In a year that began with choking bushfire smoke, and then moved to a respiratory pandemic, it seems like a better time than ever to think about how we take the air. His “Oxygen Advantage” method is a racier version of Buteyko for well people. Meanwhile, leading Buteyko practitioners such as Irishman Patrick McKeown have marketed the basic techniques to appeal to athletes and sporty types, not just asthmatics. His seminars, as pumped as Hillsong gatherings, fill stadiums. Now he’s like a late-life rock star, beamed to prominence with the help of American podcasters such as Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss and even Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop channel, where the weather-beaten Dutchman, 61, sits oddly amid the fragrant, pastel girliness. (Mine: three minutes in an ice bath.)Ī few years ago, only readers of Guinness World Records would have known much about Hof. Hof’s own latest record for direct, full-body contact with ice is 1 hour 53 minutes and 2 seconds. The “three pillars” of the Wim Hof Method (WHM) are breath patterns, “commitment” (as in, committing to breaking old routines and taking control of your body) and bracing immersions in cold water. Methods range from gentler approaches such as the Buteyko Breathing Technique (BBT), which has been around for decades and stresses the importance of light, nasal breathing, especially for conditions such as asthma and poor sleep to the more high-octane, macho-but-mindful sort, like Brian MacKenzie’s Art of Breath or the Wim Hof Method, developed by the Dutch endurance athlete Wim Hof, aka “the Iceman”, who famously attempts Mount Everest in shorts and swims among glaciers or under ice for long distances. They might cost you but trying them isn’t likely to kill you. I’m not sure they can all be miracle cures but hey, it’s only breathing. They claim to help with everything from asthma, anxiety and ADHD, to inflammation and sluggish immune systems, teeth grinding, cardio health, allergies, the way children’s faces develop, autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, sleep apnoea, and the kind of log-saw snoring that keeps partners awake. Many seem to be rebadged versions of ancient ones like yogic breathing techniques, or Tibetan tummo meditation, but with YouTube channels. There’s a whole world out there devoted to breathing techniques and their professed power to make us healthier, calmer, stronger. But was he right? Certainly he’s not alone in thinking the way we breathe matters, and that a lot of us are doing it wrong. In a time of deadly cold viruses, that last piece of information has taken on a whole new resonance. It had lowered his anxiety, improved his sleep and he hadn’t had a bad cold in years.
He claimed that since he began only nasal breathing – not a very sexy topic, I know, but stay with me – his endurance and performance had improved and the exercise-induced asthma he’d suffered had gone. Lovell said that ideally we should be breathing through the nose, awake or asleep, and even, as far as possible, when exercising. I only started thinking about it late last year when the topic came up over lunch with a personal trainer I knew, Alan Lovell. (My nose almost always, it turns out, which was a good start.) I’d never noticed if my chest was lifting or my shoulders tensing, or if I breathed through my nose or mouth. I knew I did it on a minute-by-minute basis. Until recently, I can’t say I ever gave much thought to breathing. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size
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