Mouth breathing plays a role in so many parts of our development and adult life. It can change the way your face develops as a kid, it leads to overcrowding of teeth, it ups your chances of developing asthma and/or allergies, can lead to concentration problems, reduces your athletic ability, can increase your stress/anxiety levels, and the list goes on.
And guess who ticks virtually all of those boxes?
For me the tipping point was a two-month trip to India and Sri Lanka. If you’ve ever been to either of these places, you’ll know that there are plenty of moments where you want to avoid smelling the scents. As such I spent six weeks pretty much sealing off my nose and deep breathing through my mouth. Pair this with a terrible fortnight of gastro and my system was just completely overwhelmed.
As a result I constantly felt on edge, spaced out, experienced unreality for the first time and just generally breathless. For the first time I had a series of panic attacks and felt tight-chested 80% of the time.
Just weeks later, COVID tore across the world. Lockdowns kicked in and we were all left in limbo. A perfect storm to top up the stress levels my body had already imposed on itself.
I tried everything.
I altered my diet. I gave up caffeine. I saw a therapist. I was given medication. I attended a six-week yoga course - but the deep breathing had me feeling spaced out and panicky. Each night when I read out the daily quiz to my family I found myself panting my way through sentences. Perhaps the low point was cutting out a tuft of hair and send it off for mineral deficiency testing.
Eventually, I said to aforementioned therapist “my main issue is I simply can’t catch my breath” and they asked if I had ever considered looking up a breathing clinic. So that’s what I did.
One week later, I’d been diagnosed as a severe over-breather. I was taking in almost twice as much air as necessary by gulping huge lungfuls in through my mouth. Right there and then I signed up to my first course and have never looked back.
Breathwork was a journey and it’s not like I’m perfect and/or calm at all times - after all, you can’t undo a lifetime of dysfunctional breathing overnight. However, Buteyko breathing was a light at the end of the tunnel. It offered (and continues to do so) a natural solution to a fundamentally basic (yet symptomatically complex) issue.