We can survive for three weeks without food, for three days without water but only three minutes without air! Should this not clearly demonstrate the priority that should be given to breathing?

I have spent the past twenty years promoting the urgent need to put “breathing quality” higher on the medical agenda, for research, health assessment, therapy, and general health education. As a species, man has a unique position for developing seriously bad breathing habits over the past decades, from my clinical experience, dysfunctional breathing affects over 75% of the population very significantly, laying the foundation for a host of chronic diseases and perhaps another 20% of the population impairing their health and fitness. Only a handfulof people, around 5% of the population breathe well.

Why should such an important health factor have been sidelined by medicine? There are many possible reasons from ignorance, professional disinterest, lack of research demonstrating the significance of good breathing, pressure of dealing with pathological respiratory conditions, pressures from commercial interests that favour any research and therapies that generate profits, a public unwillingness to take responsibility for their own health, poor health education at all levels from family, school to medical training or all of the above!

It is even more strange to know that for thousands of years all civilisations ans societies have considered good breathing fundamental to health and well-being and poor breathing the reason for disease.

The question I often ask my patients is “Has your doctor ever checked your breathing?”  Only those who have suffered recognised clinical respiratory conditions would answer yes.

If you wonder what health problems may be associated with dysfunctional breathing, just go to my section on this website <The Breath Conection> and you will see over a hundred health conditions that are caused by or closely associated with poor breathing, from A to Z, from Asthma to Angina, from Hay Fever to Heart Disease, from CFS to Crooked Teeth.

I would further recommend you read “Breath” by  James Nestor, recently published, that will give you an amazing insight into the “magic of breath”.

Meanwhile, why not spend sixty seconds checking your own breathing above, just click on the image and follow the instructions. You may discover you are among the elite 5% of the population who breathe optimally. If not you should take this wake-up call to improve your breathing as from today. I usually offer four ways to start on this journey to better health:

  1. Buy a book to learn more in your own time, HERE
  2. Take the free Podcast Training Course HERE
  3. Enrol on a 1-2-1 Skype Training Course HERE
  4. Enrol on a face to face Training Course (Not available during the Covid-19 crisis)

By the way, any improved breathing will boost your immune system and give you better protection against all infectious diseases, yes including Covid-19.