Buteyko Breathing

May 16, 2009

Jac Vidgen Conquers the Myth of Deep Breathing

Founded over 50 years ago by Russian Scientist Konstantin Buteyko, the Buteyko breathing technique has helped many asthmatics and sufferers of other related conditions. Jac Vidgen, who has been teaching the method over the last 15 years shares his knowledge with The Source Asia and tells us exactly why it's so difficult to get people to breathe correctly.

What is the history behind Buteyko?

It is based on the observation of this Russian doctor and that modern humans are increasingly breathing more than they should. When you breathe more than you should, it has a profound effect on your health, your wellbeing, the chemistry and physiology of the body. He saw that dying people started to breathe very deeply before they die. This led him to realize that there was an interesting norm in human physiology, a volume we should breathe each minute when at rest. He started to test that and noticed that his sick patients all breathe too much. So he worked out a structure to reduce the breathing to a more normal level, and it majorly impacted the condition of these people. This is how it started.

Why did you start to learn and teach Buteyko?

I became enthralled very quickly, because I saw results. Nobody complained, and some people reported absolute miracles.

When did you start?

I was doing PR in Sydney, so I was on the phone a lot promoting our next courses. I was ringing people in Melbourne, and I got real live feedback. I thought, wow something is going on here!

What changes did they notice?

They were mostly asthmatic and they had huge breakthroughs in the degree of their dependence on medicine and the symptom problems. They felt like they had more control.
I wanted to be a crusader. I wanted the whole world to breathe better. Circumstances led me to teach it almost by default. Today, I'm not so much of a crusader actually. The reality is, a lot of people are never going to learn to breathe correctly, and they're not even going to be interested in it. Therefore, my job is to look after the ones I can. Fortunately, I don't have a desire to get rich, because if I get my job done well, there's nothing else to sell people. Unlike most products, you can sell the person the product and then you can sell them something else. But with this, if they get the product right and they use it effectively, there's absolutely nothing else I could ever sell them. So it's a tough business. But the advantage I have is that the problem is getting worse. As the lifestyle changes, our breathing patterns are getting worse, and conventional Western medicine doesn't address breathing patterns or lifestyle. It addresses symptoms.

By lifestyle do you mean pollution?

Pollution is the least of the problems. No one could argue that pollution and smoking are good for you, but they're inherently not the problem. There are people who smoke until they're 110 years old, and they don't die of lung cancer. Smoking isn't the problem. It's a trigger, so pollution can be a trigger. But the biggest trigger to wrong breathing would probably be sedentary stress. That is the stress that occurs when you're not in physical activity. Most people's stress occurs just like that, and in fact most people exercise to relax and sit down and get stressed. But the design of the body of humans and animals is to get stressed in relation to exercise and sit down to relax.
We've changed that, and not only have we changed that, but we're changing increasingly our technological lifestyle on which we all depend. Computers were not designed for our health, neither were mobile phones and chairs. But they're all very convenient things, and we all use them. There are other issues, pollution is one of them, air conditioning is another, and then there is diet and posture.

How does our posture affect our breath?

Oh wow, your posture has a huge bearing on your breathing. If you normally sit in a chair and you don't use your core muscles, in other words you lean on the back of the chair and your body slumps, your diaphragm can't move freely, so you tend to overbreathe in the top of your chest, and not effectively ventilate the lower parts of your lungs. The breathing mechanism is interrupted by bad posture, so it has a huge effect. That's why I support techniques, such as the Alexander Technique, because it allows people to correct their own posture. Using the body and the breathing in a way that's optimal for our health is something that requires training practice, coaching and consciousness.

So correct breathing means breathing as less as possible?

That's actually quite good. But if you tell the average person, they'll think you're mad. "Take a deep breath", that motto surrounds us, and it is actually misleading and incorrect, when deep breathing is clinically dangerous. The most dangerous aspect of breathing more than you need is it reduces oxygen supply to the cells. Taking in more air doesn't get you more oxygen. It gets you less. That's the physiology. That's one of the things that I'm constantly coming up against, because I teach something that is almost counterintuitive. We teach people to reduce the breath, breathing lighter, more gently and softly. When people meditate they shallow breathe. Anybody who does deep meditation will say that when they're in deep meditation their breathing almost disappears. You're not even conscious you're breathing. You're getting good oxygen delivery.
But if you say ok this is a good idea, "I'm going to breathe less." The first thing you will encounter is that you are not getting enough air. As soon as you breathe less you increase CO2 and it increases your urge to breathe. But that's why I have a job. It's not just a simple instruction. Otherwise I could sell DVDs. It's not that kind of method. You need instruction and you need practice, and you need to get feedback on it. It's a process of reduction. Pauses in breathing without supervision can be a dangerous thing. But what we do is managed breath holding, and it's perfectly healthy because it's properly managed.

What about yoga? It teaches you to breathe deeply.

It's misleading. It's not wrong. Yoga can't be wrong. Yoga is 3000 years old. I'd be more inclined to ask you: Who taught you that? How exactly did they describe it to you and how did you interpret it? Yoga is not about deep breathing I can promise you that. Look at this analogy. If a person is angry and upset or aggressive, their breathing is heavy. They breathe deeply. But a person who's meditating, their breathing is very light, gentle, and soft. You can hardly notice it. I've taught yoga teachers and none of them had good breathing. taught pilates instructors, gym instructors, triathletes, diving instructors, people who you would think know a lot about breathing. But they've learnt a lot. It's a misleading interpretation of "you should breathe deeply".

Tell us more about the technique. Is it the same for everyone?

No it's not. There are some basic things that everybody needs to learn. Then there are some things that people need to observe in themselves and practice for themselves and see what happens when they do that. Everyone should be breathing in and out through the nose for all activities except for talking, snorkeling and scuba diving. But all other activities that you do on a regular basis, including aerobics and marathons, should be done while breathing in and out through the nose. That's what we're designed to do. You have to think: What's the role of the nose? It humidifies the air going in. It picks up moisture form the hairs. When you breathe out through the nose, it deposits the moisture back on the hairs. And the nose having narrow passages, limits the amount of flow in and out. Most people don't control their breathing. So if you use the nose without even thinking about it, you've already got better control than someone who is using the mouth. Athletes do learn to do their activity, breathing in and out through the nose, which at first is quite confronting and difficult, but 100 percent of the time they report back to me that it works better. "My heart rate is lower, my muscles ache less, I lose weight more easily, I recover more quickly." So if you're someone who does sports, who consistently uses the mouth to breathe, I guarantee you're body is compromised by this and that in some ways you're going to suffer, probably not for years, but sometime down the line.

What can you address with Buteyko?

Buteyko has the ability to reverse a lot of the symptoms and even some conditions. The most common of those are allergies, sleep and anxiety disorders, excess mucus and mild headache. At a deeper level, which you wouldn't necessarily see until later, basically we're talking about migraines, hypertension, chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple sclerosis, and cardiovascular disorder. A lot of very serious conditions can be significantly impacted by changing the breathing. But on a superficial level we can expect to see significant results within a few days, a week. If they do the work, they will see the results.

So do people have to do exercises?

You breathe all the time, so the method is not an exercise. The method is a way of approaching your breathing and relating your breathing to everything you do. You have to live the method. There are some exercises to practice before you sleep or when you wake up in the morning or when you get symptoms. But the method is a whole structure that includes an understanding of what is correct breathing. How do I recognize it, and how do I know when I'm not breathing correctly? How does my breathing affect my sleeping? The same goes for eating, exercise, computer and postural habits. You have to incorporate it into our daily life. But not everybody is willing to do that. That's why the method is not for everyone.

Can it address hyperventilation?

If you're sitting still and you're living in modern Hong Kong you're already hyperventilating, but you don't notice it, because it's quite subtle. Buteyko really treats low-grade chronic hyperventilation that you do twenty four seven. When you overbreathe too much and you have a tendency to asthma, your breathing passages close to stop you from overbreathing. Unfortunately you don't like it, because you're trying to breathe more. But the body knows exactly what it's trying to do. Then the most popular medicine an asthmatic would take at that time is a bronchodilator. It opens the breathing passages, so the person breathes more. Perfect for the person who's selling the medicine, and the person who's experiencing the symptoms thinks, "Oh I can breathe more". But what they don't realize is that their body is trying to get them to breathe less. And when they breathe less, they just get less asthma, in days, over nights, in minutes. If you had an asthma attack, and it wasn't severe, I could reduce it for you in five minutes.

How fast can you see results?

For most people a week, and results would be better quality sleep, not needing to sleep as much, not waking up as much to pee during the night, waking up with less mucus, being calmer and clearer, having better digestion, hunger level reduces a little, so you're not overeating anymore, less coughing, nose will be clearer and certainly less snoring if at all. The major issue that has become a big industry is sleep apnea (when the breath stops during the night). The industry offers expensive elaborate testing, which in Hong Kong costs about $5,000 a night. You get tested for a night in the sleep clinic. You're then advised to try a CPAP machine, which controls air pressure. But they don't give you correct breathing, they give you pressure. But it works, but they then have to wear the machine for the rest of their lives. If people learn to breathe correctly, they don't need the machine. I've allowed many people to be able to safely reduce and often eliminate the need for medication and CPAP machines.

Do you have any tips?

The first one is that everyone should breathe through the nose. That's the most important thing.
People shouldn't sleep on their back. It's a dangerous position to sleep in. People overbreathe much more prevalently on the back than on the side. The left side is a good side to sleep on. It has to do with the position of the heart.
When a person's sitting, their chest should never move. Nothing should move above the diaphragm when you breathe. There should be no noise. It should be absolutely silent. Lao Tzu said, "The perfect man breathes as if he is not breathing." That's the best tip.

Jac Vidgen teaches Buteyko mainly in Asia, in the Philippines, Thailand and Hong Kong. He will be holding free introductory talks and workshops in Hong Kong in September and October, 2009. See schedule below.

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