The Breathing Revolution: Train yourself to breathe properly to banish anxiety and find your inner calm

By Yolanda Barker

As featured in Hello!, OM Yoga & Lifestyle, Natural Health, Healthy Living, Yoga magazine and Women's Fitness.

Breathing is at the core of everything we do. Breath is life.

In this inspiring and accessible book, yoga teacher and award-winning documentary filmmaker Yolanda Barker shows us the importance of better breathing, and provides a seven-day programme of practical exercises for readers to follow.

Drawing on her own experiences with anxiety and depression, the breathing practices she shares can help to ease symptoms of stress, enable us to sleep better, and calm us down during difficult situations. Grounding the information in science and her observations as a long-term yoga teacher, she also explains how these exercises work, and shines a light on the physiology of stress, and its effect on the body, mind and emotions. The book features inspiring and instructional illustrations.

Supported with science and enriched with sensitivity, understanding and personal experience, The Breathing Revolution is an empowering guide to breathing practices that can be truly life-changing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Sep 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781472948588

Yolanda Barker

Yolanda Barker is a writer and award-winning film director. She is also an experienced yoga teacher who trained in India. Yolanda lives in London, UK.

Book preview

Dedication

To Gosia and Michael, for always being there.

Notes: If you are pregnant, or if you have any illnesses (particularly relating to the heart or lungs), then it’s very important that you consult with a specialist respiratory physiotherapist before attempting these exercises.

If you suffer from depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder, please note that breathwork can only help as part of a multi-faceted healing approach.

The names of the participants in my breathing trials have been changed.

All of the scientific studies are referenced at the end of the book in the References section.

Contents

Introduction

Author’s note

The breath effect

Why revolutions fail (the importance of awareness)

PART ONE:

The seven-day programme

Introduction

Day One: Becoming aware of your breathing habits

Day Two: Breath and body awareness

Day Three: Nose breathing

Day Four: The correct breathing muscles

Day Five: The rate of the breath

Day Six: The unstressed breath

Day Seven: The rhythm of the breath

Summary: If you’ve made it this far

PART TWO:

Everyday hacks

Identifying triggers

Pelvic floor and posture

Everyday breathing hacks

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

Introduction

Author’s note

I sat on the floor cushion, ready to meditate. It was 2015, and this retreat was my last-ditch effort to sort out my life.

A lifelong battle with anxiety and depression had brought me here. I’d spent the last decade trying to heal. I had tried everything: psychotherapy, meditation, acupuncture, spirituality, yoga, gratitude lists, setting goals, establishing routines, travelling to India, intermittent fasting, biohacking, veganism, low-carb dieting and becoming a mini-expert on nutrition and exercise.

I’d hit a wall. I was jaded, and losing hope.

I closed my eyes and focused on my breath; gradually drifting into a deeper layer of my mind – a vivid space between wakefulness and sleep. I sank further ... and then, I heard something. Words, strung into a sentence, in a voice that sounded like my own. Over and over again, it said, ‘The breath is the only thing that’s real.’

Imagine you’d lived your whole life with your eyes closed and, one day, you could suddenly see. That’s how I felt. I’d discovered a new sense, a new source of light, a gift.

I breathed slowly and mindfully, like I was drinking the air. Kinesthetic peace ran through me. I felt intimately connected to myself, and yet everything was spacious, and vast.

As my breath flowed in and out of my body, I noticed it moved with a rhythm I wasn’t controlling. It pulsed with a life of its own. I wasn’t breathing. My breath was breathing me.

I suddenly realised that this was what all those yoga books had been talking about when they said ‘the breath is life’! Breathing wasn’t just an unconscious physiological process that kept us alive. It was consciousness inhabiting the body.

It was the only thing that was real.

Okay, I know some of you will think that’s woo-woo! Spiritual experiences are like dreams: deeply personal and impossible to convey with words.

So let me try this another way. For a moment, pay attention to your breathing. Close your eyes, and just notice how each breath rises and falls, up and down, like waves in the sea.

In my meditation, I went underwater, and connected to what created the waves. I discovered the heartbeat of the ocean.

After the retreat, I carried this new breath awareness into my daily life. I breathed more slowly and consciously. Quite quickly, I noticed a change. This new breathing style blunted my anxiety, lifted my mood and gave me more energy. I felt stable, strong and flexible. I’d stumbled on to something incredible.

How ironic that I’d been doing breath-based practices for years. I meditated and was a yoga teacher. But I’d completely missed the point.

The ancient yogis developed yoga: a system of eight practices, including breath-based postures (asanas) and breathing exercises (pranayama). Pranayama was said to be the fastest path to enlightenment: peace, bliss and wisdom.

My mission was clear. What was so special about the breath? What did these yogis know that we didn’t?

I threw myself into research. I devoured books about yoga and pranayama. I investigated Western styles of breathing. I read scientific studies that were more Latin than English. I spoke to yoga teachers, psychologists, scientists, physiologists, neuroscientists, breathing experts and respiratory physiotherapists. I researched mental health and trauma. I even did a freediving course.

Everything pointed to this: the breath is a physiological skeleton key. The way you breathe affects your body, mind and emotions – largely because of its connection to the nervous system and the stress response.

Through this process, I learned about my own breathing. In sessions with a respiratory physiotherapist, in daily practice and in research, I discovered a profound link between my breathing pattern and my mental health.

What I found out changed how I taught yoga. My classes transformed from acrobatic and physically demanding workouts, to deliberate, strong, breath-centred movement. I no longer told people to ‘breathe’ – I taught them how to breathe.

My students loved the new approach. They said they felt calmer and more connected to themselves after our classes. Many asked if I’d recorded anything they could listen to at home. That gave me an idea.

I had a collection of breathing exercises from pranayama and meditation that I regularly used. I was in the process of researching them, hoping to figure out how they worked. Maybe my students could help me. I could make my own recordings and integrate the verbal cues I’d developed through teaching yoga. I’d enlist people to trial them and then get their feedback.

The whole thing took on a life of its own. More than 40 people signed up – most of them wanting help with their mental health. After four separate ‘trials’, I’d compiled my research, collated and analysed my data, identified the most popular and effective exercises, understod how they worked, and how best to share them. And I’d written everything down. I’d written a book.

No one can say for sure how to heal from anxiety and depression. There’s still a lot that we don’t know. But conscious breathing can begin to re-balance us. This is what the yogis knew.

Learning about the breath was a turning point for me. In the darkness, I stumbled upon a light. Breathing didn’t banish the night, but it made it easier to navigate. I hope the information in this book is as revolutionary to you as it’s been to me.

The breath effect

I opened the front door to Markus, and immediately knew something was wrong. He had dark circles under his eyes, and looked sunken and dejected. Upon entering, he shared that he’d been made redundant.

The loss was monumental. It would have terrible repercussions on him both financially and socially. But the immediate effect on his self-confidence was even more worrying. Markus felt worthless, ashamed and distressed, to the extent that he didn’t see any point in being alive anymore. Losing his job had triggered an avalanche of grief, and I could see it crushing him.

I lent my friend an ear. He talked and I listened, but it seemed to me that the more he spoke, the worse he felt. His thoughts were becoming progressively darker.

Now, I’m a layperson, not a psychologist, so this flew in the face of what I knew about supporting people. Wasn’t a burden shared, a burden halved? Shouldn’t this conversation be making him feel better?

I found myself noticing Markus’ breathing, and I suddenly realised that his breath was speaking too. It was chaotic. Markus was gasping, panting, and sometimes not breathing at all. His body was being hijacked by his mind and so, from what I could see, he needed an intervention that bypassed his intellect.

Hesitating slightly, I asked if he’d do a breathing exercise with me. I didn’t know how he’d respond. Markus wasn’t into this ‘yoga stuff’. But, to my surprise, he agreed. I guess he had nothing to lose.

I decided to guide him through my most calming exercise (‘the extended exhale’). I asked Markus to lie on the floor and breathe along with my instructions. As he did, I observed him.

Initially, he struggled to lengthen his breath or keep up with the directions. I sensed his frustration and impatience. On some level, he didn’t want to do this. He didn’t believe this would help. But, he was desperate. So, though he resisted, he persisted.

Within 30 seconds, there was a shift. Markus’ breathing slowed down. His inhales and exhales became long, smooth and rhythmic. His body relaxed.

After 10 minutes, he was calm.

Sitting up, measured and lucid, Markus told me his tsunami of negative thoughts had washed away. During the breathing exercise, he’d acquired a new perspective on his situation. He still felt sad and anxious, but now, he felt he could cope.

Intellectually, I knew that breathing techniques could have this effect on people. It was basic physiology in action. The slow breathing Markus implemented took him out of something called fight or flight – the nervous system’s response to stress. This then had an enormous impact on his mood and mindset.

But emotionally, I barely believed what I was seeing. Who was this person in front of me? What was this witchcraft?!

Ancient wisdom, but not common sense

Try it yourself, right now. Bring your awareness to your breath, and gently lengthen your exhale. Don’t worry about your inhale – just focus on lengthening the exhale. Close your eyes, and do this for six breaths.

How did it feel? Are you a little more calm and relaxed?

I’m not trying to minimise the complexity of anxiety and depression, or say that breathing is the beginning and end of all health problems. Mental and physical health requires a multi-faceted approach.

However, if 10 minutes of conscious breathing could have that kind of effect on Markus, what could a sustained daily practice do?

Breathing is a blind spot in generally practised medicine. How often have you been told to change your diet and drink more water? Have you ever been told to breathe differently?

We like to complicate and/or romanticise things, and breathing is … well, normal. How could something so mundane have profound effects on health and vitality?

Well, the simple things are fundamental to life.

More than 90 per cent of the body’s processes are fuelled by oxygen, compared to less than 10 per cent by food and water. Every cell in the body requires oxygen to live, and breathing is our means of absorbing oxygen from the air. People can go for months without food, days without water or sleep, but only minutes without breathing.

Yet, many people do not breathe as well as they could. You might be one of them.

Respiratory physiotherapy is a branch of physiotherapy that only deals with the breath. It’s an evidence-based system, founded on the principle that inefficient breathing can hamper people’s physical and mental health. It aims to rehabilitate people’s breathing or, in other words, help people to breathe more easily and efficiently. It does this using breathing exercises and muscle training.

Emily Lockwood, a respiratory physiotherapist in London, told me:

‘I think very few people breathe optimally. However, as a respiratory physio, I’m only invited to get involved when patients have symptoms of inefficient breathing patterns. I think most people are totally unaware they could be breathing better!’

Inefficient breathing is when a person has breathing tendencies that negatively