Take a deep breath to find your focus and fitness
Twice a week, often between video calls or meetings, Andrew Lowenthal takes a break from work to open an app on his phone that helps him focus on his breathing.
The payoff? Better stress management, clearer thinking at work and – to Lowenthal’s surprise – more strength and power in the gym. “It’s such a fundamental part of being human but not something that we think about often,” Lowenthal says.
As executive director of Out in Tech, a Manhattan-based nonprofit, Lowenthal, 33, typically spends three to 10 minutes on an app created by Inscape, a New York meditation studio. He inhales, holding and exhaling his breath for various lengths of time according to prompts. Lowenthal says he now exercises more regularly and takes better care of himself because of his breathing exercises. “It definitely helps me with my endurance,” he says.
Long a key part of meditation and some kinds of yoga, breathwork is now becoming a discipline in its own right, with proponents offering classes, one-on-one sessions and apps dedicated to the practice. And whereas the focus has predominantly been on the mental and psychological benefits of breathwork, fitness industry professionals are increasingly saying that it can also enhance athletic performance or speed muscular recovery after a workout.
It has long been recognised that deep, controlled breathing can calm someone having an anxiety attack or help anyone in need of a little more stress-relief and mental clarity. Hillary Clinton, for example, has talked about using alternate side nostril breathing to help her relax while on the 2016 presidential campaign trail. But what’s new is that scientists have found a physical link between breathing and what they call “emotionality.”
A study published last March in Science showed a direct anatomical link between the parts of the brain that control voluntary breathing and the parts that control emotionality. Altering the activity of this connection changed how aroused, alert or calm mice were. “It’s an important finding because it shows that there is a causality between the two,” says Andrew Huberman, a professor of Neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford University.
In his lab at Stanford, Huberman is doing research on breathing and how it impacts emotional states. He’s also developing an app with Brian Mackenzie, a strength and conditioning coach in San Mateo Hills, California. The goal of the app will be to customise breathwork for people by giving them a simple inhale-and-exhale test and incorporating other data provided by those who sign up for it.
“Breathwork can be thought of as exercise in that, if done correctly, it has immediate benefits – physical, emotional and cognitive – but breathwork also has longer-term benefits if you do it regularly,” Huberman says. “The idea is that people can alter and strengthen the neural pathways that link breathing with emotion regulation centres in the brain, which can help them feel calmer and more alert, and sleep better, depending on the protocols they use.”
It can also make you a better athlete. Mackenzie, who is the co-author of three sports-related books including Unbreakable Runner, teaches his clients how to use nasal breathing to optimise their athletic performance and be more “metabolically efficient.” Breathing through the nose activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps people remain calm and alert, improves their peripheral vision and encourages them to maintain better posture and body mechanics, which results in fewer stresses, strains and injuries, Mackenzie says.