Breath & Birth: How Breathing Patterns Influence Fertility

Introduction to Breath and Fertility 0:00

Hello and welcome. I'm your host, Dr. Aumatma Welcome to the Beyond infertility Summit. And today we have a very different topic for you. I am bringing on one of my friends, Sachin Patel, who is a father, a husband, a philanthropist, a functional medicine practice success coach. He's a speaker. He's an author. He's a breathwork facilitator. And he's a plant medicine advocate. He has so many skills and tools. This man is awesome. But we are going to focus our topic on breath breath, the simplicity of breath.

We're not even getting into breathwork, but the foundations of it. And the reason that we're talking about this is because it is such a beautiful tie end to fertility it the breath really is the template for our nervous system. He's going to you're going to hear such and talk about how much breath is connected to. So many different aspects of fertility that you may not have considered before. So we definitely, definitely, definitely do not want you to miss this talk. It's going to be awesome. Sachin is convinced that the doctor of the future is actually the patient and he has committed himself to helping people raise their consciousness, activate their inner doctor, and initiate their deepest healing through lifestyle and breathwork.

So you are going to be in for a real treat. I'm so excited that he accepted my invitation to this summit because he is a complete badass and you will feel just pay attention to how he speaks. Pay attention to how he's breathing. Through the interview. Because at least for me, I noticed in while I was talking to him, I noticed how my nervous system was just calming down. And he talks about how our breath is going to help mirror to other people. So, yeah, this is going to be a really fascinating experience for you.

I'm so excited that you're here and I will see you soon. All right. So I am so excited to talk to you today. Sachin. We're going to talk about breathing, which may seem a little bit weird or awkward, but breathing is kind of fundamental to everything. How do you think it impacts fertility? Aumatma, thank you for offering this opportunity to discuss this topic, and my intention is for one person to learn one new thing about breath. And I hope that piques their interest. like it piqued mine a few years ago.

So the thing the reason it might seem odd to somebody that breath and fertility just seem so far, you know, so far disconnected from one another. But that's actually where the paradox starts. Your breath is literally connected to everything. So simply put, your breath is like the steering wheel of your nervous system.

Breath as the Steering Wheel of the Nervous System 3:40

And your nervous system is really the steering wheel of your entire life. Your nervous system is informing every cell tissue, organ and system in your body whether it should be in a state of healing, repair and regeneration, restoration. You know, all the things that we want. Or if your nervous system should be in a state of fight or flight, in a state of attack, in a state of taking blood flow away from the trunk organs and sending it to the arms and legs because something is going to pounce on us or something is chasing us.

You see, the best form of birth control that I've ever heard of is chronic stress. Chronic stress keeps us in this perpetual fight or flight low grade, perhaps for some people, high grade for others, perpetual state of chronic stress. And I can't think of anything more stressful in the nervous system than trying to have a baby under those conditions. Right. Because we don't have babies, we build babies. And so we can only, you know, 3D print or 5D print out for, if you want to look at it, another human being from our own, you know, body.

Right. So the function and state of function of that body has to be ideal. And the most ideal state for anyone to get pregnant and raise a child in is when they have a calm, nervous system and so we can't control all the outside forces that are happening to us. Right. Sometimes we can control how we respond to them. But the ultimate place where that signature of stress shows up is in how we breathe. So we can either have a breath that's reactive to all the forces that are acting on us and that controls our physiology.

Or we can become aware of our breath and actually now have the steering wheel to control our entire nervous system. And so we need a healthy, regulated, functioning nervous system not just to get pregnant and, you know, have the baby grow the baby, deliver the baby, raise the baby. We need a healthy nervous system for every area of our life. So the paradox is that breath affects everything. And when we learn how to breathe, the beautiful thing is, is we are learning how to regulate our nervous system, which then improves every cell cell tissue, organ and system in our body simultaneously.

So this is truly the holy grail of healing, and it's so embarrassingly simple that it's so easy to brush over, which I did for the first 41 years of my life. I'm 45 now, and in the last four years I've discovered this journey and how it's so important that I wish. I want every human being to know this because the world would be a different place if we all learned how to breathe. You know, breathing allows us to explore our physiology and regulate it. It allows us to explore our nervous system and co-create our reality.

And it also allows us to change our facial structure. Our physical structure is also impacted by how we breathe. And we can access what some might call mystical experiences using our breath as well. And this is something else that I help people do. And we can have personal breakthroughs with our breath. I mean, there's so many things that you can do with this one tool, so I'm super excited to talk about it. And you can tell I'm excited. I haven't even taken a single breath. I'll let you ask whatever your next question is, but I hope that gives people a connection and a bridge as to why.

What we're going to talk about is still relevant to them. It's so relevant. And I just want to reiterate what you said about the nervous system. So the breath helps us regulate the nervous system and our audience has probably heard me say this a million times. If we're in fighter flight, reproduction is shut off. There is no way our body is trying to produce a child if we're needing to run from a lion or a tiger. So at the core of it, if breath is going to help us move into the regenerate, receive, relax and heal mode, then that is going to be the vehicle essentially to get us to this like more fertile state.

So yeah, I'm very excited about this conversation. I got the chill while I was talking Yeah it's a perfect, perfect recap. You summarize it really, really nicely. Thank you. Also so how do we learn how to breathe better? All right, so here's so here's the thing. Everything I'm going to share today is going to be embarrassingly and almost shockingly simple that you won't even believe how easy it is to do okay. What I learned a long time ago is that things that are easy to do are also easy not to do.

And so Leonardo da Vinci, I just came back from Italy a few weeks ago. And Da Vinci, I love this quote that he has. And he basically says that the greatest sign of sophistication is simplicity. And to me, the greatest sign of sophistication that I've ever seen is the human body. So most marvelous thing that I've ever witnessed and I've dissected the human body head to toe many times in anatomy class. I taught, you know, head and neck anatomy. So I have a very fine appreciation of of what this body is capable of and what it does.

And, you know, so it's what's so fascinating about this topic is it's going to allow us to explore in so many from so many different vantage points. So how we breathe is is a simple thing to do. And I want everyone not to get caught up in the simplicity. So The Da Vinci Code is the greatest sign of sophistication is simplicity. Nothing's more sophisticated than your body, and nothing should be more simple to take care of like a computer. I don't have to understand how my computer works to get on this call with you.

Right. I just have to push a few buttons and the sophisticated software, right, is what makes this computer awesome and a joy to use. And our bodies are the same way. They're a simple joy when we know what the inputs are. So when we talk about breathing, the first discussion probably starts here in the face. We have two orifices which we can breathe from. We have our nose and our mouth and I would argue our noses and intake and our mouth if anything is in air as an exhaust. Right. So you'll hear me pause and take a breath in through my nose as often as I remember.

I'm trying to be conscious of that throughout this interview, but even throughout the day when I'm speaking because

Nose Breathing and the Coherence Breath 10:20

I want my mouth to be an exhaust, I want to try to avoid breathing in through my mouth. The mouth is a dirty is part of our body. Right? So we have you know, you know this as a doctor yourself, many people have heard this, that the mouth is the dirtiest part of what is filled with all kinds of bacteria. And so every time if we inhale through our mouth, every breath we take, we're taxing our immune system. The nose, on the other hand, purifies the air. It pressurizes the air. So there's actually 20% more oxygen.

Pressurized air goes deeper into the alveoli. So we take healthier, more cleansing breaths that also eliminate butter. We also, when we breathe in through our nose, we physically we we enzymatic, we cleanse the air. So we produce nitric oxide, which kills viruses and bacteria on contact. We also and that has to have the right oral microbiome to do that. But we temperature regulate the air, we moisture regulate the air, which means we recapture air when we breathe through our nose. What's interesting about that is people who are thirsty all the time, it's usually because they're not breathing through their nose.

And so they're losing so much moisture while they're breathing instead of recapturing it. So the nose perfects the air before it goes into the lungs. And that's what we want. You know, the you know, we only eat about a couple of pounds of food a day. Guess how much air we breathe the day? I don't know, ten. Pounds, 30, £30 of air we breathe every day. So it's the thing. Our breath is the thing that we physically consume the most each and every single day. So more than anything, more than food. And this is why I tell people that how you breathe is actually more important than what you eat.

I mean, both are important. But if I had to choose somebody, I if I had to choose between putting somebody on a bad diet and putting somebody on on toxic breathing patterns, the person who breathes poorly will age and have disease much faster because their nervous system is keeping them calm and in a state of healing, repair and regeneration. Right. It's when we have this human beings are extremely resilient. But if we don't know how to tap into that resilience, then we can't develop it as a skill.

So breathing through our nose is a far superior way to breathe. Then if we have to eliminate air quickly or we're talking, obviously we want to be breathing out through our mouth 99% of the time. By the way, I ask my clients to breathe and the way I invite people to breathe is with our tongue at the roof of our mouth, the tongue touching just gently, the back of the front teeth and breathe, keeping our jaw relaxed, so not clenching the jaw, just keeping it in a relaxed state and breathing in and out through our nose.

We want to breathe in and out for a piece of about 6 seconds. In 6 seconds out. This is called the coherence breath. Hmm. Okay. And a lot of what I'm talking about today, just if anyone wants to go deeper into this topic, one of my mentors, James Nestor, he wrote an amazing book called Breath. And I encourage everyone to read that book. I bought it for all of my clients actually, in 2020 when it first came out, probably the most important book I've ever read. So a lot of what I'm going to share with you, if you want a fact checked it or you want to go a little bit deeper than this conversation, that's a great book for people to read.

The other so, so breathing through our nose mouth closed six in, six out. This is called coherence breath. This is the breath I want to be in as much as I possibly can. So whenever I'm drawing awareness to my breath, I'm going back into this pattern. That's my default pattern. Okay, mouth closed, six in, six out. Now, if I have to exert myself a little bit, I try to stay in that breathing pattern as much as I can. Believe it or not, the urge to breathe doesn't actually come from needing more oxygen.

The urge to breathe comes from being intolerant to CO2. So you actually don't need to breathe as much. People don't need to breathe as much as they actually do most people over breathe. So it's kind of an interesting paradox. There is such a thing as as over breathing. So the depth at which we breathe is also something we want to control. You only need about 500 milliliters or so of air per breath, so it's really not a lot of air. It's actually quite minimal that, you know, there's a huge anti-aging movement that's happening right now and there's a strong correlation between how fast an animal breathes and how long it lives.

So a turtle lives for about 200 years and they take on average about four breaths per minute, a dog ages seven times faster than a human being, and they take about 30 to 50 breaths per minute. So one of the most effective thing, things that a person can do, aside from all the other stuff that they can do, all the stuff they can put on their skin and all the treatments that they can have. If you want to slow down the aging process, the most validated way to actually do that is to breathe slower. Well, there is there's actually there's all the scientific evidence points to that already.

So that's an unequivocal fact. So slow down your breathing is why whales don't age as fast as you can. You always wonder, how do these animals, how does hurt animals live so long? Well, it's correlated to their breathing pattern. So you want to slow down aging then? Yeah, slow down your breath. It's about 500. 500 milliliters per breath is how much they want to breathe. Does it has it also been shown to reverse aging? So like with fertility especially, this question is up for a lot of people. It's like, how do I reverse the age of my ovaries, right?

Or How do I like slow down aging so that I can stay fertile longer? So has it been correlated to show like if if we strategically slow down our breath, how long would it take to like reverse our age? You don't know. I know, I know. I know what everyone wants to hear. But the truth is, I don't know. Yeah, so that's a that's a great question. I wonder if we could study that. I do know I do know that it will slow down the aging. And I know that if you could slow it down by 50% for some people, because some people are their breathing is so dysfunctional because they're just unaware of how they breathe.

And so once they have that awareness, like depending on what their delta is, I mean, they're going to see, you know, the person that's the poorest breather is going to see the most significant improvement. Gotcha. Yeah. So. Yeah. So breathe through the nose. Tongue it through for the mouth. Jaw is in a relaxed position and then 6 seconds in, 6 seconds out, about 500 milliliters. How do you measure that? You can get a barometer if you want to be very technical. But the point is, it's a very it's a pretty shallow breath.

Okay. There's going to be occasions where you want to take deep breaths and there are certain exercises that you can do. Think about when you're walking, though, right. Because you can take 23,000 of these breaths, plus or minus, right. You wouldn't breathe like to your full capacity, each and every single breath. Just like if you're walking, going for a walk, you don't take a full like complete full length stride every step you take. Right. You look like a fool. So same thing with breathing, right?

Less is more in this case. Okay? Less is more when we're breathing. And really, it's about breathing the right amount for whatever situation you're in. But leaning towards less is more. Of a so that there's I want to ask this question because there are other schools of thought like in terms of like, oh, take really deep breaths. You need to breathe into your belly. Right. And and yes, like I think probably doing that for periods of time is a good thing. But you're saying like the shallow breath is also normal, adequate and probably a good thing to do.

Like how frequently would you say compared to that? Like deep breathing? Yeah, I feel like. So there's we want to look at breathing like a spectrum, right? Just like we might look at activity like a spectrum. So if your goal is to be as still as possible. Right. And that would be like sitting and breathing equivalent cadence to that might be meditation right then. Now we're purposely and intentionally kind of disconnecting from the outside world and getting really grounded. Right. And we're going to use our breath to get more and more grounded.

And the longer our exhale is, the more parasympathetic we get. Okay, now, when I'm sitting at my desk, I don't want to have the same breathing pattern as someone who's meditating because I want to be doing focused work, right? So I want a balance between my sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system.

Breathing Patterns, Recovery, and Sleep 19:40

And so I'm going to breathe in and out at a pace of six and the shallowness of the breath and the cadence of the breath are important to indicate. So if I was breathing the same depth but faster, it's going to sound and do something totally different to my nervous system. If I'm breathing mouth open, right? Same depth right as before, but I'm breathing really fast. That changes the signal to my nervous system. So those are that's the most correct way to breathe. And then if I'm increasing my activity and I need to and I can't keep in that maintaining breathing through my nose anymore, in and out.

Right. Keeping it four, six and six out and then increasing the pace, as I need to, to keep up with my metabolic demands and I'm going to breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth and through my nose, out through my mouth. Now, if I'm on a full on sprint because the dog's chasing me or something, then for less than 1% of my day, I might be breathing heavily in and out through my mouth. Right. Or intentionally, because I'm exercising. But then I'm going to come back. So once I'm as I'm trying to catch my breath, I'm going to go back to breathing in through my nose now out through my mouth and then back to breathing in and out through my nose.

The measure of somebodies resilience in their nervous system is their ability to come back to a resting baseline. Right. So, Dave, as we talks about this in his latest book and he says it's not how hard you can push yourself, it's how fast you can recover from having pushed yourself. That's the real measurement. And so the breath gets us back to that resting baseline nervous system and heart rate and, you know, respiratory rate and all those things, blood pressure and all those things back to baseline faster by breathing in that cadence.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that that makes so much sense. Thank you for sharing that. Hey, you're welcome. Yeah, cool. Is there variances and you talked about variances throughout the day. What about nighttime breathing? Like, what does that look like or what is it supposed to look like? Yeah, you read my mind. I was hoping we talk about that. So nighttime breathing is what sets the upper limit of our metabolic system. So the most parasympathetic thing that we do is sleep right. There's nothing more grounding, nothing more important to heal the brain, but also to heal all of our trunk organs.

Then when we are sleeping at night, right? It's kind of like your car. You can't work on your car while it's driving down the highway. Get to park it, you know, and put it up on jacks, if you will, and put the parking brakes on and all that good stuff. That's what sleep is like. That's when we can do the deepest work on on healing and repair and regeneration. Now, the the nervous system is constantly being informed by our breathing in terms of what state it should be in. Right? So there's two way communication.

The nervous system can inform the breath or the breath can inform the nervous system. So anything that causes obstruction in our breathing while we sleep, or if people are sleeping with their mouth open or they have apnea or they're snoring, right. And their breathing is somewhat restricted and dysfunctional, that's going to put their nervous system in a more fight or flight state so their healing and repair won't be as deep. So important thing to note is how we breathe during the day. It carries over into how we breathe at night.

Right. So just like blood sugar, our blood sugar, if we keep it stable throughout the day, it's going to stay stable at night. But if it's a roller coaster throughout the day, then chances are it's going to be more of a roller coaster at night. So that's why I'm conscious, daytime breathing. Slowing that down will automatically slow down your nighttime breathing. Next thing we do is we encourage our clients to tape their mouth closed at night. So we've all heard the trends about mouth breathing.

And yes, it's it's a thing. And mouth breathing is, as I mentioned, it's the dirtiest part of your body you're trying to heal it. You're trying to you want to heal your immune system while you're sleeping, not make it even more toxic. Right. Or keep it on high alert all the time. Mouth breathing also acts as a diuretic, which means you're more likely to wake up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. So one of the benefits my clients report back to me is like, Oh my God, I won't have to go to the bathroom anymore.

And it's because they're simply breathing through their nose instead of through their mouth. Mouth breathing also doesn't dry. It dries out your mouth and because of that, people need to drink more water. They need to use the bathroom more. So it's like this vicious cycle. Mouth breathing is the number one cause of cavities because it changes the oral microbiome. And so all of these consequences of mouth breathing can simply be resolved by just putting a piece of tape vertically, just like this on on your mouth.

And that will ensure that you're taking nice, clean, pressurized moisture and temperature regulated breaths that are essentially cleaning and perfecting the air for your lungs to consume. So so in terms of just to finish that thought, a lot of people snore at night and don't realize it. So we recommend sleeping on your side, particularly your left side for better circulation. And we also recommend using a latex pillow. Latex is a natural, all natural organic material and renewable resource, and it also has the right type of firmness to support side sleeping.

And then the third thing we recommend is a pillow between your legs just to keep your pelvis nice and balanced and then the mouth tip so you know, those those few things can make a big difference in somebody's nighttime breathing pattern. Amazing. And have you seen that help with people that snore? Are they able to stop snoring if they do all of these things? Yeah. So this is actually the program I created for myself because I used to snore and I don't anymore. And so I documented the process and all the things I learned along the way.

The tongue exercises to do, the swallowing exercises to do, you know, a lot of Peoples Airways collapse. And as we age, just like the rest of our muscles, if we're not doing something to strengthen them, the airway starts to collapse, the musculature in the airway starts to collapse, making it a little bit more challenging for people to to breathe, especially in certain positions. So if you're not actively strengthening those muscles, then, you know, their their natural state is is that for them to atrophy?

So we teach people different swallowing exercises, tongue exercises and breathing practices that they can do to strengthen their diaphragm, to have a nice, resilient airway and then, you know, work their way up, worked themselves up to being able to tape their mouth closed at night. There's a need. Some people could just go all in, you know, that's what I did. I just started taping and, you know, four year, four years later, having stopped and then some people, they're going to need some additional, you know, nudging every day to to keep it going or they're going to need to work their way up to it.

Right. Because maybe they are mouth breather and they need to work themselves up to being able to breathe at night. And and so that that transition because I think that for people that are first time to like mouth taping it might provoke a little bit of like wait wait. I don't know if this is a good idea for me to do at night. Like, there's some, like, weird fear that might pop up. I know that it did for me. When I first heard about it, I was like, I don't know about that. I don't know anything on my mouth.

So I'm curious if there is like that. The exercises and things like that that people are doing through the day is really to help them set up so that they can do the mouth taping at night. Exactly right. You know, so first, to raise the awareness around breathing through your nose and then raise the idea around, you know, taping your mouth closed so you can get a feel for and start with 5 minutes work, you're up to 20 minutes and then try taking a nap with the tape on and then try wearing it to bed.

Some people need that progression. Some people don't, right? So if you're a little bit nervous about it, I can understand the tape is only placed vertically. So you can still talk through your mouth. You can still breathe through your mouth. You're simply keeping you're not you're not taping your mouth to seal it shut.

Mouth Taping, Snoring, and Nighttime Airway Support 28:30

You're taping your mouth so your mouth stays closed. So you're not sealing the airway. You're you're simply cueing your mouth to stay in that closed position so that, you know, it's happening effortlessly for you. Right. You're not having to, you know, because otherwise your jaw for it to stay close, you'd have to work against gravity. Right. So some people then will have tension in their jaw to try to keep it closed. But this just allows your jaw to completely relax. And what a lot of people will report, they will start dreaming again.

They'll start remembering their dreams once again. You know, you know, they they wake up and they're a lot more or refreshed and they need less sleep. That's another thing that a lot of people report, because they're the repair time is much less when you're breathing correctly or your nervous system is firing on all cylinders now. And it's working. It's being given an informed with the information that it needs to fuel your processes. And, you know, you think about it, the only place we use oxygen in our bodies is in the mitochondria.

That's the only place we use it. So, you know, if there's anything that's restricting our delivery of oxygen to our mitochondria, which is responsible for fueling ourselves, then of course it's going to affect our energy, right? If this was happening to our batteries on our phone, it would be unacceptable. And say that again. What's happening to our heart would be, well. Imagine, imagine plugging your phone into the charger, right? Thinking it's going to be 100% charge and you wake up and it's 65% charged.

Right. And so if somebody's breathing is dysfunctional, then it's 8 hours of bass. The battery should be 100% charge, but it's only two thirds charge because they weren't breathing properly. Oh, fascinating. Yeah. Wow. I don't think I've ever thought about it that way, but that makes a lot of sense. It's what you said in the beginning. It's simple, but it's it is potentially transformational if you think. It's it. Impacts every area of our life. It's a very like I just get I'm getting goosebumps right now as you're saying that because it's actually a very transformational topic and it's connected to everything.

And the shame to me is that, you know, some of the things that I'm even saying, I'm saying for the first time, right. So nobody is even hearing it being put to put together this way. So thank you for this opportunity to share. And it's a shame that others are hearing it for the first time. Right? Like, I wish everyone had known this 20 years ago because I'm so excited for what's going to happen 20 years from now because more people are going to hear about this and and so it is it is quite a mind blowing topic, like, no pun intended, it's a quite expansive topic and it just so intriguing.

And you can go down so many different rabbit holes, but it comes down to, like, one simple thing that we can do. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah, well, I'm. I'm, like, really super excited. I know everyone's going to get a message from me. All of our clients are getting messages, like I said, about team what we're doing now. But the number of people that really have no no energy are not are not sleeping in a way that actually recuperating like they still wake up with that 65% battery in the morning or the impact.

What you said about the mitochondria if if oxygen is being is kind of the fuel for all of the mitochondria and there's 200 times the mitochondria in our ovaries than anywhere else in the body, they go this like the impact is really direct. For me it was of like how crucial this is and it I'm having a little moment of like damn, why is this not a bigger part of what we talk about with clients? Because it is like so fundamental to everything. Yeah, it's it's pretty cool, right? It's a, it's a really cool topic.

And so my intention was for one person to be more intrigued about breathing and it and I think we, we did that for you today. Good job. Any other things that maybe are things you've thought about as far as like how this breathing multi being just like how improving breath through our life impacts fertility sexual health, overall health. Are there any other impacts that we can get super excited about? Yeah, well, you bring up sexual health, so I'll, I'll I'll lean into that. So one of the things that a molecule was discovered just in this past century and the last 20 years is called nitric oxide.

And nitric oxide is a the person who discovered it won a Nobel Prize because it's an important signaling molecule in our body. Nitric oxide is responsible for many things in our tissue. One is that it kills viruses and bacteria on contact. So that's why our nasal mucosa makes nitric oxide. Assuming that we have healthy oral microbiome, mouth breathing kills the oral microbiome and so does mouthwash. So, you know, some people have bad breath because they breathe through their mouth. They use mouthwash, destroy the bacteria.

And so using mouthwash can actually cause people to have dysfunctional sexual health because they're not making as much nitric oxide. Nitric oxide, interestingly enough, was. So Viagra is a drug that recirculate nitric oxide. Doesn't help you make more it recirculate. So what you have here's a thing men after 40 women after 40 their nitric oxide nosedives so viagra can be less effective because you're not making as much. There's not as much to recirculate initially. If Viagra was being studied as a blood pressure medication because that's what nitric oxide does, is it lowers blood pressure by increasing vasodilation.

Vasodilation means your blood vessels open up so you get better microcirculation. And that's, you know, when you when somebody is intimate, right? We want circulation to go to, you know, those parts of our body. And so nitric oxide helps with that as well. So one of the other benefits I know men might be listening to this as well is that if a male doesn't have a morning erection, that's usually a sign of a stressed out nervous system or low nitric oxide. Usually both. So how we breathe improves nitric oxide production.

Nitric oxide vaso dilates, which means it also helps increase circulation to our prefrontal cortex fingertips, you know, everywhere else in our body.

Nitric Oxide, Sexual Health, and Breath Signatures 35:40

And it also is an important signaling molecule for metabolic health. So there's just so many things it does and we can actually make nitric oxide by the way we breathe. So things like humming a buzz breath, what we call it, will actually increase nitric oxide production. Wow, cool. That I did not know that part. That's also yeah. There's a there's a couple of things that might be helpful for people if we have a minute or two one is called breathing signatures. And so certain breathing signatures are things that we do that create an emotional response in our body or breaths that we have that are in response to certain ways.

We feel an example would be sighing. So, you know, when we feel a deep sense relief, we just kind of take a deep breath in and let it out with a sigh, right? So we can actually do that, lean into it. It's called a physiologic sigh and do that intentionally. If we're feeling a sense of overwhelm, if we're feeling frustration and we don't want to bring it into our house or we don't want to bring it to work with us or, you know, to our loved ones places. And, you know, we can just leave that at the door by actually doing a physiologic sigh.

So it's a really simple thing you can do is sitting up nice and straight and you'll take a deep breath in through the nose at the very top. You'll pack it with a little bit more air with your mouth and you'll hold it. And then whenever you feel comfortable, you'll let it out with an audible sigh. Oh, all the way out. All the way out. Just emptying your lungs as much as you can remember, the purpose for breathing is to get rid of CO2. If once we have that awareness, we realize that the exhale is more important than the inhale with every breath we take, we only actually absorb about 20 to 25% of the oxygen that comes in.

So the urge to breathe is actually from releasing the CO2. So the better we are releasing things that aren't serving us, you know, metaphorically, but also physiologically, the better our body heals, repairs and regenerates. Another interesting, fun fact is that for every £10 that somebody loses 8.4 of those are through the lungs. So the byproduct of cellular respiration in the mitochondria is CO2 and water. And so eight and a half of those pounds that we lose through metabolism are actually through our lungs.

Our lungs also regulate the in our body and they act as a secondary or tertiary in some cases, primary detoxification organ. This is why you'll smell alcohol on people's breaths. More certain toxins will be released through the lungs as well. So it's the lungs serve a very, you know, crucial and important function. And I don't know what, for whatever reason, they're not as sexy and talk about as everything else, but they're involved with us our entire lives, right? They've got to work. The greatest predictor of lifespan is lung capacity.

So, you know, it's I tied to so many things. It's like the the birth and death are connected to breath like that first breath. And the last breath is literally what determines our life. Yeah. And it's, you know, I know that in our Hindu culture and in India, this is like something that's talked about and discussed. I know certainly I know my parents didn't really teach me anything about this. So it is in some ancient cultures and in some schools of wisdom where breath is taught at a very young age.

And I've been teaching my son this for the last four years, it's been quite a remarkable journey. And, you know, one thing I do want to say, and I've said a lot, but I did want to make sure I mentioned this is how we breathe, also affects facial structure. So you'll notice more and more these days that children have to have teeth pulled and they're going to the dentist or the orthodontist and they're having two or three, sometimes up to four teeth pulled because their face is not forming correctly.

They don't have too many teeth, they have a small job. And the reason for that is because if somebody has a mouth breather, their tongue never sits in the roof of their mouth, their tongue just hangs at the bottom, or if they have a tongue tie. The problem with that is that there's nothing pushing the upper palate outward and forward. So these people end up with very narrow faces and that leads to a very restrictive airway, which then perpetuates the mouth breathing, which then leads to a whole host of other issues for that child, a thumb sucking does the same things.

Thumb sucking pushes the upper palate upwards, creating a very arched airway or upper palate and a very arched airway or a small airway. So that makes breathing difficult. So if you have kids, pay attention to how they're breathing because that will change their facial structure. They'll save you thousands and dental bills if your children breathe correctly, not not only because of the cavities, but because of their facial structure. I don't know about you, but my parents never had braces and their teeth are perfect and they have like, you know, like perfect teeth.

And there's many mechanisms as to why that is that we could get into maybe in another call. But, you know, we don't need all these things, right? Like a lot of one domino causes many other dominoes to fall. And breath is one of those lead dominos that if we can do it correctly, then a lot of other things just automatically without us having to think about it, fall into place. Yeah. How what is there anything that we could encourage parents to do or in like how to how do we get our children to breathe better?

Well, you know, one of the things that you want to do first is pay attention to how we're breathing, because our breathing signatures are contagious. Right. So how we breathe is contagious to other people in a good way or in a bad way. So if you're if somebody is a short, shallow breather, guess what? Their child is going to be a short, shallow breather because you're modeling that breath to them. The and they're unconscious to it. Right.

Children, Facial Development, and Breath Resources 42:00

So so I think us paying attention to how he breathe is crucial, making sure that our children are keeping their mouth in a closed position and the tongue at the roof of their mouth. It might sound like a weird conversation to have with your child, but, you know, they're they're always fascinated with how their bodies work. I've never found children to be fascinated by the human body. You know, adults kind of lose that mysticism and mystery after a while, they feel. But children are always amazed when you tell them and they remember things, especially if you tell it in a memorable way.

So I love, like, training my little niece and nephew and my son about proper breathing because they want to know how their body works. So educate them in a fun light way. Tell them, you know, keep your mouth in a closed position. My son, when he's playing basketball, you know, we have permission to cue each other. So we do this. And so I can communicate him from 100 feet away that he needs to breathe through his nose and he can run circles around other kids because he knows how to breathe better.

Oh, wow. Really cool. He tapes his mouth too, my niece. Actually, she loves taping her mouth. That's the thing that she looks forward to when she comes to our place and she says, Chachi, can I put on the mouth tape? Chachi means on to your aunt. So. So it's like the cutest thing they love. They love putting your mouth tape on. It's like an adventure for them. It's well, this has been just a fascinating conversation. And I think that you've shared so many gems. And again, I'll just bring it back to.

The simplicity of this makes it so that everyone listening can go and do this in their life. Today, you don't have to wait for anything. You don't have to buy anything, right? Like literally all of the tools are in your on your being. So I'm going to encourage for everyone listening and like go and take some breaths. That's easy. It's it's like one of the best ways to support our nervous system and hence support our fertility. So I just love it. I'm glad that we had this conversation. And I'm grateful for you sharing your time today.

Thank you. It's my pleasure. Where can people find you? Well, I actually created a very special bundle that I think the listeners will appreciate today. So whenever I talk about breathing seals. So for me is something that I'm really passionate about. And of course, I hope that it's shown through today and I've created a whole bunch of different resources, breath, work, experience says many clips on breathing, you know, trainings on breathing signatures and things like that. And so I decided to finally do that.

My wife's recommended strong recommendation. She's like, You need to share this stuff with people. So I put it all into an ultimate breathwork bundle that I'd like to offer to everyone for free. And it's five of my most requested trainings and videos, and then there's more stuff that I'll put in there too. But it's everything that you need to get started and more and dive a little bit deeper into this topic if you're interested, and it's my free gift to everyone so they can go to breathworkwithsachin.com they can find it.

There. Amazing. Thank you so much. This is so exciting. I'm glad that we had this conversation again. I couldn't be more grateful. I feel like some of what you shared was like exciting enough for me to be like, Oh yeah, how can I put this into my life? Or How can we encourage all of our clients to do this? So I'm very excited. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's my pleasure. It's my honor.