Breath Retention + Pranayama: the Performance-Enhancing Effects | John Douillard's LifeSpa

Transcript

hi everyone I'm dr. John BR and today I want to share with you some amazing research on the Ayurvedic breathing practice called pranayama with kumbhaka which means breath retention there has been some amazing science that I want to share with you that blew my mind and hopefully will blow yours is something that you really need to hear about back in the USSR about 50 years ago there was a lot of research done on what they called intermittent hypoxia which happens when you hold your breath so these ancient Vedic techniques that use breath holding or breath retention as part of the pranayama practice have an amazing amount of really incredible science you could call it superhuman science actually so here we go let me introduce this to you so when they did the research you know back in the USSR and that when the USSR broke up I broke apart a lot of that research started to trickle out and scientists started using hyperbaric chambers and high-altitude training techniques and different chambers where they would mix the gases so you'd have about 10% oxygen you would breathe that for a long period of time and it turns out that when you actually breathe or hold your breath and go into a intermittent but brief hypoxic state where you don't have much oxygen to your system something really amazing things happen first of all a lot of people over breathe we breathe too much too much oxygen and we continue to breathe in too much oxygen but the oxygen attaches to the hemoglobin in your blood and it doesn't get released out of your blood until the co2 levels start to creep back up so when you hold your breath that's exactly what begins to happen is the co2 carbon dioxide starts to increase and that releases all of the oxygen to your cells to your mitochondria team literally oxygenate your tissues so a lot of us walk around with you know 95% oxygen our blood an oximeter reading which I do when you go to the doctor but that doesn't mean that your cells are carrying that Jim it's just what's in your blood so how do you actually amp up and oxygenate your tissues you actually do some hypoxic breathing or breaths retention exercise with in the article Assoc of this this technique I give you some exercises to do including some pranayama breathing practices with with natural what's called kumbhak or breath retention which are you know really simple to do and I share those with you in this article and there's some videos connected to that as well so here's one of the most amazing things is they found out that that when you hold your breath it actually increases stem cells so stem cells are rejuvenates of stem cells that interestingly are produced in massive quantities in in embryo when that when the fetus is in the womb where you would imagine that these regenerative and replicating stem cells to build a whole body are just surging well the environment the oxygen environment in the womb is about that of Mount Everest it's an extremely hypoxic environment and in that hypoxic environment stem cells surge then after birth they found that the stem cells dramatically decrease and then throughout your life in these sort of remote niches in your body your bone marrow hello oxygenated States in your body not great circulation you end up in that you end up with stem cells being stored there researchers believe that with breathing practices and holding your breath doing breath retention properly and safely that you can actually encourage stem cells to be released from your bone marrow and be delivered to different parts of your body so we now have science to show never had a lot of articles on some of the amazing of Ayurvedic things that boo stem cells like d like tumeric ashwagandha bacopa a handful of articles that I've written if you go back and see all the Ayurvedic stem-cell research is pretty amazing but now we have another one which is really powerful because when you think about using daily practices to create a little less oxygen in your blood to amp up co2 that pumps all the co2 in do all the oxygen into your cells and at the same time that hypoxic environment sends a a message to release more stem cells it's pretty crazy now that's one thing Lance Armstrong as you all remember was caught cheating in the Tour de France he wanted six times and then finally they found out that he was doping with EPO II throw protein which is a which is a hyper oxygenated kind of way to boost your oxygenation of your hemoglobin and carry more oxygen therefore function better to perform enhancing drugs well it turns out that when you actually breathe and do do brief intermittent hypoxia techniques which are pranayama breathing techniques with kumbhaka retention you actually increase EPO so yes he's not only do you get stem cells but you also get and this is like hard for me even to say cuz it's so amazing I've written a lot about you know stem cells and now you can get glance arm strong these Tour de France winning EPO from a holding your breath and in 1998 there was a molecule called nitric oxide that was they called it the panacea molecule that won the Nobel Prize in 1998 and they and it was the molecule that would sort of cure everything it was this incredible molecule that would that would kind of dilate your coronary arteries and support your arterial health and your vascular circulation it was also shown to it has also been shown to create vasodilation in the penis for a reptile dysfunction as one of the treatments for that is to be hypoxic and these breathing techniques Michelle to to actually boost nitric oxide which increase basal dilation which gives you better circulation in your whole body everywhere which is sort of amazing studies showed that when you're an intern I've intermittently hypoxic it's been shown to create resistance against very traumatic events like radiation aging as well as any kind of injury who you recover from your injuries faster studies showed that hypoxic or breathing techniques with retention have also been shown to increase a molecule called p53 which is called the guardian of the DNA it literally protects your DNA from damage which is constantly happening when it replicates it damages is something that's known and but it also has the ability to repair the DNA yeah so you know pretty pretty crazy and also high pox have been shown to increase this vascular endothelial growth factor which has been shown to support once again the health of your arterial walls all of which is really really important so pretty amazing techniques pretty amazing research on a pretty simple technique and so so you know in in breath holding and hypoxia training is something that you know you need to do under medical supervision you mean to check with your doctor make sure it's okay to do breathing practices with Brent holding that's really important to do as well but some simple practices and the one that I write in this article and I'll link to some videos of how to actually do it is is with a technique called bhastrika which is called the bellows breath we can breathe in and out fully through your nose and you do that about 10 times and I've got a video you can watch that will be linked to this video you can watch and see how that's done and you do that about 10 times and on the inhalation you would then hold your breath and hold it comfortably now if any pointing point you felt dizzy or uncomfortable or tingly you can stop the practice and can continue to breathe normally but when you hold the breath that breath should be very very comfortable after you sort of hyper oxygenate your tissues you have loaded up your haemoglobin with oxygen so you don't really need to breathe so the urge to breathe is usually not there but as soon as the urge to breathe starts to come then you need to breathe so this is not about a straining technique when you do hypoxia training properly you don't really feel like you're straining it should be something that should happen quite naturally and you do that about ten times ten breaths followed by the hold and you do three rounds of that which is basically you know 30 breaths that you would do followed by three holes and then I also say if you want to get I take the next step after a week of that if that's comfortable and there's no problems you can actually do the breath hold on the inhale and then do another round of breath holes on the exhale so that would look like ten bust Rica breaths followed by oh in inhale hold and then when you have to breathe you breathe out then you do ten bus Rica breaths with an exhale hold again same thing has to be comfortable and when that's comfortable then you breathe again and you do three rounds of that whole thing and that would be sixty Rustica breaths in total with six breath retention holds that you would do come back go holds that you would do during the practice pretty crazy we're talking about increasing stem cells your loading your blood with EPO protecting your arteries bills boosting nobel-prize-winning nitric oxide into your tissues so you know and a handful of other studies protection you have your DNA protects you from injuries so pretty interesting stuff please go read this article it's comprehensive gives you all the research you got to read it and I don't know if you've noticed but I've been putting together a lot of articles lately on breathing practices all the research that's been done on all the different products now kombucha I talk to you about emotional the research on neuroplasticity and how breathing techniques can change that so please read these articles there's just a lot of amazing information about how to not only support health as we're talking about here but also release relief relieve us from old emotional repetitive patterns of behavior by boosting what's called the neuroplasticity and there was an article I think I wrote recently about emotional health with Ayurveda or changing emotion getting rid of emotional trauma with our it was talked about fascinating fascinating research so please tune in to that stay with me because I'm taking you if you don't notice on a journey to actually make some really powerful changes in your health with some breathing practices some ancient Ayurvedic breathing practices all right thanks for listening stay tuned for our next video okay I'm dr. John yard do you like this video and share this recording is brought to you by life spa where ancient Ayurvedic wisdom meets modern science get access to free health video newsletters by dr. John at life spa calm these statements have not been evaluated by the FDA these products are not intended to diagnose treat cure or prevent any disease