Oxygen is Like Gold!

Oxygen is our most precious source of life-force and vitality, but most of us are breathing at 10–20% of our full capacity. Learn how optimizing your breathing will improve the functioning of every system in your body. Learn how combining “breathing work” and “breathwork” gives you the best of both worlds. Take this “golden opportunity” that is right under your nose!

Oxygen is our primary source of energy. 

Oxygen is free, but like gold, it can be hard to access. Most people breathe at only 10–20% of their full breathing capacity. Our brain’s main food is oxygen. It calms the mind and stabilizes the interior nervous system. Without oxygen, we cannot absorb important vitamins, minerals and nutrients. When our cells lack oxygen, they weaken and die. 

As Dr. Otto Warburg discovered in the 1930s (winning two Nobel Prizes), oxygen-starved cells mutate into cancer cells. Without enough oxygen, our body festers disease and nothing works well at all!

Oxygen displaces harmful free radicals, neutralizes environmental toxins, and destroys infectious bacteria, parasites, microbes, and viruses. These invaders, along with cancer cells, are anaerobic, which means they cannot live in oxygen-rich environments. 

Oxygen shortage has been linked to every major illness, including heart conditions, poor digestion and elimination, respiratory and sinus problems, arthritis, yeast infections, and even sexual dysfunction. Some indicators of possible low-oxygen levels are: fatigue, muscle aches, forgetfulness, heart palpitations, poor circulation (cold extremities), and excessive colds.

“The breath is the hub of the wheel of life.”

So, improving your breathing function and then consciously breathing better will enhance every part of your life. Using the breath as a tool, you can branch out into many directions for healing and rejuvenation. 

When invited in with a little vigor, oxygen and energy will penetrate the physical, mental, and emotional parts of yourself. The body will respond by healing itself, using its own innate intelligence. When these pathways become cleared, even at the cellular level, and yes, the down to atomic levels, the breath can lead you into the awareness of its connection to all of life.

For all of recorded history the breath has been used for healing—and there’s more to oxygenation than meets the eye, namely what the Chinese call the “chi.” The yogis of India speak of it as “prana.” It’s the universal life-force that flows with the breath. The yoga of breath is called “pranayama.” In the West, these tiny energy particles are called negative ions and sometimes, free electrons.

Now let’s hear about oxygen from the Breathing-Work master himself, Mike White, founder of OptimalBreathing.com. These are excerpts from a chapter he wrote for my book, Heal Yourself with Breath, Light, Sound & Water. To wrap this up, we’ll define and discuss the differences between Breathing Work and Breathwork, and how we now combine the two through Integral Breathwork™.

Oxygen Is Life— It Does More Than You Think

The American Heart Association states that over 1.5 million people die every year from heart conditions, and that 70% of our population has some evidence of heart problems. Most heart attacks originate from the heart’s failure to receive adequate oxygen. Of course, maintaining one’s arteries and capillaries for easy blood passage is important, but the fastest way to get oxygen right now is through better breathing.

Hypoxia (oxygen starvation) causes sympathetic-nervous-system overstimulation (the fight-or-flight response), inviting heart-rate increase, adrenal activation, and many other physiological changes as our bodies sound the alarm. Emotional and physical stress, anxiety, danger (real or imagined), and emergencies create high oxygen loss. During episodes of stress and following physical exertion, the body uses up its oxygen stores to bring the nervous system back into parasympathetic balance (the rest-digest-and-heal response).

Too much fight-or-flight can invite eventual cardiac troubles. Stress that never lets up causes the heart to work harder to get the oxygen it needs. In an oxygen-starved environment, the heart may eventually collapse from overwork. Many stressful states can be partially or completely neutralized through proper breathing development and function.

Fresh fruits, vegetables, and rainwater contain oxygen. Green is the color of chlorophyll, or liquid oxygen, so green vegetables and especially high-chlorophyll plants, like blue-green algae, contain the most oxygen. Meat contains no oxygen and is “used protein.” The body must employ a large amount of energy to break meat down into amino acids so it can recycle these building blocks and create usable protein, like building a car from used parts.

Cakes, candies, cookies, all empty carbs, and sugar contain no oxygen. Cooked and processed foods and stagnant water contain little or none. I call these “negative foods,” as they use up more oxygen than they give off. Processed sugars, white flour, unhealthy fats, fried foods, and pizza are major oxygen robbers. You can offset some of this loss by eating pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables daily—not portions, pounds! Taking digestive enzymes and oxygen-rich nutritional supplements can help. Using an oxygen-concentrator machine is also effective.

Oxygen intake is one side of the coin of optimal breathing. The expelling of carbon dioxide (through exhalation) is also vital. Due to its relationship with global warming, CO2 has received a lot of bad press lately, but we couldn’t live without it. Carbon dioxide needs to be at a certain level in the plasma before the cells will take up oxygen. And carbon dioxide is the progenitor of photosynthesis, by which plants create oxygen for us to breathe.

Your lungs will deteriorate 9%–25% per decade unless you do something to maintain them. (This statistic is backed up by the seminal Framingham study, which I feature extensively in the Clinical Studies section of my website.) Exercise is mandatory; however, excessive stress in exercising can actually cause breathing blocks that invite inadequate levels of oxygen. The more we tighten up the primary and accessory breathing muscles, the more we cause the alveoli in our lungs (where oxygen goes into the bloodstream) to clog up with waste products. This will impede the body’s ability to absorb oxygen, we will slowly suffocate, and our life span will shorten.

As our cells grow older, they lose their ability to carry oxygen. As the liver ages, it robs increasing amounts of oxygen reserves for detoxification, often leaving the other body systems with an oxygen shortage. When needed, the cells send signals that they need more oxygen. Our brains need it most, so when oxygen is in short supply, our brains suffer the consequences. Brain fog, anyone?

For optimum health, learn to breathe better—fuller, easier, deeper, and slower. Eat more nutritious and oxygen-rich foods, with more live enzymes to make sure you digest what you eat. Exercise moderately, without excessive straining, gasping, or breath-heaving. Stretch and get a massage to loosen tight muscles. 

Maximum oxygen and energy intake, with minimal expenditure, plus increased breathing volume and flow rate (Framingham study) are the keys to longevity. Gentle, natural breathing, breathing development techniques, regular cleansing of toxins, and replenishment of energy stores seem to be the best means to a longer and more joyful, energetic, and peaceful life.

Integral Breathwork™

For optimum health, learn to breathe better—fuller, easier, deeper, and slower. Eat more nutritious and oxygen-rich foods, with more live enzymes to make sure you digest what you eat. Exercise moderately, without excessive straining, gasping, or breath-heaving. Stretch and get a massage to loosen tight muscles. 

Maximum oxygen and energy intake, with minimal expenditure, plus increased breathing volume and flow rate (Framingham study) are the keys to longevity. Gentle, natural breathing, breathing development techniques, regular cleansing of toxins, and replenishment of energy stores seem to be the best means to a longer and more joyful, energetic, and peaceful life.

OK! 

Now let’s take a closer look at Breathing Work versus Breathwork—two different approaches to optimizing your breath and using it for self-healing. In the early 1990s, when I first met Mike White, easily the world’s foremost expert on Breathing Work, he wasn’t doing any Breathwork at all. 

It turns out he had some less-than-favorable experiences doing Breathwork in the early days. Starting in the late 1970s, my experience had been with Transformational Breathwork, which was generally NOT doing Breathing Work at all! It was evident to me that we could bring these two worlds together, improving the efficacy of BOTH.

I like to characterize the beneficial combination of these two practices as: “Fix the plane first, then fly the plane!” You see, in the early days, there was a willy-nilly attitude with some of the early practitioners of Breathwork, then called Rebirthing. They paid little or no attention to correcting or optimizing the breath first, before engaging in the lying-down, often intense, practice of a breathwork session. While truly extraordinary and transformational experiences often occurred, sometimes it was too much for people, and often, people were breathing WRONG in the first place!

When you force the breathing too much, and if you emphasize high-chest breathing, which many did in those days (I don’t know why), then untoward consequences, disorientation, sympathetic activation, excess cramping, and overly cathartic episodes could occur—which is what happened to Mike. So, Mike gave up on Breathwork, and focused solely on Breathing Work, which improves breathing mechanics and optimizes breathing physiology—until we met. And yes, “fixing the plane” is productive work all by itself, with many health benefits. But now that your breath is functioning properly, let’s take her for a ride!

I had my “California period” in the late 1970s and early 80s, where I dove deeply into spirituality and holistic health, including those early experiences with rebirthing. It was maybe because of my quasi-medical background (I was a pre-med student in college, my dad was a doctor, and most of my siblings went into medical fields), that I loved Mike’s scientific Breathing Work and soaked it up. 

I became certified under him as an Optimal Breathing Development Specialist, and I have worked with him and many other breathing experts over the years. As Breathwork evolved into a safer, gentler, and more rational approach, we developed Integral Breathwork™, which combines “East and West,” both the science and the art of breathing practice. 

We now do a half-day, Integral Breathwork Seminar, where we “fix the plane—then fly the plane!” I’ve done hundreds of these seminars in many parts of the US and Canada, in groups large and small. A typical seminar includes the following: 

Measurement and assessments of your current breathing patterns; breath corrections and exercises; understanding breathing physiology and psychology; a one-hour, lying-down, transformational-breathwork session; and finally, our closing discussion circle with a fruit feast! Here is some descriptive language about this work as it has evolved, including a summary of the benefits when Breathing Work is combined with Breathwork:

So, take the golden opportunity that is “right under your nose” by simply breathing deeper, slower, and fuller now. Merge the best of both worlds–Breathing Work and Breathwork—by practicing Integral Breathwork. (The “integral” in our name means “missing no essential parts.”) Allow the abundance of oxygen and detoxification to naturally do their magic, miracle work for your body, mind, and soul!