Breath

I haven't read the book, but I did listen to his JRE podcast

I've tried to focus more on nose breathing when I'm sitting at my desk or when I'm just generally inactive

I really need to try the lip tape for at night, I just can't bring myself to do it

My left nostril is almost completely blocked, so breathing exercises to open it up would be very beneficial for me, I just need to be more consistent

I read the book and found it fascinating and informative. I've recommended it to quite a few folks.

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My left nostril is almost completely blocked, so breathing exercises to open it up would be very beneficial for me, I just need to be more consistent

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This is why I swap nostrils with every line I do.

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I read the book and found it fascinating and informative. I've recommended it to quite a few folks.

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Did you take any of the recommendations into practice?

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the idea of taping my mouth shut is already giving me anxiety

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I thought I'd be the same way, but it's really just nothing. Just as you're about to fall asleep, put a tiny little square over the middle of your lips (I think he says it's like a Charlie Chaplin mustache just moved down an inch). It's not some deal where you are actually completely restricted. Rather, it's just enough to keep the mouth from opening for the breath. If he's right about the effects, you won't wake up until morning. (Yes, he says mouth breathing is a major cause of peeing at night as well.)

Yes mouth breathing was known to be bad even by native americans. You are statistically dumber being a mouth breather.

LESS Breath: Better Health? | Mouth Breathing vs. Nasal Breathing

Read/own it and got into the breath practice about a year ago. It's incredible how little I knew about basic fundamentals of life previously. Pretty much all my workouts now are nasal unless absolutely necessary. Doing HIIT on th assault bike using nasal only has raised my lactic threshold and endurance significantly. I’ve been following Brian Mackenzie’s Shift adapt Program for breathing integrated workouts. He’s good friends with Nestor.

This is somewhat of a tangent, but I recently got a CT scan and I have a pretty bad deviated septum. I am hesitant to get a septoplasty because I really don't have trouble nasal breathing, and I don't really have sinus problems. It just doesn't seem to tick off enough boxes to get the surgery. Anyone have any thoughts on the subject?

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I've started doing that - it's tough. Would you mind please sharing more about the progression of your experience on this?

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It sucked at first of course but I'd say I noticed an improvement pretty quickly. In the past I was at least cognizant to inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth but with all nasal, I pretty much dove right in. I didn't slowly integrate or anything. I started with a HIIT workout for time where I did stuff like dumbbell thrusters, pushups, things like that, and watched my time to complete diminish pretty considerably over a month.

Then I was also doing the assault bike for 30 seconds all out, as hard as you can go while maintaining only nasal, and then 1:30 break... For that I improved incrementally but noticeably to where I could only do one to blasting out 8 intervals in a row. Of course it's still a bitch and i'm barely able to keep from opening my mouth in between intervals, and all sorts of shite flies out of your nose.

In both cases I noticed my recovery time improve a ton and that's probably the best part for me. 9/10 after an intense cardio workout I feel fine almost right after while in the past I would have been dragging. Relatedly I don't get very sore too much anymore which as I understand it (the science is still hard to grasp) is because it's much harder to cross your lactic threshold and therefore produce lactic acid which will leave you sore when you're strictly doing aerobic vs anaerobic. I will say that for my longer runs I will only nasal breath for the first mile or so and then shift to nose inhale/mouth exhale.

As far as the nasal capacity and tissues etc, I don't tape my mouth shut or anything at night but I can absolutely say that ever since I started a combination of mindful breathing and cold showers every morning, my lifelong sinus/allergy issues are MUCH better (I quit taking Zyrtec with no looking back), I have way more energy, better stress reactions, and much better sleep, especially when doing a little breathwork prior to sleep to slow my heart rate. I quit taking melatonin altogether.

What really turned me on to all this was this book "The Wedge" by Scott Carney that you would certainly enjoy. He examines different techniques for rewiring how your body and mind react to the external world, so things like breathwork, saunas, cold therapy, ayahuasca.. the chapter on Brian Mackenzie wasn't as sexy as others but was the first time I've ever received any basic introduction to the relationship between CO2 and oxygen. Mackenzie's entire fitness philosophy is about adapting to and using carbon dioxide more beneficially as it the body's metabolic stress manager. The whole idea between these integrated nasal workouts is rooted in adapting to stress. Too much more to type here but that's where I got started.

Focusing on tongue posture diminishes the need for tape over time.