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Common Breathing Problems and Exercises

So here are some common breathing problems um poor breathing mechanics we're going to do some drills around this right away I'm a show you what our decent breathing mechanics and what kind of improper breathing mechanics because I mentioned earlier in this this a quick test someone remember how many times a day I said we breathe twenty two thousand years about twenty two thousand times a day we don't really think about that doesn't seem like something that we would do that much but yeah that's on average now if you're a poor breather you maybe read breathing as much is like twenty five twenty six thousand times a day uh that's a lot of repetition of doing something kind of incorrectly way got to take a look at that muscle weakness most people don't realize that you're breathing is a muscular activity and so muscular weakness in your diaphragm and your back muscles in your rib muscles all those can actually contribute to board poor breeding practices and if as I said if you ever had a r...

ib injury that area may need some rehab possible compromise that's what we spent most of the first section on on day one forehead posture could loot could lose thirty percent of your lung capacity overtime from that poor head posture and in chronic hyperventilation that is ah yes and what hyperventilating is like you're breathing too much well a lot of people breathe too much this is a pretty well recognized syndrome and so we want to make sure that we're breathing in right amount of air and the right way if we want to give our brains really good fuel okay, everyone good with that? Awesome. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna talk a little bit about how to improve breathing and then we're gonna do a couple different exercises now when we do the breathing exercises before we do them, we're going to the same stuff that we've been doing we're actually assess our eyes and they were gonna breathe and then we'll assess our eyes again, I want to keep reminding you, I don't care if it makes a change or not right now all that we're doing is we're testing, but at the end of the day, even if our breathing exercises don't immediately improve our visual function today, I still want you to start doing them. I'm gonna give you the two simplest breathing exercises known to man, but they could be really, really useful. All right, so let me just go through this map with you so you understand what I'm talking about? I said we breathe twenty to twenty five thousand times a day, whatever it is, how many of those breast do you think are actually conscious? Like how many times you go? I'm going to actually think about my breathing zero most people, if they never thought about this is zero fifty fifty maybe, right? Um and there are hundreds of named breathing systems around the world. Last time I checked, we did some research on it. I found it over five hundred different breathing systems around the world. I've looked at a lot of them studied a bunch of them guess what they all have in common. They make you think about breathing that's regardless, if they focus on the inhale the exhale, breathing through the nose, breathing through the mouth, whatever the main thing is, I go think about it, and that goes back to the deliberate practice model, right? I've got a practice with the explicit goal of getting much better so periodically, just like I habitually used my eyes, I'm gonna think about how you use them. I want to think about how I'm using my lungs. Okay? So we're going to first of all, work on something called high low breathing all right now were to do that, and they were to do with straw breathing. Once we've done this stuff, I may come back and talk about a couple of devices that you can purchase, and they're on the keynote so one's kind of power long ones called training mask these air cool little respiratory training devices that I recommend to people that are really cool for strengthening your lungs, improving your respiration and I've seen a lot of different benefits come from using them, but these aren't really useful until you have good basic breathing patterns. So that's what we're gonna focus on okay, so what I'd like for you guys to do I'm going to start off with what's called hailo breathing so before we do that, I need you to pick a couple of different vision assessments to do all right, so you can do your do your multi size font chart see where you're at and I want you to actually do this string okay, so I'll tie it up here for you again, so you guys go ahead and test your test two different ones go and do your chart first because I'm getting this setup and jimmy have questions, you know, where you're setting up on your throat question for is really help of doing the exercises in front of a mirror. Um, I typically recommend not doing them in front of a mirror because it could be really confusing. Okay, great, because you're kind of looking at yourself in the mirror while trying to also use your eyes so most people don't respond that well to that fantastic, okay, good you got your base level numbers, they're still about five five any clarity on form that you could tell no. Well, five hours with my glasses and it's better on like nine without okay. All right, you remember how to do this? Yeah. Okay, so we're just gonna work on actually read for you okay, right, right was the best? Yeah. Okay. All right. So just been about thirty seconds there just bouncing that bead, seeing if you can get two strings he's doing some eye circles to get an idea of how that feels I feel a little smoother. Okay? Yes, sir. And you're working on the convergence chart in the molding science fun chart. Okay, so we got a bunch of different little assess what's going on that's awesome kin it's another one of those can we use a volumetric exerciser to help with breathing work? Base level answer is yes. Yes, you can. Okay. And I have another another quick, actually more of a comment. Okay, so this is from ben wilson. Skater? Yes. Got a lacrosse ball lettered up playing catch with my lady who is now very receptive to the whole neural plasticity idea. This is great. I noticed improvement in my floaters in my eye from spending some time doing isometrics and palm ng please thank dr cobb so we haven't talked about floaters yet, right? Do you want to take a minute now is now a good time let me hold off into the final segment on that. Okay? I mean, floaters are that's kind of a fairly common issue than a lot of people have. Yeah, I guess so. Let's, talk about it. Now, we have seen some success with vision training and decreasing the incidents of floaters, but it also depends very much on what's causing them in the first place. And so, uh, that falls into the category of stuff that I go. I'm not sure that the exercises will help, but if the brain becomes a little, uh maybe less confused by them, even if they're still it still occurring, hopefully will have less impact on your on visually. So in the fact that he noticed some differences. That's awesome. Because sometimes relaxation. Yeah, the visual system seems to be a really big help for that. Okay. All right. Yeah. Wait a little bit of ah, little bit of a second line. Yeah. It's just about the same as it was earlier. Okay, just a little bit awesome that's all that I wanted. Okay, all right. So even on your tests, she's done her multi size find you've done multi size fun in cem and some I just some spirals spiral and and I did, you know, the ice in astrometrics, okay, awesome. So what we gonna do now is we're going to relax our eyes going to forget about her eyes for a second we're going to a little bit of breathing and they're going to repeat some of the eye exercises or the test and again all that we're looking at now is does give myself a little better fuel improve my visual function but more than anything else this is just good healthy practice regardless okay, so our first thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna work on what's called high low breathing you guys I have mikes on your chest you gonna have to be careful not to smack the mikes. All right? Well, I want you to do is I'm gonna have you put one hand on your abdomen and kind of one hand high up here by your collarbones. All right, go ahead and try it seated first if you unless you would feel more comfortable you can do it standing too I know we teach this one line down, but we can't see people lying on the floor early in here so we're gonna try seated now I'm gonna ask you to take four five just deep breaths in and out like you normally breathe don't try to fix anything right now just see how you normally breathe all right and what you're paying attention to is what hand is moving win so I take a breath in do I feel my upper hand moving so I feel that hand on my stomach moving and kind of what's the what's the sequence all right so take a couple more all right now let's go and stop that what do you feel feel movement here are moving here nothing up top nothing here mostly in the ab the same I could feel my when I'm inhaling in my abdomen expands but nothing up top okay yeah through the stomach to okay, that would be good on the whole that's going to be generally good breathing practice that we feel mohr abdominal motion in less chest motion all right, but now what I'm gonna ask you to do is I'm asking take a deep breath all right? So go back to the same position one hand on the stomach one hand on the collar bones take deep breaths in and out probably five or six and see what happens there there you go better it's nothing like a breeding class extremely exciting sitting wash people breathe you're doing really well all right now when you added the deeper breathing what changed my abdomen did not expand it might actually well, we went kong cave here yeah that's what I was noticing and want to talk about that what happened with you I've been taught a little how to breathe for singing right supposed to come from the diaphragm but I'm not good at it. So yes, I felt mork coming up here. Yeah, diaphragm is still moving, but up top is moving quite a bit more. Okay. Deal here. Okay, so, here's, the main thing what we were what we talk about in breathing, the first thing we want to avoid is doing a lot of very upper chest breathing. Okay, so if you watch me, what we sometimes see people do is they breathe in in the abdomen, goes in and the chest goes up. Now that he is using the wrong set of muscles for daily life. Um and so normally what you run into with people that breathed that way it's called paradoxical breathing. They have really tight necks, they have really tight shoulders, and when you're talking to them, they often gasp. If you catch yourself on the phone gasping, catching a breath very often it probably tells you that you are maybe paradox he breathing, you're breathing too high. So what we want to see on both this the normal breath and the deeper breath is I want the the emotion to start in my abdomen, and then if I take a really deep breath in right at the end, the chest should come up a little bit, but what I typically find with people is even if they're they're sitting there like, oh, yeah, I got this. I've got the lower abdomen thing as soon as I make it a little bit harder, they start coming into upper chest breathing and that's what I typically see when they're doing their vision work. Yeah, that's, what you were doing and so in terms of expanding our focus like, what am I gonna work on some there? I'm working on my string thinking ding dings or I'm doing my convergence. I want to make sure that I'm doing good high, low breathing. Now, the second thing I didn't really talk about with that one were you breathing through your mouth? Your nose listen, my nose right on in virtually always when possible nasal breathing, not mouth. Okay, your nose is really well designed to take in air and filter it through all the really cool stuff that's supposed to happen to air your mouth is for when you're running away from a bear when you need it. Oh, gulp air in that's what this big open cavity is for most the rest of time you want to be doing nasal breathing is going to do one more set five good, comfortable breath focusing on moving the abdomen first into the nose, out through the nose okay so go ahead give it a shot for me five good breath I've heard something about sometimes it's good to breathe into the mouth and out through the nose for relaxation but what do you think there are like said that comes back to multiple different breathing system as long as you're making it conscious you can use almost any breathing pattern that you want to induce relaxation um so there's really no there's no definitive physiologic effect that I can point to nose versus mouth so the main thing like I said it's being conscious of it you're looking better that's better so you again if you are having a hard time breathing in the abdomen actually push with your hand in the abdomen so that you push it out when you breathe in okay and these air good comfortable deep breaths in and out awesome okay alright retest retest just give yourself some good fuel yeah bingbing ming you doing alright still still give me a large hard time getting it okay you get half of it I I only see one right now let's move this up a little bit closer here's a little something I keep waking up yeah all right so did you guys get any change after the breathing about same all right it's like I said not a big deal to me one way or the other if you're creating a change or not what we're working on those is daily working on better fuel supply for the brain this is again like that vitamin thing like the movement drills the breathing drills they may not have an immediate direct impact on your breathe on your visual function but we're setting the stage for better brain function over time I'm gonna show you one more on this one I think for some of you will have a slightly higher possibility of giving you a little improvement in your visual skills so the second exercise that we're gonna do is called straw breathing right no you don't actually have to have a straw uh you can also call it personal it breathing and in this one we're going to actually change we're gonna breathe into the nose and we're gonna breathe out through the mouth but when we breathe out the mouth we're gonna act like we're blowing through a straw as we go through now the main thing is where is our timing because one of the big things about improving our kind of the blood gas levels oxygen carbon dioxide is we don't wantto over breathe so I don't want to breathe in too much and we want to emphasize the exhale more than the inhale something to give you a pattern you to breathe into your nose for two seconds count in your head and then you gotta breathe out through that purse lips for somewhere between four and eight seconds that make sense to you guys all right, now what I want you to do is I'm going to do ten breaths like that so too in between foreign aid out and just do it at your own pace in a comfortable way all right? Go for it and I'll take some questions because it's gonna be a little time while they're breathing here you know, yesterday we talked a little bit about potentially bringing up some supplements today is not a good time or you wanna wait till the fourth segment now I could go and talk about it okay? Because this is going to be probably two minutes while they're breathing okay? So supplementation for vision he's actually being looked at a lot right now it's being studied a lot and there are a few herbal extracts it seemed to perhaps improve blood supply um so the number one that that a lot of people are actually reading and hearing about are blueberries there's a little barbering extract that comes from from them and s o that supplement is showing some promise. Another thing that I often will talk about for the visual system is just making sure that you're getting good basic vitamin a vitamin c, vitamin e basic antioxidants because one of the things that happens with the eyes is that they are sensitive too light and whenever we're exposed to light that's one of the things that creates those crazy what are called free radicals and you need antioxidants to deal with free radicals so just good basic supplementation that way another thing that is being research right now a lot of people have heard of a little supplement called cocoa tin or you pick one known and that supplement deals with mitochondrial function and mitochondria are the little energy systems within the cells in your optic nerve which transmits your visual information back to the brain needs a lot of mitochondrial activity so there are some there's some reports that utilizing something like coke you tin can also be beneficial. So those are all things that you really shouldn't run by a health care provider who was familiar with you and the natural supplementation world for safety sake but they're definitely something they're improving and were that are showing as I said from research some some help for certain situations great. Yeah. So all right, you guys got through your little breathing uh how do you feel number one he's peaceful thiss little breathing pattern interestingly enough uh and just so you guys know this when I have someone that I'm dealing with it's doing rehab for pain other than some of the visual exercises this may be the very first exercise I asked them to do for me twice a day where they just practice good conscious breathing it is really, really powerful this is very relaxing for a lot of people very calming on people that are in pain tend to be a little bit hotly wired so breathing can be a great entry point to getting rid of especially more chronic pain stuff so any change on the on vision multi size charting things know that same same okay very good I'm perfectly fine with that so like I said main thing here we're gonna work on our breathing mechanics and then we're gonna practice periodically this now if you're going to get the keynote the main thing it says right here is repeat that little cycle that you just did twice a day but not for ten breasts about thirty breath um the hard part about this class is like some people start feeling like doc your nickel and dime and me in like two minutes here five minutes here well yeah I am you kind of have to get used to the fact that if you want to change your body change your life change your habits so the question is how much can you d'oh right um spinning for five minutes twice a day just practicing breathing in a very specific way isn't a lot to ask for people and this can actually be life changing just by itself because what will happen over time is you will start to notice that when your eyes fatigue you're breathing two grades we talked about this before if my eyes degrade right there fatiguing what is my posture do sinks my breathing begins to degrade and now I get into this kind of vicious cycle that just continues to spiral so this all starts to take us into some additional um some additional ideas about good deliberate practice which is taking time now this is going to sound a little bit in contrast to what I've said so far um but in the first slide I put up today I said, you know, these things wouldn't work on war come play we want to work on our breathing when work on mobility drills we want to work on balancing tension, relaxation and the last thing on that slide it said we want to work on taking our time right on time because one of the things that I have found over the course of doing a lot of vision work myself enough training people to division work is that ah lot of times where we try to rush the result right? We want to do five seconds, ten seconds and in sometimes just sitting with it for a little while is what really starts to make the difference. Okay? But when you're sitting and doing an exercise if you get tight if you get into startle, if you stop breathing you're actually causing you're going you did not get the benefit from it that clear so this whole section has been like how do we establish the foundation's physically to take the time to do a really good vision drill. Is everyone clear on that? Okay, so well, here's, what we're gonna do, um, I want you to pick either the convergence divergence card, this guy, or if you want to do distance vision, you can just from your seat, you can sit and pick a letter to look at. If you want to do close vision, you can take the multi size font card and here's, what I would like for you to do, you're gonna pick one of those and you're going to start the exercise. So for instance, if mckenzie says, you know what, I'm gonna work on my distance vision, and I'm gonna pick letter. What letter could you look at? Hear, t okay. So she could pick the letter now, if she can see the t clearly are relatively clearly. If we go one below that, this is a p a can. You kind of make that one out. But is it blurry? Yeah, it's blurry. But I can kind of tell them, okay, awesome. Now if you were watching her, she said it's kind of blurry and then she tied up her face and she kind of leaned forward, alright this's exactly what we're talking about now the goal of this exercise is I'm gonna have you sit with that for a little while I'm gonna have you just look at that p and I want you to tell your brain tryto un blur it well as you do that you're gonna breathe you gonna practice either the personal it breathing and I want you to spend maybe like forty five seconds to a minute just looking at that one letter in telling your brain what you want to have happen I want that to be less blurry does that make sense? Yeah. Okay so if you want to do the convergence card if you want to choose distance vision or something on the multi size font the basic goal is fine something in listen find something that's hard to do I don't want you looking at something that you can see easily right now I want to make your brain work but while it's working you know work on the relaxation and breathing component okay so are you gonna do distance vision as well? Yeah, but can you can you will quickly tell me what the vision exercise the distance exercises again s o the z in the seventh row so that's you yes okay so you can see that clearly yes alright can you pick out any letter down here? Yeah actually I was sick and dizzy and the next drug he got that one yes. All right. What about on this line? And we'll have tea and tea. Kind of in the middle of an awesome. So what I want you to do is for the next minute, you're going to focus on that tea? Yes, and it's. Okay, that blurry? Yes. You sit up and you do the breathing exercise. And the main thing is to keep trying to tell your brain I want to see that more clearly while you're going through the breathing and relaxing. Right? So we're practicing on time through the two seconds and then fortress. Okay, I got it right, and you're going to work on something on there? How many reps he wanted to do. Ten or thirty. Um for now. So I think just for time, wife, once you guys practice maybe ten to twelve breasts, all right while you're working on this, ok, but the main thing like I said is you may have to go up more than that to really start to create the impact because the goal here is I might take a lot more than ten laps. The goal here is to understand you may you may need to sit with it for a little while and it's okay that it stays blurry. All right we're trying to give our brain something really really focus on so while they're doing that I'm sure that there are more questions come here always always are okay always are s o I'm going to start off with this one from d b fact well I training help to resolve motion sickness that's a fantastic question all right so in the previous segment I talked a lot about well I didn't talk a lot about what I talked about that satellite systems of the body yes and motion sickness is a very classic case of what we call sensory mismatch where my eyes are telling me something about the current uh environment but my inner ear is telling me something different when those two disagree massively the end result jozias knowledge or the typical motion sickness so experientially vision drills can be really effective in helping people reduce motion sickness but they're often or other elements that need to come into that s so some of our other in some or other programs we talk a lot about the intern year and basically how to train the inner ear to deal with the servants isas well so the simple answer I would give is try some of the vision drills first see if that starts to make a difference if not you can always contact our office or c a uh doctor or therapist in your area that specifically deals with what's called the vestibular system okay the inner ear in the in human bodies called the vestibular system and, uh, vestibular rehabilitation specialist can often be awesome in helping people get rid of motion sickness. Okay? Yeah and then photography girl want to know about, um dry eyes, dry eyes yeah. Common with photographers common with people to do a lot of close work. Yeah. Um, there are so many different reasons that that can occur that I hesitate to say just division exercises that will make it better. That is probably something that's best looked at by an atomic trist because there can be duct issues there, khun b just tear production issues a lot of different things that may play a role in that that may not be directly addressed with some of these exercises. Okay, yeah, it's definitely worth getting checked out because it could be miserable. Okay, yeah. And you and I talked about this the other day about folks that have had cataract surgery. Yeah? Or with cataracts can you talk talk about your program and how it would affect them? Yeah, so people that have had cataract surgery in general if if they're doctor, has not given them any, you know they haven't been prescribed against doing any the thing with their eyes and their post surgery, I would definitely recommend that they try the exercise is, um as faras, if you want to try the visual exercises and you currently have cataracts, that really comes down to a good conversation with your ophthalmologist, most in some cases interesting enough when people developed cataracts there, it actually changes how the lights coming through, and sometimes their vision will improve briefly until the cataracts actually increase in size. So depending on the progression of that particular issue, whether or not you are going to get benefit from the exercises may be hard to determine. But the main thing I would say is definitively, if you're gonna have them surgically repaired to remove, think about including these in your rehab, okay? All right, he did your breathing. You stayed relaxed, didn't stay a little blurry, ready to start to clear up the yeast t became a little clearer. He became a little clear. Good. What happened with you on the multi size fun? No big change or a little bit, you know stuff it's not quite focusing, but I'm seeing maur clearly the problem. You had a slight earlier with the football shape, the stigmatism and you show there's, vertical and horizontal, and I think I'm seeing some of that good, so good that's actually really important, because, like I said, once you bring khun kind of identify the problem and you're giving it a directive. I want to see this a little differently. See this more clearly, it's a good first step. Mackenzie, how did you do? Uh, good. It feels like it gets worse before it gets better. Yeah, but, yeah, after you get over that initial, like your eye wanting to break away because it's not doing what you wanted to go there, that cleared up a little for you. Yeah. Good. So that's a great example of what I was talking about on day one, I said, one of the things that's come up with a lot of the research division exercises is confusion. We go is that the muscles isn't the biomechanics. Are we changing the shape of the lens? And most of time would go well, no, it doesn't really seem to do that. So again, the idea is that when we make the brain work hard, right there's, that little bit of a blur is a little bit difficult. The brain's going I got to clean this up. I've got to clear this up. So the more that we do that the more opportunity we have to learn to do that all the time and that's why, like I said, this last little segment is really about setting a good, non scared foundation physically so I'm in good posture, I'm breathing well, I've moved some and then I allow myself to take the time what you said may have been the most profound thing said today, which is sometimes it gets worse before it gets better and you kind of have to sit with it, right? Maybe it's a little bit more blurry and your brain's like, uh, I'm not really sure about this, do you really want to do this? And if you stay with it all of a sudden who things could begin to clear up some vision specialist over the course of years, they'll literally recommend doing an hour or two or maura day vision work now you guys are tired, I could tell someone you're gonna like this again a little bit much um, I find that to be for a lot of people just completely overwhelming and again from a rehabilitation standpoint from a brain standpoint, I much prefer the few minutes at a time throughout the day because I think that's more effective approach, but the goal is we have to accumulate good repetitions, all right? And so sometimes a said be okay with the fact that you may not be making awesome progress in that moment, but if you're just sitting with it and you're sitting in a good, healthy, safe way, the opportunity for improvement is there you know, I was able to take some of what you taught us yesterday and just riding the bus this morning near far you know, focus on the seat then focus way upon the front or some of the isometrics just forcing my eyes up into the the corners of my peripheral right? You know? So it doesn't have to be like you're saying bits at a time you can find an opportunity to do that yeah that's what I tell people about almost all forms of exercise way actually scare ourselves off by going oh well, you know I'll just cover this real fast we call it the work ethic problem the work ethic problem kind of goes like this um you asked someone that's come in they haven't worked out in twenty years and they won't start exercising they come in they get really excited like all right what's my home program and I say something like one push up and their immediate response is what that what can that possibly accomplish? And I usually look at them and say something like well how many did you do last year and they go well none I went awesome right a thousand percent improvement on one day so but the problem is we don't feel like one is ever enough but the fact is that one repeated multiple times there today actually is right so we wanted just accumulate good good deep practice good, deliberate practice on these certain things. And it could be thirty seconds going on the bus. Very, very easy stuff.