The wellness brigade believe how you breathe affects your mental and physical health. Scientists think it can improve your memory as well, says Harry Wallop
You might think breathing is as natural as, well, breathing. Most of us are able to complete the school run or pop to Pret for a bang bang chicken salad without giving the oxygen we inhale and the carbon dioxide we exhale a second thought.
“But most of us don’t breathe correctly,” says Jill McGowan. “Most people breathe through their mouths; our mouths were designed for speaking and eating, not breathing. We should breathe through our noses.” The former midwife is now a breath coach, which sounds as ludicrous as a walking coach. But don’t sneer. Breathing has become big business. There are now thousands of breathing coaches in the UK, and hundreds of apps that promise to “biohack your breathing”. Meanwhile, upmarket gyms and luxury spas are now marketing “clean breathing” alongside their saltwater pools. Practise “correct” breathing and you will have harder abs, lower levels of anxiety and will sleep better, its proponents claim.
It’s not just the wellness industry that has embraced breathing. Scientific researchers have studied the benefits of particular methods and concluded that, if harnessed fully, nasal breathing can improve not only athletic performance, but, surprisingly, your memory too. According to Artin Arshamian, a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, inhaling through the nose stimulates neurons in the olfactory bulb, which is connected to the hippocampus, the brain’s memory hub.
Breathing has the ability to stir controversy too. Last month Scientific American, the US’s oldest magazine, which can boast Einstein as a former contributor, published a long article extolling the benefits of “cardiac coherence”, a technique that attempts to co-ordinate your breath with your heartbeat. “Cardiac coherence’s stabilisation of the heartbeat can dampen anxiety powerfully,” the article claimed.
Cue howls of protest on social media, not refuting the science, but furious that its source hadn’t been properly credited. Cardiac coherence, Twitter users pointed out, was a core part of Pranayama yoga, which has been practised for 2,500 years.
Well, yes and no, say breath coaches. “Coherent breathing equalises the inhale and the exhale and you will notice a drop in blood pressure and a drop in heart rate. That’s been around for ages,” says Alan Dolan, a breath coach who runs breathguru.com. However, one aspect of cardiac coherence makes it very much a 21st century technique. Namely, it uses a “biofeedback device”, a gizmo that can monitor your breath along with your heartbeat, and flash up your performance on a screen.
Most breathing workshops do not use a machine. “I’ve never used appliances like that,” Dolan says, “because when I do my breath work it’s so obvious.” He does, however, have an app called the Breath Guru, which for £3.99 guides people through a daily ten-minute breathing exercise, which you could argue is a form of very basic “biohacking” — although it doesn’t monitor your heart rate.
Dolan admits breath work is a form of meditation. “This is a physical mantra. You are focused on repeating that breathing pattern. I often say breath work is meditation for people who can’t meditate; for those people who say they can’t clear their mind.”
He says that 70 per cent of his clients come to him with anxiety related problems, depression or insomnia, and breath work is the ideal cure. “The vagus nerve is incredible. It is a cranial nerve which goes right into the stomach. Which is why so many people talk about the stomach being the second brain, because there are so many nerve endings there, and that’s why when we are anxious we get butterflies in our stomach.” By breathing more “consciously” you can learn to control the vagus nerve and reduce stress, he says.
To find out more, I attended a connected breathing class held by Rebecca Dennis. She used to work in advertising, but set up a practice called Breathing Tree a decade ago. “I used to have clinical depression. I was on medication [fluoxetine] for 15 years and every time I tried to come off it, I couldn’t function. I tried to take my life ten years ago and then two months after trying to take my life, I came to a breath workshop. Within a few months I came off my medication and I haven’t taken it for ten years.”
Before I attend she warns me that I should not drink coffee because I don’t want to be “buzzing” and that her workshops can be “very physical, people can get very hot, they can get very cold. Sometimes people are laughing hysterically, sometimes people get very light-headed. It is emotional, it can be spiritual — and has to be held in a safe space.”
The safe space is in a large yoga studio in Marylebone, west London. And there are about forty participants. I am one of only two men. I lie on my yoga mat as Dennis and her team run through various exercises.
After monitoring my breathing, she points out that I am breathing incorrectly. “You are moving your shoulders. Your shoulders are not breathing muscles.” To control the vagus nerve, I need to learn to breathe from the diaphragm. “That’s your breathing muscle.” She adds: “Research shows that the average teenager and adult is only using a third of their respiratory system.”
It is true that the average person, when at rest, fills their lungs — which may have a total capacity of six litres — with only about half a litre of air. But they are not falling down dead in the streets, I suggest. “But they could be coping a lot better,” Dennis says. Her breath exercises partly involve trying to recreate the full breath of a baby (“the perfect breath guru”) and she regularly prods your diaphragm to ensure you are engaging it.
It was certainly very relaxing lying mostly on my back for more than an hour, breathing in and out, and Dolan is right that it is perfect for those who struggle with traditional meditation. Whenever I am told to imagine a happy place I start to wonder what I am going to eat for supper. Trying to breathe in for a certain number of seconds, then hold it, then exhale for a certain amount of seconds, then hold it takes a surprising amount of concentration. And I do feel pleasantly light-headed by the end as a result of my blood pressure dropping.
But since the primary purpose is to connect with your emotions, I am not sure connected breathing is for me. I don’t have anxiety, I already sleep well, I tell Dennis. “I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have some sort of emotional baggage,” she insists.
The Buteyko method, in contrast, promises to be less psychological and more physiological. It is named after a Ukrainian doctor of the 1950s and is eye-catchingly counterintuitive because it involves repeated, shallow, nasal breathing. “You have to breathe less to get more air,” explains Jill McGowan, who says the method — which focuses on nasal breathing — cured her acute asthma. “When I first heard this, I thought, ‘This doesn’t make sense. You are always told to take deep breaths.’ ”
Buteyko posits that most people are hyperventilating without realising, triggering something called the Bohr effect. “With the Bohr effect, molecules of haemoglobin, a protein in your blood cells which carries oxygen, stick together like glue,” explains McGowan. This means that, although you are taking great lungfuls of air, the oxygen is not actually making it into your brain cells or muscle tissues. Breathing less, ironically, is a more efficient way of raising oxygen levels in your body, the method claims.
No large peer-reviewed clinical study has proved the Buteyko method to be a better way of getting oxygen into the cells and tissue of the body, nor that it is a cure for asthma, but McGowan and other nurses are convinced that it works.
Yet even if the experts can’t agree on the benefits of shallow breathing, they can agree on the benefits of nasal breathing, not least because nasal hairs act as a natural filter for various pollutants. Second, breathing through the nose warms and moisturises the air, which helps to increase blood flow. Third, breathing out through the nose produces nitric oxide, a molecule that is crucial to good health. The nitric oxid combines with the body’s carbon dioxide to act as a smooth-muscle relaxant. “If you have high blood pressure you take drugs to relax your smooth muscles; if you breathe in and out through your nose you produce CO2 and nitric oxide, which brings the blood pressure down,” McGowan says.
Mouth-breathing does not release nearly as much nitric oxide. This also means that — although it is instinctive to breathe through the mouth during heavy exertion — your recovery times are not nearly as fast. Sanya Richards-Ross, who won gold at the London 2012 Olympics in the 400m, and is a proponent of Buteyko, hardly opens her mouth as she does a full circuit of the track.
If you haven’t got the discipline of an Olympian, resort to a bit of tape, McGowan suggests. “Any time I run now, I run with my mouth taped,” she says. “I even tape it at the gym because there is always the urge to breathe through your mouth.”
This sounds truly bizarre, but mouth-taping is becoming increasingly common and is being promoted by many as a way to improve sleep and stop snoring — by forcing you to breathe through your nose. You can buy mouth tape on the internet.
I try it, running around my local park. I get very odd looks. It is also incredibly difficult. I gave up after about five minutes, after I thought I was going to choke. One thing is certain: it makes you think about your breathing. And even if you aren’t keen on releasing any emotional baggage, spending ten minutes in the middle of the day focusing on your breathing and lowering your blood pressure is probably no bad thing.
To ease digestion
Try “ha breath” for digestion and joyful energy by Rebecca Dennis, the author of And Breathe
• Stand with your feet placed shoulder-width apart and knees bent.
• Place your hands on your lower abdomen and inhale through the mouth expanding the diaphragm.
• Exhale quickly through the mouth making the sound “ha”
• Repeat rapidly for two minutes.
The sleeping aid
Can’t sleep? To help you to relax, try this 4-7-8 exercise by Rebecca Dennis, the author of And Breathe.
• Exhale completely through your mouth, making a “whoosh” sound.
• Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four.
• Hold your breath for a count of seven. Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound, to a count of eight. This is one breath.
• Now inhale again and repeat the cycle three more times for a total of four breaths.
The running tip
Improve your nasal breathing so that you can eventually tape up your mouth while running or sleeping. Exercise by Patrick McKeown, the author of The Oxygen Advantage.
• Inhale and exhale through your nose, then pinch your nose and hold your breath.
• Walk as many steps as you can, building up a medium to strong air shortage.
• Resume nose breathing and calm yourself as quickly as possible. (If you’re not able to recover within two to three breaths, you’ve held your breath for too long.)
• Wait one to two minutes, then do another breath hold.
• Repeat for six breath holds.
Beverley D’Silva visits Breath Guru Alan Dolan for a Conscious Connected Breath session
Conscious breathing is a powerful and safe way to infuse the body with oxygen and energy. It can have profound therapeutic benefits to our physical, mental and emotional wellbeing and integrate negativity. It can initiate openings to higher levels of consciousness, allowing us to tap into our resources and live our lives joyfully and in abundance.
Breath-work is having a big moment, I’m sure you’ll have noticed. It used to be the preserve of wellbeing sites and health mags but now all mainstream medias have got the breathing bug. With its origins in the ancient east, it is the latest holistic healing practice to be widely adopted in the west, with appreciation of its profound therapeutic effects. It’s probably the most important holistic breakthrough since we all ‘got’ yoga, meditation and acupuncture.
Yoginis and Yogis are well-versed in pranayama, and controlling the breath, the source of our prana, or vital life force. The new breath-work, however, is not tagged on at the end of a yoga session – it is a practice in its own right. There are many breath practices and exercises now in vogue – holotropic, Butyeko, rib-cage breathing. The one I am interested in is conscious connected breathing – that is, abdominal breathing done in a circular fashion with no pauses. Open, healthy breathing, just as babies breathe.
I love the sound of that, so I look up breath coaches, and one who is outstanding is Alan Dolan, aka Breathguru. With more than 15 years’ experience, he’s one of the most experienced breath coaches in Britain. He first trained with Judith Kravitz, co-creator of Transformational Breath and now simply calls his work conscious breathing. Starry clients he’s breathed include actress Naomie Harris and presenter Lisa Butcher, and with top healers Barefoot Doctor and Jody Shield pitching up at his door, you know something good’s afoot, so I’m super-excited to bag a session with him.
Just a hop, skip and a jump from the noisy Caledonian Road in north London, and I’m in a tranquil private mews, being greeted by Alan at his practice, Breathing Space. He has a kind smile and zen-like warmth that immediately puts you at ease.
A sentence from his website – ‘Breath work is the most powerful physical, emotional and psychological healing tool,’ – is in my mind as I follow him to his practice room. I also read there that studies of breath-work have shown it can boost the immune system, help with anxiety and depression, develop self-awareness, reduce chronic back pain and lower blood pressure. The bit I really like is it can help you access ‘divergent thinking’, which is so important to creativity. I could use some.
Alan used to be in PR in the aerospace industry. Like the best healers, he has endured his own suffering – chronic depression that dogged him, which he’s talked publicly about. Breath work pulled him out of the doldrums into a new, holistic life. Having helped himself, his mission is to help others feel better by breathing better.
His practice room is light-filled with a couch covered in downy fabric. We go through any physical issues (a niggly cough); state of mind (low-level anxiety – I live in on-full-alert London, after all); and medications. He asks me if I have an intention for the session – what would I like to achieve as a result of it. I would like endless energy and to write a bestselling novel – not much to ask!
Alan tells me to lie down (this is where loose clothing is a good idea), and close my eyes. He gives me a moment ‘to land in the space’. Then he says he is going to observe my breath in a resting pattern. Any hint of an examination normally makes my pulse race like a mouse on a Tube track, but it doesn’t feel like that. My breath is strong in the belly, he says – which is good. Around 80% of people don’t breathe much in the abdomen but are chest breathers (which can contribute to them feeling ‘spacey’ or dizzy). Breathing below the naval means I’m using my diaphragm fully. However, my breath could be stronger in the upper chest area.
He asks me to begin breathing in and out, through the mouth not the nose, as this technique brings in more oxygen, and to take a longer inhale and a shorter exhale – ‘like a quick silent sigh’. No pause between the in and out breath, a continuously connected flowing breath. This connected breathing turns on the body’s self-healing, he says. He models the pattern – about 4 beats inhaling to 1 beat exhaling. And it’s important that the exhale is relaxed, like a soft but silent sigh.
Music is played, a tribal rhythm with a heavy drumbeat. My breathing gradually syncs to its rhythm. Alan coaches me to keep my breathing connected – ‘no pauses’ – and to keep my mouth. He props me more upright on pillows, to help bring more breath into the upper chest.
While I’m focusing on that, he begins to use ‘body mapping’ points – pressing with his hand or fingertips on points, on my torso, near the ribs, behind the calves, around the shoulders. I learn later body-mapping points correspond to emotional issues – like meridian points relate to physical issues. A point can be about moving forward in life, for example, or expressing love, or letting go of anger. The pressure is mostly gentle though sometimes, as with a point between the ribs, it’s so firm as to feel tender. If a point is tender it is in most need of being worked on. He coaches me with phrases such as ‘It’s good to breathe’ and ‘it’s safe to let go’.
I feel a gentle throbbing in my temples, and across my cheeks, like a mild anaesthetic at the dentist. It goes away after a few minutes. Apparently this sensation is called tetany and is common, especially in new conscious breathers.
I’m almost nodding off when Alan gets me to make a sound – ‘Say Ahhhhh…..’ He jokes ‘Pick another note and make like Pavarotti’. He also gets me pounding my fists on the bed and stamping my feet while toning.
Certain phrases are spoken, though I only vaguely remember them, to do with receiving any gifts or insights that might be helpful to me – afterwards he explains these were invocations, to help me generally. It all definitely shifts my feelings from drowsy to energised. It’s like flying or skating through a wonderful dreamscape while being totally alert.
After what seemed like no time (in fact it was around 40 minutes), he tells me to let my breathing return to its normal pace. I have a few minutes’ recovery time. To close the session, he plays the beautiful Devi Prayer; Hymn to the Divine Mother Akasha, a plaintive song that makes me want to cry – and I feel releasing tears slide down my face.
There is the dinging of a bell and I sit up, fully awake. We have a post-breathing pep talk. My breathing pattern is good overall, he says, my main issue is with my exhale. He thinks it is connected to me not wanting to let go and lose control. I can relate to that. He mentions my ‘lunar point’ – the female or yang equivalent of the ‘solar point’ or yin solar plexus, which he feels is connected with the mother, who he sees in my energy field. Well, my beloved mum and I were close, so that wouldn’t surprise me. He thinks when I was around five I decided I didn’t feel safe with the adults, ‘so you started to do things your own way.’ He’s so right about that, too, but how could he know? He says he recognised this in me because it was his experience, too. I want to go forward in life but hold back, an issue of trust. ‘It’s time you saw things through….’ Could this be the unfinished novel sitting on my desk…? This is almost like psychic intuition with some reading of body language. You know what? I find it more insightful and helpful than years of psychotherapy.
I leave my breath session feeling totally rejuvenated – light, energised and clear-headed. I feel as if I’ve been breathing fresh air on a Swiss mountaintop instead of north-London grog. I have exciting new ideas whizzing around – did divergent thinking kick in? Take note, creatives! I feel so happy to have found breath work, my new favourite holistic therapy. I’m very grateful to have met Alan Dolan, who is a fantastic breath coach. I am a conscious breathing convert. I will add that into my next set of invocations.
Fill your lungs and empty your mind – deep-breathing techniques will help you keep a clear head
Nobody wants to be told they’re not doing the essentials correctly, but I think it’s time we talked about the fact you’re not breathing right. Well, OK, you’re alive so you’ve got the bare essentials down. But how about the ways you can breathe to make the more extreme moments more bearable?
The way you breathe when exerting yourself or when things get stressful can have a huge impact on how you deal with these particularly difficult states: ask anyone who’s ever been bad at breathing during a workout. Actually, you don’t even need to ask them, because we spoke to the experts in breathing about how exactly you can change the way you face a crunch time via inhalation and exhalation.
Alan Dolan, BreathGuru
“Our brand of Conscious Connected Breathing aims to open up the full capacity of the lungs (on average we use about 25 per cent) in order to release excess emotional baggage, increase oxygen to starved tissue and recharge energy levels.
“Not only is our breathing technique an effective and healthy way to protect ourselves from the ravages of stress and anxiety, it also provides an immediate remedy for dealing with symptoms as they occur.
“The beauty of our technique is that you can do it yourself at home:
1. Lie on your back on the floor in a quiet spot where you wont be disturbed. Place a pillow under your head and shoulders.
2. Begin to breathe through your mouth. Your mouth should be open wide enough so that you can get your index and middle finger in between your upper and lower teeth.
3. Breathe deeply into your abdomen, just below your navel. Imagine you are inflating a balloon in your stomach with each inhale.
4. Without pausing, release your breath in a short, soft sigh, like fogging a mirror.
5. Again, without pausing, take a deep inhale through your mouth and continue the steps.
6. The key is to keep the breath flowing so that each inhale and exhale is connected, continuously moving.”
As spiritual wellbeing becomes a new measure of health, travellers are searching for a getaway that offers something beyond unlimited spa treatments and bargain shopping, writes Emma Vidgen.
The girls’ trip has come a long way since the all-inclusive booze cruise. As the pace of modern life reaches dizzying new speeds, so too does the need for something meaningful. Healing modalities once dismissed as ‘new age’ are increasingly topping holiday wish lists.
“Most of the people I work with are stereotypical professionals who are living very fast lives and are very often parents,” says Alan Dolan, aka the Breath Guru. “What they have in common is that they’re overloaded and have so many responsibilities.”
Today’s spiritual getaways are all about stepping off the hamster wheel and reconnecting with yourself. Here, we round up five now-age trends coming to a holiday near you…
WHAT IS IT? “Breathwork is a self-healing modality designed to be done by you, for you,” says Dolan. Using a series of connected breathing exercises and techniques, the practice puts participants into a meditative state where the body can rest and repair.
HOW IT WORKS “Breathwork activates the body’s auto-pilot recalibration system,” says Dolan. “The cells begin to work better and more efficiently, and that means you also work more efficiently.” Dolan has helped people with ailments ranging from depression and anxiety to sleep disorders, chronic fatigue and severe pain. “Indigenous tribes have been experimenting with sound, rhythm, movement and breath since the dawn of time. To me, breathwork is very, very ancient. We’re really just rediscovering it.”
WHERE TO TRY IT Dolan runs workshops throughout the year from his property in Lanzarote, Spain. Four-night retreats start from approximately $2000 per person.
How can you turn something you do every day into a seasonal mood booster? Writer Karen Swayne discovers a natural high that’s under your very nose
I know, I know .. going to a retreat to learn how to breathe sounds like the ultimate in woo-woo indulgence. We do it instinctively from birth and, having made it this far, we must be doing something right.
But, says Alan Dolan, aka the Breath Guru, we can all learn how to do it much, much better, and by doing so, reduce tension, gain sharper focus, enhance wellbeing and give ourselves a spiritual detox to boot. With a full-on combination of work, family, a gruelling commute and with Christmas fast approaching, free energy on tap sounds super-appealing, so I book myself into the Lanzarote villa where Alan runs his connected breathing retreats.
‘Jean shorts, grey T-shirt – look for the hippy :),’ reads his text message when I land at the airport where we’re due to meet.
Slightly dishevelled, but instantly engaging and interested, Alan is a well-travelled soul who’s lived in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, before settling in the Canaries. He has called Lanzarote his home for the past 15 years, drawn by the year-round sunshine. As we drive through the dramatic black lava landscape, he explains why he’s on a mission to help the stressed out slow down, find some space and trust in the healing power of their own body. It’s clearly going well – among his fans is actor Naomie Harris, and we’re travelling in a smart and very unhippyish Range Rover.
Why breathing? ‘Most people only use a fraction of their lung capacity,’ he says, ‘Conscious, or connected breathwork allows us to access much more than that, and infuse the body with oxygen and energy. All it takes is a little bit of practice. Basically, it’s meditation for people who can’t meditate: a way of pressing pause on our 24/7 lives.’
I’m all for that, but surprisingly nervous – what if I’m no good at it? Still, I’m happy to find that the villa is a zen-like delight: cool, minimal, stylish rooms surround a pool, Buddhas gaze benignly down from walls, and the mountain views are spectacular. With no alcohol, caffeine or meat on offer, I’m looking forward to a physical detox, as well as body reset in time for the festive season.
Alan works with small groups of three or four people at a time, and joining me are Jim, a retired teacher from
Fife who is here to get space to reflect, and Liz, a clinical psychologist from London who had a one-off session with Alan in the UK and wanted a deeper experience. We will soon know the intimate details of each other’s lives; it turns out that this breathing thing can be rather exposing.
Pinned to the kitchen wall is the day’s schedule, which doesn’t look too gruelling:
8.15am: ginger and apple shots and smoothie
11.30am: one-to-one breathe session with Alan
4.00pm: group breathe session
8.00pm: hot tub
9.00pm: self practice
It’s something of a surprise to find myself staggering around just a few hours later like a spaced-out zombie, desperate to lay my head down and sleep.
First up is the massage (more of a full body workout), which is designed to open up the body to prepare it for the breathwork later. In the strong, skilful hands of Martin, the air is pushed out of my lungs, while the combination of shiatsu, reiki, deep tissue and craniosacral work leaves me shattered. But, before I have time to draw breath, it’s straight to the therapy room for my first one-to-one session.
Cross-legged on cushions, Alan explains that our regular breathing is so shallow that we only use around 25% of our lung capacity. Breathing through my mouth will allow me to draw in more air down to the lower lungs and flood my red blood cells with oxygen. Most importantly, I must stay ‘connected’, with no pauses between inhaling and exhaling.
I soon get the hang of it and almost immediately feel the physical effects. It starts with a tingling in my hands and arms. Alan has primed me to expect a sensation like pins and needles or Champagne bubbles flowing through my veins, but this is way more intense. They are throbbing, as if my body is expanding Incredible Hulk-style, as the blood rushes around. At times, the pressure is so great that it’s as if someone is pressing down on my body.
It’s unnerving, but as Alan murmurs positive affirmations, such as ‘I am good enough’, and gently applies acupressure to stress points, mainly my hips and collarbones, the hour flies by. Afterwards, I feel charged with energy, like one of the women in Naomi Alderman’s futuristic novel The Power who can take down men by pointing a finger at them and zapping them with electricity.
Tottering to my room, I catch sight of myself in the mirror; pupils dilated, I look dazed and confused – in a way I haven’t been since I used to go clubbing (decades ago). Can I really do four days of this? I crash out and go straight to sleep. Later that day, I attend the group session, which is slightly less intense. There’s a different energy in the room, but the physical sensations remain.
The following morning, I wake after a fitful sleep with a pounding headache, which continues on and off over the course of my stay. As the days drift by, I find I’m unable to focus on anything; I can’t concentrate on a book or look at a screen. Jim, Liz and I spend our time talking about our experiences or simply sleeping. A beach walk feels like a major expedition – the thought of Christmas shopping is simply unimaginable. But, in our final one-to one session, Alan says, ‘Let’s see if we can get you to Nirvana…’.
With each breathing session, I’ve gone deeper into my body and, by now, the feeling is comfortingly familiar. While I wouldn’t call it blissful, it feels more natural and when the session ends, I surprise myself by finding tears flowing down my cheeks. The strange thing is that I don’t feel sad or emotional, in fact, I feel strangely calm, but every sensation is heightened – touch, sound and vision – it feels quite psychedelic, with the brightness turned up to max. ‘There you go, you made it,’ says Alan. ‘Just wow!’, I scrawl later in my journal.
Back home, and doing daily 10-minute sessions every morning, my exhaustion is a distant memory. I feel charged with energy and ready to handle anything the festive season (and Southern Railway) can throw at me. Connected breathing is one of the best antidotes to stress and anxiety, and at this busy time of year, I’m using it to find calm in the chaos.
Now get breathing
The beauty of the conscious breathing technique is that it can be done anywhere you can find a bit of privacy. Start with a five-minute session at the beginning or end of the day and increase up to 10-15 minutes.
1. Lie on your back on the floor in a safe, secure environment where you won’t be disturbed. Place a pillow under your head and shoulders.
2. Begin to use your mouth to breathe – make sure it’s open wide enough by checking you can get your index finger between your upper and lower teeth.
3. Breathe deeply into your abdomen, aiming for just below your navel. Imagine you are inflating a balloon in your stomach with each inhale.
4. Without pausing, take a short breath out – a gentle puff, as if fogging a mirror. The emphasis is on the inhale, the exhale is a short, soft sigh.
5. Your breath needs to flow, so imagine it is like a swing, continuously moving.
6. Once you have finished, close your mouth, and breathe through your nose. Notice any emotions and physical feelings and allow them to just be.
It is no small coincidence that the wellness industry is thriving at a time when stress has reached epidemic levels, the NHS is in crisis, health insurance is inadequate and millennials are insatiably hungry for tech-based solutions to age-old problems. Longer working weeks, fewer hours of rest and a fixation with smartphones has created an appetite for fitness and mind-body therapies currently worth $542 billion*.
From yoga and mindfulness to gong baths and breathing techniques, practices that were once the butt of bad jokes have been given a thoroughly modern overhaul (and some much-needed scientific validation) for a generation of anxiety-ridden insomniacs. Here we detail three apps from 2018’s most forward-thinking wellness leaders.
Breathing techniques have been used for millennia to engage the parasympathetic system (responsible for the body’s unconscious actions), lower stress hormones and calm overactive minds. The brand of “conscious breathing” employed by breath guru Mr Alan Dolan aims to open up the full capacity of the lungs (workaholics and urbanites tend to use just 25%) in order to release excess emotional baggage, increase oxygen to starved tissue and recharge energy levels.
The technique was a game changer for Mr Dolan himself. A former PR manager in the aerospace industry, he achieved his financial goals only to remain deeply unsatisfied. The shift he experienced from breath work encouraged him to formalise a method that has tangible effects on his clients’ daily lives: smokers can be reformed, the anxious can find ease and the vast majority experience some level of emotional release.
Mr Dolan’s popularity means private sessions aren’t always immediately available, a conundrum that led him to create an app that features a series of easy-to-follow instructional videos for each day of the week.
Use your lungs to improve your mind — and get high. Susan d’Arcy takes a class with the Breath Guru
We can, literally, do it in our sleep, but, according to Alan Dolan, we’ve been doing it all wrong.
Dolan — 55, from Manchester — is the Breath Guru, and his mission is to get people breathing better. So much better, in fact, that their memory will be improved, stress levels lowered and even depression lifted. There are City boys who’ve trained with Dolan who say he’s helped them sharpen their focus. There are pop and rock stars who report that his breathing technique gives them a bigger buzz than drugs. The actress Naomie Harris is a past student.
Dolan is an advocate of “conscious connected breathing” and, earlier this month, I flew to his retreat on Lanzarote to see if he could put some puff in my pipes.
Varieties of so-called “transformational breathing” have been big among Hollywood sorts for a while. I tried it in LA last year and loved it, but my instructor told me that it was too dangerous to practise at home on my own. Dolan, on the other hand, promises he can teach me all I need to know in a long weekend, setting me up for a lifetime of happy, connected inhaling and exhaling.
His retreat is an unpretentious three-bedroom villa in the well-to-do hillside village of Nazaret. When he first appears, I can’t help thinking he looks like Noel Edmonds gone native: same beard, same cheeky grin, but wearing a Captain America T-shirt, low-slung shorts and a footballer’s hairband to tame his flowing locks. He is unnervingly cheerful, but I like him. When I tell him I’m not interested in a spiritual awakening, thank you, just getting a better brain, he understands.
Fifteen years ago, he was bashing out press releases about military aircraft for BAE Systems, driving a Porsche Boxster and deeply depressed. He resigned, retrained as a breath coach, regained his mojo and moved to Lanzarote. Now, 14 years on, he wants to share the secret of his happiness.
His white-walled Breath Room is only fractionally longer and wider than the two king-size mattresses on the floor. There is Buddha artwork on the walls, incense fills the air and Robbie Williams sings Feel through the speakers. I’m on edge, and not just because of Robbie’s high notes. I’m sitting with my knees raised, arms protectively hugging my shins. Dolan is sprawled across some scatter cushions, limbs so loose they could have been deboned.
He tells me babies breathe from their bellies, which keeps them connected to their root chakra and their inner selves. As the appeal of Peppa Pig fades, so does our breathing technique, and we start to use only the upper chest. This is not good. He tells me that connected breathing will access my entire respiratory system, oxygenating cells more efficiently, thereby improving my general health, clearing out my emotional baggage and tuning me in to God and the universe. He stops and smiles: “Yeah, I know you think that’s piffle.”
He instructs me to lie back, inhale through my open mouth down into my belly and exhale gently, also through my mouth, as if I’m fogging a mirror. Crucially, I must then inhale again immediately, creating a continuous loop — ie, connecting my breath. I’ve flown 1,700 miles to be told to breathe in after breathing out?
This is not like relaxation exercises or yogic breathing. Almost instantly, my mouth is bone-dry. I panic, cough and protest that I need to swallow. Dolan gently insists that I don’t. I keep pausing. I correct that, but then exhale too forcefully. Finally, I get the hang of it, mostly.
Thirty minutes later, Dolan says I can breathe through my nose again. Suddenly, I know what those hard-partying rockers are on about. My body is flooded with a wonderful energy. The sensation lasts for about 10 blissful minutes before being replaced by a sense of clarity and concentration, which remains for the rest of the day.
“You just hyperventilated,” my husband sneers when I phone him after my first session. According to Dolan, hyperventilation is about exhaling more than you inhale, decreasing levels of carbon dioxide and leading to faintness. The average person uses just 30% of their lung capacity when they breathe, he says. His strategy is about utilising the spare 70%. Either way, I’m counting the hours until my next session.
By my fourth session with Dolan, I can breathe through my mouth without swallowing for 30 minutes, no problem. This doesn’t affect my subsequent levels of euphoria and lucidity, but it makes getting there more pleasant. My fellow students are similarly seduced. One is a fiftysomething property developer who realised he had to address his stress levels as he struggled into an ambulance with a suspected heart attack. He reports feelings of elation, vibrations through his body, and a few tears. By day three, he looks 10 years younger. The other is a twentysomething actress on her second visit in six months.
In between my two daily workshops, I laze by the pool or in the hot tub, looking at the distant volcanoes, go for excellent massages and eat the retreat’s cracking vegetarian meals.
As I prepare to leave, I feel refreshed, focused and free from the computer ache that usually plagues my neck and shoulders. I am aghast, however, to discover that there is no breathing session on departure day. “I don’t want you in an altered state at the airport,” Dolan explains. I beg for one more session. Duty-free never seemed so serene. Back home, I’m now on 20,000 deep breaths a day and officially addicted.
When asked what he does first thing in the morning, Marcel Duchamp reportedly replied, “Breathe.” In addition to being one of the patron saints of the Madness issue, Duchamp was right on trend: Breathing classes, workshops, therapies, and retreats are on the rise, and there’s lots of money being made. Kelly Conaboy inhaled.
Do you breathe? I mean: Do you breathe?
Your hippie friend says holotropic breathing is the new ayahuasca. Your Goop-y friend does breath exercises in the salt room at their spa. Your super-scheduled friend has a breathing app on her phone. And your friend who owns the self-improvement aisle at the bookstore has been going to breathing therapy for months.
Like it did with yoga in the ’90s, Western culture has opened its mind to breathing, née pranayama, as a tool to wield against anxiety, stress, and physical ailments, as well as a way to trip the fuck out. The practice of mindful breathing has traveled through time from the world’s oldest living religion, Hinduism, to the world’s newest religion, Wellness, and counts Gwyneth Paltrow, Karlie Kloss, Oprah, Emma Watson, and the New York Knicks among its practitioners. It is often dubbed as a quick way to relieve stress and, indeed, “the new yoga!”
The association with capital-W Wellness is unfortunate. Though the Wellness movement’s goals may be pure (and that’s giving it the benefit of the doubt), the path it takes to secular enlightenment is often through a field of toxin-filled money landmines and junk science, which can give one a sense of knee-jerk, often correctly cynical, disapproval. Because the concept of Wellness stretches so broadly—natural makeup is Wellness, and so is cultivating a sense of inner peace, and so is salad—it has an association with luxury that can sometimes feel discordant (like, uh, luxury meditation).
And when the luxury peddled at the Church of Wellness is breathing, the absurdity is hard to ignore. Breathing is one of life’s simplest pleasures and can be done anywhere, anytime, at little-to-no cost—go ahead, try it now. But those who are looking for something a little more high-end can get their kicks with a four-day breathing retreat in a beautiful poolside villa in Lanzarote (one of the Canary Islands), or private $550 breathing classes on the Upper East Side of Manhattan; there was even, of course, a dedicated breathing room and breathwork sessions offered at the New York City Goop summit.
Is paying someone to show you how to breathe ridiculous or a surprisingly reasonable way to grow healthier? I live in New York City, a Western Wellness capital rivaled only by L.A. And like everyone else with access to Twitter, I’d love to feel more balanced, calm, and free from sickness and symptoms. And so, with credit card in hand, I set out to learn firsthand: Is breathwork bullshit?
My first foray into capitalistic respiration cost less than a green juice. For $3.99, I obtained a breathing app from the man who runs that Lanzarote retreat I mentioned earlier, “BreathGuru” Alan Dolan. The eponymous program comprises two guided breathing sessions and a few videos featuring the guru himself. I’d rather never watch a video, but the guided breathing sessions are nice. It’s pleasant to lie down and breathe for either 10 or 30 minutes, which are the two options. Nothing much is demanded of you, and breathing is a clinically proven stress reliever (you can read about this March 2017 Stanford University study on breathing’s positive effects on emotion, if you’d like). The app is more expensive than the typical cost of breathing, but you also get to hear New Age music and a man breathing with you—maybe you like that.
The BreathGuru’s claims don’t stop at stress relief, however. “Degenerative diseases, cardiac problems, and cancer are linked to oxidative stress and cellular free-radical damage, and breath is a key factor in prevention,” Dolan said in a Net-A-Porter article on the power of breathing. “When the breath is out of kilter, your body’s fight-or-flight mode is heightened. But get the breath right and cells are flooded with oxygen, so the body begins to recalibrate and release toxins.”
It always strikes me as particularly insidious when cancer is brought up in the promotional material of Wellness salespeople. But I am trying to breathe and remain relaxed, so I spoke to Geoffrey Chupp, M.D., a pulmonary medicine professor at Yale University and director at the Yale Center for Asthma and Airways Disease, about whether or not all this stuff was bullshit.
“There’s a desire to say that if you breathe right, you’re going to have less cancer, but it’s a more complex relationship,” he said. “What’s pretty clear is that having healthy lungs contributes to having a healthy body. And having healthy lungs means that you have to use them, and you have to use them properly, and you have to take care of them. I think the link is that breathing exercises, the fads and the traditional ones, are ways of keeping your lungs healthy.”
So the purported health payoffs aren’t just a marketing ploy? “There’s probably pretty good data out there supporting the benefits of [breathing exercises] for a lot of diseases,” he said, “including psychiatric diseases and anxiety, cancer, heart attacks, and most important in my field is asthma.”
Dr. Chupp told me about a study, published in the Journal of Asthma in 2011, on the benefits of yoga and breathing exercises on asthma; it was inconclusive, but showed in some cases that patients had better asthma control if they exercised. The connection between your breathing and your brain is well known in both sickness and in health, he explained—breathing has a chemical effect on your blood, and a chemical and hormonal effect on your brain. When you’re anxious, you breathe quickly; when you breathe deeply, you can decrease anxiety.
“The normal response to exercise is to bronchodilate,” meaning to increase airflow to the lungs, “so I think a lot of these [breathing exercises] are basically facilitating that and ensuring that your airways are being ventilated,” he said. In deep (vs. shallow) breathing, you fill your lungs to their full capacity, so you’re trading a larger amount of carbon dioxide for oxygen with which to oxygenate the blood. This is proven to ease anxiety, and sounds good to me.
Heartened by the cosign from a medical professional, I decided to take the next monetary step toward breath perfection: I visited MNDFL—an extremely good-looking meditation studio chain with three NYC locations—for its $25 BREATH class. “Feeling stressed or anxious?” MNDFL’s website asks. Yes! I’m so glad you asked. “This is a good class for you. Learn to focus on your breathing in order to become more present. Work with the breath in a way that allows you to be more calm and not get too lost in your own head.”
MNDFL’s space—wooden, bright white, light-flooded—is dotted with large, leafy green plants. It faces a floor-to-ceiling window that frames a large outdoor moss version of the MNDFL logo. It’s a calm, beautiful, perfectly branded breathing space, and I’d booked my spot online, which was very convenient. I sat cross-legged on a cushion early in the morning surrounded mostly by beautiful women in casual business attire. We breathed in a fairly nonstructured way, and listened to a very soothing woman talk to us about our breath and our thoughts. Periodically, she would give us tips: Focus on your breath; give a bit of attention to nagging thoughts and then let them go. It was essentially a meditation class, and it was extremely fine.
Here’s the thing about mentally therapeutic techniques, such as breathwork: Shilling them without knowing much about the mind of the client can be tricky. I spoke with Patricia L. Gerbarg, M.D., assistant clinical professor in psychiatry at New York Medical College and part of the husband-wife team behind Breath Body Mind (an evidence-based breathwork initiative that aims to “integrate the best of conventional and natural treatments”), about what she sees as the potential missteps of mass-distributed holistic mental care.
Mostly, she said, the issue stems from not understanding or explaining potential side effects. “We see very famous people recommending their brand of a breathing practice, and that’s going to be fine for 95% of people,” she said. “But we know some people will have a bad reaction. Anyone can take an idea and put a little twist on it and make it sound like their own special thing, but if they don’t really understand how that affects the system, physically and psychologically, then their little twist may add something that’s not good for people.”
But the mass-distributed breathwork is growing, and with it research, evidence, and acceptance. “Most recently, the National Veterans Association made the decision that veteran treatment facilities should offer mind-body practices,” Dr. Gerbarg said. “They’re open to it, and they’re now officially offering it in a way that incentivizes VA facilities to find people to teach these kinds of programs.”
One solution—a pricey one, of course—is one-on-one breath sessions. These are offered in places ranging from yoga studios to well-appointed lofts to your very own apartment, usually with a Skype option available for out-of-town breathing. The one I tried, a $180, 60-minute session called Rebirthing, was a surprisingly wonderful experience. It didn’t start out that way; the night before, I had to fill out a very insane 38-question form, which asked what time I was born, what my most negative thoughts about relationships are, and what I was like as a child. At the start of the session, the breathworker and I went over my answers together, which was slightly uncomfortable.
But afterward, the very kind breathworker just watched me breathe while I lay under a blanket on a little massage table—big deep breath in, big deep breath out, big deep breath in, big deep breath out—for an hour. She told me my hands and face and legs might get numb and rigid during the breathing, and, wow, they did. It was very odd. But I did not suffer a breakdown, which I was nervous about. I also did not invent a memory of being involved in a Satanic sex cult, which I was also nervous about. After, I felt briefly energized and slightly happier, and she told me I was a very good breather, which I include not as a brag, but as a fact.
Of all the Wellness-centered breathwork offerings out there, holotropic breathing is one of the most, well, out-there. The technique was engineered in the ’70s by Stanislav Grof, M.D., and his wife, Christina, psychotherapists researching the effects of LSD. The practice, meant to mirror LSD’s effects, is done by inhaling and exhaling quickly—essentially mildly hyperventilating—while lying on your back, typically for about three hours, and usually to a soundtrack of meditative music. The trippy experience is practiced in the name of accessing otherwise inaccessible parts of the psyche, letting go of past trauma, and decreasing anxiety.
I asked Dr. Chupp what happens in your body when you do this, mostly because I was afraid I might die while trying it. “What you’re probably doing is getting rid of carbon dioxide, so you’re changing the acid-base balance in your body,” he said. According to Google just now, the acid-base balance is based on the levels of carbon dioxide (an acid) and bicarbonate (a base) in the blood. “That would need to be studied pretty scientifically, at almost a molecular level, to understand what the effects are,” he added.
“For people who are looking to have some sort of very intense experience, this can provide it,” Dr. Gerbarg explained. “People who are very psychologically healthy and well put together can tolerate it fine.” But holotropic and even rebirth breathwork can be upsetting—even destabilizing—for those who aren’t as psychologically sound. “It’s creating an altered mental state. So people used to do this as a way to have trips and other psychological experiences,” she said. She specified that she wasn’t criticizing the techniques, because they can do a lot of good, “but I do believe that some of those practices are not safe for the general public in the way that we use them.”
She advised practicing these techniques—if one must—one-on-one with an experienced breathworker, rather than in a large group.
But I’d already signed up for my group holotropic session, so I blew off the suggestion (sorry, Patricia!) and found myself in a group of Rag & Bone–looking people in a second-floor loft space in Lower Manhattan. The class took place at Woom, and luckily, it was not a nightmarishly bad experience in the ways I feared most (Satanic sex cult recovered memory). The holotropic breathwork was part of a Friday night five-part sound meditation session ($40) and lasted not for the standard three hours, but for 20 minutes. The room was full of very beautiful people in loose clothing who were hanging all over one another before the session began, which made me realize this was perhaps a thing people did before they had sex. (I was alone.)
For the session, everyone lay on blankets on the ground (extremely uncomfortable because the five-part session lasted two and a half hours, but I’m not complaining—I would never complain) and put blindfolds on that said “LOOK INSIDE” on the inside part. During the breathing practice, the instructor moved around the space banging a gong faster and faster, to the tempo of our breaths. The sound of everyone hyperventilating together was, I must admit, to my ear (and I say this without judgment): extremely not pleasing. About 30 men and women all going [inhale] [HUUUUUHHHHH], [inhale] [HUUUUUHHHHH], [inhale] [HUUUUUHHHHH] for 20 minutes is simply not something I am naturally inclined to enjoy, and that’s fine. The breathing was at a much faster pace than the breathing during rebirthing, and while I got a bit of the same numbness, I got none of the pleasant feelings and also chest pain.
But I am only speaking for myself. In the final part of the session, we were invited to share our experiences: One man said he could feel “toxin after toxin” leaving his body, and one woman said she felt herself going back to the womb. (Remarkably, she did not add, “Like you will be going back to the Woom, every week, for more meditation,” so I don’t believe she was an advertising plant.) I am happy for them, and I genuinely hope they did not feel my light negativity.
I don’t see breathing’s rise in popularity as a bad thing, though that is admittedly an odd sentence to have to write. “I think it’s gaining popularity because it makes people feel better,” Dr. Chupp told me. “There doesn’t have to be data for things to become popular. It just has to make people feel good.” He added that he believes if more studies were done, “and they probably should be,” they’d attest to breathing’s power.
Basically, breathing is good for you, and people deserve to practice absolutely anything within the realm of decency that helps them feel even the slightest bit better. But it’s important to take a moment to pause and consider what you’re buying, why you’re buying it, if you should be buying it, and from whom you’re buying it. Slow down; be mindful of your mindful breathing. Take a deep breath. Exhale. [HUUUUUHHHHH].
Mindfulness in nature, wild fitness, all-day yoga, this is our round-up of Spanish retreats to experience this season. Namasté.
Conscious breathing in Lanzarote – Breath Guru’s retreat is located in a rural location in the most easterly part of the Canary Islands. This luxury sanctuary is a villa that only accommodates 4 guests at a time to ensure maximum relaxation (and learning). Daily 1-1 breath sessions with Alan Dolan – the owner and guru – takes place in the complete privacy of a therapy room and can be coupled with massage, personal training, or even volcano climbing. The rest of the day is spent sunbathing on the local beach – Famara – and enjoying freshly made vegetarian meals.
There’s nothing more stressful than failing to relax. I’m in a Zen-like refuge in the hills of Lanzarote, supposedly being lulled into a meditative trance by Alan Dolan, one of the world’s leading mind-body practitioners. I’ve just had the best craniosacral massage of my life. I should be right in the moment, right here, you know? But instead I’m fixating on all the amusing ways my partner Sean is going to take the p—s out of the whole experience when we get back to our room. He’s already rolled his eyes at the sight of goji berries in the kitchen. He’s lying next to me, and I swear even his breath sounds cynical.
As Alan encourages us to let go, I grasp even more tightly on to my regret. What was I thinking, bringing Sean along? Worrying whether he’s enjoying himself will ruin my break. We’ll never be one of those couples on Instagram who stand side by side in tree-pose silhouettes against the setting sun. God, I need a wine. I start to wonder if the reason my previous trips have been so wonderful is because I was alone, without this worrisome, cynical lump of a male next to me.
Until now, my wellness-holiday habit has always been a solitary pursuit. I never even took a friend along for the ride. Ever since my very first yoga retreat at the age of 25, I’ve been hooked on holidays that leave me feeling better than when I first arrived. I’ve cheerfully booked myself on yoga workshops, kite-surfing courses and hiking boot camps.
Most attendees turn up for these alone, are thrown into a group environment, handed a schedule and taken on a collective journey. And when you have only yourself to please, travel becomes much easier. I didn’t want the pressure of someone else sharing my space, moaning that the yoga was too hard, or the food too healthy, or whatever.
When it comes to our precious time off, women often have different goals to men. For me and many others, the real adventure takes place within. We want to embark upon an emotional journey as well as a physical one, and to emerge with our relationship intact – but any type of incompatible desires when it comes to your holiday can be near-impossible to negotiate.
My friend Ling, for instance, is currently lobbying for an all-inclusive beach resort with a kids’ club so she can spend Easter on a sunlounger with a book, while her husband would rather take the family camping in the Lake District. My friend Tom refuses to get on aeroplanes any more (‘too much hassle’), while his girlfriend is desperate to go somewhere more exotic than northern France.
As for us? Well, there’s something I need to tell you about Sean: he doesn’t really like travelling. Which is a bit of an issue for a travel obsessive like me. I still remember him dropping this bombshell when we’d been dating for a few months, as we left the pub having waved goodbye to friends who were heading off on a year-long round-the-world trip. ‘Wouldn’t you love to do that one day?’ I’d asked Sean, dreamily. And there was a silence.
I looked at him. ‘Wouldn’t you?’ I demanded. ‘Um, to be honest I’ve never really had the urge,’ he said. To me, this is akin to saying you don’t really like food, you’d happily just pop a calorie-and-vitamin pill rather than bother with an actual meal. How could he not want to travel? Did he even have a pulse?
For our first trip together, and ever since, I’ve used all my knowledge of travel, both personally and professionally accrued in my job as someone who writes about it, to select destinations I knew to be rewarding, but also not cause huge culture shock.
Entry-level intrepid travel, basically. Thailand was our first trip, on a two-week stopover before an eight-week camper-van jaunt around New Zealand, then on to Australia. Sean sort of enjoyed himself in Thailand, although he made the rookie error of believing he could take on mosquitoes and emerge unbitten, victorious. As most of us know, you can’t beat mosquitoes. You can only hope to minimise the horrors of your bloody defeat.
Much as I try to avoid gender stereotypes, I’m firmly of the belief that women make the best travellers. In my experience, men are less comfortable with chaos and suffer more severely from culture shock. Today, women are more likely than men to go it alone: we constitute 58 per cent of single travellers, with that figure rising for more active and intrepid trips. Increasingly, we’re Instagram-obsessed aspirational overachievers with high demands of our limited leisure time.
On that first proper trip, Sean discovered new depths to his grumpiness. To him, my enjoyment of the whole thing was baffling. ‘You seem to find novelty a virtue in itself,’ he said, ‘but something can be new or unfamiliar, and still be s—t.’
And so, unsurprisingly, I’d taken to travelling by myself, though I would always miss Sean and look forward to returning to him recharged and ready to resume normal life. Recently, however, our work arrangements changed, and at the moment we only get to see each other at weekends. Suddenly, going on a separate holiday didn’t sound refreshing – it sounded tiresome.
And as any seasoned fan of health-focused travel knows, there has been a shift in the demographic. With wellness tourism the fastest-booming travel sector – an industry worth £404 billion annually – men are now rolling out their yoga mats next to us.
‘When I founded The Healthy Holiday Company in 2003, I’d say that only 15 per cent of our clients were men,’ says Kathryn Brierley. ‘But we’ve seen a steady increase over the past decade, and on some retreats it’s as high as a 50:50 male-female mix. Today there’s no negative stigma. Practices that were derided by men as new-age nonsense when we first started out are now seen as an aspirational form of travel.’
Back at the retreat, I find myself lying crossly on the mat, wishing I was here alone. I thought I’d picked the safest of bets: because on top of Alan’s reputation for being no-nonsense, breathwork can be life-changing. One of the strongest well-being trends of the past year, its devotees (including Kate Hudson and Naomie Harris) swear that it eradicates stress, improves digestion, boosts energy levels and helps with trauma and emotional upheaval.
What’s more, between twice-daily ‘conscious breathing’ sessions at his sellout Breathing Space workshop, there are volcanoes to hike, delicious veggie meals, and world-class massages and bodywork sessions from Martin Cairoli plus individual counselling sessions from Donna Lancaster. It’s the Rolls-Royce of wellness breaks and, I’d thought, the perfect one to pop Sean’s cherry.
Hands up: my intentions weren’t entirely altruistic. Sure, I felt that Sean would benefit, but I also reasoned that perhaps I’d been missing a trick for years by attending life-enhancing breaks and courses alone, and returning to my cynical and confused partner unable to explain it to him.
Slotting back into the life I had beforehand, my squeaky-clean new yoga or meditation plans never stuck around for long. If we both adopted a new habit for a week, surely it could take root? And if a meditation weekend can transform my own soul, who knows what it will do for our marriage?
But now I’m convinced it’s all been in vain. Alan rouses us, and everyone apart from me gently moves, opening their eyes, starry-eyed and blown-of-mind. Including Sean. ‘I really don’t understand what just happened, but that was amazing,’ he says, softly, and takes my hand. Oh. I realise, to my horror, that I might be the problem here. That’s the thing about retreats. They seem gentle, benevolent and hippyish on the surface, but they always bite you on the ass.
Our week unfolds, and Sean couldn’t be more comfortable, padding around in his white bathrobe, emerging from individual breathwork sessions with Alan tousle-haired and Zen-like. We all know that our relationships change in a group dynamic. Here, we’re surrounded by chatty, curious, emotionally intelligent women. Finally, it’s not just me nagging Sean to express himself, it’s all of us. I have a posse.
Meanwhile, I use my individual therapy sessions with Donna to unpick why I dread my own parties because I’m paranoid about people not having an amazing time, and, indeed, why I’d rather travel solo than risk taking a friend or partner along.
I highly recommend bringing your rows to a retreat; there is no better place to sort them out. I learn that my control-freak and perfectionist tendencies sometimes leave me isolated, because I’d rather miss out on a social occasion entirely than do it badly.
And Alan’s work starts to take effect. We feel relaxed, opened up, malleable and loving. Crucially, we feel like we will return to reality with a habit we can both share. And an experience we don’t have to try, and fail, to explain to each other. We might never get to the stage where we Instagram green smoothies and do yoga together in the setting sun, but we’ve used a holiday to learn to communicate that little bit better. And that’s a trip worth taking.
Tell me a bit about yourself
Stressed out city slicker who is feeling far from slick. I need to relocate my inner calm (it’s gone Awol) and sort out my sleep. A traditionalist open to new ideas, provided they’re not too kooky.
A stately but non-stuffy spa with a new-age twist to help me find inner calm and survival strategies for city life. Must have a generously proportioned pool and all mod cons.
A breathing workshop at the Landmark London’s newly revamped spa. The Marylebone hotel’s red-brick exterior and fabulous glass-ceilinged atrium, complete with towering palm trees, are like something out of a Wes Anderson movie, but the spa is decidedly modern, as is its partnership with the Breathguru, Alan Dolan. “Conscious breathing” (also known as transformational
breathing) is tipped to be one of 2018’s hottest wellness trends, promising to banish anxiety, cure insomnia and alleviate stress and depression. Dolan’s approach is brilliant if you’re normally too fidgety for traditional meditation methods. His “connected breath” technique – mouth wide open, long inhale and a shorter exhale, with no pause in between – not only fills the body with energising oxygen, but also requires considerable physical focus (which stops the mind meandering back to unsent emails).
Unlike many modern-day ‘gurus’, who create dependency on their services, Dolan promises he can teach you this life-changing technique in just one session (though when you meet him, you can see why people keep going back). You’ll walk out feeling not only relaxed but inexplicably lighter, as though your lungs are somehow larger. You breathe about 20,000 times a day, so why not make the most of them?
The Simple Power of Breathing package includes an 8O-minute private session with Dolan and a full day pass to the Landmark London Spa & Health Club, with
access to gym, chlorine-free pool and Jacuzzi. It also includes a one-hour massage. (I highly recommend the Mediterranean by Candlelight, in which knots in muscles are kneaded into oblivion with warm wax.)
When we travel on business our bodies become disoriented, says breath coach, Alan Dolan
Breathing exercises are just the tonic for business travelers who take long haul flights and struggle with busy schedules when they’re away from home.
Because the bodies regular schedule changes as they cross different time zones, a traveler’s circadian rhythm becomes confused and out of sync. Jet lag can also lead to long term sleep problems.
Similarly, when business travelers don’t feel grounded or comfortable at their new destinations, this can impact their mental and physical health.
With the above in mind, learning safe and easy breathing exercises for stress relief en route is definitely worth it.
Doing breathing exercises or breathing deeply and consciously in a controlled way has long been said to offer people a form of stress relief. It promotes physical and emotional wellbeing whereby we can connect better with ourselves, feel relaxed and less tense.
Whenever someone feels stress they may experience an increased heart rate, high blood pressure and breathe faster. Whenever they stay still, concentrate on their breath and breathe deeply, this sends a message to the brain to calm down and relax.
In turn this message is transferred to the body which will begin to slow down the breathing and reduce the heart rate.
Business travelers aside and a survey released in January 2017 by the American Psychological Association showed stress was on the increase nationally.
In fact, the “Stress in America” survey revealed that stress levels increased on a 10 point scale from 4.8 to a 5.1 over the past year.
Breathing exercises such as belly breathing and roll breathing have been around for centuries for stress relief. Today breathing consciously or ‘Breathwork’ has become one of the most powerful ways to bring oxygen and energy into our bodies so we can heal and relax on demand and as needed.
And thanks to breath experts such as Alan Dolan, this method of relieving stress and balancing the mind and body is now available to all.
‘Conscious Breathwork and breathing exercises provide a mechanism for rebalancing our overworked and stressed out systems. ’ Says Breathing Space founder and breath coach, Alan Dolan.
‘Conscious Breathwork is based on the premise that our bodies have a natural ability to bring us back into equilibrium using our breath as the means to re-calibrate.
‘For those wishing to experience tangible positive results a daily practice is recommended.
‘For stress relief, some people like to do a twice daily practice or breathing exercises.’
Overall, Breathwork or ‘Conscious Breathing’ is said to:
De-stress: Breathwork and breathing exercises helps to release old mental and/or emotional energy which got filed away in the system. Stress is in effect a state of bodily contraction during which the body finds it difficult to process mental emotional energy so it simply files away the ‘baggage’ until such time as its possible. When we practice Conscious Breathing we go into a very relaxed space so much so that the emotional filing cabinet can be accessed and spring-cleaned.
Energize: Breath is life and quite literally fuels our bodies. Think of it as a vehicle which transports oxygen and energy into and around our bodily at the most profound level possible.
Enhance Sleep: For those of us who have busy minds (IE everyone) Conscious Breathwork provides a quick and easy way of putting our bodies into sleep mode as described above.
Today Alan brings his Conscious Breathing techniques and breathing exercises to clients in private 1-1 sessions in London, Dublin and Brazil, as well as in groups or ‘retreats’ at his luxury and peaceful Breathing Space villa in Lanzarote.
The breathing exercises and techniques he teaches are safe and easy to do, whilst anyone can reap the stress relieving benefits just like he has.
‘Conscious Breathing brought the magic and mystery that I experienced as a child back into my adult life.’ Reveals the former PR manager.
‘Life had become very black and white for me and I was on a career trajectory which was mostly about perceived status and money.
‘I’d lived with depression since my early teens and had got by using tobacco and alcohol but once I discovered Breathwork my 20-30 cigarettes a day habit ceased.
‘My alcohol consumption reduced massively and I cleared the depression in 12 weeks.
‘That was fourteen years ago and since then I’ve continued to refine and no longer do caffeine and I’m mainly vegetarian.’
Over the last decade Alan’s successes in offering stress relief and transforming his clients lives through Breathwork have been many.
Examples have included women who are overworked and who haven’t prioritized their own wellbeing over getting ahead in their careers.
‘One client hadn’t taken a proper (as in going away) vacation for years.’ Explains Alan.
‘To get by and ‘switch off’ at the end of the day she was self-medicating with alcohol and junk food.
‘Her energy levels were not good and she didn’t know how to break out of the cycle.
‘Cut to three months later after doing a few 1-1 session of Conscious Breathwork and adopting a daily practice she was feeling great, had significantly reduced self-medication levels and rather wonderfully had decided to take a 6 month sabbatical traveling in Asia to make up for ‘all the holidays I didn’t take.’
‘I’m not suggesting we should all drop our careers and head off backpacking, however it was GREAT to see how this person had re-prioritized her own needs and wellbeing over all other elements in her life.’
Alan has also recently released a breathing app which suits professionals who want to incorporate breathing exercises into their business travel for stress relief on the go.
This breathing app includes easy-to-follow instructional videos and short, manageable guided breathing sessions and breathing exercises which meet the needs of the stressed executive who travels often.
‘I want to get Conscious Breathwork out there to as many people as possible hence investing a lot of time and effort in creating the BreathGuru App.
‘I truly believe that this most powerful of tools has the potential to change the world and feel my role is to make sure people are a) aware of it and b) able to have a direct experience for themselves .
‘Business travelers who use this breathing app can find time time to watch the concise instructional video clips which contextualize and explain the ´how to’ of the technique.
‘With this breathing app they can then go to the 10-minute guided audio session and enjoy a test-drive making sure to spend a few minutes after the practice simply observing how the body is feeling and whether there are any discernible changes as a result.
‘The technique itself is both an energizer for our systems and also a de-stressor so for most people they find it useful to do the short 10 minute practice on waking and than again at the end of one´s day prior to sleep.
‘The AM practice on the breathing app will boost levels of oxygen and energy within the system and the PM will tend to take the excess energy most of us carry in our heads and redistribute it to lower down in the electrical system – I.E it will ground us.
‘The breathing app also has a 30 minute guided audio which is perfect for weekends or whilst traveling.’