A healthy breath hold baseline is 90 seconds. 

A breath hold less than 30 seconds indicates:

-dirty lungs

-stuck muscles used shallowly

-capacity is less than 3 liters of air

-resting breath rate around 25 breaths per minute

A breath hold less than 60 seconds indicates:

-lung tissue is a little dirty

-muscles used shallowly

-capacity is around 5 liters of air

-resting breath rate around 20 breaths per minute

A breath hold less than 90 seconds indicates:

-lung tissue mostly functional

-muscles have some flexibility

-capacity is around 7 liters of air

-resting breath rate around 15 breaths per minute

It’s easy to double your capacity when I show you how to:

1. -clean your lungs,

2. -make the muscles that pump the lungs flexible, and

3. -make those muscles strong.

   We can double your capacity (to 10-14 cubic liters) and cut your breath rate to half—a natural, automatic breathing rhythm.

   To test your capacity, try our breath test. If you’re pregnant or have a respiratory illness, please take note of the safety precautions outlined at the start of the breath test.

Clients who commit to this routine 5 days a week typically double their breath hold within 6 weeks. This is based on GOOD practice of each of the three exercises.

To experience results, you only need 10 minutes of effective practice, 5 days a week. (The course teaches what “effective” actually looks like. It’s not hard!)

Mighty Breath has combined Opera & Power Metal singing techniques focused on: 

-Cleaning the lung field 

-Making the muscles that pump the lungs flexible 

-Making those muscles strong 

-Quantifying progress

-Shaping the Breath

By practicing conditioning exercises that double the lung capacity, you can naturally reduce your natural breaths per minute—not just during “breathwork practice” but in every moment of your life. A slower breath reduces stress, pulls the body into a rest state, empowers your immune system, and allows you to toggle-switch your brain waves.

In addition, you’ll develop a powerful and controlled inhale and exhale which improves your natural speaking voice, singing voice, and ability to think clearly under pressure; reduces your recovery time between workouts; improves digestion; eliminates brain fog; and much more. 

Combining Mighty Breath with Fascia Flow allows you to tune the rhythm of the brain, breath, and body simultaneously.

Dr. Stanislav Grof invented Holotropic breathwork after the use of LSD on patients became illegal. His rhythmic (often mouth breathing) technique uses a high breath per minute style to elicit a psychedelic experience. Classically, these sessions were 2-3 hours long and required a “sitter” to watch you. This hyperventilating technique activates the stress response and floods the brain with chemicals and tenses the tissues of the body, which is why many people have cramped hands or muscles during the experience. 

Mighty Breath is very different. You’ll train your breath so your breath works for you even when you’re not paying attention to it.

1. -You’ll breathe only through the nose, holding a specific tongue posture.

2. -You’ll double your lung capacity so your natural and automatic breath rate reduces. 

3. -You’ll clean the lung field.

4. -You’ll make the muscles that pump the lungs flexible and strong. 

5. -You’ll quantify your progress.

6. -You’ll shape the breath so you can master a one-breath-per-minute pattern.

   In addition, you’ll develop a powerful and controlled inhale and exhale which improves your natural speaking voice, singing voice, and ability to think clearly under pressure; reduces your recovery time between workouts; improves digestion; eliminates brain fog; and much more. 

Wim Hof is an extreme athlete with 23 world records who invented a technique that brought huge attention to the power of breath. His style often uses a high breath per minute sequence that dumps adrenaline into the system, replicating a stress response. His technique was successful in solving his problem and reaching his goals, but it doesn’t work most efficiently on people who are already overly stressed, chronically overstimulated, or over-caffeinated. 

Mighty Breath is very different.

1. -You’ll breathe only through the nose, holding a specific tongue posture.

2. -You’ll double your lung capacity so your natural and automatic breath rate reduces. 

3. -You’ll clean the lung field

4. -You’ll make the muscles that pump the lungs flexible and strong. 

5. -You’ll quantify your progress

6. -You’ll shape the breath so you can master a one-breath-per-minute pattern.

   In addition, you’ll develop a powerful and controlled inhale and exhale which improves your natural speaking voice, singing voice, and ability to think clearly under pressure; reduces your recovery time between workouts; improves digestion; eliminates brain fog; and much more.  

Reducing your breaths per minute reduces stress, maintains rest states longer, empowers the immune system, toggle-switches brain waves, improves digestion, eliminates brain fog, tones the face, improves articulation, and so much more.

In Brain & Breath Connection, I outline the chronological connection between your brain, breath, and body that has been happening since your inception. The rhythm of your breath correlates to your brain wave state and the tension level in your body. 

For example, let’s pretend a big explosion goes off outside. There would be an immediate response in your body (that I outline in detail in Brain & Breath Connection) that makes you mouth-gasp for air into your upper chest. Now, let’s pretend you’re sitting down in your favorite pajamas, your house is perfectly clean, all your work is done, and you have your favorite beverage with you. The body naturally does a deep long sigh. 

These natural breath responses are coordinated with brain and body rhythms. By seeing these patterns laid out physiologically, you become a witnesser of the pattern and can start to influence it. For instance, when we breathe at a rate of 2-4 breaths per minute for 4 minutes, we begin to pull our bodies into a deeper brain wave frequency. For advanced students, we flirt with maintaining 1 breath per minute for extended periods of time. 

Pregnancy and breath patterns have not been well-researched. That said, if you’re pregnant I recommend skipping the detox breath pattern from Mighty Breath, as it creates a violent action in the diaphragm. In addition, practice the maximum and minimum capacity holds at a 60-80% expansion/contraction.

As a lover of research, I point people who are struggling with severe respiratory illnesses to the Buteyko Methods. The research around those techniques are so hopeful and well-documented, so they may be a better path toward healing for you. Still, many people with respiratory illness do have great results in my technique, even though we train it a bit differently than the Buteyko method (which doesn't create shape in the breath and can feel brutal). My more gentle methods are built to clean your lungs and make the muscles that pump the lungs flexible and strong.

We begin our process with a basic physiology lesson of our nasal glands and tongue position. With simple, gentle exercises, we can reestablish your relationship with your nose, nasal glands, and tongue. Through training, we change the shape of your tissues over time, and you’ll notice it becomes easier and easier to breathe through your nose continually and to keep your tongue in the proper position to open the nasal glands.

The nasal glands filter, humidify, and regulate temperature for the air we’re drawing into the lung field. Anytime we bypass the nasal glands, we’re stressing out our immune system and lungs and building up particles in the lung field. Plus, our nasal glands have a connection to our brain and frontal lobe function—which influences our ability to think clearly and effectively.

The lungs are beautiful, spongy organs with tiny little crevices called alveoli that diffuse oxygen and carbon dioxide particles. The alveoli are so small that anytime we inhale smoke, fragrance, VOC’s, and other unnatural substances, particles can become trapped. By breathing through the nose, we have a purification process: the nostrils filter out part of the toxins and the adenoid catch most of the rest of them. We can clean the lungs, but it’s best if we proactively protect them from pollutants.

Approximately 80% of Americans have a deviated septum (where the cartilage and bone that separates the nasal cavity is off center). The beauty of Mighty Breath and the science behind the orthotropic technique we practice is that your nasal cavities shift and heal with simple, gentle exercises over time.   

The lungs are beautiful little organs that can be repaired when we can visualize the physiology of the lung field and the muscles that pump the lungs. In Mighty Breath, you’ll learn an effective exercise—the Detox Breath—that moves stuck particles and triggers coughing (coughing is how we get the old particles out). We identify where tension in the lung field is sitting and we open the muscles in those spaces. We also restore healthy nasal glands, and train the tongue to be in the proper position so you rehab the entire breathing system together. 

It’s my great joy to show people a cross section of the skull, how the nasal glands sit in our face, and what we can do to help clear the lymph system in our adenoids and tonsils that become inflamed when we travel, weather changes, or pollen season hits. When you see the connection of the breath to the glands, there are infinite ways to assist your body in clearing the inflammation. By understanding physiology and knowing how to identify where the root problem lies, you become more empowered to help your body heal.

Practically speaking it can be helpful to:

-Consume raw, natural honey (not heated or in tea) off  a wooden or plastic spoon (metal denatures the enzymes).

-Massage your face while you move through the sequence if your nasal glands get stuffy. 

-Use steam showers, hot baths, or humidifiers to unglue stuck nasal fibers in the nose and assist the adenoids to release mucus. 

-Gargle hot water with salt, or hydrogen peroxide if your tonsils are swollen.