By nature our jobs/lives require us to be switched on - in a high arousal or high energy state. Think about your own busy day - deadlines, multi-tasking, sitting, looking at screens, dealing with people, work life balance and the list goes on. Amongst the busyness of your day are you actively shifting back into a calm state OR do you tend to stay in that high arousal state? If you do you will get a lot done but it tends to come at a cost over the long term. Let me explain. Our bodies are the masters of compensation - we are adaptive machines. Staying in the busyness of our days and not allowing for intermittent disciplined recovery, during your day, results in bodily adaptations as a result of continued exposure to stress. Don't think of high level stress either, just think about the challenges and demands that are placed on you throughout your day and the necessity to get things done. This is the most common type of stress - it's not necessrily bad, it just demands a lot of our energy. However, it needs to be balanced with recovery (stress +recovery = growth). Every system in the body requires stress for optimal health. They all need stress to create adaptation for robustness. However, without adequate recovery you start building cumulative trauma of some form (emotional, physical, mental). This accumulative trauma builds up in our bodies and we simply adapt to it. Here are some of the signs and symptoms that we experience secondary to chronic stress. - Inability to concentrate or focus - Difficulty sleeping - Anxious or racing mind - Low energy throughout day - Brain fog - Emotional exhaustion - Moodiness - Irritability - Short temper - Inability to relax - Feeling overwhelmed - Body tension  We all develop different strategies to manage stress. These can range from adaptive strategies (like exercise, meditation, social support, being in nature….) to maladaptive strategies (like smoking, alcohol use, avoidance behaviors, excessive phone and social media use….. ). Maladaptive strategies are coping strategies to deal with stress, the problem is they tend to be things that activate our bodies stress response thus adding more load.

Hi Dave, my wife has fairly bad hay fever this time of year. Any recommendations on where to start with breathwork to help?

You will see this exercise in the breathing for calm and focus section of the course. A 5:20:10 (inhale:hold:exhale) restricts your breathing to around 2 breath cycles per minute. See the questions below and comment with your answers. I will be posting a follow up to this post. 1. Could this exercise be used as a calming breathing practice? 2. What do you think will happen in terms of arterial oxygenation saturation? Oxygen saturation (SpO2) is a measurement of how much oxygen your blood is carrying as a percentage of the maximum it could carry. It is a reading out of 100%. Normal Sp02 is between 95-98% and can be recorded on a simple pulse oximeter. 3. If one day you find this exercise easy (no stress or air huger) and another day you find it more difficult, what is that a reflection of? 4. This is an exercise I would regularly use at the start of a recovery session with athletes we train (see pic below). Why would I start with this? what am I trying to learn about the state of the athlete with this exercise? FYI - Generally 2 things result in a low Sp02 readings below 95% - An inability of the lungs to inhale and send oxygen to all cells and tissues - An inability of the bloodstream to circulate to the lungs, collect oxygen, and transport it around the body Try performing a 5:20:10 for 2 minutes and see how you feel. Use the breathing pacer. Rip in with some answers or questions