Ed Harrold and Dr. Peter Litchfield explore breathing, respiration, and the role of breath in human performance and excellence.
Ed Harrold with Dr. Peter Litchfield. Originally published on YouTube May 14, 2025. Watch the original conversation on YouTube.
Ed Harrold and Dr. Peter Litchfield explore breathing, respiration, and the role of breath in human performance and excellence.
00:13.8 Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. My name's Eddie Harrold, and I am so excited today to bring you an American treasure, Dr. Peter Linchfield, who has been involved in human performance, excellence, breath, respiration. His, his work is well renowned all over the earth. And with no further ado, Dr. Linchfield, welcome. Well, thank you for such a lovely introduction. I appreciate that. Well, your work is, is cutting edge, and it still continues to reveal secrets, uh, to humanity so that we can live a more dynamic life. How'd you ever get started in respiration or, or breathing or, you know, what came first, breathing or respiration? Respiration came first for me.
01:05.4 Yeah. I didn't come out of any kind of tradition that included breathing. Uh, I came out of the science of physiology and psychology, is where I came from. And initially, I was part of the field of behavioral medicine and, uh, what we call psychophysiology, a kind of a combination- Mm-hmm ... of physiology with psychology. And I got into, to the subject of breathing and respiration for a c- couple of different reasons. Uh, the most important reason was is that my main interest was teaching people about how physiology is a psychologically driven system, that physiology is psychological. It's not like somehow we and our consciousness affect physiology.
01:56.4 It's that physiology in and of itself is a psychological phenomenon, and it operates that way. And if you don't see it that way, then it becomes very difficult to really understand in a holistic way what physiology's all about and how it works. Mm-hmm. And so breathing became a way for me to teach that subject, because it is something that so many people are interested in and it's so foundational to our being, that to bring that message to people through breathing seemed to be the most effective way to do that. That's number one. Number two, I learned one day when my closest friend of now 56 years came in with a, an instrument called a capnometer, which
02:44.8 measures carbon dioxide concentration in the breath, which is then correlated with the concentration in the blood and so on. He came in with one and hooked me up, and he said, "You look good." And I said, "What do you mean?" And he proceeded to point out to me that I should go back and review my physiology around respiration, because in fact, about, um, 60% of the ambulance runs in New York City, where he was from, were a result of people with disturbed kinds of learned breathing habits. Mm-hmm. And he'd just gotten into it. He had a big research grant, a $2 million grant, to look at behavioral variables in epilepsy, and he discovered that breathing played a major role in the triggering of epileptic
03:31.0 seizures. So that'd been well known for some time, but he thought maybe there might be a way to help people who were having seizures by essentially making sure that they didn't lower their carbon dioxide levels- Mm-hmm ... thereby changing the threshold for a seizure and increasing the probability of seizure. And so when I learned about those statistics in combination with my interest in physiology and psychology, I said, "Hey, I've gotta get involved in this." That was back in 1984. That's fascinating. Man, you were way out on the periphery in 1984 with this, weren't you? That's for sure. The physiology was. The physiology was just, uh, standard pulmonary physiology, respiratory physiology, and this kind of instrumentation, the capnometer,
04:23.9 was being used in, in surgery, uh, everywhere, and used in emergency medical care, and in ambulances, and in critical care. And the physiology and the instrumentation had been around for a long time, even in 1984. So that part wasn't new. It's bringing it in to the field of psychology and integrating it in with behavioral science that was our contribution starting in 1984. Fascinating. You know, I think a lot of folks don't realize that, you know, you're inhaling the, this O2 and, you know, its molecules, but you're also exhaling CO2, which also holds two oxygen molecules a- and we're finding out that, you know, CO2 is an amazing fuel source
05:15.5 for so many different systems in our physiology and psychology. Uh, can you kind of, how did we back our way into discovering how valuable CO2 really is to us, to longevity? Well, obviously the body is, that's where you get CO2. Mm-hmm. It's, you essentially create it. Mm-hmm. And some of that is extremely useful to the body, and the body keeps it. It has to keep the right concentration of it in the blood for regulation of acid-base balance in the body, and the rest of it, it excretes. And somehow- Mm-hmm ... you know, it came to everyone's mind, uh, you know, years ago that carbon dioxide was a waste product, because we were dumping it.
06:03.3 Mm-hmm. And it is a waste product- Mm-hmm ... if you have too much of it, like anything, in a sense ... is a waste product. If you have too much of it and it's getting in the way of things, then, you know, you wanna get rid of it. Mm-hmm. And so people focused on carbon dioxide in that way. And, you know, the, the whole movement right now about, uh, you know, the warming world that's heating up, and carbon dioxide is a villain in all of that. That then carbon dioxide got yet a, a worse name than it had before, and, uh, was something that people consider to be poisonous.
06:41.7 Right. Uh, and there were studies that showed that, you know, carbon dioxide levels were rising in office buildings and in offices, and somehow this was poisonous to us and having a, a negative impact. And of course, that simply isn't true. Um, you know, the amount of carbon dioxide that accumulates in a building is very small. And besides that, if it were more than that, it probably would help a lot of people. Mm-hmm. There are a lot of people in those buildings that are over-ventilating and losing carbon dioxide, and adding a little carbon dioxide to the air is like breathing into a paper bag. You know?
07:22.7 Mm-hmm. Where people have a panic attack or they, they're hyperventilating and they breathe into a paper bag and, you know, you get about... If you use a paper bag, you get quite a bit of carbon dioxide that accumulates in there, and you don't get any accumulation like that in a building. Mm-hmm. So, you know, any, any kind of very small contribution in the way of carbon dioxide concentration in a building's likely to, you know, help people a little bit a- in the sense that it's serving as a paper bag. On the other hand, if there was, you know, if there's more than that, then all y- one does as a function of the reflexes that operate respiration,
08:04.8 is you just breathe a little bit more and you dump that carbon dioxide. Mm-hmm. So if there's a little bit, you know, in the office building and you're a normal breather, and now you've got a little bit more carbon dioxide, you just breathe a little bit, tiny bit more, just a minuscule bit more, and you're gonna lose that carbon dioxide. Right. And maintain the right concentration. Because the reflexes in the brain, the brain stem reflexes, essentially operate the system to maintain the correct concentration in the blood. And whatever it takes to do that, taking breaths a little bit larger or breathing a little bit faster, that's what it'll do.
08:43.7 So even if there is more carbon dioxide, the system essentially automatic ventilates a bit more and dumps that carbon dioxide. So it wouldn't even make any difference regardless, unless you have a huge amount, you know. Mm-hmm. Then obviously that's a whole nother story, but you're never gonna find that in a building, and certainly not in the atmosphere when you're talking about global warming. So it's, it's- Right ... so minuscule. You talk about global warming, I mean, it's, it's important in respect to temperature of the earth. But as far as physiology goes, it's absolutely irrelevant. Totally irrelevant. That's just such a great outline for folks to, to tr- to gnaw on, you know, for, uh, a little bit.
09:33.9 You know, as I've moved through my career, you know, I really try to meet indivi- tools, you know, based on where they are. Everybody's, you know, we're all basically the same, but we've had different upbringings, we have different projections, different probabilities. We're in different levels of alkalinity and acidity, the different ages, lifestyles. What, one thing that, that I notice when I, when I first meet someone, that they usually have weak exhale muscles, and they have problems getting out CO2. I- is that a correct as- assumption, or a- am I off base a little bit? Well, just being frank with each other here, uh, you know, you're a bit off base.
10:17.4 Yeah. Okay. Because first of all, as far as exhalation goes, you know, if you're resting and sitting, you don't require any muscles to exhale. It's a passive process, and when you relax the, the muscles that you use to inhale, you increase the pressure of the air in the lungs. It's higher, the pressure in the lungs is higher than the pressure outside in the atmosphere, so the air just flows out. So one of the first things we focus on in our work is to help people understand that exhalation in a resting situation is about essen- essentially, you know, releasing or dilating the, the muscles associated with inhalation so that
11:06.3 the air just comes out automatically. It's a passive process. And people get into trouble when they try to force the air out. When you try to force the air out, it can create air hunger, so you feel like you need to take a breath. And so when you're, when you're pushing the air, you know, you're, you're being actively involved. It's something you're doing. It's not something the reflex is doing. You're doing it, and it can create air hunger. And now you, and upon feeling that, you take a breath. And when you do that, you start to lose carbon dioxide in no time flat. So the idea is to learn to allow the breath, to get out of the way.
11:45.9 So one of the first things we do is we teach people to observe their breathing, to be aware of the breath, not to manipulate it. 'Cause what you find, a lot of people, when you ask people to focus on the exhale, for example, say for two minutes or three minutes, and then you ask them, "Well, what did you, what did you see? What did you observe? What was your body doing while you were observing?" And their answer, typically, is something that they did. It w- isn't something they observed. It's something they actually executed, some kind of breathing that they did during that so-called observational period, which then tells me
12:26.3 right away that from their perspective, breathing is about doing. It's not about watching it happen. It's about doing it. And so they're telling me what they did. And what's really important here is to understand the body as a friend, as a partner, who breathes by itself. And then you can observe that, see what your body does, and you can see if there's any problem associated with that, because your body learns just like you do. This goes back to why I got into this whole area of breathing, is that the body is a learning system. It is a system that reconfigures itself based on experience, and you can observe what your body has learned independently of you.
13:13.1 Right. And then work with your body to help your body learn something different if there's a problem, if there's a habit that's problematic. Okay, so f- the first thing here about exhalation is that it's passive, and the idea is that there are very few people out there who under-breathe, except for people who are ill. They have COPD, they've got, you know, eczema, or they, they've, um, got some kind of a disorder. Maybe they're grossly overweight, for example, and they can't breathe very well because of all that overweightness. But in reality, m- for the average healthy person, regardless of age, um, you know, the issue is getting rid of
14:01.0 too much carbon dioxide. You sometimes get what's called hyperinflation, where people don't exhale. They take a breath, and they only let a little bit of air out, so they're breathing in the, the dead space, the anatomical dead space, and they can actually under-breathe. The solution to that is very easy. You simply work with the person to allow the exhale, and when they feel that, that they get enough air when they do that, then they just start doing it all the time, because it feels good. The outcome works, whereas what they were doing before wasn't working. But this is very unusual, and most people who work in the breathing community that I'm a part, a part of, rarely find people who
14:44.0 are under-breathing. It's a very unusual thing, with the exception of people who are working with people who have, you know, compromises, cardiovascular compromises, pulmonary kinds of compromises. It's a different story, and that's a, that's a specialty that involves, you know, other, uh, professions, uh, in working with someone like that. There may be, you know, drugs that are required. There may be surgery that's required. There may be all kinds of things that are a part of the, that picture. But by and large, uh, you know, the problem is losing carbon dioxide, not getting, getting rid of it. Ah, this is fascinating. Thank you so much for that.
15:28.0 And, you know, I think we, we may whate- you know, we need to be mindful of the doing. And, you know, when we think about the being, uh, the autonomic nervous system, you know, we have this, you know, passive inhale, and then there's this magical pause, and then we have this- Beautiful exhale, and then there's this manis- magical pause, you know, the, the being part. You know, how they kind of- Yeah, that pause itself- If you- ... is really important, um, you know, to, after the- It's so great ... after the exhale, because there's a reflex in there, and if you can find the reflex, then you can build confidence in the system so that you, you're not worried about it as
16:08.5 much, when you can see that it happens automatically. A lot of people will abandon trying to control the breathing all the time, as if they don't know how to breathe, and they have to learn how to breathe, what- breathe the right way. In reality, what's important is to step away from the breathing and to allow the body to do it on, on its own. But the body also does things on its own that don't work very well, and we work with people who have breathing habits where they, and then, in essence, work with their bodies to help their bodies go back to simply allowing the reflex to operate.
16:45.4 That reflex is, um, you know, it's an amazing system. Uh, breathing, uh, you know, most people don't realize it, but breathing regulates pH- Mm-hmm ... in, you know, the, what's are called the extracellular fluids of the body, like, um, blood plasma, uh, cerebral spinal fluid, lymph fluid, and what are called interstitial fluid, which is the fluids that surround all of the cells in the body. The pH of all these fluids is regulate- regulated literally breath to breath to breath. Mm-hmm. And when you take it over, you get in the way of that, and you can get into trouble in no time. There's your 60% of the ambulance runs in New York City right there.
17:28.2 Mm-hmm. So let's talk about the relationship, if we can, between, you know, our, our respiration, you know, our heart rate, and, you know, our neural activity, if we could. Uh, which was the last thing? And which activity? Our, so we have our respiration rate, breaths per minute, then we have our heart rate, and then our heart rate is gonna reflect neural activity. Oh, neural activity. I, I see. Okay. So what would you like? Would, would you like me to make some kind of comment about- Yeah, I'd love to hear, you know, the interplay that we have in the being, you know, underneath the doer, like, what's
18:03.9 happening scientifically, you know, around respiration, how that affects cardiac function, and how cardiac function is affecting our neurochemistry and brainwave activity moment by moment. Well, first of all, um, there's the whole subject of breathing mechanics, and then there's respiratory chemistry. Yes. And I differentiate between breathing and respiration. They're not the same thing. Very good. Thank you. And we breathe for many reasons that have nothing to do with respiration. Mm-hmm. One of the, one of the, an example of that is what I'm doing right now, communicating, talking. I use breath so I can create sound, language that you can listen to or hear so we can communicate.
19:01.2 That doesn't have anything to do with respiration. However, the objective of that kind of breathing, to create language, has to be consistent with good respiration. I don't wanna compromise my respiration- while I'm breathing for another reason. They need to be compatible. They need to be aligned. Breathing mechanics need to be aligned with respiratory requirements. So we think of respiration as a reflex system that's chemical, and we think of the breathing part as mechanical, it's behavioral. And we learn to, uh, breathing habits in the same way learn, we learn postural habits. I mean, look at my head right now. It's at an angle. I didn't do this on purpose, nor did I learn this on purpose.
19:55.2 And then when I'm speaking with my hands, look at my head now. I, I, I've put it forward. Look at my fingers, at my thumb and these fingers back here. And again, I now have raised my eyebrows and then smiling while I'm talking, and my hands are like this. I never practiced this. My father or my mother didn't teach this to me. I learned it unconsciously, 'cause almost all learning is unconscious. And the body is reconfiguring based on the outcome of what it does all the time. The body collects information, stores information, organizes information, uses information. That's what it's so damn good at, at doing.
20:36.9 That's what it's about. That's what... You know, like computers, it's about their software and the, how they've been programmed. And, you know, if we had a, a, we had a computer doctor, if, the way we practice healthcare, you know, if you had a computer doctor, they'd come in looking for microprocessors and trying to g- give you a new hard drive and a new graphics card. And they wouldn't even know there was any software in the system. Mm-hmm. Imagine using a computer and you don't, trying to fix a computer, and you don't even know it operates software. Or does, you don't even know it has an operating system.
21:12.7 I mean, what is a computer about? It's about programming, right? Well, but the physiology is the same way. So the breathing- Mm ... mechanics- Mm-hmm ... are all highly programmable in the same way that my posture is right now. And so we develop all these habits, and then we get, we, we end up with these belief systems about the habits. Like for example, fast breathing is, is not so good unless, you know, you're running a race. You know, fast breathing has got a bad reputation. Slow breathing's got a good reputation. Okay, now you have to look at the history of why that's true. You know, from my point of view, this is, this is irrelevant when it comes to respiration.
22:00.7 Because the reflexes, you know, if you allow them to operate, do their job, and what they do is they operate based on, you know, from breath to breath. There's many other factors that come into breathing, but the con- continuous variables that regulate that respiration, that the mechanics have to make true, is that the oxygen concentration in the blood, the carbon dioxide concentration in the blood, the pH of the blood, the pH of the cerebral spinal fluid, and the carbon dioxide concentration in the cerebral spinal fluid. There are receptor sites that are, that essentially pick up changes in these gases and in the pH, and it regulates
22:48.4 based on that. And it go, it runs through the mechanics where the breaths are larger or smaller, or they're faster, or they're slower. And then the relationship between the rate of breathing and the size of the breath will regulate basically how much air is exchanged or how much air is moved in and out per minute, for example. Mm-hmm. Or per unit time. And what your job is, you know, what the respiratory system does, that it ensures that the carbon dioxide concentration is constant in the alveoli of the lungs. Unless you're anaerobic or you're ill or something, we're talking about the average healthy person, is that the system, those reflexes,
23:39.5 by virtue of the mechanics, maintains or maintain the correct concentration of carbon dioxide in those alveoli so that when the blood comes traveling through the lungs, it will give up carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide will diffuse into the lungs down to the level that you're maintaining in your lungs. So when we talk about air pressure, we're talking about, uh, carbon dioxide, we talk about units of pressure, millimeters of mercury. So the air, the concentration of carbon dioxide you want in the alveoli, I'm not gonna go into any detail, is between 35 and 45 millimeters partial pressure of carbon dioxide, which is about 5% of the gas in your lungs is carbon dioxide.
24:30.0 That's what you wanna maintain. Mm-hmm. About 5% of the gas in your lungs should be 5%. In the atmosphere, it's almost zero, okay? The warming effect, you know, global warming, you know, it, it matters. This little tiny bit matters. But as far as physiology goes, it, it's effectively zero. Mm-hmm. But you have to keep 35 to 45 there so you can maintain the right amount of carbon dioxide or the concentration of carbon dioxide in the blood. No matter what you're doing, whether you're running aerobically, whether you're doing meditation, it doesn't matter. You have to maintain the same level- Of concentration of carbon dioxide in the lungs, regardless if you're meditating or running, huh?
25:22.3 I'm not talking about anaerobic exercise, but aerobic. Mm-hmm. It should be the same, because that's what's required to get the right pH in the blood, which is about 7.4. You wanna maintain 7.4. That means you have to have 35 to 45 millimeters of concentration, partial pressure of carbon dioxide in the lungs, which then the blood equilibrates to so it has it the right level. So you can be a fast breather, you can be very fast, as long as the breaths are real small, and your respiration can be perfect. You can be breathing 25 breaths, 28 breaths per minute, rather than the normal 12, or maybe you're meditating at six.
26:09.2 And as long as you can maintain the right concentration of carbon dioxide in the lungs, it doesn't matter how fast you're breathing. Mm-hmm. You could be breathing at 28 or you could be breathing at four and maintain the right level. Or you could be breathing at four breaths per minute and be losing too much carbon dioxide. So the rate doesn't tell you whether the respiration is good or bad- Mm-hmm ... because you don't know how big the breath is. You'd have to know how big it is. As long as it's small enough, if it's fast, you're in good shape, or vice versa. So it is, um, judging the mechanics simply as mechanics is a big mistake.
26:59.3 Look at my breathing now. I'm holding my breath at times to make a point. I may be holding it out, I may be holding it in, I may be breathing fast, I may be aborting my breath, I may be doing, I mean, breathing through my mouth. I'm doing all these things, but my CO2 level is normal. And how do I know? I can feel it. So you can learn to feel what good respiration is, and no matter what you're doing, whether you're running or whether you're talking or eating and all the things that you do, those reflexes will come in and regulate it unless you have a habit that gets in the way of it.
27:39.3 So fast breathing, for instance, for me, I'm a fast breather. I breathe on the average 18, 20 breaths per minute, and I get, and I have really, really good CO2 levels, and my respiration is just perfect breathing at that rate. And I feel very relaxed when I, when I sl- when I essentially take smaller and smaller breaths, and my s- my breath speeds up necessarily, because I'm not moving enough air when they're really small breaths. So I'll be breathing at 20 breaths per minute, 18 breaths per minute. Feel really, really relaxed when I do that. And I focus on my breath. It gets really gentle and smaller and smaller and smaller, and I feel real good that way.
28:24.5 The next person doesn't do that. The next person's down at six breaths per minute, then other rates, and they, they like it so slow, and it's, they're larger breaths. Okay, but from a respiratory point of view, it doesn't really make any difference. And the idea that, for instance, fast breathing makes you sympathetic, you know. I, I hear this all the time. Fast breathing, you know, is associated with the sympathetic nervous system. Slow breathing, you know, uh, is associated with the para- sympathetic system. Well, what about walking fast or walking slow, breathing fast or breathing slow? You know, sympathetic, parasympathetic. What you see is a correlation between rapid breathing and people who have poor respiration.
29:13.9 It's not that the fast breathing causes poor respiration. It's just that when people worry about getting enough air, what do they do? They open their mouths because it's easier to get air, they take bigger breaths, they breathe faster. And when they do that, they get themselves into trouble from a respiratory point of view, and they lose carbon dioxide, and they get all kinds of symptoms that they then attribute to the fast breathing. "I'm feeling this way because I'm breathing too fast." Mm-hmm. "I have, I'm getting dizzy, I'm getting disoriented. You see, I knew it. Fast breathing is no good, and I, I've just proved it to myself." Okay, so you find a high correlation, not high, but a significant
30:01.5 correlation between fast breathing and problematic respiration, not because somehow fast breathing is responsible for that. It's more that the individual has taken charge of the breathing and, you know, the respiration essentially goes off the mark, and they get all these symptoms they attribute to the, the fast breathing they're doing. Uh, that, that gives you an example of how looking at mechanics, breathing mechanics and respiratory chemistry, and how the mechanics need to serve the respiratory requirements, and how often they don't- Mm-hmm ... because we learn habits, and then we misinterpret the symptoms that come from those habits, and then we blame, say, something, uh, like fast breathing is no good, something like
30:46.7 that. So when we talk about breathing mechanics, we're talking about a, a muscular reaction, and then respiratory is chemical? Well, that's, we're talking about moving. Once the oxygen is in the system, it has to be moved to the tissues. Right. And once there's carbon dioxide generated by tissues, it has to be moved into the system at large. Some of it has to be excreted, and some of it has to be retained, and the mechanics serve that process of retaining that correct level of CO2. 'Cause, you know, you need very little air to get enough oxygen. A lot of people don't understand that, that there's- Right.
31:26.4 Exactly ... only a tiny bit of air you need. And you can, when it comes to the heart, you know, when you're doing, you're running or something like that, the, the, the variable that is, uh, holding you back is your heart, not your lungs. Because for every liter of a- every liter of blood your heart can move through the lungs, well, you only need one liter of air. But you can create, the average person can move 20 liters of air. They only need one. Mm-hmm. You know? And so you only need a, a very t- tiny amount of air. And when you d- lose carbon dioxide, what happens, one of the things that happens is that the hemoglobin is stingy, and it doesn't
32:13.3 give up the oxygen, you know, in an easy way. It holds onto it. So it goes through a tissue that needs oxygen and doesn't deliver it properly, 'cause the hemoglobin, because of a low carbon dioxide in the red blood cell, the hemoglobin holds on to the oxygen and doesn't release it n- until the demand for it is much higher. Right. That's called the Bohr effect. Yes. And you compromise the delivery of oxygen when you take breaths that are too large in the name of getting more oxygen. And you get vasoconstriction, because when the pH, you become too alkaline in the blood, you get constriction of the blood vessels, and now
32:57.7 you restrict the amount of blood going to a tissue that needs more blood so it can get more oxygen and get more glucose, and it can't get it because of the vasoconstriction that's occurred, especially in the brain. Mm-hmm. You see radical constriction. You can see a loss of 50% of blood flow in the brain as a result of just taking breaths that are a little bit larger, and then people attribute this, those symptoms of, say, disorientation and disconnection, they attribute it to something else. They blame something else, 'cause they don't under- understand that it's a result of the breathing they're doing. Fascinating, Peter. Thank you s- you know, so much.
33:41.2 Sure. You know, let's talk a little bit about this amazing muscle that we call the diaphragm muscle and its responsibility to produce what you're speaking of. Well, one of the things that's important to understand about the diaphragm is what's controlling it. Uh, if you go into the brainstem and you look at, you know, a certain, one of the centers there, one of the respiratory centers, without going into any detail, is that, uh, it regulates breathing to a great degree through movement of the diaphragm. Okay? And so when people reach for air and they get involved in air, very often they will shift to the chest, because that's what they know how to do.
34:30.2 So they shift there, and they feel in control, and that is a very powerful reinforcement. When you, when you feel more in control, most people like that. Of course, we like being out of control too. That's another whole subject. We're not getting into that. Okay? So, but people feel more in control when they use these other muscles up here, and that can reduce anxiety, for example. Mm-hmm. It may go along with other kinds of re- Defensive posturing, the way you're thinking and things like that. And so these muscles go along with that because you have that immediate control of it. And if you ask people, for example, like m- remember one time, I always give this example, this woman I was working with, I, I asked her, I, I had her breathe in
35:20.9 the diaphragm, which she was able to do for t- you know, a couple of minutes, and then I had her breathe in the chest for a couple of minutes. Then I had her breathe in the diaphragm, then I had her breathe in the chest. And after about 10 minutes, I said, "Well, tell me about your experience. Which did you prefer? Did you like the diaphragmatic slow breathing or did you like this upper chest faster breathing?" And she said, "The chest. The chest." And I said, "Really?" And I said, "You know, you look so comfortable, really. I mean, you know, that nice slow diaphragmatic breathing." She said, "No, no.
35:59.6 No, no. I didn't like that at all." I said, "Well, what is it that you liked about breathing in the chest?" And she said, "It made me feel free." Mm-hmm. "I felt so free." I said, "What do you mean you felt free? You're really confined, you know, up in the chest with all those bones and everything." She said, "Well, I could move. I could feel my shoulders going up, you know, and my body was moving. It feels good. But when I got into the diaphragm, I felt like I was a prune. I was a prune and I was trapped." Well, she's never gonna breathe in the diaphragm if she feels that way.
36:37.1 So what, what was important was to, in working with her, is to get to her, her to a place where she liked breathing in the diaphragm and preferred it to breathing in the chest. And part of that has to do with the way that, that the role of the diaphragm in breathing being regulated by this brain stem reflex mechanism that utilizes the diaphragm, which is a large, powerful muscle that brings down the, you know, lungs so easily, you know, into the abdominal cavity. And, you know, it's, in helping someone to get there and to learn about allowing, 'cause if you allow, that's what's gonna happen.
37:23.9 If you allow breathing, you're gonna find yourself in the diaphragm. If you're trying to control it, sure, you can control the diaphragm, too. I find plenty of people who have learned to use the diaphragm in a way that they over-breathe horrifically, and they're in trouble. Breathing in the diaphragm is no guarantee of anything. A lot of people who breathe in the diaphragm have very dysfunctional respiration, because they've gotten involved in trying to control it, and it's unconscious. They don't realize that that's what's going on. So you can make ... You know, it's, it's easier to make a mistake in the diaphragm because you can move more air more efficiently than you can in the chest, and that means you can get into trouble faster if you have a
38:08.2 bad habit. Mm-hmm. So if you have, let's say you're someone who's breathing the way you are to control memory. You have, you've had a trauma, you had abuse, you have PTSD, and now you, you essentially lose carbon dioxide, which then disconnects you from a bad memory. So every time you start to have a bad memory, you breathe that way, you change the brain state, you lose oxygen in the brain- You can't focus anymore, you can't concentrate, you can't remember, you dissociate, you disconnect, and it makes you feel good. Well, teaching that person diaphragmatic breathing is, is, has no value. What has that got to do with anything?
38:50.5 This person is breathing that way to avoid that memory, and whether they, and they're gonna do it in the diaphragm just as easily or more easily by using the diaphragm than by breathing in the chest. So either way, their objective unconsciously here, the objective is to disconnect, is to dissociate. And it doesn't matter what muscles y- you're using. You accomplish it any which way you want. So to solve that problem with that person, moving them into the diaphragm doesn't solve the problem. The problem is, is that they're overventilating, and they're disconnecting from their environment and from other people, and they have all the, the negative, uh, fallout
39:35.8 of poor, of poor respiration. Poor respiration does terrible things to the body, and it doesn't do good things to, for the mind. And you don't wanna be there unless you have to be for some reason. And someone who's suffering with severe trauma, from their point of view, they need to be there just as much as an alcoholic needs that alcohol, and they're gonna keep drinking that alcohol. They're gonna keep breathing that way until you can show them a different way of trying to control that memory function. And so the diaphragm or the chest is irrelevant to the resolution of the problem, because they're using the breathing the same way I use my arm.
40:14.6 I may be a, a violent person, and I hit people. I'm using my arm in an inappropriate way. It's not about teaching me how to use my arm properly. It's about teaching me not to hit people, which is a psychological thing. It's the same thing here. It's not about teaching someone to use the diaphragm. It's about what they're using the diaphragm, what they're using breathing to accomplish. They're breathing a certain way to accomplish something that is working against them. So you wanna teach them not to breathe that way because of the outcome. You're, you're compromising respiration. Here is something different you can do. So it's about using your arm properly.
40:55.5 In this case, using your, your breathing apparatus properly. Uh, you know, i- in other words, you don't wanna hit people, you know, if, uh, when it comes to the arm, and when it comes to the breathing, you don't wanna compromise your body in this severe kind of a way that you would be doing if you're overventilating. Interesting. That is so good. So, you know, whether we're, you know, using our diaphragm or, or whether we're breathing into our chest, it's all good. We're still looking to change brainwave activity so that we can learn and connect new neural skills so that we can improve and heal our life.
41:35.8 Right. It's, it's about the objective and how you get there. And so, you know, when we say that breathing isn't good, what do we mean by that? You have to ask, someone says, "His breathing's no good," or, "Her breathing's no good." Well, why? What, what does that mean? Well- Ah, well, they're breathing, they're, they're, you know, they're breathing fast. Well, why is breathing fast bad for them? And then, you know, and then what we do is we'll, we'll look to see why, you know, first if a person is breathing fast, is it bad for them? Well, if it's triggering a lot of emotion, then it's not good.
42:13.1 Now, you ask, "Well, why is it triggering the emotion?" A lot of people will come up with an explanation like, "Oh, because it's sympathetic." That's, that's just a description of the person- Right ... when they're breathing fast. They're stressed, and they feel sympathetic. It's not that the fast breathing caused it. It's safety for them. That's, that's their safety mechanism. That's right. So the idea here is, is that you learn to respond to the experience of your breathing. So if you're breathing, some people when they breathe slow, they get panicked. They feel like they can't get enough air. That they've emotionally learned, we call it just classical conditioning in psychology, uh, you know, they've emotionally learned when they breathe slow, they get really panicked, and they
42:53.9 feel really stressed because they feel like they're not getting enough oxygen. And the same thing can be true if people are breathing fast. They get really stressed, and they get bent out of shape. And just to describe what the nervous system is doing isn't an explanation for it. It's just j- a further description of what you already know. Yeah. Yeah. You know? So, yeah, let me take a stab at this. Sure. So to say, "I'm not gonna change my breathing at all. I'm just gonna consciously watch my breathing. I'm not gonna change it. I'm just gonna watch it come in, come out." If you can.
43:33.6 A lot of people can't do it. Go ahead. Well, being the observer is, is, is a challenge in this world- Right ... of- Right ... whatever we're doing. But- Right ... just don't change your breathing, and just consciously watch it come in and consciously watch it go out. Yeah. That in itself allows the brain to create nor- new neural connectors where we have a greater understanding of maybe pain in the past or suffering, addiction, you know, what- you know, whatever it may be, war. So you don't even need to change your breathing, but you do need to consciously come present to what's already occurring and
44:21.4 just notice that some of our fears might be hiding our greatest strengths if we can just allow them to come forth free. Well, allowing breathing is also a metaphor for allowing things in life to happen. You know, one of the interesting things about- Breathing is that it can be used as a metaphor, and it is a very powerful kind of a metaphor. Uh, whereas when you let the breathing go and you become aware of it, then in a sense you let life go and become more aware of it. Uh, so there's that consideration. But one also needs to understand that it's not just you who's learning.
45:04.1 Your body is learning all the time. And we have all these habits we've developed throughout, throughout our life on all these different physiological levels, and breathing being one of them. And it, it, it can have a very profound effect on us. So even if you do, hopefully, allow the breath so that you can observe what your body is doing, you may discover that your body needs to do some learning that you can help your body do, you see? So, um, we, we do that in our work all the time, and then we work as a team. We, we call it client-centered, uh, education, if you will.
45:47.3 And, um, when we work with people, it's about their learning how their body breathes during the day. And it's not about using the breathing to accomplish something, which is fine. Like, you use your arms to do things. You can use your breathing to do things. We use our bodies to do things. But unlike my arms, I'm breathing all night, I'm breathing all day, and it's happening all the time. And I have all kinds of habits, and habits are triggered. All habits have a trigger. Something causes them to come online because the idea is that the habit is relevant at a particular place and time. That's where the habit is helpful, is it comes online precisely at the right time and saves the day.
46:38.8 Like, for example, when I'm chewing food in my mouth, I have all these habits that regulate that or I chew up my tongue. You know, so it's extremely precise, and I almost never make a mistake, but when I do, it hurts like hell. You know, when you bite your tongue, it's the last thing on earth you ever want, you know? So it, that is all coordinated, and it's learned, okay? And the system operates that way, very, very precisely. So these triggers come on, and suddenly you're breathing in a certain way, and it's not good, and now you feel panicky, and it- it's triggered by a particular thing that came into your mind, or someone walked into the room during a particular time and place.
47:25.9 So you may breathe well most of the time, but at certain times it just goes way off the mark based on some experience you had. I could give you all kinds of examples. I might wanna give you a, a, you know, a simple case. Yeah, go for it. Yeah, to give you an idea. Um, this is a, a woman in this case who was a Olympic, uh, star, um, in one of the Olympics back in the '80s, I think '88 or something like that. Uh, she was a biathlon, uh, champion, um, in the Olympics, and for a different country, not, not the US. And, um, uh, she was a friend of a friend of mine.
48:15.4 Uh, and my, my friend was a, a physical therapist. And her friend, who was the Olympic champion, was, uh, also a physical therapist. And I was visiting my friend, and she said, "I'd like you to see this friend of mine who's got a breathing issue." And I said, "Well, what's the breathing issue?" She said, "Well, she, um, misses one or two days of work every week, and she has to reschedule all her appointments and it's a nightmare, and she doesn't know what's going on. She can't, she can't get her breath. She feels like she's not getting enough oxygen, and it's, it's been going on for a few years and she can't seem to get help.
49:02.3 Maybe you could talk to her." I said, "Sure." So I went over to my friend's clinic and sh- and her friend came over there, and, uh, I asked her, uh, her friend, I spent about an hour with her, and I asked her, I said, uh, "Now, tell me more about the problem." She says, "Well, I miss a whole day of work, and it's unpredictable. I don't know why it happens. It just comes on suddenly. Uh, and, you know, I'm, I have to reschedule all my appointments, and no one can help me." Uh, and I, I had her connected to a capnometer where I could measure her CO2 concentration, and I was looking at it, and it was normal.
49:42.9 She was like 5% of the air in her lungs was carbon dioxide that I could measure directly in real time and see it. In fact, she said to me, "Oh, I've seen one of those capnometers before. I don't have any problem with carbon dioxide," she said. You know, "You can see it's completely normal." I said, "Yeah, it's normal right now." She said, "Well, it's normal. It's like people have good blood pressure, right? I have normal blood pressure. I have normal CO2." No. We'll see. Okay, so she said, "I'm normal." And I said, "Well, can you define, you know, anything about when it comes on?" And she said, "No, it's just
50:23.0 unpredictable." I said, "Well, you told me that you miss a whole day of work." She said, "Yes." And I said, "Well, obviously it comes on in the morning if you're gonna miss a whole day." She said, "Well, yeah, you're right. You're right, I never thought of that." After two or three years, she never thought of that. Never thought of it. Bless me. So I said, I said, um, "So when you get up in the morning, do you feel like you can get enough oxygen?" Mm-hmm. And she said, um, "Yeah, I have no problem when I wake up. I'm fine." "So you eat breakfast?" She said, "Yes." I said, "You're eating breakfast and y- you're still getting enough oxygen?" And she said, "Yes.
51:03.4 Yes. No problem." I said, "Well, it seems to me this problem shows up right after breakfast. 'Cause you miss a whole day and you're normal right through breakfast, it must show up after you, you just, after you ate." And she looked at me and said, "My God, I never thought of that. You know, it happens to me sometimes right after lunch. You know, hey, it's, I get in a hurry. And when I get in a hurry eating, that seems to be when it happens." Hey, three years and she never knew that. Yeah. No one had ever asked her. I said, "Have you ever been, uh, who have you seen to try to deal with the problem?" She said, "Been to a number of doctors." She'd gotten a prescription.
51:53.3 Prescription had made her feel less tense, less stressful, but it had no effect on her breathing. No one was able to help her. Um, you know, and then I said, "Well, so what do you do during the day? I mean, here you are, you can't get enough oxygen, you can't go to work. What do you do?" No one ever asked her. She said, "Well, I sit and I work on my breathing some of the time trying to get more air, trying to get more oxygen." And I said, "Well, how did you learn that?" She said, "Well, I'm a physical therapist. You know, we work with people around their breathing to try to relax them.
52:34.8 And, you know, we have them slow down their breathing, take larger breaths, et cetera, et cetera. And I practice what I preach with my patients." I said, and I said, "Does it do you any good?" She says, "No. There's something wrong with me. It doesn't work. It doesn't do any good. In fact, sometimes it gets even worse when I do it." And I said, "Well, what about, um, how long does it last? I mean, all day, right? How about dinner? Are you still suffering at dinner?" And she said, "No." I said, "Somehow it stops before dinner." I said, "What do you do at the end of the day?" She said, "I go to the gym.
53:16.5 I go to the gym and I do my workouts." And I say, "You mean to tell me you're sitting on the sofa and you can't get enough oxygen, but when you go to the gym and work out, you get enough oxygen? That seems rather strange. You know, you work out, you get enough oxygen, you're sitting around and you're not. I don't get it." And she said, "Hmm. My God, you know, I think next time I feel like I can't get enough oxygen, I'm just gonna go to the gym and work out." I said, "Doesn't that tell you something? There's something about what you're doing at home that you're not doing in the gym." She says, "Yeah, but what could that be?" I said, "Can we,
54:00.5 let's work with your breathing a little bit. Are you willing to do a little over-breathing with me and lo- and lose carbon dioxide on purpose and then come back?" And she said, "Yeah, I'm willing to do anything. I, this is, this, this is driving me crazy." So I talked her into- Just through coaching her, I brought her carbon dioxide down to a, a moderately low level in the lungs so that the blood would leave with less carbon dioxide than it requires to maintain the acid-base balance in the body. And when I got her down to a moderately low level, not a severe level, moderately low level, suddenly she said, all of a sudden,
54:44.4 "This is exactly what happens to me. This is exactly what happens to me, and I'm not gonna be able to get out of this the rest of the day." I said, "Well, what did you do? What, what do you th- what do you think got you to this?" "I did what you told me." And I said, "Well, I told you to do what you told me you do when you work with your patients. I asked you to do what you do when you're at home trying to deal with the problem, didn't I?" Mm-hmm. She said, "Yeah, you're right. You're right." I said, "Well, what do you need to do?" She said, "Well, I need to stop doing this." And I said, "Go ahead.
55:30.2 Be my guest." She struggled, and she struggled, and she struggled, and it was getting worse, and she was getting panicky. CO2 was going down, not up. So I coached her with these really tiny little breaths, gentle little tiny breaths. It took me maybe seven or eight minutes to get her up, 'cause it takes quite a while to get a person back up. She'd gotten trapped in this breathing. And suddenly she said to me, "I can't believe this." I said, "What?" "I feel fine, and I'm hardly breathing at all." Right. I said, "That's right. You essentially s- perpetuate this habit you have, and when you go to the gym, you stop focusing on it, and the reflex mechanisms take over
56:19.1 and restore you." So I had her over-breathe a second time. She's trapped. She couldn't get back. Over-breathe a third time. She gets trapped. She can't get back. It took maybe five times where she was able to do it herself. She worked on it for a few weeks on her own, and she was normal after two to three years. That simple. Masterful. Just a conversation. That's just masterful work, doctor. Well, thank you. So you work with all sorts of different people. You have a organization that, that's helping humanity. Uh, can you share a little bit about that with our audience so we can send people your way?
57:06.8 Sure. Well, I do, um, I'm involved in, with two entities and, uh, one entity is a school. It's a licensed school, and we offered the master's degree for a long time and, um, a professional diploma program that we offer now and a certification program and a number of different programs at different workshops and things that we do that are, uh, designed to train professionals to bring what we call breathing behavior analysis, which is what I just gave you an example of a breathing behavior- Analysis to bring that into their work. And it might be a nurse, it might be an athletic coach, uh, like the Brazilian, um, um, shooting team that
58:02.8 won the silver medal, where their coaches brought this work into what they're doing, or into ice, the ice dancer who won the gold medal, uh, in Canada quite a few years ago based on this kind of work and so on. So we, we help professionals bring it into their practices, like psychologists, athletic coaches. The LA Police Department, for example, brought it into what they were doing because there were cadets that were flunking out because they couldn't hit the target well enough when they were shooting, only to find they were overventilating and losing carbon dioxide, so they couldn't focus on the target and shoot properly. All kinds of applications.
58:41.6 So we train people who are professionals in whatever domain they represent, uh, to bring this work into what they're doing. And again, we have all kinds of example, like Kaiser Hospital system, just all kinds of places. Bravo. We also have a program now that's for people who don't wanna go that far into breathing behavior analysis, but they wanna help people around, uh, restoring carbon dioxide levels. It's, we call it capno learning. Capno is CO2. A capnometer is a CO2 measuring device. Capnometer, you know. And so, um, we, um, have a, a basic course that, where people can take it in a modular way and listen to recordings and, and, um, do a practicum and so on, and then work with people to help them bring their, restore
59:41.8 their CO2 levels to normal. For example, uh, gamers right now, where they can improve, uh, reaction time. Uh, we just had one of our people that I've been working with for years. He's in Italy. Uh, he's a, he was the soccer team doctor for Italy for years and, um, football team, as they say in Italy. Um, and he was working with a gamer, the t- the captain of one of the big teams. And, um, he looked at reaction times of the, the top gamers have a reaction time of about 150 to 170 milliseconds, and this gamer is a captain of one of the top teams.
60:22.7 When my friend measured his reaction time, it was over half a second. It was like 500-plus milliseconds. And his CO2 level was very low. Hmm. So he worked with the man to raise his CO2 level, and when he was retested, he was 170. And then when they lowered the CO2 level again, he was back up over a half a second. Then they raised the CO2, and he was back down to 150 to 170 milliseconds. And so you're looking at reaction time, and then you can look at, uh, accuracy. So when they click, they may miss the target, and they have to click a second time, and they lost the game.
61:03.1 Uh, or you look at attention time, where they have to notice something that changes on the screen. How long does it take them to notice the change? Hmm. So my me- my friend measured all those things, including evoked potential in the brain, and that the low CO2 levels evoked potential w- it was delayed considerably, and all these different measurements were, um, you know, influenced radically. And when he restored the CO2 level, all of these things changed. So this is a specific application and where someone can learn how to work with gamers, say, to raise their CO2 levels, very specific applications. Another one would be public speaking.
61:44.0 Another one would be in pregnancy, where most, most women, um, in pregnancy are suffering with low CO2 levels. And low CO2 levels, there's a name for it. Hypo, too little, capnia, carbon dioxide. And it's just routine that pregnant women suffer with low CO2 levels. But they can learn to raise that CO2 level, so they don't get the symptoms of low CO2 that are normally attributed to the pregnancy. So all their symptoms, they believe, are from the pregnancy, when a lot of them can come from the breathing. And the pregnancy symptoms can be exacerbated by the breathing that's going on, and it's all blamed on pregnancy.
62:30.4 So a lot of people that we've trained over the years work with pregnant women. So you can, you know, be trained in capno learning and then actually help pregnant women maintain a high, a normal level during pregnancy, which I did with my ex-wife. I coached her, and she was able to maintain a good CO2 level. And so there are many specific applications, so you can learn capno learning, and then if you're really interested and you're doing that, you can then go in and get a professional diploma in breathing behavior analysis, where it becomes a profession. So th- that kind of thing, and then the, the master's degree that we had for many years that we stopped offering it, we're gonna offer it again down the line here.
63:16.7 But, um, and then there's a, the second organization I'm involved in is a company. I was one of the founders of the school, along with, uh, uh, one other person. The two of us founded the school. And then, uh, there's another organization that I founded in the two- May of 2000, which is a, um, manufacturer of capnometers. But these capnometers are for identifying breathing habits. They aren't used for monitoring blood gases during surgery. They're used for identifying dysfunctional breathing habits that are compromising respiration, and we use that in everything that we do. And we have those instruments, um, all over the world. We have, we're in over 60 different countries.
64:01.1 Um, we're in just all kinds of locations, like as I'd mentioned, LA Police Department, Kaiser Hospital. We're in all around the world in different places and bringing this out there, and we have a, the device, there's actually a... I don't think I have one here. Oh, here's one. Uh, it's a little thing like this. It weighs six ounces, and you, it's all Bluetooth, and you can wear it when, during sleep. A lot of people use, uh, this, uh, people have sleep apnea, because people who have dysfunctional breathing habits where they lower CO2 levels during the day, that that problem carries into sleep where you, and where it's significantly correlated with sleep apnea.
64:48.0 So you can wear this when you're asleep. It's all Bluetooth, battery operated. You can use it on your cell phone. You can use it on your Apple computer. You can use it on your PC computer. There's all kinds of lessons and practicums and different things that you can learn. So I do that. So I run that company. Um, it's called Better, um, it's called, um, Better Physiology Ltd., Better Physiology, and the school is called the Professional School of Behavioral Health Sciences. They're totally separate from each other. They are not connected in any way. One is a licensed organization. Um, you know, a school, you know, we're, um, licensed by the state and, um, we've just been accredited
65:36.0 by, uh, an international, uh, university, uh, organization, uh, in Europe. Um, and so we're, we're basically a licensed professional school and, uh, you can find us, if you're interested in our school, there's a very simple website, which is just a few letters. B as in bravo, P as in papa, Better Physiology, if you will, bp, um, .edu. www.bp.edu. Very short. Just four letters. Um, and then the company, uh, is betterphysiology.com. So it's www.betterphysiology, in this case breathing, uh, .com. And that, that's where, uh, you can find us. If you wanna reach me, uh, it's, it's just as easy. My initials, uh, Peter Lichfield, PL, pl@bp.edu, or pl@betterphysiology.com.
66:44.4 We'll have all this in the show notes so people can reach out to you, doctor. I learned so much in the last hour of my life. I really appreciate you taking the time to share your experience, your wisdom, your knowledge, uh, with our audience, and thank you so much. Sure. Pleasure. I appreciate you. Thank you. Same here, for what you do. All right. We need a lot of you out there to get the word out about all kinds of things. Well, I think we're w- we're winning the war. Thanks so much. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Anytime, doctor. You're a real treasure.
67:19.9 I appreciate everything you're doing. So long. So long. Bye for now A lot of people use, uh, this, uh, people have sleep apnea, because people who have dysfunctional breathing habits where they lower CO2 levels during the day, that that problem carries into sleep where you, and where it's significantly correlated with sleep apnea. So you can wear this when you're asleep. It's all Bluetooth, battery operated. You can use it on your cell phone. You can use it on your Apple computer. You can use it on your PC computer. There's all kinds of lessons and practicums and different things that you can learn. So I do that.
65:04.0 So I run that company. Um, it's called Better, um, it's called, um, Better Physiology Ltd., Better Physiology, and the school is called the Professional School of Behavioral Health Sciences. They're totally separate from each other. They are not connected in any way. One is a licensed organization. Um, you know, a school, you know, we're, um, licensed by the state and, um, we've just been accredited by, uh, an international, uh, university, uh, organization, uh, in Europe. Um, and so we're, we're basically a licensed professional school and, uh, you can find us, if you're interested in our school, there's a very simple website, which is just a few letters.
65:57.6 B as in bravo, P as in papa, Better Physiology, if you will, bp, um, .edu. www.bp.edu. Very short. Just four letters. Um, and then the company, uh, is betterphysiology.com. So it's www.betterphysiology, in this case breathing, uh, .com. And that, that's where, uh, you can find us. If you wanna reach me, uh, it's, it's just as easy. My initials, uh, Peter Lichfield, PL, pl@bp.edu, or pl@betterphysiology.com. We'll have all this in the show notes so people can reach out to you, doctor. I learned so much in the last hour of my life. I really appreciate you taking the time to share your experience, your wisdom, your knowledge, uh, with our audience, and thank you so much.
67:00.2 Sure. Pleasure. I appreciate you. Thank you. Same here, for what you do. All right. We need a lot of you out there to get the word out about all kinds of things. Well, I think we're w- we're winning the war. Thanks so much. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Anytime, doctor. You're a real treasure. I appreciate everything you're doing. So long. So long. Bye for now