The Russian Medical Doctor and Professor, Konstantin Buteyko, spent hundreds of hours during his medical training studying the respiration of people on their deathbed. He noted that the closer to death patients were, the worse their respiration. How they were breathing was a direct reflection of the status of their health, and the more they deteriorated, the faster, shallower and more labored their breathing became.

Cured himself from his high blood pressure

Professor Buteyko had experienced health problems himself, but thanks to a discovery in 1952, which was as brilliant as it was simple, he cured himself of high blood pressure. Only 29 years old, he suffered from a galloping high blood pressure of 220/120.

While attending to a patient with high blood pressure, who had signs of labored breathing very similar to his own, an insight struck him like lightning. Professor Buteyko realized that his respiration, just like his patient’s, was very poor. When the patient had been discharged, he immediately began to work on improving his own breathing habits.

He quickly discovered that by taking control of his fast, heavy breathing, and forcing himself to breathe slower and smaller, he was able to alleviate his symptoms within minutes, but when he returned to his previous breathing pattern, his symptoms came back again.

Poor breathing, poor health – good breathing, good health

Professor Buteyko was as enthusiastic as a child on Christmas Eve about his discovery. He didn’t sleep a single wink that night. Instead, he ran around the hospital where he was working and more or less forced those seriously ill patients whose breathing patterns were also often fast and heavy to slow down their breathing.

The positive results did not take long to appear. When the patients breathed slower and took smaller breaths, the rapid improvement in their health validated Professor Buteyko’s own experience.

The Buteyko Method is spread around the world

After his discovery Professor Buteyko used the remaining 50 years of his life to help people improve their breathing. Buteyko conducted research on tens of thousands of patients with a variety of health problems. His research confirmed the link between poor breathing habits and poor health. Buteyko developed an easy test to assess ones breathing.

Professor Buteyko (who died in 2003) and his colleagues have helped tens of thousands of people improve their breathing habits and they were “miraculously” cured of asthma, cancer and heart disease. Today the Buteyko Method has spread all over the world.

I am a qualified practitioner of the Buteyko Method and the extraordinary work of the late Professor Buteyko inspired me tremendously when I developed the Conscious Breathing Retraining Program.