QUESTION: I have tried taping my mouth for two nights and am very tired when I wake up. As far as I know, I have not woken up during the night. Do you think I should continue with the tape or not?
ANSWER: For some who start breathing training, some form of cleansing or initial change for the worse may sometimes occur before it gets better. The reaction (a temporary change for the worse) may occur immediately or after a few weeks of breathing training. What happens during an initial change for the worse can be compared to when a person who quit smoking does not feel so good at first. Instead, the gains come after a while. Usually, the reaction occurs where we have had problems earlier. One way of looking at an initial change for the worse is that the body is healing.
Being very tired when you wake up can be a form of initial change for the worse. So my advice is to hang in there and continue taping your mouth at night for at least one week and most preferably for four weeks. In this article, you can read about some experiences of people who have started breathing training and have experienced issues that got worse before they got better: “Can breathing retraining cause a cleansing reaction?“.