Transcript

[Luke Coutinho] (0:03 - 0:56)
Welcome to the Luke Coutinho Show, where we can learn to reimagine our lifestyle. Anders, it's so good to meet you again. I had the privilege of spending time with you at the Soneva Fushi Wellness Festival a couple of weeks ago and attend your sessions, attend your one-on-one session and experience, you know, the whole subject of conscious breathing and breath.

And I thought right then you would be a perfect fit for our show because, you know, we come from the land of breathing and pranayama and yoga and everything that you kept speaking to me, you simplified it and you made it so easy for us to understand. And I thought it would be great for our audience to benefit from your, you know, from your knowledge, your experience and your whole intelligence involving such a simple, free tool, breath. So thank you.

Thank you for being on our show today.

[Anders Olsson] (0:56 - 1:03)
Thank you for having me, Luc, and great to see you again. It was a really nice time we had there at the Soneva Show Festival.

[Luke Coutinho] (1:04 - 1:31)
It feels strange coming back and leaving that island, you know, it feels a little empty like Malin was saying, but, you know, what I didn't get to ask you when we were back in the Maldives at the festival was, you know, how did you get into this journey? You know, how did you get into this journey? What brought you to this whole conscious breath?

Was there something that you were going through in your life? And I would love to hear, you know, why you've picked up this particular subject and made it your passion.

[Anders Olsson] (1:32 - 2:13)
Yeah, for sure. It is my passion. And that is mainly because it has changed my life.

I used to have this racing mind since I was little, very hard, I found it to relax and wind down and sort of unlock my turbo. It was always more or less in racing mode. And when I read a book about breathing, it was titled How to Swap Asthma for Life.

Get rid of your asthma by changing your breathing. Then I started to apply it to myself. I didn't have problems with asthma, but I did have this racing mind and I was able to calm down just by calming down my breathing.

So simple. And I was hooked almost immediately.

[Luke Coutinho] (2:14 - 2:17)
And how old were you when you discovered this?

[Anders Olsson] (2:17 - 2:30)
This was in 2009. So I had spent quite a lot of my life making myself and people around me stressed out. So I'm glad and I think people around me as well, I'm glad that I found that tool.

[Luke Coutinho] (2:31 - 3:16)
Now, that's great. Thanks for sharing that. You know, in India, we have the whole beautiful, you know, way of living, which is called yoga.

And a part of that is pranayama. And when we spoke and we had our one on one session where you shared so much of your knowledge with us back then, I kind of realized that, you know, pranayama also talks about the importance of breath and consciousness of the prana and energy and breath. And that's everything.

You know, we can live without food and water for a while, but with breath, you know, without breath, we all tend to die. So conscious breathing, conscious breath. What is this to you and how have you simplified it in a way that it could change your life?

And now I know what you teach so many people across the world, the subject of conscious breath.

[Anders Olsson] (3:17 - 4:59)
Yes. So first, I'd like to say that it's nothing new. I haven't or we haven't invented anything, as you said, yoga, it's been around for thousands of years.

Right. So I've been inspired a lot by yogic traditions and but I've also been inspired by scientific research and other modalities out there, like the Buteyko method and others. So in essence, what conscious breathing is, it's about your daily breathing habits, kind of outside of the yoga mat, if you like.

So it's the knowledge what happens when you're breathing, when you move the air in and out of your lungs, the breath awareness in your daily life. How am I breathing when I'm talking, when I'm eating, when I'm sitting in the car, when I'm watching TV, when I'm sleeping and exercising, etc. And then the realization that we can use our breath as a tool to shift our nervous system because there is one type of breathing that would put us more in a state of fight flight and another type of breathing that would put us in an other direction in the more relaxing state.

So a lot of us, we spend too much time too often in fight flight, so we need tools, ways to get out of that state and into the calm, feeling safe and secure. And our breath is a fantastic tool because it's one of these, or it's unique in that sense, it's the only function that we can control by will and thereby change the terrain in our body. So that is, in essence, conscious breathing.

[Luke Coutinho] (5:00 - 5:50)
No, that's great, you know, because what you say makes absolute sense. Sometimes after my yoga practice, you know, I've done the asanas, I've done the pranayama, I sit for the meditation, I feel great, right after, maybe for an hour, and then life takes over, meetings, patients, emails, and everything and all of a sudden, what we learned on the mat, or what we practiced on the mat, it's completely, you know, out of our mind. And sometimes you check it, you're breathing shallow, you're breathing through the chest instead of the diaphragm.

So I love the word conscious, how are we able to stay conscious? But so my question for you, I know you deal with busy people across the world, how do you teach them consciousness, there's breath, how do you teach a busy person to remember to be conscious or to build this habit of consciousness during the day?

[Anders Olsson] (5:52 - 7:59)
Yes, so there are a few things you can do, you can, for example, apply it before going to bed. So you just turn to your breath, and the key in our teachings is basically to close your mouth and prolong your exhale, that will help you to achieve this low diaphragmatic breathing, and slow and rhythmically, and that is what helps you calm your nervous system. So you can apply prolonged breathing before going to bed, you can apply it before a meeting, you can set your alarm a few times per day, for example, every hour or every second hour or five times per day, and when it goes off, you check in on your breathing first.

And there you may start to realize that there is this connection between, oh, I feel a bit stressed out, and my breathing is high up in my chest, or I feel angry, and oh, I'm holding my breath, I have stopped breathing. So when we check in on it, we may start to see these patterns. And then the next step would then be to close your mouth, and also let the tongue rest gently in the roof of the mouth, and prolong the exhale slightly, super simple, but super effective.

And that helps you to become more present, and be here and now, and get ready for the task at hand. And you can also apply other things, you can try to inhale through your nose before talking, you can focus on nasal breathing when you do physical activity, you can, when eating, if you have the same problem as I used to have, I was this fast eater, taking in the food very fast. And so I applied the technique of when I put the food in my mouth, I do that on the exhale, that helps me to calm down.

So these kind of simple techniques, there are many more you can do to apply it in your daily life.

[Luke Coutinho] (8:00 - 8:27)
Since you're talking about food, that's a brilliant point. I know that breath affects digestion as well, because we're not meant to eat and digest when we're in the sympathetic nervous system. We're supposed to be in the parasympathetic nervous system.

But people who are stressed out and eating or having these working lunches, or constantly looking at their gadgets, and they're in the sympathetic nervous system, how can we use breath as a tool to move from sympathetic to parasympathetic?

[Anders Olsson] (8:28 - 10:55)
Yeah, that's a good question. And a lot of people need that, including that's where I come from. And I realized that when I was eating that fast, I was also swallowing a lot of air, which upsets our stomach, right?

The air is supposed to go into the lungs, just as the food is supposed to go to the stomach. If we reverse that, we're in problems, right? So that is one aspect.

If you eat fast, you will definitely swallow more air, which upsets your ability to break down and take up the food. But then there is also the diaphragm. We should realize how the diaphragm has a positive impact on our stomach and our intestines.

If you see a video of the diaphragm working, you see when it moves down, it gives a really nice massage to the stomach and intestines. So it helps and assists a lot in the digestive process. So it makes sense when we talk about anxious stomach or stressed stomach, that that goes hand in hand with stressed breathing, because stressed breathing, the hallmark is fast, shallow breathing, right?

Then we are not using our diaphragm. So then we are not assisting our digestive process. So those are a couple of tips related to eating.

And then, again, if you want to get into the state of parasympathetic, it's just to prolong the exhale. At the end of the day, the tips we are giving is really, really simple, and it can be applied anywhere. And the reason why prolonged exhale take you to a state of parasympathetic is because with every breathing cycle, we affect our nervous system.

So if I'm exaggerating a little bit, inhale, that is tied to sympathetic fight, flight, stress activity. While exhale, again, I'm exaggerating. We don't need to do any of those, but just inhale activation, exhale relaxation.

So when I prolong the exhale, you even see it if you measure your pulse, and that is called the heart rate variability, the ability for the heart to be active when it's supposed to, and relaxed when it's supposed to. So on the inhale, the pulse goes up, and on the exhale, the pulse goes down.

[Luke Coutinho] (10:57 - 11:04)
So I can actually use conscious breath and techniques to improve my heart rate variability, like athletes?

[Anders Olsson] (11:04 - 13:47)
Oh, absolutely, you can, yeah. And also another thing when it comes to food and the metabolism itself, if many of us, we have problems, we are craving sugar, and we can't burn fat to the extent we would like to. We have a tendency to go more for the sugar.

And breathing is hugely important in that sense, because if I'm breathing fast, if I have my mouth open, if I'm in fight, flight, I signal to my brain, to my body and my nervous system and my brain that I need energy fast. And sugar is a lot faster. Less complicated energy source than fat.

So the body will automatically choose sugar over fat. But it's also the oxygen aspect. If I'm flooding my system with oxygen, flooding my mitochondria, which I do when I'm breathing fast, and when I say breathing fast, not this visual, obvious type of hyperventilation, but a low-grade form of hyperventilation that slightly exceeds our body's needs.

But since we repeat it over and over again, over time, it will have negative consequences, because we take about 1000 breaths an hour. So when we breathe in a way that exceeds our body's needs, we take in more oxygen, we flood our system with oxygen, which then means that we need to match that with fuel, right? And again, then sugar is a quicker fuel than fat.

So we will go for the sugar to match the high intake of oxygen. So that's one aspect. And then the other aspect, which we seem to, many of us in today's society, when we engage in daily life, we have this chaotic way of breathing.

We switch between fast and shallow breathing and then holding our breath. So one second we may flood the system with oxygen, and the next we may deprive our body of oxygen. And when we deprive our body of oxygen, the mitochondria can't work.

They need oxygen to work, and the mitochondria is the only place where we can burn fat. So again, even when you deprive your body of oxygen, you will turn to sugar for fuel. So both ways you will go for the sugar, which makes a lot of sense if we look at today's society.

We are breathing fast and we have problems to burn fat, and we are prone to eat sugar.

[Luke Coutinho] (13:48 - 14:24)
Yeah, I think this just reminds me about the intelligence of the human body. And that's why to maintain homeostasis, we need a balance in breath, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. Coming to carbon dioxide, I remember a time in the Maldives where we experimented with carbon dioxide.

A lot of people have this negative view of carbon dioxide, but we absolutely know that the body has its requirement for carbon dioxide. Can you please explain this and help us? How can we empower ourselves to use carbon dioxide to our body's benefit?

[Anders Olsson] (14:25 - 17:52)
Yeah, so we usually have this view. Oxygen is the good guy and carbon dioxide is the bad guy. It's all about balance.

I mean, our car doesn't go better just because we give it more fuel. It needs the right amount of fuel and the same with our body. So if we just talk a little bit about oxygen, why it's problematic when we over-breathe, when we take in too much oxygen.

There is absolutely no point in doing that, because at rest, we are only using about 25% of the oxygen we inhale. The rest we will exhale. So when we are over-breathing, like many of us are, we take in more oxygen, but to no use.

On the contrary, it will be toxic to our body, because the only possible reason why we store so little oxygen in our body that we will only survive a couple of minutes is because it is toxic. If I take a bite in an apple and put it down, it will turn brown. That's why we want to protect all food from oxygen.

We wrap it in plastics and etc. And that's the same with our body. When we take in too much oxygen, oxygen is extremely reactive.

So when we have too much, it will start this creation of free radicals, which is short for free oxygen radicals, which we then call oxidative stress. And inflammations. So that's the one part when we engage in this fast and shallow breathing.

And the other aspect is the carbon dioxide that is produced in our body. So we inhale oxygen and we exhale carbon dioxide. And when we breathe faster than normally, than what is optimum for our body, we will exhale too much carbon dioxide.

And that will lead to constriction. Constriction of the airways, constriction of the blood vessels, which means the air and blood, it's harder for them to flow. So we need to use more resources for the air to reach the lungs, for the blood to reach the muscles and the brain, etc.

So that those are two aspects of carbon dioxide, the widening of the airways and blood vessels. Another aspect is that carbon dioxide helps the oxygen to leave the blood, because the oxygen travels closely bound to hemoglobin in the blood, right? But at some point, we would like the oxygen to be released.

There is no point having a lot of oxygen in the blood. We want it to reach our muscles, our liver, heart, etc. And carbon dioxide is heavily involved in that process to offload the oxygen from the blood.

So all in all, what this means, the extra oxygen in your body leads to more inflammations, more oxidative stress, and the reduced carbon dioxide leads to more constriction. So in a way, you can say that oxygenation of our cells is crucial for our survival in order to produce energy efficiently. But we have too much focus on oxygen.

We haven't realized that it's carbon dioxide that paves the way for oxygen.

[Luke Coutinho] (17:55 - 18:24)
Wow. So I wanted to talk about the point of, you know, when people hold their breath, for example, you're stressed out or you're working, and all of a sudden you find that you're not breathing. And then you just remind yourself to take a deep breath.

So what's happening in the body at that point? So I have inhaled oxygen and I probably exhaled carbon dioxide. So the space between my last breath and the start of the new inhale, what is happening in the body at that point?

[Anders Olsson] (18:25 - 21:10)
Well, so we may ask ourselves the question, what is it that makes us take the next breath? So despite what we may think, it is not lack of oxygen. It's the buildup of carbon dioxide that stimulates our breathing center in our brainstem.

So when the carbon dioxide builds up, it makes us take the next breath. But then we can override those signals by, for example, focus, concentrating, be completely absorbed by an email or whatever it is. And we stop breathing.

Or when we get scared, we also stop breathing. And so that is when we form these chaotic breathing habits. And that's why we need to work on them because we live in a society, we have created a society that is not very natural.

So we then start to develop these unnatural habits. And our breath is really a reflection of all our habits, of our thoughts, our emotions, and our physical body. And today's society makes that very clear.

We sit in front of the computer many hours per day, many of us, or we have all these unresolved traumas, unhealed wounds that we can spot in our breath. Research shows that there is an anxious breath, or there are angry breath or sad breaths. We can actually spot that in the breathing rhythm.

So when you hold your breath, it's probably a combination of that we have the food we eat, the posture we have, the emotional unhealed wounds we have, and the task at hand. So our brain gets really stressed out about that. What our brain needs and wants more than anything is oxygen, right?

So a way to being able to focus and concentrate better is to give our brain exactly what it wants. More than anything, it's oxygen. So when we sit there and breathe too fast, our brain gets stressed out, or if we hold our breath, our brain gets stressed out.

So that's when our brain tells us, oh, we need a break. I need to go for a coffee. I need a fruit.

I need to call my best friend. I need to go to the toilet. All these things that distracts us from the task at hand.

But when we ensure a steady supply of oxygen to the brain, it will start to relax, and we will be able to focus and concentrate better and longer.

[Luke Coutinho] (21:11 - 22:18)
I love what you said about the emotions and using breath to kind of determine. I want to talk about a patient that I had this morning. And as you know, our time with Dr. Bruce Lipton, he certified me on the technique to help program the subconscious mind. So by the way, from the time we left the mall, at least till now, I've already hit 30 patients. But I want to talk about this particular patient today. She was an old elderly lady in a wheelchair.

Okay, cancer patient stage three. Okay, her problem was feeling safe. So we were doing the whole programming of a subconscious mind.

And every time she had to affirm to herself, I feel safe. You could see her heart rate, her chest. It was just, you know, it was getting more and more erratic, clearly, because her subconscious mind didn't believe what her conscious mind was now affirming.

But as her breath started, you know, slowing down, she started breathing in, just breathe deeply, breathe deeply, you saw the heart rate, like literally the heaving in the chest come down. And that was the impact, the visual impact of an emotion on a human being's breath. And it was quite fascinating.

So I thought I'll share that.

[Anders Olsson] (22:19 - 22:46)
Yeah, it is really fascinating. But when you have opened that door, when you have made that realization, you can't go back, right? You see that everywhere.

And it's so fascinating. In my view, these emotional issues, they lay the foundation for our inner stress that takes us way too often into a state of fight flight, which in turn leads to poor health and diseases over time.

[Luke Coutinho] (22:46 - 23:15)
Yeah, you keep, you know, you keep mentioning that about how breath can calm the nervous system. And what is your definition of disease with the amount of people you've worked with, patients you've worked with, what is your definition of disease? And how can we use, you know, conscious breath to be a tool?

You know, while people take their medication, they do whatever is needed to get better. How can we introduce conscious breath on that prescription?

[Anders Olsson] (23:17 - 28:01)
Yes, so my definition of poor health and disease is that we spend too much time too often in a state of stress and activity and fight flight. That is necessary, of course. That's a major part of the nervous system, very important.

Our nervous system is there to keep us alive and keep us safe more than anything, right? But as Bruce Lipton also talks about, we install a lot of programs during the first years of our life. If we just think about it, the amount of space we have to install programs, if we didn't have role models that we wouldn't be able to talk and write probably if we grow up in a forest without people that we can learn from.

So we have this enormous space to learn new things for good and for bad, because a lot of times we seem to install too many of these survival programs. We read code too many of the incoming stimulus saying, oh, I need to be afraid of this and that. So I see when looking back the stress I had, it came from my survival programs.

I had installed programs thinking that I need to perform. I need to be stronger, faster, smarter in order to be worthy of love. So I just focused on that.

And then maybe I would be loved eventually, hopefully. So many of us, we have these red-coded survival programs that are not true. They were installed by someone else when we were very small, many of them.

And then we just repeat them as we grow up. So we need to first become aware of them. And then we need to heal those wounds or upgrade these programs.

And our breath is a really powerful tool to help us with that. So it's a reflection. When I'm afraid, I can spot that in my breath.

And if I start to calm down my breathing, it's easier to be in the storm of a hurricane, if you like, to be able to dare to take the bull by the horn and withstand that fear and be there. So for example, my biggest fear, I mean, all categories, it really was limiting me. It was public speaking.

I thought it was completely horrible. And now it's a large part of my occupation, actually. So I think, honestly, that our biggest fear, the things we are most afraid of, they have the potential to really help us reach our full potential.

But we need something, someone to help us get into clinch with them. And our breath could be our best friend. Because when I start to breathe low and slow, I help to ground myself.

I actually help to get in touch with these fears. So if we think about it, the stomach area, we have a lot of fears, worries, anxiety situated in the stomach area. Like if we're going to do something that is uncomfortable, something taking us out of our comfort zone, we may need to go to the toilet or we may feel a stress in our stomach.

And what happens with our breathing is that we, oh, I don't want to feel that stress, that fear, that worry. So we move the breath higher up in our chest. It's like on the African savanna, we ran away from the tiger.

Today, we ran away from the things that scares us sitting in our office chair, moving up our breath higher up in our chest. So when we slow down our breathing, when we start to breathe diaphragmatically, we are able to get in touch with these fears. We're able to heal them.

And it may not happen overnight, but since we do this so often, thousand times an hour over time, it will have the effect that I feel braver. I feel more grounded. I feel like I'm a tree with big roots.

So when the storms come, I'm able to withstand them without the problems. I've seen that in myself and so many other people. So that's really fascinating.

I think that is what the world needs more than anything. We need less adrenaline and more trust in ourselves and our ability.

[Luke Coutinho] (28:02 - 28:45)
Yeah, that's beautifully put, Anders. You know, I'm a huge believer of the power of breath. We see it in our blood pressure patients, you know, systolic and diastolic pressure.

And then you put them through a series of deep breathings, deep breaths, and you check their systolic and diastolic. It's down by even 10 points sometimes. And even blood sugar levels.

You know, I want to talk about, and I want to ask you for your views on fat burn, because, you know, the mechanism in my mind makes complete scientific sense. And I also do believe that if people exercise the right way using their breath, the ability to increase fat burn, you know, is 100% possible. I would love your views on this.

[Anders Olsson] (28:46 - 31:35)
Yes, that is really interesting. If I go to the gym, I see almost only mouth breathers and also huffing and puffing and even in the dressing room, when they put on a sock, they sound like they do when they lift the weights. And when I'm out jogging, I have only in more than 10 years, I think I've only seen one person or two, maybe breathing through their nose.

So what we do when we exercise, what we may not realize is that we have too much focus on the goal. So we go there in this high intense activities to the point where we ruin our breathing habits, where we induce more mouth breathing outside of the gym, outside of our exercise. We induce more fast chest breathing.

We induce more of this tense and labored breathing. So if you push yourself too hard, it may be done to the expense of breathing. So that means when you're breathing, it may work.

Your breathing may match your metabolic demand during the exercise. But when you come out from the exercise, there is a high risk that you will continue to breathe in that fashion. And that is where you then start to lock the door to your fat reserves.

Because of the imbalance between oxygen and carbon dioxide. The breathing that was okay during the strenuous exercise, suddenly it is not okay. It doesn't meet your metabolic demand.

So either you're flooding your system with oxygen and the body will choose sugar, or you're depriving your system of oxygen and your body will choose sugar. So effectively shutting the door to your fat reserves if you are training too hard. I remember we have this biggest loser program here in Sweden.

And there was this person, he was, all the other participants, they go to consult with their personal trainers and they do this strenuous exercises. But this guy, he was just too fat to participate in any exercises. So he just did low intense exercise, walking.

And he was the one who lost most weight in the history of biggest loser here in Sweden. That is just anecdotal, but I think there is really something to it. If we have low, slow, rhythmic nasal breathing, that really opens up the door to our fat reserves.

And we start burning more fat and creating less sugar.

[Luke Coutinho] (31:36 - 33:28)
I absolutely believe that. I believe a zone one training, but done the right way, breathing the right way, can be more powerful than a zone two, done the wrong way. People running in a zone two, breathing through the mouth compared to someone doing a very low intensive zone one, but without mouth breathing.

Now that's brilliant because I do believe when it comes to fat burn, how we use our breath is absolutely important. And since we're talking about mouth breathing, and as I would love for you to talk about that, a lot of people snore, a lot of people have sleep apnea, a lot of babies and young children, you know, they tend to sometimes breathe through their mouth for whatever reason, maybe they were sucking their thumb. And then, you know, one is it's affecting their breathing, it's making their upper respiratory tract weaker, but then they also have drier adenoids.

And sometimes that's surgically removed because of mouth breathing. I would love, I know you spoke about this on stage back then, and you explained it beautifully. Can you take us through mouth breathing?

How can we identify if we have this problem? And, you know, I'm using the tape. I've started, you know, taping my mouth and breathing every night.

It's been, it's been, well, we were together to the 10th of October. Yeah, it's almost been, it's almost the end of the month, and I've done it every single day, including a 16 hour flight to New York. I love it.

I wake up more energetic. I feel I sleep deeper. So I don't know if I was a mouth breeder.

I snow sometimes a little bit here and there, and that's what I'd like to think. But the point is it's made a difference. Now, what about the people who are mouth breeders and people who don't know they're mouth breeders?

I would love for you to talk about the impact of mouth breathing on adults, children. How can we identify this? And of course, you know, how do you suggest we correct this?

[Anders Olsson] (33:29 - 37:24)
Yeah, so if we just start and set the level, there was this book that came out called Shut Your Mouth and Save Your Life, meaning shut your mouth so that you breathe through your nose. And that book came out 1870, more than 150 years ago. And the author, he was a painter.

And he documented the North American Indians for 30 years. And he painted them. And then he went back to the civilized society and exhibited his paintings around US and in Europe, Paris and London.

And the book came from traveling back and forth and seeing that the North American Indians, they didn't have any child diseases, no infants that died. And they had these beautiful faces. And in the book, he writes, I have witnessed thousands of Indian women breastfeeding their children.

And not a single time after the breastfeeding, had they forgot to make sure that the lips are together on their child before the child is about to sleep. So it starts already with the first breath. After birth, we should, as parents, make sure that our kids are mouth breathing.

And what he saw when he compared the bill of mortality in the mid 1850s was that in the civilized countries, in big cities, half of the children died before the age of five. And another 25% died before the age of 25. So only one out of four got to be 25 years older or more.

So the health was really poor in the city. So probably it was a combination of different stressors, being many people on a smaller surface, the food quality, maybe the working conditions, all of that. But you can also look at it from the perspective that he did, that there was this breathing aspect, that people were mouth breathers.

And that is really detrimental to our body. It's not like a death sentence. Our body is amazing at adapting, but we will not reach our full potential.

So the nose prepares the air for the lungs. And we're talking about up towards 10,000 liters in a single day of air that the lungs are exposed to. So in the nose, it's warm, humidified, cleaned of virus and other bacteria, virus bacteria and other particles in the air.

And there is this substance, this gas produced in the nose called nitric oxide, which is also antibacterial, antiviral. And compared to mouth breathing, that means you're taking in cold air, dry air, full of virus bacteria and other particles and presenting that air to the lungs, which means the airways and lungs will be irritated, inflamed, and when we have an inflamed tissue, it will swell, right? So that means that it's harder for the air to flow because we induce this constriction.

So that will lead to high chest breathing, which is the hallmark of stress and activity and fight flight. And if you do that when sleeping, obviously that is not the state we want to be in, right? We want to be in parasympathetic so that our body can heal and repair and recover.

And we also activate our immune system when we are in parasympathetic. So it has a huge impact.

[Luke Coutinho] (37:25 - 37:40)
And what are some of the symptoms? Not the symptoms as such. How could we check if we're mouth breathers because we're sleeping?

Unless you have a partner who's keeping an eye on you while you sleep or what are some of the signs that we can look out for? What's the self-check that we can do?

[Anders Olsson] (37:41 - 39:38)
So what he noticed already there in the 1870s in his book was the deformation of the face. The tongue is supposed to rest in the roof of the mouth, which it cannot do when we are breathing through our mouth, right? I can't have it out there when I'm mouth breathing.

So when the mouth is closed, then I can have the tongue rest in the roof of the mouth. So the teeth, they are... When we get retainers, the reason why retainers work is because you apply a very, very little pressure over a long period of time.

And that is enough to move a tooth. So we have pressure pushing on our teeth from our lips and cheeks. And the tongue is the counterweight.

So the tongue is U-shaped. So the teeth is supposed to form around the tongue. So if the tongue isn't in place in the upper palate, the tongue, the muscles in the lips will push on these teeth and make it harder then for the teeth to develop straight.

So you can spot it in your face. But I think the easiest way to spot it is to actually tape your mouth shut at night and see if you notice a difference. So there are so many people having opinion on how we are breathing when we sleep.

But honestly, we really don't know. And even if we have a partner, that partner is also asleep. They may wake up once in a while, especially if we are snoring.

But that I think is the best tip. To stay curious and try and see what it can do for you. And just because we go to sleep with our mouth closed and we wake up with our mouth closed, it doesn't need to be that we have our mouth closed during the whole six, seven, eight, nine hours or whatever many hours we sleep.

So that I think is the main tip.

[Luke Coutinho] (39:39 - 39:46)
So Anders, we can just tape our mouths and start to sleep.

[Anders Olsson] (39:47 - 40:32)
Now what I want to ask you is- Can I maybe just say about the mouth taping? Because for a lot of people that seems very scary. Oh my God, I won't be able to survive that.

No, no, that's not for me. So then obviously you should not do it. You should take it step by step.

So tape for a few evenings, for maybe 10, 15 minutes until you get used to the sensation. And when you feel ready, and that's you only, right? That's you in charge of your body.

That's your unique journey. No one else can tell you when you are ready. If that means three days or three months, it doesn't really matter.

It's when you are ready, you should do it.

[Luke Coutinho] (40:33 - 41:06)
Perfect. And you introduced us to a beautiful device, the Relaxator. And we're hoping to get that in India pretty soon.

I know you have it there. We're trying to make it available to people. I would love for you to explain the science behind the Relaxator.

And thank you. I've been using it on flights. I've been using it in office in between patients as well.

And even before bedtime. And I come on level four right now. And I think I'm doing pretty good.

I moved up from a three to a four. And a four is becoming easier and easier. I would love for you to explain it to everyone.

[Anders Olsson] (41:07 - 44:18)
So the Relaxator follows this principle. That if you want to calm your nervous system, you do that by slowing down your breathing. Breathing low, meaning using your diaphragm.

And slow and rhythmically. And the best way to achieve that is to prolong your exhale. Because the exhale in itself is tied to relaxation.

And when you prolong the exhale, you will start to find a better balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide. So that your body will start to relax. Because when you increase the carbon dioxide, which you do when you slow down your breathing, it will be easier for your body to get oxygenated.

So your brain and your nervous system will start to calm down. Because this rhythmic low, slow breathing will ensure a steady supply of oxygen. So that's the main thing to help you achieve an efficient oxygenation, I would say.

Increase the gas mileage if you were a car. Become oxygen efficient. So you put it in your mouth.

First, you set the resistance of your choice. So it goes from one to five. And I recommend starting at a three.

And then find if it's too much, you just lower it. Or if it's too little, you can just increase a little bit. And then you just put it in your mouth.

Inhale through the nose and out through the Relaxator. Which then gives a slight resistance on the outbreath. So and preferably hold it with your lips.

If you hold it with your teeth, there is more risk that you induce tensions in your jaw. And if you feel a bit tired, that's because your lips, they are muscles. And if we have our mouth open too much, these muscles are not working.

They work when our mouth is closed. So for some people, there will be maybe a few days where they may feel some strains in their lip muscles. Some people feel that they create more saliva, which could be viewed as seeing that when we go more into parasympathetic, our body thinks, oh, food is coming.

So it starts to produce more saliva. So it's usually a sign of being in a calmer state. And also the increased saliva production could be because, well, also because there is a stress having this in our mouth.

We're not used to having it. But it could also be that our body starts to become in more balance. And it's possible for it to get rid of more of the waste products we have accumulated.

And normally we have the four system, our skin via sweating, our breathing, we breathe out a lot of waste products, and then the two when we go to the toilet. And saliva producing mucus is a backup tool for our body to get rid of waste products. So that is usually something that goes away after a few days or a few weeks, a little bit depending on the person.

[Luke Coutinho] (44:19 - 44:41)
Okay, that's great to know. And diaphragmatic breathing, belly breathing. You know, a lot of people breathe from the chest.

When we're actually supposed to, like you beautifully explained, the diaphragm as it moves lower, it literally gives us a massage, you know. So can you explain to us in the simplest way, how do we belly breathe? How do we use our diaphragm in our breath process?

[Anders Olsson] (44:42 - 45:36)
Yeah, so many may have heard of belly breathing, which makes sense if your breathing is stuck up here. You focus on your belly and think stomach in, stomach out. But I would like to take it a step further than that, because when you look at the diaphragm, it doesn't only expand forward when we breathe, because when it moves down, it expands in all directions.

So we should think more of a 360 breath. So one exercise you can do is the diaphragm activator, where you put your hands on the lowest ribs and try to push your hands out to the sides when you inhale. So you can exaggerate the inhale a little bit and take a big breath in and push your hands out to the sides.

And then when you exhale, you push your hands in on your ribs.

[Luke Coutinho] (45:37 - 45:38)
Yeah, I see.

[Anders Olsson] (45:38 - 47:28)
It's a really great way of activating your diaphragm, as is the Relaxator, because when you prolong your exhale, your inhale will be slightly lower. You will activate your diaphragm more. So other advantages with this, apart from the low, slow rhythmic breathing, it also increases the pressure in your lungs.

So the alveoli open up. So the gas exchange will be better. It will be easier for the lung to move the oxygen from the air we inhale over to the blood and the carbon dioxide that is produced from the blood over to the lungs.

And this section in the throat is a bottleneck, a narrow section for many of us, which becomes evident when we go to sleep and we snore and we have sleep apnea. And with the relaxator, it helps you to increase and relax, increase the strength, I should say, and relax the muscle toners in the muscles surrounding the airways in the neck and throat, which is really important. And also it helps to increase the pressure in your sinus cavities.

So the air circulates better. And also the air circulates better in the lungs when you increase the pressure. So many of us, we have areas in the lungs where they are sealed off.

We don't use them. And there you have trapped air and trapped particles, bacteria, viruses, which creates an environment that is favorable for inflammation. So many people, for example, after COVID, have noticed the benefits of using this to help open up those sealed off areas.

[Luke Coutinho] (47:29 - 47:56)
Wow. That's amazing. So much of science and breadth.

So what I'm taking away, Anders, is for anxiety, when you're stressed out, when you're looking at calming nervous system, before we eat a meal, before we sleep, we can use the technique of an inhale through the nostrils. And of course, if we're using the Relaxator, it's different. But if we don't have a Relaxator, it's going to be an exhale through the nostril, but an extended exhale.

[Anders Olsson] (47:56 - 47:58)
Yes. What about focus?

[Luke Coutinho] (47:59 - 47:59)
Sorry, finish.

[Anders Olsson] (47:59 - 48:14)
No, and you can also do, you can have a straw to extend the exhale. You can have pursed lips. You can do Ujjayi breathing.

Yeah. Or you can just, as you said, through the nostril, extend the exhale.

[Luke Coutinho] (48:15 - 48:24)
Yeah. So what about focus? If I'm getting into a meeting and I want to be focused and I want to be a little energetic, do what breadth technique would you suggest for that?

[Anders Olsson] (48:26 - 51:34)
Yeah. Many may think that, oh, okay, let's do some forceful breathing. That would make me fired up and energetic and focused.

But I tend to view that more as, okay, I want to be in the top of my game and I take a chocolate bar, but it won't last that long, right? I want, maybe a meeting will be for one hour. I want to have a steady energy during the whole meeting.

So if I do this, I may have great energy and focus the first five minutes, but then it starts to drop just like with the chocolate bar. I would definitely go for the calm breathing. In most cases, we of course need to listen to our own body.

Sometimes it may be beneficial to do some more forceful breathing or breath of fire. But in general, I think we are too focused on the adrenaline aspect because when you do forceful breathing, you will lower the carbon dioxide. And when you lower CO2 in your body, you will automatically increase adrenaline.

So it feels great, but it may not be the optimum. Yeah, so that's my view. You can just, you want to be focused in a meeting, great, put this in your mouth, prolong the exhale or take a three minute walk around the block and doing nasal breathing and try to prolong your exhale.

So you take more steps on the exhale than on the inhale. Those are super beneficial. But having said that, for example, when I started using this and I was driving in my car and in my mind, I thought, okay, the relaxator is good always for everything.

So I was sitting there driving and I started to getting tired and tired and tired. When I realized I'm using the relaxator and it helps me go into a state of parasympathetic and I'm getting too much into that state and that is not the best way when I'm driving. So I put it out of my mouth.

So we always need to listen to our body, right? So it could be the fact that many of us, we live in overdrive. So when we start to wind down, when we start to find our inner peace, our body will tell us what it actually needs.

And that may mean sleep because many of us, we are deprived of sleep. So then if you find that you get more tired before that meeting, probably it is that because you have lack of sleep, you should in the best of the worlds, you should go and lay down and have a nap. But if you can't do that prior to that meeting, probably it's not best to use this then.

Do you see what I mean or am I unclear here?

[Luke Coutinho] (51:34 - 51:41)
Yeah, that happens with me as well. Sometimes if I use that breath, I start to feel a little bit sleepy and drowsy and less focused.

[Anders Olsson] (51:41 - 52:14)
Yes, and that is what our body needs then. Our body needs to sleep, but we are deprived of sleep. That is my interpretation because I've been there many times, running over my body and realizing that when I do breathing exercises, when I used to relax, say that, oh, I'm getting really tired, but I want to be energetic.

Well, your body now, when you turn to your breathing, becomes more imbalanced. So it actually tells you what it needs and that is sleep. So then you may want to benefit more from breath or fire.

[Luke Coutinho] (52:15 - 52:38)
Yeah, that makes absolute sense. That makes absolute sense. So Anders, with the amount of people and patients that you've seen, you know, over the last couple of years, what are some of the things, the awesome changes that you've seen in the health and lifestyles of people who have now adopted and learned conscious breathing?

You know, what are some of the problems that you've seen it's corrected?

[Anders Olsson] (52:39 - 58:11)
Yeah, so just let me start with the name conscious breathing. So become conscious about your daily breathing habits, but it has a dual meaning. It also helps you increase your consciousness.

And in my world, that is becoming smarter. So I see that people become less reactive. They become, they act less from fear and stress and worry and anxiety and more from a place of safety and calmness and love and kindness and harmony.

So that is, in my view, the absolute biggest takeaway. Our tagline is change your breath, change your life, change the world. And I think war and conflicts, they start with individuals not feeling well, having not peace on the inside.

They have war on the inside. And that will be reflections in their words and their actions. So the more often we can find peace on the inside, the more we will radiate that to the people around us.

And that is how you change the world, I think, in that sense. So that is one aspect, becoming less fear-based, less reactive, and more conscious and more loving in your day-to-day activity. And then we see, I think sleep is the number one.

I put that very high on the list. It is so important. We all know what happens when we haven't slept well.

We are not most creative. We may end up in conflicts. We may just want the day to end.

So prioritize our sleep is crucial, I think. And in order to get the deep sleep our body needs and wants, we really need also to address our breathing. And the sleep tape at night is a super simple biohack.

But of course, we are awake maybe 16, 17 hours, asleep maybe seven, eight hours. So the way we live and breathe during our daily life, that will, of course, affect our breathing and our brain activity when we sleep. So it is not only about focus on your sleep.

If you want to achieve better sleep, you also have to address your daily lifestyle and things. So sleep is something we see a lot of. And I can just mention a study I participated in at Stanford in the US about five years ago, where we blocked our nose.

So we could only breathe through our mouth for 10 days, 10 days and 10 nights. And we measured a ton of things, three hours per day roughly. But the thing that got most negatively affected, that was the sleep.

I went from no snoring at all to three hours of snoring per night. I didn't even want to go to sleep because I knew it's going to be a horrible experience. And I woke up five, six times every night.

I was dry like a desert in my mouth. I was exhausted when I woke up. And to the point where I felt stupid and to the point where my body needed to compensate.

So my sugar cravings increased. My adrenaline levels increased, I think by 300% or something. So sleep and breathing, those are really tightly together.

And that is what we see. We see also the ability to reduce the stress, which can be translated to I'm able to focus and concentrate better in my daily life. I make less stress-based decisions.

We see pain, which many women who have gone through childbirth know that breathing is extremely effective in reducing pain. And midwives talks about the fear tense pain cycle. The woman is afraid of what's coming.

She tense up and that increases the pain. And if you want to get out of that state, your breathing is a fantastic tool. If you want to relax, you can turn to relax breathing.

So there are so many people that have testified to how the breath has helped them to reduce their pain and probably by reducing their tensions. And also physical performance and fitness is something we see. Now it starts to become a trend with, I ran a half marathon, I think 11 years ago with duct tape over my mouth like this and over my head.

And it was just to get some attention, get people to, ah, what is this stupid guy doing? Why is it doing like that? And then start to ask yourself the question, how am I breathing when I'm exercising?

So now we see more and more sports people actually taping their mouth when they exercise to ensure nasal breathing. And that leads to more efficient oxygenation. It's almost like doing high altitude training at sea level.

[Luke Coutinho] (58:12 - 59:12)
Yeah, I can relate to that point. I've not been taping my mouth and sprinting, but I would see in my final sprints, maybe towards the last three or four minutes, I would automatically open my mouth because my heart rate's really, really high. In fact, today I did my sprints today and I didn't.

And I just feel what's happening inside. Correct me if I'm wrong, but based on my knowledge of anatomy and the heart, the capillaries are getting thicker and stronger if we nasal breathe and we don't use our mouth. Because my surface area for the release of carbon dioxide now is completely different from the surface area of my two nostrils.

So I'm just thinking that the heart is actually getting stronger and probably I'm even growing more capillaries. Like, you know, mountaineers have more capillaries in their hearts. Their hearts are larger because of, you know, the heart has to get more efficient at using lesser oxygen.

So what's your thought on that?

[Anders Olsson] (59:14 - 1:02:04)
No, that's exactly. So all things we do within conscious breathing, whether that is taping your mouth shut at night or using the relaxator or doing physical activity with a closed mouth, at the end of the day, it's all about restricting the intake of oxygen and increase your ability to tolerate carbon dioxide. Because if we think about what is the main difference between a person that is in deep relaxation, sitting there meditating and a person in severe stress, the ultimate stress, a panic attack.

The major difference between those two states is not exercise or sleep or food, it's breathing. The person that is in deep relaxation is breathing low and slow and reducing the oxygen intake and increasing the carbon dioxide in the body. While the opposite is true for the person in a state of panic.

That's why that person in a state of panic, if it comes to hospital, will get a bag to breathe in and out through. And bag breathing means we exhale about 100 times more carbon dioxide than we inhale. So when you exhale that in the bag, you will then re-inhale it on the next in-breath, right?

And that, when you increase then the levels of CO2, which you have lowered when you sit there and you're in a state of anxiousness and panic, you lower the CO2. So with bag breathing, you increase the CO2, which opens up the airways, opens up the blood vessels. So the stressed, blood-deprived, oxygen-deprived brain gets more blood and then it can relax.

So studies show actually that the major stress in our body is lower levels of carbon dioxide. So in the brain, we have this threshold. We have this electrical spikes, right?

When we measure the activity in the brain, it's the electrical activity. So we have this threshold and the spikes, they need to go above the threshold in order for a nerve signal to fire so that we move a muscle or think a thought or whatever it is. And when you lower the CO2 in your brain, the threshold will lower.

So you get more of these spikes and if that goes on for too long, you may get an epileptic seizure, which is really a lot of these spikes. And that is because the threshold has been lowered. So studies have shown when you inhale extra carbon dioxide, those epileptic seizures, they vanish almost immediately.

Wow. Now I have forgotten what the question was. Sorry.

[Luke Coutinho] (1:02:05 - 1:02:21)
No, no, no. You've answered everything. Anders, before we end this amazing, amazing talk that we've just had, I wanted to ask you one last question.

What would be that favorite breathing tip that you leave for all of us and our audience?

[Anders Olsson] (1:02:24 - 1:02:25)
Can I only pick one?

[Luke Coutinho] (1:02:25 - 1:02:27)
You can do two, you can do three. It's up to you.

[Anders Olsson] (1:02:29 - 1:03:13)
Okay. So the easy one is tape your mouth shut at night. The second one is physical activity with closed mouth.

It's amazing. And the third one would be the awareness in your daily life. Turn to your breath, check in on it and prolong the exhale.

And you can even visualize a breathing anchor. So you can think of it like the anchor exercise. You visualize an anchor sinking lower and lower and lower and make you more grounded and present.

For every exhale, this anchor sinks lower and helps you take the elevator down from your active mind down into your body and embody you.

[Luke Coutinho] (1:03:13 - 1:03:38)
It's beautiful. That's beautiful. Anders, this has been amazing and we hope to have you on our show again because there's so much more information we wanna get out of you with your years of experience and science and knowledge.

But thank you so much for this. This has been so amazing. And I look forward to talking to you soon again.

Thank you so much for your time and being so generous with your knowledge.

[Anders Olsson] (1:03:39 - 1:03:44)
Thank you, Luke, for having me. I'm really pleased to be on your show. Thank you.

[Luke Coutinho] (1:03:44 - 1:03:53)
Thank you. Stay tuned for more. We're gonna continue our journey learning, sharing and evolving.