This BREATHING TECHNIQUE Will Transform Your BODY & MIND! | James Nestor & Lewis Howes

James Nestor 0:00 Breathe through your nose all the time. I don't care if your nose is clogged. If you wanna make your body a very violent place for viruses to live in, start with breathing through your nose-

Lewis Howes 0:09 Wow

James Nestor 0:09 ... take your vitamin D and C. If you see teeth imprints on your tongue, then your mouth is too small for your tongue.

Lewis Howes 0:16 I think you gotta have a dream. The School of Greatness. Really? [laughs] Please welcome Lewis Howes. It seems to me that most of the world, at least in America, breathes through their mouth. Is that the case in your mind that y- from all of your research of this, that most people breathe through their mouth?

James Nestor 0:33 The estimates are that somewhere between 25 to 50% of the population habitually breathes through its mouth. And a lot of us think, "Well, who cares? We've got a mouth, we can breathe through it." But very different breaths you're taking through those two different channels that affect us in various ways.

Lewis Howes 0:50 What's a, uh, a breath through the mouth do to the body and the mind versus a breath through the nose? One of them, and then what is a day of that consistently doing t- for our body?

James Nestor 0:59 I'll introduce my, my friend here at this time.

Lewis Howes 1:01 Yes. I love this.

James Nestor 1:03 The-

Lewis Howes 1:03 Show me the science. What happened?

James Nestor 1:04 Well, he... I usually wait a while to bring him on, but-

Lewis Howes 1:06 Let's bring it

James Nestor 1:06 ... no, you c- you called him up. So for people listening and not seeing this, I'm showing a cross-section of a human skull. And so you will notice if you take a breath in through your nose, it has to run this gauntlet of different structures, past different tissues, past cilia, before it makes it into the throat and before it makes it into your lungs. If you look at the mouth, none of that is there. So when you are breathing through your nose, you are humidifying air, you're pressurizing it, you're filtering it so that you can use that air so much more efficiently. So yes, we can breathe through our mouths. What a wonderful thing. We have a backup delivery system for our lungs. That does not mean you should be breathing through your mouth throughout the day, and this is something the ancients have known for thousands of years, and modern Westerners just have not been hip to this fact.

Lewis Howes 1:58 Why is this not taught to us at a younger age to be nose breathers over mouth breathers?

James Nestor 2:04 Uh, th- this is an eternal question-

Lewis Howes 2:05 [laughs]

James Nestor 2:06 ... that I've asked myself for, for years and years because the science is so clear that when you're mouth breathing, you're gonna make yourself more susceptible to respiratory ailments, you're gonna be denying yourself more oxygen. You can actually change the shape of your face if you breathe through your mouth when you're young. The skeletature will start forming to that slack-jawed posture, and you will have this long face. I'm a great example of this, right? [laughs] Because I was mouth breathing through a lot of my youth, and even up into adulthood. But there is more than 50 years of research on this stuff down at Stanford, which is very close to me, and it's indisputable. No one is arguing with this research, and yet go around and look and what do you see?

Lewis Howes 2:55 Mm.

James Nestor 2:55 A bunch of mouth breathers wherever you go.

Lewis Howes 2:57 I had Andrew Huberman on recently. I'm not sure if you've been familiar with his work at Stanford.

James Nestor 3:01 He's a friend. Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Lewis Howes 3:03 And, and, and he was sharing some breathing techniques and the power of breathing for the mind and the neuroscience behind breath, and he was talking about a powerful breathing technique which is a, a, a deep, long inhale through the nose with an additional breath at the top of it. So a [inhales] where you can really... That's when you actually oxygenate the most of the, the body and the cells, I guess. I'm not sure if that language is correct. But you're opening up pathways and creating more energy in the body when you breathe that way, uh, as opposed to through the mouth. I've been studying a lot of your videos on Instagram and the different work that you've been doing, and you've had s- you've interviewed so many different doctors and scientists and researchers on sleep apnea, on human performance from breathing. I feel like, um, a couple things happened when I was a kid. I always breathed with my mouth open, and I have one theory, maybe you can correct me if this is true or not, one theory that my teeth, although genetics play a factor in it, my teeth became very crooked because I always had my mouth open at night breathing and during the day and working out. Is that theory, uh, true or is it more genetic that my mouth is, you know, messed up and my teeth?

James Nestor 4:21 It's all those things, but oral posture plays such a huge role in this, and this is something that people are just starting to realize right now. If you look at our ancestors, they all had perfectly straight teeth.

Lewis Howes 4:35 Really?

James Nestor 4:35 They had these very wide faces, these very broad jaws. If you don't believe me, go look at a skull anything older than around 500 years old. I've looked at hundreds of these things.

Lewis Howes 4:46 They have big, wide jaws, big mouths.

James Nestor 4:48 Huge. And th- these are the mouths, the jaws that you see in models nowadays. So about 90% of us have this retrognathic growth, which means our faces are growing backwards, which is one of the reasons why our teeth are crooked, which is another reason why we have smaller airways. Smaller mouth, smaller airway, breathing problems. So we've known this, again, for decades and decades, and I had a hard time believing this until I went into the labs, till I was standing in this room surrounded by ancient skulls from people from Asia, Africa, Europe, South America, all over the world, all smiling back with perfectly straight teeth.

Lewis Howes 5:26 Gosh.

James Nestor 5:27 And I thought, "My God, what have we done?"

Lewis Howes 5:30 Well, and you know, it's interesting you say this. I, when I was 16, trying to... Yeah, 16, I had eight teeth removed because I was supposed to get braces and they said that my mouth was so small that it was, it was clustering the teeth, and that's why I looked like Edward Scissors Hands in my mouth, right? And so I had these eight teeth removed, and then I decided not to get braces, which was probably the dumb thing. 20 years goes by. My teeth receded back, my top teeth receded back so that the only teeth that ever touched for the last 20 years were my front two teeth. My back teeth have never- ... felt each other touch until about four months ago, 'cause I finally got Invisalign about a year ago, and my, I've been expanding my, my mouth and my teeth out. And it's crazy, the more research I'm doing, I feel like I just did this to myself because of my breathing patterns, especially at night, 'cause my mouth was just always open and relaxed as opposed to shut. That was one theory I wanted to have, uh, clarified from you. Another theory, I listened to a doctor of dentistry tell me that almost all disease comes through the mouth, uh, that we pick up. Almost all of it comes through the mouth, from ingesting, from breathing, all these different things. And the reason why people that breathe through the nose are usually healthier is because they're not breathing in the, the viruses or the disease that we might carry with the filtration system through the nose that catches it a lot more. Is that accurate as well?

James Nestor 7:02 So the first part of that, looking at the mouth and teeth. So why do we get our teeth straightened? We get our teeth straightened because they grow in crooked.

Lewis Howes 7:11 Yeah.

James Nestor 7:11 Why do they grow in crooked? 'Cause they have a smaller playing field. They have a smaller mouth to grow in straight. So the Western approach to this, and this wasn't always this way, is let's remove more teeth from a mouth-

Lewis Howes 7:24 [laughs]

James Nestor 7:24 ... that's already crowded.

Lewis Howes 7:26 Yeah.

James Nestor 7:26 And what's gonna happen? The mouth is gonna get smaller. So as this mouth gets smaller and smaller and smaller, your airway goes from this to this. So all of these orthodontists, and I probably talked to 20 of them, right, have said that there is this big wave coming, [laughs] and we're gonna look at what we've done 10 years from now and be horrified.

Lewis Howes 7:51 Wow.

James Nestor 7:51 Because the physics are there. Small mouth, smaller, smaller airway. It, it's not too hard to get your head around, but the question is, what do we do about it? We acknowledge this problem. And your story, I've heard this 100 times-

Lewis Howes 8:06 Really?

James Nestor 8:06 ... [laughs] from different people. I've had extractions, I've had braces, I've had head gear. My mouth is messed up. My breathing was messed up. You hear this from everyone. And, uh, it, it, it was pretty shocking to me to, to realize that breathing could be affected so significantly.

Lewis Howes 8:24 Isn't it interesting that we focus a lot on what we eat, how we sleep? We focus on hydration, nutrition, working out. But we can go a long time without eating or drinking something, but we can't go a long time without breathing the right way, and yet we hardly ever focus on the art of practicing how to breathe. Isn't it amazing that a lot of challenges we're faced with as humans, whether it be our teeth, our breath ways, inflammation, the ability to, uh, exert energy in workouts or whatever it may be, are all affected from our ability to breathe or a lack of understanding how to breathe? Are we supposed to breathe through our chest? Are we supposed to breathe through more of our diaphragm? When do we breathe? How do our ancestors know this instinctively and we don't?

James Nestor 9:14 Our ancestors didn't need to know this, just like they didn't need to know the latest CrossFit exercise to stay fit.

Lewis Howes 9:20 [laughs]

James Nestor 9:20 Just like they didn't need to know what foods to eat to be healthy because they were living in a very different world than our own. Our ancestors weren't doing pushups or burpees, right? [laughs] They didn't need to because they were walking for four hours a day. They didn't need to avoid sugars or high carb foods 'cause they were eating everything natural and raw. So when it comes to breathing, we have this amazing organ called our nose, which dictates so much of how the air should be coming in and how we should be using it. It's harder to breathe through your nose, right?

Lewis Howes 9:53 It is.

James Nestor 9:53 It takes more time. It pressurizes it. That's all good because that allows your lungs to absorb more oxygen. You get 20% more oxygen breathing through your nose than you do equivalent breaths through your mouth.

Lewis Howes 10:06 Why is that?

James Nestor 10:07 So because of how long it takes, because of the pressure, and because of a significant release of nitric oxide, which is in our sinus cavities. Nitrous oxide, and it's not, um, uh, it's not nitrous, it's nitric oxide, so don't go out and, and, uh, you know, uh, get those little things that fill up balloons or whipped cream and do them.

Lewis Howes 10:29 That's not good.

James Nestor 10:29 You will get very high.

Lewis Howes 10:31 Yeah.

James Nestor 10:31 You want nitric oxide, which is the stuff that is released when people take Viagra or other sexual, um, uh-

Lewis Howes 10:39 Hm. Interesting

James Nestor 10:40 ... sex-performing drugs, so enhancing drugs.

Lewis Howes 10:42 So breathing through your nose can make you more aroused.

James Nestor 10:46 I wouldn't go so far as to say that, but I will say, um, arousal comes with a relaxation, a parasympathetic response. An orgasm is associated with a sympathetic response. We calm ourselves parasympathetically with slow breaths. We arouse ourselves with breaths.

Lewis Howes 11:09 Hm.

James Nestor 11:09 So you could see how when, whenever you, you happen to be coupling with, with whomever, your breath is following the, the arc of the experience in a lot of ways, and that, that's not by accident. Those, those two things are, are very uniquely combined there.

Lewis Howes 11:25 You've been studying this for a while now, and you were doing, like, uh, deep dive, uh, studies as well before that, in water and things like that. This seems like this is something that's been fascinating you to research and understand. What have been the three biggest findings that you've realized that were kind of shocking or just big eye-openers that you realized you were doing the complete opposite of, or it's been i- impacting you in such a negative way that you've now changed in your daily lifestyle?

James Nestor 11:54 I think the first one is breathing too much. A lot of us think that by breathing more, we are getting more oxygen to our hungry cells in our bodies. False. We are doing the opposite, and I'll show you what I mean by that. Right now, if you take 10 to 20 big breaths- [breathes] You're gonna feel some lightness in your head, you're gonna feel some tingling in your fingers. If you keep breathing that way, your extremities will get a little cooler. That's not from an increase of oxygen, but from a lack of circulation in those areas. So by breathing slowly, you actually can increase circulation and delivering, deliver more oxygen to these areas.

Lewis Howes 12:32 Really?

James Nestor 12:33 So-

Lewis Howes 12:33 So, uh, so if I'm in a, a, a cold state, I go outside, I'm, you know, I'm from Ohio and it's wintertime, and it's cold, and usually we're, like, shivering or [breathes] . You're saying we should be actually slowing our breath in that cold state to allow us to get more oxygen, or what does that mean?

James Nestor 12:51 It, it depends what you're wearing, it depends how cold it is, it depends on who you are, what, what your fat content is-

Lewis Howes 12:58 Gotcha

James Nestor 12:58 ... in your body. But having said that, there are numerous breathing techniques that allow people to sit in the snow for hours at a time and not get frostbite-

Lewis Howes 13:08 Okay

James Nestor 13:08 ... and not get hypothermia, and scientists are still wondering how the hell do they do it?

Lewis Howes 13:13 [laughs] Right, right.

James Nestor 13:13 You can see videos of these monks, they put 'em in a... Harvard Medical School researcher put these guys in a cold room, put a wet sheet over them, they breathed in this way, and they dried the sheet. So within about-

Lewis Howes 13:27 They dried the sheet?

James Nestor 13:28 That's right. And you can... This is all available on YouTube. It's available in a study published in Nature, which is the most esteemed scientific journal out there.

Lewis Howes 13:38 And there's obviously lots of studies with Wim Hof, who I know you've connected with. I was in Poland with Wim. I took a trip with, uh, 13 guys that I sent there earlier this year and got to experience this firsthand with him and, and experiencing it as well. So what types of, uh... So that's one thing, that, you know, this fast breathing, uh, is not the, the way you should go in general, depending on all these factors, but more slow breathing, uh, to help you kind of get the oxygen through your extremities. What's the next thing?

James Nestor 14:11 When you're working out, a good thing to do is to practice breathing less. So there's slow breathing and there's less breathing, and these are two different things. 'Cause if you're breathing slow but you're taking in a larger volume, that is still breathing at your metabolic rate. But by decreasing your breathing, something called hypoventilation training, which is getting huge right now, you can mimic the effects of altitude training.

Lewis Howes 14:34 No way.

James Nestor 14:35 You... Yes. You can release more EPO, um, build more red blood cells, um, and, and all of these things. That's what Lance got, got busted for, shooting up EPO. But you can do this naturally, and they've, they've been doing so many studies in this. Xavier Warrain's in, in Paris has been doing studies in this, and various Olympians have, have adopted this breathing technique. It's not fun, because the one need in life is to breathe.

Lewis Howes 15:02 Is to breathe. [laughs]

James Nestor 15:04 So I've done it. Uh, not fun, but it is amazing to feel your body compensating. Instead of having your fingers cold, just everything is hot because you've just got blood pumping throughout your body. Um, so pretty interesting stuff.

Lewis Howes 15:20 About a month ago I committed to doing my first marathon, so I've been doing longer runs, which is not fun for me. And, uh, I've been a, I would say a, a high-level performing athlete most of my life, from playing professional football back in the day to playing on the USA Men's National Handball Team currently for the last 10 years. And just as an active person, uh, doing a lot of different sports. It's really hard to slow your breathing down when you are sprinting, when you're running fast long distances, when you're doing a CrossFit type of workout. Is it healthy to, to slow it down when your body, your heart rate is pumping so fast and it saying, "I need to breathe"? Is it good to say, "Okay, let me restrict it right now, breathe slower," when it feels like your heart is gonna pump out of your chest?

James Nestor 16:07 What you want to be doing is be breathing all the time within your metabolic need. So you don't want to be over-breathing, you don't want to be under-breathing. But so many of us are conditioned to over-breathe all the time.

Lewis Howes 16:20 Mm-hmm.

James Nestor 16:20 That's what I'm saying breathing less can be very beneficial. To wanna be as efficient-

Lewis Howes 16:26 Mm

James Nestor 16:26 ... especially in athletics, especially in performance, why do you want to go expend more energy to do something when you could expend less energy to work at that same level? Which means you can push it harder, you can run faster, you can run further. And they've done studies with, with people who have been running marathons and looked at their heart rates mouth-breathing versus nasal-breathing, and one guy, when he was nasal-breathing, you know, uh, 26 miles, heart rate was the same the whole time-

Lewis Howes 16:57 Really?

James Nestor 16:57 ... because he was pivoting into his parasympathetic state. This is the state in which your body is allowed to use oxygen most efficiently. You know, as Westerners, we're just like, "Cram it in, cram it in. Throw out what we don't want. Cram it in." You know that it's most efficient and it's best for your body to be working right in line with its, its coherence.

Lewis Howes 17:19 Mm-hmm.

James Nestor 17:19 So right in line with its needs. You wouldn't get in a sports car and just rev it at every stop sign-

Lewis Howes 17:25 Mm

James Nestor 17:25 ... and just completely pin the RPMs everywhere you go. The motor's gonna wear out, right? Our body is the same thing.

Lewis Howes 17:32 Is there ever a time as an athlete pushing the limits that's good to breathe through your mouth?

James Nestor 17:39 You would have to talk to my buddy Brian Mackenzie, who deals with, um, elite athletes all the time. I think once you get to a certain threshold, to a certain stage, I'm talking top-tier athletes here, right?

Lewis Howes 17:52 Mm-hmm.

James Nestor 17:52 Then you can start exploring that in your zone five, your zone four. But what he's told me, and what four other breathing therapists have told me, is never work out harder than you can breathe correctly. So this doesn't mean when you're, uh, you know, about ready to dunk on someone and it's the finals in the NBA, you can't open your mouth-

Lewis Howes 18:14 [laughs]

James Nestor 18:15 ... and you're just slamming on someone. That's fine. What I'm focusing on is habitual-

Lewis Howes 18:21 Like 90% of the time you should be breathing through your nose. Even when you're pushing your boundaries as an athlete and you feel like you can't get the oxygen in, are you saying that if you're training properly, the body should start to adapt and be able to-

James Nestor 18:35 That's exactly what I'm saying.

Lewis Howes 18:37 Yeah.

James Nestor 18:37 And there's 40 years of research with Dr. John Douillard who has proven that you get more oxygen breathing-

Lewis Howes 18:43 Wow

James Nestor 18:43 ... through your nose. So why do you want... If, if... And, and breathing deeply. If you think about breath, okay? You take in a breath, it's gonna go into your mouth, it's gonna go into your throat, it's gonna go into your, your bronchi here, but it takes a while to actually get to your lungs. So why would you wanna breathe a bunch of very short, shallow breaths? You're not using that air. So 50% of it is going into your body and out without ever being-

Lewis Howes 19:11 Wow

James Nestor 19:11 ... by breathing slower and deeper you can increase your efficiency by 35%-

Lewis Howes 19:18 Mm

James Nestor 19:18 ... over breathing shallow. So, and this is something I was hooked up with a Stanford experiment with pulse, with a pulse oximeter on a bike and pushing it as hard as I could, breathing through my nose at a rate of six breaths per minute, which is about a quarter. And I said, "I have to be, my O2 has to be just sinking now." It stayed the same the whole time.

Lewis Howes 19:40 Six breaths a minute?

James Nestor 19:42 We were... This was all through the nose. We were trying to find the breaking point of when I was losing oxygen. But what dictates that need to breathe is not oxygen, it is carbon dioxide. So if you-

Lewis Howes 19:55 In the, in the muscles or in the blood? What is that?

James Nestor 19:59 It's in the, it's in the blood, yes.

Lewis Howes 20:00 Yeah.

James Nestor 20:00 CO2 is, is what we off-gas. I'm blowing off CO2 there, right? So if you were to exhale and to hold your breath, you're gonna feel that nagging need to breathe. It's not oxygen. That's increasing levels of CO2. So once you acknowledge that and understand that an increase of CO2 can actually be very beneficial, it changes your relationship with how you breathe.

Lewis Howes 20:25 So we want to increase CO2 in the body 'cause more CO2 will mean we need to breathe less?

James Nestor 20:34 More CO2 will allow oxygen to disassociate from red blood cells more easily. To be clear, people with emphysema, people with COVID, you don't need any more CO2. I'm talking about healthy, healthy people-

Lewis Howes 20:48 Mm

James Nestor 20:48 ... who don't have underlying conditions. An increase of CO2, including for asthmatics and panic sufferers, has been found to be profoundly beneficial because most of us breathe too much, which guess what happens? We offload too much CO2, and without that CO2 our bodies have to work harder to get oxygen. This is so complicated. Sorry you have to go through this process. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 21:13 Yeah.

James Nestor 21:13 But, but especially for a journalist. I w- never went to medical school, had to learn this stuff, but we've known it for 120 years, it's just few people are paying attention to it.

Lewis Howes 21:22 You know,

Lewis Howes 21:22 when I do the Wim Hof Method and when I'm with Wim and he's like, "Okay, let's do a few rounds," and then breathe all the air out so there's no air in your lungs, and then you can do more pushups than you've ever done before with no, I guess, air stored in the lungs but it's oxygenated throughout the body. What are your thoughts on techniques like that for performance?

James Nestor 21:46 I think they're fantastic, and I think the science is very clear on that, whether or not it's Wim Hof Method. And by the way, Wim i- h- makes no claims that he invented this stuff, right?

Lewis Howes 21:55 Right.

James Nestor 21:56 These breathing techniques have been around for thousands and thousands of years, and it's no coincidence that Wim Hof Method does the exact same thing as Sudarshan Kriya, which does the exact same thing as pranayamas. They all have you really breathe, hold your breath, or breathe really slowly, and they go through these cycles. So what you're doing there is you're offloading CO2, you are uploading oxygen. When you hold your breath, that CO2 goes up, that oxygen releases into all your cells, and you start all over again. So, um, I found... I, I try to do Wim's breathing, Tummo, whatever you wanna call it, you know, four, five times a week. I'm a huge fan of it. I see big benefits of it. And with breathwork and athletes, uh, trust me on this, in the next five years it's already happening, there is gonna be an explosion of focus on breathing. There used to be, we forgot about it for 40 years, and here we are again.

Lewis Howes 22:55 If someone's only got five minutes a day, what's the best breathing strategy routine to just give them a boost or get them more intentional and grounded for the day? What would that be for you? Is it a set of cycles? Is it a deep breathing? Is it a calm breathing? What, what would you recommend?

James Nestor 23:13 Everyone's different. What they need is different. So this is why these blanket prescriptions-

Lewis Howes 23:19 Mm

James Nestor 23:19 ... for entire populations don't really work too well, except for a subsect of people. But there is a certain foundation of breathing. Doesn't matter if you're an asthmatic, if you have anxiety, if you're an athlete, you can all benefit from. So these steps are breathe through your nose all the time. I don't care if your nose-

Lewis Howes 23:37 Mm

James Nestor 23:37 ... is clogged. If it's clogged, find a way of clearing it. [laughs] You have to breathe through your nose, people.

Lewis Howes 23:42 Yeah.

James Nestor 23:42 The second one is to breathe slowly, to breathe less of course, and to exhale fully. A lot of us are conditioned, this is very typical Western mindset, to put more and more in, more and more in, air on top of air. In order to get a full breath of air, you need to get the old breath out and you need to focus on your exhales and exhalations. So a simple thing, and just because something's simple doesn't mean it's effective. Look at nutrition. The most simple nutrition is the most effective. A- after 50 years of trying to find ways of hacking, "I'm gonna pull this vitamin out and put it in this powder," we're back at square one. Oh, whole food.

Lewis Howes 24:21 [laughs] Yeah, just eat vegetables. Yeah. [laughs]

James Nestor 24:24 [laughs] We've been saying this for a long time.

Lewis Howes 24:26 Oh, yeah.

James Nestor 24:27 So breathing is the same. If there's one piece of advice I would give to people, beyond that nasal part, is try to breathe in to a count of about five or six, relax yourself, don't challenge yourself, breathe out to that same count. If you wanna relax yourself even more, extend the exhale. Nature is simple yet subtle, and your body will respond to this. And if you have heart rate variability monitor, if you have a pulse ox, look at what happens to your heart rate, look at what happens to your heart rate variability when you slow down the breaths and you breathe in a rhythm. This affects how we think.

Lewis Howes 25:03 Hmm.

James Nestor 25:03 It affects the emotional centers in the brain. So it affects the entire body because of course it does. It's breathing. It's our most basic biological need.

Lewis Howes 25:13 Why do you think we have adopted this other style once we... when we knew this 40, 60 years ago, hundreds of years ago, we've- we've known this. Is it just a change in the society or something else?

James Nestor 25:26 Well, some of it is anatomical. So we, our faces have fundamentally changed, as we were just talking about earlier.

Lewis Howes 25:33 Yeah.

James Nestor 25:33 That's part of it. So even if you focus on healthy breathing at night, you have sleep apnea, you have snoring, because our faces have changed. Some of it is environmental. If you think of what happened in the Victorian era, people started wearing corsets, okay? Really tight vests, really tight belts. What happens when you do that? You can't take a deep breath.

Lewis Howes 25:54 You can't breathe. [laughs]

James Nestor 25:55 Add to that pollution, add to that allergens-

Lewis Howes 25:59 Huh

James Nestor 25:59 ... add to that stress, add to that, um, working in an office where you're in a chair like this, and you're stressed out, and you can't take a deep breath even if you want to, and you've got this perfect cocktail of illness. And if you don't believe me, go look at what's happened to people in the past 50 years, from BMI to asthma to COPD. I mean, things are out of control, and it's so common now that people just think, "Ah, yeah, I snore. My wife has sleep apnea. I s- I, you know, sleep in another room." There's nothing normal about this.

Lewis Howes 26:33 What's the best way to reverse sleep apnea?

James Nestor 26:36 It really depends where your sleep apnea is, nasopharynx, oropharynx, hypopharynx. Um, for a lot of people, this is an issue from... And I'm not saying everyone.

Lewis Howes 26:47 Mm-hmm.

James Nestor 26:47 I would never say that. Some people absolutely need surgery. But so we have this muscle tube, it's our throat, and all these soft tissues at the back of our mouth. When you just eat soft foods, which is 95% of the diet today, even what's considered healthy, yogurt, oatmeal, avocados, all this stuff is soft. All of those areas get flabby-

Lewis Howes 27:11 Hmm

James Nestor 27:11 ... just like anything else would get flabby.

Lewis Howes 27:12 It's a workout in your mouth, yeah.

James Nestor 27:14 You need to work them out. So there's this whole new branch of science called myofunctional therapy, where they have these kids and adults do exercises with their tongues. This is an extremely powerful muscle, right? And if it's not working out, it's gonna get flabby.

Lewis Howes 27:33 [laughs] Did you have a lot of sleep apnea yourself?

James Nestor 27:35 Not too much. I was snoring for a little while, years and years ago. Um, I'm surprised because I've, uh, you know, I've had extractions, I've had all the other problems. But I had numerous respiratory issues. I was working out all the time, eating all the right food. I was surfing, I was boxing, I was sleeping eight hours. Kept getting pneumonia, kept getting bronchitis.

Lewis Howes 27:58 Really?

James Nestor 27:58 Kept wheezing. And was told, like, people would just like, "Yeah, you're getting old, dude. This is how it is." I said, "Eh, I don't quite believe that." So once I really learned about what's happened to our airways, um, basically everyone, and once you understand what's happened, you can figure out ways of fixing it. So for people with mild or moderate sleep apnea, and anyone can look up these studies online, these oropharyngeal exercises, I'm not gonna do them now 'cause they- they look pretty weird, but they have had a significant effect on snoring and sleep apnea. Work out for your mouth.

Lewis Howes 28:33 Hmm.

James Nestor 28:33 Why not? It's free, right?

Lewis Howes 28:35 What are they called? Oral what?

James Nestor 28:36 Oropharyngeal exercises, and I'm happy to send you a few links.

Lewis Howes 28:42 Yeah, I gotta check this out. Is there a benefit with practicing breathing through one nostril and another nostril for the brain, for memory, for health? Is this a thing?

James Nestor 28:55 It is. And if anyone is not driving, I guess you could do this driving, um, but you can just take a finger or thumb or whatever you want and just block your right nostril and breathe in through your left nostril. So there's been... And breathe in and out through your left nostril. There's about 20 years of studies showing that when you breathe through this channel, you will, you will lower blood pressure, your heart rate will lower, and you will stimulate more of the right, quote-unquote, "creative side" of your brain.

Lewis Howes 29:28 Hmm.

James Nestor 29:28 Now, the right nostril, inhaling through that has the opposite effect. It stimulates you. Blood pressure goes up, heart rate goes up. So there's this thing in yoga called alternate nostril breathing, right? That has you use these different channels to elicit different moods or put you into different states.

Lewis Howes 29:47 How often should you be practicing this? Is this like a one minute a day type of thing? Is this every hour on the hour you do this for a few seconds? What do you think is the best process?

James Nestor 29:58 Well, you shouldn't have to be practicing it at all. And I say that because [laughs] going back to that we shouldn't be focused, have to focus on our diet or exercise.

Lewis Howes 30:08 Right.

James Nestor 30:08 But the modern era is requiring us to. And what I mean by that, um, in regards to your nose is your nostrils are covered with erectile tissue, and this erectile tissue inflames and grows flaccid just like the erectile tissue you know where. So our noses throughout the day, when I learned this down at Stanford, it just blew my mind. One nostril will naturally open for about a half an hour to three or four hours and then gently close, and the other one will naturally open.

Lewis Howes 30:38 All day?

James Nestor 30:40 All day long.

Lewis Howes 30:41 This is happening to us.

James Nestor 30:42 It's going back. Sometimes they're both open, and then they both... So your body-

Lewis Howes 30:47 It's kinda like when you have a little congestion, sometimes it's on one side and it's like it comes out the other nose [laughs] like five hours later and you're like, "What's going on?"

James Nestor 30:54 This is, this is the cycle in, in our noses that our-

Lewis Howes 30:57 Ah

James Nestor 30:57 ... bodies naturally do. And if you think about how breathing air through these different nostrils affects our physiology, affects us mentally, what a fantastic thing-

Lewis Howes 31:08 Oh

James Nestor 31:08 ... that our bodies are, are turning on the, the throttle, putting on the brakes-

Lewis Howes 31:13 Crazy

James Nestor 31:14 ... back and forth. So if you're breathing through your mouth like-

Lewis Howes 31:18 Look at that

James Nestor 31:18 ... this guy, you get none of this. Zero.

Lewis Howes 31:23 Wow. It's kinda like nature's night and day. Like one nostril maybe, or like when the waves come in and when they go back. It's like allowing nature to happen inside of your nasal cavity, which affects the rest of your body and the mind, I'm assuming. This is fascinating. Do you know how often that is? Is that like every few hours it changes? What's the rhythm?

James Nestor 31:46 It's about every 30 minutes to three or four hours it switches.

Lewis Howes 31:50 Wow.

James Nestor 31:50 And once you know this, you could... Right now my right is more, um, obstructed than my left. My left is a lot more open. Ancient yogis believe that all humans share these same patterns, and they did a study a couple decades ago where they looked at people and had them gauge how they were breathing throughout their noses, and when the moon was at its strongest-

Lewis Howes 32:15 [laughs] Stop. No. [laughs] Come on

James Nestor 32:17 ... during a full moon and during-

Lewis Howes 32:20 No

James Nestor 32:20 ... a new moon, everyone was synchronized.

Lewis Howes 32:23 [laughs]

James Nestor 32:24 So, um-

Lewis Howes 32:25 No way

James Nestor 32:25 ... this-

Lewis Howes 32:26 What do you mean? Like one nose is, is clogged during, uh, for everyone during a new moon or something?

James Nestor 32:31 Yes.

Lewis Howes 32:32 Well, [laughs] this is crazy.

James Nestor 32:33 That's, that... More, more studies need to be done of course.

Lewis Howes 32:35 Right.

James Nestor 32:35 This is one study.

Lewis Howes 32:37 Sure.

James Nestor 32:37 But this is why I included... This, this stuff sounded insane to me, but there it is on the National Institute of Health, um, Library.

Lewis Howes 32:46 Fantastic.

James Nestor 32:47 So, uh-

Lewis Howes 32:48 This is fascinating. So how long have you been practicing this new way of breathing for yourself personally?

James Nestor 32:54 So people think that since I wrote this book about breathing, I'm now just the badass breather.

Lewis Howes 32:59 Yeah.

James Nestor 32:59 I'm just, I got it locked in. I'm f- no. I am a science journalist and-

Lewis Howes 33:04 [laughs]

James Nestor 33:04 ... tried to take an objective view of this. Yeah, I picked up a few tricks from the experts in the field, which I have felt completely transformed from, but I am not the guru, um, to be disseminating, you know, uh, "You have this problem, breathe this way." That's, there are other people that do this so well. Uh, having said that, again, this stuff is easy. This isn't requiring you to go keto. It's not requiring you to go vegan. It's not requiring you to run 10 miles a day.

Lewis Howes 33:35 Mm.

James Nestor 33:36 We carry our breath with us all day long, and we can focus that breath, and you will see instant benefits from doing this. The science is very clear.

Lewis Howes 33:44 Uh,

Lewis Howes 33:45 have you seen through the research and the science people applying this new way of breathing, or I guess old way of breathing, uh, that people are able to do things like cure asthma or other respiratory problems, uh, through a healthier breathing technique? Have you seen this?

James Nestor 34:02 So I've talked to dozens and dozens and dozens of these people, people who had had asthma for 50 years, who had been on bronchodilators, oral steroids. If you stay on oral steroids for too long, it starts impacting your bones, um-

Lewis Howes 34:16 Mm

James Nestor 34:16 ... which is why increased risks of osteoporosis, autoimmune diseases. I mean, it, worsening asthma. It's bad news. And again, this is no, no controversy about this. But what do you do? You can't get off this stuff because then you'll die of an asthma attack. So, uh, this story was written about in The New York Times about how someone, um, a, he was a violin maker-

Lewis Howes 34:39 Mm

James Nestor 34:39 ... in Vermont just started breathing in this different way, breathing within his metabolic needs instead of over-breathing. Asthmatics over-breathe all the time. They breathe through their mouth. He was able to get rid of oral steroids that he'd been on for decades, and he was going from 20 pumps of a bronchodilator to I think two a day.

Lewis Howes 34:59 Geez.

James Nestor 34:59 And I read this in The New York Times, so this is not a sketchy journal, and I said, "What is going on here?" So I spent months and months talking to the top researchers in this field. And a lot of people think that asthma, "Oh, I inherited it. There's nothing. It's an incurable disease. I can't do anything about it. I have to stay on these drugs." That is not true. If you look at the scientific literature-

Lewis Howes 35:21 Mm

James Nestor 35:21 ... and if you look at these people who have done NIH studies into asthma and breathing and what a huge impact it's gonna have. I wanna be perfectly clear, I'm not a doctor.

Lewis Howes 35:31 Mm.

James Nestor 35:32 I'm not a breathing therapist, okay? I'm not saying go ditch your bronchodilators. No. I'm saying that you should, if you have asthma, it would be worth your time to explore how breathing can help benefit you, how it can help blunt the symptoms. But don't do anything per this advice.

Lewis Howes 35:50 Right. Right, right. Yeah.

James Nestor 35:51 I just need to put that big label on there.

Lewis Howes 35:52 Of course. And what, and what would you say are some best practices from your research when our nasal passages are congested? How do we... We can't breathe through your nose for five days for whatever reason. What's the strategy there? Have you, have you heard anyone share that?

James Nestor 36:08 So some people, their noses are so messed up they need surgical interventions. Absolutely. But for the majority of us, including me, I, I was a perfect candidate for surgery, right? Broken this nose about four times, basketball, surfing, like-

Lewis Howes 36:23 Oof

James Nestor 36:23 ... I'm a complete mess. But I wanted to see what my body could do, and I was able to restore so much of that damage through, through breathing to open up these passageways. So a nice trick if you are congested is to exhale, and you hold your breath, and you hold your nostrils, and you move your head back and forth, you move your head up and down until you feel a significant need to breathe. Then you calmly exhale through your nose. And inhale again, and then wait about 45 seconds to a minute and do that same thing over again. So what you're doing is you're increasing that magical molecule, carbon dioxide, which is a vasodilator, which helps to open your nose. So there's a lot of YouTube-

Lewis Howes 37:14 Wow

James Nestor 37:14 ... tutorials on this, and, uh, uh, it's free, you know?

Lewis Howes 37:18 Right. So, so first close your nose, then exhale, or exhale then close your nose?

James Nestor 37:23 You can exhale, then close your nose.

Lewis Howes 37:25 Get all, get all the ai- uh, air out at first?

James Nestor 37:28 Yep.

Lewis Howes 37:28 Then close your nose, go up and down, side to side, then exhale more or then inhale?

James Nestor 37:34 You can inhale through your nose from that.

Lewis Howes 37:36 Then inhale through your nose.

James Nestor 37:37 If it's still congested, just be very calm about this. Don't [sniffs]

Lewis Howes 37:42 Right. [laughs]

James Nestor 37:43 Just calm- calmly inhale and try that again. Patrick McKeown, um, who's been doing this stuff for 20 years, has a lot of free tutorials on YouTube that you can check.

Lewis Howes 37:52 He seems pretty fascinating with his research, yeah.

James Nestor 37:55 Uh, th- this guy is someone who had severe asthma, severe health problems, was getting no help from anyone. Figured out how to breathe, now has zero symptoms of asthma and is teaching thousands of asthmatics what he did.

Lewis Howes 38:10 Wow.

James Nestor 38:10 He was a business guy, right? He had no intention of doing this, and his life took a hard left turn into this world. So he's scientific, he's a, he's a great practitioner. He's, uh, he healed himself through it-

Lewis Howes 38:23 Wow

James Nestor 38:23 ... so it's worth listening to him.

Lewis Howes 38:25 For those who struggle with extreme anxiety or panic attacks, it seems like more and more people are dealing with anxiety and panic attacks, what's the easiest way to calm down using breathing that you've discovered?

James Nestor 38:40 Slow your breathing down. So there was a study about 10 years ago, NIH study by Alicia Meuret down at Southern Methodist University. She went to Harvard and Stanford, and she gathered a bunch of different people who were suffering from panic, and she just had them slow down their breathing and increase their CO2 levels. I know I keep saying CO2, but, but this is, this is the stuff, people. And something like 96% of these people, a year after the study concluded, said they were much improved or very much improved. The majority of them stopped having panic attacks.

Lewis Howes 39:20 Mm.

James Nestor 39:20 Because what happens when we're panicked, okay? I'm sitting here with you. Oh, I feel claustrophobic. [panting] The more you breathe like that, the more you're gonna exacerbate and hasten that attack. So when you feel it coming on, you don't [sniffs] stop and take a deep breath. You stop and take a slow and light breath into your lungs, right? And control your body and control your breathing. And this has such a profound effect on people. And again, that, that study, um, it was, uh, published, top scientific journal. It's available for everyone. It just... I, I find it so bizarre, and I should mention that my father-in-law's a pulmonologist, my brother-in-law is an ER doc. I'm a huge fan of Western medicine. But it's so bizarre that people with panic, people with asthma, no one's looking at how they're breathing, right? They're, they're given these, these pills and powders and, and put on their way. And the science is, is very clear on this stuff. It can have a really profound effect.

Lewis Howes 40:26 Does the mind or thoughts, when we're in a panic or stressed or fight or flight moment, does the mind or thoughts influence the breathing, or does the breathing influence the mind?

James Nestor 40:38 Great question. It goes both ways. So what you're thinking is gonna influence how you're breathing, but the wonderful thing is sometimes you can't ca- take control of those thoughts, right? You get nervous. You can't turn that off. But you can take control of your breathing, and 80% of the messages are coming from the body to the brain, not to the brai- not from the brain to the body. So just by allowing yourself, think whatever you wanna think, but slow down your breathing to the way that you would be breathing when you're calm, and you will start shooting calming messages into your brain-

Lewis Howes 41:16 Interesting

James Nestor 41:16 ... and you can take control of those, those states. And this is something that Huberman has been studying for years down at Stanford, right? With the, with the phrenic nerve and the way that the diaphragm moves. How that diaphragm moves is gonna affect the signals that your brain is gonna get, gonna get, and it's gonna affect how you're gonna be processing things.

Lewis Howes 41:37 How the diaphragm moves?

James Nestor 41:39 So the diaphragm is this amazing muscle that sits underneath the lungs. The lungs don't inflate and deflate themselves, right? They need something to do it. So we have this crazy muscle, it looks like a, a parachute or an umbrella, that when we breathe in, [inhales] that diaphragm goes down, and when we breathe out, that diaphragm goes up. So this rhythmic motion of this diaphragm, the diaphragm works as a pump. Some researchers have said the heart is a secondary pump. The diaphragm is the main pump. So when your s- when your diaphragm's going like this, it is sending panic signals to your brain. This is like-

Lewis Howes 42:17 Oh

James Nestor 42:18 ... you know, red alert, things are bad. But if your diaphragm is going like this, this is sending calming signals, right? And you're gonna-

Lewis Howes 42:26 So it's, so it's almost like you could be stressed out in your mind, but the moment or moments you start to slow your breathing, it's gonna send signal back to your mind that everything's g- better. You don't need to stress as much. So you, if you can control your body, you'll control your mind.

James Nestor 42:43 So guess what Navy SEALs do before they go in for some black ops mission, really intense stuff. They start breathing in a box pattern. Four in, hold four, exhale four, hold four. Four in, hold four. Imagine a box. If you look at what's happening there, you're in for four, but you are holding or exhaling for three-quarters of the time. So the longer you hold and the longer you exhale, the more you're gonna be eliciting that parasympathetic- ... that calming response. So these guys aren't going to sleep, right? They're trying to focus themselves-

Lewis Howes 43:18 Mm-hmm

James Nestor 43:18 ... to be the biggest badasses on the planet.

Lewis Howes 43:20 Right. [laughs]

James Nestor 43:21 To go take care of business in an efficient way. They can't have their brains just all over the place. "What? What did you say?" Panic. They can't panic, they're dead. So this is a technique that anyone can use. I mean, the vast majority of us aren't gonna be in that scenario, but we can breathe the way that they breathe and that so many other people do to focus our thoughts, to take, take advantage of our breathing to take over certain states, anxiety or anger.

Lewis Howes 43:51 Can you explain why the diaphragm is sometimes referred to as the second heart?

James Nestor 43:57 So the diaphragm, again, is this huge pump. It's almost like the heart is a sump pump, right? It's just doing all the other work, just the additional work. But the diaphragm is enormous, and as you're breathing in and out, it is pumping blood, okay? It is helping to pump blood. But it does something else. A lot of people view breathing as just a biochemical act, right? Getting oxygen in, getting CO2 out. It is a biomechanical act. So when the diaphragm goes down, it also softly massages the organs, which helps us leach out more lymph fluid. So it is the pump for lymph fluid.

Lewis Howes 44:36 Hmm.

James Nestor 44:36 So everything in the body should be moving. You know, you can think about it like a pond gets scummy, right? And a lot of stuff starts growing it because it's still water. That, that's not what happens with a river, and our bodies want-

Lewis Howes 44:50 Hmm

James Nestor 44:50 ... to act like a river. Things, things are static for too long, does not like that. That's where problems occur.

Lewis Howes 44:57 What's, uh, better for the body and your health: chest breathing or lower belly breathing? Like, where is the diaphragm sitting? In, is it in between the two? Is it a mixture of both?

James Nestor 45:09 So a lot of us are chest breathing throughout the day, and when we chest breathe, this is associated with a sympathetic or fight or flight response. What happens when you get scared? [panting] But instead, people are doing this all, all day. So when you breathe like that, a sympathetic response, it's amazing. This is what has kept our species alive.

Lewis Howes 45:31 Hmm.

James Nestor 45:32 It focuses us. It shifts blood from less, uh, um, important organs to the heart and the skeletal muscles so we can, like, fight or we can run. But it's meant only to be in that state for shorts, short amounts of time. So if we stay in the sympathetic chest breathing state for too long, we are cutting off other organs-

Lewis Howes 45:56 Hmm

James Nestor 45:56 ... and a bunch of problems can happen in those organs because of that. I won't go down the laundry list. Just trust me on this. So to answer your question, you want to breathe lightly, fluidly, and deeply. This does not mean you have to just go for it every breath and push out your stomach. It means you should be breathing through your nose. Nasal breathings are, are deeper, okay? These go to the lower lobes. At the bottom of the lungs is where we have the largest profusion of blood, so that's where oxygen exchange can happen much more efficiently. So light, slow, and deep. That's how we should be breathing.

Lewis Howes 46:33 And less.

James Nestor 46:34 Ordinarily you would say breathe in line with your metabolic needs-

Lewis Howes 46:38 Got it

James Nestor 46:38 ... but I'm saying for the vast majority, less is, that's your metabolic need right there.

Lewis Howes 46:43 That's... Gotcha.

Lewis Howes 46:44 And is it true that our lungs get smaller as we age?

James Nestor 46:47 Absolutely.

Lewis Howes 46:47 And if, if so, can breathing practices prevent this from allowing us to have more expansive lungs?

James Nestor 46:54 So what happens from ages around 30 to 50, you're gonna lose about 15 to 16% of your lung capacity.

Lewis Howes 47:02 Oh, man, that sucks.

James Nestor 47:03 After 50, it just goes down very, very quickly.

Lewis Howes 47:07 That sucks.

James Nestor 47:08 So the pro- [laughs] Well, there's good news behind this.

Lewis Howes 47:10 [laughs]

James Nestor 47:10 I'm gonna depress you, then I'm gonna inspire you.

Lewis Howes 47:13 [laughs]

James Nestor 47:13 Backwards. So the problem is our ribs get a lot less flexible. Our intercostals get less flexible.

Lewis Howes 47:22 Hmm.

James Nestor 47:22 But what's great about this is you can reverse that damage. Guess what yoga does? I'm gonna have you reach your arm like this, [inhales] breathe into this lung, and be flexible. And now [inhales] breathe into this lung. So yoga is essentially just allowing us not only to maintain our lung capacity, but increase it.

Lewis Howes 47:44 Hmm.

James Nestor 47:44 I've worked with free divers who have doubled their lung capacity, so. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 47:48 Doubled?

James Nestor 47:49 Average adult male, six liters. This guy had 12 liters. So I think he had-

Lewis Howes 47:54 Wow

James Nestor 47:54 ... he was abnormally large. I won't say quite doubled. Maybe 40 p- you know, 70% larger.

Lewis Howes 48:00 Wow.

James Nestor 48:01 So it's not uncommon to increase your lung ca- capacity 30% by, by, um, including these exercises, by breathing properly. And especially when we get older, this is so important. We don't wanna go down that entropy, right? And be sh- We at least wanna sustain it. If we can increase it, great.

Lewis Howes 48:21 What's the benefit to increasing our lung capacity?

James Nestor 48:24 It's the same benefit of having a larger gas tank in a car, right? So if you're driving cross-country, do you wanna stop and fill up every hour?

Lewis Howes 48:33 No.

James Nestor 48:33 Or do you wanna stop and fill up every six hours? [laughs]

Lewis Howes 48:37 Right. [laughs]

James Nestor 48:38 So by having larger lungs allows you to take fewer breaths and to get more oxygen with those breaths. It's about being efficient.

Lewis Howes 48:46 Hmm.

James Nestor 48:46 So when we're breathing slower and when we're breathing deeply into our lungs at our metabolic need, our heart can work so much more softly. We aren't overworking it. When we're breathing twice the amount into our chest, [panting] just feel your heart rate when you do that. The heart hates this. Why do you wanna overwork your heart? You should... It should just be doing what it needs to do, not compensating for your bad habits, and that's what this larger lung capacity, this softer, lower breathing allows you to do.

Lewis Howes 49:19 Is there anything that you've learned- And that doctors or scientists are saying is essential for us as human beings to practice that you don't practice? For instance, I know sugar is horrible. I know it's the root of all evil in the body, and developing cancers, and all these things, but I love sugar. You know, I'm better at it the more I know how horrible it is for me. I'm better at balancing that. But I still love [laughs] eating sugar, you know? So is there anything that you're like, "These things I should never do, but I still do it 'cause it's just a bad habit"?

James Nestor 49:53 Well, you're talking to a guy who just had a big old chunk of chocolate before I hopped on.

Lewis Howes 49:56 [laughs]

James Nestor 49:57 Yeah, so...

Lewis Howes 49:57 Good you, good thing you don't have... Good thing you're not with me right now, 'cause I'd be sharing that with you.

James Nestor 50:01 [laughs] I'm, I'm with you on that. You, you know, it's... I, I think it's a little ironic. In a lot of wellness circles, people are so stressed out about doing the right thing all the time that they're miserable.

Lewis Howes 50:14 Yeah.

James Nestor 50:14 To me, the point of wellness is to live a happier and longer life, so why do you wanna spend all your time beating yourself up for-

Lewis Howes 50:21 Yeah

James Nestor 50:21 ... eating a piece of chocolate or drinking a beer-

Lewis Howes 50:25 Right

James Nestor 50:25 ... you know? So I think in moderation is key. I... These breathing practices, like Wim Hof Method, Sudarshan Kriya, they've been found to be so effective for people with autoimmune problems, asthma, anxiety, depression. But just breathing those slow and easy breaths, um, can... There are so, so many benefits to that, and psychologists and psychiatrists have used this for people with anxiety and depression as well. So having said that, as long as you have this foundation of healthy breathing, just like with, with diet, as long as you have a foundation where you're eating a lot of vegetables, right? You're not eating a lot of, of highly processed carbs or not too much sugar, you can have a piece of cake. You can drink a beer. You can have a glass of wine. That's all fine. The same thing with breathing. If you're laughing really hard and you're breathing out of your mouth, who would tell you that's a bad thing, right? I'm talking about the habits, habitual breathing, the 90% of the day, even 80% of the day. If you adhere to healthy habits there, it's gonna have a downstream positive effect on your health, and the science, the studies, the data has really shown us that.

Lewis Howes 51:38 Pa... I was just trying to practice this as I was listening to you. Is there a way to communicate and speak, but also breathe through your nose? Like, while you're having a long speech for an hour on stage, n- do we practice breathing through the nose or out of the nose while you're speaking? I'm not even sure. Is that possible?

James Nestor 51:53 There is, but it's so awkward.

Lewis Howes 51:55 [laughs]

James Nestor 51:55 When you... And I'll, I'll tell you what I mean by that. When I was talking to these breathing therapists, some of these people on the phone, I thought, like, they had some, some problems-

Lewis Howes 52:04 [laughs]

James Nestor 52:04 ... with their brain because they would say this very fluid sentence, and they would keep talking, and they're still talking, they're still talking. Then they would go silent and go, [inhales] "And now I'm gonna talk some more, and talk some more."

Lewis Howes 52:17 [laughs]

James Nestor 52:17 So if-

Lewis Howes 52:18 Just not natural, yeah

James Nestor 52:19 ... if I did that on a radio interview or with you, it would be a fricking disaster.

Lewis Howes 52:25 Mm.

James Nestor 52:25 So as you can see, I'm breathing through my mouth, right? I'm trying to breathe through my nose when I'm listening, but these aren't healthy breathing habits, but I'm aware of it-

Lewis Howes 52:36 Mm-hmm

James Nestor 52:36 ... so that when I'm off this call, I can go and close my mouth, and breathe through my nose the rest of the time. So to answer your question, there is a proper way of doing this, but good luck with your friends if you, if you do this [laughs] in person.

Lewis Howes 52:48 [laughs] Yeah, right. Unless you're all breathing experts and you're a part of the same language.

James Nestor 52:53 And I've, I've talked to circles of people. [laughs] The conversations are really trippy. [laughs] It's like-

Lewis Howes 52:57 It takes 30 minutes to get a point across. It's like, come on. [laughs]

James Nestor 53:01 It's like someone gave you nitrous oxide. I knew nitrous oxide was gonna come back into that, so.

Lewis Howes 53:06 That's hilarious.

Lewis Howes 53:07 Is there any evidence thus far if training your breathing helps to fight or reduce symptoms for viruses, flu, COVID, anything that could be affecting the immune system and weakening it in a certain way?

James Nestor 53:23 I just talked to David, Dr. Haskam, about this, who has been studying how different habits can help defend our bodies better against COVID. I don't think he's too pumped, um, for, uh, this herd immunity thing. He said our best line of defense is ourselves. And so they have looked at how breathing plays this role in inflammation. So inflammation is behind... Show me the, the top 10 killers in the world and I guarantee inflammation is behind 90% of them, even 95% of them. So how we breathe affects inflammation in the body.

Lewis Howes 53:58 Really? Mm.

James Nestor 53:58 If we are stressed out right now and [panting] you know how we did that heavy breathing exercise and you felt some numbness in your fingers? That is inflammation, okay? That is blood not getting to these areas. So, so our, uh, arteries and our, and are becoming inflamed, so it's harder-

Lewis Howes 54:17 Mm

James Nestor 54:17 ... for blood to push through these places. That's, that's what it is. So breathing absolutely plays a role in this, and it, I should also note that there's been a ton of research looking into nasal breathing and how that is your first line of defense against COVID.

Lewis Howes 54:34 No way.

James Nestor 54:35 So not only does the nose filter out pathogens, and bacteria, and viruses, but Dr. Lewis Ignarro, who won the Nobel Prize in the '90s, has found that that release of nitric oxide interacts directly with viruses to kill them. So in the first-

Lewis Howes 54:55 No way.

James Nestor 54:55 Yes, in the first-

Lewis Howes 54:56 So breath- breathing out through the nose? Is that what that does, or?

James Nestor 54:58 Breathing through your nose at the whole, the whole time, okay?

Lewis Howes 55:03 In and out. In and out.

James Nestor 55:03 So, so not, not only is this, is this filtering, because we have nasal hairs, we have cilia, we have all these other structures, but the release of this nitric oxide... The first round of SARS, which was, like, 14 years ago, they would expose mammalian cells to nitric oxide, and those cells would live so much longer, and it's no coincidence there are 11 clinical trials right now looking into giving patients guess what? Nitric oxide to help them defeat COVID and to, to blunt the symptoms of COVID after it happens. We produce nitric oxide in our noses

Lewis Howes 55:39 So we don't produce it in our mouth?

James Nestor 55:42 We, we produce it throughout our bodies, but we get a much larger profusion through our noses. Our mouth specifically is not producing any nitric oxide. So if you hum, and if you hum on occasion, you increase your nitric oxide 15-fold.

Lewis Howes 55:59 [laughs]

James Nestor 56:00 15 times.

Lewis Howes 56:01 Wait. So humming, why? Just because you have your mouth closed and you're breathing through your nose?

James Nestor 56:06 It releases more nitric oxide, the vibrations of it. So they, uh, found this out 10 years ago, 12 years ago, and there's even been this one small study where this guy had, uh, chronic sinusitis, and he hummed at a prescribed time, four times a day, and he was able to clear his nose. I'm not saying this-

Lewis Howes 56:25 Shut up

James Nestor 56:25 ... I'm not saying this is gonna work for everyone, but I'm saying that the science is there. If you look at what nitric oxide interacts directly with path- pathogens to kill them. Okay?

Lewis Howes 56:37 That's their whole job.

James Nestor 56:39 It's, it, i- it's a-

Lewis Howes 56:40 Part of the job

James Nestor 56:40 ... va- vasodilator. It's part of what it does. Uh, remember-

Lewis Howes 56:44 Wow

James Nestor 56:45 ... uh, it's also Viagra. When you, when someone takes Viagra, they release more nitric oxide, which allows you know what to happen you know where.

Lewis Howes 56:54 So they release it, that means they're getting it out of their body? They're getting it, releasing it inside their body?

James Nestor 56:59 They're releasing more nitric oxide within... It stimulates the release of more nitric oxide.

Lewis Howes 57:04 Inside the blood.

James Nestor 57:05 That's right. That's right.

Lewis Howes 57:07 Got it. Yeah, you're not, you're not breathing out nitric oxide. You're breathing out carbon, right?

James Nestor 57:13 You, you breathe out carbon dioxide. That's right. It's really hard to hum and inhale.

Lewis Howes 57:19 Mm-hmm. [laughs]

James Nestor 57:20 They were looking at humming and exhalation. And it's, it's also important to note that nitric oxide has a bioavailability of about two to six seconds, so you have to constantly keep producing it, which is why you need to constantly... It really helps to constantly be breathing through your nose, not just, "I'm gonna breathe through my nose for, for five minutes and fight off COVID." No. This is something you have to do all the time. If you wanna make your body a very violent place for viruses to live in, I would argue start with breathing through your nose-

Lewis Howes 57:56 Wow

James Nestor 57:56 ... take your vitamin D and C.

Lewis Howes 57:58 Let's say we're have our mouth shut 90% of the time, right? Hopefully more throughout the day. You're sleeping with your mouth shut. You know, it's interesting, when I started to sleep with my mouth shut, I stopped snoring. You can't snore with your mouth shut.

James Nestor 58:11 [laughs] You-

Lewis Howes 58:13 You can't go [snores] .

James Nestor 58:14 You-

Lewis Howes 58:14 I mean, I guess you could, but it's like your body just learns how to breathe through the nose as opposed to just your tongue flapping around in the back of your mouth, I guess, right? I mean...

James Nestor 58:23 You, you can snore when you have issues with your, with your nasopharynx. People can [snores] . Some people can do that. But for a lot of people, simply shutting their mouth at night can open the airway, and you w- you, you won't snore.

Lewis Howes 58:38 That's it. You just shut your mouth.

James Nestor 58:40 You know, mom-

Lewis Howes 58:41 And you stop snoring most of the time

James Nestor 58:42 ... moms have been saying this crap for, for 300 years, you know, "S- sit up straight and shut your mouth."

Lewis Howes 58:48 [laughs]

James Nestor 58:49 Maybe they were right.

Lewis Howes 58:50 I know, right? It's interesting, when I went to India four years ago to study this, we were practicing, uh, a meditation, breathing, you know, cycle, and they were telling us the science behind each one of the reasons why we would hum for a period of time, why y- it was all breathing through the nose, why you breathe in, uh, let's say, for two seconds, then you always breathe out for four seconds, or you double the breath on the e- on the exhale. And they were saying, "This is what we've been doing in this practice for thousands of years in India." Uh, but they were finding the science that then backs the reasons why each thing is valuable. And they were saying to me that when you hum, it releases more, uh, what is it? Nitric oxide. Is that what it's called?

James Nestor 59:33 That's it. Yeah.

Lewis Howes 59:34 And it, it helps release that, and which defends against disease, all these different things. So it's, it's fascinating that-

James Nestor 59:41 Absolutely

Lewis Howes 59:41 ... people have been doing this for thousands of years, and now the science is catching up to it all.

James Nestor 59:46 Well, think about prayers, right? Um, there was a study done about 20 years ago where they looked at the Catholic prayer cycle of the, of the rosary, Ave Maria, and they looked at Om Mani Padme Hum, one of the most famous Buddhist prayers, right? Each of these prayers requires you to, uh, recite a phrase that takes about six seconds. So you're only exhaling when, when you're reciting, when you're vocalizing, always on the exhale. And then it was about a six-second break to inhale. So, so many prayers, Sai Namah, the same exact thing. Um, all of these prayers in these different cultures had the same respiratory rate tied into it. And it turns out that that respiratory rate, you don't need to pray to do this. You can, and that's great. But just breathing at that rate will increase oxygen to your brain, it will slow your heart rate, it will increase circulation, and the systems of your body will enter this state of coherence. And you can see this with heart rate variability. All those lines that are disjointed suddenly become these beautiful sine waves. And this is your body really working at peak efficiency. So if you look at humming too, guess what happens when you go, "Ohm." All of these prayer- not all of them, many prayers in different cultures incorporate elements of humming, which all do the same thing.

Lewis Howes 1:01:09 Chanting, humming. Yeah. I guess you're saying that this, when you breathe through your nose, it, it, it create, it releases more nitric oxide in the blood. You have to keep doing it. It's not like it's there, you do it for five minutes and it's there all day. You have to continually do this to keep releasing. Is that right?

James Nestor 1:01:27 That's correct. But if you're, for instance, let's say you're exposed to someone and they're coughing and they look sick. This would be a good time to be breathing through the nose, to be humming, right? Um, to get away from them. Because if this nitric oxide only lasts so long, it's that, that time when the virus comes in, which, which can, uh, come into your body and, and make you sick. So that would be the time you would, you would really want that extra plug of nitric oxide

Lewis Howes 1:01:54 ... boost. And so your body isn't releasing it when you breathe through your mouth, but it releases it when you breathe through your nose.

James Nestor 1:02:01 Nitric oxide is released in various areas of the body, but it is not released in your mouth specifically. So you get a far, you get six times more nitric oxide breathing through your nose

Lewis Howes 1:02:12 Through your nose. And if you're doing it throughout the whole day through your nose, you're constantly boosting your immune system, I'm assuming. You're constantly optimizing relax- relaxation. You're less stressed by doing all this, right?

James Nestor 1:02:27 Everything you're saying. It affects your nervous system function. It affects your brain. It affects your biochemistry. I mean, I can go on and on.

Lewis Howes 1:02:35 How much of a change have you made in your personal life since researching and studying this? Do you feel like you're 50% of the way there? Are you 80%? What's your personally, your lifestyle like?

James Nestor 1:02:48 Well, I wanted to address, it's, it's pretty easy to tell people how to breathe well. It's another thing to teach them why they need to breathe well or what it's doing to their bodies. So that's what I really try to focus on in the book because I was frustrated when I first started this research years ago finding all these yoga books with 400 breathing techniques with these crazy names. It's like, "Cool, where, where do I start?"

Lewis Howes 1:03:12 Right

James Nestor 1:03:12 "What's it doing?" So, so the how is really the, the easy part, but what I wanted to tackle, um, beyond the breathing practices is how to enlarge my airway, how to stop from wheezing, how to stop getting bronchitis and pneumonia and-

Lewis Howes 1:03:30 So when you mean enlarge your airway, you mean your mouth? You mean your throat? What does that mean?

James Nestor 1:03:34 I'm talking the, the, uh, oral pharynx in the back, so the throat, all those soft tissues. But I was just curious, um, to see if you can expand your mouth. So we've, we've done a very good job in our culture of making small mouths smaller.

Lewis Howes 1:03:51 Freaky. [laughs]

James Nestor 1:03:51 You're, you're a great example. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:03:53 Exactly.

James Nestor 1:03:53 I'm a great example.

Lewis Howes 1:03:54 And now I'm ex- now I'm expanding it through braces to widen it.

James Nestor 1:03:58 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:03:58 And it, the fa- not to cut you off, the fascinating thing is they were originally going to make it smaller by closing the gaps, and I'm, like, kind of blessed because for 20 years I just had eight teeth... Well, I really had four teeth missing and they took out my wisdom as well. And I'm kind of blessed because I didn't get braces. If I would've gotten braces right away, they would have sh- closed my mouth and pushed the teeth back to make it straight. And my orthodontist was like, "If we do this, your tongue is gonna be pressed against your teeth. You're gonna be, speaking might be messed up. You're, you're gonna be, you have no airway." He's like, "We need to expand the mouth and put implants in." I was like, "Why'd I get my mouth, [laughs] my teeth taken out if I wanna put a fake ones back in there?" But it's kind of a blessing where, okay, now we've been expanding it, and I'm hopeful that this will be impacting my health for many years to come because of it.

James Nestor 1:04:54 Well, you just think of the, the physics here. So by you having a larger mouth, by having more room, there's more room for the tongue to naturally lie up on the upper palate, okay?

Lewis Howes 1:05:04 Mm-hmm.

James Nestor 1:05:04 Instead of sticking out the sides like it does with mine-

Lewis Howes 1:05:07 [laughs]

James Nestor 1:05:08 ... right? 'Cause my mouth was shrunk up. You're gonna have more room to breathe. So of course you are. And, and the fact that I think it's just so bizarre that for so many years we've been shrinking mouths and now we're like, "Maybe that's not the best idea."

Lewis Howes 1:05:23 [laughs]

James Nestor 1:05:23 "Maybe we should enlarge them." So they're getting us going in and going out.

Lewis Howes 1:05:27 Oh, man.

James Nestor 1:05:27 So I, I did the same thing where, uh, I had seen so many case studies of people who had used this device, they just wore it at night, which gently opened up the upper palate. So there is a, if you have a clean thumb, don't do this with some dirty COVID thumb, but-

Lewis Howes 1:05:43 [laughs]

James Nestor 1:05:43 ... you can put it on the roof of your mouth, and there is a crack. There's a suture, okay? That crack can open at virtually any age and widen naturally. This is how when we're born as babies our heads are this big and then they double in size. You can feel all these cracks on your head right now, okay? Those open up. Um, and I wore this device to help expand my upper palate.

Lewis Howes 1:06:10 Right

James Nestor 1:06:10 And I gained about 15 to 20%, um, increases in my airway from-

Lewis Howes 1:06:15 You got up. You did?

James Nestor 1:06:16 In, in, in one year. I took a CAT scan too, um, because I was-

Lewis Howes 1:06:20 And you saw the mouth expanded?

James Nestor 1:06:22 The mouth, there was much more gentle movement in the mouth. The mouth probably expanded, you know-

Lewis Howes 1:06:29 A few millimeters

James Nestor 1:06:30 ... about three or four mil- yeah. Um, but just from having that, um, this also stimulated some chewing stress, so it worked out these back tissues, and the back tissues just voop, opened up. And subjectively I can say I've never been breathing more, more freely. I didn't know I could breathe this way. So a lot of people don't need their mouths expanded unless they went through what we went through.

Lewis Howes 1:06:55 Right. [laughs]

James Nestor 1:06:55 But they can s- do these oral pharyngeal exercises, um, which can have a significant, significant improvements on your airway health.

Lewis Howes 1:07:04 What is... Is this a thing you wear? Is it just a thing you press on there all night or-

James Nestor 1:07:08 It is

Lewis Howes 1:07:08 ... a retainer?

James Nestor 1:07:09 And, and, you know, I've gotten, like, hundreds of emails of people saying, "I wanna do this. This is gonna solve my asthma. I wanna do this. This is gonna solve my cancer." Everyone's different, man, and this worked for me. I'm not saying it's gonna work for you. But I will say working out your tongue, there's no bad side effects to that, okay?

Lewis Howes 1:07:27 What's, what's one tongue exercise we can do?

James Nestor 1:07:29 Oh, they look grotesque. I'm not gonna do it.

Lewis Howes 1:07:31 Give me one. Give me one.

James Nestor 1:07:32 All right.

Lewis Howes 1:07:33 One.

James Nestor 1:07:33 All right. All right.

Lewis Howes 1:07:33 The least crazy one.

James Nestor 1:07:35 So, so first of all-

Lewis Howes 1:07:36 [laughs]

James Nestor 1:07:36 ... uh, this was a retainer I put on the top of my, top of my mouth, yeah-

Lewis Howes 1:07:41 Yeah

James Nestor 1:07:41 ... that stimulated chewing stress and very gently opened up- The, the roof of my mouth, because it had been so small for so long

Lewis Howes 1:07:50 Mm.

James Nestor 1:07:50 So oropharyngeal exercises, uh, here's the easiest one. You see how I'm gonna get around this.

Lewis Howes 1:07:56 [laughs]

James Nestor 1:07:56 Um, it's just closing your mouth. You want your tongue to always be on the roof of your mouth. You don't want it to be down below sloshing around on your teeth.

Lewis Howes 1:08:07 All the time, in general?

James Nestor 1:08:09 Yes.

Lewis Howes 1:08:10 Really?

James Nestor 1:08:10 And the-

Lewis Howes 1:08:11 So you wanna be holding it up there almost gently

James Nestor 1:08:13 ... the, it should naturally be doing that. The front teeth should almost be touching. If the front teeth are lightly touching, that's fine. So you're gonna notice when your mouth is closed and the tongue is at the roof of the mouth, the tongue goes up, the airway opens. If you open your mouth, the tongue rocks back, and the airway gets smaller. So if you are constantly having shutting your mouth, I can't quite demonstrate shutting my mouth while-

Lewis Howes 1:08:40 Sure

James Nestor 1:08:40 ... I'm talking to you. So that is, uh, the number one thing you can do. After that, you can do something, um, that a myofunctional therapist just taught me. You're gonna get it now. Are you happy? It's, it's-

Lewis Howes 1:08:52 Yes

James Nestor 1:08:53 ... but it's called the cave, and this is doing this. So I'm putting the r- the tongue on the roof of my mouth, and I'm sucking it up there.

Lewis Howes 1:09:03 Suck up, yeah.

James Nestor 1:09:04 And, and don't overdo it. Start with a few seconds, and you can do that throughout the day. And another one you can do-

Lewis Howes 1:09:12 What, what does that do? What does the cave do? Do you... putting that on the-

James Nestor 1:09:14 This-

Lewis Howes 1:09:14 ... the front of your teeth or more on the top of the roof?

James Nestor 1:09:17 Right where, the front of the tongue should just be touching the back of your teeth. So this is strengthening the tongue, right? It's getting it more-

Lewis Howes 1:09:25 Just-

James Nestor 1:09:25 ... more elastic and strengthening it

Lewis Howes 1:09:27 ... five seconds at a time, 20 seconds.

James Nestor 1:09:29 You can do, you can hold it for, for 30 seconds if you'd like. But another one, um, this is also known as mewing even though it's just oropharyngeal exercises, is using the back of the tongue and putting it to the back of your palate and sort of moving your tongue forward so that the tip of your tongue reaches the back of your teeth, like that. So-

Lewis Howes 1:09:55 So from the back of your throat almost, as far back as it can go, and then pushing it forward on the top of your mouth like?

James Nestor 1:10:01 You will feel the muscles right here-

Lewis Howes 1:10:03 Mm-hmm

James Nestor 1:10:04 ... when you do this. And when you're doing this, you are tensing those soft tissues. You're just working 'em out, and there's-

Lewis Howes 1:10:11 Right

James Nestor 1:10:11 ... some other tricks. I'll forward you the paper from-

Lewis Howes 1:10:14 Yes

James Nestor 1:10:14 ... Guest Journal, which is an esteemed journal. This is where this stuff was published, and very effective for snoring and sleep, for some people with snoring and sleep apnea.

Lewis Howes 1:10:23 Do you speak, uh, Spanish any chance, James?

James Nestor 1:10:27 Un poquito.

Lewis Howes 1:10:28 [laughs] For 20 years, I've wanted to learn Spanish, and one of my theories on why I think it's more challenging than it probably needs to be is 'cause I've never been able to learn how to roll my Rs. And part of me is wondering, is it because I have a smaller mouth? Is it 'cause I just, I can't use my tongue the right way? Is it because... I don't know. Has this ever come up where people can roll their Rs, uh, in a certain way for the language, whether it's Spanish or another language, based on breathing, strengthening the tongue, you know, working it out? Is this something that you've seen?

James Nestor 1:11:05 That's a great question I've never been asked. Um-

Lewis Howes 1:11:08 Yeah

James Nestor 1:11:08 ... and I have no idea. Just from an anatomical perspective, it makes sense to me. If your tongue is not aligned with your lower jaw, if your tongue is flopping around, if you see teeth imprints on your tongue when you hold it up, then your mouth is too small for your tongue and makes you more apt to have airway issues. How that relates to languages like Italian or Spanish or Portuguese, I'm not sure, but, but a great-

Lewis Howes 1:11:42 It's a good-

James Nestor 1:11:42 ... a great thing to think about

Lewis Howes 1:11:42 ... that's a good thing for you to research next and let me know if you find any research on that.

James Nestor 1:11:46 A new book.

Lewis Howes 1:11:46 [laughs]

James Nestor 1:11:47 It's in my new book.

Lewis Howes 1:11:47 How to Roll Your Rs. [laughs]

James Nestor 1:11:49 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:11:50 Are, are you able to do that? Just curious. Do you know how to roll the Rs?

James Nestor 1:11:54 I sound terrible when I do it, but I try, and you always get the sort of snicker of sympathy, which-

Lewis Howes 1:12:00 [laughs]

James Nestor 1:12:01 ... sort of allows you to get away with a bunch of stuff, so.

Lewis Howes 1:12:04 Got it.

James Nestor 1:12:04 I'm a terrible Spanish speaker, but I'm in California, right? And I grew up in Southern California, so we were just down there all the time. As long as you try, man, that's all they want.

Lewis Howes 1:12:14 That's it. Yeah, gotcha.

Lewis Howes 1:12:15 Curious, just my personal, personal curiosity. Uh, with the mask wearing in the global pandemic, is there a way to develop better breathing techniques to help people breathe better in masks?

James Nestor 1:12:29 So what people are reacting to when they have a mask on is they're not reacting to a lack of oxygen. You see these people walking around, saying, "Oh, I'm anxious, I panic, I can't breathe, I'm not getting oxygen." That is almost always never the case. What they're reacting to is that increase of carbon dioxide. So when you have a mask on, you are breathing slowly, and there is a little backdraft of CO2, and CO2 is the thing that makes us need to breathe, just as we talked about earlier. It's funny hearing people and even hearing people on the street who say, you know, "There's no way I'm getting enough o- oxy- I'm not wearing this thing." All you need to do is buy one of these. Uh, it's about 15 bucks on Amazon, or you can buy it at your local store, whatever. This is a pulse oximeter, and you put your finger in here, and it shows you your blood sats, okay? Uh, there's been numerous studies that have shown no matter what mask you're wearing, I'm sure there might be some 20-ply mask that might make it really hard to breathe, but all the masks that most people are wearing right now, this is not an oxygen problem. It's an increase of CO2. As we mentioned earlier, having more CO2 in your body, as long as you have healthy levels of oxygen, can be very beneficial. We're just not used to it, so we think it's unhealthy.

Lewis Howes 1:13:52 It can be beneficial. Yeah, that's interesting. And are you finding it comfortable when you're breathing through a mask? Is it not bothering you? What's your personal take on how you're doing it through the nose?

James Nestor 1:14:04 I take this as an opportunity to focus even more on my breath-

Lewis Howes 1:14:08 Mm

James Nestor 1:14:08 ... and to breathe slowly. If you don't wanna smell your garlic breath, if you've just eaten some pizza for lunch or whatever, then why would you want to keep breathing 20 times a minute? Why not breathe six times a minute?

Lewis Howes 1:14:21 [laughs]

James Nestor 1:14:22 Really slow down your breathing and allow your body to calm down and function better. So San Francisco was one of the first cities to shut down. Everyone's wearing masks here, and, uh, I actually don't mind the, the mask. I'm a, I'm a weirdo. Because I've checked myself, I've checked my blood sats. My oxygen's just fine. It's that increase of CO2, and knowing that there is extra vasodilation, more circulation with an increase of CO2, um, I look at this as a, as a, as a benefit in some ways.

Lewis Howes 1:14:54 Yeah. Is it possible to reverse aging if we learn to breathe better? Can we become younger? Can we live longer because of our breathing techniques or strategies and way of being?

James Nestor 1:15:05 You're gonna be skinny. You're gonna look great. You're gonna get that leading part in a movie. Everyone, all you gotta do is breathe. No, uh, really, it is one of-

Lewis Howes 1:15:14 Is there science around, is there science around it for living longer though?

James Nestor 1:15:17 Absolutely there is. If, if you-

Lewis Howes 1:15:19 Wow

James Nestor 1:15:19 ... look at lung capacity, so, um, so we're, we had talked about this before. One of the leading markers of, of death, okay, is when you lose respiratory health and when you lose lung capacity, even more than, than genetics. So lung size-

Lewis Howes 1:15:37 So when the lungs, when they shrink and you can't breathe-

James Nestor 1:15:39 Yes

Lewis Howes 1:15:39 ... how are you gonna survive?

James Nestor 1:15:40 Lu- lung size is a very accurate marker for life-

Lewis Howes 1:15:45 Wow

James Nestor 1:15:46 ... span.

Lewis Howes 1:15:46 Wow.

James Nestor 1:15:47 Th- this was a study they did about 30 years ago, um, part of a longitudinal, uh, study that's been going on for 70 years, and they found that lung size and respiratory health. And it's amazing, like you can't do anything about your genetics, right? But you can do something about your breathing, and you can do something about your lung capacity. You can really focus on that and show some substantial differences.

Lewis Howes 1:16:10 What is the... Is there studies or research around how many years you could potentially extend based on the size and capacity of your lungs?

James Nestor 1:16:20 There's not, because everyone's different.

Lewis Howes 1:16:22 Of course.

James Nestor 1:16:22 Everyone's a different age. But, but I... This was a pretty interesting study I found. It didn't make it into the book. My editor said, "This is just too weird."

Lewis Howes 1:16:29 [laughs]

James Nestor 1:16:29 But one researcher looked at people who had had double lung transplants, and those people who had been transplanted with larger lungs-

Lewis Howes 1:16:38 Shut up

James Nestor 1:16:38 ... lived significantly longer than-

Lewis Howes 1:16:41 [laughs] Shut up. Than what?

James Nestor 1:16:44 Than people who had their original size or smaller. Significantly longer. So those references are available for free on my site if you don't believe me.

Lewis Howes 1:16:55 That's amazing. So, okay, so if you wanna live longer, increase the capacity to breathe deeper-

James Nestor 1:17:03 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:17:03 ... and bigger lungs.

James Nestor 1:17:04 Don't go out and get a lung transplant if you don't have to, people.

Lewis Howes 1:17:07 [laughs]

James Nestor 1:17:07 We have this incredible machine called the human body that really responds-

Lewis Howes 1:17:12 Wow

James Nestor 1:17:12 ... to the inputs we put into it. So you can hone this thing if you-

Lewis Howes 1:17:17 Wow

James Nestor 1:17:17 ... just spend a little bit of time, a little bit of focus. And I, I just wanna... I realize I was being a smartass before. Breathing isn't gonna do everything for you, right? Either is eating well.

Lewis Howes 1:17:28 Mm-hmm.

James Nestor 1:17:29 Either is exercising, but it has to be considered with these other things.

Lewis Howes 1:17:33 Absolutely.

James Nestor 1:17:34 It has to. A lot of us know that eating crap food is gonna make you feel crappy. It's gonna shorten your life. It's gonna make you more susceptible to disease. Same thing with exercise. Who's talking about breathing? Well, hopefully more people. Our ancestors were for thousands of years, but I see that wave starting to really come up now and, and a lot of scientists and researchers are very excited about exploring this further.

Lewis Howes 1:17:58 Is it expanding the rib cage that we need to do, or more making it more flexible so we can breathe in and out deeper? What is the thing we need to do?

James Nestor 1:18:09 Your muscles like flexibility. Your mental capacity likes to be flexible.

Lewis Howes 1:18:14 Mm-hmm.

James Nestor 1:18:14 Your respiratory system likes to be flexible. Your ribs wanna be flexible. Your intercostals wanna be flexible.

Lewis Howes 1:18:20 Mm.

James Nestor 1:18:20 So if you look at these free divers, these are people with these enormous rib cages, right? But they can also [exhales] exhale all that air out, right?

Lewis Howes 1:18:31 Gosh, man, that's super expansive.

James Nestor 1:18:33 So here's, here's how you can tell if you're engaging your diaphragm when you're breathing, 'cause sometimes this is confused with just belly breathing. You see these people, they're just like, "I'm breathing healthy," and they're just sticking their stomach out.

Lewis Howes 1:18:44 The belly out, yeah.

James Nestor 1:18:45 Take your hands like this and place them just above your hip bones, right? And take a breath in through your nose, [inhales] and you want your hands to move out, okay? You don't want them to move forward. You want them to move outward laterally. [inhales] And when you breathe that way, [inhales] just real calmly, that shows that you're allowing that diaphragm to go down and gently push outwards, okay? So that, that's a healthy breathing. A lot of people are just focused on the stomach, but you're just using stomach muscles there. You want your, your body, just as I said before, everything in the body wants to be moving softly. Like, uh, your blood wants to be coursing softly through-

Lewis Howes 1:19:30 Mm-hmm

James Nestor 1:19:31 ... through your veins. Lymph fluid wants to be moving. Muscles wanna be flexible, and they wanna be moving. And I would consider the diaphragm the most important muscle in the entire body, 'cause if it goes out or if you are losing function there, everything's gonna go to hell. Your health is gonna go to hell.

Lewis Howes 1:19:48 Ooh. Uh, okay, I've got two final questions for you, um, that I ask everyone at the end of my interviews. Before I ask them, wanna make sure people get the book, Breath- The New Science of a Lost Art. Uh, they can check it out on your website, on Amazon, everywhere. And, um, best website for you is mrjamesnestor.com. You're also on social media, Mr. James Nestor on Instagram. You've got a lot of great little short bits there on Instagram that I really like watching. Uh, so make sure you get the, the book. And one of my final questions is called the three truths question. So I want you to imagine a hypothetical situation that because you've mastered the art of breathing, you've extended your life for as long as you wanna live, and it's the last day for you, though. It's got the last day of your life. It could be 100 years from now, whenever it is, but you've accomplished everything you've set out your life to be. For whatever reason, you've gotta take all your body of work with you, all of your content, books, interviews, they gotta go with you so no one has access to your written audio or video words anymore. But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true, the three big lessons you would leave and share with us, what I like to call three truths. What would you say are those three truths for you that you would share?

James Nestor 1:21:11 I'd say never underestimate the capabilities of your body. Okay? If someone tells you something is impossible, go prove that it's not. [laughs] And I think the third one is ambition is the last refuge of failure. And what I mean by that is to sit around and try to do something and hem and haw, that's not the way to do it. You just do it, then you don't have to have ambition. You're already on the train. You're already moving forward.

Lewis Howes 1:21:41 Hmm. Love that. Those are powerful truths. James, I wanna acknowledge you for a moment before I ask the final question for, for taking a deep dive into something that I think is affecting s- billions of people around the world, uh, that don't have the tools and the science of understanding this. I'm, I'm very grateful that you're popularizing this in a mainstream, uh, especially in America, so that we can understand it more for those who maybe haven't been trained in other philosophies where they learned this growing up. And I think it's a lot of the, a lot of the causes of pain, stress, anxiety, mental disease can be solved or helped through understanding these practices in a major way. So I acknowledge you for studying this, for researching it, for finding practical ways for us to apply it in our lives. It's very powerful, the work you're doing, and I appreciate your work. Uh, final question for you. What is your definition of greatness?

James Nestor 1:22:38 Mm-hmm. Flexibility.

Lewis Howes 1:22:39 [laughs] There you go. James Nestor, my man, thank you so much for being on. I appreciate it.

James Nestor 1:22:46 Thanks a lot for having me. Really, really appreciate it.

Lewis Howes 1:22:49 If you're looking for more greatness in your life, make sure to check out this video right here. And also, check out our free PDF, The 3 Secrets to Unlock the Power of Your Mind to Help You Change Your Life. Download it right here.

James Nestor 1:23:02 Deep breathing, deeper conscious breathing influences the mitochondrial aerobic dissimilation