So I figured it’s time to start writing part two of my little experiment into taping my mouth shut when I go to bed. You are going to see a lot of pictures of me with my mouth taped up haha
As a quick reminder the idea behind what all this about. It is taken from the bukeyko method and perfected to be called the ocygen advantage. It’s the brain child of Patrick Mckeown a guy who suffered with all kinda sleep and concentration issues as well as breathing issues as a kid all of which is pretty much down to mouth breathing.
Now I am not really a mouth breather, my time doing yoga has taught me to breath through my nose quite well.....but at night I don’t know, I wake up in the morning drowsy and with a dry mouth quite often, both things being a sign that you have been mouth breathing. So here it is, my little take on mouth taping at night.
After 9 days of sleeping with my mouth taped up I am honestly noticing a massive difference in my breath rate, how quickly I am having to breath in and out and not just while my mouth is taped but in general Day to Day living. I notice that while I am in bed and reading and getting ready to sleep that I really must normally sigh quite a lot as the tape is stopping me from doing so, so I have to swallow that starvation sensation down and actually deal with that feeling that an increasing Co2 causes. I feel that I am waking up at 6am and I AWAKE, I am ready to get onto doing my yoga practice straight away. This hasn’t been the case for a while, where I always just crawl back to bed after feeding the pups.
so I’m not going to go on much more because I’ve bored you all enough already but this is something that I honestly believe some of you should try, especially if you wake up with that dry mouth, those feelings of exhaustion and lethargy, just feeling as if you are walking around with your head in the clouds all day.
Breifly what is happening is kinda called the Bohr effect. So when you breath hold/challenge your self with HIIT or high altitude you end up increasing the levels of CO2 in your blood and if you can learn to not blow that off straight away but yawning and sighing etc then the increased levels help to contract the spleen (our bodies own blood bank) and release more red blood cells (hello better oxygenation). The increased Co2 level will decrease the blood Ph and causes the oxygen to be offloaded from the haemoglobin into your tissue cells.
So that she kinda where we are going with this. I have signed up for the teacher training in the oxygen advantage technique and will be looking forward to helping people with breathing issues, athletes who want to get fitter, general people who want to experience and clearer headed way of living.
So go on maybe try taping your mouth up for a week of sleeps and see how you get on, make sure you tag me in any pictures you take. Make them silly (I have tried to with a chunk of mine.) Also go buy the book the oxygen advantage it’s well worth your time.
