Waking Energy 7 Timeless Practices Designed to Reboot Your Body and Unleash Your Potential

decreases the sympathetic stress response and gives your body the golden opportunity to recharge,
regenerate, and heal. When you breathe deeply and smoothly, you call off the dogs of war, sending a
clear message to the fight-or-flight branch of the sympathetic nervous system that it should go on
vacation. Less stress also helps reduce the secretion of stress chemicals like adrenaline, cortisol, and
norepinephrine. Damaging acid levels in the blood will naturally decline, reducing inflammation and
your risk for diseases like cancer, which thrive in stress-induced, acid environments. When we highly
oxygenate our blood, we alkalize it and make it more inhospitable to pathogens.
Every Breath You Take: A Sea Change
If you look beyond the physical components of breath—the oxygen, carbon dioxide, and other
molecules that stream in and out with every inhalation and exhalation—inside each and every breath
is your life force, your life expressing itself every moment.
Like the ocean’s tide, a cycle of perpetual renewal, every breath you take is new. The ocean of air
that swells inside you is called your tidal volume, the name for the normal volume of air displaced
during a single cycle of inspiration and expiration that occurs without your applying any extra effort—
about half a liter on average, a baseline that your body can flexibly alter to accommodate your
activities.
Did you realize that you breathe up to 30,000 times in one day? And in the course of that day, your
body will exchange 2,500 gallons of air with the world around you. You will breathe almost 8 million
breaths each year, almost 265 million liters of air in a lifetime. If you live to be eighty, you’ll breathe
more than 600 million times! However, despite the prodigious volume of air we consume, only a very
small proportion of it is actual oxygen that finds its way into our bloodstream. In normal, quiet
breathing, we consume about a pint every minute or a little over 1,400 pints, or 175 gallons, of
oxygen every day. Our body requires different amounts of oxygen for different activities, and luckily
our breathing capacity can adjust very readily to our various pursuits, delivering varying amounts of
oxygen to our body depending on what we’re doing.
Most of us suffer from compromised breathing because we use just a fraction of our lung capacity.
We’ve adapted to a limited sphere of breathing, and our breathing apparatus itself has atrophied.
Because of this, our energy capacity has diminished. As a result, we are often living into just a small
percentage of our potential. But there’s good news. You can change this and rehabilitate your breath
function simply by becoming aware of it. The average person breathes between twelve and twenty
times per minute, but when you become more skilled in your breathing practices, consciously
directing your breath, you can inhale the same volume of oxygen while breathing only five to eight
times per minute.
The Eastern ancients understood the importance of breathing, studying it as a way to cultivate
energy for vibrant health for thousands of years. With the breathing techniques you’ll learn in the
following practices, these health and longevity secrets can soon be yours. Your intention and
awareness will strengthen your breathing and enhance your lung capacity, which means greater
stamina and energy. The goal is to strengthen your respiratory muscles to become so proficient at
breathing that your organs won’t have to work as hard to pump blood through your body. This