✍️ 🧠 Upside Guest Writer: The Power of Your Breath, By Leonard Zaichkowsky

This week our guest writer is Dr Len Zaichkowsky, PhD. Len is a world-class expert in biofeedback, psychophysiology, and cognitive fitness, specializing in the application of neuroscience and psychology to elite sports performance. With decades of experience as a professor, researcher, and consultant, he has worked with top professional teams across the NHL (Penguins, Canucks), NBA (Warriors), European soccer (Real Madrid), NFL, and Olympic levels, the Spanish men national soccer team, integrating cognitive training and psychophysiological techniques to enhance focus, resilience, and decision-making under pressure. A pioneer in sport psychology and human performance, Dr. Zaichkowsky has authored influential books, including The Playmaker’s Advantage, and continues to shape the future of cognitive fitness in sports and beyond.

This week’s article is called “The Power of Your Breath”. Read on.

By Leonard Zaichkowsky, PhD

Learning how to breathe properly, as simple as it seems is perhaps the most important regulator of our cognitive fitness and how we deal with stress and our overall health. This is true for athletes of all abilities as well as other professionals in high performance occupations such as corporate executives, military personnel, first responders, surgeons, etc.

Let me begin by asking you this question: “How many of you know how many respirations/breathes you take per minute?” Now, be honest! Well it is likely in the range of 15-18 breaths per minute at rest and of course much more when you are exercising, competing, or under acute psychological distress. In addition to learning the rate of your breathing, it is important to understand two other important points about breathing: 1. people breathe using either their chest muscles or abdominal/stomach muscles and specifically the diaphragm. Diaphragmatic breathing is the proper way to breathe. Chest breathing is something you want to avoid and is a sure sign that you are experiencing stress. Observe someone under stress and you will clearly see it is their chest that is moving in and out and not their stomach when they breathe. Point 2 is to ask whether you breathe through your nose or your mouth? Scientific studies tell us that Nose breathing is the most efficient way to breathe.

With this as background, I would like to introduce you to something called resonance breathing, the scientific name that describes what happens when your breathing brings your heart rate, heart rate variability or (HRV), your blood pressure, and brain waves into a coherent frequency. So sometimes we will also call this kind of breathing “coherent breathing”. Decades of research have shown us that we can bring on resonance or coherence by learning to breathe at a rate of 6 breaths per minutes, although people do differ on this resonance rate by a few breaths per minute. Some of you may find resonance at 5 breaths per minute and others at 7 or 8. Scientists have also learned about resonant breathing and its benefits from studying the meditative practices of Buddhist monks and Yogi’s who learned to be masters of their breath.

By learning to breathe at resonance we balance the two branches of our autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic that activates us and serves as an accelerator, and the parasympathetic branch that serves to slow us down or act as a brake. Throughout the day, we alternate through speeding up and braking with each breath we take.

As athletes we lean towards acceleration and generally that is good, but we also need to learn how to use our breath to brake the sympathetic nervous system. With resonant breathing you learn how to apply the brake at will, rather than worrying about being nervous and stressed out.

How do we learn Resonance Breathing?

Today we do not have to search for a Yogi to teach us how to do resonant or diaphragmatic breathing. We can go right to the APPS on an android or apple phone or Tablet. I rarely recommend one particular app or technology, but rather like to provide you with options to choose from since we all have different preferences. But here are some terrific options for learning how to breathe diaphragmatically, self-regulate your autonomic nervous system, increase your HRV, strengthen your immune system, improve your cognitive fitness, and enhance your athletic performance. Some of these apps are free and others have a small cost. You can simply “google” them. Here are some Apps that you can check out.

1. Breathe 2 Relax (the number 2)

2. The Breathing App

3. HRV4Biofeedback. (the number 4)

4. Elite HRV

5. Breathwrk

6. Paced Breathing

7. Calm

Essentially the apps that I recommended, will guide you through practice sessions and help you to quickly learn diaphragmatic breathing. Here are some of the steps that you will go through:

1. Lie on your back, get comfortable and turn on your app.

2. Breath through your nose, using your belly and not your chest and shoulders

3. Inhale and Exhale more slowly than you typically do, but you want it to be “natural”, having a nice rhythm to your breathing

4. Focus carefully on your breath, trying to stay with the inhale and exhale pace of your app. When you inhale, imagine bringing in “energy” and feeling powerful.

In conclusion, who would have thought that our simple breathe turns out to be so powerful. Without question it is your first and most important cognitive fitness skill to master. With practice you will learn to be calm, collected, yet appropriately intense, focused and in the moment, on task, and able to make better decisions when you perform.

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