Breath - The First Pillar
Of all the foundations of health, breath is the only one you can't negotiate with. Start here — with a few simple questions worth asking yourself.
A quick correction before we begin. In the last issue, I suggested working through the Nine Pillars in order — there is no required sequence. Some pillars can be addressed relatively quickly. Others are a lifetime of practice. The work is simply to put the tools in place.
Now. The first pillar.
Of the nine pillars, breath is the only one you cannot defer. You can survive weeks without food. Days without water. For most of us, without breath, the brain begins to die in minutes. There is no negotiating with that timeline.
And yet because breathing happens automatically — without effort, without intention — it is often lower on the list of things we think to examine when it comes to our health and wellbeing.
That inattention has a cost.
Before we go any further — a few questions and two simple tests worth trying right now.
Ask yourself:
Do you breathe through your mouth regularly — during the day, during exercise, or during sleep?
Do you snore, or has anyone observed you stopping breathing during sleep?
Do you frequently sigh or yawn, or feel like you can't get a satisfying breath?
Do you experience chronic tension in your neck, shoulders, or jaw?
Do you have recurring back pain?
These aren't a diagnosis. But if any of them give you pause, the way you breathe may be an unexamined factor in your symptom picture.
Try these:
The nostril test. Close your mouth. Plug one nostril and breathe through the other for a few breaths, then switch. Significant difficulty on either side is worth attention.
The BOLT test. Take a normal breath in, exhale normally, then hold at the bottom of the exhale. Note how long before strong air hunger arrives.
Under 20 seconds: significant room for improvement
20–40 seconds: moderate — meaningful progress available
40+ seconds: well-regulated CO₂ tolerance
This is useful information regardless of where you land. The rest of this newsletter will help you understand what it means.
The term I use clinically is functional breathing — a practice explored with intention, distinct from the way we breathe throughout the day. That said, how we do with the practice tends to say something honest about the quality of our everyday breath.
It has a few specific characteristics.
It is nasal. The nose warms, moistens, and filters incoming air in ways the mouth simply cannot. Breathing through the mouth bypasses those functions, dries the throat, and keeps the nervous system in a low-grade state of alert it was never designed to sustain indefinitely.
It is diaphragmatic. The diaphragm is a dome-shaped muscle — picture an umbrella — that spans the base of the ribcage and anchors into the spine in the lower thoracic and upper lumbar region. When you inhale, it contracts and descends, creating the pressure change that draws air into the lungs. The ribs expand in all directions — front, back, and to the sides. When you exhale, the diaphragm releases and rises.
This is the primary muscle of breathing. When it isn't doing its job, other muscles compensate — the neck, the upper trapezius, the muscles along the top of the shoulders. The body manages. But there's always a cost.
The diaphragm is also tethered directly to the spine, and the ribs are too. The way you breathe shapes your posture. Your posture shapes the way you breathe. For anyone dealing with chronic back pain — this connection is worth sitting with.
Finally, functional breathing is generally not loud. When explored as an intentional practice: slow, smooth, and roughly even between inhale and exhale.
The paradox of the deep breath
Carbon dioxide is widely understood as a waste product — something to be expelled. But CO₂ is also the chemical signal that tells the body to release oxygen from the blood into the tissues where it's needed. When we overbreathe, CO₂ levels drop and that delivery signal weakens. More air comes in. Less oxygen reaches the tissues.
What feels like a deep, nourishing breath can sometimes work against us. Functional breathing is not necessarily large breathing. Slower, quieter, and more complete is often more corrective than more.
A word on energy
Classical yoga texts describe prana — life energy — as riding on the vehicle of the breath. In Chinese medicine and yogic philosophy alike, the foundational disruption underlying many diseases is stagnation: energy that has stopped moving. Different languages. Same observation.
Breath is not incidental. It is the current that moves everything else.
Breathing isn't always simple
Breathing better sounds straightforward. The clinical reality is more nuanced — and worth being honest about.
Difficulty breathing nasally may point to allergies, structural issues, or longstanding habit — each with a different path forward. Mechanical restriction in the ribcage may require hands-on work. Conditions like sleep apnea or cardiovascular disease may need to be part of the conversation.
Sometimes awareness and practice are enough. Sometimes the work requires guidance. The practice below is a place to start.
The practice
Holotropic breathing, Wim Hof, pranayama — these are genuine and valuable practices, each with their own tradition and purpose. They also involve intentional departures from what I've described here as functional breathing. That isn't a criticism. It's context. What I've observed, both clinically and as a teacher, is that access to a reliable functional diaphragmatic breath tends to deepen whatever practice someone is already doing. It is the foundation everything else stands on.
The most common restriction I encounter is lateral expansion — the outward movement of the ribcage to the sides. It can also be one of the harder sensations to find without guidance.
The video below offers a simple hands-on exercise to help you feel exactly that. Not a comprehensive practice — a starting point. A way to develop a felt sense of what the ribcage actually does during a functional breath.
The rib stretch doesn't require a large breath. You're not looking for volume. You're looking for sensation. For most people beginning this work, the movement is modest — and that's right. Depth comes later, and it comes naturally. Not from effort, but from learning to stop fighting your own capacity. You don't force it. You make space for it.