You know how it feels when you’re sleep-deprived. You feel stressed, your muscles ache and you can’t focus on anything. It’s time to get better sleep by implementing one simple game-changer: tape your mouth before you go to bed and improve your nasal breathing.
The goal is to increase the amount you breathe through your nose.
Did you know that you are much more likely to get sick when mouth breathing compared to nasal breathing? Those little hairs in your nose do much more than catch the boogies.
The beauty of what we are talking about is starting your journey of optimizing your breathing is simple. That is what this blog post is about… giving you three= simple and actionable steps that you can implement right now.
1. Tape your mouth at night
One of the big goals of MTS is making change as seamless as possible. With all the information out there about health and fitness it can get overwhelming fast. This is why we like to suggest things that are easy to do and are often just little tweaks to things you are already doing.
We all sleep. We all know sleep is beyond important. You are already doing it. We want you to get the full benefits of it.
We guarantee your sleep will improve if you tape your mouth. Yes, nasal breathing is powerful. We guarantee.. it is that powerful.
The kind of tape you get is important especially if you are someone who has facial hair. We learned this the hard way! What you want to do is get this 3m micropore tape.
The biggest thing you need to know is that it is not about making it impossible to open your mouth but instead giving you feedback when your mouth is open.
This means a vertical strip down the middle is plenty. Everyone feels a little claustrophobic at first but it is much easier when you are not wrapped up like a mummy.
The goal is during sleep you will unconsciously recognize when your mouth starts to open and close it to get back to nasal breathing.
Another major key here is that you do not need to make it through the full night the first time or even the first ten times. Just like most things in life its about small improvements over time.
Most people wake up with the tape thrown across the bedroom the first few times. That is perfectly fine as long as you try again.
Eventually, you will make it through the night and send us an email thanking us because it’s crazy how much of a difference it has made. Go at your own pace.
We suggest working towards a solid three months of having it on all night.
This isn’t an exact number but more so what we found worked for our community. If you have been mouth breathing and snoring for as long as you can remember then taping a few times clearly isn’t going to offset that. All great things require consistency and changing your default breathing patterns is no different.
2. Breathe in through your nose as much as possible.
When you do cardio try to keep your mouth shut and breathe in through your nose and out as long as you can. Throughout the day take notice of when you are sitting at your desk with your mouth wide open. The first step is as simple as closing your mouth and taking a few relaxed breaths in through your nose.
Try our neck relief class to guide you through what we are talking about:
3. Take 10 conscious nasal breaths per day with a full exhale and pause
Another small change you can make is taking 5-10 conscious nasal breaths with a full exhale followed by a pause.
Contrary to popular belief most people don’t need to breathe more or take “deeper” breaths but instead, they need to take fewer breaths and be more efficient.
If you have an apple watch you probably get an alert that already says take a breath.
Let’s keep that going but just add some detail to make this little practice even better.
- Try a relaxed and silent inhale in through the nose. Gently begin to exhale either out through the nose or mouth (ideally switch it up) and aim to get completely empty.
- Now pause for 1-5 seconds with your mouth closed. Your level of empty week one should be nothing compared to week five. Remember small improvements over time.
Think about this in two ways.
- We know you need to maintain your joints by moving them through a full range of motion. If you don’t use it then you lose it. What about your lungs, diaphragm, and guts? When was the last time you fully exhaled?
- As we mentioned the major goal of optimizing breathing is efficiency. We want you to do more with less. Being able to slow our breathing down and not need to inhale right away is a sign of efficiency.
Now you have 3 actionable steps to start improving your nasal breathing right now.
Before we go here are three deeper resources to consider when you are ready to take it even further.
- The Elite Video Membership is our online class platform that has an entire playlist dedicated to breathing. We also incorporate it in all of our classes whether the goal is mobility, strength, or body control. You can do a free trial with this link
- If you are coach, trainer or therapist, our course Mobility Coach Plus shows you how to help your clients improve their breathing.
- We know some people prefer to learn by reading books so here are two great options that helped us a ton. We highly recommend Breath by James Nestor & The Oxygen Advantage by Patrick Mckeown.
Have a great day!
