Breathing through the nose

You have two doors for the air, and most of the day you do not choose between them. At ten to twenty breaths a minute, that is somewhere around twenty thousand breaths a day, each one passing through one door or the other. The nose is built for breathing. The mouth is built for eating and speaking, and happens to work as a spare. This guide asks you to notice which door you are using, and to try the nose on purpose for a few minutes.

What the nose does with the air

On the way in, air passes through narrow, folded passages lined with moist tissue. They warm the air, add moisture, and catch some of what you would rather not carry into the lungs. Because the passages are narrow, the breath also meets a little resistance. Many people find that nose breathing is quieter and slower than mouth breathing, without trying to make it so.

There is also some early research on what nasal breathing does in the brain. In one study, researchers recorded from a small group of people with epilepsy who were being monitored in hospital. The rhythm of their nasal breathing showed up in brain areas linked to smell, emotion and memory, and the signal was weaker when they breathed through the mouth. Healthy volunteers in the same paper were a little quicker to recognize fearful faces, and remembered more, when the task fell on an in-breath. A later study found that people tend to breathe in as they begin a mental task.

These are laboratory findings, and the brain recordings come from a small group of patients. They are interesting. They are not instructions.

Trying it

Sit or stand somewhere you will not be hurried.

1. Close your lips lightly. Let your teeth part a little, and let your tongue rest wide and soft.
2. Breathe in through the nose, quietly. No sniffing, no big pull.
3. Breathe out through the nose, a little more slowly than you breathed in.
4. Let the belly and lower ribs move a little. The diaphragm, the dome-shaped muscle under your lungs, does most of the work. The shoulders can stay out of it.
5. Keep the breath smaller than you think it should be. Quiet is the aim.

Try three breaths, then go back to however you were breathing. Another day, try a minute, counting each out-breath from one to five.

A simple check while walking: if you can keep your lips closed and still feel comfortable, the pace is about right. If you cannot, slow down, or open your mouth. Neither is a failure.

Take care

The mouth is a good door. Use it when you have a cold, when your nose is blocked, when you are climbing a hill or running for a bus. Nothing is gained by forcing air through a closed nose. If one side is blocked, that is common. The nostrils take turns being the more open one through the day.

A smaller breath can feel, at first, like not quite enough air. The urge to breathe is set mostly by carbon dioxide, not by a lack of oxygen, and a slower, quieter breath lets a little more of it build up. The feeling usually passes within a few breaths. If it does not, or if you feel dizzy, go back to your ordinary breathing. If you have asthma or another condition that affects your breathing, or if your nose is blocked most days, ask a clinician before you change how you breathe.

In the room we ask people to breathe through the nose when they can, and we say plainly what to do when they cannot. Nobody checks. Nobody keeps score.

Tonight, at a red light or in a queue, close your lips and notice which nostril is more open. Just notice. That is the whole exercise.