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Improve your Nasal breathing using a simple technique from Patrick McKeown in his book Oxygen Advantage

Many runners struggle with nose breathing in general because the nose is runny or blocked. And I suggest that you complete all your Base Runs breathing only out of your nose! What to do?

Luckily there is a simple strategy to help with this. In the book Oxygen Advantage author Patrick McKeown outlines a simple but effective technique to improve your ability to breathe out of your nose. It goes as follows:

1. Walk for a few minutes breathing gently from your nose
2. Exhale from the Nose
3. Pinch your nose with your fingers
4. Take as many paces as you can until you feel a moderate-to-strong need to breathe
5. Remove your fingers from your nose and breathe in from the nose. Your first 2-3 breathes may be larger than normal and that’s ok. But return to gentle breathing as quickly as you can
6. Continue walking for 1-2min breathing gently from the nose
7. Repeat step #2-6 for a total of 6 reps.

McKeown explains that this technique will unblock your nose – even if you are congested with a cold. At first, the nose may become clogged again 10min (or more) later. But once you can reach 80 paces, then your nose will likely remain unblocked at all times.

Add this technique to a morning or evening walk and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the long-term improvement that it brings. Just don’t rush the process by forcing yourself to take more paces until the need to breathe become unbearably high. Be patient over several months of practice. Progress your number of paces you take slowly.

If you want to learn more about the importance of Nasal breathing, check out the Oxygen Advantage. It is a full program on improving your total body oxygenation by, paradoxically, breathing less (but better). Detailed explanations of how each element of the program functions on a physiological level are also included for those that like to understand the underlying principles.