Pierre Aucamp — Conscious And Performance Breathing Use Your Breath To Change Your Life

It's time to introduce my next guest this evening and we're going to be talking breathing so take a deep breath as we say a very warm welcome to you Pierre Ocampazet. Good evening David, thank you so much for having me. It's an absolute pleasure. Okay so we're talking breathing and you sent me a very interesting email and it piqued my interest because it was along the lines of something else I'm busy with now and I thought yeah okay we need to talk to this man a little bit about it. Tell me a bit about Pierre though. You know where did you start off because you have a martial arts background you currently are you practice martial arts currently. Correct yeah. So let's go through the beginning you know so where does Pierre originate from? Well back in 19 I'm thinking 89 I was a little boy living on a farm close to Peter Myersburg in KZN really really wanting to be a ninja. Don't all little boys want to be a ninja? I want to be a ninja. I remember rolling around on the lawn doing what I thought was back flips but I think I was just kind of barrel rolling on the grass and my parents were definitely not happy with the idea of doing anything ninja like but they had the foresight of enrolling me into some judo classes at least and judo progressed into karate, karate progressed into taekwondo, there's been a little bit of Muay Thai, there's a bit of a little bit of boxing, there's a bit a little bit of everything but for most of my life it's been taekwondo which is a Korean form of martial arts and then ended up being Brazilian jujitsu for the last number of years and that's become an obsession, a love affair and I think personally I think a lot of my own personal growth has come from the last couple of years of doing Brazilian jujitsu. When we talk Brazilian jujitsu as opposed to the more traditional Korean style Brazilian jujitsu made famous really by the Gracies, the Gracie family and when I look at some of the footage of what those guys do and how they do it they're absolutely amazing. So how do we go from doing Brazilian jujitsu to talking about breathing because and I made this post on Facebook as well today saying you know it's kind of something we all have to do if you're not breathing you're pretty much not here. So why is breathing because it is becoming a thing these days which is weird because you know a lot of the ancient spiritual practices etc etc have always advocated breathing and I thought whatever carry on we do breathe. So tell me about it, why breathing? Well that's something I come across very often. Every now and again someone has a has a smart ass remark of I've been breathing since the day I was born I don't need to learn how to breathe. I've been successfully breathing for the last 30 years I don't need anyone to tell me how to breathe and exactly what you're talking about lately it is something that's come onto more people's radar and I feel it as well. The fact is that everything does start with breathing and as we've already said your first your first breath was taken the moment you were born that was the first thing that made you a living human being was your first breath. It happens every day and the last thing you'll do as a human being also is your last breath. We often go through the through our lives from the first to the last breath not paying any attention to it and as you rightly say ancient especially eastern philosophies have talked about breathing and the power of breathing for thousands of years we just might not have been paying enough attention to it and when I was around 18-19 years old um again martial arts I heard Bruce Lee saying something about breathing my hero that man is my absolute I used to have the posters all over my bed oh yes yes yes I can I can relate to that the posters the nunchucks the yeah I did myself a lot of serious damage with nunchucks and did you did you ever mimic any of the weird sounds he made because I was all around doing that in fact I'm doing the nose thing yeah I had to do that that was the Bruce Lee thing was the thing man anyway sorry I digress so I heard him talk about breathing and watched a video of him doing very very weird breathing practices and at very much the same time he was talking about the Gracie's there's a lesser known Gracie called Hixon Gracie and and within about a year or two of seeing the Bruce Lee thing I also saw a video of Hixon Gracie doing really weird looking breathing exercises and he was he was on about how this is the most important thing every day that he does are these weird looking breathing exercises that's when I became fascinated because if Bruce Lee and Hixon Gracie both say I should pay attention to breathing then I will pay attention to breathing um started studying everything I could find about breathing um at the at the time I started teaching my my Taekwondo students breathing exercises as well but as as you've been saying for years no one ever resonated with these things I breathe every day why I'm here to learn how to kick and punch why are you teaching me how to breathe people have just never resonated with that but the last couple of years that is changing big time and the interesting thing about this which is why we've got one of the reasons we've got here tonight is is neuroscience is seeming to now kind of starting to agree with what people are saying so that you know but all of these old Chinese people Middle Eastern people used to say about breathing and they would often refer to it as breathing in your chi or getting the chi flowing and a lot of martial arts like uh qigong for example was very much to do with breathing and everybody poo pooed that but I've seen a couple of qigong masters and the stuff that they can do is very very impressive so so why do you think it's it's starting to resonate now the the spiritual community speaks a lot about there's a there's a change in spirituality at the moment people are waking up now I'm not I'm not too clued up on that but I kind of feel that something is changing in human consciousness because people are just suddenly becoming more aware of let's call it their inner world it might be spiritual it might not be spiritual but people seem to become more aware of their inner world and maybe it's just because we have so much more access to information than we've ever had Dr. Joe Dispenza says in in the information age that we live in ignorance is a choice and I really agree with that because information really is everywhere right now and maybe that's the biggest reason all of these really old ideas um Dr. Wayne Dyer um made um Chinese dao the dao he made that famous years ago but only came on my raid on the last couple of years because of the internet and because of youtube and I think that's just a bit of a critical mass that's building because more people have access to more information just if you are a Joe Dispenza fan he's one of the people I'm trying really hard to get onto the show so uh you better stay listening let's see what we can do but breathing has has reached the forefront yes because it can do spiritual things and and you know a lot of people talk about it but also from a health point of view the way we breathe if you think about the way we breathe when we're babies and the way we breathe as adults and as we get older it's two totally different things so you saying that the way that you teach the breathing that you teach is about health and improving your health definitely about health and also we're talking about physiological body what it can do for your health yeah but then also there's an extension into what it can do for your mind and your mind is always the leader of your body as well and if you can if you can hack your thoughts just a little bit you're getting an edge on living a better life every day so yes we want to influence the body but we for sure want to influence the mind getting into a space where you can improve your life on a daily basis now to learn this kind of breathing is it very difficult not at all we could do it in the show we could start we could start on the show for sure fantastic okay well i'll tell you what when we come back we're chatting to peer oakum martial artists instructor coach and now apparently breathing expert we're going to be finding out a little bit more about that and how to breathe my guest in studio is here peer oakum we were just having we're having a chat because uh the best way to find you is curious peer okay and i was like why why that and you said because you've always had this curiosity this wanting to know more learn more to have your mom mad and everything like that i kind of get it we'll give you details out towards the end of the show though um but but let's talk about this breathing because there's there's a couple of things that that you mentioned in the mail that you that you sent to me i've done a little bit of reading about stuff um you talk about conscious breathing that's right as opposed to the other kind i suppose which is the unconscious breathing so you know there's there's a couple of things and you talk about something calling called getting your daily dose um so let's start off with conscious breathing what what is that and how does one breathe consciously well there's a there are hundreds probably thousands of techniques of breathing just like meditation if you search for different ways of meditating it's it's endless different breathing exercises absolutely endless conscious breathing is just the the act of in your mind thinking about how am i going to be breathing take a deep breath in and release exhale that's conscious breathing is it important to have a specific breathing technique well there are different breathing techniques that do do different things but if you just stop put everything down slow down for a few minutes a couple of times a day and just consciously go i'm taking a deep breath in and i'm exhaling

that is so different from what you have been doing otherwise which is just unconsciously breathing we'll get into that now that you don't really have to do anything else if you just stop your day a couple of times a day and consciously take a few deep breaths you're in a very very good space because you mentioned something as well which which struck a chord with me is about stress and tension and i happen to know physiologically when you are stressed or tense you don't breathe properly yes you breathe from sort of the top of your chest and so so just you're saying just by taking a couple of minutes out and doing what five six ten deep breaths but really and i'm assuming when you say deep breath really suck that air in that's correct okay and i don't have to chant anything or just absolutely not hold it and just let it out because i know are we going to get onto am i am i sort of you know getting ahead of myself belly breathing something that i've learned which i i found incredibly incredibly useful but i digress let's go back to you so conscious breathing unconscious breathing well seeing as you though you've mentioned belly breathing yeah if you want to change anything if you want to have a breathing technique the only thing that you need to change is two things inhale through your nose i will get to why i didn't always believe that you have to in the last couple of years i've discovered why you have to inhale through your nose there's a very good reason for it so inhale through your nose exhale through your mouth that's number one do that the other one is belly breathing is just focus on extending your stomach as you take a deep breath in the reason for it is we don't realize but if you don't think about it if you're breathing unconsciously you might be thinking that the act of breathing is your chest expanding so you might feel like it's your intercostal muscles it's the muscles in between your ribs that expand to make you breathe but it's not what happens it is your diaphragm below your ribs that extends to get your lungs full of air which makes sense then when as kids if somebody smacked you there they said they that you had your wind knocked out of you 100 so any muscle if you want to try this any muscle they've ever had this on your forearm muscle if you take your if you take your left forearm you take your i'm not saying you should do this but as a kid we used to do this because it was funny and you take your right hand and you give yourself with your knuckles of your right hand a good smack on your left forearm with it with the edge of a knuckle and if you watch that muscle let's see what it does we used to call it a mouse because under your skin it looks like a mouse shape rising up because as you hit that muscle it spasms and you see that mouse under the skin if you get winded getting hit in the stomach that diaphragm muscle does the same thing it spasms and that spasm means it's stuck it can't move and that's why for a second or two you feel like you can't breathe because the muscle that does the breathing is in a spasm and it can't move okay makes sense so i'd like to add something to that if you can remember from biology class biology lab and i know we had one of those it was a glass jar and there was a balloon hanging in this glass jar yes i remember that one yes i do and the opening of the balloon was on the top in the lid of the jar and the opening of the balloon had access to the outside air but it was limp hanging just limply inside this glass jar that's what our lungs are our lungs aren't attached to any muscles they're hanging limp in our chest cavity and that glass jar at the bottom had a plunger like a syringe plunger and you could pull down that plunger as you pull it down what it does is obviously creates a vacuum inside of this glass jar what your diaphragm does at the bottom of your chest cavity is as it lowers it creates a vacuum in your chest cavity and that vacuum makes you suck in air from the outside through your mouth into into your lungs okay so we know how it works now belly breathing yes sir okay so talk to me about you say you know when you're taking a deep breath and we're talking belly breathing why through your nose can we just suck it in the most convenient way well to get a good lung full of air doesn't matter if it comes in through your mouth or through your nose but you're missing out on a very important molecule if you only breathe in through your mouth now this is this is fascinating inside your nasal cavities inside your sinuses and those hollows and for years i've been asking what is the use of these hollows that i have inside my skull and a few doctors have sort of explained a little bit of something the mucus sure when you when you when you inhale bacteria and viruses can get trapped in the mucus and obviously that goes to your stomach or out your nose and it means you don't get sick so there is that side of it um i've heard a doctor explain it maybe maybe it's like a guitar's sound box and um the the nasal cavities all our nasal cavities are slightly different and it kind of changes our voice a little bit as well could be something like that makes sense a couple of years i read ago i read the study which blew my mind the epithelial cells the surface cells of our sinus sinus cavities produce something called nitric oxide so nitric oxide is a single nitrogen and a single oxygen molecule bound together now as we inhale through our noses the airflow catches those little molecules pulls it right into our lungs and as it hits the walls of the lungs it goes straight into our bloodstream so now we a big deep breath in through our nose floods our bloodstream with nitric oxide so what is the reason for that what does nitric oxide do well if you if you're if you're a jumbani and um you spend a lot of time in um supplement shops this is what i was going to say i've seen this yeah you go and ask for something called a vasodilator what is a vasodilator it dilutes blood vessels why because you'd get a good pump of oxygen to every cell in your body because the blood vessels open up and look at the ingredients of vasodilators it's nitric oxide so as you inhale you've got it free inside your head as you insert inhale nitric oxide through your nose right into your lungs it hits your blood vessels blood vessels dilates open up nicely and you get a brilliant flow of oxygen and all the other nutrients to every part of your body which is then i mean also deep breathing you know i've i've often sort of felt this way if you're sitting there and you're working at your desk whatever the case may be you're like feeling a little bit drowsy stand up a couple of deep breaths is that part of the reason you suddenly feel refreshed and okay yeah now i'm getting you know a little bit of rush of blood to the head there you're getting a good a good load of oxygen everywhere and if you think about it this way um what happens when your blood vessels constrict what is the biggest health issue with constricting blood vessels that's called hypertension that's high blood pressure um there's a japanese study that shows that as little as six really deep breaths start changing your emotional state and start lowering blood pressure why because you're inhaling nitric oxide which is diluting blood vessels and the diluting blood vessels lowers blood pressure so it dilates and it makes them bigger and it's okay so then why are we not all breathing like this because when we talk and we go back to this belly breathing now because i want you to talk a little bit about that as babies if you see a baby if you watch a baby breathing that's how they naturally breathe you don't see their chest expanding and you see their their bellies rising and sinking um and yet we seem to have forgotten to do that is this and i've noticed all of the the the guys that are seriously into martial arts will breathe that way you can correct me i mean you you're more up to date than i am well i think i think most people who are very active very sports active and it's without without thinking about this breathe that way and i think i i this is a this is something i'm very passionate about i think the reason is our modern life our modern adult lives make us breathe the wrong way i think hundreds of years ago adults didn't stop breathing correctly i think it's a modern issue um ariana huffington in a book she wrote she coined a term which i think was called something emails in rome and what she said was found is when people sit in front of a computer doing their emails and it's not just emails i found this doing any kind of work especially there's a deadline involved in this stress involved in this pressure involved i've i've found when i when i pay attention to my breathing it feels like i am not breathing at all i'm taking such shallow little breaths while i'm sitting and working in front of a computer that i'm wondering how am i still alive thankfully we do breathe breathe unconsciously so we can stay alive um i there's there's some evidence to suggest this but i i believe that in in a in an ancient human world where we often had to fight for survival or run to catch an animal we didn't stop breathing the correct way if you're a sports person if you're a rugby player running in a rugby field i'm pretty sure your stomach is what you're using for belly breathing and getting a good amount of oxygen if you're a 100 meter runner i am sure that your belly is extending and contracting when you're breathing but our issue is in a modern world our problems are all in our head our problems are not a guy with a spear or a lion our problems are superficial problems that causes stress in our minds and now that doesn't that doesn't automatically cause us to take deep breaths we're sitting in front of a computer um involved in whatever whatever stresses we have in our minds and that gets us to breathe shallower and shallower and shallower because we're caught up in a fight or flight response in our minds without an actual danger externally yeah well yes the saber tooth tigers are all dead uh we're talking to pure oak hump about uh breathing um i want to talk when we come back i want to chat to you a bit about power breathing and a bit about uh something that you call dose because i want to know about getting my daily dose okay this is a week 93.8 some legendary radio i'm david what's the show is what's involved peer oak hump my guest in studio this evening we're talking breathing and apparently we've been doing it all wrong we need to be more conscious of it um i said when we came back i want to talk about power breathing and something that you call dose so we'll talk about that uh somebody says uh how hi peer how can we get in touch regarding correct breathing for sportsmen we're going to give you all of those details later on um and uh it comes from joanne carlos or juan carlos so there we go we'll see what uh give you some appears uh info a little later on um okay so before we went to the break we wanted to talk about this so what is what is power breathing power breathing is very similar to if if people are interested in this thing there's a guy called vermoef he's from the netherlands um certifiably nuts in my opinion he's also called the ice man because he holds these records for under ice swimming in glacier swimming he is crazy and we were just mentioning how once his eyes froze shut while he was swimming under the ice and he almost died because he couldn't see how to get back and yet you know the philosophy that he espouses as well is um in terms of what our body and our and our minds are able to do well he was able to take he then these experiments he's able to take people put them to through a two-week course and then subject them to tests um to see whether they're susceptible to something like flu and then after two weeks by breathing and cold exposure no they're not susceptible to flu they don't get sick yeah i've seen a couple of those things that he does those actual those courses that he does this i don't think i could do it never so i'm looking for the armchair i'm looking for the armchair sort of version of the so what do you suggest what do we do well belly breathing is number one breathe in through your nose breathe out through your mouth mouth use your use your stomach extend your stomach as you breathe in and pull in your stomach as you breathe out is it a good idea to put something on your stomach so you can make sure it's doing something i mean with me it's going to be a challenge because of my round shape but i'll try and balance something on it but is it a good idea yes you don't have to do that all the time but if you want to practice belly breathing if it's something and the interesting thing is if you haven't practiced this if it's not something you're really conscious of then people often reverse that when they take a deep breath in they pull their stomach in and as they breathe out they extend their stomach which is the wrong way around but if you've never really experienced it it's easy to make the mistake so lying down put a book put your cell phone put your wallet on your stomach and just feel it rise up as you inhale and come down as you exhale and you can actually then feel your diaphragm as well expanding and contracting 100 and this is a good thing because surely if it's a muscle if you're breathing like that you must be exercising that muscle it is a good thing to exercise the muscle because it gets lazy because we don't use it if you sit in front of the computer every day and you have deadlines as we've already said you only fall about 10 of your lungs with with air and it means that diaphragm is just not working that well it doesn't it doesn't move as much as it could yes exercise it in my workshops it's one of the tools that we do use as well lie down we'll put something in your stomach and we start teaching you exactly how to do belly breathing okay and then what about dose right dose is an acronym your daily dose d is for now my mind's gone blank put me under pressure you weren't breathing dopamine feel good dopamine oxytocin serotonin and endorphins okay so power breathing is a form of breathing where you are not quite hyperventilating but moving towards hyperventilating which means you're hyper oxygenating your body and you're blowing off carbon dioxide so have a process that we use to to do that and the after effect of that is a release of dopamine oxytocin serotonin and endorphins through throughout your body all of the things that make you feel good get your naturally high love it and absolutely the natural high and what people in the workshops experience feeling is especially if you'd want to meditate but you could never meditate because you just never get yourself to that place man that's i i used to have such a problem with this it's the the old monkey mind my mind used to lurch around like a drunken monkey i promise you i was like oh look a squirrel oh i could just never never quite in my mind and it was a problem well after a session of power breathing your body floods with all of these really good hormones and chemicals that make you feel so good and you're in the perfect state for meditation you will be meditating without trying to meditate it is a feeling of bliss and euphoria and you can do this and in a workshop we do this in our workshops all the time how long is a workshop anything between an hour and a half to three hours it depends on what kind of workshop we put together and um it's it's very easy to get into it especially if it's something you want if you want to experience a good feeling in your body breathing is a great way to do this um and and again as i want to mention this again a lot of people can't meditate or think they can't meditate or don't want to try because it seems difficult if you can if you do a lot of good breathing exercises you can skip the meditation but if you do get back to meditation after good breathing you'll find that suddenly it's easy now there there are chemical changes that happen in your body after a good power breathing session as well and Wim Hof speaks about this quite a lot we all know that we don't want our bodies to be acidic the more acidic your body the more unhealthy it is you'd like your body to be slightly alkaline breathing without ingesting anything a good power breathing session changes the chemistry in your body to slightly alkaline which is such a healthy place to be but now and i mean we had this uh um Juan Carlos and he was he was asking about for sports persons surely if you're breathing like this you're oxygenating your muscles you're giving so that's gotta have a benefit 100 more oxygen in your cells is is exactly what your cells need to function but the other things where you have other nutrients in your body and if you if you're a sportsman you take supplements whatever it is you want to get those supplements to to every cell in your body if your if if your body is not circulating blood and oxygen well enough into all of these cells it's also not getting the nutrients to everywhere in your cell okay the other thing as well is let's talk about mindset quickly if you're a sports person yes so we do that sorry i've just seen another question coming can you help people with emphysema i don't have any personal experience so i can definitely not talk about that not having had personal experience but improving circulation in your body i'm sure must help with emphysema as well but i definitely can't speak about that i'm definitely no doctor and i haven't had anyone with emphysema try breathing okay might be worthwhile though might be worthwhile um i would suggest uh maybe have a chat to to uh pia and maybe speak to a doctor as well see what they recommend anyway back to what you were saying i just i have to if the listeners ask a question i have to put then we'll we'll answer it um let's talk about mindset quickly because there are definitely all of these all of these physical benefits but if you're a sports person or if you're just a person and um you'd like to have a better mindset having more oxygen in your body definitely helps with mindset if you're a sports person your mindset always leads your performance it's like when when jesse owens broke the four minute mile it was it was believed for years and years impossible for a human being to break the four minute mile when he finally did it how many people did it afterwards right yeah then they then they came out of the woodwork all over the place because the mindset changed yeah so you want to definitely be in control of your mindset and breathing brings you to a place just like meditation and other mindfulness exercises do brings you to a place this is very interesting we have two minds we've already mentioned that we breathe consciously and we also breathe unconsciously well we have these two minds as well we think consciously but we also think subconsciously which is where a lot of the problem could lie is those unconscious all of conscious problems all of it programs rather yeah yes all of our programs all of our habits um it's all stuck in our subconscious mind it makes it sound bad it's not a bad thing we have to have the subconscious you wouldn't be able to drive a car and hold a conversation if it wasn't for your subconscious mind because your subconscious mind knows how to drive yeah it it learns all of those things and it kind of it almost it's like a program you write the program in off you can go okay so i'm sitting here in front of a microphone and i'm really concentrating on talking in this microphone but that's not what david's doing david's talking a microphone and he's i don't know what he's this is this monitor that monitor that but he's doing other things while i'm talking to him why because in his subconscious mind yeah these patterns have been so well established that he's almost on autopilot and handling everything like a pro yeah well that's the thing and i mean it becomes yeah okay good point but every bad habit is also stuck in your subconscious mind yeah and the way we can we can improve that is by getting our conscious mind and our subconscious mind which sometimes seem to be at odds but we can have them kind of inhabiting the same space at the same time and sort of become one mind is this what is this what people like joe dispense are called brain coherence that's exactly what it is brain coherence and i'm hearing a different term these days as well calling whole brain a whole brain state and now you're getting this brain coherence where you're having conscious mind and subconscious mind being on the same page at the same time you're getting left brain right brain communicating well and joe dispense are also he says brain coherence heart coherence because when they test the frequencies they find when you get to this space which breathing can get you to you find that suddenly all of these systems are in sync in a way they've never been before now we've actually been programmed this way now we talked about stress yeah stress is the biggest killer of the modern world stress is not a bad thing but it's a bad thing in our modern lives stress is a great thing when there's a lion and you have to run it causes stress stress causes all the correct hormones to flood your body so you can either fight or run away or hide but in our modern worlds your credit card statement gives you the same kind of stress your mortgage gives you the same kind of stress your deadline gives you the same kind of stress because it doesn't disappear but when it was a lion that stress disappeared after you escaped the lion yeah and the zone you find yourself in immediately after your life is not over brings you in the state where everything is in coherence it brings a kind of a homeostasis which is the healthiest space you can be in but in our modern lives we're caught in stress the whole time so no more homeostasis so we didn't get around to practicing the breathing um and people have asked all sorts of things uh everybody's wanting to know about it brilliant show content etc etc so Pierre number one you mentioned you were kind enough you're going to be giving away something um what are you offering to our listeners well for the for the mix FM listeners that are listening right now i've put up a link on my website that'll be taken off tomorrow morning okay so while you're listening give be nice give them until tomorrow afternoon at least because you know some of them are looking about to judge right did you think some of them but slow like me because i am slow when it comes to these kind of things give them give them give them until tomorrow afternoon okay we'll leave the link up until tomorrow afternoon yeah if you go to curiouspierra.com okay so spell that's curious piers is it p i e double r e p i e double r e so it's i'm testing my spelling ability right here c u r i o u s curious p air p i e double r e dot com not dot c r dot com curious pier dot com that'll take you straight to my home page and right now you'll see a beautiful picture of david on my home page really i don't know if i'd say that that was a beautiful picture and it says very clearly uh mix FM listeners so you can't miss it there's a button to press right there which takes you to a place where you can give me your name and details next week monday is a public holiday yeah for the mix FM listeners i'll have a free breathing workshop in edenville if you send me your details cool so they can come there 10 for free three hour breathing workshop and walk out feeling rejuvenated they will i always get this this is the most relaxed i have felt in my life after the workshop well i'd love to hear back from me if you do pier thank you so much for coming in and joining us tonight we seriously appreciate your time out i am going to be breathing consciously all the way home until next week you guys take care and hey one more thing before i go thanks for listening don't forget curious pier.com