Healthy breathing - Easier studying - Relaxed Teaching

The way children and adolescents breathe influences their ability to concentrate, their academic and physical performance, their mental resilience, their emotional stability, their sleep quality, etc. You can find some of the connections in the blog article: Close your mouth & stay healthy. Buteyko for children and adolescents. Breathing healthily means breathing through the nose, as it makes us breathe more slowly, more deeply and yet lightly. This also applies to us adults. If we as caregivers understand how our breathing works and exemplify and support healthy breathing, we benefit twice over.

It doesn't take much to get started! Here are a few ideas on how you can incorporate healthy breathing into everyday (school) life:

Support yourself as a teacher or caregiver

• Breathe in and out through your nose whenever possible, even during sport. It gets easier with time!

• When speaking, make sure you breathe in through your nose. It calms you down and you help the children, because you breathe in an exemplary manner and automatically speak in shorter and more comprehensible sentences.

• If your nose is blocked and you find it difficult to breathe through your nose, do the Nose Free exercise.

• Make sure you keep your belly relaxed so your diaphragm can move freely, allowing you to breathe low and calm your nervous system.

• If your mouth opens during sleep, tape it. This will help you recover better during the night. Myotape are specially designed to hold your lips together, without completely sealing your mouth.

• Learn about healthy breathing and breathing exercises. The more we know about the benefits, the more we are inspired to support our breathing. You can find literature tips below and relaxation exercises here. Or attend an Oxygen-Advantage or Buteyko breathing workshop.

as a teacher or caregiver Support the children

• Explain to children that nasal breathing is important. As calms us down, allows us to think more clearly, protects our airways, etc...

• Practice the Nose Free exercise together with the children, e.g. in the morning as a start. The exercise also promotes blood flow to the brain and wakes us up.

• Regularly practice the "emergency exercise" with the kids and do it together, e.g. before exams or in hectic moments to calm down.

• Inspire children to breathe through their noses. Depending on what children respond to, for example with pictures of famous athletes who tape their mouths during training or at night to improve their performance. Or of models, who use mouth taping to support the esthetic development of their jaw and teeth.

• Give parents of children who often breathe through their mouth a hint. Children with asthma, hay fever, concentration and/or behavioral disorders, hyperactivity, sleep problems, bedwetting... often breathe through their mouths.

Supporting children in PE lessons

• During the warm-up exercises, encourage nasal breathing: if you can't breathe through your nose, you are moving too fast! This is particularly useful for children with respiratory problems such as asthma or hay fever.

• Incorporate nasal breathing as a game, e.g. running from A to B with water in the mouth or whoever breathes only through the nose during the game receives bonus points or other rewards...

• Encourage the children to breathe through their nose during breaks in a game or between strenuous activities and let them remind each other to do so.

• Let the children experience the difference between nose and mouth breathing. For example, by running a lap with nose breathing and one with mouth breathing. Discuss the observations.

• If you understand Swiss German, you can watch this webinar recording to get some input on why nasal breathing in sports improves our performance and reduces the risk of injury. If not, you find links below.

Important to know:

When we switch from mouth breathing to more nasal breathing, we initially have a feeling of not getting enough air through our nose. This feeling is NOT due to a lack of oxygen. The reason is that the slower and easier breathing increases the CO2 level in the blood and we have to get used to it first. It is therefore important to approach the switch to nasal breathing and related exercises slowly - especially for people with respiratory illnesses or a tendency to panic attacks. In sport, we initially need to slow down, but over time we become faster than before. This is because more CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the blood is beneficial for our body! CO2 ensures that the brain, organs and muscles are better supplied with blood and oxygen.

Oxygen Advantage & Buteyko trainings use targeted exercises that support us on our way to a healthier and more efficient breathing pattern.

Would you like to find out more? Contact me and we can organize a workshop for your college or school class or a private coaching session!

Literatur and Links