Top contributors on the platform this week will be entered in a raffle for a 1-1 coaching session🥳 Learning happens through dialogue and experience - @Rach Friedli is currently in the lead. Let's give her some competition😎 Lesson 3: How to Breathe to Control Anxiety Most of us were taught algebra in school. We were taught history, literature, and science - but never the science of ourselves. In fact, I was talking with Emily one of our incredible students who you’ll find helping to instruct many of these lessons about how insane it is that students in biology class will often dissect a frog or some other member of the animal kingdom without ever learning about their own, diaphragm their lungs with their heart. When we say learning, we don't mean for memorizing information from a textbook or listening to a podcast. The only way to learn about our physiology is through experience. In the exercise above, you will learn to feel CO2 levels rising in your body. You will learn to decouple the physiology of anxiety from the psychology of worry. If you followed our previous lessons, you'll be taking a full expensive breath that stretches your ribs from the inside. You'll feel alive as you learn, and you learn to better live. If you don't have time for the nine minute video, he was a quick breakdown. Breathing and Anxiety 101: • We don't breathe because we're running out of oxygen. • We breathe because we're experiencing rising carbon dioxide levels in the body. • As carbon dioxide level levels increase, it can feel uncomfortable and anxiety provoking. • Many of us have a very low tolerance to carbon dioxide from years or decades of mouth breathing. • When we get stressed carbon dioxide levels rise naturally - triggering a cascade of responses related to the cycle of rising carbon dioxide and low carbon dioxide tolerance. • We breathe ourselves into an anxious state by mistaking heighten arousal and readiness for a threat. By familiarizing ourselves with our own physiology and learning to feel the sensation of rising carbon dioxide - decoupled from life stress - in a fun training environment we can recognize the sensation in when it appears in everyday life.

We breathe ourselves into the shape we're in. Imagine molten lava shaping the landscape after a volcano. Each breath that we take creates changes in our internal landscape. From the position of our ribs to the pressures inside our chest, back and belly our breath shapes the architecture of the human body. Try the two exercises in this video. Notice which one seems to have the greatest impact on helping you breathe into parts of your body that you may not have experienced. The most rebellious act in a culture desensitized to itself is learning to feel fully. Share your experience with the group!

Team, I'm excited to kick off a new era of learning, training, and skill building together! Our first lesson is foundational to everything we do at Physiology First. You'll learn how to take a full breath - possibly for the first time. When I say that 99% of adults and 100% of teens who pass through our doors have never taken a full breath in their lives I'm not exaggerating. To access our full tidal volume takes work, practice, and skill. The feeling is absolutely amazing - it reminds us immediately that we've been breathing shallow, partial breaths for most of our life. Take your time with this lesson - because it's our first one (and because it's a holiday in the US) I'll hold off on lesson 2 until Monday. That gives everyone the weekend to follow Emily and practice taking a full breath. Share your experience with the group afterwards! That where the fun starts, how the community builds, and what gives us the confidence in our own voice to share these skills with others. Weekly Challenge: As you go through your week ask yourself when you might take a full breath like the one you're about to practice. There are plenty of opportunities where this fits - and not every breath necessitates the recruitment of our full breathing musculature and tidal volume. This will be a cool way to build increased breath awareness into the week and challenge you to think about your breathing in a new way. Enjoy the first lesson and our weekly challenge and share your experience with the group! And huge thanks to Emily for her amazing work on this project. *For some of our new members who joined this week, this is a great opportunity to introduce yourself and get to know others in the Physiology First University community!