#238 How to Breathe Properly and Avoid Mouth Breathing - Leigh Ewin

Leigh Ewin (0:00)

If you breathe less, your demand on energy is less.

The harder, the faster you breathe, the more energy your body is producing. And that's also why we see a little bit of these issues in modern day life, where, like you said, if we're stressed out, if we're in fear, if we're panting, these kind of things, we're producing energy the whole time.

Siim Land (0:21)

Welcome to the Siim Land Podcast. My name is Siim Land, and today our guest is Leigh Ewin. Leigh is an Australian living in Finland.

He's a Wim Hof instructor, breathwork specialist, and a biohacker. In this episode, we talk about the benefits of breathing properly and how not to breathe. This video is brought to you by The Total Sleep Optimization Video Course.

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Siim Land (1:15)

Leigh, welcome back to the show.

Leigh Ewin (1:17)

Hey, mate. How you doing?

Siim Land (1:19)

Yeah, I'm doing good, and glad to speak with you again.

Leigh Ewin (1:23)

Yeah, it's great. Always a pleasure to see you.

And just wondering when's the next time we see in person. Can't wait.

Siim Land (1:28)

Yeah.

It's like we could probably have to wait until more of these lockdowns get easier. But yeah, it's slightly like we spoke about before we started that. Yeah, like we never know what happens next. Like there's a lot of like uncertainties and like just mysteries going around all the time.

Leigh Ewin (1:48)

Yeah, but it's as we've said, it presents some new opportunities too. New ways to train, maybe some more time to consume some content, get better, get more resilient, you know.

Siim Land (2:01)

Yeah, that's right. So you are mostly known about doing the cold stuff, ice immersion and the Wim Hof method.

Yeah, like maybe just to give a brief like an overview as well, like how did you get into it and what you do now?

Leigh Ewin (2:17)

Yeah, well, I would say like my it's always starts with the Australian. I'm the Australian guy that moves from one side of the planet to the other from from the hot, warm climate to the cold climate of Finland. And of course, you get confronted like I didn't really know too much about Finland, to be honest, when I first came here, I heard it was cold. I thought there was polar bears, but actually I didn't realize how cold it would be and how tricky that would be to adjust. So yeah, just a lot of people started to invite me to cross country skiing and other other sort of things to do because I was so afraid to go outside. I wasn't used to it at all.

And we have this beautiful creation here called Sauna, the only Finnish word in the English dictionary Sauna. And that was that was really cool thing, like a really good thing. Not cool, but a really hot thing. Good, good thing to do.

Felt always nice there was a social thing. But of course, over here, when you go to these cottages out in the woods, there's 187,000 lakes and the chances are your Sauna will be located right next to a lake.

And in the wintertime, it's usually frozen. So yeah, the Finnish guys were like kind of throwing me into the into the lake all the time. But the funny thing was I just I took that as like a bit of a challenge. You know, I didn't want to I didn't want to be the Australian guy that couldn't handle it or couldn't couldn't hack the the cold, you know, Finnish customs or whatever. So yeah, I learned all about it, made a lot of mistakes, fell in love with the cold, really felt the effects, felt different, felt the health effects and saw the benefits.

But that was also a little bit of a segue into Wim Hof because as we all know, many of us know Wim Hof, they used to call him a Dutch daredevil back in the in the old days before the science started coming out and people started understanding that there was something more to it, what he was doing. And it helped. He helped me understand a little. He opened some doors for me, mainly with the breathing, I would say, oddly enough, the cold thing I was doing. And I think I got it pretty well and I understood what was going on physiologically pretty well. But he kind of helped me link in the, you know, some of the brown fat stuff, sure. But the breathing and how, you know, changing the way we breathe based upon how our physiological reactions are is like the is that's where it's all that.