#417 The Surprising Benefits of Nasal Breathing Nobody Tells You - Leigh Ewin

Leigh Ewin (0:00)

What's really interesting is that you're finding 70 plus year old grandmas and grand dads basically, who are able to spend seven minutes under the water. Nasal breathing versus mouth breathing, higher IQ with nasal breathing versus mouth breathing, and things of that nature. So it's quite a important thing for any parents out there to kind of ensure the child has every possibility to breathe through the nose, you know.

Siim Land (0:29)

Leigh, welcome back to the show.

Leigh Ewin (0:31)

Hi Siim, how are you man?

Siim Land (0:34)

I'm doing really good and I'm happy to see you again. So you've been writing a book recently and it's coming out quite shortly, which is I think quite an exciting time for you, like writing your first book, if I'm not mistaken. And yeah, we'll be talking mostly about that topic and other things.

And maybe like we can start first of all with some background because we go like pretty long time back. Like we met, I guess like eight, no, no, six years ago or something like that. And yeah, we've been doing a lot of things together as well in this online space. So yeah, I'm happy to speak with you again.

Leigh Ewin (1:19)

Yeah, mate. It's really, yeah, it has been a while, hasn't it? I remember some of those cold, we did a couple of retreats together where we had like some water that was about this fire and we were like getting in the air and stuff. So it was a lot of them.

Siim Land (1:32)

Yeah. And I guess it's always, I always like find your story pretty interesting of you being an Australian guy living in Finland. And yeah, maybe we can start with, how did you get, how did you end up in Finland? And especially doing like cold exposure and breathwork.

Leigh Ewin (1:52)

Yeah, it's a, it's a, it is a quite a long journey, but I can narrow it down, of course. Like, you know, like many, many foreigners meeting the foreign woman coming here like that. That's how I actually like got to Finland. If I'm be honest with you, I never actually, I probably was one of those people that thought there was like polar bears in Finland, you know, to be honest, I didn't know what I was getting myself into. And then of course I had the first winter here.

You know, I've had very, very little experience even with the snow. And I tried to, I tried to kind of like live like a bear, really, like, like, kind of like simulate hibernation for the whole winter. And it just felt horrible. It felt absolutely horrible to do that. And at the same time, my colleagues had like really, really urged me or even forced me to go and experience the cold water. Of course, sauna, it's sort of like sauna is a Finnish word, of course, in the English dictionary. It's the only Finnish word. Sauna thing was like something I became familiar with. Being naked in the sauna with other people was like something to come to terms with. But the cold was really something I didn't, I couldn't anticipate, you know? And these guys really, it was like a baptism of, I was going to say fire, but in fact, it would be like ice. So, yeah, they kind of kept forcing me there year after year, and eventually I just sort of went and did my own thing. I learned about it. I made all the mistakes. I felt like I was going to, honestly, I felt sometimes I really overdone it. A bit panicked sometimes, but in actual fact, I went to one party and they wanted to force me in the cold again, and I kind of proved to them that I can do it now, you know? So everything self-taught, all the mistakes have been made, and now I'm happy to be able to share my knowledge and my experiences with people so that it can help them, you know? Because cold and by default, breathing as well, breathwork is really, really two big health trends at the moment, I would say.

Siim Land (4:08)

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And it's for sure, like a lot of people can be quite, you know, exciting or like more, like the exotic thing, like the cold exposure for sure. Like, you know, most people don't do winter swimming or ice ice baths on a regular basis. And it can be quite, quite like a like a, I guess, yeah, exotic thing. But yeah.

Leigh Ewin (4:32)

It actually surprised me how many Finnish people sort of like don't do that too, you know? Like it really surprised me. Sometimes it's just the, like everyone has done it, but nobody has, not everyone has this consistent practice of cold exposure. So yeah, it is an exotic thing for an Australian to sort of like reintroduce the cold to the Finns, and selling the ice to the Eskimos in a way.