The only way to oxygenate your brain and stop excessive and useless thoughts featuring the Buteyko Breathing Method.

1. Anxiety Free
By: Patrick McKeown,
author of “Anxiety
Free: stop worrying
and quieten your
mind”
www.ButeykoDVD.com
www.ButeykoKids.com
www.ButeykoClinic.com

2. How you breathe significantly
contributes to;
• Anxiety
• Attention deficit
• Behavioural issues/ADHD
• Racing mind
• Panic attacks
• Poor concentration

3. More specifically: over-breathing
/chronic hyperventilation
•Breathing a volume of air greater than metabolic
requirements. In other words, breathing too
much.
•During prolonged overbreathing, the respiratory
centre in the brain is reset to maintain the habit.
•Prolonged hyperventilation (for more than 24
hours) seems to sensitize the brain, leading to a
more prolonged hyperventilation.

4. Modern living causes
overbreathing
• Processed foods / overeating
• Lack of exercise
• Stress
• Belief good to big breathe
• High temperatures of houses
• Public speaking- school
teachers, sales etc.
• Asthma – (symptoms- vicious
circle)

5. Overbreathing can be recognised by;
Breathing through the mouth
Hearing breathing during rest
Sigh regularly
Regular sniffing
Irregular breathing
Taking large breaths prior to talking
Yawning with big breaths
Upper chest movement
Lot of visible movement

6. What happens when
you breathe too
much?

7. The Bohr effect
• Heavy breathing causes a loss of
carbon dioxide from the lungs, blood,
tissues and cells.
• This results in less oxygen being
released from the blood into the
tissues and organs. The heavier you
breathe, the more your body is being
starved of oxygen.
• Breathing through the mouth, sighs,
sniffing, noticeable breathing,
hearing breathing during rest
indicates that you are heavy
breathing.

8. Blood vessel constriction
“Every 1 mmHg
drop of arterial
CO2 reduces
blood flow to the
brain by 2%.”
Haughe et al 1980 cited in
Multidisiplinary approaches to
breathing pattern disorders by Leon
Chaitow, Dinah Bradley and
Christopher Gilbert

9. Lower carbon dioxide within the blood causes a
constriction of the carotid artery, the main blood
vessel going to the brain. The extent of constriction
depends on genetic predisposition but has been
estimated by Gibbs (1992) to be as much as 50% for
those with anxiety and panic attacks. This finding is
also supported by Ball & Shekhar (1997).
Cited in Anxiety Free: stop worrying and quieten your mind

10. Other researchers, including Balestrino and Somjen (1988)
and Huttunen et al. (1999), have demonstrated that CO2
reduces cortical excitability.
“breathing too much makes the human brain abnormally
excited due to reduced CO2 concentrations. As a result,
the brain gets literally out of control due to appearance of
spontaneous and asynchronous (‘self-generated’)
thoughts.” Balestrino and Somjen (1988) in their summary
directly claimed that, “The brain, by regulating breathing,
controls its own excitability.”
Cited in Anxiety Free: stop worrying and quieten your mind

11. Oxygenate all tissues and organs
• Quiet breathing ensures optimum partial pressure of
carbon dioxide within the lungs, blood, tissues and cells.
The release of oxygen from the blood depends on the
presence of carbon dioxide.
• The calmer and quieter you breathe, the more blood
vessels open, enabling better circulation and distribution of
oxygen throughout the body, including the brain.
To oxygenate your brain- breathe
correctly

12. “Hyperventilation presents a collection of bizarre and
often apparently unrelated symptoms, which may
affect any part of the body, and any organ or any
system.”
Claude Lum: Hyperventilation- the tip of the iceberg

13. He further labels hyperventilation syndrome
as the fat file syndrome, noting that patients
go from doctor to doctor in an attempt to get
help for their symptoms. However, because
chronic hyperventilation is overlooked in most
instances, the patient might be told after a
series of tests that there is nothing wrong with
him or her, thus increasing the size of the
patients’ file and further adding to his or her
anxiety.

18. Vicious Circle

19. Only by bringing your breathing volume to
normal levels can you deal with the
physiological aspects of stress and anxiety.
Long-term stress is exhausting and is known to
result in many illnesses. It increases breathing
volume, causing carbon dioxide to be washed
from the lungs.
Remember: The more you breathe in, the
more your breathe out.
The more you breathe out, the more CO2 is
washed from the lungs.

20. • As CO2 is washed from the lungs, the partial
pressure of CO2 is reduced in the blood,
tissues and cells.
• Prolonged overbreathing resets the
respiratory centre in the brain to tolerate a
lower partial pressure of CO2.
• Therefore, even when the initial stress is
removed, the heavy breathing habit is
maintained as a result of chemoreceptors in
the brain being reset.

21. An anxious person may attend many
psychotherapists, counsellors, psychologists
and psychiatrists in an effort to get to the root
of his or her condition. However, unless
chronic overbreathing is addressed, he or she
will be at a significant disadvantage in making
progress.

22. Level and correct breathing volume allows
normalisation of the partial pressure of
carbon dioxide within the lungs, thus
improving oxygenation of the brain and
resulting in far less brain cell excitability.

23. Reverse the circle

24. • Dr Robert Fried, professor of psychology,
states that “the first stage of chronic graded
hypoxia (insufficient oxygen), which has
repeatedly been shown in the case of chronic
hyperventilation, is depression of mood and
activity.

25. • In the late Professor Buteyko’s words,
“Exhaling Carbon Dioxide from the organism
brings about spasms in bronchi, vessels and
intestines, etc. This reduces oxygen supply,
leading to oxygen deficiency, making one’s
breath heavier, thus completing the vicious
circle.”

26. What is involved with Buteyko?
• Unblocking of the nose
• Switching from mouth to nasal
breathing
• Correction of breathing volume to
more normal levels
• Various guidelines regarding physical
exercise, diet, stress and sleeping.

27. Anxiety Free
By: Patrick McKeown,
author of “Anxiety
Free: stop worrying
and quieten your
mind”
www.ButeykoDVD.com
www.ButeykoKids.com
www.ButeykoClinic.com