in this video I'm going to share a simple breath holding technique to clear brain fog it's helped me enormously in my recovery from burnout and long covid so if you're struggling to focus if you're feeling foggy if you have cognitive fatigue then stay tuned and I'm going to show you how to go from foggy to clarity [Music] hi I'm Neil tranter and my mission is to teach you the skills to feel calmer and clearer no matter what life throws at you so if you're experiencing brain fog then you know that it can be really quite
unpleasant some people notice a sort of dullness of their mind for other people they struggle to remember their words they find it really difficult to focus for other people it's like a kind of mental fatigue so in this video I'm going to share some of what I've learned on my brain fog Journey how holding your breath in a particular way can reduce the symptoms of brain fog and then I'm going to guide you through a breath holding exercise so that you can experience it for yourself and what's really exciting is there are actually a whole
group of breathing exercises that can be used to permanently cure brain fog for some people anyway so stay tuned to the end of this video and I'll give you some more information about those and a link to another video with a different breathing exercise in it I put some chapter links in the description below so that you can skip around if you want to [Music] so four years ago I burnt out really badly working in my it job during the day I was teaching meditation in the evenings and I was generally burning the candle at
both ends I started to experience these symptoms of brain fog when I was working so I'd be halfway through an email or writing a meditation script and then suddenly my mind would start to become really dull I'd start to slow down and I found that the more I try to push on and keep going the worse the brain fog got until eventually I'd have a migraine and I just have to stop working for a couple of days I completely then at the beginning of the pandemic I got covered and that turned into long covered and
that made things even worse so I would wake up in the morning and it would literally take me an hour before my mind could function at all I tried everything I could think of to get rid of the brain fog I had different kinds of therapies talking therapy I did a ketogenic diet I worked with a functional therapist and I tried loads of different supplements and for me none of these things got rid of the brain fog I'm not saying that they might not help you but for me these things didn't help and in some
cases they actually made things worse is beginning to give up all hope and then one day I was searching on YouTube and it was actually something to do with unblocking my nose because I'd always had a congested nose and I stumbled upon this group of breathing exercises I tried a couple of them and during one of them that involved making small breath holds I suddenly noticed that my symptoms started to clear my mind became clearer the volume on my tinnitus started to lower my vision started to move from what had been quite fuzzy into more
like high definition and although it didn't completely get rid of my brain fog it was enough to make me think hang on I'm on to something here the breathing exercise is called the many small breath holds exercise and it's part of the potato method fast forward two years to now and my brain fog is much better I'd say 80 better than where it was before I still have days when I'm foggy but for the rest of the time I can actually function on a higher level than before I started using the potato breathing exercises I've
now actually trained as a potato instructor because I'm really passionate about sharing these breathing exercises with others as they have all kinds of benefits so let's talk a little bit about why bateco breathing exercises can help to clear brain fog [Music] the many small breath holds exercise actually helps to reduce brain fog in two different ways firstly it helps to calm the nervous system so when we down regulate the nervous system we actually have more blood supply to the brain if you think of the opposite when we're really stressed what happens is that the body
diverts blood away from the brain down into our limbs to our heart so that we can fight so that we can run away and that's really helpful if there's an angry bear but if we need to think clearly what happens is there's a lot less blood supply to our brain to the to the neocortex the thinking part of the brain and that means that we become less clear less able to focus and less equipped to do cognitive tasks the second benefit of holding our breath for short periods of time is that it gently raises levels
of carbon dioxide in the blood and without needing to go too much into this science when we have elevated levels of CO2 what happens is that at this actually improves our blood supply to the brain and it also improves the transfer of oxygen from that blood to the cells in our brain so paradoxically by breathing less we actually transfer more oxygen to our brains and this obviously has the benefits of helping us feel clearer and less foggy if you're finding this video helpful then please consider giving it a thumbs up and if you want more
content from me then please consider subscribing to my channel and you can also leave a comment and let me know what kind of content you're looking for so let's move on to the guided exercise now so that you can experience the many small breath holds technique for yourself [Music] although this technique is suitable for most people if you are pregnant please don't do any breath holds and if you are experiencing any serious health condition then talk to a potato practitioner before doing any of the exercises but for everyone else let's get into it okay so
for you to get some benefit from this exercise you do need to do it rather than just know about it so I'm going to guide you through it now it'll take three to four minutes and hopefully that should give you a feel for how it works okay so before we start I'm just going to give you the basic instructions of how this works so what we'll be doing is we'll be taking a normal breath in and out through the nose we'll be holding the nose for about three to five seconds then we let go of
the nose and we breathe normally in and out through the nose for about 10 to 15 seconds all the way through you'll have your mouth closed obviously I've got my mouth open because I'm talking but normally for the whole exercise you keep your mouth closed and that's really important otherwise it doesn't work okay so let's get ready then it's good to do this in an upright comfortable posture so just getting yourself set up in that kind of sitting position and then when you're ready I'd like you to take a normal quiet in and out breath
through the nose hold your nose for five four three two one let go of the nose and just breathing normally through your nose with your mouth closed so in between the breath holds we're just breathing normally no deep breathing nothing like that just breathing quietly and softly and then when you're ready we'll do it again so taking a normal quiet breath in and out through the nose holding your nose for five four three two one letting go of the nose and just breathing normally through your nose with your mouth closed note that the the breath
that we take before the breath hold is a normal small quiet breath it's not a big breath and then when you're ready taking a normal breath in and out through the nose holding the nose for five four three two one letting go of the nose and just breathing normally especially can staying with the exercise until the end because you do need to do it for a few minutes before you start to feel the benefits and then when you're ready taking a normal breath in and out through the nose holding the nose for five four three
two one Let It Go of the nose just breathing normally softly and quietly through your nose with your mouth closed so that in your shoulders soften down letting your belly relax letting your legs relax maybe having a little bit of a smile on your face but keeping the lips closed and then when you're ready we'll do it again to taking a normal gentle in and out breath through the nose holding the nose for five four three two one letting go of the nose and then we'll go again so taking a normal quiet in-breath out breath
holding your nose for five four three two one letting go of the nose and so slowly what's happening is carbon dioxide is beginning to build up in the body this helps to calm the nervous system it helps to improve the circulation of blood to the brain oxygen delivery to the brain and then when you're ready we'll take a normal breath in and out through the nose holding the nose for five four three two one letting go of the nose just breathing quietly in and out through your nose mouth closed and just letting your body be
relaxed in between the breath holds and then when you're ready taking a normal breath in and out through the nose holding the nose for five four three two one letting go of the nose foreign s [Music] so when you're ready taking a normal breath in and out through the nose holding the nose for five four three two one letting go of the nose breathing gently in and out through the nose mouth closed noticing any subtle effects in the body any feelings of warmth of calm maybe a little bit more clarity so you're just looking for
a little bit at the moment it's not going to be a massive difference any difference is a positive sign and then when you're ready there's two more taking a normal breath in and out through your nose holding the nose for five four three two one let it go over the nose this breathing normally in and out through your nose for the next 10 seconds letting your body relax in between the holes okay final round taking your normal breath in and out through the nose holding for five four three two one letting go of the nose
and just letting your body settle down as you get the hang of this you can hold your breath for slightly different amounts of time three to five seconds it is a good place to start you don't want to hold your breath for so long that you feel out of breath or it disrupts your breathing because then it has the opposite effect foreign so just to summarize then by using these small breath holds we can calm the nervous system down we can gently Elevate levels of carbon dioxide in the blood and both of these together can
help to improve blood flow to the brain and oxygen delivery to the cells in the brain both of these things are really great for healing brain fog you can use this technique on demand throughout the day you can do it for you know five minutes at a time and you can do that up to once an hour as well so it's something that you can use regularly in the short term it will help just to provide relief but the more and more frequently you do it it'll also start to permanently change your body and help
to reduce brain fog and earlier in the video I mentioned some of the other breath holding techniques that you can use to support long-term healing from brain fog and the most important of these is the bateco breed light exercise I've made a video about that and you can find out all about it here
