What is the Buteyko breathing Method?

The Buteyko Breathing Method has to do with chronic hyperventilation which is affecting 95% or more of our society. Most people, however, do not realize that there are 2 basic versions. More about the Buteyko method: https://www.normalbreathing.org/buteyko-method/ .

The original version (as thought by Dr. Buteyko himself) includes the Buteyko Table of Health Zones. He used it to define a person’s health and included many methods in order to heal his patients.

One can measure the amount of air we breathe in liters per minute and compare results between those that are healthy and those that are sick. The medical norm would be between 5-6 liters per minute (+-12 breaths per minute), which corresponds to around 40 seconds for the breath holding time test.

Buteyko himself, however, concluded that the health norm should be around 60CP. This would be 4 liters of ventilation (8 breaths per minute). He concluded that this would be normal health but if we look at society today, only 1% of the population would reach his standard.

The second version (most popular in the west) is simply only the Buteyko Breathing exercise that, of course, is also included in the original version. So when most people talk about the Buteyko Method, they usually refer to his breathing exercise only. It is common to see that practitioners and coaches only apply the second version and do not include complete lifestyle changes and know or talk about the Buteyko Table of Health zones.

As such, the second version will not allow one to reach Buteyko’s true norm of health. It is simply used to treat asthma and other respiratory diseases and reduce/eliminate medication.

Furthermore, many practitioners, myself included, combine the original method with other alternative healing methods in order to make the protocol more effective. Misha Sakharoff, for example, specializes in healing cancer by combining a variety of methods (including Buteyko).

As you can see, there is a big difference between the practitioner’s application of the method. The debate continues between practitioners about whether the method should be considered dynamic and changing over time or be considered static and only include the tools given by Dr. Buteyko himself.

You can find the overview of the Buteyko method here: Buteyko Method 

From my experience, I can conclude that, even when following the complete original version of the Buteyko method, certain conditions cannot be cured. Mainly in the field of nutrition, there has been much development. Certain (strict) dietary protocols have proven very successful in combination with the Buteyko Method. For example, eliminating plant foods can be necessary for treating auto-immune diseases. In future videos, I will discuss the benefits of the carnivore or PKD (Paleomedicina) diet in combination with breathing retraining.

Also, Buteyko himself had a negative attitude towards breathing devices. However, as time has progressed, many practitioners have found that certain devices proof very beneficial for breathing retraining (especially for the lower health zone students).

Furthermore, a static approach (as opposed to dynamic) of the Buteyko method, does not take into account lifestyle changes over long periods of time. One can assume that after 50 years or even more, people have different lifestyles and different factors need to be included in order to maintain health. Therefore, a dynamic application of the Buteyko Methods, from my perspective, seems to be the only way to go into the future. The same can be seen in the application of yoga for health and mind. The efficacy of the yoga protocols in the ancient transcripts (some more than 3000 years old) in today’s society is much lower compared to ancient times. Things change and we must adapt our protocols along the way. Even in the last 100 years, things have changed dramatically. Many seemingly insignificant changes, such as the introduction of soft chairs and couches, have a negative effect on our health. Other examples of relatively recent developments that have affected our health negatively are amalgam mercury fillings (in the tooth) or the fact that we started wearing rubber shoes and walk on artificial floors (which keep us electrically insulated from the earth).

Moreover, numeral studies have concluded that the development of agriculture (the introduction of rice, wheat, and grains in the diet ) is a huge cause for many of our current health problems. Later on, the use of table sugar coupled with the overall increase of carbohydrates in the diet, as well as the rise of processed foods and even later the increase of vegetable oils has damaged our health even more. It is apparent that as humankind evolves, we should also keep changing the way we treat health. Therefore, at normalbreathing we keep developing the Buteyko Method to ensure our patients and students progress with their level of health most effectively according to the Buteyko Table of Health Zones.

The URL of this video is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXDbxMzgUIY

This video features Dr. Artour Rakhimov.