If it seems odd to anyone that I've redirected my focus in recent years from nutrition to breathing, I absolutely get it. Compared to brightly coloured wholefoods, breathing seems …dare I say boring? And coupled with scepticism because “I'm alive so I must be ok” the impact of how we breathe is easily sidelined. Nevertheless, it is utterly foundational and it matters more than most of us imagine. This post is in three parts with clear headings to facilitate easy access to the most relevant...

In a recent episode of the Feel Better Live More podcast, Dr Rangan Chatterjee interviewed a sleep doctor who revealed that he and his wife sleep with the TV, not just in the bedroom, but on at night and with a dog sleeping between them at pillow level, with the doctor getting the rear end! The interview is nevertheless worth a listen.The discussion covers a range of sleep-related matters including the issue of waking up at around 3am and not being able to go back to sleep. The doctor...

I'm fairly confident that had someone told me, as recently as the previous decade, that they did breathwork, the conversation wouldn't have developed any further. I hadn't come across the expression ‘breathing retraining’, but since it wasn't something I needed, it wouldn't have grabbed my attention, either. And I wouldn't have bothered to consider whether or not breathwork and breathing retraining were the same thing. Did I say I didn't need it? I was wrong. And it took James Nestor's book,...