“Control breathing and take control of life.”

ALTUMBLUE is a website, dedicated to exchange information about mental focus, leadership, decision-making, health anf fitness. Part of this effort, is ALTUMBLUE 2050, a kinetic evolving lifetime project, which proposes that at any age, everyday, a person should be on the quest of personal best. This philosophy is inspired by the sport world, especially the freediving mindset.

The central theme of ALTUMBLUE  is “improved respiration». It is a driving force, the path to choose, if we want to get better in several aspects of ordinary life.

The desired end-state of this project is an individual with 5 distinct attributes:     

1. Solid Mental Focus
2. Persuasive Leadership
3. Sharp Decisión Making
4. Good Quality Health
5. Phisycal Peak Performan

We only need to prepare ourselves. We will get this distinct features with daily breathing routines, conducted in a proper way.

“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.”

-Seneca

Dare = To train one thing ten thousand times to achieve mastery.

“Daring wisely is everything”

Let’s start with the concept of improved respiration. I need to say that I am not an expert in the art of breathing,  Improved respiration is the basic idea of becoming proficient at breathing. It is not easy to master respiration. Breathing is an art. I do want to change the way I breathe and improve my profiency in breathing. Improved respiration has a profound influence on the most important issues of life. Improving the way we breathe changes life for the better, for ourselves and others.

Just because breathing is a basic process, does not mean it is simple. Everybody breathes. In fact, one can live without water and food for days but only few minutes without breathing. While breathing is universal, not many people master the art of breathing.

In my strong pursuit to learn about breathing, I have read many books about respiration. I started taking yoga classes and engaging in meditations. I became certified as an instructor (SCUBA and FREEDIVING) by the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI). So far, I have learned several amazing things about the great effects of improved respiration in the 5 distinct features of ALTUMBLUE’s end state.

1.Solid Mental Focus

“The brain creates its own future by the choices it makes in the present.”

–Brant Cortright, Ph.D

A deep-routed intrinsic motivation will make us bulletproof in overcoming challenges when we are still in pursuit of our objectives. From ancient times prophets to modern mindulfness practicioners, meditation has been crutial to strengthen the spirituality. All types of meditation focus on breathing; improved respiration is the goal. Developing good breathing techniques help the brain to perform better and achieve deep concentration.

According to a September 2016 Time magazine special edition, “Mindfulness the new science of Health and Happiness”, succesfull people say the first thing they do each day is meditate and seek answers to the big questions in life. Why not imitate practices of those who have acheived success? Meditation may be worth trying if it could put you on the right path towards your objectives,whatever they could be.

There are different types of meditation, each with its own breathing techniques. In order to reach an improved respiration, ALTUMBLUE  will highlight interesting breathing techniques, focusing mainly on what I call “meditation in motion” or freediving training.

2. Persuasive leadership

We are all leaders of someone or something. Controlling emotions makes us better leaders. Many people fail in leadership due to a poor emotional control. There are ways to train and improve. Learning to influence the autonomic nervous system is the path to emotional control and is possible only with improved repiration.

The autonomic nervous system is the command and control center of our emotions, even involuntary movements, in the parasympathetic division. People who perfect the art of breathing; yogis,  mindfulness practionners, elite freedivers, and budist monks, among others, can master relaxation and positively affect the autonomic nervous system.

The ALTUMBLUE  leadership style emphasizes the importance of persuation and positive reinforcement to get better results. I learned in the Special Operations Forces of the Marine Corps that leadership is a matter of inspiring, guiding and supporting others. The role of the leader is to motivate team members to perform to the highest standards and to instill self-discipline.

3. Sharp decision making

As we already know, with improved respiration, an individual can positively influence the nervous system, relax and improve the decision-making process, including mastering the observation-orientation-decision-action (OODA) loop. OODA loop is a basic model of command and control used by the Marine Corps. When engaging in any situation, we observe and take inventory of the status. Next, we orient ourselves to the situation, analyzing it to define what it means to us. Based on our orientation, we decide what to do—take an inmediate action or formulate a deliberate plan. Finally, we put the decision into action.

When making decisions, we need to be calm no matter what the conditions of the surroundings are. Life requires us to make decisions every day. Some choices are simple, while others are complex. It is my intent to put science to practical use, and through reading and research, offer information that can be applied to making better or life-changing decisions.

4. Good Quality Health

“The harmful effects of stress on your health are not inevitable. How you think and how you act transform your experience with stress. When you choose to see your stress response as helpful, you create the biology of courage”.

–Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D.

Like the quote above, the rubicon of good or poor health could be the personal perception of stress. Mastering relaxation with improved respiration is an effective way to manage stress. Recognize the signals of stress and take advantage of them. With positive input to our autonomic nervous system, hormones are realesed to support health by neutralizing the toxic effects of stress.

With that in mind, we need to prepare our nervous system to keep calm under pressure with different respiration techniques. Also,  ALTUMBLUE focus on specific breathing training to help the body in the natural production of Nitric oxide, and therefore age proof the cardiovascular.

5. Peak performance in physical activities

The benefits of exercise are well documented. However, very few people breathe in an apropiate manner while excercising, and many never train on breathing techniques to boost performance.

An improved respiration helps to achieve maximum results from excercise, boost nitric oxide (NO) and maximal oxygen uptake (VO2Max) production. Nitric oxide, “the molecule of the year in 1992”, also known as “the miracle molecule”, is a powerful signalling molecule and naturally produced gas present in the cardiovascular and nervous systems, and throughout the body.

“I am convinced that nitric oxide can age-proof your cardiovascular system, keeping it much fitter than your chronological age will indicate.”

-Dr Louis Ignarro, 1998 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

 VO2Max indicates the maximum volume of oxygen that a person’s body can consume per minute at its peak performance. It is an excellent measure of cardiovascular fitness.

Boosting NO and VO2Max is central to the ALTUMBLUE  fitness approach. Here you can find some personally proven techniques that help to improve breathing, and bring physical and mental capacity to a higher level. A combination of exercises from five separate activities makes the difference: freediving, weightlifting, yoga, calisthenics, and high intensity interval training.

On the whole, because we believe in life, we know our path in this world is a neverending learning process, we can learn from each other. In this specific ride, we need to understand the huge benefits of improved respiration.

Let´s walk together as a powerful team, and follow a lifestyle based on a Permanent Quest of Personal Best in every journey we engage.

Breathe to inspire***

Bibliography

Bryan, Nathan. Ph.D The Nitric Oxide Solution

McGonigal, Kelly Ph.D- Upside of Stress: Why Stress is Good for you, and how to get good at it» 

Cortright, Brant Ph.D- The Neurogenesis Diet and Lifestyle

The Editors of TIME Mindfulness: The New Science of Health and Happiness.