We recommend all people who want to optimize their health and performance to first carry out the Body Oxygen Level Test (BOLT). With BOLT, we hold our breath after exhaling until we feel the first involuntary movements of the breathing muscles or a clear desire to breathe. The BOLT test gives us effective feedback on both functional breathing and our exercise tolerance. We’ll show you how you can easily find out your BOLT level.

• Breathe in normally and silently through your nose.
• Exhale normally and silently through your nose.
• Pinch your nose with your fingers to prevent air from entering your lungs.
• Stop the seconds until you feel the first urge to inhale.

Basic optimization:

Our goal is to teach you easy, slow and deep breathing. Gentle breathing normalizes lung ventilation and blood circulation. In addition, the delivery of oxygen to the cells is improved. Slow breathing improves heart rate and optimizes the balance between the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems. Deep breathing improves lung volume and increases oxygen uptake in the blood. It also has a calming effect on the psyche and can have a positive effect on various mental illnesses.

So, our first goal must be easy breathing. We will explain to you with a simple exercise how to make your breathing easier.

• Sit upright in a chair or lie on your back.
• Rest hands on lap or chest.
• Notice how your breath is drawn in and out of your nose.
• With each breath, slow your breath a little more. Above all, the breath should be silent.
• Slow your breathing until you can barely feel it.
• The goal is to make you feel like you need more air.
• Complete the exercise for up to 4 minutes.

This is the first step to comprehensively optimize your breathing. In a next step we will try to reduce our breathing rate comprehensively. The goal must be to reduce the breathing rate comprehensively. The ideal breathing rate is 6 breaths per minute. This frequency automatically leads to an improvement in the BOLT level. A simple exercise will help us. We’ll show you how to do it.

• Sit on the floor in a cross-legged position.
• As you exhale, feel your ribs move.
• Inhale for 4 seconds and exhale for 6 seconds.
• Feel the ribs move outward on the exhale and inward on the inhale.
• Repeat this exercise for 4 minutes.

The last step is to optimize the breathing so that the breathing becomes deeper. A simple exercise that we can do while walking will help us get closer to this goal.

• Block one of your nostrils with your finger.
• Breathe through the open nostril.
• By bundling the airflow, breathing becomes deeper and the lung volume is temporarily reduced.
• Conduct the exercise for about 5 minutes.

These simple exercises are just a first step towards personal self-improvement. If you use them regularly, your BOLT level will increase, which is a good basis for further breathing exercises, which we can present to you in further sections. The goal is an energetic balance with the help of which we can achieve optimal physical and mental health that opens all big opportunities of the world to us.

Sources: McKeown, Patrick. Atme Und Heile Dich Selbst: Wissenschaftlich Belegte Atemtechniken Für Ein Gesünderes, Glücklicheres Und Längeres Leben. Riva, 2022.