How to Breathe Better for Peak Performance | Brian Mackenzie | Align Podcast #527

Align Podcast

Aaron Alexander

Health & Fitness, Alternative Health, Nutrition

4.8 • 900 Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What if the way you breathe is hurting you?

In this episode of the Align podcast, Brian Mackenzie, a human optimization expert, breaks down the science of breathing to transform health, performance, and emotional resilience. You’ll discover the role of CO2 in calming the nervous system, why proper breathing techniques are essential for strength and recovery, and how you can integrate some of the best breathing techniques into your daily life and training routines.

OUR GUEST

Brian is an innovator and pioneer in developing and applying custom protocols to optimize human health and performance. His work harnesses and integrates respiratory (breathing), movement, strength & conditioning, and endurance-based training approaches to elicit unprecedented positive results. His protocols and programs have been used to accelerate and raise mental and physical performance in world-class Olympic and professional athletes, first responders, musicians, actors, top executives, elite military operators, the tactical firearms community, prisoners in institutions, and the health of people suffering from chronic and pathological issues.

Brian’s work is voluntarily and repeatedly subjected to rigorous 3rd party scientific testing, re-testing, and improvement, at top institutions. He has been contracted, and his work is involved in research projects at Stanford University School of Medicine, California State University Fullerton, San Francisco State University, and the UFC Performance Institute.

Brian is himself a highly accomplished practitioner. He completed Ironman (Canada, 2004), the Western States 100-mile, and The Angeles Crest 100-mile runs using adapted training protocols he developed to improve performance. He is the co-founder of The Art of Breath, a division of SH//FT that teaches a principles-based approach to breath & performance. Brian has also co-authored the book Power Speed Endurance, The New York Times Best Seller UnBreakable Runner, and UnPlugged, which assesses the integration of emergent technology and human performance. He has voluntarily integrated and invested his programs at varying California State Prisons, including San Quentin, Pelican Bay, and Corcoran, with tremendous success. His programs have been featured in Outside Magazine, Men’s Health, Runners World, Triathlete Magazine, Men’s Journal, and periodicals such as The Economist. Brian and his protocols have been featured in 2 of Timothy Ferriss’ New York Times bestselling books, including: “The 4-Hour Body” and “Tools of Titans” and Scott Carney’s New York Times best-seller “What Doesn't Kill Us.”

His clients have included: Ari Emanuel, Kelly Starrett, Tim Ferriss, U.S. Military (Navy, Army, Marines - including elite units), varying Law Enforcement Agencies, Canadian Military (CANSOF), Jon “Bones” Jones, Laird Hamilton, Tia Clair Toomey (5X CrossFit Games Champion), Rich Froning Jr. (4X CrossFit Games Champion) and many others. Brian is the Founder & Creative Director of SHIFT, Co-Founder and President of The Health and Human Performance Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to researching how breath and innate tools can optimize and help health and human performance.

BRIAN MACKENZIE

📸 IG ▶ https://www.instagram.com/shift_adapt/

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▶️ YT ▶ https://www.youtube.com/@SHIFTADAPT

🌐 Website ▶ https://shiftadapt.com/

AARON ALEXANDER

📸 IG ▶ https://www.instagram.com/aaronalexander/

🤳 TIKTOK ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@alignmethod

👉 SUBSCRIBE ▶ https://www.youtube.com/@AlignPodcast?sub_confirmation=1

🌐 WEBSITE ▶ https://www.alignpodcast.com

ABOUT

Aaron Alexander is a pioneering manual therapist and movement coach with over 5 years experience. He is the founder and creator of The Align Method, author of The Align Method book, and host of The Align Podcast which has ranked #1 in Nutrition on Apple Podcasts.

Aaron has worked with some of the world’s greatest professional athletes, performers, and celebrities to help relieve pain, improve strength, better flexibility, and ease the mind and body.

On this channel, Aaron interviews renowned experts in a range of fields focused on improving the mind and body. This mind and body podcast will teach you all that you need to know to become the healthiest version of yourself by integrating simplified ancient techniques and the foundational principles of The Align Method to strengthen your body, balance the mind, and activate healing systems in daily life.

The mission? To be the best personal growth podcast about healthy habits, redefine functional movement, and make fitness who you are; not what you do.

TOPICS

1. Breathwork techniques

2. Breathing techniques

2. ATP efficiency

3. Mindfulness

4. Emotional resilience

5. Stress management

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome back to Lyme Podcast. My name is Aaron Alexander. Today's episode is with my good friend Brian
0:04.4	McKenzie. Brian is an innovator in human performance on stress adaptation and he's a pioneer in the
0:10.6	development and application of custom protocols to optimize human health and performance. He is
0:15.6	a absolute legend in the world of endurance training and respiration, i.e. breathing. This conversation is a deep dive
0:24.4	into how to breathe better. Some of the common mistakes people make with breathing and do not even
0:29.1	realize it. And also some of the mistakes people are making when they are intentionally doing
0:33.6	things like breathing practices and they could be exacerbating issues just because they don't
0:38.2	have the proper training on how to do so we are taking on average around 20,000 breaths per day
0:43.4	each one of those breaths affects every aspect of our physiology and our mental emotional state
0:50.1	we can regulate our mental emotional state as well as our physiology by regulating our breath.
0:56.0	That's what this conversation is about.
0:57.0	And that is also what the Align Breathing program is about, which I am over the top excited to finally be launching and releasing.
1:06.0	I think it is the best, most comprehensive breathing program on the internet. I'm sure I'm not supposed to say
1:12.4	that, but I've looked at most of them. And what I really value about the line breathing program
1:16.9	is it is truly comprehensive in that it focuses on the mechanics of breathing first and then goes
1:22.1	into calming or down regulation and then goes into stimulating or upregulation and also has a brief overview
1:28.8	of the anatomy and physiology of breathing.
1:30.9	A great starting point for you guys.
1:32.5	If you want to learn more about your own breath is to take the breathing archetype quiz
1:36.2	to determine whether you are a what we refer to as a stressed survivor or if you are an
1:41.6	air alchemist or something in between.
1:46.4	These are the names that we determine for people who are doing really well with her breath or could use a little bit of work. So if you
	...

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