From previous experience of our students, we do know that amount and intensity of physical activity are the main factors that allow any student to achieve and maintain Dr. Buteyko norms for health (over 60 s morning CP, less than 70 for the pulse at rest while sitting, with about 4 L/min for minute ventilation and 4, rarely 5, hours of natural sleep). This became the key goal (to break through 40 and then 50-60 s MCP) of the Advanced Course that includes 3 lessons.
This required amount of physical exercise varies from person to person, while we continue to explore the topic in order to find the methods of how to reduce the total time and energy investments while keeping normal health. There were students who would need up to 3 hours in total, but there were some older people who could be fine with 1 hour only. In my experience, I met only one person (Lynn – see our NDT videos) who had very little exercise while having normal (Buteyko) breathing. This signifies the crucial role of stress (past traumas) in this bodily drive to increase respiration. In any case, numerous cases of students who learned the NormalBreathing Course suggests that they require nearly twice less time than students trained by Dr, Buteyko in the 1960s -1980s. (I am not aware of any Soviet or Russian practitioners who got 60+s MCP in the 1990s or later, but they could exist.)
Even women can achieve normal health. One of my students was a female with mild scoliosis, about 50 yo, who started with around 12-15 s CP and got up to 50 s MCP in one month during the main course. She continued to practice using our tools and got 70 s MCP some weeks later. Students with scoliosis are usually not enthusiastic about running (even after breaking to 60+ MCP), however, she loved her daily 2-hour power walk to stay in this zone. What was unusual about her case, she needed 5 hours of sleep (all others would be fine with 4).
Meanwhile, one can do simple math and conclude that, as for most of our students, she needed about 7 hours in total for sleep and devoted physical exercise. This means that the whole process does not take time at all. Moreover, due to the “time dilation” effect, such students can accomplish many more things on a typical day.
Here are observations of other Buteyko Practitioners. Chris and Volker were trained by Dr. Artour.
Chris Prokop, a Buteyko educator from Mississauga, Canada.
Meditation: 3 to 11 minutes (sitting). Yoga kriyas listed in physical exercise. About 10 minutes of breathwork. 1 hour and 40 minutes of intensive exercise. This includes 40 minutes of yoga. Also, various dancing in one session of exercise that includes bboying (breakdancing), popping and freestyle. 1 hour + of easy exercise (walking, chores around the house). Lots of various stretches for posture throughout the day (some include: butterfly, pushing feet back and forth with legs straight, spinal flexes, touching toes with legs straight and neck stretches). Vegan diet: 50% raw and various fruits for breakfast with a variety of cereals. Dinner includes various ethnic dishes (Punjabi, Thai) of mainly veggies and some vegan protein of beans, tofu, chickpeas, lentils etc.
Volker Schmitz, Buteyko and NormalBreathing teacher from Hamburg, Germany
1-2 hours intensive (but with changing intensity, e.g. interval training or lots of different sports) and 2-5 hours of light exercise (e.g., walking ) are giving me the best results. All this is done with tons of stretching and daily meditation to stay calm and relaxed and keep the parasympathetic system in balance. On keto or low carb diet, my morning CP gets easily and fast over 60 that way. There is no need for many breathing exercises because breath is reduced for many hours a day automatically. No need for 3 hours of intensive training, 3 hours can trigger inflammation and even damage in my opinion. But one has to do much more light movements, if one is not doing a lot of intensive exercises, I think.
Bud Weiss, Buteyko teacher from NY, USA
Stalmatski’s instruction with the use of 5 sets of maximum pause and 3 minutes of minimal breathing rest 1minute and next set completing the 5 sets 6 times a day. Rest of the day doing very reduced breathing, eating one time a day restricted calorie diet with veggies and some meat protein. Lots of water and sea salt, no more than 4 hours sleep, sleeping on left side taping mouth, cold water showers for 5 minutes once a day at least with controlled breathing before and after. Racewalking 1 hour a day with warm up and cool down in that hour building to heartrate 130/minute for 20 minutes. in the 3 months, to begin with, working as Stalmatski’s assistant, I built to a CP of over 60 and Max pause of over 120 to demonstrate for new students. I maintained that for about a year and began to drop off to under 30 seconds MCP ( morning control pause) after my knees began to give me a lot of trouble. about two years ago at age 78, with Misha coaching me beginning with an MCP of about 20, and very little exercise other than once a week for 20-25 minute workout on Nautilus equipment using Dr. Doug McGuff’s routine, with Misha’s version ( he uses special bone broth with added natural ingredients to keep balance of specific organ neats amino acids and chelating property of cilantro) of reduced protein and calorie ketogenic intermittent fasting, using the Frolov device building to 2 20 or 30 minute sessions with my maximum exhale of about 35 seconds, in 1 month I reached about 45-50 second MCP and 90-100 max CP.
My personal experience was that having about 2 hours of intensive physical activity (pulse over 150 beats per minute) with about 1-2 hours of easy exercise such as walking allowed me to keep the morning CP above 60 with 4 hours of natural sleep for many weeks without any formal breathing sessions, but occasional breath holds and maximum pauses were very beneficial to have large boosts in CO2 (and CPs) with further increases in already high energy levels. However, one has to take into account that these positive effects of maximum pauses were possible because of the previous 2 years of having up to 1-2 hours of daily reduced breathing.
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