Respiration

and Female Hormones

Presenter: Dan Hellman
RHM: Welcome back to The Female Hormone Solution! Up next weve got Dan Hellman how
are you today?
Dan Hellman: Doing great, thanks for having me!
RHM: Pleasure. Lets get started; what does a proper breathing pattern look like?
Dan Hellman: First of all we should talk about the actual rate. Now if you take a textbook or
Google you will find that it will be from 12 to 22 breaths per minute. In school a lot of textbooks
told us that the average person should breathe 12 to 16 times per minute, some textbooks
even say 16 to 22 times per minute.
Now studying under Paul Chek, Paul believes that healthy people really only breath 6 to 8 or 6
to 10 times per minute, which is far from what textbooks tell you. So I find that interesting,
because at the end of the day we have to understand that our society, our medical system
study sick people they dont study healthy people so right away I think we have to look at the
frequency, the amount of time people breathe per minute.
We will come back to that in a minute. A proper breathing pattern should look like this. It
should be like an umbrella; if you open up an umbrella, it opens up in 360 degrees, if your
umbrella only opens up at the front you will get wet. In a proper breathing pattern the first 2/3
of breath should come from around the diaphragm area below the rib cage and the last
third should come from the chest.
Now with that said, its easy to see but it gets a little more complicated than that because you
actually could be using one side of your diaphragm more or you could be using one side of your
rib cage more. The other thing we have to look at is that it is three-dimensional; you have an
anterior/posterior, lateral and a vertical expansion. Now fortunately, the last one that people
loose is the vertical one; if we lose this one we are dead. Most people will typically lose the
anterior/posterior expansion first and then they will lose the lateral expansion and then the last
thing that will go is the vertical expansion.
So when you watch somebody breathe you have to make sure you are watching them around
their entire body and make sure that they are breathing, again in 360 degrees and also in all
1

three dimensions and all three planes. The one that you will see more readily is the vertical
expansion, thats almost people breathing, thats something we should get into and the cause
of why people do that.
If you are in the fitness or health industry, you never tell people what you are looking at
because no matter what the test is you never wants to lose the test, so you never say Im going
to watch you breathe in, Im going to count how many times you breathe in, you just do that
when you are doing something else. I normally do it when I am interviewing the person or
when I have them standing up and looking at their posture or something like that.
RHM: Next question what is the impact of respiration on the female organs?
Dan Hellman: Now the impact of the respiration on the female organ We can go from a
biochemical standpoint or from a very touchy, feely aspect. Obviously biochemically, if we are
hyperventilating were gassing off too much carbon dioxide and our pH actually goes up, we are
very alkaline.
If we are in a lot of pain and we are holding our breath the pH actually goes down and we
become very acidic. Now you dont have to be a biochemist to figure out that if I change the pH
in my body that its going to have an impact on every organ and every gland not to mention
every muscle because I am sure, I dont know if you guys have ever seen somebody
hyperventilate, its not a pleasant experience because what happens is all of the blood vessels
begin to constrict and the person basically ends up becoming a very tightly bound ball. Its not a
pleasant thing, so you know right away that it is going to have a major impact on the organs
and the glands of the human body.
Just because of the pH level, certain areas of our body have different PH at different times of
the day and depending on activity. So right away the respiration is going to affect the pH
balance. If we look at a pure physical component when we breathe properly, the diaphragm
literally massages every organ in our body.
The diaphragm, and Ive always said this, is the most important muscle in the body. People
come back and say it is the heart but the heart I consider more as an organ. The diaphragm is
literally the most important muscle in the body and because its not a muscle that we can see
flex in the mirror, nobody straightens the diaphragm, the diaphragm needs to be stretched, the
diaphragm needs sometime to have soft tissue work done to it and sometimes the diaphragm
needs to be reinforced.
2

So there are actually three different parts to the diaphragm and all three parts of the
diaphragm actually has a different stretch to stretch it, you can also reinforce the diaphragm in
many different ways depending on what is going on with the person. The diaphragm is
extremely complex and unfortunately I did not get a lot on this in physical therapy school and
very little information in the personal training field. Its very important that the diaphragm
moves properly because again its literally like giving your organs an entire body massage.
When it moves up and down it pumps and it helps pump fluid, transport spinal fluid, blood to
limbs to support your immune system, so on, and so on.
RHM: So what are the differences between the organ of the person that is breathing and
getting all that circulation and nutrition going to their organs as oppose to the person not
breathing properly and getting that pumping?
Dan Hellman: Sure, what you see is the people that are not getting the pumping is a lot of
stagnation. Ill never forget what Paul Chek said; Whenever you see stagnant water what do
you see? Well you see mold and bacteria and fungus etc., so for people not using their
diaphragm properly I really think and really believe that the organ health has to come into
question at that point. If they are not using their diaphragm and it is not pumping the organs,
you have to ask yourself the question why? There could be many reasons why and then also
you have to look at the effect it has moving the water through the body.
Whether you say it is 70 percent water or 80 percent water doesnt matter, so lets say the
human body compose of 70 percent water, lets look at it differently its made up of water
filled tubes. If you look at the human body under a microscope you see millions and millions of
tubes and hopefully those tubes have water in them. Dr. Guy Voyer says something very
interesting; The day the water stops flowing in your body is the day you die.
So when somebody isnt using their diaphragm properly in my opinion what they are doing is
actually causing stagnation in their organs and then who knows what you are setting yourself
up for. When something isnt moving, when something isnt flowing, I think thats when cancers
grow, thats when fungus grows, that when parasites grow, thats when candida grows, etc. Its
a very broad question and who knows, who knows what happens, but I dont think any good
comes out of it.
RHM: Can you talk about breathing for a flat belly in regards to the TVA?
Dan Hellman: When the TVA works properly, the TVA compresses; its like a corset, it sets
around your body like a weight belt, so to speak.
3

Ill tell you guys the story at a fitness conference that I was speaking at. When the next
presenter stepped into the room and she said Ok guys, hold your stomach in because you
never know who is watching. Well when you do that are you reinforcing the TVA? Probably,
but to what detriment? To the detriment of not using you diaphragm, right?
If you cant use your diaphragm we come back again to the organs. Eugene Sandow said back in
the late 1800s that you cant have healthy muscles without having healthy organs and glands,
so I dont get caught up in hammering the transverse abdominus for a flat belly. If the
transverse abdominus is toned, will it make your belly look flatter? Absolutely.
I can tell my clients how to loose inches off their waist; I just teach you how to reinforce and
activate your transverse abdominus. The transverse abdominus is a major stabilizer of the body
but more importantly is stabilizing my spine Depending on what you are doing, sometime your
body says Wait, its time to breathe, diaphragm do your job!
If am going to lift a 1 rep max dead lift my body says breathing is not important now; your TVA
is. Thats why we hold our breath so we can use the diaphragm; use the TVA to stabilize our
spine. But to think of the TVA of purely a means of flattening the tummy I think is the wrong
approach and I think its setting people up for a lot of respiratory problems and inverted
breathing patterns, hyperventilation, and chronic neck tension because they are not ventilating
the way the body is suppose to ventilate.
If you get down to basic respiratory mechanics we have to create a negative void in our lungs to
breathe, and the only way to create a negative void to:
Inhale, so that my diaphragm drops down think of it like pulling a balloon down, thats going
to create a negative pressure in my lungs and anything that has a negative wants a positive, so
then boomm! Oxygen rushes in and then when my diaphragm comes back up carbon dioxide or
waste expels back out. If I am activating my TVA in such a way that I am not allowed to use my
diaphragm then whats going to happen is that I have to become a chest breather, or I have to
become a neck breather because in some way, shape or form I have to create that negative
void in order for oxygen to come in.
So now you see people who breathe up in the top of their chest, everything is up in the neck
and you see this massive vertical expansion. You see nothing down here in the belly, so the TVA
is extremely important. We need to reinforce it but I think that the fitness industry has gone
crazy on too much of the holding-in, always compressing, always drawing your belling in
because thats not how the human body really functions.
4

RHM: How does faulty breathing tips someone towards the sympathetic dominance and
therefore decrease function of the female hormonal system?
Dan Hellman: This is probably the star question right here. Pretty much I would say 80 to 90
percent of all pharmaceuticals that are written today are written due to imbalance in the
autonomic nervous system.
So again, just for those people who may not know what that is the autonomic nervous system
is automatic but you do have some control over it. Your autonomic nervous system controls
your breathing, your blood pressure, your digestion, your pupils of your eyes etc. It has two
branches: the sympathetic branch and the parasympathetic branch.
The way I think about it is; the sympathetic branch is If I have a tiger that jumps out in front of
me I want sympathy from the tiger, please dont eat me Mr. Tiger. I go on to a fight or flight
response right away.
So my sympathetic branch, what is does is that it halts my sex hormones, it halts my digestion,
it makes my pupils dilate, it shunts all of the blood from my organs and my glands to my arms
and my legs so that I can either fight this tiger or run from this tiger. So thats how I look at the
sympathetic branch.
The parasympathetic branch is our repair side; its anabolic, its yin, its there to build the body
back up again. When I am parasympathetic Im creating my sex hormones, Im creating my
testosterone, my progesterone, if youre female estrogen, you can go on and on.
The key to health, the true key to health is the simple balance of the autonomic nervous system
but thats really easier said than done.
Again, if you look at most prescriptions that are written; high blood pressure, hypertension,
men taking Viagra, well what is that? You are not making your sex hormones. You look at most
of depression medication, upset stomach, irritable bowl syndrome, thyroid I swear with every
single medication there is a direct link to the autonomic nervous system and then we have to
take in how do we work with that autonomic nervous system.
Well I tell you the science of yoga is breathing so I can absolutely take myself from a
sympathetic state by focusing on the proper breathing. I can absolutely pull myself back into
the parasympathetic state. Now with that said we dont want to walk around being
parasympathetic because we would never get anything done, we would be couch potatoes, the
key is the balance between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic system.
5

When that system is in balance there is no need for medication, there is no need for doctors
because everything is working the way it should. So again I think that is the key to my talk and
to you guys summit is the balance of the autonomic nervous system and the most effective
way to do that is to start at highest survival reflex of the human body. That is breathing. If your
breathing is off everything is off, and you can hear these people; nothing is smooth, nothing is
flowing, theyre all up in the throat, very highly strung.
So again that was the best question, and thats really the key to the whole hormonal seminars
that youre doing because if I am constantly sympathetic, if I am constantly being chased by the
tiger things go wrong. When I say chase by the tiger you guys know that it could be that you get
a tax bill, you dont like your job, your relationship, you work out too much, you dont rest
enough, when I say that I dont mean chase by the tiger literally but figuratively. It means
stress. The root thing or activity we have to deal with is breathing.
RHM: What kind of practices can people follow to improve their breathing if they identify that
they may not be breathing properly, or they are not using their diaphragm, or they are not
using their belly, what strategies do you have for people to rectify that?
Dan Hellman: First of all we should talk about why people are not breathing right. I think a lot
of time people have an aahhaa moment because here is this guy saying that nobody is
breathing right. Well let me tell you why nobody breathes right.
It wasnt until couple years ago when a colleague of mine and I went to Barbados and over a
three week period we assessed over 112 people. We compared our notes and found that out of
112 people maybe only three people that actually had a proper breathing pattern. Now
whenever I assess somebody I always look at breathing, its the first thing I look at, its the
highest survival reflex.
So I started kind of questioning my techniques and asking was I looking at the right thing? I
actually sat down and had a conversation with Paul Chek about this, and I said Paul, how is it
possible that out of 112 people only three people actually breathe properly? Of course Paul
gave me an amazing answer and so we started first with the metaphysical aspect it.
If you think about the metaphysical aspect of it theres really two emotions in life and that is
fear and love. Lets say that you are five years old and you get lost in the grocery store; you
immediately have a fear, you have a holding pattern. The diaphragm sits at the solar plexus,
where you have neurons than you do in your entire brain and spinal cord. Thats why the
Chinese medicine philosophy calls it The abdominal brain, thats why you hear people say Go
6

with your gut feeling, because you actually have more nerves here. If you have a big business
decision to make a lot of time you listen to your gut.
So what happens is when we have a fear, when we get mad or upset we create a holding
pattern in the solar plexus and that holding pattern actually creates either an inverse breathing
pattern, or a chest breather or a neck breather or something like that. How many people on
this planet have being scared, mad or upset at some point in their life? Everyone has, thats the
first problem. The second problem again is with what the fitness industry is saying.
The fitness industry is saying everyone can walk around with their stomach tucked in because
you dont know who is looking at you. I hear that all the time because people are so conscious
of their mid-section. Every time they turn on the TV, every time they open up the magazine, we
have TV and magazines dictating to us what health is.
Well Marilyn Munroe used to be the most beautiful woman on the planet and she was very
shapely and all of a sudden Marilyn turned into Ms. Twiggy, like the size of my forearm and
extremely anorexic. We have newspaper and magazine and television show and media dictating
to us whats health and whats not health, which is complete rubbish.
That is why we have so many faulty breathing patterns and because it is so engrained into our
nervous system after a while its very difficult to get out of that faulty breathing pattern,
especially if there is a mental, spiritual, emotional component. We wont talk about that now,
lets talk about the physical component now.
Physically I have found that if I dont take my clients through infant development sequences
and retrain their breathing pattern it doesnt stick, so what I mean by that is for me infant
development to me is just positions. An infant is either on its tummy or on its back when it
starts out in life, and from there it goes to four-point on its hands and knees. From four point it
goes to the sitting, from sitting it goes to tall kneeling on two knees, from tall kneeling to half
kneeling and from half kneeling to being the only creature that walks on two feet.
So I have found that if I actually starts retraining the breathing pattern with those sequences in
mind I found that it sticks much more effectively than just taking your client and saying Oh no
you dont breathe like that, you breathe with your diaphragm. It doesnt work guys, it just
doesnt work.
Again I do it through the infant development approach and sometimes my client goes away
with only lying on their back with the weight on their stomach to practice lifting it with their
7

belly when they breathe. My record so far was a forty pound weight; twenty kilos. I have had to
put forty pounds on someones stomach just to get them to figure out where their diaphragm is
because they have amnesia, they dont even know where anything is anymore, they just lost
the connection.
I have people that for a week all they do is lie on their back with the weight on their tummy
and work on diaphragmatic breathing because there is no sense in taking them into another
position till they can at least figure out when gravity is resisting them. When you stick someone
up on his or her hands and knees forget it; they completely loose it. You start taking someone
up the vertical they loose it. so taking them through the infant development procedure or
positions work beautifully.
Going the reverse way before they go to sleep is equally powerful. Standing next to the bed and
doing two or three breaths in standing, two or three breaths in half kneeling, two or three
breaths in tall kneeling, two or three breaths sitting on the bed, two or three breaths in four
point on the bed and then lie on your back and fall asleep is the fastest way to put somebody
parasympathetic. You cant go there until you first conquer the order of infant development
lying to standing.
RHM: What an amazing concept. How should women breath during exercise?
Dan Hellman: This could be a bit of a long topic because breathing during exercises is really a
misunderstood phenomena and I will tell you right now that the fitness industry does not teach
clients how to breathe right at all, it is completely reversed.
So first of all we have to understand that it all depends on whether you are using your
diaphragm as a respiratory muscle or a stabilizer muscle; that is the first key. As a rule of thumb
if you are doing a load roughly at about 60 percent or less of a 1 rep max, so now you are
looking a weight that you can lift at about eighteen to twenty times you are using it as a
respiratory muscle.
A lot of trainers always say I train my clients higher than that. Really? So who are you
training? Body builders, Olympic athletes, professional athletes? No, they are usually training
the CEO that sits behind his desk or the mum that runs around after her kids all day. You should
be training around the 60 percent max range because if you are training them for posture, to
pump their body, by the way for me the number one purpose of exercise is to pump the body.

If you are working with your corporate people, with your stressed out stayed home mom, I
would tell you to probably hover a lot of time around that 60 percent 1 rep max range. Now
you are using the diaphragm as a respiratory muscle throughout the entire workout.
So next thing the spine trumps the arms and the legs. We think of the spine first, if we are going
into axial extension, which means we are getting taller or if we are going into extension,
meaning bending backwards, we inhale.
If we are going into horizontal abduction extremities we inhale, if we are going into external
rotation with the extremities we inhale. If we are going away from pronation, away from the
fetal position then we are going to supination, we inhale.
If we want to excite the extensors of the body those are all the muscles down the back of the
body, the extensor chain, we inhale. Ok, thats all coupled with inhalation. Remember the spine
wins.
With exhalation, if we are going into axial flexion, we are getting shorter, we exhale. If we are
going into flexion we exhale, if we are going into then pronation position or the fetal position,
we exhale.
If we are going into extremity extension or adduction or horizontal adduction or pronation we
exhale.
Very simply, if you just do an exercise, exaggerate the motion; so lets say for example we are
going to do a single arm cable pull. I pole the cable, am I going away from the fetal position or
into the fetal position? Well, I am going away from the fettle position; I want to inhale.
The fitness industry says as soon as you start lifting the weight you breathe out. That doesnt
make sense; again thats all predicated on what the load is. Now if I am going to do a heavy one
arm cable pull I going to inhale because thats going to excite my extensors. Im probably not
going to breathe during the exercise Ill take a big breathe before and breathe out a little bit
on the way out. I do that because my body says Wait a minute, Dan; use your diaphragm
because if you dont use your stabilizers youre going to blow your back out.
If people would just listen to their body intuitively it will tell them how to breathe. It takes
3000-3500 repetitions to change a bad pattern, When I work with various clients that had other
trainers, I tell you it takes a lot of repetitions to change their breathing pattern.

So again just think about it this way; if youre opening going away from the fetal position you
inhale, if youre going into the fetal position you exhale. But always pay attention to what the
spine is doing; if you are trying to change someones posture with a reverse wood chop and
youre having them breathe out, you are trying to tell the body to stop and go at the same time.
It doesnt make much sense because when we inhale we get taller and when we exhale we get
shorter.
If I am going to throw a punch, I breathe out because those are the flexors. Exhalation activates
the flexors. Inhalation activates the extensors; it makes me want to go vertical. If I am trying to
change somebodys posture I am not going the use the heavy load; I am going to use a load that
they can lift roughly 18 to 20 times and Im going to make sure I breathe with the movement.
RHM: Lets talk about stress management what type of exercise can people do to get
themselves back to normal?
Dan Hellman: A very simple one is what I call the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 breathing. Just inhale and exhale
for one second each. The next breath inhale for 2 seconds, exhale for 2 seconds. Continue that
and work all the way up the 5 seconds inhale and 5 seconds exhale.
For the people that sit behind the desk all day I have them set a timer everyone has a smart
phone nowadays and every hour when it dings I have them do the 1 to 5 seconds breath.
Thats it, that is enough to take somebody from being extremely sympathetic to being
parasympathetic, it completely changes their world.
Again with the breathing part of it, with the exercise, if a woman walks in for a work out and
they come in dragging their butt from work, had a bad day at work, may be they had a fight
with their husband, etc and they come in with no energy; I am going to give them a workout
where they breathe energetically through the workout. Im going to lower the load, and Im
going to make sure when their body is opening up they inhale and when the body is closing
they exhale. I promise you they will leave my gym high as a kite, in a good way. They will be
revitalized.
And again another wonderful saying by Paul is Are you a trainer or are you a drainer? A lot of
people are drainers, they think they are coming to the gym just to get their butt beat but a lot a
time people need to get a little more TLC in the gym.
Another one is I love to use Feldenkrais exercises to restore proper breathing patterns, so
once I teach the person how to breathe properly then I have to reinforce it in their body and
10

one of the really nice ways to do that is to have them do very gentle Feldenkrais exercises or
any type of just gentle movement tai chi, qigong, any practice like that where your body is
going into and out of a fetal position encouraging inhalation or exhalation.. Any type of exercise
like that will help restore and start the process of drilling a new pattern into the nervous
system.
When you teach someone to go through the infant development patterns my favorite one is to
have them reverse it; go from standing to reverse the pattern, to help go from a sympathetic
state to a parasympathetic state
RHM: Neck tension and breast health can you touch on why women can get tight necks from
poor breathing, and why bad breathing affects breast health/
Dan Hellman: The number one exercise in the gym is the crunch. There are proper ways of
doing the crunch and there are not-so-proper ways to do the crunch.
Unfortunately most people do crunch off the floor where they do like this. What thats going to
do that is going to shorten the rectus abdominus its actually called dropping sarcomeres.
Research show that after a short time the rectus abdominus actually drops sarcomeres, so we
actually shorten the rectus abdominus.
Now for all you ladies out there your rectus abdominus attaches to the sternum and it attaches
to you pubic bon. If you drop sarcomeres it pulls your sternum down, now your breasts are
facing south instead of straight out.
Normally that makes your breast look smaller than they really are and a lot of women then go
off to the plastic surgeon to get a augmentation.
So think about having some saline put in your breast and having that hang down all day long.
Whats that going to do is start reinforcing neck breathing. Now you are going to have some
very facilitated neck muscle; things like scalenes, upper traps, all these muscles are going to
become very tightened, very facilitated and the body typically wants to use a facilitated muscle
over a non-facilitated muscle.
What will happen over time is that person starts to become a neck breather and now you will
see the neck tension go up and down, up and down. You can go to have a massage every day of
your life, you could have your neck manipulated every day of your life, if that practitioner
doesnt know how to teach you to use your diaphragm you will always have neck tension.
11

RHM: Do you want to leave us with some closing comments?

Dan Hellman: To summarize my contribution for the beautiful job that you guys are doing and
want to accomplish; understand that the autonomic nervous system is the major player in the
hormonal system.
Thats what this whole topic is about because if you are being chased by the tiger all the time, if
you are always sympathetic, if youre always catabolic, if youre always yang, if youre always
tearing down, if youre always working out it is absolutely impossible to create health
hormones. In a fight or flight state your body doesnt care about hormone at that time because
your body is gearing up for a fight and thats why we talk about all of the blood been shunted to
the arms, to the legs, the digestive system locking down, the blood been pulled away from the
organs of the body.
So for my contribution I think it is important to understand that there is a means of controlling
the autonomic nervous system, and the simplest form of doing that is through breathing,
proper breathing and not to be ashamed or to even think twice about why you have an
improper breathing pattern because we talked about that. Most people do and it comes back
to again the emotional, mental, spiritual aspect of the human being.
The emotional, mental, spiritual aspect moves much faster than the physical so if Im not happy
in my relationship, if Im not happy at work, if Im scared that I might be losing a love one, if Im
scared of financial problems, I am going to set up a holding pattern in the solar plexus and
thats going to directly affect my respiration, which is going to directly affect my hormones.
Understand that we can control our breathing, there are techniques to restore a proper
breathing pattern and there is a proper way to breathe during exercise. If your trainer is always
telling you to breathe out when you are lifting the weights I think you need to question that,
especially if you are doing a load that is less than or roughly around 60 percent 1 rep max,
which again you can lift about 18 to 20 times.
So I think in summary that is my contribution to the wonderful job you guys are doing with the
female hormonal system.
Thank you for having me ,and its always a joy to talk to you guys and again I support you and I
hope what you are doing is a huge success, maybe I look forward to talking to you in the near
future.

12