“The more you breathe the closer you are to death. The less you breathe the longer you will live.” Konstantin Buteyko 1923-2003. It seems every mammal is allotted the same number of breaths in their lifetime, roughly 600,000,000. Some whales and certain elephants manage on as few as four breaths per minute and can live to 150 years whereas the busy fast moving pigmy shrew who breathes around 500 breaths per minute lives just over a year. The table below shows the data for other mammals including us humans:

“The perfect man breathes as if he is not breathing” Lao Tzu (4th century BC). Lao Tzu is claimed to have lived to a 160 years old. Perhaps he only breathed about five breaths per minute.

We don’t promise great longevity when you train with the Buteyko Method, though you will have better health, more energy, sounder sleep, fewer symptoms and a calmer life if you breathe better.

With humans, one of the major factors that cause chronic hidden hyperventilation is stress. Stress triggers the primitive fight/flight response repeatedly, eventually causing the CO2 receptors to accept a lower level of CO2 and thereby establishing a over-breathing pattern. Your doctor usually never checks your breathing as part of a routine examination (unless you arrive complaining of a respiratory condition) despite the fact that breathing is perhaps the most important activity in our lives! Well, we can live for three weeks without food, three days without water, and less than three minutes without air!


Over seventy-five percent of us in the West over-breathe or hyperventilate and breathe badly, using upper chest and mouth breathing instead of using the amazing breathing tube – our nose! You can check your own breathing on our website thebreathconnection.com or you can learn more about ‘The Breath Connection’ with a book just recently published by the same title – from Lulu.com – and become aware of just how much you can do to help yourself to better health.

Michael Lingard BSc. DO BBEC