I can’t think of a little boy in this country who ever imagined he would grow up to hurt those he cares about most. That’s why targeting these violent behaviours through a men’s health and wellbeing lens presents a vital and largely untapped approach to violence prevention. It’s a message I brought to the NSW Government after the Bondi Junction attack and one I’ll be taking to share at the crisis roundtable being convened this week in Canberra.

This is a missing angle in the conversation, and while some think it’s finding an excuse for men’s behaviour, that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s a solution, and a much needed one. Seeking to further understand the drivers and risk factors of violence and finally start to actively engage men in a way that talks with them as change makers with skin in the game, is a moral imperative if we are to turn the tide.

We need to understand the rates of childhood maltreatment and trauma in boys and men. Those who grow up in domestically violent households are around four times more likely to perpetuate violence than those who don’t. Australian data estimates that over a third of domestic and family violence involved perpetrators drinking alcohol. Men’s suicidality is also a significant risk factor for intimate partner homicide. If you then add the impact of the porn and gambling industries in men’s lives, a stark picture appears.

These are typically not happy men. These are key forces undoing any progress we might be making on gender equality, and they are inextricably tied to men’s health and wellbeing. For years we’ve been overlooking the profound impact of men’s lived experience on violence perpetration, but if we don’t seek to understand what is going on for them, nothing will change.

In my clinical practice, men I talk to often explain that they feel blamed for the actions of others, for things they have never, and would never do. My response to them is that you don’t need to be part of the problem to be an active part of the solution. That’s where we need to get to. It’s an opportunity for growth and self-betterment.  Looking after yourself, checking in on your mates, being active and present in the lives of your children and loved ones – these actions improve health outcomes for men and contribute to women and girls feeling safer.

Instead of fixating on the wall-to-wall coverage of this crisis, we need to listen, amplify the voices of women, and get our arses into gear to realise what we can do in our own lives, to safeguard our own wellbeing and that of those we love most. Healthier men mean a healthier world for all.

There are millions of men and boys who would never consider harming their partner or families. There are incredible fathers, sons and brothers who would do anything to keep them safe and show nothing but care and compassion. They live on every street in every suburb across the country. As the majority, we need to feel part of the solution, we need to feel empowered to pick up the proverbial shovel and start digging.

I’m writing this, to encourage you to gather some courage to have those hard conversations with your mates you’re worried about – especially those who seem to be in freefall, reverting to their vices more than they have in the past. Taking action looks like lifting up your mates struggling to live healthily while being bombarded by social media, gambling ads, and alcohol in their daily lives. Taking action also looks like joining forces with advocates tackling these harmful, billion-dollar industries profiting off our collective misery. Most importantly, taking action means listening to and showing up for those who have experienced trauma or violence, ensuring they are not alone, to feel seen and understood, allowing them to choose healing over hurting.

Rallying for justice, for fairness, for the sake of the people we love, is built into men’s social DNA. But it’s important we realise that in advocating for the safety of the women and girls in our lives, we are actually also rallying for our own wellbeing, our own desire to live out our dreams as boys of being good, honourable, kind men. This is the bedrock of healthy masculinity.

So many guys tell me they feel like they don’t have purpose or meaning in their lives, that everything feels hopeless and they can’t seem to connect with others. Well, here is your opportunity to tap into something bigger than you. Let’s get marching men.

Related:

8 Behaviours That Might Be Precursors To Domestic Violence

Why Control Is A Slippery Slope Into Violence When It Comes To Relationships

The post Dr Zac Seidler on why men have a crucial role to play if we are to effectively tackle domestic violence appeared first on Men's Health Magazine Australia.

Adding to previous research of its kind, authors of a study found that more than 300,000 people saw that being sedentary was a major health hazard. Yet they also estimated that exercising a little bit – the equivalent of a 20-minute brisk walk daily – could reduce the risk of premature death in inactive people by as much as 16 to 30 per cent.

Globally, 1 in 4 adults aren’t moving enough, according to the World Health Organisation. And even if you think you’re an active person, you might be spending just enough time in front of your TV when you’re not at the gym to be putting your health at risk.

What’s more, the effects of staying seated go far beyond what you may think. Sure, your sedentary behaviour can hurt your heart and raise your risk for inflammation-causing extra unwanted kilos. It might also be responsible for some more surprising effects too, including effects on your sex life, your mood, and your blood sugar.

Let these 7 sinister side effects of living a sedentary life inspire you to move a little bit every day. Read on to learn more—and to discover the easiest thing you can do right now to reverse the damage.

Sedentary behaviour effect #1: your mood takes a dive

Feeling down? Blame your chair: Research continues to show that long periods spent sitting can have a significant impact on your mental health, with a 2022 study showing that sitting time was strongly associated with adverse mental health effects during the COVID-19 lockdown.

What’s more, other types of sedentary behaviour—like watching TV or playing electronic games – can increase your risk for anxiety, according to a meta-analysis of nine studies published in BMC Public Health. The reviewers suggest that engaging in “screen-based entertainment,” as they call it, may get your central nervous system all riled up and invite anxiety. Screens may also disrupt sleep, bringing on anxiety that way.

If you’re spending your time on screens, you’re probably not fitting in enough physical activity, the researchers say.

And that’s important, since exercise has mood-boosting benefits. Some research indicates that cardio can boost your mood just as effectively as prescribed antidepressants.

Sedentary behaviour effect #2: Your cancer risk skyrockets

The post ​7 ways you wreck your body when you don’t get off your butt appeared first on Men's Health Magazine Australia.

That’s not to say that recent local and global events haven’t put a strain on that. When it comes to mental fitness, the recent weeks living in my city of Sydney has been like trying to play first grade footy with no preseason warm-up. I’m sure you feel the same way. There’s been a lot going on and it’s a lot for anybody.

My mental fitness had been pretty good, however, just like when I find myself puffed at the top of a flight of stairs or my “good t-shirt” is a little too tight, I came to understand that I wasn’t where I wanted to be. I needed a bit of mental strength and conditioning work to get into better shape.

If you’ve ever done a 10-week challenge at your gym you’d be familiar with the most bastardly of all exercises, the burpee. I hate them, you hate them, we all hate them. Why? Because the burpee is possibly the best total-body strength and conditioning exercise you can do in a confined space. It doesn’t do everything, but it does a lot in a short amount of time.

There’s no doubt if you were to do 100 burpees a day for 30 days, it would transform your aerobic fitness, strength and flexibility. It would change your physical fitness. Luckily there’s an exercise I can use to improve my mental fitness just as profoundly. Mental fitness being the ability to make healthy choices that are not influenced by strong reactive emotions. If I’m mentally fit I’m able to feel all those powerful feelings and pause long enough to think, is this the right thing to say or do? More often than not, it isn’t.

So, what’s a really powerful, really efficient technique that if you can perform on a daily basis would transform your ability to be less reactive and more deliberate about your day? What’s the burpee of mental fitness?

Before we get there, it’s important to know what it is we’re hoping to improve. The Zen Buddhists say we all have two minds.

The “thinking mind” and the “observing mind”. Our thinking mind is an excited Labrador chasing a frisbee. Our observing mind is sitting on a park bench watching that frothing Labrador about to run straight onto a busy freeway. Yet if the Labrador runs onto the freeway, the observing mind also feels the consequences.

When we’re flooded with emotion, we can get stuck in “thinking mind” and it’s almost impossible to see that the frisbee isn’t the best thing to be focusing on. So, how do we build up the strength of the “observing mind”? For me, it’s noticing.

You can get into it in a couple of ways. Try putting the words “I’m noticing” in front of a physical feeling. For example, right now I’m noticing that my left ‘sit bone’ feels a little heavier on the chair than my right sit bone. Just that is enough to get me out of my thinking mind and into my observing mind. Set a timer on your phone and try just noticing sensations in your body for one minute.

Another way to use ‘noticing’ is to enquire about the emotions we’re feeling. Right now, I’m a little nervous I won’t make the deadline to write this column. If I notice a bit more, I discover that nervousness comes from wanting to do a good job for the people at Men’s Health, and that I don’t want to come across too sincere when you’re reading this. And once I’m aware of the fact that I’m feeling a bit nervous, a bit tense in my stomach, and my body’s feeling a bit stiff and sore, I know that when I’m like that, I tend to not make great choices. But now I’m aware of it, I can carry on typing this alongside those sensations and emotions, instead of letting that fear change what I write here.

“Noticing“ really helps my observing mind get used to jumping into emotionally intense moments and taking a look over things. Noticing can also be used as meditation. When I meditate, I can get extraordinarily frustrated that I can’t not think of stuff. So instead I just close my eyes and notice the things I’m thinking about, watching the thoughts go by me. Sometimes the thoughts are like slow boats on a river, usually the thoughts are a waterfall. What kind of SUV is Blaze from the Monster Machines? What did that bloke who paddled a Pumpkin down the Tumut River like it was a canoe cook with stuff he scooped out? Does my dog remember songs? I try to just watch these thoughts go by, and not get trapped under the weight of the thought waterfall.

Other times I’ll put a five-minute timer on my phone, and just notice the different parts of my body as I breathe in and out. Going clockwise from my left big toe all the way around my body down to my right big toe, spending a breath on each part. So – left big toe up through my foot, ankle, shin, knee, thigh, hip, all up my torso, back down the other side. All I’m doing is training my observing mind to get used to getting involved automatically.

You can even do it walking. When you walk, just walk and notice things. Notice the different hubcaps on the cars. Notice the different species of grass on different people’s lawns. Notice the different kinds of trees. Name them. It’s not a tree, it’s a eucalypt. It’s a Melaleuca. It’s bottlebrush. It’s not a bird. It’s a magpie. It’s a currawong. It’s a Channel Bill Cuckoo, if you’re unlucky enough to live next to one of those noisy bastards. You’d be amazed at what just ten minutes of that can do.

If you haven’t got time for any of these, try a tactic that is way harder than it sounds. See if you can notice just three times today when you go from sitting to standing. What you’re doing is you’re getting your observing mind involved in these otherwise subconscious or automatic behaviours. You’re getting your observant mind used to just being there in those spaces where sometimes you’re just on auto-pilot, or worse automatically reactive. The more sets and reps you do, the more you’re building up that neural pathway to that observing mind, getting in the habit of noticing your thoughts.

And when those peak moments come, for example, I’m noticing that I’m getting really frustrated at what’s my partner is doing here. I know that sometimes when I get really frustrated, I say things I regret. When I’m mentally fit, that tiny moment helps me take a breath and perhaps make a better choice, which serves me and my partner, than I otherwise would have.

If you’ve never done it before, just try it yourself for a couple of minutes. Just try noticing. Noticing how your body’s feeling. Try to notice when you feel happy or sad or anxious or bored or joyous or excited or horny or dull. Just notice. Soon enough, that observant mind starts to show up a bit more and help you make better choices that are aligned with the kind of person that you want to be in the world, and the kind of person you want to be to the people you love and the people who love you.

Related:

Osher Günsberg on what healthy masculinity actually looks like

Osher Günsberg: how I found freedom from fear of death

The post Osher Günsberg on the mental burpee everyone needs to do appeared first on Men's Health Magazine Australia.

It was 9.53pm on a ‘school night’. I looked at my wife. Should we keep going? I felt the familiar grip that a great series can exert on you, gluing you to the couch, unable to resist the pull of finding out what happens next but knowing choosing to stay up could come back to haunt you the next morning. Then, as you wake bleary-eyed, you curse yourself for not calling time on the show at a reasonable hour.

This experience is not unique to Baby Reindeer by any means. This year alone I’ve felt similar levels of paralysis when watching One Day, Heartbreak High, Shrinking and any number of other streaming shows that ruled my world for a few nights, but tellingly perhaps, I now struggle to recall. Part of me loves being in the midst of a streaming binge. The knowledge that you have something good to watch at night gives you a treat to look forward to as you wash the dishes or, if you’re a parent like me, an escape from Bluey.

When you don’t have a series on the go life suddenly becomes more aimless. You face the endless scroll for a show that captures your interest. The number of shows my wife and I have started and abandoned after 15 minutes or so means the “Continue watching for Ben” tab on my Netflix carousel is one of the biggest on my account. Restlessness, boredom, ennui all come calling. A good series is a blessed relief. If you didn’t know better, you’d call this behaviour an addiction.

Is it though? Binge-watching has become a burgeoning field of research after the term was first recognised by the Oxford Dictionary back in 2013. Since then, many researchers have pointed out the practice’s similarities with addictive behaviour, namely its engagement of the same neural pathways.

“When engaged in an activity that’s enjoyable such as binge watching, your brain produces dopamine,” says clinical psychologist Dr Renee Carr. “This chemical gives the body a natural, internal reward of pleasure that reinforces continued engagement in that activity. It is the brain’s signal that communicates to the body, ‘This feels good. You should keep doing this!’”

But the behaviour could be a symptom of underlying issues rather than a cause of them. A study of Taiwanese adults found problematic binge-watching was associated with depression and anxiety related to social interaction. Similarly, a study from Georgia Southern University found associations between binge-watching and anxiety and depression.

But binge watching may also have less sinister motivations, such as boredom or a desire for escapism. A study by Portuguese researchers found participants had positive changes in mood after watching sci-fi, while their “negative affect values” decreased after watching comedy and slightly increased after watching drama.

Regardless of whether you classify binge-watching as an addiction, there’s no denying that it can impact your sleep.

As well as the impact of the message (the show), there’s also the effects of the medium (your 64-inch flatscreen). Blue light emitted by your TV screen suppresses the production of the sleep hormone melatonin, which can keep you awake for longer, often processing what you’ve just watched – I did this after watching episode five of Baby Reindeer.

So, what should you do if you’re in the midst of a streaming binge?

Make a plan going in

Decide on a limit beforehand, say two episodes. Or a time limit. If your normal bedtime is 10pm, then enforce a hard cut-off, no matter where you are in the episode or how climatic the scene you’re watching.

Take a break between episodes

Pause the screen during the countdown to the next episode. Get some water, go to the bathroom, have a chat about what you’ve just watched with your partner. By taking a break you might find you’re good for the night.

Don’t watch in bed

Ideally, you shouldn’t have any screen time an hour before bed. By having the TV in another room you’re at least creating some kind of break, however brief, between hitting stop and hitting your pillow.

 Don’t be too hard on yourself

Don’t beat yourself up if you slip up; everybody does it. Tomorrow is a new day, a new episode, a new series. The journey starts again.

Related:

Study: your Netflix binges are lowering your sperm count

Study Reveals Watching Less TV Could Cut Heart Disease 

The post Baby Reindeer and the lure of the binge-watch appeared first on Men's Health Magazine Australia.

With footy season in full swing, the NBA play-offs about to commence and the Olympics on the horizon, there’s no shortage of options for sports fans to get stuck into and that could be a home run, or to use a more tortured Aussie sporting metaphor, a torpedo punt from 60m out on a tight angle, for your health and wellbeing, according to a new Japanese study.

In the study, researchers from Waseda University used a mix of data analysis, self-reports and neuroimaging to explore the connection between sports viewing and wellbeing in the general population, rather than just dedicated sports fans, a group whose mood and wellbeing probably rises and falls with the fortunes of their teams. But among the general population – those who don’t paint their faces or board public transport cloaked in team colours – it appears watching sport can have positive effects.

In the first study, the researchers analysed publicly available data on the influence of watching sports on 20,000 Japanese residents, confirming an ongoing pattern of elevated wellbeing was associated with regular sports viewing. That’s one point for sports.

A second study looked to see if the association between watching sports and wellbeing differed depending on the sport. In this case, 208 participants watched sports videos, with their wellbeing assessed before and after viewing. In this case, popular sports like baseball, huge in Japan (like your buddy, Fritz), had a more significant impact on enhancing wellbeing than less popular sports, such as golf. Two points for watching sports, though not golf, damn.

But it was the final component of the research that drove home the link between watching sport and wellbeing. Using neuroimaging techniques, the brain activity of fourteen able-bodied participants was analysed while they watched sporting clips. Specifically, sports viewing triggered activation in the brain’s reward circuits, indicating feelings of happiness or pleasure. The imaging also showed individuals who reported watching sports more often showed greater grey matter volume in regions associated with reward circuits, suggesting regular sports viewing may gradually induce changes in brain structures. Three points for sports viewing.

“Both subjective and objective measures of wellbeing were found to be positively influenced by engaging in sports viewing,” says study author professor Shintaro Sato. “By inducing structural changes in the brain’s reward system over time, it fosters long-term benefits for individuals. For those seeking to enhance their overall wellbeing, regularly watching sports, particularly popular ones such as baseball or soccer, can serve as an effective remedy.” Game over, watching sports wins.

Related:

From the bleachers to bliss: the link between sports fans and happiness

Google search data proves Aussies are as sport obsessed as ever

The post Why watching sports may be good for your wellbeing appeared first on Men's Health Magazine Australia.

The canvas tote bag that carries my towel, water and a fresh shirt features a painting of Saint George Michael, dressed in a robe in gay pride colours, holding an organic cigarette.

So, this is where I have landed; a two-hour breathing practice on my back, overlaid with loud, rhythmic and mesmerising music.

The session is an adjunct to the 200 sweet, hot vinyasa flows I have attended in 17 months at the One Big Heart studio in Camden, NSW. And two in late December with the arrogant, sun-soaked, beautiful people on bicycles in Byron Bay. An unassisted handstand still evades me. Like most things in life, it’s all in my head. I know that. Before Christmas, I conquered three minutes in an ice bath at 3.5-4.0 degrees Celsius. What is wrong with me?

A decade of distance running on roads and in the bush to get fitter and deal with PTSD following a melanoma diagnosis, now 18 years ago, has given way to a 5000-year-old practice of mindfulness, deep breathing, physical discomfort and self-exploration.

It’s a room heated up to 30 degrees plus, filled with hot bodies, moving in sync for 60 to 75 minutes. Previously called Bikram, a name which has largely been dropped due to its founder featuring in an eye opening Netflix special, and certainly not for the right reasons, it’s a transformative practice.

“Transformative” and “transformation” are words that have been used in modern business so many times in the past decade that they are now meaningless.

But they have true meaning here.

My rubber yoga mat reeks of sweat and needs to be periodically hung on the line and doused with water. It’s less than 12 months old and already has small holes in it. No matter how many times a particular singlet has been hot washed, the stench of my body odour bacteria still lingers. It’s now a rag.

This breathwork class, my first, starts with a brief history. The practice was created in 1975 by psychiatrist, Stanislav Grof only because Richard Nixon had banned the therapeutic use of psychedelic substances like psilocybin and LSD during his administration’s catastrophic war on drugs. Grof was looking for a way to treat people suffering from the likes of PTSD, anxiety and depression – central nervous system afflictions that affect most people at some stage and thanks to social media, are only getting worse.

Fast forward to 2024 and Australia has been the first country in the world to legalise these substances for use in psychotherapy.

We all lie down and we are encouraged to take long, deep breaths, the kind that hit the bottom of your stomach. The music booms but it’s not uncomfortable to the senses. I breath in unison with it, over and over and over again. Oxygen fills every cell.

Thoughts start bubbling up, things that I think about intensely when I am not in the studio, walking and running out in nature or asleep.

Fascism in the United States, plutocracies masquerading as democracies, demagogue leaders, corporations avoiding tax, the media’s obsession with the indiscretions of TV stars, sporting results and sportspeople, why musicians don’t make good music anymore. The usual stuff.

Sport always gets me thinking about my dad and his generation of men who are unable to express their emotions. Our conversations typically centred around football, cricket and car registrations. His dad was sent away to shoot at other people in the mosquito-infested tropical jungles of South-East Asia. Something is bound to go wrong years later back at home.

Dad didn’t know how to relate to me when I was growing up. He told me this two weeks before he died from cancer. I wish he told me that much earlier. But it’s okay. Well, it’s not okay but it’s still not his fault, he was a good man. I can’t help but think that if I knew this years ago, we most certainly could have done something about it.

I’m still breathing, long and deep. My hands and feet are tingling. I can’t feel or move my right foot. My right shoulder and upper arm are moving involuntarily.

I pull back on the heavy breathing a bit so I can gather the feeling back in my foot and to make sure I don’t float away. I hear the sound of a didgeridoo just above my left ear.

At this point, I’ve lost track of time. In fact, I’ve lost a bunch of things, perhaps even my ego. Yoga teaches us that our ego is our enemy; that our closest relationship in life is not with a parent or a partner, it’s with our own breath. It’s impossible to hold a pose properly if it’s not accompanied by proper breathing.

But this is a whole new level, it’s an altered state of consciousness, reached without the help of any substance. This is supposed to be a good substitute for medical psychedelics. It’s probably not quite there but it’s got to be the next best thing. I feel relaxed and kind, my mind lifted into an empathetic and judgement-free state. I care nothing for money, race, culture or status. The late American ethnobotanist, Terence McKenna, who I listen to intensely in the car on the way to 6:00am classes during the week, regularly opines that culture is not our friend.

McKenna says that culture insults, disempowers and uses us, filling us with false happiness. He says that culture is a perversion and what is important is the felt presence of experience. It’s a view that I tend to agree with, particularly today.

Our breathing slows down as we gather in a circle in the middle of the room in silence. My left hand touches the sweaty mid-back of a male stranger. I feel connected to the group as we wind down as one. My teacher places his hand on my chest and back on the way out to make sure that I’m ok before I go back out into the world.

I’m not really walking, more floating out towards the car park in the cool afternoon air. Trees have a shine to them, flowers look brighter. I stroll into a random supermarket thinking that I will somehow find some Japanese food.

I’m wishing I could see my dad again, wondering why showing love was so difficult for those men and realising that it’s so important for this generation to break the chain.

Now . . . about that handstand.

Byron Connolly is Sydney-based writer, running and yoga enthusiast. He completed the North Face 100 ultra marathon in 2012 and 2013. He’s also won a few Parkruns

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The post Why getting familiar with your own breath might just save you appeared first on Men's Health Magazine Australia.

But the benefits of breathwork aren’t only limited to stress: mastering your breathing can make a big difference in your quest for better performance or faster fat burn. During exercise, your muscles require oxygen. It is their fuel: the more they receive, the further and faster you run and the more you lift. So, the way in which air is drawn into your body that determines how well your muscles are oxygenated.

Here, everything you need to know about breathwork, and some of the best breathing exercises to help you relax.

What is breathwork?

Most of us take breathing for granted. We breathe about 14 times every minute, more than 20,000 times a day, and no fewer than 526 million times during the course of an average lifetime. Nearly all of those breaths are automatic; respiration generally requires about as much thought as pumping blood or digesting food. Yet despite all that practice, most of us suck at it.

Breathwork revolves around deep, diaphragmatic breathing or belly breathing, which research suggests may trigger relaxation responses in the body, according to the Frontiers in Psychology study. It encompasses a range of breathing exercises designed to enhance physical, spiritual, and mental health.

Different breathwork techniques

While some types of breath work are designed to alleviate stress and induce relaxation, others can be used to boost energy and focus the mind. If you’re unsure which is best for you, ask yourself why you’re considering incorporating breathwork. Is it to tackle a specific problem? Has breathwork been advised to help with mental health problems, such as anxiety or stress? Or are you just seeking to grab a moment out of the madness, relax and unwind?

Once you have an idea of you needs, you can choose a type of breathwork from these categories:

1. Controlled breathing

Controlled Breathing (or Pursed Lip Breathing) involves disrupting the body’s natural breathing pattern. An example is box breathing where you hold your breath, exhale, empty your lungs and inhale for a count of four.

2. Diaphragmatic breathing

This type of breathing is best against stress and anxiety. With Diaphragmatic breathing (or Deep relaxation breathing) you focus on breathing using the entire diaphragm rather than just the belly.

3. Circular breathing

Used in meditation, circular breathing involves visualising each long, slow exhalation and inhalation to let go of negative energy and focus on your thoughts. When a person engages in a continuous flow of circular breathing this is called ‘Conscious Connected’ breathing.

4. Holotropic® breathwork

Developed by psychologists Stanislov and Cristina Grof in the 60s, Holotropic® breathwork is said to have a similar effect to a psychedelic substance. Involving deep breathing through the nose and mouth at an accelerated rate it reduces oxygen to the brain and unlocks a state of higher consciousness.

5. Pranayama breathing

With origins in yoga, pranayama breathing is used to control the breath in varying patterns to yield different results. Types of breathwork that fall under this umbrella include Lion’s Breath, in which a person produces an audible pant sound and alternate nostril breathing, which involves closing off one nostril at a time and inhaling deeply.

How to learn breathwork

If you’re wanting to try breathwork for the first time, you might be confused trying to figure out how to learn. A good first step is to attend a local breathwork workshop to test the practice out under the guidance of a trained facilitator. Other trained facilitators like counsellors and coaches offer private breathwork sessions, too.

If in person classes aren’t really your thing, virtual breathwork class are great option as you can practice in the comfort of your own home. The virtual setting also offers more flexibility, so you can participate from anywhere in the world at a time that works best for you.

Another great option is a breathwork app. Many of these apps include resources and guided sessions that will allow you to learn breathwork online for free. Several of them also allow you to access premium features for a fee.

Are there any risks associated with breathwork?

Although incredibly rare, if you’re new to breathwork, more challenging techniques may lead to hyperventilating. If you start to experience dizziness, tingling in your hands, arms, feet, or legs, an irregular heartbeat, muscle spasms or a change in vision stop what you are doing and seek medical help.

Who should not practise breathwork?

One group of individuals who should be cautious when practising breathwork are those with respiratory conditions such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). These conditions can be exacerbated by certain breathing techniques, such as those that involve holding the breath or breathing rapidly – so it’s important to consult with your doctor before starting a breathwork practice.

While certain breathing techniques can increase the oxygen supply to the fetus, another group of people who should also be careful when practicing breathwork is pregnant women, as more intense techniques like holotropic breathwork may not be safe. If you’re pregnant, it’s best to consult with your obstetrician before trying any new breathing exercises.

Why is breathwork so powerful?

From holotropic hyperventilation to Wim Hof’s ‘power breathing’, manipulating your respiration has lately been sold as a way to enhance your exercise performance, quicken your mind, or even enter altered states of consciousness – but if you’re asking ‘why?’, that’s a fair question.

Research shows that different emotions are associated with different forms of breathing, and so changing how we breathe can change how we feel. For example, when you feel joy, your breathing will be regular, deep and slow. If you feel anxious or angry, your breathing will be irregular, short, fast, and shallow. When you follow breathing patterns associated with different emotions, you’ll actually begin to feel those corresponding emotions.

How does this work? Changing the rhythm of your breath can signal relaxation, slowing your heart rate and stimulating the vagus nerve, which runs from the brain stem to the abdomen, and is part of the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for the body’s “rest and digest” activities (in contrast to the sympathetic nervous system, which regulates many of our “fight or flight” responses). Triggering your parasympathetic nervous system helps you start to calm down. You feel better. And your ability to think rationally returns.

There’s another part to this story, too: When you breathe, air is drawn mainly into the upper part of your lungs, but the greatest concentration of blood is lower down. Proper breathing carries air deeper into the lungs to allow more oxygen transfer to the blood, improving oxygenation by up to 15 per cent. It sounds nerdy, but it’s impossible to think of a simpler tweak with a greater impact.

How to do breathwork by yourself

Here are a handful of meditative breathing techniques and how they may help benefit your body, no matter what’s going on around you:

The post Everything you need to know about breathwork appeared first on Men's Health Magazine Australia.

As I scan the room and see my friend and I step around the full table by the door, and that delightful feeling is completely shattered as out of nowhere someone at the table next to me punches me in the shoulder hard enough to rattle my teeth and knock me off my balance.

I swerve around to face whoever hit me, my adrenaline firing as I’m wondering what’s about to kick off and I see a smiling face that my brain recognises but I struggle to immediately place.

It’s a man I haven’t seen in maybe five years. I think it was someone’s birthday lunch, and he was their older friend. Tall fella, mid 60s, long reach, an older-model Australian man – let’s call him Clancy*. (*That’s not his real name or his real description. I don’t want to out him)  We had sat next to each other at lunch and connected over motorbikes. It was a good chat, however, I haven’t thought of this person, said this person’s name, or spoken about this person to my friend that I met him through since that day five years ago.

It took me a little bit to get my head together, until my mouth caught up with my brain and I explained that it was good to see him, I’m here for a meeting, I won’t be long and after I’ll come and chat.

Walking towards my friend, I had to take a moment to recalibrate because I was rattled by what just happened. I’m not a person that gets into fights. Ever. There was one time that I punched a bully in the tuck shop line when I was 14, but that’s another story.

I was rattled by this. Clancy is a big kind of bloke, a surf club-life-member type who looks after himself.  And now I have my back to him and it’s hard to focus on chatting with my friend because I’m wondering if this bloke is going to come and put me in a friendly headlock and give me a noogie as a way to say goodbye before he heads off.

To centre myself, I try to understand where he’s coming from. As an older guy, when he was younger that’s probably how Clancy was told how men connected, how blokes of his cohort showed each other that they cared.

Wrapping up my meeting I went and chatted with this guy for a few minutes, then took the lead with a one-handed goodbye handshake.

Riding home I investigated why I got so rattled by the whole exchange. Turns out it was a physical flashback to the school I went to, where a hard punch on the arm was a way of saying hello. If you were joining a group of people then it was a dead arm as a welcome because everyone gets in on it.

There are a number of other such greetings.

I used to work with a bloke who was from the country and his signal of affection was a nut slap. He’d misdirect and signal an incoming handshake and as you came together his other hand would just flick you in the nuts. Hard enough to make you drop to your knees struggling to breathe. That was hello.

We’ve all met a guy who does the crushing handshake, like he’s the henchman in a Bond film. Is he assuming I’m keeping some walnuts in my palm and he’s helping me crack them? Does he work on commission with an orthopaedic surgeon? Does he think I’m hiding a piece of coal in my hand and together we’ll make a diamond?

If it’s not a physically dominant greeting, it’s verbal.

“Hey! Osher ya fat fuck!”.

“Yeah, nice to see you too, Gav”.

It might be a controversial take, but here goes.

I don’t like being greeted in any of these ways, and I don’t think it makes me any less of a man because of it. I would like to think that we don’t need to call someone horrible names, or punch them in the arm, or slap them in the nuts, to say hello, or show that we care about them.

When I point out that I don’t like it in the moment, I’ve been told it’s playful and harmless. No, it isn’t. It’s a shitty way of asserting physical dominance over somebody.

Punches, nut-slaps and insults are like shields we weakly cower behind, dominating the other person so we don’t have to be emotionally vulnerable when engaging with them.

It takes self-worth, confidence and presence to look someone in the eye and connect with them as you shake their hand.

Because in that cafe, what does the old guy want to do? He just wants to reconnect with the guy he had a great chat about motorbikes with but he might not know how to do that in a way that doesn’t involve a slug to the shoulder. It’s not his fault, perhaps he doesn’t know there’s another way to say hello.

Talking about this moment to an acquaintance, she commented that “this kind of toxic masculinity needs to be called out”.

I do take issue with that word.  A punch in the arm is not great behaviour and labelling it ‘toxic’ just ends the conversation. In an effort to help men and especially boys, figure out what’s okay and absolutely normal, I believe that referring to aspects of masculinity as “healthy” and “unhealthy” offers not only a pathway to change but a way for others to model behaviour for them.

I appreciate it’s “toxic” is word that describes many aspects of workplace culture and overall behaviour that detracts from our society yet that label is limiting when it comes to offering solutions or alternatives for young men and boys to find their way towards, as they figure out how to fully express their masculine self in a healthy way.

When it’s expressed in a healthy way, masculinity is as important to our community as femininity. It’s vital that we model healthy masculinity for the young men and boys around us, and it’s on all of us to make sure that unhealthy expressions of masculinity have less and less impact on our workplaces, our friendships and our families.

Masculinity has played a huge role in my life. My career couldn’t possibly be what it is, nor would I have the relationships that I have without the drive, vision, confidence and whatever other things that are often labelled, but aren’t exclusively, masculine traits. I most certainly do have those things, yet my masculinity doesn’t express itself like a slap in the dick to say hello.

I don’t believe that makes me any less of a man.

Related:

Osher Günsberg: how I found freedom from fear of death

Osher Günsberg on the hard road to a healthy ego

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