Why you shouldn’t JUST tape your mouth
You’ve likely come across the book Breath by James Nestor, or maybe you’ve seen an article with someone wearing tape on their mouth.
I can’t help but roll my eyes when I see yet another ‘bondage’ style image, pulled from a free image bank, but I am glad we are starting to talk about the importance of breathing through the nose.
Having just read : “Just tape your mouth shut“ Can I unlearn the breathing habits of a lifetime? in The Guardian this week, I felt it was about time I wrote something on mouth taping, and why we shouldn’t JUST mouth tape during sleep and hope for the best.
In this article, we see a woman, Brigid Delaney, (who’s just done a meditation teaching course), attending a breathwork session. She is inspired to try to use her nose more and then tape her mouth. She is unguided and starts with inappropriate tape, not suitable for the face. She feels anxious about having her mouth taped, and instead of benefitting her sleep, it keeps her awake. She admits, she can’t last the night.
1) She doesn’t know that her CO2 tolerance is too low.
2) She doesn’t know how to naturally decongest her nose.
3) She doesn’t know how to make herself feel safe and avoid a panic attack.
Now here’s what she could have done:
Found a Breathing Retrainer for support - ME
Had a FREE breathing assessment via Zoom call
Attended my fully supported online course for breathing retraining
As Brigid mentions in her article, “it will take a while to unlearn the habits of a lifetime“, but it is so much easier and faster when you have someone to hold your hand through the process.
I’m that someone and I couldn’t be more passionate about healthy breathing and breathing retraining.
Whilst meditation and breathwork are both incredible for us, they do not teach us how to retrain our breathing 24/7, optimising over 20,000 breaths per day to improve:
anxiety
snoring
poor sleep
fatigue
concentration
performance
recovery
mood
& more!
What are you waiting for?
If you’d like to hear more about mouth taping, check our my video:
You can also purchase mouth tape suitable products at www.linkbreathing.co.uk/products.