The Challenges of Mouth Breathing Pt. 2: Psychological Sources

Happy Tuesday to You!

I hope you are enjoying my new series on Mouth Breathing so far.

This is a VERY common problem, and many people don’t even know they have the problem, and because so many people have it, they think it is normal.

Here’s a little tip for you…if you wake up from sleeping and have a wet pillow around your mouth, you are mouth breathing when you sleep.

In my blog today, I will share:

1. Part 2: Psychological Factors

2. Tips For Healthy Children; An interview with schoolteacher and children’s book author Jen Richards and her puppet Bumi.

3. Highlights from recently completed C.H.E.K Advanced Training Programs.

4. Art: A beautiful mandala from PPS Success Mastery student, Julia Schneider and my most recent painting.

The Challenges of Mouth Breathing Pt. 2: Psychological Factors

The psychological sources of mouth breathing, and related breathing disorders are numerous, and are commonly treated symptomatically with prescription drugs…

So far, I’ve seen no legitimate indication that this approach is working. Though there are medical reports and research that would suggest otherwise, there is no evidence in the public, as these issues are rising faster and faster, regardless of how many pills are handed out.

Following the outline in the image above, I begin my video blog (vlog) by explaining that all emotions are rooted in, or expressions of two basic, love and fear.

I address the following common psychological causes of mouth breathing (and related faulty breathing patterns):

1. Fear based thinking. Here I share current research into people’s thoughts, which suggests the average person thinks about 68,000 thoughts a day, of which approximately 90% have been found to have a negative orientation.

2. Parental/Social/Religious Conditioning: Conditioning is a word that implies that the ego-mind, brain (and nervous system) and body have learned to believe given ideas to the exclusion of others.

When we are conditioned in ways that don’t serve the process of creating and living our dreams each day, naturally, we are likely to meet unwanted, and unexpected resistance in relationships with persons, places, and things.

Since much of our conditioning occurs in the first twelve of our lives, many find themselves living challenging lives, stressful lives, and struggling with negative, often painful thoughts.

It is not at all uncommon for such people to feel that “the world is challenging them”, or that their challenges are someone else’s fault…

In this section of my vlog, I share my concerns over exposure to TV, medial in general, and the risks of exposing children to video games that can cause negative programming.

3. Low self-esteem: Here I highlight that low self-esteem can be a possible cause of mouth breathing.

4. Head detached from body: Here I share my concerns over the way our children, and people at large are being educated.

When you couple this with how the average child is being educated, and their massive exposure to media in general, as well as cultural influences, you can easily get someone who so lives in their head, they forget their body!

I see this challenge as a major player in the illness, diseases, and injuries many of the people I’ve been a coach and therapist to suffer from.

To exemplify that it is like when someone’s head is detached from their body, I share how common it is for people working and playing on computers today to forget:
– To pee or poop
– To eat
– To drink water (if such people drink, it is usually something processed and sweet, which makes the problem worse…)
– To exercise, or just move their bodies
– To sleep; often people get soon entranced with computers, TV, and media delivery streams in general that they loose track of time at night and get to bed way too late.

Over time, this leads to sleep deprivation, hormonal dis-regulation, blood sugar handling problems, cognitive disorders, and much more.

If you want to know more about this, read the book, “Lights Out.”

One of the best things you can do for yourself, or someone you feel has their head (mind) detached from their body is to buy my book, How To Eat, Move and Be Healthy! and complete the health appraisal questionnaires.

The book leads you to determining your overall stress score so you can estimate how much stress you are under.

Then, you are guided to each specific chapter to learn how to lower your stresses and stress scores. In addition, there are specific breathing and movement exercises to help energize your body and lower your stress scores in each category.

5. No dream worth living for: Here I quote psychologist, Jerry Wesch, who appropriately states, “If you have a big enough dream, you don’t need a crisis.”

This is indeed very true! Another way to look at the issue of having no meaningful dream, goal or objective in your life is found in the arena of goal setting, where it is said that “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there!”

In this section, I explain the importance of a dream for guiding your creative energies.

It is important to remember that we are all here on earth, and are all exposed to the daily challenges of being human, and human relationships.

When we have a dream worth living and growing for, we are empowered to learn, grow and participate in our dream(s).

Remember, a labor of love is sustainable, but doing something you’ve convinced yourself “you have to do”, or doing what you parents want you to do instead of what you really want to do is labor without love.

That is the stuff fatigue, illness and diseases are made of!

I refer here to the work of Daniel Siegel, MD, who wrote the book “Mindsight” and other great books (and great audios too!).

In his teachings on attachment and detachment disorders in children, Dr. Siegel explains that the number one correlating cause of such disorders (over-attachment to, or disinterest in parents by infants and children) is parents that lack a sense of direction in their lives.

In Paul Chek language, this could be restated as, “the number one cause of attachment and detachment disorders in infants and children is having parents without a dream worth living and growing for.”

6. Biochemical Imbalance: This primarily comes from toxicity of food, drink, and environment. We will look into this in part 4 of this series.

I finish this presentation of approximately 55 minutes by explaining how stress activates the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system (SNS), and disturbs the balance between the sympathetic, and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system.

I elaborate on many of the key stress indicators and explain how they relate directly, or indirectly to mouth breathing.

I hope you enjoy my video presentation on mouth breathing today.

Paul Chek’s TIPS For Healthy Children

Jen Richards, is a schoolteacher, paleo chef, and children’s book author from Melbourne, Australia. Jen and her puppet Bumi interviewed me while Penny and I were attending the Filex Convention in Melbourne a couple months ago.

Jen is an amazing woman with a huge passion for educating children. She feels it is essential that children have the opportunity to develop a healthy, spiritually based mind-set, and shares Taoist concepts for kids in her books, and in her work.

Her book: Bumi and WOKABUG is a refreshing example of helping kids understand positive thoughts and that they can create their positive reality too!

Jen also creates a whole line of paleo-foods for kids, all made from top quality food sources, and with a lot of love. Check out her website: https://www.rumblespaleo.com/

In the interview with Jen and Bumi below, Jen is asking me a number of questions about how people can support their children more effectively.

If you are interested in my opinions on this issue, feel free to enjoy this interview (under 9 minutes).

Paul Chek talks Paleo with Bumi:

Thanks for all you do Jen and Bumi! You are both a gift to children, parents, and the world!

Recently Completed C.H.E.K Advanced Training Programs

I am blessed to have an amazing team of highly skilled, down-to-earth instructors at the C.H.E.K Institute (CI). They are truly masters of their craft!

What a joy for me it is to see so many amazing, life-changing courses being run all over the world with highly skilled teachers who walk their talk.

Education is the cornerstone of the C.H.E.K Institute. From rehabilitation to corrective exercise to high performance conditioning; from stress management to healthy eating to lifestyle coaching; health and fitness professionals from around the world turn to the C.H.E.K Institute for training and education.

Thank you my dear instructors for all the love and wisdom you share with the world! This past week was particularly busy as you can see below.

CHEK Practitioner Level 1 with Dan Hellman – Ft Lauderdale, Florida

Exercise Coach with Ashley Mazurek – Denver, Colorado

Holistic Lifestyle Coach (HLC) 2 with Angie Lustrick – Toronto, Canada

Holistic Lifestyle Coach (HLC) 1 with Jator Pierre – San Francisco, CA

Holistic Lifestyle Coach (HLC) 1 with Jo Rushton – Melbourne, AU

I’m very grateful to all of you that have entered into the CI programs, for you are the leaders, those that offer a living example of what health is, and what it looks like to be health.

The world is in serious need of authentic teachers and anytime you get yourself healthy and live your dreams, you are the inspiration, and you are changing the world for the better.

Recent Art

I love this amazing mandala! PPS Success Mastery student, Julia Schneider, created it.

As you can see, Julia is a talented artist. I love how her mandala expresses the elements of earth, water (moisture in the air), fire (nothing grows without the sun), air, and space.

The tree, a common motif for life, beautifully wraps around the mandala, as though it is embracing the earth, and life itself.

Additionally, the mandala is encased in a second circle, which suggests that there is something we can’t see behind creation; this would be the principle of Wu-chi if viewed from a Taoist perspective.

Julia has devoted a lot of her time and energy to her personal, professional and spiritual growth in the past several years. She also completed my Tao-Te-zen program, and was the source of many great discussions on the lessons.

Thanks for sharing Julia. I love it!

The Spirit Of Oxygen

Each day when we come to work, Angie, Vidya and I like to exercise our intuition by letting our soul guide us to “the card for the day” from my past teacher, Rowena Kryder’s “Soul Fire” card deck.

Rowena’s beautiful cards come with a book that gives some quite in-depth explanations of the symbols on her cards, and how they relate to your life.

It is quite uncanny at times…it is as though she’s been watching you and is speaking through her cards. This wouldn’t surprise me at all.

Rowena was a shaman, and had a knowledge base so vast it is hard to imagine. Her art is extraordinarily beautiful.

When I did training with her on the nine Egyptian light bodies at her home in Colorado many years ago, Penny and I were blown away at the beauty of her home. She built it herself from bottom to top, and there were many amazing stone in-lays, and artistic features throughout the home.

Yesterday, I had the need for, and the urge to do some painting in a state of “no mind” (turning myself over to my intuition completely). I let my soul guide me to the card for the day, and it turned out to be “Oxygen” (which doesn’t really surprise me as it also pertains to my BLOG topic in this series).

I listened to some great music as I painted with the Oxygen card next to me for energetic inspiration, and this is what came out of me in the next four hours. I call her “The Spirit of Oxygen”.

If you stand back from it a little, and look carefully at the white within the blue hearts that flow like a river, or look like a woman’s dress below, and behind the yellow sun-burst coming from the central heart, you will see her running through space-time, thoroughly enjoying herself.

The red hearts symbolize the life-giving energy of oxygen in our blood, which is charged and moved by our heart; the central heart of the painting symbolizes love.

Behind it all is a spiral, which symbolizes the golden mean, or Fibonacci spiral, which relates to all things in nature.

The small yellow hearts are only found within blue hearts because without air and moisture in the atmosphere, you can’t see light.

This is why when we look past our atmosphere into space, you don’t see sunlight even though you know it is there because it is here.

When photons hit vaporized water droplets and air, they refract, bounce around, and “light things up”.

The use of silver represents the strong conduction of energy, and without oxygen, there is no conduction of energy in our bodies…we are dead…

I hope you feel the energy of “The Spirit Of Oxygen” as you look at it, and that you feel inspired to let the Art Spirit move through you!

Thanks for joining me this week.

I hope to see you at one of our upcoming CHEK Courses worldwide: Exercise Coach, CHEK Practitioner, or Holistic Lifestyle Coach courses soon. We offer many different ways for your develop your professional skills and knowledge.

Love and chi,
Paul Chek