Sleeping badly affects your whole life and those around you. Learning the Buteyko Breathing Method is a natural, drug-free way of improving quality of sleep by reducing the incidence of snoring, sleep apnea, insomnia, restless leg, vivid dreams and nightmares. This will enable you to wake refreshed, start the day with vigour and have more energy. 

HYPERVENTILATION / OVER-BREATHING 

Breathing increases and decreases in line with changes in metabolism. When you exercise your breathing increases, becoming noisy and forceful. When your metabolism is low, such as when you sleep, the breathing is quiet and gentle. When people snore the breathing is more like the type a person naturally does while exercising rather than sleeping, and so snoring is a sign of hyperventilation, or breathing more air than your body needs during sleep. 

People who hyperventilate will be familiar with some of the following indicators of poor sleep: 

* Repeatedly waking during the night 

* Waking up tired instead of refreshed

* Vivid dreams and nightmares

* Night sweats

* Blocked or runny nose, especially on waking

* Snoring

* Abnormal pauses in the breathing, or sleep apnea

Snoring, or breathing heavily drags in extra cold, dry air laden with dust, pollen and other pollutants. Breathing like this tends to cool down, dry out, and irritate the delicate airway tissue, which responds by swelling and increasing production of mucus. The swelling and mucus narrow the airways slightly, making it necessary to breathe with extra force than usual (thus snoring), compounding the problems. 

When you are asleep the airways are more relaxed than when you are awake and so they are more likely to vibrate, making the snoring sound if you breathe too forcefully. They are also prone to collapsing when the upper airways are narrowed because the forceful breathing creates a stronger vacuum in the lungs than gentle breathing does. This greater vacuum allows ordinary atmospheric air pressure to suck your tongue back and to collapse the relaxed, narrowed airway when you inhale forcefully. 

The root cause of your abnormal breathing pattern needs to be addressed so that you no longer breathe with such force while you are asleep. By breathing correctly your upper airway will no longer be abnormally narrow, allowing the free flow of air without any devices or machines. 

Buteyko is a wonderful tool for resetting the automatic breathing pattern to operate at the correct level for any activity, including sleep.