Speaking about breathing is one of the most counterintuitive subjects

you could possibly talk about

because normally people don't think about it

as we don't think about blinking our eyes, digesting our food.

These are not things we think you need to work on,

they just occur from the autonomic nervous system.

But breathing is different

because there are also ways to breathe intentionally;

certain patterns of breathing that change how you feel internally.

I wouldn't travel the world teaching breath-work

if it were even just simply to help people relax.

The reason I travel to teach people how to breathe

is because we now live

in a digitally-obsessed, escape-based society as you know.

We want to call it the new normal,

and there seems to be a big push to accept it;

however, we are unhappy.

If you look at studies on the level of happiness now,

especially the medications that we use,

we are not a happy society.

We should be ecstatic; we have a rectangle in our pocket

that has access to all the world's knowledge,

that has any entertainment you'd possibly want,

so why aren't we ecstatic?

The World Health Organization has stated that by 2020, worldwide,

depression and anxiety will be the number one disability;

that's only four and a half years from now.

In the United States, 25% of women are now taking

antidepressant medication, anti-anxiety medication, or both;

men are close behind.

The CDC has declared

that sleep dysfunction is now at an epidemic level.

Again, this is not an American problem, this is a global problem.

From Beijing to Berlin to Tel Aviv to Cape Town, it's the same problem.

So, there are things we can do about it,

and one of the things is to create a daily practice of breath-work

which is free, once you learn it, and has no side effects,

unlike a lot of the medications we see on television

where you see people wearing white, running down the beach