Andrew Weil MD graduated from Harvard Medical School in the late 1960s. Since that time he has worked across a number of different health disciplines, researching and pursuing his interests in drugs and their impact on the mind, understanding both conventional and alternative medicine, and exploring preventative interventions – believing that we’ve become too reliant on drugs, surgery and technology.
His belief that medicine needed to shift away from being curative to preventative has underpinned much of his work since the 1980s and 90s. In 1994 he founded the Centre of Integrative Medicine, which has been focused on training medical professionals on the benefits of integrative medicine. He has gone on to write numerous books on good nutrition, herbal medicine, healing and optimum health and has put together a wide range of education programmes based on his research, expressing the need to break our dependency on pharmaceutical medicine and the dangers of over-prescribing such substances.
As part of his alternative/complementary mission, he has helped make 4-7-8 breathing (which comes from the yogic tradition) popular amongst many who are breath workers and understand the value of controlled breathing when it comes to managing panic, anxiety, fear, worry and depression.
In this 5 minute video he introduces this simple, but powerful technique. Well worth viewing…
Summary of the 4-7-8 technique:
1) Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound.
2) Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four.
3) Hold your breath for a count of seven.
4) Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound to a count of eight.
5) This is one breath. Now inhale again and repeat the cycle three more times for a total of four breaths.
6) This is best done at least twice a day to get maximum benefits – this is not something to be done intermittently.
7) Helps with sleeping, digestive issues, impulse control, cravings, COPD, atrial fibrillation, cardiovascular disorders and balances out the central nervous system.