Podcast on Bilateral Breathing | Total ImmersionTotal Immersion

This week, our mid-week post is a podcast I recently recorded with Rich Soares of Mile High Endurance on the topic of bilateral breathing.

Our interview begins at the 25:00 mark of this audio file.

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Rich and I discuss a blog post I’d written: What prompted me, after 28 years, to begin breathing to both sides?

Twenty-five of those left-side breathing years were pre-TI, so my breathing habits had become mostly unconscious incompetence.

Breathing to the right for the first time (in 1992) felt uncomfortable, but alerted me that my left-breathing was inefficient, because I took two more strokes for 50 meters than when I breathed to the right.

Yet I was initially trying to achieve the same level of comfort when breathing to the right side. So left-side breathing, while less efficient provided the benchmark I tried to match on my new breathing side.

However, because my right-side breathing lacked bad habits that had built up over 28 years of ‘unconscious’ breathing, it progressed fairly rapidly.

Honestly cannot recall the time when right side displaced left for me in setting the standard for left side breathing technique, but I can remember the specific breathing skill that I recognized I was better at on my new breathing side, I had a noticeably more patient lead (left) hand while breathing right. So my first example of Conscious Incompetence was to try to make my lead (right) hand more patient, while breathing left.

I now keep my head low while breathing to the left.

Next I noticed that I slightly lifted my head while breathing left . . . which caused my lead hand to stroke prematurely. So that became Conscious Incompetence item #2, And so on.

Just as I do on the right.

Enjoy the podcast.

Su-Chong Lim

Amazing! Eerie deja vu feeling reading of your progress 28 years ago. I first bit the bullet to do bilateral breathing about 3 years ago to learn one in 3 and to do it consistently. But was always aware that my “bad” left side breath was always dreaded in anticipation as it was coming up and performed awkwardly, maybe even hurriedly, so as to get it over with quickly. So I grit my teeth and for 2 months did nothing but left sided breathing exclusively and repeatedly. That got me over the hump and used to it, but even now when I get tired and panicky with air hunger I start to cling to my old trusted right side. But yes, I too noticed that my new left side breathing, while less “secure” feeling, without many years of bad habits ingrained into it, and built new according to exact TI specifications from scratch, seems to be performed technically much better, with head and mouth low at waterline, and much more consistent patient lead hand held at the correct spear angle. And it became the model on which to improve my old trusted right breathing but which had been loaded with bad habits of years of bad practice. But those right sided breathing bad habits come back when tired and with air hunger.
Julie Ham

What an interesting article!
I love bilateral breathing all the time… yeah I used to lift my head while breathing left, but not now. I enjoy it and think of my balance while both side breathing.
The potcast is good too.
Paul Douglas

Got relevant for me at the 25 minute mark. Excellent pointers like chin-follow-shoulder focal point! Great podcast when Terry was speaking. It is always so inspiring to hear him.
When I was swimming traditionally, I had swum with bilateral breathing for almost 30 years without a problem (my right side was always a little better than my left). When I took up TI last winter I suddenly couldn’t breathe on my left side at all! I’ve had to relearn to breathe bilaterally with TI, but I have just started having consistent success in the last 2-3 weeks. Very humbling, but it feels so wonderful when you do it right.