WellO2 review - sleep and recovery


Who: 

Almost 40 years old

Mother of three


Training habits:

Goal-oriented gym training + seasonal endurance training


Motto:

Start and you have already passed the biggest obstacle



Without boring you with details, my already hectic life with studies, work, and motherhood was challenged with two personal losses that affected both my wellbeing (mostly mentally) and strained my already stretched day-to-day time management about five years ago. My health was at risk, while my emotional self was ruined down to pieces with two major losses and the demand of handling so much more than before in most of my roles in life. 

Ever Been in That Survival Mode?

I was in survival mode! My day-to-day life took every crumb of energy I had. This survival mode coated with grief lasted for approximately one year. After that, I was ready to start my healing process and get in contact with myself both mentally and physically. I have always worked through physicality, my feelings are visible in my body, inside and out. It works both ways, if I feel blue I can get my spirits up through activity and if my mind is strong my body is doing well. 

Through this trauma my stress-levels went up. And though I actively tried many ways to calm my nervous system for years, I couldn’t calm it down. I am an “action first person”. So my endeavors of relaxing myself with yoga, different web-based courses to enhance my recovery, or even attempts for mindfulness didn’t do the trick. 

WellO2 Enhanced my Sleep and Recovery

Lucky for me, we ( e.g. Nordic Innovation Shop) got the chance to execute a customer research project for WellO2. WellO2 is a Finnish innovation for strengthening your breathing capability. It is a patented device that combines training of your breathing muscles with steam.

During the exercise for approximately 5-10 minutes (once or twice a day) you breathe deeply with a variety of resistance. During this breathing exercise you activate the deep breathing muscles which activate the parasympathetic nervous system. The activation of your parasympathetic nervous system tells your body to calm down and that it is ok to relax. 

How to Actively Activate Better Sleep and Recovery

As I stated earlier I’m a quite active athletic person. I have enhanced my conscious mind-work and body through goal-oriented training, with more or less occasional professional support from a personal trainer for a few years now. However, my unconscious mind and body, or maybe the traumatized side of me, was still on alert-mode and my heart rate was on overdrive, blocking my recovery. 

Without any such expectations, during my WellO2 test-period, my fitness tracker showed me pure data on how my recovery levels were better after using WellO2! I was totally overwhelmed about this! For years I had actively tried to recover better and to activate my parasympathetic nervous system without any major enhancement. Now, during this testing period in less than a week, all of my recovery levels went significantly upwards. 

I suppose that I was on such an “active mode” to calm myself down that I had trouble actually calming down. But when I had a device and a program to follow, I could actively support my sleep and recovery!

We seek for all kinds of guides, systems, and references on how to improve this and that. But the brilliance of our bodies and the existing mechanisms fascinate me so much. We are so lucky to possess all this from birth. Many of these mechanisms you can’t control. But by affecting your breathing, that steers many of your automatic mechanisms, you are able to enhance your health in a variety of ways. Helping your body find those existing systems that help you fulfil your potential is just amazing. 

I am not a mindfulness-person, even if I have tried to be and read lots of books and other information about its benefits. So for me, a person aiming for results and filling checkboxes, this device really was a dream come true. Finally I could actively affect my recovery.

Start Enhancing Your Sleep and Recovery with WellO2

Nowadays, just the thought of WellO2, feels safe and appealing. Because I know now, that I have the right tools to actually enhance my well-being easily and conveniently right in my bathroom drawer. 

If you are interested in learning more about why WellO2 does the trick in such a variety of mechanisms, read about breathing exercises here.

Using the WellO2 has also improved my VO2-max. You can read more about my WellO2 training experience here.

You can learn more about WellO2 here: