Nasal Breathing Gives Coaches a Practical Tool for Stress Regulation
Chi Kim, CEO of Pure Edge Inc., argues that nasal breathing gives coaches and adults around teams a simple way to recognize and regulate stress before it shapes attention, decision-making, and behavior. In her talk, she links pressure to a narrowing of physiological and cognitive capacity, then presents counted breathing through the nose as a route back toward parasympathetic activation and steadier presence. Her point is deliberately practical: before correcting an athlete or reacting to a play, adults should manage the state they bring into the team environment.
Stress narrows the body before it narrows the game
? chi-kim framed nasal breathing as a practical tool for coaches, athletes, and adults around teams: a way to notice physiological stress and influence the state from which decisions and reactions emerge. She made the room feel the mechanism first.
Kim asked participants to tighten their muscles “as tightly as you can,” hold their breath, and “suffer a little longer.” Then she had them raise their hands and exhale as they lowered them. The point was the contrast: under pressure, the body changes before people are fully aware of what has changed.
A slide showed a medical-style profile illustration of a brain with a bright red area glowing in the lower central region. Kim described this as “your brain under pressure.” She then pointed to the front region of the brain, identifying it as the prefrontal cortex — the area she associated with decision-making, creativity, and emotion regulation. Under stress, she said, that region “actually just goes quiet.”
That matters in sport because practiced skills still have to be available in pressure moments. Kim connected the biology to coaching: whether in “pee wee soccer or something else,” teams can practice a skill repeatedly, but when the body is in stress, attention and decision-making can narrow. She referred to research on attention under stress, describing it as a kind of blindness: people can become unable to see what they need to see in the moment.
The route back, Kim argued, can begin with something simple enough to be overlooked — breathing through the nose.
The intervention was deliberately small: breathe through the nose
Kim’s core instruction was a brief, bodily practice. A black slide displayed a single word in white capital letters: “BREATHE.” She told the room they would focus on the nose and “a couple of other things,” then led a nasal-breathing sequence.
The exercise used only the nose. Participants inhaled and exhaled in counted intervals, gradually lengthening the breath. Kim counted them through rounds that included “inhale one,” “exhale one,” then longer counts: “inhale one, two,” “three, two, one,” and eventually “inhale one, two, three, four.” The purpose, she said, was to elongate the breath.
Afterward she told participants to let their breathing return to normal and offered a bodily marker to notice.
If you have a small pool of saliva collecting inside your mouth, you’ve just activated your parasympathetic nervous system.
Kim described nasal breathing as a fast route back toward parasympathetic activation and homeostasis. In her account, the practice was a way to move the nervous system from a pressure response toward regulation.
Regulation is individual, but coaches make it social
? chi-kim moved from self-regulation to co-regulation. In a room addressed to coaches and athletes, the practical implication was that the presence an adult brings to a team does not remain private.
She told the audience that the group had “collectively in this room” co-regulated through the breathing exercise. Then she tied that experience to coaching presence: “the presence that you bring to your team,” she said, spreads.
It spreads like wildfire.
The claim was not presented as a complicated intervention. It was about what coaches and adults carry into the space around athletes. If the adult on the sideline is under pressure — with narrowed attention and reduced access to the capacities Kim associated with the prefrontal cortex — that presence can spread. If the adult can use breath to return toward homeostasis, Kim suggested, the presence around the team changes.
A later visual showed a profile illustration of a brain with a glowing heart superimposed at the center. Kim used that image to describe homeostasis as connecting “our head and heart.” Her point was operational: regulation helps reconnect the capacities people need when they are trying to decide, respond, and lead under pressure.
The nose is a tool no one has to buy
? chi-kim repeatedly emphasized agency. At the start, she told the room they would have “complete agency over our own bodies.” Near the end, she turned the same point into a warning against commodification.
If someone tries to monetize your nasal breathing, just back away.
The line was partly humorous, but it carried the talk’s practical boundary. Nasal breathing was presented as accessible and immediate. Kim added that “no AI is going to take over,” while also pointing the audience to free resources from Pure Edge, Inc.
A slide titled “Brain Breaks by Pure Edge” listed a free mobile app with animated videos for ages 4 and up, in eight languages including ASL, with the ability to save favorites. The slide also showed “BREATHE MOVE REST,” QR codes, and a download path through app stores or linktr.ee/PureEdge. Kim also mentioned a series called “Let’s Play,” describing it only as “a series of animations that actually just talk about nothing.”
The larger message was that coaches and adults working with children can use brief practices to interrupt stress physiology without waiting for specialized equipment, a paid product, or a formal program. Kim asked the audience to remember “one simple thing,” the nose — a part of the body that “doesn’t get a whole lot of attention,” but, in her account, gives people a direct way to influence how they show up.