Listen Instead of Reading
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4 THOUGHTS
1. Introducing…
Now open. Check it out.
2. Seeing More Joy
Doing a deliberate slow nasal breathing practice first thing every morning is like putting on joy contacts to start your day.
3. A Good Case for Doing Your Practice in the Morning
“We each have our unique starting baseline—the level of stress arousal that we usually hover around through any typical day … Regardless of where we start from, the lower we can get our baseline stress arousal, the better—it means we’ll be much more able to tolerate the peaks of stressful events.”
- Elissa Epel, Ph.D., The Stress Prescription
To me, this passage presents a good case for doing our slow breathing (or whichever practice you do) first thing in the morning. By starting at a lower baseline, we’ll tolerate the day’s stressors better 👏
***
P.S. And if you choose slow nasal breathing, you’ll get the added bonus of seeing more joy 😊 (see Thought #2).
4. The Power of Breath Awareness
Dr. Amishi Jha discussing breath awareness in Peak Mind:
“[W]e use the breath for a couple of important reasons: It anchors us in the body. It allows us to experience the body sensations that are unfolding in real time as we breathe, in the here and now. … And finally, our breath is always with us. It’s the most natural built-in target for our attention that we can always return to.”
Put simply: The breath is the best way to be present with what is happening now.
1 Quote
“The first step in changing reality is to recognize it as it is now.””
1 Answer
Category: A Funny Breathing Exercise
Answer: This breathing exercise causes the abdomen, chest, and diaphragm to tighten while also expanding alveoli, all of which may improve lung function.
…
(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)
…
Question: What is laughing?
In good breath,
Nick Heath, T1D, PhD
“Breathing is the compound interest of health & wellness.”
* An asterisk by a quote indicates that I listened to this book on Audible. Therefore, the quotation might not be correct, but is my best attempt at reproducing the punctuation based on the narrator’s pace, tone, and pauses.