Don Campbell

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Inspiration, Recharging Our Batteries, and How to Float Through Life

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Listen Instead of Reading

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Reading Time: 1 min 33 sec

I hope the next 19’ish breaths are the most nourishing of your day.


4 THOUGHTS

1. Inspiration from the Environment

“Studies of brainwaves during breathing suggested that the strongest effect of synching up with breathing rate comes on an in-breath. It sounds a bit cheesy, but it’s also true: when we breathe, we are literally taking inspiration from the environment and the subtle clues that it contains.”

– Caroline Williams, Move

How cool is that? Inhaling synchronizes our brainwaves because it’s literally our way of receiving subtle clues from the environment. This means that information coming from breathing gets special attention in the brain…which is why deliberately changing how we breathe can profoundly impact our mental and emotional states 👏

2. Recharging Our Batteries

“A lot of people also run out of energy because they forget to recharge. We need to recharge our batteries by doing retreats or other things that help us to relax, that give us pleasure and make us laugh, because we don’t want to take ourselves too seriously. We all want to lighten up, don’t we?”

– Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, The Heroic Heart

This applies not only in big ways like retreats, but perhaps even more importantly, in tiny ways—like when we have a few extra minutes to laugh, to breathe, to walk, or read. When we recharge our batteries this way, we’re better able to serve others 🙏.

3. Retreats, Frames, and How to Float Through Life

1. When life is your practice, you’re always on a retreat.

2. Any frame we put around the power of breathing won’t fit.

3. To float through life, treat laughter as your ocean.

4. Don’t Should on Yourself

“How many of us should on ourselves all the time?”

– Don Campbell, Healing Yourself with Your Own Voice

Guilty here. Let’s do our best not to “should on ourselves” this week 😊

1 Quote

“The breath helps you maintain full attention, enabling you to see with greater clarity and accuracy the true nature of all forms: everything that arises passes away.””
— Larry Rosenberg

1 Answer

Category: Lung Forces

Answer: When upright, blood flow is greatest in the lower portions the lungs (up to 5-fold greater) due at least partially to the effect of this ever-present force.

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(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

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Question: What is gravity?

In good breath,

Nick Heath, T1D, PhD
“Breathing is the compound interest of health & wellness.”

P.S. okay let’s not jump to conclusions

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Amazon Associate Disclosure

I’ve been recommending books for almost 6 years. Yet somehow, I just discovered that I could be an Amazon affiliate [face-palm]. In any case better late than never. Now, any Amazon link you click is an affiliate link. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. So, if you’d like to support my work, buying books through these links is helpful : )

* 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.

 
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Better Learning, Life's Lifeline, and How We Breathe is Who We Are

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Listen Instead of Reading

If you enjoy listening, you can subscribe to the audio version on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Audible so you don’t even have to look at the email 😊

4 THOUGHTS


1. How We Breathe is Who We Are

“Breathing is about much more than simple gas exchange or even cardiorespiratory fitness. We exhale and inhale more than twenty thousand times per day, and the way in which we do so has tremendous influence on how we move our body, and even our mental state. How we breathe, as Beth puts it, is who we are.”

- Peter Attia, MD, Outlive

I have nothing useful to add here, except a few of these 👏👏👏

P.S. The Beth mentioned was one of his colleagues, Beth Lewis.

2. Science or Prayer, Medicine or Meditation

A profound aspect of breathing is that, depending on our disposition, we can treat it like science or prayer, like diet or exercise, like medicine or meditation.

And the best part: No approach is right or wrong.

3. Alternate Nostril Breathing Improves Learning & Retention

“Our findings indicated that a single 30-minute session of deep alternate-nostril breathing significantly facilitated the retention of a newly acquired motor skill. Better retention was evident immediately, as well as 24 hours after breathing practice, suggesting that such simple practices can be exploited as an effective tool to enhance both short term and somewhat longer term retention of skilled movements.”

– Deep Breathing Practice Facilitates Retention of Newly Learned Motor Skills

I’ve shared this one before. However, I revisited it recently and thought I’d share it again.

The take-home is that we can use slow alternate nostril breathing immediately after learning a motor skill to improve that skill’s short and long-term retention.

Check out these 9 slides that describe the study with images.

4. It’s Made Simple by Simplified Controls

This is a genuinely mind-blowing analogy for all breathing practices:

“For example, consider a car. We hardly give it a second thought when we climb into a car and drive off to an appointment. … All we have to do is press on the gas pedal and hold the steering wheel, and away we go. Simple, yes? No, not simple at all, but it has been made simple by virtue of the simplified controls that enable us to effortlessly transform a volatile substance, gasoline, into a speedy and safe ride to our appointment.

Pranayama is like that. In fact, all effective spiritual practice is like that. We can take complex principles of transformation found in the human nervous system and, with a series of simple procedures, apply these for great spiritual benefit.”

- Yogani, Spinal Breathing Pranayama

1 Quote

“By developing the simple profound practice of mindful breathing, you have a lifeline that ties you to every dimension of your life.””
— Al Lee and Don Campbell

1 Answer

Category: Breathing 101

Answer: The amount of air left after a maximum exhalation, known as this, helps to ensure the alveoli do not collapse.

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(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

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Question: What is residual volume?

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In good breath,

Nick Heath, T1D, PhD
“Breathing is the compound interest of health & wellness.”


P.S. This is everything I hoped for

* 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.

 
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Build-a-Breath, How to Work with Emotions, and Carrying Great Power

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Listen Instead of Reading

If you enjoy listening, you can subscribe to the audio version on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Audible so you don’t even have to look at the email 😊

4 THOUGHTS

1. Build-a-Breath: Breath Stages and the Nervous System

“Vagal activity is enhanced during the postinspiratory period and inhibited during the postexpiratory period.” - Kromenacker et al. (2018)

 

When I read this somewhat unassuming sentence, it actually led to a pretty big “aha moment” for me. It means: 

  • Inhalations: Sympathetic

  • Inhale-Pauses: Parasympathetic

  • Exhalations: Parasympathetic 

  • Exhale-Pauses: Sympathetic (I had never actually thought about this one and just assumed it was parasympathetic.)

Let’s apply this to a real-world example: the popular 4-7-8 breath. Using the above relationships, we see that 4 seconds are spent in sympathetic and 15 parasympathetic—no wonder it’s so relaxing.

With this information, you can now assemble and tailor a breath to meet your needs using a simple app like Breathe: iPhone & Android.

The power is yours…have fun with it 🙏

 

2. One Way to Stop Overbreathing: Mouth Tape at Night

“Taping the mouth at night ensures the benefits of good breathing during sleep, allowing you to fall asleep more quickly, stay asleep longer, and wake feeling energized.”

– Patrick McKeown, The Oxygen Advantage

And if that’s not enough, it’s also one way (among many changes we need to make) to train our bodies to breathe less in general.

As Patrick says, “Spending a guaranteed eight hours breathing through your nose while you sleep is an opportune way to reeducate your respiratory center to adjust to a more normal breathing volume.” 👏 👏 👏

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P.S. If you want more amazing wisdom from The Oxygen Advantage, I just released a Book 411 summary on it in the Learning Center.

3. How to Work with the Root of Emotional Imbalances

“No matter how out of control we feel, how low our energy is, or how large our problems seem to loom, wind energy training is an effective intervention for all emotional imbalances. When we work with the breath, we work with the root of the problem.”

- Anyen Rinpoche & Allison Choying Zangmo, The Tibetan Yoga of Breath

I have nothing to add except to repeat that last sentence: “When we work with the breath, we work with the root of the problem.” 👏

4. A Tiny Thought On Why Breathing Helps Everything

Since no bodily function can occur without breathing, it just makes sense that breathing, in some way, influences every bodily function.

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1 Quote

““For something so simple, automatic, and for most people, unconscious, breathing carries with it great power.””
— Al Lee & Don Campbell

1 Answer

Category: Breathing and Emotions

Answer: Using fMRI, researchers have found that breathing influences activity in this region of the brain, an area associated with emotional regulation and response.

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(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

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Question: What is the cingulate cortex?

In good breath,

Nick Heath, T1D, PhD
“Breathing is the compound interest of health & wellness.”


P.S. and I can finally be free

* 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.

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