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4 Thoughts
1. Thirty Days to Better Sleep and Higher Vagal Tone
“Taken together, our results suggest that slow-paced breathing performed before sleeping may enhance restorative processes at the cardiovascular level during sleep.”
Here’s another excellent study from Laborde & colleagues, with lots we could cover. But the take-home messages were that 15 min of slow breathing (6 breaths/min) before sleep for 30 days led to:
Significantly better subjective sleep quality
Significantly higher nighttime vagal tone (via HF-HRV)
Higher (but not significant) morning vagal tone
Not bad for just 15 minutes a night 👏
2. The Centering Breath (and 5 Breaths for Better Focus)
“[B]reathe in for six seconds, hold that breath for two seconds, and then breathe out for seven seconds. When you modulate your breathing this way, you're controlling your state of arousal and corralling your body's natural response to stress.”
- Dr. Jason Selk & Tom Bartow, Organize Tomorrow Today
Here’s a nice breath to try whenever you need to re-center. In for 6, hold for 2, exhale for 7. Even just one of those is enough to reset your focus.
***
P.S. Here’s a guest blog I recently wrote for ResBiotic all about breathing & focus: Why Breathing Gets You Focused (and 5 ways to do it)
3. Perfect Advice for Applying the Power of Breathing in Your Life
“It’s not difficult to experience the psychological and social benefits of movement. … There’s no training formula you have to follow. There is no one path or prescription except to follow your own joy. If you’re looking for a guideline, it’s this: Move. Any kind, any amount, and any way that makes you happy. Move whatever parts of your body still move, with gratitude.” (my emphasis)
- Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., The Joy of Movement
Although Dr. McGonigal is talking about movement, this is also the absolute perfect advice for breathing:
Breathe. Any kind, any amount, and in any way that makes you happy. And breathe with gratitude for this beautiful life we have, thanks to the breath.
4. Your Own Finely Crafted Breathing Program
“The Craftsman Approach to Tool Selection: Identify the core factors that determine success and happiness in your professional and personal life. Adopt a tool only if its positive impacts on these factors substantially outweigh its negative impacts.”
- Cal Newport, Deep Work
And to piggyback on Thought #3, here is the perfect way to choose which breathing practices (or any self-improvement practices) we perform.
Here’s to finely crafting our own unique breathing programs, this week 🙏
1 QUOTE
“[W]e must seek awareness, and that can begin with the awareness of your breath, the foundation of your totality as a human being.”
1 ANSWER
Category: Nasal Breathing
Answer: Nasal breathing not only synchronizes electrical activity in the olfactory bulb, but also in these two areas, helping explain why it influences our emotional state.
…
(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)
…
Question: What are the amygdala and hippocampus?
In good breath,
Nick Heath, T1D, PhD
“Breathing is the compound interest of health & wellness.”
Breathing for Diabetes:
If you love learning about breathing, or just want to live an overall healthier life, I think you’ll really enjoy this class (diabetes or not).
* 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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Each Monday, I curate and synthesize information from scientific journals, books, articles, and podcasts to share 4 thoughts, 1 quote, and 1 answer (like "Jeopardy!") related to breathing. It’s a fun way to learn something new each week.