August 1, 2022

Progress, Heart & Happiness, and How to Become a Breath Coach

August 1, 2022

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. Another Excellent Quote on Breathing from Another Doctor

Last week, I shared a great quote from Andrew Weil, MD. Here’s another one, this time from Wayne Jonas, MD, in his outstanding book How Healing Works:

“Breathing techniques and mobile apps can teach you to use your breath to self-calm. The breath triggers changes in the body's nervous system that help you better manage stress. Deep breathing techniques help reduce feelings of anxiety and stress by blunting the expression of genes turned on during stress”

👏👏👏

2. A Different Perspective on How to Make Progress in Your Practice

Sometimes progress is just knowing when it’s time to switch things up.

Improvement can simply be trying new breathing exercises when it feels right.

3. Heart & Happiness: Strengthening Your Heart May Have Antidepressive Effects

“Additionally, recent neurocardiology studies have revealed that the heart is capable of secreting feel-good chemicals like dopamine, oxytocin, and norepinephrine, all of which help to counteract feelings of depression. … This suggests that strengthening the heart through HRV-strengthening practices could possibly yield mild antidepressive effects.”
- Leah Lagos, Psy.D., Heart Breath Mind

That’s insane. And here’s Dr. Lagos’s starting practice for strengthening our hearts: “The standard rate that works for most individuals is to inhale for 4 seconds and exhale for 6 seconds with no pause in between.” Sounds good 🙏

4. The Breath of Art

“Art, after all, is about rearranging us, creating surprising juxtapositions, emotional openings, startling presences, flight paths to the eternal.”
- Rosamund Stone Zander & Benjamin Zander, The Art of Possibility

Adding ‘breath’ to great quotes is what I do best (yes, blatant plagiarism is my calling 😂). So, here it is:

Breathing is about rearranging us, creating surprising juxtapositions, emotional openings, startling presences, flight paths to the eternal.

Extra: Become a Breathwork Coach Starting August 8

Through holding my free 1-on-1s, I’ve gotten to meet some incredible people.

One of them is Campbell, a physical therapist, breathing coach, and all-around good person. In our chat, I learned he has a 12-week breathwork coach program. It looks awesome.

If I had any free time nowadays, I’d join. But since I can’t, I’m going to put it here for anyone who might be interested:

Learn more about the Breathwork for Practitioners Program

I hope you’ll check it out.

1 QUOTE

“Everything in the world is full of signs. All events are coordinated. All things depend on each other. Everything breathes together.”

— Plotinus

P.S. Thanks to good friend (and 411 reader) E.S. for sending me this one 🙏

1 ANSWER

Category: Breathing & Blood Pressure

Answer: When you inhale, your heart rate increases, which causes your blood pressure to rise about 5 seconds later; the opposite occurs during exhalation. This process is mediated by these specialized receptors.

…

(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

…

Question: What are the baroreceptors?

In good breath,

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

P.S. the honesty policy

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).

LEARN MORE AND VIEW THE COURSE CURRICULUM

* 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.

Sign Up For The Breathing 411

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.

Nicholas Heath

July 25, 2022

weekly email, Batch 8

Learned Hope, Suffering vs. Peace, and a Perfect Quote on Breathwork

Nicholas Heath

July 25, 2022

weekly email, Batch 8

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. A Perfect Quote on Breathing from Dr. Andrew Weil

“Breath work—learning how to change breathing habits and practicing specific breathing techniques—has remarkable effects on physiology. It cannot cause harm, requires no equipment, and costs nothing. It can correct some cardiac arrhythmias and gastrointestinal problems, for example, and is the most effective treatment I know for anxiety, as well as the simplest method of stress reduction.”
- Andrew Weil, MD, Mind Over Meds

That is all 🤯

2. One Key Reason Breathing is So Powerful Actually Has Nothing to do with Breathing

Have you heard of learned helplessness? When we’re subjected to adversity we can’t control, we give up. Then later on, we give up in situations we can control.

However, I recently learned in Transcend that helplessness isn’t actually “learned” per se; it’s actually our default reaction to prolonged adversity.

To overcome that default, we need what Kaufman calls “learned hope:”

“the perception that [we] can control and harness the unpredictability in [our] environment.”

In my opinion, this is why breathing is so powerful. It’s not that there’s some magical breathing method out there. It’s that once we see our ability to control our body and emotions through the breath, we develop learned hope.

We believe we can retake control again. And then we do.

3. Who’s Breath Are You Focusing On? Suffering vs. Peace

When you first learn about breathing, it’s natural to notice how poorly everyone else does it. And it’s natural to want to fix them.

But let’s remember that trying to change others will lead to suffering.

Focusing on what you can control—your breath—will lead to peace.

***

P.S. This was inspired by this excellent Optimize +1.

4. What to Do If You Don’t have a Teacher

“In absence of a teacher, one is to rely on a thorough, repeated study of as many texts as available and on constant self-observation and introspection.”
- Michael Wurmbrand, The Primordial Breath, Volume II

Although there’s no substitute for a teacher, I hope this newsletter helps you in one of these three areas with your breath 🙏

1 QUOTE

“[B]reath understood as metonym for life itself, rather than as a discrete physiological process, has often acted as a philosophical first principle.”

— Arthur Rose

1 ANSWER

Category: Diaphragm

Answer: According to one review, the diaphragm is completely made out of this type of tissue.

…

(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

…

Question: What is fascia?

In good breath,

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

P.S. alone time in the mornings

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).

LEARN MORE AND VIEW THE COURSE CURRICULUM

Sign Up For The Breathing 411

Nicholas Heath

January 1, 2022

Blog

22 One-Sentence Breathing Ideas for 2022

Nicholas Heath

January 1, 2022

Blog

Let’s continue the tradition this year. Here are 22 one-sentence breathing ideas to kick off 2022. Enjoy!

***

1. Demonstrations of breathing are small compared with the great thing that is hidden behind them.

(Inspired by a Khalil Gibran Quote)

2. Breathing doesn’t heal you; it gives your body the environment it needs to heal itself.

3. We can be lost in breath, without knowing we have been breathing.

(Inspired by The Things You See Only When You Slow Down)

4. If you know only one breathing method, then you really know none; if you understand one breathing method, then you really know them all.

5. Breathing is the most direct path to practicing philosophy in our lives.

6. If breath is life, then optimal breathing is optimal living.

7. Science is timely; personal experience is timeless.

8. Every method works when used correctly, but no method works for everybody.

9. What one teacher says is essential, another will say is useless.

10. Breathing is a pair of leather shoes for life.

(Idea from The Tibetan Yoga of Breath)

11. The most practical tip for breathing is this: make it quiet and subtle.

12. To breathe in a “quiet and subtle way” takes deliberate practice—effort leads to effortlessness.

13. Breathing may be my 70% solution but only your 20% solution.

14. Breathe less, sometimes more; breathe slow, sometimes fast.

15. We breathe through each nostril separately so they function better together as a whole.

16. Read about breathing but, most importantly, embody that education through practice.

17. Start by starting; one minute is always better than none-minutes.

18. A simple rule for getting started: 40% of your breath should be inhaling, 60% should be exhaling.

19. Holding implies tension and effort; pausing is natural and effortless.

20. Breath and mind are inseparable: This means you can use your breath, to change your mind, to change your breath for the better.

(A play on this line from Neurodharma: “Neurons that fire together, wire together. This means that you can use your mind, to change your brain, to change your mind for the better.”)

21. The goal of a breathing practice is better mindless breathing.

22. The joy of breathwork is breathing.