calmness — Blog — The Breathing Diabetic

3. Greater Calmness: How to Choose Effective Responses in Stressful Situations

“When we are mindful of our breathing, it automatically helps us to establish greater calmness in both the body and the mind. Then we are better able to be aware of our thoughts and feelings…And with this awareness comes a feeling of having more room to move, of having more options, of being free to choose effective and appropriate responses in stressful situations rather than losing our equilibrium and sense of self as a result of feeling overwhelmed, thrown off balance by our own knee-jerk reactions.”

- Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., Full Catastrophe Living

Beautifully said 👏👏👏

So the next time we need to choose an effective & appropriate response in a stressful situation, let’s first tune into our breath to “establish greater calmness in both the body and the mind,” allowing us to move forward with clarity.

4. This Will Help You in Anything You Set Out to Do

“Working memory is where you hold a goal in mind so you can move toward it. By goal…I mean the micro-intentions and deliberate aim of having a desired outcome for each and every task you engage in—all the decisions, planning, thinking, actions, and behaviors you do over the course of a day: anything you set out to do.”

– Amishi P. Jha, Ph.D., Peak Mind

Based on this description, having good working memory is pretty crucial since it plays a role in “anything you set out to do.”

But it’s relevant here because a 2022 study found that slow breathing significantly improves working memory.

Putting it together: By improving working memory, slow breathing may potentially help you with anything you set out to do 👏

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4 Thoughts

1. Breath is Mind: 25 Thoughtful Quotes on the Breath-Mind Connection

1. “When you practice mindfulness of breathing, then the breathing is mind.” - Thich Nhat Hanh

2. “I am as conﬁdent as I am of anything that, in myself, the stream of thinking…is only a careless name for what, when scrutinized, reveals itself to consist chieﬂy of the stream of my breathing.” - William James

3. “As we discover, when we pay attention to its natural rhythm, the breath becomes calm. Simultaneously, the mind quiets down. It all happens naturally. … Any force is counterproductive.” - Bhante Henepola Gunarantana

Keep Going…

2. Breathing Residue: Turning Setbacks into Assets

“The problem this research identifies with this work strategy is that when you switch from some Task A to another Task B, your attention doesn’t immediately follow—a residue of your attention remains stuck thinking about the original task.”
- Cal Newport, Deep Work

Attention residue. It’s a major setback to productivity.

However, let’s turn that concept into an asset with a new term:

Breathing Residue: The calmness that persists several minutes (sometimes hours) after performing a slow breathing practice.

We want less attention residue, more breathing residue : )

***

P.S. The nerds among you might prefer to call breathing residue by its more scientific name, vagal tone. But that’s not as fun 😊

3. How to Make Meditation Fun (no breathwork needed)

Here’s an easy way to make meditation fun: Instead of trying to “stop thinking,” try to “curate your thoughts.” Watch them all go by and see if you can find any good ones. Your mind thinks; you just listen for the fun and exciting stuff.

We can call it a curation meditation : )

***

P.S. I often do this when I wake up low and can’t sleep (it’s how some of these thoughts are made). It seems like it would make for a fun formal practice, too.

4. On Becoming Breathing Homo Exercens

“We call ourselves ‘knowing man’ because we see ourselves as distinguished from our ancestors by our vast amount of knowledge. But perhaps a better way to see ourselves would be as Homo exercens, or ‘practicing man,’ the species that takes control of its life through practice and makes of itself what it will.”
- Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool, Peak

I love this. We can “know” all we want, but it’s meaningless without practice. And there’s no better practice for taking control of our life than breathing.

So here’s to becoming breathing Homo exercens, today.

***

Related Quote: “If learning is not followed by reflecting and practicing, it is not true learning.” * - Thich Nhat Hanh

1 QUOTE

“I am nothing more than a single, narrow, gasping lung floating over the mists and the summits.”
- Reinhold Messner

1 ANSWER

Category: The Thinking Mind

Answer: Recent research suggests we have about this many thoughts per minute.

…

(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

…

Question: What is 6.5 thoughts per minute?

P.S. That’s a lot of thoughts to choose from during your curation meditation : )

In good breath,

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

P.S. okay time to sleep

* 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.

The Best Morning Breathing Exercise, Air Candy, and Greater Calmness

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4 THOUGHTS

1. Air Candy

2. The Best Morning Breathing Exercise

3. Greater Calmness: How to Choose Effective Responses in Stressful Situations

4. This Will Help You in Anything You Set Out to Do

1 Quote

1 Answer

Category: Breath-Heart Connections

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25 Thoughtful Quotes on Breath & Mind, and How to Make Meditation Fun