Listen Instead of Reading
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4 Thoughts
1. The Breath-Love Connection: Safety, Self-Love, and Upward Spirals
Here is a summary of my recent dive into the breath-love connection:
Breathing is self-love: It increases vagal tone and helps us feel safe, allowing us to experience more love-love. Experiencing more love, then, will reshape our lives for the better, triggering an upward spiral that lifts us to become the best versions of ourselves we can become.
2. The Breath-Heart Connection: Entrainment
“‘Entrainment’ is the term for when two oscillations become synchronized—like when two tuning forks come to vibrate at the same frequency or two pendulums begin to synchronize and swing at the same tempo.”
- Lisa Miller, Ph.D., The Awakened Brain
Although this passage wasn’t about breathing, I thought “entrainment” was the perfect word to describe the breath-heart connection.
When we breathe at about 4-7 breaths/min, our breathing rate entrains our heart rate. They “synchronize and swing at the same tempo.”
This makes everything run more efficiently. As Tree Meinch says, “our respiration has the potential to optimize the rhythm of various mechanisms and align them with our heart rate.” 👏
3. Big Tech vs. Gandhi
“‘[O]ne of the ironies is there are these incredibly popular workshops at Facebook and Google about mindfulness—about creating the mental space to make decisions nonreactively—and they are also the biggest perpetrators of non-mindfulness in the world.’”
- Aza Raskin, from Stolen Focus by Johann Hari
I’ve often thought it was cool to hear that big tech companies have meditation pods and mindfulness events. How neat, right?
Well, maybe not. As this passage points out, these companies are also the “biggest perpetrators of non-mindfulness in the world.” (🤯 never thought of it like that).
Of course, no one person or company is perfect—we’re all just trying to do the best we can.
But this reminded me of a Gandhi quote: “One…cannot do right in one department of life whilst…doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole.”
So here’s to doing our best (accepting we’ll never be perfect) to lead with our hearts and live up to our values in all areas of our lives 🙏
4. Science Offers Only Glimpses
“This highlights a weakness in what otherwise might seem quite impressive findings on the yogis: these data points are but glimpses of the altered traits that intensive, prolonged meditation produces. We do not want to reduce this quality of being to what we happen to be able to measure.”
- Daniel Goleman & Richard Davidson, Altered Traits
I think the idea applies perfectly to breathing, too. It’s a nice reminder that, while we should value scientific findings, we must also remember they’re only a glimpse of the benefits based on “what we happen to be able to measure.”
Free 5-Day Email Course on Becoming a Breathing Generalist
I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback on the ideas presented in this email series, so I thought I should share it again. I hope you’ll sign up!
Day 1: The Four Paths of a Generalist
Day 2: How to Read Books Efficiently
Day 3: How to Find Science Papers Worth Reading
Day 4: How to Decide Which Books and Papers to Read
Day 5: Become More You, Become Irreplaceable
1 Quote
“Love—like taking a deep breath…—not only feels great but is also life-giving, an indispensable source of energy, sustenance, and health.””
1 Answer
Category: Breath Speed
Answer: A nasal exhale travels at a maximum of about this many miles per hour.
…
(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)
…
Question: What is 3 mph?
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.
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.