fun

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

 
 

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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.

 
 

Breathing Graffiti on 28 Famous Quotes, Sayings, and Idioms

When I wake up low at night, I sometimes use breathing to help me fall back asleep (after eating glucose, of course). Other times, I accept that I won’t be sleeping for a while, and I just let my mind wander and laugh at my thoughts.

This thought came on one such night, Thursday, March 11th, to be specific. It seemed especially cheesy, so I decided to go with it : ) Some of them I actually found pretty funny, others I had to stretch a bit…

Email me (nick@thebreathingdiabetic.com) if you have any good ones I didn’t think of so I can add them in.

Anything below #28 are user additions.

 


1.  To breathe, or not to breathe: that is the question.

 

2.  A breath in the nose is worth two in the mouth.

 

3.  Don’t put all your breaths in one basket.

 

4.  You have to breathe it to believe it.

 

5.  You’ve made your bed; now breathe in it.

 

6.  A breath is worth a thousand words.

 

7.  Breathe the change you want to see in the world.

 

8.  Be all you can breathe.

 

9.  There’s a method in the breathlessness.

 

10.  Familiarity breathes contempt.

 

11.  Don’t judge a breath by its cover.

 

12.  This option gives us the breath of both worlds.

 

13.  Your breath is as good as mine.

 

14.  Get your breath out of the clouds.

 

15.  Don’t throw your breath out with the bathwater.

 

16.  Just in the breath of time!

 

17.  Sometimes, we just don’t breathe eye to eye.

 

18.  Birds of a feather breathe together.

 

19.  Every breath has a silver lining.

 

20.  It kills two breaths with one stone.

 

21.  The breath is in your court.

 

22.  It sounds like you need to breathe off some steam.

23.  That outfit looks like a million breaths on you.

 

24.  It’s time to breathe home the bacon.

 

25.  That’s a hard breath to crack.

 

26.  You’re breathing up the wrong tree.

 

27.  Stop breathing around the bush.

 

28.  Breathe smarter, not harder.

***

29. All breathing in moderation, including moderate breathing.