Good Stress, Self Love, and Breathing for Happiness and Wisdom

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4 Thoughts

1. On & Off: The Stress-Reducing Effects of Fast Breathing

“Breathing really fast and heavy on purpose flips the vagal response the other way, shoving us into a stressed state. It teaches us to consciously access the autonomic nervous system and control it, to turn on heavy stress specifically so that we can turn it off and spend the rest of our days and nights relaxing and restoring, feeding and breeding.”

- James Nestor, Breath

Although I talk about slow breathing 99.9% of the time, this is an excellent description of the benefits of occasionally practicing fast breathing: We consciously turn on stress so we can then turn it off. 👏

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P.S. If you’re interested, I just released a Book 411 on Breath. Sign up for the Breath is Life Learning Center to get immediate access 🙏

2. Breathing for Happiness, Love, and Wisdom

Thought #1 reminded me of this amazing quote from Rick Hanson, Ph.D., in Buddha’s Brain:

“Happiness, love, and wisdom aren’t furthered by shutting down the SNS [sympathetic nervous system], but rather by keeping the autonomic nervous system as a whole in an optimal state of balance.”

So here’s to using our breath—our remote control to our nervous system—to achieve an optimal state of balance and find a little more happiness, love, and wisdom this week 🙏

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P.S. We also have a Book 411 on this one in the Learning Center : )

3. The Breath of Life Influences Everything

“Chronic overbreathing leads to loss of health, poor fitness, and compromised performance and also contributes to many ailments including anxiety, asthma, fatigue, insomnia, heart problems, and even obesity. It may seem strange that such a disparate range of complaints can be caused by or worsened by overbreathing, but the breath of life influences literally every aspect of our health.”

– Patrick McKeown, The Oxygen Advantage

And fortunately, this is also why improving our breathing can help with so many issues—because “the breath of life influences literally every aspect of our health.” 👏

4. The Best Definition of a Breathing Practice is…

Self-love. It covers all benefits for the body, mind, and spirit.

So don’t forget to show yourself some, this week.

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1 Quote

“Remember that every time you bring yourself back to full presence, you reap major rewards: you become more impactful, more memorable, and come across as more grounded. You’re laying the foundation for a charismatic presence.””

— Olivia Fox Cabane

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1 Answer

Category: Blood Reservoir

Answer: At rest, these organs contain approximately 10% of the total circulating blood volume.

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(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

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Question: What are the lungs?

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In good breath,

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

P.S. sorry Jerry I was in a jam

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* 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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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.

Big Tech vs. Gandhi, Breathing is Self-Love, and Syncing w/ the Heart

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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.”

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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!

Sign Up for Free Here.

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

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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.””

— Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D.

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1 Answer

Category: Breath Speed

Answer: A nasal exhale travels at a maximum of about this many miles per hour.

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(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

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Question: What is 3 mph?

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In good breath,

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

P.S. this one’s gonna be huge for me

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* 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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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.

My New Favorite Therapy, Self Love, and Your Breathing Headphones

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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 😊

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4 Thoughts

1. Reading Can Produce Healing (my new favorite word & therapy)

“Bibliotherapy is based on the assumption that the simple act of reading can produce healing of various health conditions, including depression. The definition of bibliotherapy has broadened over the years to include using any type of reading material that is uplifting or emotionally sustaining.”

 - Herbert Benson, MD, Relaxation Revolution

As someone obsessed with reading, bibliotherapy might be my new favorite word and therapy : ) However, I’ve always thought that reading alone is not enough; we must also act. 

Maybe I’m wrong…

As Dr. Benson says, one study found “Therapeutic reading ranked toward the top of the interventions, along with CBT and supportive-expressive groups, as a highly effective method of decreasing depressive symptoms.” <— 🤯

I hope these 411s serve as bibliotherapy for you 🙏

2. The Relaxation Response for Stress-Related Diseases

“Taken together, the RR has been shown to be an appropriate and relevant therapeutic tool to counteract several stress-related disease processes and certain health restrictions, particularly in immunological, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative diseases/mental disorders.”

- Esch et al. (2003)

This study found that regularly eliciting the relaxation response can counter the adverse effects of stress and serve as a free therapeutic tool in many chronic diseases, especially immunological, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative/mental disorders.

Want to use it in your life? Here’s a short video showing you how.

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P.S. If you want to use the relaxation response to conquer stress, check out the latest Science 411 on this paper or the new Book 411 on Relaxation Revolution, released this past Friday.

3. Breathing as Spiritual Headphones

Breathing exercises are like spiritual headphones: You can tune in, not bother anyone, and no one will ever know what you’re “listening” to.

4. Breathing is Self-Love, a Pre-Requisite for Loving Others

Last week, we learned that high vagal tone = high loving potential; thus, slow breathing increases our loving potential.

But the key word there is “potential:”

“While these activities do not directly create positivity resonance, they can set the table for an eventual feast of love. … They condition your mind, heart, eyes, and ears to be more prepared for positivity resonance when true connections become possible.”

- Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D., Love 2.0

So, we might say that a daily breathing practice is self-love, which prepares your heart and mind to love others.

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1 Quote

“We must meet hate with love. We must meet physical force with soul force.””

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

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1 Answer

Category: Stress

Answer: When free radical production exceeds antioxidant defenses, it creates this kind of stress.

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(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

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Question: What is oxidative stress?

P.S. The relaxation response helps counter this stress, too.

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In good breath,

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

P.S. I’ve been really missing my friends

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* 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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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.