Listen Instead of Reading
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4 THOUGHTS
1. Yoga Breathing, Meditation, and Longevity
“By inducing stress resilience, breath work enables us to rapidly and compassionately relieve many forms of suffering.”
Here’s my take-home from this excellent narrative review 👏
Yogic breathing and meditation are complementary practices that may enhance longevity by improving nervous system health and stress resiliency, boosting emotional health, enhancing brain health, and reducing suffering associated with disasters.
***
P.S. Sign up at BreathLearning.com to get the PDF & podcast summaries for this one, and tons of other science articles & books.
2. Amazing or Dangerous? Mindful Breathing Preserves Focus After Multitasking
I’m not sure if this finding is (1) just amazing or (2) potentially dangerous, lol. But it’s too neat not to share 😊
“For instance, research at Stanford University found that if you are focused on an important project and then stop to answer a text or email, and end up browsing the web, when you finally return to your important project your focus has dimmed. It takes you some time to ramp up your concentration to the previous level. Unless you did ten minutes of mindfulness of your breath a couple of times that day—then you have little or no loss of concentration after ‘multitasking.’”
– Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., Why We Meditate
3. Affecting Deep Physical and Psychological Changes
“As the breath is the link between the body and mind, it can intervene in the activities of either level. With increased awareness and control of the subtle aspects of breathing, these interventions can affect deep physical and psychological changes.”
- John Clarke, MD, Science of Breath
Just a compelling reminder of how powerful breathing exercises and simple mindful breath awareness are. Because the breath literally and metaphorically links the body and mind, such interventions “can affect deep physical and psychological changes.” 👏
4. Don’t Have Time to Breathe or Meditate? (maybe this passage will be inspiring)
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that one saves time travelling only two hours from one point to another instead of spending eight hours on the same journey. While this holds up mathematically, my experience is the opposite: time passes more quickly when I increase the speed of travel. My speed and time accelerate in parallel. It is as if the duration of a single hour becomes less than a clock-hour. When I am in a rush, I hardly pay attention to anything at all.”
- Erling Kagge, Walking: One Step at a Time
Although this passage is about travel and walking, it applies perfectly to breathing or meditation.
By taking time out of your already busy morning to meditate or breathe, you actually create more time because you slow things down.
So, instead of thinking, “I don’t have time to do this,” think, “I create time by doing this.”
1 Quote
“Sometimes, you get lucky in life, when the most important thing you need to do turns out to also be the simplest. One example is breathing. Breathing is the most important thing we need to do in our lives, and for most of us, it is also the easiest thing we ever do. If you belong to the population of people who can breathe effortlessly, you are so lucky!””
1 Answer
Category: Nasal Drainage
Answer: These eventually go down the nasolacrimal duct, draining into your nose, often causing people to need a tissue.
…
(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)
…
Question: What are tears?
In good breath,
Nick Heath, T1D, PhD
“Breathing is the compound interest of health & wellness.”
P.S. so true
I Take 1/2 Bottle Every Morning
I take 1/2 a bottle of iCalm every morning, just before my first sip of coffee. It’s amazing, and I absolutely love them.
In fact, although I don’t have much disposable income right now, I prioritize these each month because they’re so helpful.
If you’d like to try them, use the code NICK20 to get 20% off 🙏
* 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.
