BY: MICHAEL J STEPHEN, MD
4 THOUGHTS
1. Breathing Makes Everything Possible: Life & Breath Are Synonymous
“That oxygen, life, and lungs all came into our world in relatively close succession is no coincidence. Only with oxygen and some means of extracting it are all things possible—thinking, moving, eating, speaking, and loving. Life and the breath are synonymous.”
I often feel crazy because the more I learn about breathing, the more I feel like all of life’s problems come back to it. It just seems too simple to be true.
Then, I read a beautiful quote like this. One that succinctly states how breathing, quite literally, makes everything possible. And it reminds me that it is, in fact, the opposite: It’s not crazy that all of life’s problems come back to the breath. It would be crazy if they didn’t.
Remember: “Life and the breath are synonymous.”
2. The “Feynman of Breathing” and 4 Quotes on Our Beautiful Lungs
Dr. Stephen is the closest thing we have to a “Feynman” of breathing. He’s an expert on the lungs and uses that understanding to describe them beautifully.
So, for this thought, I just want to share a few of the elegant passages on the lungs so we can appreciate just how special they are.
“While the heart has dense striated muscle, and the brain its conglomerated networks of communicating neurons, the lung is a thin, graceful structure of interconnecting fibrous tissue that is beautifully held together with a foamy substance that lubricates its functions in a quiet and effortless manner. It is an organ of elegance, not brute strength.”
“Our lungs developed to utilize oxygen and efficiently drive our metabolic reactions. We are aerobic creatures, and if the lungs are our most important organ, then oxygen is the most important gas in the atmosphere. […] With oxygen, the possibilities of the world opened up.”
“The lungs are a mysterious and even mystical organ. They are our connection to the atmosphere, the organ that extracts the life force we need to exist.”
“The lungs tap into something universal in their structure, maximizing uptake of the life force that surrounds all of us.”
3. The Lungs Lead. The Heart and Mind Follow
“This knowledge is spreading back to the West through disciplines such as yoga and mindfulness, but also through techniques aimed at improving endurance, and even intimacy. These practices demonstrate that the mind and the heart follow the lungs, not the other way around.” (my emphasis)
Study after study has shown that breathing gives you access and control over your heart and mind, for example, by increasing heart rate variability and synchronizing brain waves. The lungs lead; the heart and mind follow.
But even with all this research, sometimes it takes an eloquent quote like this to make it seem so obvious.
So, do you want to change how you think or feel? It all starts with the breath. Everything else follows.
4. Yoga and Breathing Exercises, or Prozac and Zoloft?
“Deep breathing is a potent inducer of the parasympathetic nervous system. The release of acetylcholine not only calms our organs, it also stimulates the release of serotonin, dopamine, and prolactin, the feel-good hormones targeted by medicines like Prozac and Zoloft. But yoga and breathing exercises produce this effect naturally and without side effects.”
I found it fascinating to learn that breathing and yoga exercises target the same hormones as Prozac and Zoloft. This helps explain why they’re such a potent therapy for stress and depression.
This might also be why in Mind Over Meds, Dr. Andrew Weil says, “Learning to regulate the breath is a more effective anti-anxiety measure than benzodiazepines, without any of the cognitive impairment and addictive potential of those drugs.”
Of course, we can’t just “breathe” our way off our medications. But, adding it into our daily routines seems like a no-brainer since it’s cheap, easy, and there are no adverse side effects.
1 LIFE-CHANGING IDEA
Breathing Exercises Lower Inflammation and Change Gene Expression
“In those who practice breathing exercises, levels of inflammatory proteins in the blood are significantly lower, especially under certain types of stress. Mobilizing the power of the breath has also been shown to turn on anti-inflammatory genes and turn off pro-inflammatory ones, including genes that regulate energy metabolism, insulin secretion, and even the part of our DNA that controls longevity.7 Looking down the generations, those of us who practice breathing exercises today may well pass on more disease-resistant genes to our descendants tomorrow.”
Here's a life-changing idea: How we breathe can reduce inflammation, change our gene expression, and maybe even allow us to pass down better genes to our kids.
How do we get these benefits? Well, the study Dr. Stephen is referencing (the 7 superscript) was on “the relaxation response,” which Dr. Herbert Benson (who discovered the response) describes as:
“Briefly stated, the relaxation response is defined as the response that is the opposite of the “fight-or-flight” or stress response. It is characterized by the following: decreased metabolism, heart rate, blood pressure, and rate of breathing; a decrease or “calming” in brain activity; an increase in attention and decision-making functions of the brain; and changes in gene activity that are the opposite of those associated with stress.”
A simple way to trigger this state is slow breathing with extended exhalations. Something as easy as a 4-second inhale and a 6-second exhale will do.
Another approach Dr. Benson recommends is a mantra-based meditation. Pick a word or phrase that’s meaningful to you (I use “be the change”). Then inhale, and say your mantra silently in your head during the exhale.
Do either method for at least 10 minutes to trigger the relaxation response, change your gene expression, and maybe even change the future generations.
1 STACK OF MEMORABLE QUOTES
“Oxygen is the life force, the source of life’s infinite possibilities.”
"Ancient Egyptian cultures also recognized the importance of the breath, the evidence of which we see today in the many ancient statues that had their noses broken off but otherwise were left untouched. This defacement was no accident, but a deliberate act by conquering groups to take the life, in this case the breath of life, away from these icons."
“Science is beginning to investigate in a serious manner something humanity has known for centuries—that the breath can be used to heal the body.”
“In the beginning was the voice. Voice is sounding breath, the audible sign of life.” - Otto Jespersen
“Buddhism and Hinduism were based on an understanding of the potency of the breath. According to these disciplines, studying and harnessing the breath was the only recognized way to nirvana.”
“It is a beautiful circle of reuse and recycle, appropriately termed circulation, with the lungs as the centerpiece, the lynchpin connecting the body and the outside world.”
“Each time we check on each other, we are validating the words of the Roman philosopher Cicero, dum spiro, spero, ‘As I breathe, I hope.’”
“The lung changes the breath, as the liver changes the chyle, into food for the vital spirit.” – Alessandro Benedetti
“Another crucial aspect of the breath, and one that is rarely discussed, is that it gives us our voice.”
“Life and respiration are complementary. There is nothing living which does not breathe nor anything breathing which does not live.” – William Harvey, 1653