BY: RICK HANSON, Ph.D., with RICHARD MENDIUS, MD
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4 THOUGHTS
1. The Power of the PNS and How to Utilize It
“Parasympathetic activation is the normal resting state of your body, brain, and mind. If your SNS were surgically disconnected, you’d stay alive (though you wouldn’t be very useful in an emergency). If your PNS were disconnected, however, you’d stop breathing and soon die. … The cooling, steadying influence of the PNS helps you think clearly and avoid hot-headed actions that would harm you or others. The PNS also quiets the mind and fosters tranquility, which supports contemplative insight.”
We frequently discuss the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems (SNS & PNS). But that’s crazy to learn that we could live with our SNS surgically disconnected. Not the PNS, though.
PNS activation is “the normal resting state of your body, brain, and mind.” If that’s not enough, it also helps us think clearer and have contemplative insight (among many other things).
So how do we use it and nourish it?
Here are two (of several) exercises Dr. Hanson suggests:
Diaphragmatic Breathing: “Place your hand on your stomach a couple of inches beneath the upside-down V at the center of your rib cage. Look down, breathe normally, and watch your hand. You’ll probably see it move only a little bit, and sort of up and down. … Leaving your hand in place, now breathe in such a way that your hand moves out and back, perpendicular to your chest. Try to breathe into your hand with real oomph, so that it travels back and forth half an inch or more with each breath.”
Big Exhales: “Inhale as much as you can, hold that inhalation for a few seconds, and then exhale slowly while relaxing. A big inhalation really expands your lungs, requiring a big exhalation to bring the lungs back to their resting size. This stimulates the PNS, which is in charge of exhaling.”
Or better yet, combine both of those. Just a few minutes is all you need to feel it.
While you’re doing that, let’s move on to the next thought, where we learn that we still need the SNS for an optimal life.
2. Finding the Optimal Balance for an Optimal Life
“Happiness, love, and wisdom aren’t furthered by shutting down the SNS, but rather by keeping the autonomic nervous system as a whole in an optimal state of balance.”
And how do we do that? Back to Dr. Hanson: “The best-odds prescription for a long, good life is a baseline of mainly PNS arousal with mild SNS activation for vitality, combined with occasional SNS spikes for major opportunities or threats.”
So, there’s an excellent “prescription” for a long, good life.
But here’s a crucial point: Our modern world does not set us up for this balance. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite. We are constantly barraged by unnatural stressors (like phones, email, etc.).
This is a problem. As Dr. Hanson says, “your brain preferentially scans for, registers, stores, recalls, and reacts to unpleasant experiences; as we’ve said, it’s like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones.” So, in our minds, all those negative stressors severely outweigh the positive, putting us in an SNS-dominated state.
Meaning to find balance, we need to focus mainly on PNS-activating practices.
This is why we primarily discuss slow-breathing exercises here. They ramp up PNS activity and help offset those modern stressors.
So here’s to using our breath to regularly activate the PNS, find an optimal state of balance, and ultimately an optimal state of life.
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P.S. We could also apply Dr. Hanson’s “prescription” to our breathing practice itself. It might look like this:
Baseline PNS Arousal: Mainly slow breathing practices + nasal breathing 24/7
Mild SNS Activation: Occasional fast-breathing and/or breath-hold practices
Occasional SNS spikes: Wim Hof or similar
3. Why Breathing Seems Like a Panacea
“Your body has numerous major systems, including the endocrine (hormone), cardiovascular, immune, gastrointestinal, and nervous systems. If you want to use the mind-body connection to lower your stress, cool the fires, and improve your long-term health, what’s the optimal point of entry into all these systems? It's the autonomic nervous system (ANS).”
And what’s the optimal point of entry into the ANS? The breath.
As Deb Dana says, “Breath is a direct, easily accessible, and rapid way to shape the state of the nervous system.”
And when we combine that with Thoughts 1 and 2, we see why breathing often seems like a panacea: When we change the breath, we change the nervous system, and we change all the major systems of the body.
4. The Perfect Word to Describe Why We Practice
“Equanimity is neither apathy nor indifference: you are warmly engaged with the world but not troubled by it. Through its nonreactivity, it creates a great space for compassion, loving kindness, and joy at the good fortune of others.”
Equanimity. That’s the perfect word to describe what you get from a breathing practice. It’s both what you feel immediately after a session, and it’s a state that gradually becomes part of who you are.
So here’s to experiencing a little more of it, today.
***
P.S. Here’s the etymology of equanimity from Dr. Hanson: “The word equanimity comes from Latin roots meaning “even” and “mind.” With equanimity, what passes through your mind is held with spaciousness so you stay even-keeled and aren’t thrown off balance.” Sounds good to me.
P.P.S. Of course, I’m nowhere near a permanent state of equanimity (just ask my wife 😂), but it has certainly become more a part of me than it was before.
1 LIFE-CHANGING IDEA
Our Breath Moves Spirit Around Like Our Hearts Move Blood Around
“Each neural signal is a bit of information; your nervous system moves information around like your heart moves blood around. All that information is what we define broadly as the mind, most of which is forever outside your awareness.”
After reading that, I thought this analogy was fitting:
Our breath moves spirit around like our hearts move blood around.
Putting our breath in this perspective is, indeed, life-changing. Each breath we take feeds and moves our spirit—it nourishes our souls.
Of course, the words for breath and spirit (or soul, life force, etc.) were the same in ancient civilizations. We’ve forgotten this link, but it’s always there. We only have to breathe mindfully to re-establish the connection.
As Thich Nhat Hanh said, “It takes only two seconds, three seconds, to breathe in, to bring mind home to your body. And there, mind and body together, we are established in the here and the now, and you get in touch with the wonders of life, the Kingdom of God.”
So here’s to using our breath to move our spirit and get in touch with the Kingdom of God, today.
1 STACK OF MEMORABLE QUOTES
“With Buddha’s Brain, we are invited to take a deep breath and consider the neural reasons why we should slow ourselves down, balance our brain, and improve our connections with one another, and with our self.” - Daniel J. Siegel, MD
“We’re simplifying things when we refer to the brain as the basis of the mind. … The mind and brain interact with each other so profoundly that they’re best understood as a single, co-dependent, mind/brain system.”
“Paradoxically, it takes time to become what we already are.”
“The best-odds prescription for a long, good life is a baseline of mainly PNS arousal with mild SNS activation for vitality, combined with occasional SNS spikes for major opportunities or threats.”
“Every time you take in the good, you build a little bit of neural structure. Doing this a few times a day—for months and even years—will gradually change your brain, and how you feel and act, in far-reaching ways.”
“Abide as equanimity. Breath after breath. At ease. Settle into deeper and deeper layers of equanimity. As you can, sense a sublime freedom, contentment, and peace.”
“With equanimity, you can deal with situations with calm and reason while keeping your inner happiness.” - The Dalai Lama
“Virtue sounds lofty, but it’s actually down to earth. It simply means living from your innate goodness, guided by principle. When you are virtuous no matter what other people do, their behavior is not controlling you.”
“Inner strength comes in many forms, including quiet perseverance. Get familiar with what strength feels like in your body so you can call it up again. Deliberately stimulate feelings of strength to deepen their neural pathways.”
“We hear the word “mindful” more and more these days, but what does it actually mean? Being mindful simply means having good control over your attention: you can place your attention wherever you want and it stays there; when you want to shift it to something else, you can.”
“When your attention is steady, so is your mind: not rattled or hijacked by whatever pops into awareness, but stably present, grounded, and unshakeable.”
“Oxygen is to the nervous system what gasoline is to your car. Although just 2 percent of body weight, your brain uses roughly 20 percent of your oxygen. By taking several deep breaths, you increase oxygen saturation in your blood and thus rev up your brain.”
“Integrate rapture and joy with the sensations of the breath. Let bliss breathe you, let the breath be tranquil.”