Quotes

Here are some quotes I have shared in my 411 newsletter. Some are related to breathing, some aren’t. Enjoy!

"To know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“He who tastes a grain of mustard seed knows more of its flavor than he who sees an elephant load of it.” - Yogi Mamacharaka, Science of Breath

"By voluntarily changing the rate, depth, and pattern of breathing, we can change the messages being sent from the body’s respiratory system to the brain.” - Richard Brown & Patricia Gerbarg, The Healing Power of the Breath

"Therefore, any conditions to affect normal respiratory route during sleep (nasal breathing) can…have negative effects on sleep and daily life." - Park, C.-S., Sleep Medicine Research, 2014

"We can’t learn how to breathe, but we can learn how to stop not breathing." - Richard Rosen, The Yoga of Breath

"However, there is a bridge between our conscious mind and the subconscious action of the autonomic nervous system – breathing." - Stephen Elliot with Dee Edmonson, The New Science of Breath

“We should take wandering outdoor walks, so that the mind might be nourished and refreshed by the open air and deep breathing.” —Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind

“Replace the habit of taking short shallow breaths into the top of the lungs with the practice of taking a full deep breath. Nearly all of the benefits begin with this one simple change.” - Al Lee, Don Campbell, Perfect Breathing

"If someone at Kobe’s level needs to commit hours to practicing the fundamentals, then so do all of us. Kobe taught me a pivotal lesson that morning. The basics are simple, but not easy." - Alan Stein Jr., Raise Your Game

“What is the perfect breath? Far from being some noble yet unreachable goal that takes years of rigorous practice to master, a perfect breath is any breath you take for which you are completely and mindfully aware.” - Al Lee & Don Campbell

"They discovered that the optimum amount of air we should take in at rest per minute is 5.5 liters. The optimum breathing rate is about 5.5 breaths per minute. That’s 5.5-second inhales and 5.5-second exhales. This is the perfect breath." - James Nestor, Breath

"Your quality of sleep is closely related to how you breathe, both when you sleep and when you are awake." - Anders Olsson

"Chinese doctors two thousand years ago advised 13,500 breaths per day, which works out to nine and a half breaths per minute. " - James Nestor, Breath

"Attention without intention is wasted energy." - Chris Bailey, Hyperfocus

"Looking at the evidence, it’s hard not to conclude that our entire physiology was engineered to reward us for moving." - Kelly McGonigal, The Joy of Movement

"You won’t find many quick fixes in this book, but there is one way to immediately boost willpower: Slow your breathing down to four to six breaths per minute [...] Slowing the breath down activates the prefrontal cortex and increases heart rate variability, which helps shift the brain and body from a state of stress to self-control mode. A few minutes of this technique will make you feel calm, in control, and capable of handling cravings or challenges." -Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct

"Taken together, these results confirm that nasal stimulation represents the fundamental link between slow breathing techniques, brain and autonomic activities and psychological/behavioral outputs." - Zaccaro et al. (2018)

“We want to learn to rest anywhere, anytime, in ways that restore us, calm us, relax us, and make us alert. That means we have to learn how to breathe.” - Matthew Edlund, The Power of Rest

"Breathing, like most forms of physical rest, improves as you practice. It takes a little time. But it’s a technique you’ll be able to do for the rest of your life, so it’s worthwhile getting good at it now." - Matthew Edlund, The Power of Rest

"The waste that is collected by the blood and delivered to the lungs is expelled with the next inhale, but few people realize that 70 percent of the waste that our bodies generate is removed by the breath. Only 30 percent is removed via sweat and elimination." - Al Lee and Don Campbell, Perfect Breathing

“One day I noticed that I wasn’t breathing—I was being breathed.” – Byron Katie

"Today, chemoreceptor flexibility is part of what distinguishes good athletes from great ones. […] All these people have trained their chemoreceptors to withstand extreme fluctuations in carbon dioxide without panic." - James Nestor, Breath

"You can borrow knowledge, but not action." - James Clear

"Practicing the 0.1 Hz rate before sleep was shown to improve sleep onset latency and quality in insomniacs and enhance the stability of their sleep pattern (13). Thus, we suggest 0.1 Hz as the optimal frequency for a slow breathing technique." - Self-Regulation of Breathing as an Adjunctive Treatment of Insomnia

"Gandhi became absolutely motionless. His absorption was so profound that he scarcely seemed to breathe" - Eknath Easwaran, Gandhi The Man

"And if the traveler is fortunate—that is, if the path is complex and profound enough—the destination is two miles farther away for every mile he or she travels." - George Leonard

"It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light." - G.K. Chesterton

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

"By repeatedly stimulating the vagus nerve during those long exhalations, slow breathing may shift the nervous system towards that more restful state, resulting in positive changes like a lower heart rate and lower blood pressure." (my emphasis) - BBC, Why Slowing Your Breathing Helps You Relax

"For breath is life, and if you breathe well you will live long on the earth." - Sanskrit Proverb

"Fainting is okay, it just means you went deep." – Wim Hof

"How do you best move toward mastery? To put it simply, you practice diligently, but you practice primarily for the sake of the practice itself." - Robert Greene, Mastery

“It’s not enough to understand; you’ve got to do something.” - Sandra Day O’Connor

"Conversely, it may be possible to reduce fear and anxiety by slowing down our breath." - Greater Good, UC Berkeley

“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Machines: use it and lose it; organisms: use it or lose it." - Frano Barovic, Antifragile

"For noses clogged, you need to find a way of unclogging it. You can do that by breathing more through your nose because it's really a use-it-or-lose-it organ. The more you breathe through it, the more you're going to be able to breathe through it." - James Nestor, NPR Interview

"Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything." - Blaise Pascal

"Slow-paced breathing appears a promising cost-effective technique to improve subjective sleep quality and cardiovascular function during sleep in young healthy individuals." - Journal of Clinical Medicine (2019)

"The hardest thing in the world is to simplify your life because everything is pulling you to be more and more complex." - Yvon Chouinard

"I knew that there was no book. The book was me. The book was the interaction with the nature." - Wim Hof, FoundMyFitness, January 3, 2016

"Training yourself to breathe correctly isn't complicated, but it can help you beat back stress, sleep better, stop snoring, get fitter, avoid asthma and allergies, and even focus more easily. That's a lot of positive change for such a small intervention." - Inc. Magazine

"The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing." - Walt Disney

"The problem in today’s corporate world, as well as in many other realms, is not hard work; the problem is insufficient recovery." - Tal Ben-Shahar

"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers." - James Thurber

"But keep at it, because with continued practice, diaphragmatic breathing will become easy and automatic." - Diaphragmatic Breathing, Cleveland Clinic

"Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable." - Mark Twain

"Breathing isn’t only the automatic exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide, afterall. The way we breathe is influenced by our emotions and environment, and vice versa." - Shayla Love, Why We Sigh

"How do you identify someone who needs encouragement. That person is breathing." - Truett Cathy

"He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor." - Menander (342 BC - 292 BC)

“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.” - Marcus Aurelius

“We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.” - Abigail Adams

“Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.” - Bell Hooks

“In this, chronic overbreathing will not create ‘hypoxia’ in tissues; this is a fact that many Buteyko adherents consistently get wrong. The real damage from overbreathing comes from the constant energy the body has to expend to run more cells anaerobically and to constantly buffer for carbon dioxide deficiencies.” - James Nestor

“Constant buffering also weakens the bones, which try to compensate by dissolving their mineral stores back into the bloodstream. (Yes, it’s possible to overbreathe yourself into osteoporosis and increased risk of bone fractures.)” - James Nestor

"To say…that a man is made up of certain chemical elements is a satisfactory description only for those who intend to use him as a fertilizer." - Herbert J. Muller

“Quit worrying about your health. It’ll go away.” - Robert Orben

“You may think you really have to understand something in order to explain it. But observe what happens when you are talking to other people about what you are studying. You’ll be surprised to see how often understanding arises as a consequence of attempts to explain to others and yourself, rather than the explanation arising out of your previous understanding.” - Barbara Oakley

“Trees and plants depend on the weather to flourish but I make my own weather, yea I transport it with me.” - Og Mandino

“Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.” - Blaise Pascal

“The secret of making progress is to get started. The secret to starting is to divide your complex, overwhelming task into small, manageable tasks, and then start the first.” - Mark Twain

“This is the essence of education: to facilitate a person’s learning.” - Fred Rogers

"If there’s one concept from my book I hope you embrace, it’s this: People change best by feeling good, not by feeling bad." – BJ Fogg, Tiny Habits 

"As long as we have breath, as long as we are still conscious, we are each responsible for answering life’s questions." - Viktor Frankl

“Anxiety is often excitement and anticipation without the breath.” - Michael Port

"Without knowing it, you might be messing up your sleep, mood, digestion, heart, nervous system, muscles, brain, and even the development of your teeth and face structure." - Patrik Edblad, How to Breathe Properly – A (Surprisingly Important) Complete Guide

"It's all right to have butterflies in your stomach. Just get them to fly in formation." - Dr. Rob Gilbert

"A hundred objective measurements didn't sum the worth of a garden; only the delight of its users did that. Only the use made it mean something." - Lois McMaster Bujold

"Just because you can measure something doesn’t mean it’s the most important thing." - James Clear, Atomic Habits

"The quality of your breath lets dogs know if you are the one who has what it takes to be the leader, the one who can confidently lead them to food, safety and rest. That would be the belly breather." - Breathing is a Communication Skill

"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint." - Mark Twain

"Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?" - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Instead of trying to think yourself out of feeling anxious, you can do something concrete — breathe slow or fast, in a particular rhythm, or through one nostril — and sometimes find immediate relief." - Feeling anxious? The way you breathe could be adding to it

"The pattern of your breathing affects the pattern of your performance. When you are under stress, deep breathing helps bring your mind and body back into the present." – Gary Mack, Mind Gym

"So what makes breathing so effective? It’s very difficult to talk your way out of strong emotions like stress, anxiety, or anger…But with breathing techniques, it is possible to gain some mastery over your mind." - Harvard Business Review, Research: Why Breathing Is So Effective at Reducing Stress

"World-class performers are less about complexity and more about optimizing simplicity…It’s about the fundamentals." - Robin Sharma, Optimize Interview

"Those of us who practice breathing exercises today may well pass on more disease resistant genes to our descendants tomorrow." - Michael J. Stephen MD, Breath Taking

"A genius is the man who can do the average thing when everyone else around him is losing his mind." – Napoleon

"When it comes to effective vagal maneuvers, any type of deep, slow diaphragmatic breathing…is going to stimulate your vagus nerve, activate your parasympathetic nervous system, and improve your HRV." - Psychology Today, Diaphragmatic Breathing Exercises and Your Vagus Nerve

"All these methods trained children to breathe through their noses, all day, every day. It was a habit they would carry with them the rest of their lives." - James Nestor, Breath

"Growth is driven by compounding, which always takes time." - Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

"Life and respiration are complementary. There is nothing living which does not breathe nor anything breathing which does not live." - William Harvey, 1653, Lectures on the Whole of Anatomy

"Just two minutes of deep breathing with longer exhalation engages the vagus nerve, increases HRV, and improves decision-making." - Christopher Bergland, Psychology Today

"But the truth is that wealth is what you don't see. Wealth is the nice cars not purchased. The diamonds not bought. The watches not worn, the clothes forgone and the first-class upgrade declined." - Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money