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Hi it's Nick. Welcome back to another episode of The Breathing 411. Let's jump straight into this week's four thoughts. The first one is titled Breathing Pattern and Mental Status. And here's a quote. "Mental status, anxious versus calm, is reflected by breathing pattern, and it is believed that conscious regulation is key to achieving control over mind slash mental status." End quote. That was from a paper published in the International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences I believe in 2017. And it was a systematic review of alternate nostril breathing and that was in the introduction and it just stood out to me. I thought that's so good. It's reflected by breathing pattern rather mental states and is believed that conscious regulation is key to achieving control over the mind slash mental status. So it's just an excellent reminder to regulate our mental states. We must first start by learning to consciously regulate our breathing. So you work on that. I keep working on that every day. And I hope that reminds you to do it every day so that we can control our mind through our breath or our mental state I should say through our breath. So good. All right. And it's just cool when it's in a science paper. All right. Let's move on to thought number two. It is titled "Surprisingly it's not during meditation." And here's the quote. "Surprisingly it's not during meditation that you make progress in meditation. It is during the rest of the day. What you do in meditation is get the power. Install the dynamo. The actual work is done after you open your eyes. Get up and go out into the world." End quote. And that is echmyn from passage meditation. And that's just such a good reminder, right? That ultimately we make progress in meditation or breathing, right? By bringing the results into the world. So here's to carrying the calm, attentive, and perhaps even joyful state, right? That we achieved during our practice, during our breathing, or during our meditation, or our yoga, or our reading, or our prayer, whatever we do first thing in the morning, taking that into our everyday life so that we can truly advance and so that the next time we sit to practice, it will be that much better because we're even that much calmer from the whole day before, right? It's just a progressive positive feedback loop when you apply the things you learn or you take that state of mind out into the world that it comes back the next day, the next morning in your practice. So I love that. And of course I'm obsessed with echmyn's wisdom. It's so just it's yeah, it's like nourishing just to read it. So I love his perspective and I'm so grateful for it. Alright, let's move on to thought number three. It is titled key, the key to lung expansion and a long life. And here's a quote. What Stowe had discovered was that the most important aspect of breathing wasn't just to take in air through the nose. Inhaling was the easy part. The key to breathing, lung expansion and the long life that came with it was on the other end of respiration. It was in the transformative power of a full exhalation in quote. And that is James Nestor from breath. And that is just a great reminder of the power of fully exhaling right by pushing more out air out. We can get more air in thus improving lung capacity and hopefully right lengthening lifespan. I say hopefully because right science shows that lung capacity is associated with a longer life. And it makes a lot of sense. However, right, there's a lot of factors and I'm only 37. So for me to guarantee it could help you live longer would be complete nonsense. So I'm hoping for myself and for you that these practices help us live a longer and even if not, time longer, at least a more present life right so that we can enjoy more of the time we have here. And with that, let's move on to our fourth and final thought. It's a great one. It is titled, it will lead you where you need to go. And here's the quote. Follow the breath, lean into it. The breath goes everywhere. And it will lead you where you need to go. In quote, and that is from none other than Wim Hof from the Wim Hof Method. Whether you like his method or not, that's a fantastic quote, right? And that sounds like the perfect advice to follow this week. Yeah, follow the breath, lean into it. The breath goes everywhere. And it will lead you where you need to go. I love that. I personally don't practice the Wim's approach, but I love that. And I think it applies to all breathing methods. All right, let's move on to the one quote for this week. It's a great one here. It is quote, you're more alive when body and breath are permeated with the energy of awareness in quote. And that is from Larry Rosenberg. And I think that came from three steps to awakening. I believe this where I found that one. All right, let's move on. Let's wrap up with the one answer. The category this week is the nose. And this one is crazy. All right, here's the answer. Research has suggested that stress hormones oscillate between the left and right sides of the body in connection with this. What is the nasal cycle in that crazy? I think it was one study. They like took samples from arms and like the left arm had more catecholamines. I think like I forget exactly which ones they were measuring. It's probably a journal. I'm not sure I shouldn't I won't mess up and say the wrong way. But they were measuring stress hormones. I don't remember precisely which ones. And it was oscillated back and forth which arm had more. And it was they found correlated with the nasal cycle. Super neat and super fascinating stuff. All right, with that, let's recap. Remember that our breathing pattern is reflected by our mental state and vice versa and conscious regulation is the key to achieving control over our mind in our mental states. Remember that it's not during meditation that we make progress, right? It's once we get up, open our eyes and go out into the world that we really make advancements in our practice. Remember the key to a bigger lungs, a lung expansion and a long life is that full exhalation, which allows a bigger breath in and and just lets you access more of your lungs. And remember to follow the breath, lean into it. The breath goes everywhere. And it will lead you where you need to go. Thank you, whim for that one. And just thank you as always for listening. Always remember, right? If you find one of these thoughts interesting, you're like, Oh, that was that got me inspired in any way, right? That you might like the breath learning center because that's what every day is, right? I send a short, at least, you know, between probably 10 and 30 second long email, it's just written. So there's no audio for these because they're daily and it would be too much. But every morning you can start with a positive, inspiring message, full of wisdom, science, everything, just like these thoughts are so random and dispersed, but all focus around being better people using the breath, meditation, mindfulness, reading to be, you know, more present, have a better life. That's what this is. You're greeted by a brief 30 second email, inspiring wisdom, reading it is virtually guaranteed to start your day off, right? So you can start for as little as 16 cents a day because I have a pay what you can option. It's literally nothing right to be inspired every single morning. And yeah, start your day off right. So go check it out breath learning.com. And that's All right, thank you so much, as always, for listening. I'll see you next time.
