Breath Learning Center
https://breathlearning.com/
You can read the text version and sign up for The Breathing 411 Email Newsletter here:
https://www.thebreathingdiabetic.com/blog/its-possible-movement-for-mindfulness-breath-is-life
The Breathing 411
It's Possible, Movement for Mindfulness, and Breath is Life
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 "Remarkably It's Possible." And here's a quote, "Remarkably, it's possible to use your breath to train your body to react more healthily to stress, both in the moment and over the longer term, by virtue of the way that it changes the level of activity along the vagus nerve." Over time, practicing slow breathing can change your baseline level of stress reactivity to a point where you freak out less often and recover more quickly when you do. End quote, and that is Carolyn Williams from the book Move, which is a fantastic book. And I just put a few in the newsletter, just a few emoji clappy hands to that. I have nothing to add. Right? That's so good. Over time, practicing slow breathing can change your baseline level of stress reactivity to a point where you freak out less often and recover more quickly when you do. That is so good. And a little side note to this book I just bought, kind of on a whim, like spontaneously. I just saw it and thought, "Oh, it's a cool cover. Judge a book by it's cover," right? And then read the quick description and said, "Okay, I'm going to get this." And it was so good, and it has a whole chapter on breathing, which I did not expect. And it was unbelievably good chapter. I loved the chapter on breathing. It resonated with my perspective very much, so I thought I'll assign from the universe right to buy that book and be inspired by the wisdom in it. So go check out that book if you're interested. It's a really good book about moving and how movement impacts our life. And with that, that is a perfect lead into our thought number two, which is titled movement aids a mindful life. And here is a quote, "Without a balance between physical activity and meditation, for instance, we may become irritable or restless. Exercise, jogging, swimming, climbing, hard work, and so forth for young people, and walking for just about everybody can help to solve some of the problems that come as you descend in consciousness." End quote. And that is ethnicish Warren from passage meditation. I should have looked up when this was published, but it must have been, you know, in the 90s maybe or the late 80s, but I would guess sometime in the 90s, right? And here, ish Warren is reminding us of that same thing we know about movement, right? That a mindful life doesn't require just sitting around all day. In fact, it's the opposite, right? When we participate in some sort of physical activity, it reduces our restlessness, right? And it eases the mind, which helps us to, as he says, quote, solve some of the problems that come when we descend in consciousness or solve these problems that come when we actually do need to sit still in practice, right? So they complement each other perfectly. We all know this stuff, right? It's no nothing revolutionary that we should move our bodies, right? It's a good reminder to us who nerds who like to focus on our breath and our thoughts and all these crazy things that we also need to move a lot and actually vigorous activity. Ish Warren even goes as far as saying, "Vigorous physical activity is necessary, it is part of the meditative journey," which you would never expect from him. Like when you read his books, he's just so, you know, you would just think he's, all he does is sit around and meditate with how clear his mind is, but he's a huge fan of, especially brisk walking. And that resonates with me deeply and maybe it will, too, you, too. But as the book moved taught us, which we won't go into too far, but any type of movement works, so anything you enjoy and do that and know that it's helping your meditation as well. And with that, we'll move on to thought number three, which is three reminders that breath is life. I've been enjoying these little quote shares of reminders, so here is three that breath is life. One, the fact is that when we focus on the breath, we are focusing on the life force. To contemplate breathing is to contemplate life itself. End quote, and that is Larry Rosenberg. Here's number two quote, "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." End quote, and that is Michael J. Steven MD. And finally, number three quote, "Without the breath, what is there? It's where you and I and everyone else began. It's where all life begins." End quote, and that is Wim Hof. And that is three reminders that breath is life. And with that, let's move on to our fourth and final thought. This is a great one. This titled, "This breathing exercise is in fact good medicine." And here's a quote, "In conclusion, our results support the ancient knowledge that spontaneous laughter is in fact good medicine, preventive or therapeutic, being associated with greater reductions in cortisol levels as compared with the usual activities." End quote, and that is from a paper published in 2023 in the journal, plus one or plus one. I think it's plus one, I've actually never said it out loud, plus one, yeah, of course. And so, yeah, it's just a great reminder, right? Modern science and ancient wisdom agree, laughter is medicine. Make sure you're enjoying this most enjoyable of breathing exercises this week because of course, it is a workout for your diaphragm, for your core muscles and all these other things. So, awesome reminder to laugh and science backs it up. All right, that is it for the four thoughts. Let's move on to the one quote. It's a great one. "While we cannot control life, we can learn to shape our response to it. Conscious breathing is a valuable tool to support that." End quote, and that is Eddie Stern from Healing Through Breathing, his audiobook. I've said it a million times, if you haven't got it, go get it. It's so good. All right. And finally, the one answer for this week, the category is breathing and the core. And here is the answer. This core muscle connects the spine to the femur or the thigh bone and plays a role in breathing through its link to the diaphragm. So it's a core muscle connecting the spine to the femur that plays a role in breathing through its link to the diaphragm. What is the so as? And in the blog post and in the newsletter version of this, that's the one I'm looking for, the newsletter version. There's a link to a video from Jill Miller, who is the expert on all things breath, all things breath really, but specifically these anatomical connections that are so fascinating how they impact it. So there's a cool YouTube video of her explaining all of this and how mind blowing it is. I don't fully understand it all. I've never gotten into that side too, too much, but it is really, really cool. All right, let's recap, remember that remarkably it's possible to use our breath to respond more healthily to stress, basically to freak out less often. And then of course, when we inevitably do, that's what life does, then you can learn to recover quickly when it happens. Remember to move, right? Movement aids our mindfulness. It aids our meditation actually allows us to go deeper in meditation because we're not as restless, we're not, our brains are calmer and that allows us to meditate more deeply. So movement is a huge part of meditation. Remember that breath is life. You don't need that reminder and remember that laughter is in fact good medicine and we should all practice some of that every day as much as we can, as long as you're not annoying other people. So laugh a lot, enjoy that breathing exercise. And if you enjoy a variety of approaches to living a more mindful life, sort of like this newsletter, right, valuable little nuggets of wisdom, check out the breath learning center at breathlearning.com to get way more wisdom and a super simple and easy to digest format, just like this newsletter, only better with practices and things that just make your life easier without too much added with, yeah, with very little added work, right? It's just learn as you'd like to to improve your life with no, no specified method, more of just a generalized approach to living better. So go check that out. And if you have diabetes or know anyone that does check out the breathing app for diabetes, I teamed up with Eddie Stern, who we had a quote from and the team at the breathing app to create the breathing app for diabetes. It's awesome. Just so easy to use and we get unbelievably good feedback from people with diabetes. So if you have diabetes, check that out, have fun breathing with it and just thank you. That's it, right? Thank you as always for listening and I will see you next week.