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4 Thoughts

1. Breathing & Rock Climbing: Falling and Recovering as We Climb Life’s Mountain

As rock climbers ascend a mountain face, they periodically clip into a new anchor higher on the wall. But no matter how high they get, they still take heavy falls and get slapped into the mountainside.

Critically, though, they’re a little higher up when they recover.

That’s what breathing (or anything you use for better living) does. We’re still going to fall. It’s still going to hurt really bad. But when we recover, we’ll be a little higher up life’s mountain than the last time we tumbled.

***

P.S. This was inspired by this +1: Higher Highs and Higher Lows

2. Stress & Growth: Lobsters and their Shells

“For the lobster, stress literally leads to growth—if the lobster did not feel stressed in the small shell, it would not know to get a bigger one and be able to continue growing. Stress provides you with the same opportunity to grow. If you don’t experience stress, you don’t move forward, you don’t challenge yourself, and you don’t get the opportunity to live a fulfilling, meaningful life.”
- Inna Khazan, Ph.D., Biofeedback and Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Speaking of falling, that stress can actually be a good thing. Like lobsters, we need stress to grow, to “live a fulfilling, meaningful life.”

Stress—> Breathe—> Recover—> Grow—> Repeat Forever 💪🏋️‍♀️

3. Using Breathing Techniques as Needed to Access Different States

“The breathing practices can energize you or slow you down. They can heighten your ability to examine things in an analytical way or heighten your ability to move your awareness inwardly to support your innate ability to be contemplative and serene, to sense who you are in an interior way.”
- Eddie Stern, One Simple Thing

Last week, Emma Seppälä reminded us that breathing is the most accessible tool we have. Here, Eddie reminds us just how powerful it is for changing our state.

Want to be analytical? Contemplative? Energized? Serene?

It’s all there, right under our noses : )

4. How to Easily Access Presence (with or w/o breathing)

“But learning new skills is also one of the best ways to enhance awareness of the present moment […] New situations kill the mental clutter. In newness, we’re forced into presence and focus.”*
- Michael Easter, The Comfort Crisis

This might be why our first breathing practice, our first meditation, or the first wave we surfed was so life-changing. In that novelty, we found presence.

So to access presence, embrace newness. Try a new breathing method. Listen to a new song. Try a different yoga class. Lift a new weight.

Of course, consistency is key, but we can deliberately use newness to access a more present state of mind and periodically reinvigorate our spirit.

1 QUOTE

“Sometimes carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.”
- Albert Camus

1 ANSWER

Category: Stress and Growth

Answer: This is the name given to positive psychological changes that occur after stressful and challenging events.

…

(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

…

Question: What is post-traumatic growth?

In good breath,

Nick Heath, T1D, PhD
“Breathing is the compound interest of health & wellness.”

P.S. My toxic trait is…

* An asterisk by a quote indicates that I listened to this book on Audible. Therefore, the quotation might not be correct, but is my best attempt at reproducing the punctuation based on the narrator’s pace, tone, and pauses.

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Each Monday, I curate and synthesize information from scientific journals, books, articles, and podcasts to share 4 thoughts, 1 quote, and 1 answer (like "Jeopardy!") related to breathing. It’s a fun way to learn something new each week.