All 3 at Once, Laughing Monks, and Naturally Arising Compassion

1. Breathing Does All Three at Once

A body scan focuses on your physical being.

Observing your thoughts focuses on your mental being.

Observing your beliefs focuses on your spiritual being.

But being with your breath does all three.

2. Maybe We Shouldn’t Be Surprised?

Imagine the power in your home goes out.

Would you walk into every room, try each electronic, and then act surprised every time they didn’t work? “The coffee maker won’t start!” “The internet won’t turn on!” “The TV isn’t working either!”

Of course not. But that’s sort of what we do with breathing studies: “Breathing helps our brain!” “It also helps our heart!” “It also helps us sleep better!”

But like the power lines feeding our homes, breathing is the power feeding our bodies. Without it, nothing else works; however, when it’s working correctly, everything inside works better, too.

So maybe we shouldn’t be surprised when breathing helps our bodies in some way. Maybe we should be surprised when it doesn’t…

3. Mindfulness plus Slow Breathing equals Amplified Benefits

“In both groups, meditation acutely decreased arterial and cerebral oxygen saturation, reduced chemoreflex sensitivity, and prolonged the RR interval, independently of respiration. Conversely, slow breathing improved heart rate variability, independently of concurrent meditation.”

- Bernardi et al. (2017), Psychophysiology

This study isolated the unique benefits of mantra-based mindfulness vs. slow breathing. As stated, they found that meditation alone reduced metabolism, whereas slow breathing alone increased HRV.

But in my opinion, the most practical finding was that combining them into one practice may provide the best of both techniques.

Here is a simple way to do it:

1. Pick an emotionally meaningful word (“peace,” “love,” etc.)

2. Focus on and silently repeat that word to yourself while exhaling during your slow breathing practice.

4. Laughing Monks: A Story to Contemplate

“For example, when Varela put on an EEG cap, which uses electrodes to measure electrical activity in the brain, monks from the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in Dharamsala laughed and said, ‘How could we be measuring anything to do with the mind by putting a cap on the head? The mind is here!’—pointing to their hearts.”

– Clifford Saron, Ph.D., The Healing Power of Meditation

 

Reading that story (and its multiple implicit lessons) a few times is like a meditation in itself 😊

"It is not even logical, but it seems that when the human mind is open, compassion is the most natural thing to arise, and I think that is a key part of what we call mindfulness training."

— — Dr. Edel Maex

Category: Brain Changes

Answer: Meditation, like breath awareness, can increase the density of this brain tissue, which is where neurons talk to each other, and information processing happens.

…

(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

…

Question: What is grey matter?

In good breath,

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

P.S. How to deal with stress

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