25 Thoughtful Quotes on Breath & Mind, and How to Make Meditation Fun

1. Breath is Mind: 25 Thoughtful Quotes on the Breath-Mind Connection

1. “When you practice mindfulness of breathing, then the breathing is mind.” - Thich Nhat Hanh

2.  “I am as confident as I am of anything that, in myself, the stream of thinking…is only a careless name for what, when scrutinized, reveals itself to consist chiefly of the stream of my breathing.” - William James

3. “As we discover, when we pay attention to its natural rhythm, the breath becomes calm. Simultaneously, the mind quiets down. It all happens naturally. … Any force is counterproductive.” - Bhante Henepola Gunarantana

Keep Going…

2. Breathing Residue: Turning Setbacks into Assets

“The problem this research identifies with this work strategy is that when you switch from some Task A to another Task B, your attention doesn’t immediately follow—a residue of your attention remains stuck thinking about the original task.”

- Cal Newport, Deep Work

Attention residue. It’s a major setback to productivity.

However, let’s turn that concept into an asset with a new term:

Breathing Residue: The calmness that persists several minutes (sometimes hours) after performing a slow breathing practice.

We want less attention residue, more breathing residue : )

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P.S. The nerds among you might prefer to call breathing residue by its more scientific name, vagal tone. But that’s not as fun 😊

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