Humor, How to Live Well, and the First Step Toward Self-Regulation

1. A Humorous Breathing & Mindfulness Practice

“I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it.”

- Writer and cartoonist Frank A. Clark

Here’s a “breathing and mindfulness” practice to try:

1. Use mindfulness to find humor in a problem.

2. Use breathing to laugh at it (and yourself) 😊

2. How to Live Well: Loving Attention in the Breath

“Living well, therefore, is merely a game of learning how to steer our energy toward life. It requires us to direct our loving attention toward the pulse that ebbs and flows within us, finding the precise rhythm of how that energy moves and immersing ourselves in it. When we do so, life comes alive.”

- Gladys McGarey, MD, The Well-Lived Life

What better way to “direct our loving attention toward the pulse that ebbs and flows within us” than with conscious breathing?

As Jon Kabat-Zinn says, tuning into the breath “immediately anchors our awareness in the body, in a fundamental, rhythmic, flowing life process.” 👏

3. The First Step Toward Self-Regulation

“But one of the best reasons to breathe through our nose as a regular practice, and as a mindful practice, is that it helps us to slow and regulate our respiratory rate…This is the first step towards self-regulation.”

- Eddie Stern, Healing Through Breathing

The first step toward self-regulation: breathing primarily through our nose. This one step helps us slow down and regulate our breathing, which helps us slow down and regulate our mind and body 🙏

4. You Are Still Carrying Her

Here’s a Buddhist story (I found in Advice Not Given) of two monks crossing a river:

“The two men come upon a young woman who is having trouble getting to the opposite shore. One of the monks, despite his vows to never touch a woman, picks her up and deposits her on the other side of the water. As they continue on their way, the other monk, the one who has kept his vows and not touched her, can’t stop chastising his overly benevolent friend.

‘How could you do that?’ he asks. ‘You know touching a woman is against our vows. And you were holding her.’

‘I put her down long ago,’ replies the first monk. ‘You are still carrying her.’”

"By changing patterns of breathing we can change our emotional states, how we think, and how we interact with the world."

— — Patricia Gerbarg, MD

Category: The Nose

Answer: A significant portion of this food-related sensation (some say as much as 80%) is attributed not to the mouth but to nasal breathing.

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(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

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Question: What is taste?

In good breath,

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

P.S. breath coaches be like…

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