Listen Instead of Reading
If you enjoy listening, you can subscribe to the audio version on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Audible so you don’t even have to look at the email 😊
Reading Time: 2 min 12 sec
I hope the next 33ish breaths are the most nourishing of your day.
4 THOUGHTS
1. The Most Ubiquitous Form of Stress (and one solution to it)
“Our bodies get worn down more quickly under chronic stress, and chronic uncertainty is the most ubiquitous form of chronic stress.”
- Elissa Epel, Ph.D., The Stress Prescription
Our greatest, “most ubiquitous form of chronic stress” is uncertainty. (This statement holds up in my life. It’s mind-blowingly obvious, yet I’ve never realized it.)
One of Dr. Epel’s Solutions: Accept and embrace uncertainty as an unavoidable part of life. Easy to say, harder to do.
My Way of Doing It: Practice mindfulness of breathing, learning to cultivate an attitude of nonjudgmental acceptance as you receive each breath exactly as it is. This mindset will transfer to your perspective off the cushion, too.
2. A Simple Way for Getting More Out of Your Practice
Before you start:
“Take a moment to reflect on your motivation, making sure that the wish to practice for the benefit of all beings is present in the mind.”
- Anyen Rinpoche & Allison Choying Zangmo, The Tibetan Yoga of Breath
It only takes 5-10 seconds, and you can adopt this beautiful mindset for any wellness practice you do 👏
3. Mindfulness is Contagious (you can make others healthier)
“As more than forty years of research has shown, mindfulness is good for our health. The research on mindful contagion suggests that one person’s mindfulness may increase another person’s mindfulness. Thus, I think it may be the case that the people around us with whom we interact may actually be having a positive effect on our health.”
- Ellen Langer, Ph.D., The Mindful Body
✅ Mindfulness is good for our health.
✅ Our mindfulness can increase another person’s mindfulness.
Thus, deductive logic tells us that, by practicing mindfulness, we may be able to positively impact the health of those around us 🙏
4. Becoming Your Own Island
“You don’t need a course in silence or relaxation to be able simply to pause. Silence can be anywhere, anytime—it’s just in front of your nose.”
- Erling Kagge, Silence
That’s amazing by itself, but it got even better. Kagge went on to say, “Sure, we are all part of the same continent, but the potential wealth of being an island for yourself is something you carry around with you all the time.”
“An island for yourself” <– That’s so good 👏
Here’s to using our breath to create our own island of silence, today.
BONUS: The Best $0.99 cents I’ve Spent
This gentle, fade-in alarm clock: Progressive Alarm Clock (this is iPhone specific, but it looks like Android has other good options).
P.S. I just Googled “gentle alarm clock” and found this one. Perhaps there are better ones out there, but this does the trick for me.
1 Quote
“I recommend breathwork to almost all patients that I see because, in my experience, stress is a primary cause (or an aggravating cause) of most cases of illness. And even if people have diseases that clearly have organic physical causes, relaxation can nonetheless benefit them and help their body’s healing system work better.””
1 Answer
Category: Respiratory Tract
Answer: The upper & lower respiratory tracts are lined with this, which can trap small particles, thus helping to filter incoming air.
…
(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)
…
Question: What is a mucous membrane?
3 Spots Left
I have 3 spots left in October for my 8-week program for overcoming stressful life setbacks. Email nick@thebreathingdiabetic.com with subject line “breath” to learn more.
In good breath,
Nick Heath, T1D, PhD
“Breathing is the compound interest of health & wellness.”
P.S. achieved full enlightenment
iCalm for Focused Relaxation
If you haven’t already, try iCalm. They called it “meditation in a bottle”…I gave in and bought…and now I use it almost daily, lol. Use discount code NICK20 for 20% off.
* 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.