Erling Kagge

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One Solution to Stress, Getting More, and the Best $0.99 I’ve Spent

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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.””
— Andrew Weil, MD

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.

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(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

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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.

 
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3 Simple Lessons, Why We Practice, and the Most Important Determinant

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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: 1 min 57 sec

I hope the next 30ish breaths are the most nourishing of your day.


4 THOUGHTS

1. Breathing Exercises Reduce Oxidative Stress: 2023 Meta-Analysis

“Breathing exercises can improve the main biological indicators of OS [oxidative stress] toward the direction of antioxidation and improve the OS state by increasing the levels of antioxidants and reducing those of oxidative markers.”

– Li et al. (2023), Frontiers in Medicine

This 2023 meta-analysis examined 10 studies, finding that breathing exercises of all kinds (fast, slow, inspiratory muscle training, and so on) significantly reduce biomarkers of oxidative stress. Breath practices also increase the body’s antioxidant capacity, which may benefit both healthy and disease states 👏

2. The Most Important Determinant & the Mother of Mindfulness

Ellen Langer, Ph.D., put the word mindfulness on the map in western psychology (she’s even referred to as the “mother of mindfulness”).

I’m reading her latest book (she’s one of my favorite authors), The Mindful Body, and I felt obliged to share this passage because it’s so good. Enjoy:

“But my use of the word “mindfulness” also, importantly, refers to a condition of the body. Indeed, I believe our psychology may be the most important determinant of our health. I’m not just speaking of harmony between mind and body. I believe the mind and body comprise a single system, and every change in the human being is essentially simultaneously a change at the level of the mind (that is, a cognitive change) as well as the body (a hormonal, neural, and/or behavioral change). When we open our minds to this idea of mind-body unity, new possibilities for controlling our health become real.” (my emphasis)

3. Three Simple Lessons about Breathing

  1. The best morning breathing exercise is a good night’s sleep.

  2. The best healing breathing exercise is a good dose of laughter.

  3. And the best time of day for breathing exercises is always right now.

4. Experiencing Wholeness: Why We Practice

“Through ongoing practice, we can come to live in a more integrated way from day to day and from moment to moment, in touch with our own wholeness and connectedness and aware of our interconnectedness with others, with the larger world in which we find ourselves, and with life itself. Feeling whole, even for brief moments, nourishes us on a deep level.”

– Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D, Full Catastrophe Living

That’s why we practice: it brings us wholeness. And even if we only experience wholeness briefly, it still “nourishes us on a deep level” 🙏

1 Quote

“The silence around us may contain a lot, but the most interesting kind of silence is the one that lies within. A silence which each of us must create.””
— Erling Kagge

1 Answer

Category: Breathing 101

Answer: This is the clinical name for shortness of breath.

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(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

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Question: What is dyspnea?

In good breath,

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


P.S. how to make parties more interesting

iCalm for Focused Relaxation

If you haven’t already, try iCalm, an awesome product made by a mindful and loving company (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.

 
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Mindful vs. Slow Breathing, and How to Know the Nature of All Beings

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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 3 sec

I hope the next 30ish breaths are the most nourishing of your day.


4 THOUGHTS

1. How to Become Mindful of the Nature of All Beings

“Moreover, breathing is not exclusive. Living beings differ in appearance and behavior. They eat various kinds of food. They sleep in many types of beds. But all living beings breathe. … When we focus on the breath, we become mindful of the universal nature of all beings.”

– Bhante Gunaratana, The 4 Foundations of Mindfulness

Just a thoughtful reminder that breathing unites all living beings, so when we focus on it, it can help us appreciate this universal connection 👏

2. An Excellent Summary of Some Benefits of Mindful Breathing

I found this summary by Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., in Why We Meditate and loved it. I hope it inspires you to practice as much as it did me 🙏:

“People who practice simple mindfulness of the breath, for instance, become more relaxed in their daily lives and recover from upsets more quickly than non-meditators. The method seems to calm the amygdala, so that we are pitched into the fight-or-flight state less often. And the more time over the years you put into this mindfulness method, the less reactive you become. Troubling events trigger you into an upset state far less often. If you are triggered, your upset is less strong. And—maybe the biggest calming benefit—you recover more quickly than you did formerly.”

3. An Excellent Summary of Some Benefits of Slow Breathing

In that same book, Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., also had a wonderful summary of the key benefits of slow breathing:

“To summarize all the studies: Along with this healthy variability in time between heartbeats, people doing slowed breathing reported feeling ease and comfort, being more relaxed, as well as having positive energy and a general feeling of pleasantness. …

Slowed breathing also seems to bring a significant change in brain function. …(EEG) studies found that slower breathing was accompanied by an increase in synchronized alpha waves, which signify the brain has gone into a state of rest, like a car idling. This shift in brain state was associated with benefits like lessened anxiety, anger, and confusion, and an increase in feelings of vigor.”

The natural question: Should I practice mindful breathing or slow breathing?

My super scientific answer: The choice is yours 😊

4. Why Breathing Brings Us to the Present Moment

You can’t retake a previous breath you’ve already taken. You can’t take a future breath you haven’t taken. You can only take the breath you’re currently taking.

That’s pretty darn obvious, but it’s crucial for why breathing brings us to the present moment. When you focus on your breathing, you cannot be anywhere but here and now.

1 Quote

“That is the point. You sail out across the sea, but it’s when you make your return that you may discover what you have been seeking is in fact inside yourself.””
— Erling Kagge

1 Answer

Category: The Human Body

Answer: Your bone marrow produces 2-3 million of these every second.

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(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

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Question: What are red blood cells?

In good breath,

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


P.S. a conversation with God

Become happier, healthier, and more mindful.

Let’s go beyond standardized approaches that do not account for your unique circumstances. I’ll meet you exactly where you are and serve as your coach and accountability partner on your journey toward living a happier, healthier, and more mindful life.

Learn More about One-on-One Coaching.

* 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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Laugh More, Buddha’s Breathwork, and How to Find Inner Silence

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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: 1 min 51 sec

I hope the next 28ish breaths are the most nourishing of your day.


4 THOUGHTS

1. Laugh More: Laughing Reduces Cortisol by More than 30%

“These analyses demonstrated the potential therapeutic role of laughter-inducing interventions as a complementary strategy to improve everyone’s well-being and highlight the need for further research aiming to improve our collective sense of humor.”

– Kramer and Leitao (2023)

How’s that for the best quote ever published in a science article?

This recent meta-analysis analyzed 8 studies and found that spontaneous laughter reduced cortisol by 31.9%, making it a potentially powerful tool for improving wellness.

It certainly corroborates our saying: The best and most therapeutic form of mouth breathing is laughter 😊

***

P.S. Sign up at BreathLearning.com to get my 4-page and 12 min 39 sec podcast summary of this one, which includes three ways to incorporate more laughter into your day using Spotify, funny videos, and Instagram.

2. Did the Buddha Do Breathwork?

Yes he did, apparently. But then he gave it up:

“After his enlightenment, the Buddha described how he had previously practiced extreme self-discipline by manipulating his breath in arcane and special ways. But he discovered that he could not get rid of impurities by holding his breath or altering his breathing. So he gave up breath-control exercises and followed his own middle way.” - Bhante Gunaratana

And what was that middle way? Mindfulness of breathing. It’s what ultimately led the Buddha to enlightenment.

It gives me hope that one day I’ll give up breathing exercises and reach enlightenment, too 😂 😂 😂

3. How to Find Your Inner Silence

“I believe it’s possible for everyone to discover this silence within themselves. It is there all the time, even when we are surrounded by constant noise. Deep down in the ocean, below the waves and ripples, you can find your internal silence.”

– Erling Kagge, Silence in the Age of Noise

One way to find that silence is to breathe deep down into your belly, below the restlessness of your noisy mind. There, you’ll discover your ever-present and always accessible internal silence.

***

P.S. Thanks to Dr. M. for recommending this incredible book 🙏

4. The Gravity of Breathing

With consistent practice, the breath creates its own gravity, naturally pulling your attention toward it in every situation.

1 Quote

“To control the breathing is to control the mind. With different patterns of breathing, you can fall in love, you can hate someone, you can feel the whole spectrum of feelings just by changing your breathing.””
— Marina Abramovic

1 Answer

Category: Lung Measurement

Answer: This is generally a measure of the lungs’ ability to expand due to changes in their pressure.

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(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

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Question: What is pulmonary compliance?

In good breath,

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


P.S. what makes us human

Work with Me

Or, create your own relaxation with iCalm (use discount code NICK20).

* 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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A Smile, Perfect Advice on Methods, and I Was Happy Until this Moment

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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 1 sec

I hope the next 30ish breaths are the most nourishing of your day.


4 THOUGHTS

1. Science of Breath: A Practical Guide

“There is no such thing as an involuntary system if the student learns to regulate the motion of the lungs. For by doing so, a vast portion of that system is brought under his voluntary control.”

– Swami Rama, Science of Breath

That is, in a nutshell, the science of breath. By controlling the breath, we gain control of involuntary processes (via our autonomic nervous system), giving us access to better physical, mental, and spiritual health 👏

***

P.S. Of course, there’s a lot more to the science of breathing. So, if you’re interested, I can’t recommend this book enough (I’m ashamed it’s taken me this long to read it). If you don’t have time to read all day, you can also sign up at BreathLearning.com to get my 6-page and 21-minute podcast summary of this one (and many others).

2. That’s a Smile of Enlightenment

“The moment you wake up, right away, you can smile. That’s a smile of enlightenment. You are aware that a new day is beginning, that life is offering you twenty-four brand-new hours to live, and that that’s the most precious of gifts.”

– Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Breath

I began doing this after reading the book, and it’s genuinely life-changing (even if it’s an awkward smile with my mouth tape, lol).

Try it tomorrow morning (or anytime, really) and see how you feel 🙏

3. Perfect Advice on Methods and Teachers

“While you practice a particular method, it can be helpful to believe that your technique—or your teacher or lineage or meditation center—is the best. You feel fortunate. This mobilizes energy and often inspires strong practice. But as you grow on the path, more ingenuity is called for. You have to become self-reliant and see what you need from moment to moment.”

- Larry Rosenberg, Three Steps to Awakening

This is so good. I love how Rosenberg acknowledges the power of believing your approach is the best…“This mobilizes energy and often inspires strong practice”…while simultaneously recognizing that it will eventually change 👏

I hope it helps you wherever you are on your path, too.

4. Our Intrinsic Wholeness is Still Here

“Wholeness and connectedness are what are most fundamental in our nature as living beings. No matter how many scars we carry from what we have gone through and suffered in the past, our intrinsic wholeness is still here…”

- Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D, Full Catastrophe Living

That is all 🙏

1 Quote

“It’s a mistake to think too much about the goal and to ask too often about it. I was happy on those hikes with my parents. ... Happy until the moment when I started asking how much farther it was.””
— Erling Kagge

1 Answer

Category: Cellular Respiration

Answer: This is defined as the volume of CO2 produced divided by the volume of O2 absorbed during cellular respiration.

…

(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

…

Question: What is the respiratory quotient?

In good breath,

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


P.S. I will not be awkward today

Get Calm & Focused w/o Meditating

I take 1/2 a bottle of iCalm every morning, just before my first sip of coffee. It’s amazing.

In fact, although I don’t have much disposable income right now, I prioritize these each month because they’re so helpful.

If you’d like to try them, use the code NICK20 to get 20% off 🙏

Get the iCalm Relaxation Shot

 
 

* 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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Is this Amazing or Dangerous, Longevity, and How to Create More Time

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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 😊


4 THOUGHTS

1. Yoga Breathing, Meditation, and Longevity

“By inducing stress resilience, breath work enables us to rapidly and compassionately relieve many forms of suffering.”

– Brown and Gerbarg (2009)

Here’s my take-home from this excellent narrative review 👏

Yogic breathing and meditation are complementary practices that may enhance longevity by improving nervous system health and stress resiliency, boosting emotional health, enhancing brain health, and reducing suffering associated with disasters.

***

P.S. Sign up at BreathLearning.com to get the PDF & podcast summaries for this one, and tons of other science articles & books.

2. Amazing or Dangerous? Mindful Breathing Preserves Focus After Multitasking

I’m not sure if this finding is (1) just amazing or (2) potentially dangerous, lol. But it’s too neat not to share 😊

“For instance, research at Stanford University found that if you are focused on an important project and then stop to answer a text or email, and end up browsing the web, when you finally return to your important project your focus has dimmed. It takes you some time to ramp up your concentration to the previous level. Unless you did ten minutes of mindfulness of your breath a couple of times that day—then you have little or no loss of concentration after ‘multitasking.’”

– Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., Why We Meditate

3. Affecting Deep Physical and Psychological Changes

“As the breath is the link between the body and mind, it can intervene in the activities of either level. With increased awareness and control of the subtle aspects of breathing, these interventions can affect deep physical and psychological changes.”

- John Clarke, MD, Science of Breath

Just a compelling reminder of how powerful breathing exercises and simple mindful breath awareness are. Because the breath literally and metaphorically links the body and mind, such interventions “can affect deep physical and psychological changes.” 👏

4. Don’t Have Time to Breathe or Meditate? (maybe this passage will be inspiring)

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that one saves time travelling only two hours from one point to another instead of spending eight hours on the same journey. While this holds up mathematically, my experience is the opposite: time passes more quickly when I increase the speed of travel. My speed and time accelerate in parallel. It is as if the duration of a single hour becomes less than a clock-hour. When I am in a rush, I hardly pay attention to anything at all.”

- Erling Kagge, Walking: One Step at a Time

Although this passage is about travel and walking, it applies perfectly to breathing or meditation.

By taking time out of your already busy morning to meditate or breathe, you actually create more time because you slow things down.

So, instead of thinking, “I don’t have time to do this,” think, “I create time by doing this.”

1 Quote

“Sometimes, you get lucky in life, when the most important thing you need to do turns out to also be the simplest. One example is breathing. Breathing is the most important thing we need to do in our lives, and for most of us, it is also the easiest thing we ever do. If you belong to the population of people who can breathe effortlessly, you are so lucky!””
— Chade-Meng Tan

1 Answer

Category: Nasal Drainage

Answer: These eventually go down the nasolacrimal duct, draining into your nose, often causing people to need a tissue.

…

(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

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Question: What are tears?

In good breath,

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


P.S. so true

I Take 1/2 Bottle Every Morning

I take 1/2 a bottle of iCalm every morning, just before my first sip of coffee. It’s amazing, and I absolutely love them.

In fact, although I don’t have much disposable income right now, I prioritize these each month because they’re so helpful.

If you’d like to try them, use the code NICK20 to get 20% off 🙏

Get the iCalm Relaxation Shot

 
 

* 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.