Listen Instead of Reading

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4 THOUGHTS

1. How to Breathe for Joy

“To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration that the alteration of respiration is sufficient to induce emotion.”
- Respiratory Feedback in the Generation of Emotion

This groundbreaking study (21 years ago 😊) was the first to find that breathing in specific ways can induce the corresponding emotional state. Meaning we can change our breath to change how we feel.

For example, to elicit joy, they told participants to “Breathe and exhale slowly and deeply through the nose; your breathing is very regular and your ribcage relaxed.”

Try it for ~2 minutes and see how you feel 🙏

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P.S. If you want to learn more about breathing & emotions, sign up for my upcoming 4-week course, Breathing for Better Mental & Emotional Health: Click Here to Learn More

2. Finding Answers to Life’s Most Pressing Questions

“An athlete gets herself into trouble when, instead of listening to her body and its intuitions, she begins to worry about what her competitors are doing and tries to “outwork” them. The answers to the most pressing questions that athletes face in their day-to-day quest for improvement (“Should I push? Should I back off?”) lie within them.”
– Matt Fitzgerald, How Bad Do You Want It?

I believe this idea applies to all of life, not just athletics: Nine times out of ten, the answers to the most pressing questions we face in our quest for continuous improvement lie within us.

3. How to Deal with Life’s Storms (according to Thich Nhat Hanh)

“When a storm comes up in you, get out of the treetop and go down to the trunk for safety. Your roots start down at your abdomen, slightly below the navel…Put all your attention on that part of your belly, and breathe deeply. Don’t think about anything, and you’ll be safe while the storm of emotions is blowing. Practice this every day for just five minutes, and after three weeks, you’ll be able to handle your emotions successfully whenever they rise up.”
- Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Breath

I love this analogy. The next time we’re dealing with an emotional storm, we’ll be wise to remember to “get out of the treetop and go down to the trunk for safety.” 👏👏👏

4. Your Breathing Style Determines Your Stability in All of Life

“The larger point is that someone’s breathing style gives us insight into their broader stability strategy, the set of patterns that they have evolved over the years to help them get by in the physical world. All of us have these strategies and 95% of the time…they work fine. But once you add different stressors…those strategies, those instinctive physical reactions, can create problems. And if our respiration is also taxed, those other problems will be magnified.”*
– Peter Attia, MD, Outlive

Although Dr. Attia is discussing the role of breathing for physical stability, isn’t it amazing that this idea is equally applicable to mental, emotional, and spiritual steadiness too?

Our breathing style determines our stability in all of life.

1 Quote

“By consciously slowing down the breath and making it rhythmic so that consciousness is not disturbed by it, we can achieve corresponding tranquility.””

— Hiroshi Motoyama

P.S. I found that great quote here.

1 Answer

Category: Breathing & Emotions

Answer: Nasal breathing stimulates this part of the brain, which communicates with emotional areas like the amygdala and hippocampus.

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(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

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Question: What is the olfactory bulb?

In good breath,

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

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* 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.

🎧 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. The 3 P’s of Breathing

Physiology: The impact breathing has on your body.
Psychology: The impact breathing has on your mind and emotions.
Philosophy: The impact breathing has on how you live your life.

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P.S. You can’t have any one P without the others : )

2. A Revolutionary Finding: The Two-Way Street of Breathing and Emotions

“Lo and behold, the participants started to feel the emotions that corresponded to the breathing patterns. In other words, when they took deep, slow breaths, the participants felt calm. And when they took rapid, shallow breaths, they felt anxious or angry. The finding that we can change how we feel by using our breath is revolutionary.” * (my emphasis)
- Emma Seppälä, Ph.D., The Happiness Track

We know that how we feel affects our breathing. However, research tells us it’s a two-way street: We can change our breathing to change how we feel.

Quite revolutionary, indeed.

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P.S. This falls into the the 1st and 2nd “Ps” above. And if you apply it regularly, then the 3rd one as well : )

3. Wim Hof vs. Wim Hof: Which of His Components is Most Important?

A 2020 study that’s still in preprints (so it hasn’t undergone peer review yet) shed light on the individual components of the Wim Hof Method (WHM).

Here’s what they did:

One group practiced the breathing only.
One group practiced cold exposure only.
One group practiced cold and breathing.
One group was trained by Wim Hof.
One group was trained by a researcher.

Then, all the groups were injected with endotoxin, like the first WHM study.

Here are a few of the key findings:

Breathing by itself reduced inflammation significantly, but did not reduce flu-like symptoms.
Cold by itself reduced flu-like symptoms, but did not reduce inflammation. (This doesn’t mean cold exposure doesn’t reduce inflammation in general. It just means it didn’t lessen the acute ramp-up of inflammation brought on by the endotoxin.)
The combination of cold and breathing reduced inflammation even more. (So, cold exposure wasn’t helpful on its own for inflammation, but added a boost when combined with the breathing.)
The results were the same whether Wim trained them or not (this was most surprising to me).

As a breathing nerd, this paper was super satisfying to read.

But remember it’s still in preprints, so it could turn out there was a major flaw or bad data or something. But, still fun to geek out on nonetheless : )

4. Breathing Like Journalists: Slow Breathing for Everyday Life

“I call this approach, in which you fit deep work wherever you can into your schedule, the journalist philosophy. This name is a nod to the fact that journalists…are trained to shift into a writing mode on a moment’s notice”
- Cal Newport, Deep Work

Let’s adopt this journalist philosophy to our slow deep breathing practice, fitting it into our schedules wherever we can. This will allow us to flip the switch on our physiological and emotional state anytime, anywhere (see thoughts 1 & 2).

Here’s to becoming breathing journalists, today : )

Bonus Thought: Join a Breathing Experiment

My good breathing friend AJ Fisher is looking for participants for a breathing and exercise experiment. Essentially, you get her 8-week Breathography Course for free in exchange for some pulse oximeter measurements (that’s it!).

If you’re interested, you can learn more and sign up here:

Learn More about the Experiment

And, you can learn more about AJ and the amazing things she does here:

AJ’s Corectology Website

1 QUOTE

“There is a force within that gives you life. Seek that.”
- Rumi

1 ANSWER

Category: Designed for Breathing

Answer: Paradoxically, the narrower passages of the nose reduce this during sleep.

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(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

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Question: What is upper airway resistance?