Yogic Breathing & Brain, Comebacks, and Using Mind Energy for Good

1. How Slow Yogic Breathing Helps the Brain (CSF, brain nutrients, and waste)

“With rigorous testing, we demonstrated that the three yogic breathing patterns (slow, deep abdominal and deep diaphragmatic) immediately increased both cranially directed instantaneous CSF velocities and power of respiratory-driven CSF motion.”

— Yildiz et al. (2022)

A new 2-min video explainer is up, showing how breathing increases the flow of cerebrospinal fluid dynamics toward the brain by as much as 28%. Check it out below:

2. Breathing as the Gateway to All the Body’s Systems

“Your body has numerous major systems, including the endocrine (hormone), cardiovascular, immune, gastrointestinal, and nervous systems. If you want to use the mind-body connection to lower your stress, cool the fires, and improve your long-term health, what’s the optimal point of entry into all these systems? It’s the autonomic nervous system (ANS).”

— Rick Hanson, PhD, Buddha’s Brain

And what’s the optimal point of entry into the ANS? The breath. As Deb Dana says, “Breath is a direct, easily accessible, and rapid way to shape the state of the nervous system.”

When we change the breath, we change the nervous system, and we change all the major systems of the body.

3. Using Your Mind’s Energy for Good

“One way to think of this process of transformation is to think of mindfulness as a lens, taking the scattered and reactive energies of your mind and focusing them into a coherent source of energy for living, for problem solving, and for healing.”

— Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living

What a great analogy. It’s not that mindfulness is some magical force; it’s that it helps us gather all the mind’s energy—which is typically wasted on things like reacting, worrying, and stress—and focus it on good.

4. Where Life’s Troubles Come From

“The trouble comes into the world largely because various beings take themselves seriously, instead of playfully.”

— Alan Watts

Just a nice reminder to not take ourselves too seriously this week 😊

“The brain prioritizes messages from the lungs above all others.”

— Charlie Morley

In good breath,

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

P.S. you got this

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.