wellbeing – Observations and Misunderstandings

Let me tell you a little about breath. Not just any breath either, the perfect breath. It turns out my shallow two second inhale followed by two second exhale may just be doing both my mind and body the type of harm you wouldn’t immediately imagine something that brings life would. In truth two seconds may even be a little generous. It is a long way from the recommended five point five second inhale and five point five second exhale, which conveniently equates to the perfect amount of breaths per minute. Five point five for those who don’t fancy the maths. This is according to James Nestor whose new book Breath delves into the art of something which we all seem to be doing wrong.

Nestor explains the science and art of breathing. He uses anecdotes and scientific research to back up and prove his theories. He discusses thousands of years worth of knowledge like ancient Indian pranayamic breathing techniques and the Buddhist Tummo. Tummo has in the last ten years been sexed up, repackaged and proven to the western world by Wim Hof. He goes into his own experiments with Stanford University of only nasal breathing and only mouth breathing, all of which are backed up by the research results which show a dramatic and scary contrasting end result. Our mouths have shrunk and our teeth don’t have enough space to grow straight anymore, three hundred years of industrial processed food haven’t helped. Heart disease, anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue, asthma – the list of diseases related to incorrect breathing seems endless. He doesn’t suggest breathing is going to cure a rampant disease of course but it can help with the preventative part, the bit western medicines ‘cut it out and cure it’ approach seems repeatedly limited in. It does turn out we’ve been breathing wrong all these years and he explains how and why.

What he shares is immediately relatable. This dissection of the consequences of a breathing I know I do and which I instinctively know and have known for a while to be wrong and dangerous. Nestor has managed to explain something which is hard to disagree with within our narrow prism of proved truth. We need things to be proven in certain ways that Eastern texts don’t do, Nestor manages to do this with language and information it is hard to disagree with. As I said I can relate to what he is saying though and I suspect that is probably what has led to this book being the success it has been. Good authors manage to give new information in a way that makes the author feel they’ve always known it and finally it has been confirmed. Genuinely, I want everyone, and especially everyone I care about to read this. Now then, it’s time to go practise my breathing.

One thing I have noticed about this blog is that since I started publishing it and not continued keeping it a secret thing like the first month, I have stopped writing about the blog itself. The pieces now seem to be about topics; such as resolutions, Dublin, something political, and other things I can’t remember but certainly in the early days I was happy to write about how this beast itself was developing. Initially the point of the blog was to do an experiment and see whether I could write about something every day. So far I have managed that and it is something that the majority of the time doesn’t take up a disproportionate amount of effort. The articles are not necessarily of the highest calibre, or what I would like them to be, I suspect if I took longer or didn’t put a piece out daily, I could take more time and effort researching and forming something. Instead as is clear I seem to start with an idea and just go from there, which I also really enjoy as a format. I’ve mentioned before about the discipline to sit down each day and the mental discipline to put in effort to write something decent are separate things. Since publishing certainly the awareness of others reading has had an effect on this, but I think I am pushing myself slightly more; fully aware I could go further, which will evolve as time goes on.

What will also evolve though, and has as I said, is what I write about. As I mentioned already I’m not really putting out fluff pieces – although it could be argued this is one – even though it’s a perfectly legitimate topic it feels slightly self-indulgent. I see other blogs and they seem to be on particular issue, like travel, food, mindfulness or politics and I seem to drift into each of those areas when I feel like it. To attract people to this blog it would be good perhaps to focus on a particular area and subject to write about. However I’m not going to as I think that while it will evolve organically, the point is to see if I can write each day about something over writing about something each day, and there is a difference. Equally if it is an experiment to simply write, we corrupt ourselves the moment we worry more about numbers than the actual thing we’re doing. It may evolve organically in a certain direction which would be great and if after one year I am still writing and writing about a particular subject then the goal would be complete with a bonus thrown in.

So this blog is going to continue to be random and off the cuff. I would like it to improve, in the meantime though I’m happy; nothing is ever perfect so it is great that I can see improvement is necessary and hopefully make the effort to find it. It is even greater that I’m still here after what is probably about two months now and not got distracted and sacked it off.

Self-congratulatory piece…tick.

Well done me…prick.

Tag: wellbeing

BR#Eleven – Breath

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