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Do Breathe
Calm Your Mind. Find Focus. Get Stuff Done.
Do/Breathe (2015) is a calming antidote to the stressors of contemporary life, offering a simple guide to cultivating balance, honing focus, and learning to be present. Do/Breathe takes you right back to life’s basics – like breathing, eating, and sleeping – to show how adjusting fundamental practices, habits, and mindsets can produce positive, lasting change in your life.
- Busy professionals who never seem to reach the end of their to-do lists
- Dreamers whose fear holds them back from chasing their goals
- Multitaskers who want to juggle their roles and responsibilities without losing equilibrium
Michael Townsend is an author, entrepreneur, and an expert at managing stress through mindfulness. Once a high-powered advertising exec, he’s now a yoga teacher, mindfulness coach, and well-being advocate. Townsend is committed to helping others find calm and focus, through his BreatheSync app and his mindfulness coaching.
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Do Breathe
Calm Your Mind. Find Focus. Get Stuff Done.
- Read in 15 minutes
- Audio & text available
- Contains 9 key ideas
Synopsis
Do/Breathe (2015) is a calming antidote to the stressors of contemporary life, offering a simple guide to cultivating balance, honing focus, and learning to be present. Do/Breathe takes you right back to life’s basics – like breathing, eating, and sleeping – to show how adjusting fundamental practices, habits, and mindsets can produce positive, lasting change in your life.
Key idea 1 of 9
Managing stress can be as simple as optimizing your breathing.
From missed trains to financial worries, constantly pinging mobile phones to disturbing news headlines, we all have different stressors that can set us off. But our bodies react to stress in the same way, by releasing the hormone cortisol into the bloodstream, which increases heart rate and blood pressure.
Stress is complex, but reducing the physical symptoms of it can be as simple as breathing in and out. When you’re stressed your breathing is rapid and shallow. When you’re relaxed, you breathe well, taking longer, slower breaths.
But your breathing isn’t just a reflection of your mental state – it can actively change that state, too.
Mimicking relaxed breathing tricks the body into thinking you actually are relaxed. What’s more, drawing long slow breaths for 60 seconds is enough to rid the bloodstream of the stress hormone cortisol entirely.
Does that mean you have to learn to breathe well? Not quite. You were born with the ability to breathe like this. You might just need to remember it.
Have you ever seen a baby breathing? She inhales through her nose, and fills her belly with breath. Then she exhales through her nose for longer than the length of her inhale. There's a reason for this. Nose hairs filter the air, making the nose the best breathing organ. And a long exhale stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which promotes rest and digestion.
Now ask yourself, are you breathing like a baby?
Let’s work on that. The first step is to pay attention to your breathing in different contexts. Get to know your breathing. It’s as unique as you are! When you know your breathing, you can learn to recognize the onset of stress and anxiety and calm yourself before your body and mind hit the panic button.
So how can you breathe like a baby again?
Breathe in and out through your nose. Fill your belly and diaphragm with each breath. This will help center you and give you a sense of calm control. Breathe out for longer than you breathe in.
Why don’t you take a few deep breaths before you move on to the next blink? You might find that you’re feeling more focused and less overwhelmed already.
Key ideas in this title
- Managing stress can be as simple as optimizing your breathing.
- The only productivity hack you’ll ever need is simplicity.
- To live the life of your dreams, first face your fears.
- Learning to live in the moment is the best gift you can give yourself.
- Your mental clarity is dependent on your physical health.
- Mental focus is a muscle you can exercise.
- Find flow by seeking struggle, and then release.
- Breaking bad habits isn’t as hard as you might think.
- Final summary
