Deep Breathing

When the vagus nerve is inflamed your breathing becomes more shallow. It’s fight or flight time! You are panicking. Your breath becomes quick. Stop it! Breathe deep.

Let me tell you something: most people think “yoga” is all those exercises where people are standing upside down and doing weird things. In the Yoga Sutras, written in 300 BC, there are 195 lines divided into four chapters. In all those lines - only on line - refers to physical exercise. It basically says, “be able sit up straight”. That’s it. That’s the only reference in the Yoga Sutras to physical exercise. Just as important is an area of yoga called pranayama which has to do with deep breathing.

Basically, yoga measures a lifespan in the number of breaths you take. A dog pants fast and dies young. A turtle breathes slow and lives to over 100. Pranayama is the art of breathing slower and slower And using your cavities in your bodies other than your chest cavity to hold your breath (i.e. your abdomen, for instance). You don’t have to be a pranayama expert. I don’t want to be one. But the simplest exercise is to sit there and hold your breath for 8 seconds, breath out for 8 seconds, breathe in for 8 seconds, hold, etc. Do that for ten minutes a day. They didn’t say this in 300 BC but your oxytocin comes out to play during these moments.

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Read Full Article: 10 Unusual Ways to Release Oxytocin Into Your Life


Author / Source: James Altucher at The Altucher Confindential