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Instead, we’re adopting and passing down traits that are detrimental to our health. This concept, called dysevolution,
To breathe is to absorb ourselves in what surrounds us, to take in little bits of life, understand them, and give pieces of ourselves back out.
it collects inhaled debris in the nose, then moves all the junk down the throat and into the stomach, where it’s sterilized by stomach acid, delivered to the intestines, and sent out of your body.
the number one cause of cavities, even more damaging than sugar consumption,
“Carbon dioxide is, in fact, a more fundamental component of living matter than is oxygen.”
“The yogi’s life is not measured by the number of his days, but the number of his breaths,”
human evolution is no longer based on the survival of the fittest,
Without fear, survival was impossible, or, at minimum, extremely precarious.
chemoreceptor flexibility is part of what distinguishes good athletes from great ones.
We’ll scan our email, write something down, check Twitter, and do it all over again, never really focusing on any specific task. In this state of perpetual distraction, breathing becomes shallow and erratic.
“email apnea,” can contribute to the same maladies as sleep apnea.
for reasons nobody quite understands, by the 1950s, a century of scientific research disappeared.
Breathing slow, less, and through the nose balances the levels of respiratory gases in the body and sends the maximum amount of oxygen to the maximum amount of tissues so that our cells have the maximum amount of electron reactivity.
breathing, like any therapy or medication, can’t do everything.
The perfect breath is this: Breathe in for about 5.5 seconds, then exhale for 5.5 seconds. That’s 5.5 breaths a minute for a total of about 5.5 liters of air.
