I can still picture one night when I was lying in bed, breathing deeply, and I kept meditating. An hour, more than an hour. I felt my jaw go slack. I felt my body calm. I fell asleep. I woke up in the morning rested—genuinely rested. Feeling different than I had in a long, long time. I kept doing it. Many nights, it would take an hour or more, maybe two. Now that I have learned the science, I know I was shutting off my sympathetic immune system. I was short-circuiting the dangerous cycle that Dr. Irwin had described in which my central nervous system had dosed my body with adrenaline, further
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