One Simple Thing Quotes

“Bessel van der Kolk, in his brilliant book The Body Keeps the Score, says:”
― Eddie Stern, One Simple Thing: A New Look at the Science of Yoga and How It Can Transform Your Life

“Melodic, pleasant vocalization, such as humming, chanting the sound of om, or the ujjayi and brahmari pranayamas help to tone the vagus nerve. At least one study, done at the Nepal Medical College in Kathmandu in 2010 has shown that five minutes of practicing brahmari pranayama is effective in lowering heart rate, systolic blood pressure, and most significantly, diastolic blood pressure, which is the measure of pressure in the arteries as the heart rests between beats.7 This is when the heart fills with blood and gets oxygen.”
― Eddie Stern, One Simple Thing: A New Look at the Science of Yoga and How It Can Transform Your Life

“Dr. Daniel Siegel has said that the mental processes of awareness, which the yogis identified as the subtle body, can be used to meditate on our entire sphere of experience, and then to be able to distinguish the experiencer from the experience that is being had. He calls this the Wheel of Awareness, a straightforward and profound practice that guides you through meditating on your five senses; the interior sense of your body (interoception), which he calls the sixth sense; your mental activities, the seventh sense; and your sense of interconnectedness, the eighth sense. These senses exist as the rim of the wheel, where our senses meet experience. The hub of the wheel, however, is our clear, calm, receptive, open, and aware sense of being. It is our center, a center that is connected to all other centers, and perhaps where we can sense divinity within us.5”
― Eddie Stern, One Simple Thing: A New Look at the Science of Yoga and How It Can Transform Your Life

“The idea of the world around us being our extended body is, to me, one of the most profound and obvious reasons for practicing the yamas, and behaviors like non-harm and kindness. Not only are the elements and people around us extensions of us, but we are extensions of them as well. There is truly no “other” out there; there is only all of us, together, as one, huge, simultaneous happening.”
― Eddie Stern, One Simple Thing: A New Look at the Science of Yoga and How It Can Transform Your Life

“The answer that yoga gives is that the mind is a neutral field in which experiences occur or are perceived. It can expand and contract to fill any space, however big or small; for example, it can expand to contemplate the nature of the universe, with its billions of galaxies and trillions of stars, or it can contract to focus on a single atom, a single cell, or the lightest sensation of touch where the breath leaves the tip of the nostrils.”
― Eddie Stern, One Simple Thing: A New Look at the Science of Yoga and How It Can Transform Your Life