2024-10-03
8 分钟Hi, I'm Dacher Keltner and welcome to Happiness Break,
where we explore practices that can bring more joy and peace to your day.
The concept of using breath to regulate the nervous system is a well established principle in many traditional Eastern practices,
including those found in Indian, Tibetan and Chinese traditions.
This week we're trying a breathing technique that incorporates a lot of those time honored cyclic sighing.
Cyclic sighing involves inhaling deeply through your nose,
filling your lungs, and then exhaling slowly through your mouth.
This slow, extended exhale is what makes cyclic sighing so relaxing.
Today we're guided by Dr. David Spiegel,
the director of the center on Stress and Health at Stanford University.
His research suggests that cyclic sighing lowers your breathing rate,
which can help reduce stress and anxiety by calming the nervous system and improving blood flow to the brain.
Now let's dive into a short cyclic sighing practice led by Dr. Spiegel.
Take a moment to settle in and let's find some calm together.
Breathing is an intrinsic part of living, but it's an unusual mind body phenomenon.
Because the way we breathe is right at the edge of conscious and unconscious processing,
we obviously can control how we breathe.
We can decide to inhale and exhale and how often to do it,
and yet most of the time we do it automatically.
So the way breathing is controlled in the brain,