Take a deep breath. This is message 412 and day 66 in the 8-C Challenge (2/3 of the way there!) and this message is dedicated to Wim Hoff.

I have seven fundamentals I write out in my journal every morning. It is a checklist of sorts to remind myself of the most important foundational practices. If I’m not prioritizing these, it doesn’t matter what other successes I may be achieving or striving for.

Number one on this list is breathing. A good deep breath is one of the unsung pleasures in life. We rarely think about it. Maybe when you have a bad cold it rises more to your consciousness, but for the most part we take breathing for granted.

The last couple of years I have tried to pay more attention to my breathing and studying it. I mentioned Brian Johnson recently, you can search for his “Optimal Breathing 101” class which was my introduction. I also recommend Wim Hoff, Herbert Benson, and Richard Brown. If you search any of those names with the word “breathing” you’ll find plenty.

Why is breathing something to be conscious of? We have a parasympathetic nervous system and a sympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic system takes care of the “rest and digest” side of things while the sympathetic is there for “fight or flight” stuff. In short, relaxation response vs. stress response.

We obviously need both. But… Modern life has thrown us into a near-constant arousal state with our sympathetic nervous system working overtime which leads to all the stress and dysfunction and burnout we don’t want. Dr. Rob Gilbert (he is a big proponent by the way of breathing exercises) gives the illustration of working out with a dumbbell, but only ever exercising your right arm. Today we all have a beefy right arm (sympathetic nervous system) and a scrawny left arm (parasympathetic nervous system).

Our breath is the fundamental way we can flip the switch between relaxation (parasympathetic) and arousal (sympathetic). There is a nerve that runs from the base of our skull down into our gut called the Vegas nerve. It sends signals throughout our body that everything is cool. There is more detail to go along with this, but for today try this: close your mouth, take a deep breath through your nose that pushes out your stomach, then slowly breathe out longer than it took to inhale. Try that for a minute. You just switched the dumbbell from your right arm to your left arm. Try some of those searches I mentioned if this interests you. Your parasympathetic nervous system will thank you for it.