Breath

[00:10] Rory: My name is Rory O’Toole, and my name is Matt Schultz.

[00:14] Matt: And this is how to be the.

[00:17] Rory: Podcast where we discuss ancient wisdom, modern hacks, paperback self help books, and pithy.

[00:23] Matt: Platitudes, the hopes of figuring out the best way to live this one precious and wild life.

[00:31] Rory: Take a deep breath in through your nose and then let it out through your mouth. Could it really be so simple? Join us as we discuss. Breathe.

[01:06] Matt: Hi, Matt.

[01:08] Rory: Hey, roar. How are you? Fine. With an asterisk?

[01:15] Matt: Sure. I wanted to ask you, how’s the rice experiment?

[01:22] Rory: They’re both. Neither one has rotted at all.

[01:26] Matt: Really? And are you sending hate and love?

[01:29] Rory: Yeah. Well, I have some questions about it. It’s like, do I need to hate the rice specifically, or can I direct hate and love about other things at the rice?

[01:49] Matt: Actually, maybe the experiment was just, you write hate or love on the jars. Maybe you’re not even supposed to be sending it.

[01:57] Rory: From what I’ve read, they also send.

[02:00] Matt: They also send. Verbally or just psychically?

[02:04] Rory: Verbally. So every day, I go up to the rice, I pick up the loved one, I say, I love you. You’re so good. I try to make it about the rice. You’re delicious. You go with everything. You’re such a wonderful food. You’re a staple to so many different cultures. It’s incredible what you do. It’s just incredible what you do. And you should feel really proud of yourself. But then I pick up the hate rice, and I’m like, I hate you. I hate you. You’re bland. You’re boring. You’re a carbohydrate. You’re making me fat. You’re nothing. You’re nothing except what we put on top of you.

[02:47] Matt: Okay. And so far, neither has flourished or collapsed under the weight of your words.

[02:55] Rory: No, so far, they’re both doing great. They’re both looking gorgeous.

[02:59] Matt: Oh, really? Now, would you eat this rice?

[03:04] Rory: No, I would not.

[03:08] Matt: Not even the love rice. Okay.

[03:10] Rory: And I’m definitely curious about what it smells like in that jar.

[03:14] Matt: Sure. But you don’t want to disrupt.

[03:18] Rory: I don’t want to disrupt the experiment, but we’ll do a smell test at the end of the experiment if that day ever comes.

[03:25] Matt: Yeah. When does the experiment end?

[03:30] Rory: That’s a good question. I think when one or both of them starts to rot.

[03:36] Matt: Okay.

[03:37] Rory: If the loved one, it’s proven failed. If the hate one, it’s a proven success, obviously. Do you have rice going?

[03:50] Matt: No, I never started my rice. I kept forgetting.

[03:53] Rory: Do it.

[03:55] Matt: No. Now that I see how long it takes. I don’t really want two jars.

[03:59] Rory: Maybe your love and hate. Maybe your beams are more powerful than mine.

[04:04] Matt: I just don’t really want two wet jars of rice hanging around my apartment.

[04:09] Rory: Why? I can’t understand why.

[04:12] Matt: Yeah.

[04:13] Rory: I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want that.

[04:15] Matt: We have such ample space here in this palatial one bedroom.

[04:20] Rory: Yeah. Put in one of the guest rooms.

[04:22] Matt: Yeah. Maybe the guest bathroom.

[04:25] Rory: Yeah. Put in the guest bath. It’ll be a nice conversation piece when you have guests.

[04:30] Matt: Yeah.

[04:33] Rory: No, but that big sigh I just made was an invitation to a segue.

[04:40] Matt: What’s going on? Why’d you sigh so big?

[04:43] Rory: No, we’re talking about breath today.

[04:46] Matt: Oh, we really are. Are we ready to get into it already?

[04:52] Rory: I think I am.

[04:55] Matt: Yes. We are talking about breath today. Insert. And I can feel you breathe. You’re watching over me.

[05:05] Rory: What’s that?

[05:06] Matt: Suddenly I’m melting into you. So many thoughts about breath.

[05:13] Rory: Yeah, just breathe. Wait, is that what it is? Yeah, just breathe. Who is that?

[05:22] Matt: Faith Hill.

[05:23] Rory: When my card’s on the table and life’s like an hourglass glued to the table. What is that? It’s like either Michelle Branch or Natalie Merchant.

[05:35] Matt: And those are different songs.

[05:38] Rory: What is it?

[05:39] Matt: No, you’re right. That’s just breeze. Just breeze. Right.

[05:46] Rory: No one can find the rewind button girl. So cradle your head in your hands and breathe.

[05:56] Matt: Just breathe.

[05:58] Rory: Who sings that?

[05:59] Matt: Listeners, if you know who sings Anna Nalak.

[06:02] Rory: Oh, yeah. Anna Nalak. Course.

[06:05] Matt: Really? I’ve never heard that name before in my life.

[06:08] Rory: I mean, she wrote that song, so.

[06:10] Matt: That’S what that name before, though?

[06:12] Rory: Yes. When I’ve downloaded that song, but I’ve played that.

[06:19] Matt: Those are some lyrics. Life’s like an hourglass glued to the table.

[06:24] Rory: Yeah.

[06:25] Matt: Wow.

[06:26] Rory: Mind button girl.

[06:28] Matt: Wow. Okay. I can’t believe she didn’t go farther than that one.

[06:34] Rory: Well, now we’re just stuck with Taylor Swift.

[06:38] Matt: Yeah, right. I mean, Taylor Swift, though, she can really turn it.

[06:46] Rory: Taylor Swift right now.

[06:48] Matt: Well, it’s about time for everyone to become capitalism. Yeah. It’s about time for everyone to turn on.

[06:56] Rory: Know, sometimes we don’t turn on people as a society, though. Like Beyonce, there hasn’t been a turn.

[07:02] Matt: Because she respectfully went away and she didn’t go anywhere. She is not overexposed.

[07:14] Rory: That’s for **** sure. She’s not overexposed.

[07:18] Matt: And she took a long break, and she’ll be on the talk show again, I feel.

[07:23] Rory: No, she’ll never be sitting in that armchair talking about an upcoming project?

[07:27] Matt: No, I think some people didn’t like Beyonce, though. When was she the most exposed? I don’t know. People had things to say about lemonade.

[07:40] Rory: Yeah. Was that, like, the highest level of exposure and. Yeah, like the airing of the marital grievances wandered dangerously close to Jada Pinkett territory.

[07:53] Matt: Yeah, but she only did it in song form, keeping us to guess who is Becky with the good hair.

[08:01] Rory: Yeah. Whereas Jada Pinkett leaves us guessing about nothing.

[08:06] Matt: She read someone else’s scorned poetry in lemonade. Yeah. Jada Pinkett.

[08:14] Rory: So many celebrity memoirs. Right now, I’m thinking about reading Barbara’s.

[08:18] Matt: Oh, really?

[08:19] Rory: Barbara? Yov says I have a terrible Barbara Streisand impersonation. Barbara Streisand.

[08:28] Matt: Wow, it’s so bad. You’re usually pretty good, too, Barbara. No, you sound like a mid Atlantic newscaster from 1950. Streisand. How many gorgeous black and white portrait photos of herself do you think she has?

[08:48] Rory: Oh, you know, there’s a lot. There’s a collection of artwork of herself in that house.

[08:57] Matt: How did she even choose one? There’s probably so many of her from her youth, looking gorgeous in black and white, half lit.

[09:08] Rory: I went to, like, a gay art sale in Tel Aviv a few years.

[09:12] Matt: Huh.

[09:13] Rory: And there were quite a few Barbara portraits there, as I recall.

[09:18] Matt: I mean, come on.

[09:20] Rory: One of the most beautiful women.

[09:22] Matt: She’s so beautiful. Especially in black and white.

[09:26] Rory: Yes. Just dying to be photographed, I guess.

[09:31] Matt: It’s like the bone structure.

[09:33] Rory: Yeah, it’s in the eyes. The eyes. Liz, you luminous the eyes that sparkle.

[09:39] Matt: She really does. She does have eyes that sparkle. I won’t be reading that. Don’t care, but do like her.

[09:47] Rory: I don’t actually think I’ll read it either. I don’t think I’ll ever read any celebrity memoir. I can’t imagine why I would sit down and dedicate myself. I should listen to that podcast, though.

[10:00] Matt: Yeah, see, I’m interested in celebrity personalities, especially when they’re, like, big personalities. But I’m not interested in reading celebrity memoirs because as for me, reading is a quest. It’s a no book.

[10:18] Rory: Waste my book time.

[10:20] Matt: Yeah, exactly. So the celebrity memoir book club podcast really helps me out.

[10:27] Rory: Yeah, waste my podcast time.

[10:29] Matt: Exactly. I need to fill my podcast time, actually.

[10:33] Rory: Yeah, my book time. I need to dedicate to reading books that will make me feel better about myself in terms of, like, thinking I’m a smart person, a smart, well read person.

[10:43] Matt: Well, that brings us to today’s topic, I think pretty well, which is that you read James Nestor.

[10:50] Rory: Nestor. Well, I didn’t really read it. I read some of it.

[10:53] Matt: Okay. Well, today, as we mentioned before, we’re talking about breath. Why? Breath is a question I’ve always pondered because it’s such a tenant of spirituality. Focus on the breath. And I’m like, why are we focusing on the breath? Why not focus on blinking? What is it about breath that’s so special?

[11:19] Rory: Yeah, why focus on the breath and not blinking? Yeah. There’s some similarities between breath and blinking because they’re both things that happen without our conscious control. But we can bring them under conscious control.

[11:40] Matt: Exactly. It’s not like digestion. Not like digestion. Like moving your hand somewhere in between.

[11:49] Rory: In terms of focusing on something. When you’re meditating, breath has the benefit of being rhythmic.

[11:57] Matt: You can’t blink rhythmically. Boom, open. Boom, open. I’m doing it right now.

[12:06] Rory: Breathe rhythmically. Just like you can tap your foot rhythmically, but your breath is rhythmic on its own. Tap into it and just pay attention to it. Now, if you’re going to blink rhythmically, that’s going to have to be a lot more on the conscious control side than the breath.

[12:29] Matt: Yeah, that’s true. I guess my question is, could we even be spiritual breathing beings if we didn’t breathe?

[12:38] Rory: Yeah. Like, if there was some sort of opening on our body that just took an air continuously, not in a pulsating, rhythmic way, with no conscious control, just always happening, what would our spirituality look like then?

[12:58] Matt: Yeah, if our breathing was like our digestion, how could we be spiritual beings?

[13:06] Rory: Well, maybe God gave us breath in order to be spiritual beings. That’s certainly how the Bible has it, because the breath of life is what separates humans from just, like, clumps of matter. God sculpts the humans and then breathes the breath of life into them.

[13:32] Matt: Now, that’s an interesting point, that not all things that breathe have a conscious spiritual.

[13:40] Rory: Mean. But maybe they. You know, madame Lowry says that plants don’t have souls, and maybe it’s because they don’t breathe in this way. They’re just kind of always breathing.

[13:57] Matt: Oh, like soul equals breath.

[14:00] Rory: Soul equals breath. Madame Lowry says trees are amazing. They’re amazing meeting points of all these different energies. They’re like a dialogue between all these different spiritual energies. And they’re doing so much. But they do not have souls. They do not reincarnate. They do know maybe there’s something here about what it means to be to conceive of oneself as an individual. And the most essential thing about breath is in inside of me, out outside of me. So breathing sort of defines the boundaries of the self and is also a way of. It’s an intermediary between self and not self. But maybe for the tree, the tree whose connection points with outer reality are constant and continuous. There’s no in out. It’s always in and always out, always at the same time. Maybe that’s a more oceanic consciousness that doesn’t have the individual selfhood required to be a spiritual being. Because to be a spiritual being, you have to be a little bit unspiritual so that you even have the motivation to do spiritual work. You need some sort of distance from God in order to have a spiritual practice to connect with God.

[15:32] Matt: Like, it fills the space between. But she does say about trees that they share energy between one another through their roots. I mean, isn’t that all what it’s about, though, with human beings, too, is like trying to feel more connected to each other?

[15:53] Rory: Yeah, I think it is.

[15:55] Matt: Recognize that oceanic connection.

[15:59] Rory: And that’s why we have spiritual practices, because we don’t just have that naturally. The tree is just there. The tree knows about how interconnected the universe is. Humans don’t. We’re under the illusion of.

[16:15] Matt: Yes, yes.

[16:18] Rory: We need spiritual work to bring us back into connection with each other.

[16:23] Matt: Yes, absolutely. Agree. Tell us a little bit about this book. What does James Nestor say about breathing? Because there’s breathing as the spiritual practice, then there’s breathing as sort of mindfulness, which. Mindfulness is sort of the despiritualization of classic spiritual practices almost. It’s like the way we’ve sterilized it to make it appealing to the secular masses.

[16:53] Rory: I think that’s a negative spin on mindfulness. I’m not sure if I would apply that lens to it. I definitely know what you’re talking about, though. There’s, like, the mindfulness industry, which wants to sell basically, like spirituality, as a means of recharging your batteries so you can be a better employee. Like capitalist mindfulness. Mick mindfulness, they sometimes call it.

[17:25] Matt: They do. It’s like any critique of capitalism in that sense. It’s just adding Mick in front of it. Classic.

[17:35] Rory: How do you feel about that as an know about the Irish?

[17:42] Matt: If only the Irish were that important to. I guess I don’t mean it to be totally negative. I think mindfulness is absolutely so important, but it feels, like, sanitized in this way sometimes. The way people talk about it, like on good Morning America. Mindfulness practices to make sure that you can not beat your children.

[18:09] Rory: Yeah. The goal is not God consciousness and the universal brotherhood of all humankind. The goal is LIke, are you looking to destress from a hard day of work on the weekend? It’s much more terrestrial and it’s Much more like not threatening the system.

[18:31] Matt: Yeah. And I get that most of us are not going to be living our lives to become Tibetan monks or anything like that. So it’s actually a lot more applicable to just think of it as mindfulness, present moment, yada yada. I just think it’s interesting that the way we can put something through a little scrub machine and sort of take away certain parts and I guess leave the rest.

[19:00] Rory: Yeah, it’s very interesting. The Talmud is a very popular book in Korea.

[19:08] Matt: Interesting. And what’s the Talmud?

[19:11] Rory: The TALMUD is the major compendium of jewish oral traditions. Jewish oral.

[19:20] Matt: It’s not the law bOok.

[19:23] Rory: There’s law in it and there’s myth and there’s discussion and debate. It’s full of all sorts of things.

[19:29] Matt: But it’s different from the torah.

[19:32] Rory: Yeah, basically, in Judaism, we believe that we have two Torahs, one written, which is the one we think of when we say Torah, the big scroll, and one the oral, which was just an oral tradition, but then they committed it to writing in the Middle Ages because it was made illegal to study it and there know people needed to preserve it, so they wrote it down. But in KOREA, they sell know, edited down versions of it, selections of it. And it’s sort of thought of as like, Jews have this reputation of being smart and successful, and it’s sold as like the secret to Jewish success, studying Talmud. And it’s kind of LIke that. It’s kind of LIke, let’s boil this down to one tangible benefit that we think we can get from it. And by the way, I don’t find this offensive at just. It’s just similar to what we’ve done with meditation.

[20:39] Matt: Right, exactly, yes. So this book that you read, James Nestor, is it like that? Is it like mindfulness? What’s the point of view? Where are we starting from when we open this book?

[20:52] Rory: So it’s pop journalism, which is not to say that it’s not thorough and good. He took a breathing class that really changed his life. And then he went on a journey and talking to different people about breath. So he meets with scientists, he participates in experiments, he talks with religious leaders, he talks with divers who are really good at holding their breath, all these different things. He reads a bunch of ancient vedic manuals on breath from the hindu tradition, and yeah. He’s like, this is the key to life. It will help you lose weight, regulate your emotions, feel happier, be healthier, not get cancer.

[21:44] Matt: It’s everything. It’s the scope. Right?

[21:47] Rory: Full scope. Full scope. And he’s also like, humans are the worst breathers on the planet. The way we’ve evolved has made us really bad breathers. And our mouths are, too.

[22:04] Matt: See, I watched a tiny, short video with him on, like, Gail King’s morning show, CBS, about our jaws are small because they’re weak. Because, as he puts it, we eat industrialized mush.

[22:21] Rory: Yeah, we eat mush. And I’m like, we also eat a lot of crackers, but I guess that’s not.

[22:28] Matt: You were just chomping on an apple.

[22:31] Rory: Yeah, I was just chomping on an apple. I’m exhausted now.

[22:38] Matt: I don’t understand is why does evolution. I guess because it’s an ongoing process. But why would we evolve into bad breathers?

[22:49] Rory: Well, it gave us other benefits. This particular mouth shape is what enables our speech.

[22:56] Matt: I see. So do you think one day we’ll evolve to be able to speak and breathe better?

[23:02] Rory: He seems to think that we can breathe better in this life, but we just have to work at it.

[23:08] Matt: Now, why do our mouths being small, have to affect our breathing? Because shouldn’t we be breathing through our nose anyway?

[23:17] Rory: Yes, we should. And I don’t have a good answer to that. But the first chapter, which is really the only chapter I read, he does an experiment where he plugs up his nose and only mouth breathes for two weeks.

[23:36] Matt: Two weeks.

[23:36] Rory: By the way, did you see that instagram I sent you with that family of 13 kids?

[23:41] Matt: Oh, the Dockerty dozen is a household name in this house, Matt, because the.

[23:48] Rory: Older ones were given mouth breathing on.

[23:53] Matt: They all needed some work. They all needed some work.

[23:59] Rory: I thought the youngest four were cute, but the oldest five were.

[24:03] Matt: If there’s a hundred of you, like, you’re not getting the attention you need. You’re not getting the breath instruction, are you?

[24:10] Rory: Yeah, you’re definitely not. I’ve lived this when my allergies are really bad, I’m mouth breathing for weeks, and I can attest to exactly what he experiences, which is that it’s absolute hell.

[24:26] Matt: Tell me.

[24:27] Rory: You dehydrate, you get headaches, you have mental fogginess, you feel tired, you sleep horribly. Waking up after a night of mouth breathing. Sleep the way your mouth feels. You feel like a corpse rising from the dead. But not because you’re alive. You’re still dead. You’re just rising.

[24:52] Matt: That is the thing is, whenever I have, like, a really stuffy nose, which is rare, much rarer than in your case, which is an annual occurrence, it’s hard to even fall asleep breathing through your mouth. It’s so miserable. And what he was saying on Gail King’s little morning show was that your nose is basically, everything inside your nose is like a little filtration system that gives better quality air to your lungs than your mouth.

[25:21] Rory: Also, it gets the air to the right temperature. It moisturizes the air. It filters out all the pollutants.

[25:30] Matt: Yeah. Honestly. Unbelievable. Crazy. But are our noses smaller than they were before?

[25:38] Rory: They definitely seem it. Look at a horse’s nose. I mean, we didn’t evolve from horses. Look at a gorilla’s nose.

[25:46] Matt: Yeah, this is the thing. It’s like I have pretty small nostrils. Do you think that you breathe better than me overall, structurally, because I have big nostrils. You’re a man with a big old nostril nose.

[26:00] Rory: I don’t know.

[26:02] Matt: Or is it everything that’s important to get to your lungs gets there.

[26:08] Rory: His philosophy seems to be that you can work with what you got.

[26:13] Matt: Yeah, absolutely.

[26:16] Rory: We’ve all got different equipment, but we can all work on this. I want to take a breath work class. I’m sold. Now, obviously, I’m not going to go too crazy on this, as I sometimes do with things. And I don’t think it’s going to help me lose five pounds.

[26:36] Matt: Yeah, I love that claim. It’s like, put that on the book, you’ll sell a lot.

[26:41] Rory: Yeah, breathing, I can do that.

[26:45] Matt: Why would it help you lose weight? It speeds up your metabolism.

[26:50] Rory: Yeah. Your body just works better.

[26:53] Matt: Oh, okay. Interesting. Well, I will say that it feels so good to breathe really well and deeply. Like, the first couple of breaths I take when I’m going into my meditation is seriously, it’s so cathartic, it instantly relaxes me. Makes me wonder why I haven’t been doing this all day.

[27:16] Rory: I know. There’s a real pleasure to it. Yeah. When someone reminds you to take a breath, you’re like, oh, cool.

[27:23] Matt: Yeah. Except for that. I struggle with a lot of anxiety, and I’ve had many therapists be like, just focus on your. Just take deep breaths. Focus on your breathing. And I once just told my therapist, that’s baby stuff. I need some real advice here.

[27:38] Rory: Yeah. And when I went to that meditation class the other day when I was anxious, it was not helping. I was like, I actually need to sit out on a street corner with a glass of wine and hear the city noises distracting me from my breath.

[27:56] Matt: Yeah. And of course, as someone with OCD and I have a little bit of somatic OCD, this was happening to me last night when I was researching breath for this episode. Sometimes it happens more with blinking, but sometimes I can become really fixated on breath in an obsessive, unhealthy way. I don’t know. I’m sure there are listeners out there who occasionally you’ll be falling asleep and become too keenly aware of your heartbeat and it causes insane anxiety.

[28:29] Rory: Yeah, I mean, that’s definitely happened to me. That’s interesting, too. The pulsation of the heartbeat, which used to really disturb me, sort of this spasm motion of it. There’s something repulsive about it, the way it spasms over and over again. I almost wish that our heart was more like a bellows, like a fireplace bellows open, close. I wish our heart breathe was more like breath.

[29:02] Matt: Yeah, I guess that’s what you’re saying.

[29:04] Rory: The thing about breathe in the blood, breathe the blood back out. But there’s something profound about the heartbeat also, which, you know, Alan Watts talks a lot about pulsation. He’s like everything in the world is flickering in and out of being really fast. And that’s what reality is. And the fact that it know, sturdy and solid to us is really just an illusion of the fact that it’s flickering too fast.

[29:36] Matt: Well, that’s to catch. I think that’s a component of getting really tuned into your heartbeat is not only is there something sort of biologically repulsive, but you become so aware of how important your heartbeat is and this thing seems so. What’s the word I’m looking for? Precarious.

[30:03] Rory: Yeah.

[30:04] Matt: Just stops. It’s over.

[30:08] Rory: Yeah. It needs to do this. It can’t miss one.

[30:12] Matt: The stakes are so high.

[30:14] Rory: Yeah, the stakes are really high. I mean, the stakes with breath are high too, but we’re just lucky that air is everywhere.

[30:20] Matt: Yeah, the stakes with breath are really high, but I think we have more of an illusion of control over it. I mean, a lot of times we can control it to a certain extent, so that makes it a little bit easier to come to terms with.

[30:37] Rory: Yeah. And air is just so abundant, so we don’t worry about running out of it. We don’t even think of air as a thing. We just think of air as the space we’re in, even though it’s like this precious resource.

[30:49] Matt: But if you were trapped on an elevator, reminding me of that Fraser episode, if you were trapped on an elevator, how quickly would you run out of air? Is this a thing that you would need to worry about, or there are little ways that air is sneaking in, so it’s fine.

[31:08] Rory: That’s a great question. Yeah. Is the air getting in?

[31:13] Matt: It would have to be like a vacuum sealed room for air to not get in.

[31:17] Rory: Also, you know what’s weird about breath? That what we breathe out isn’t the same thing we breathed in.

[31:24] Matt: Wait, what did you say?

[31:26] Rory: It’s really weird that what we breathe out isn’t the same thing that we breathe in.

[31:32] Matt: It’s honestly unbelievable that our body takes what it needs and then pushes back out the rest, and then we have this amazing relationship with plants where they’re like, we’ll take that and give you this.

[31:45] Rory: Wait, but here’s my question.

[31:49] Matt: Tell me everything.

[31:53] Rory: Are we taking what we need and pushing out the rest? Are we taking something in, putting it in a box, and then taking something out of a different box and pushing that out?

[32:03] Matt: No. In my research yesterday, what happens is we breathe in air. It goes into our lungs. Our lungs take the oxygen and put it into our bloodstream and everything back into our esophagus and pushes it back out.

[32:22] Rory: And that’s carbon dioxide.

[32:24] Matt: Yeah. And nitrogen and everything but oxygen that’s in the air.

[32:30] Rory: So all that’s carbon dioxide and nitrogen is just in the air that we breathe in?

[32:35] Matt: Yes, we breathe it all in and our lungs sort it.

[32:40] Rory: Okay. What are the trees doing then? Because they take in the carbon dioxide and push out oxygen. Right.

[32:50] Matt: Yeah.

[32:52] Rory: Don’t you see? It doesn’t quite make sense. Like, if I gave you oatmeal with strawberries and you picked the strawberries out and gave me back the oatmeal, I can’t now take that oatmeal and give back strawberries.

[33:07] Matt: Oh, I see what you’re saying. I don’t think it’s like a one for one. I think it’s like, what it is is it’s like a giant picture, a giant buffet.

[33:17] Rory: Of all sorts of different kinds of oatmeals and berries.

[33:21] Matt: Yeah. We’re all taking from the buffet and leaving the rest. Right. So there’s more oxygen in the air when you’re in a room with a plant, percentage wise, but maybe not amount wise.

[33:42] Rory: Okay.

[33:43] Matt: I have no idea.

[33:45] Rory: Have plants in your house?

[33:46] Matt: These are just insane speculations, actually. What did you say?

[33:50] Rory: Does it make a difference to have plants in your house?

[33:54] Matt: I have heard it does make a difference. The air is cleaner, as they say. But you obviously can live without plants.

[34:04] Rory: Now, I live in a place with such bad air quality, and sometimes to really think about your breath when you think about the air quality is a little depressing. But I guess it’s like you got to trust your lungs to sort this stuff out.

[34:19] Matt: Well, no, I mean, we know that bad air quality has a negative effect on us.

[34:23] Rory: Yeah, but maybe it wouldn’t if I was really good at breathing like James Nestor wants me to be.

[34:29] Matt: I mean, that’s a good know. Apparently, there’s so many toxins in the home that even if you live in a city with bad air quality, you should still keep the windows open because it’s still better than whatever you’re breathing in your disgusting apartment.

[34:44] Rory: Yeah. Cooking and cleaning supplies.

[34:52] Matt: Why haven’t we conquered cooking yet?

[34:56] Rory: You just can’t heat up food like that without little particulates coming into the air.

[35:04] Matt: It just goes to show there’s no simple answer for anything, and it really makes you want to just throw in the towel.

[35:14] Rory: Yeah, but also, we’re doing fine, aren’t we? People are living longer.

[35:19] Matt: Yeah, for sure. 100%. But there’s no way to hack the system, I guess what? I mean, I feel like there’s so many people who are like, this is the secret to life, like, eating no dyes or whatever, but then it’s like, are you cooking your food? You know what I mean? There’s no way that you can’t be affected negatively in some way by your environment.

[35:46] Rory: Well, yeah.

[35:51] Matt: Why shouldn’t we be? We’re not here on earth to live perfect, unaltered lives.

[35:59] Rory: No, certainly not. I think the appeal of a book that promises to increase your lifespan, reduce your risk of disease, and help you lose weight is precisely that. It reinforces the illusion of control.

[36:18] Matt: Right.

[36:21] Rory: And I think that probably these spiritual depths who develop these techniques, even though they may have derived a great many of those benefits, were very aware that you can’t control the universe, and they’re all dead.

[36:42] Matt: Which we all will be one day. Although I really do want to do an episode on longevity and people who want to live forever, because I find that fascinating. I’m sure everyone does. Okay. Speaking of, the wise ones of ancient times really had something with breath. Like, they’ve been here with breath for so long, realizing it makes a difference in the way you feel psychologically. Another great example of. What’s the word? I’m looking for, like, results. And then now we have the science to back it up. Right. Because it’s like, oh, focus on the breath taking deep breaths. And now we know why. What do they say? It triggers your parasympathetic nervous system and the vagus nerve and brings. When you have more oxygen coming into your brain, you’re more relaxed.

[37:44] Rory: Yeah. It’s interesting how we process knowledge as a society. We’ve talked about this so many times. We love studies. And what would it mean to not have a study, to just be like, do this. It will work. And we have a lot of that, too. We have people telling us that rose quartz will heal your knee pain, and they have no information. I guess the idea of the study is that it helps you keep yourself from being swindled or conned.

[38:23] Matt: It helps you in the comment section of an Instagram post to have a study.

[38:30] Rory: Yeah.

[38:31] Matt: To be able show that tv for children will make their eyes pop out of their heads. To be able to say that. So powerful.

[38:43] Rory: Yeah, we love the study. We’re obsessed with the study.

[38:46] Matt: I personally am obsessed with the study. I’m like, actually, what would I do if I couldn’t be like, actually, you don’t need eight glasses of water a day. That was based on a study from the 1940s, which was also including food intake.

[39:01] Rory: Yeah. And the power of saying that study was actually really flawed.

[39:10] Matt: You read the methodology? No, but someone else did.

[39:15] Rory: Someone else did. Yeah. I know the study you’re citing, actually. And they had a really small sample group, and they didn’t even follow up with them. And those side effects wouldn’t have kicked until after four months anyway. So there’s not much we can learn from that.

[39:30] Matt: But it’s like, we can’t dismiss the study because otherwise, all these people, kids wouldn’t be getting vaccinated because their parents think it makes them autistic, because there’s been such a rise of autism diagnoses.

[39:43] Rory: No, we certainly can’t dismiss the study. But it’s just like, yeah, it’s interesting that, especially in the realm of spirituality, the study that confirms the ancient spiritual knowledge.

[39:58] Matt: Yeah. I mean, it’s so disappointing to me that there isn’t more robust support for acupuncture.

[40:06] Rory: You want it to be there.

[40:07] Matt: Of course.

[40:09] Rory: Have you had positive experiences with acupuncture?

[40:13] Matt: Opposite. Opposite. I went to acupuncture very regularly for my jaw issue, and it didn’t improve it in any way. Confirmed by the doctors themselves. They were like, wow, this isn’t really working for you. And then for the most part, there’s limited research that it’s like, acupuncture works essentially because it relaxes you.

[40:39] Rory: Okay. Yeah. Why do you studies to be there? You would think you would have had a positive experience if the studies showed it worked.

[40:50] Matt: No, I want the studies to be there because I want it to be an option if ever I need it again for something else.

[40:57] Rory: I know. Well, yeah, it’s like, we want these things to work.

[41:03] Matt: Yeah. Like vitamin C. Like vitamin C. There’s been no evidence that it helps with illness. Like vitamin C supplement. But I still take it.

[41:17] Rory: Really? You take, like, that invented by a teacher thing?

[41:22] Matt: Yeah, but do I take it because I think it’ll help, or do I take it because it’s yummy?

[41:28] Rory: Well, I’ve been snacking while we’ve been talking on these fiber gummies.

[41:34] Matt: Don’t do too many of those.

[41:36] Rory: I only had the correct dosage, but I love them.

[41:41] Matt: Do they help fiber wise?

[41:47] Rory: Studies show that. I don’t know, but. Okay, back to breath. So, I think the thing with buddhist meditation is the idea with meditation in Zen Buddhism, it’s like the idea is to just do what you’re doing and nothing else. So meditation is not something you do when you’re sitting. Meditation is the act of just sitting and doing nothing else. The sort of way of Zen Buddhism is to really be present with what you’re doing and not add onto it. All these other narratives that we add onto things and distractions. Whatever you’re doing, you can never not also be breathing. So maybe that’s why breath sort of is the fundamental spiritual act. And I do think that deep meditators, deep buddhist monks, are also in relationship with their circulatory system.

[43:00] Matt: Oh, yeah. Like their heartbeat.

[43:02] Rory: Yeah. I think they’re doing the same thing with that as they’re doing with breath, but that’s not really available to the novice because you have to get much deeper for that. They’re slowing down their heart rates. They’re doing crazy things.

[43:20] Matt: I mean, that’s what you do when you’re panicking, right? You do slow down your breath in hopes of slowing down your heart rate.

[43:28] Rory: I think they get there directly.

[43:31] Matt: I agree. I think that there’s many more powers over the body once you get to a deeper spiritual state. I don’t know if studies show that, though. We’ll have to check. I agree that it’s like you meditate. When I took a Zen buddhist meditation class in high school, it’s just counting your breaths, and every time you lose count, you start from the beginning, and I think you count to, like, 36 and then start over. And at the end of the class, we had to go around and say how the class has influenced our daily lives. And this one guy was like, honestly, I’m not meditating every day, but I swim every day, and it has helped me pay so much more attention and be more present. When I’m swimming, I just focus on my breath. And the teacher lit up. He was like, you could tell that this really was like, aha. You get it. And I think that is the point is we are carrying our breath with us, and so why not carry that breath awareness with us everywhere we go?

[44:51] Rory: Yeah. And it can always anchor you. And that’s what I find when I meditate. And I think this is a cool thing about meditation, which is that you inevitably drift off into some sort of a daydream or you’re arguing with someone or you’re fantasizing about what you’re going to do later. And sometimes you just drift a little bit away and you call yourself back, and sometimes you drift really far away, like you’re flying in a deep train of thought. But the journey. This is going to sound cheesy, I think. But the journey back to the present is always the same distance, no matter how far you go. You can go really far, or you can go not far. You can go this way, you can go that way. But the journey back to the present is always as simple as just, like, clicking into your breath. And it’s always right there.

[45:53] Matt: Yes, absolutely.

[45:55] Rory: Is that cheesy or profound or just.

[45:58] Matt: Like, can it be both? I guess things can be cheesy and insightful. No, I think it’s most insightful. Very insightful. What did you say?

[46:11] Rory: Live, laugh, love. Cheesy and profound, if you ask me.

[46:16] Matt: Yeah. See? An earlier episode. But when I was researching breath. Yes. No. You know what was crazy, actually?

[46:27] Rory: Tell me.

[46:28] Matt: Yesterday I was meditating, and I was doing my meditation app, and I click. Sometimes there will be a theme, and I clicked just any. Let the universe decide the theme. And the theme was breath.

[46:45] Rory: Oh, my God. That universe, that algorithm.

[46:50] Matt: I know. They knew. And Fiona was like, it has been said that no one can steal your breath. Remember, your breath is always there to center you. This is exactly what she was saying to me.

[47:06] Rory: No one can steal your breath. And, you know, in Hebrew, the word for breath and the word for soul are pretty much the same, I think, in Latin, too. Really?

[47:20] Matt: Yeah, I think so. I read something like that when I was googling breath. Important, spiritual. Why?

[47:30] Rory: Well, I guess, yeah. Didn’t we talk about this in our last episode? Like, you see a living person, you see a dead person. What’s the most immediate difference?

[47:43] Matt: Yeah. Breath.

[47:45] Rory: The breath has gone out of them. They’re no longer doing this up down thing.

[47:50] Matt: Yeah. And isn’t the soul as ethereal as the breath?

[47:56] Rory: Yeah, perhaps. Oh, yeah. It is. Spirit. Spirit in Latin is like respiration. And then you have aspirations like, I aspire to be a scientist, whatever. And in modern Hebrew, when they needed to create a word for aspirations, because there wasn’t one, in biblical Hebrew, they copied that etymological link.

[48:35] Matt: And what’s the hebrew word for aspiration?

[48:39] Rory: Shefa, which is the same word as to inhale.

[48:45] Matt: Oh, interesting.

[48:46] Rory: Isn’t that intriguing? But anyways, what was I saying before that?

[48:53] Matt: Rest, soul, ethereal. That was me.

[48:56] Rory: Yes. The very idea that there’s, like a ghostly presence within us has to be connected to the fact that a very big part of our physicality is this ghostly dance we do with air all the time.

[49:17] Matt: Yeah. Who can forget that? That’s why they buried people alive accidentally, because they were only checking if you were breathing or not.

[49:28] Rory: Yeah. It’s not the best way to check. It’s a provisional way to check for life.

[49:34] Matt: But it is so interesting because now there’s sort of this weird limbo state of living where you can be artificially breathing with machines in the hospital, and so your body is still decaying. It’s still in a living state to.

[50:00] Rory: An extent, but your brain dead.

[50:03] Matt: But you’re brain dead and you can’t breathe on your own. But I guess breathing on your own, we have fixed that problem. We can make you.

[50:14] Rory: Yeah. Yeah. It’s very bizarre. I’m sure Madame Lowry has talked about what’s going on with the soul.

[50:25] Matt: Don’t. I don’t think an ideal position.

[50:28] Rory: No. Because I don’t think the soul can completely walk away from that situation.

[50:34] Matt: No. I don’t know. It’s hard to say.

[50:38] Rory: I think they’re still in the room.

[50:40] Matt: Yeah. Studies show they’re still in the room, begging for Frazier to be turned on.

[50:47] Rory: Begging for someone to come turn on the tv. Have we talked to the audience about that?

[50:52] Matt: Yeah, we have.

[50:54] Rory: Yeah. Rory’s job, if I’m ever in a coma, is to make sure there’s always tv on.

[51:00] Matt: Keep the Frasiers running.

[51:02] Rory: Keep the Frasiers running. I haven’t been keeping up with the new.

[51:08] Matt: Oh, well, I’m one behind.

[51:12] Rory: I’ll catch up. There’s been other things going on, obviously.

[51:16] Matt: Yeah, sure. Other tv to watch, too.

[51:19] Rory: There’s been other tv to watch.

[51:22] Matt: Yeah.

[51:23] Rory: There’s been deep breaths oh, my God. I woke up at 430 the other day.

[51:29] Matt: Okay.

[51:30] Rory: The amount of meditation I did was just so incredible.

[51:35] Matt: Oh, you were like, I have all this time. Let’s use it to meditate.

[51:40] Rory: I meditated. I did morning pages. I prayed in a really spacious way. Everything with the breath, it really was a great foundation for the day.

[51:53] Matt: Did you have a better day?

[51:55] Rory: No, I was so tired because I didn’t get enough sleep. Oh, no, but I’m always tired.

[52:03] Matt: Okay.

[52:04] Rory: I hope there’s a chapter in this book. Maybe I’ll keep reading it. We’ll see about energy. Breath. I want a breath. That’s some sort of breathing technique. That’s cocaine.

[52:18] Matt: Yeah, like Wim Hof. Isn’t that what that kind of is?

[52:22] Rory: Well, I mean, jumping in ice water will definitely wake you up. I’m also thinking of switching to cold showers.

[52:32] Matt: I would love that. I would love to hear how that journey goes for you.

[52:35] Rory: For me, it’s just about dry skin. The hot showers have been making my legs very dry and itchy lately, and the cool shower leaves my legs feeling relaxed and nice.

[52:47] Matt: Lukewarm.

[52:49] Rory: Yeah, they haven’t been cold. They’re just like the temperature you’d bathe a baby in, which most adults would consider, like, unacceptably cold.

[53:02] Matt: Oh, is that right?

[53:03] Rory: Yeah. It’s one of the hardest things about being a baby. You don’t get to have a nice, hot shower.

[53:11] Matt: Besides all that industrial mush they make you eat.

[53:14] Rory: Yeah. Weakening your jaw.

[53:18] Matt: I want to know what he thinks about my jaw being so restricted from TMJ.

[53:26] Rory: Well, I think he has that too. He’s like a bad breather.

[53:31] Matt: Yeah. Well, are we all just. We’re born bad breathers. And I think he came to this.

[53:37] Rory: Though, because he was, like a very bad breather.

[53:42] Matt: It’s so incredible to me that you can be a bad breather, something you just do so automatically.

[53:47] Rory: I mean, I have a lot of breath issues. I’ve got allergies. He seems to think we can cure our allergies with these techniques too, which I find very tempting, of course.

[53:57] Matt: Oh, I think you need to throw yourself into this then. By the time you have a few months until allergies season starts. Yeah, but just a few. You better get going.

[54:09] Rory: Just a few.

[54:10] Matt: Can acupuncture allergies? Have you ever looked into that?

[54:14] Rory: I have. They definitely have it for that. I’ve never tried out acupuncture. They actually offer it through my school, which is weird.

[54:23] Matt: Oh, okay.

[54:24] Rory: They’re like, rabbinical students need acupuncture.

[54:29] Matt: This is the thing. That’s one thing that’s really interesting about acupuncture is that it’s really permeated western medicine for some reason.

[54:39] Rory: Yeah, it’s a real recommended.

[54:42] Matt: Yeah. It’s become a real standard of care.

[54:44] Rory: The docs are recommending. Yeah. Supplementary medicine, they call it.

[54:50] Matt: Oh, is that what they call it?

[54:51] Rory: Well, James Nestor arrived to a breath workshop, like a sort of hippie dippy breath workshop through a real good. Breath is real.

[55:03] Matt: Breath is real, though. The oxygen to your blood cells and the blood cells. You know what I mean?

[55:10] Rory: Yeah, but he talks about, and it’s a good point, he talks about how little our medicine system cares about breath. You go for a physical, the doctor usually doesn’t really talk to you much about your breath. They talk about your blood pressure. They don’t check your blood oxygen level necessarily.

[55:29] Matt: Yeah, absolutely. It’s like. Yeah, because on the CBS show, he was. Morning show, he was saying so many things can be cured from breath. And then they were like, but then why did we stop focusing on breath? And then he was like, well, modern medicine, we thought it would be easier to just take a pill.

[55:47] Rory: Yeah.

[55:49] Matt: And also I do think that there is like, okay, well, I don’t know. Well, we’re breathing, so there’s no, like, I guess the idea of a spectrum of quality of breath.

[55:59] Rory: Yes. It’s not how we think of things. We think of breath as binary. And that’s what his book is really about, saying that breath is not binary. It’s not a matter of breathing or not. Mouth breathing is very different and. Yeah. Like this idea that the nose and the mouth are just like redundancies. Like breathe through one, breathe through the other, whatever.

[56:20] Matt: Right. I think I’m going to watch one of his videos with the five techniques to make you breathe better. Yeah, all I probably need.

[56:30] Rory: Yeah, I might skip to the back of the book that just has the techniques.

[56:35] Matt: Yeah. Because I don’t need the evolutionary understanding of breath.

[56:40] Rory: No, I don’t need the interview with the coral reef divers. That’s the thing about the nonfiction book market also. A lot of things are just really. Could be a long article, but there’s not really a market for long articles. There’s a market for books.

[57:04] Matt: Yeah. It could have been a pamphlet.

[57:06] Rory: So people are forced to fill up the book. Fill up the book.

[57:13] Matt: And what better way to fill up the book than with studies.

[57:17] Rory: Yeah. And case studies. Margaret came to me complaining, know, if threatened by a doctor, they love that.

[57:25] Matt: Oh, yeah. I wish that this person had interviewed Kate Winslet, who learned how to hold her breath for four minutes to film Avatar. Really?

[57:34] Rory: Water as like Titanic.

[57:38] Matt: Not Titanic, though, interestingly enough.

[57:41] Rory: Wait, Kate Winslet’s in Avatar?

[57:44] Matt: The second avatar, I think.

[57:47] Rory: Oh, I forgot about that movie was so bad.

[57:52] Matt: The first one or the second one?

[57:54] Rory: The second one.

[57:55] Matt: Oh, you saw the second one?

[57:57] Rory: I did.

[57:58] Matt: Did you like the first one?

[58:00] Rory: I did.

[58:02] Matt: Interesting. Do you think you’d like the first one now?

[58:07] Rory: I think so. It’s quite a fun movie.

[58:10] Matt: Wow. I didn’t find it fun. I found it long.

[58:14] Rory: But I saw the second one. It was so boring and long also, I was on that in one of those theaters where the chair moves around and spits on you.

[58:25] Matt: Oh, my God. You saw it in four DX?

[58:28] Rory: I saw it in four DX. I hated it. I was like, I do not feel immersed. I actually feel demursed. Like I keep being pulled out of the movie because I’m in pain.

[58:40] Matt: I can’t believe you.

[58:41] Rory: The chair is throwing me around, abusing me, spitting on me, spraying like fabrize on me. Like, you see these gorgeous plants on the screen and it sprays like floral fabrize on you and you’re like, that’s not what those plants would smell like. What?

[58:58] Matt: Oh, wow. So interesting. Because our friend Lexi is obsessed with 40 x movies. She is always wanting to see every movie with that experience.

[59:08] Rory: Yes, I’m very anti, I saw a.

[59:12] Matt: Bullet train in 40 x, which was actually a good movie to see because that movie, it’s not like a weighty movie. It’s not like I’m trying to experience the fauna.

[59:23] Rory: I want to see sliding doors in 40 x. I want to feel Gwyneth Paltrow getting the haircut. I want them to, when the blow dryer is going, I want to feel like the blow dryer on my neck. Yeah. I want a little scratchy comb. And obviously I want to feel those doors slam shut.

[59:52] Matt: Yeah, absolutely. But could they materialize? Could they capture and thrust upon you the heartbreak of seeing your boyfriend?

[01:00:05] Rory: It would punch you in the gut. She walks in on her boyfriend sleeping with someone else and like a robot arm punches you in the gut.

[01:00:14] Matt: I want to see sliding Frasier’s. The episode of Fraser that’s based off sliding doors in four DX.

[01:00:20] Rory: Yes. I would also go see a screening of that.

[01:00:23] Matt: I want to feel Frasier trying on the blazer, trying on the sweater, trying on the blazer, trying on Dr. Frasier Crane.

[01:00:30] Rory: Or just Fraj.

[01:00:31] Matt: Just Frase.

[01:00:34] Rory: Any hootie.

[01:00:35] Matt: Any hootie well, I think it is all about the breath.

[01:00:40] Rory: I’m going to certainly keep investing in it a little bit.

[01:00:44] Matt: I actually do think that if there’s one way out of this, it’s through the breath. And I’m grateful that we have it, because what if we didn’t have it? If we didn’t have breath, we’d be.

[01:00:54] Rory: Talking about blinking right now.

[01:00:56] Matt: Yeah. How could we express our spiritualness?

[01:01:00] Rory: Could we all about the blinking? The blink of life.

[01:01:04] Matt: That’s true. We’d be waxing poetic on the blink of life.

[01:01:07] Rory: Yeah.

[01:01:08] Matt: The ability to just blink, the ability to see, unsee. See unsee.

[01:01:16] Rory: Yeah. There’s something to it for sure.

[01:01:18] Matt: Speaks to our.

[01:01:20] Rory: I think we’d find something.

[01:01:22] Matt: Oh, yeah, we’d find something. If nothing else, we’re seekers.

[01:01:27] Rory: Seekers. Seekers. So breath it is. How to be and will be.

[01:01:33] Matt: Right, Matt?

[01:01:34] Rory: Right rare. I will talk to you later, Ttyl.

[01:01:39] Matt: Oh, wait. Before we go, I just want to remind everyone to like and share.

[01:01:45] Rory: Like it. Please share it.

[01:01:48] Matt: Please share it. Just give us one share. Share.

[01:01:51] Rory: Yeah.

[01:01:52] Matt: Sharon.

[01:01:52] Rory: Spread the word.

[01:01:54] Matt: Share with a Sharon. Okay.

[01:01:58] Rory: Today is. Yeah, it’s share with a Sharon week. Share with a Sharon of your choice.

[01:02:04] Matt: Find the best Sharon in your life or the worst. And make sure they know about this.

[01:02:08] Rory: Podcast, one who needs it the most.

[01:02:12] Matt: All right. Bye, Matt. Bye.