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Hey, Life Kitlistener, this is ManoucheZamorodi, host of NPR's Ted RadioHour, and the new Ish podcast BodyElectric.
So this is a series about how our technology is impacting our physicalhealth.
Andtoday, the Life Kit team invited me to share an episode that we did about the relationship between our screens and how webreathe.
Because a lot of people don't realize that as they type andscroll, they hold their breath or take shallowbreaths.
But there's actually a pretty easyfix.
So please take a listen and if you like theepisode, join me over at the Body Electric Feed for more investigations into how we can live better and healthier with ourdevices.
Enjoy.Hey, it'sManouche.
I have been a journalist covering technology and how it changes us for over adecade.
And a woman named Linda Stone was someone I had read about and would occasionally bump into pretty much from thebeginning.
My name is Linda Stone and I worked at Apple for seven and a half or eight years and I worked at Microsoft for a little over eightyears.
Linda has a background in educationalpsychology.
She didmarketing,innovation, and research all thoseyears.
But what made her well known in certain nerdy circles was what she did outside of her work at those techcompanies.
It all started in2007. In2007, I was experiencing some healthchallenges.
And as a result ofthat, I began to work with someone on breathing techniques and breathingexercises.
And I noticed day after day that once I got to mycomputer, I was either holding my breath for long periods oftime.
Or I was breathing veryshallowly.
And this would go on forhours.
Youknow, as I would open my email and the email would streamin, I would inhale because we tend to inhale inanticipation.
But I wouldn't exhale because so many emails would be streamingin.
And I'm guessing you can relate tothat.
I'm getting stressed out just hearing you describe all your emails comingin.
Yeah. And it didn't change unless I interrupted myself very consciously or stoodup, walkedaround, and did my breathing exercisesagain.
And Iwondered, was this just me or was this some more universalexperience?
So you are someone who likes to get to the bottom of the things that youobserve.
And you embarked on what you have referred to as kitchen tablescience.
I love this somuch. Kitchen table science or citizenscience.
And so I went out and gotsome, got a piece of technology that had an ear clip that would allow me to see pulse and heart rate variability displayed on thecomputer.
And I decided that anyone brave enough to come over and visit me was going to betested.
So Linda invited peopleover.
Friends, friends offriends, former colleagues fromMicrosoft, random people that I just thought wereinteresting.
And she'd hook them up to the health monitoring gadgets she had and then sit them down at hercomputer.
I would have them do email and I would have them do webbrowsing, randomly and also web browsing around specific assignments that I gavethem.
And I think it's important to tell you that almost always I gave them cookies or some kind of dessertafterwards.
Because you werelike,oh, thank you for being my guineapig.
Thank you for allowing me to observe you for the last 30minutes.
Andyes, thank you for being my guineapig.
Linda observed dozens ofpeople.
And the only ones who didn't hold their breath or take shallow breaths were a former military testpilot, atriathlete, and professionalperformers, includingdancers,singers, and achillist.
Who was really the mostimpressive.
Those were the people who stayedembodied.
They were people who had learned to breathe and do something at the same time as part of theirtraining.
So you observed thishappening.
You're notsurprised. It soundslike.
And you gave it aname.Yes,email,apnea, or screenapnea.
What I really wanted to communicate was that there was disturbed breathing when we were in front ofscreens.
We've all heard for years that taking deep breaths is a way of calmingourselves, taking life down anotch.
But what if we're not breathing properly or much at all when we probably need calming down themost?
All those hours when we're on ourscreens.
I'm MnuchiaZamorodi, and this is season two of NPR's BodyElectric.
This season we've been doing two kinds of episodes foryou.
A weekly five minute episode to entice you to take a break from yourscreen.
But we're also continuing our investigations into the relationship between our technology and ourbodies.
Today, our tech habits and ourbreath, how we can retrain our bodies to be more resilient and better deal with all the screen time stress coming atus.
So back to LindaStone. She figures out she's not breathing well when she's on hercomputer.
And neither are a lot of other people sheknows.
But sowhat? Like what's the bigdeal?
Well, the big deal is when I discovered that there was this compromise inbreathing, I did reach out to people in healthcare and researchers that Iknew.
Andboy, did I get a lot ofinformation?
The body becomesacidic.
The kidneys begin to reabsorbsodium.
And asoxygen, carbon dioxide and nitric oxide balance areundermined, our whole biochemistry is thrownoff.
So all of these chronic diseases that have been on the rise and probably follow the same trajectory as the ubiquity of our adoption of personaltechnology, I began to see that it was probablyrelated.
At thetime, did you change any of yourhabits, your techhabits?
Ohboy, did I evertry? It's not thateasy.
So I tried taking actually inspiration from thecellist.
Observing the cellist was probably one of the most powerful things that I had witnessed when I was doing all thistesting.
Because I could see that his whole body stayed andlivened,energetic.
And he was fully present when he was sitting in front of ascreen.
So I began to pick up different instruments to see if there was some instrument that I would enjoy playing that would help me in terms of relating to an object while I was maintaining posture andbreathing.
I started to take ballroom dancinglessons, which was the mostfun.
That'sawesome. Because that was both rhythmic and I had to stay completely embodied and present in relation to a dancepartner.
I got up morefrequently.
First, I got up for five minutes once anhour, but I really realized that it was really fiveminutes, every 30 minutes thatmattered.
What also strikes me is the fact that here weare, youknow,16, 17 years since you first didthis, and I just read an article in the New York Times that mentioned yourwork.
It still makes me thinkthat, youknow, in a society that's obsessed with mindfulness and meditation and breathwork, why we are not really making the connection as youdid, especially if every time you talk about it or I read about you and yourwork, everyone'slike,yes,yes.
We all resonate withit.
Yeah, but I'll tellyou, I'm humbled by the continued interest inthis.
And I really believe that the more aware we are of how our relationship with technology is impacting our personal health and our personalrelationships, the more that we will take steps to discover ways to improvethat.
As Linda pointed out all those yearsago, when we're on ourdevices, we do two things that affect ourbreath.
We change ourposture. So as Linda putsit, we melt into ourtechnology.
We become one withit. And when we dothat, we also get a steady stream ofinterruptions,pings, andinformation.
So what's a gal to do if she doesn't want to take up aninstrument, and she's already trying to takebreaks?
I think you can absolutely be a healthy breather looking at a screen without adoubt.
When we comeback, JamesNestor, author of the megabestseller,Breath, the new science of a lostart.
Talk to James on finding out if you have screenapnea, and he'll explain how to reset yourbreath.
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We'reback. And I just want to note that a lot of people are talking aboutbreath,right?
It's kind oftrendy, especially in the world of propodcasts.
I don't think that most people realize just how important how we breed is the land of coldplunges.
Tell me if you're ever in a bad mood getting out of coldplunges.
Intermittentfasting.
Just eat all the food you want toeat, but just eat it in thatwindow.
And other wellness trends taken to theextreme.
How would you guys like to learn a 60-second breathworktechnique?
I just finished up like a seven-minute guided breathingsession.
Oh mygod,bro. Why am Ishaking?
Who's I to usethis?Yeah.
Writer James Nester has no time forthis.
Most of those bros who claim to be at absolute peak health are the worst breeders you can find outthere.
Really? I'm being serious because a lot of them are completely vain and they do not allow their stomachs torelax.
If you are constantly inhaling and sucking up yourgut, you're inhibiting the extension of thediaphragm, you're inhibiting bloodflow, you're inhibiting the ability of the body to pump lymphfluid.
You are causing stress because you are clenching your stomach and sending signals up to your brain that you are in a state ofstress.
So don't look to those bros for healthybreathing.
James is a sciencejournalist, but he embarked on trying to better understand what happens when we breathe properly because of personalproblems.
I was suffering from chronicbronchitis.
I was getting mild bouts of pneumonia everyyear.
I was starting to wheeze when I was working out and I thought I was doing everythingright, eating the rightfoods,exercising, sleeping eight hours anight, all ofthat.
But I just kept getting sick with breathingproblems.
So it wasn't until a doctor friend suggested I look into my breathinghabits, which is something I had never thought aboutbefore.
And once I adjusted those habits and started understanding that it's not just that we'rebreathing, but how we're breathing it had a huge transformational effect not only on myrespiration, but on other aspects of myhealth.
Yeah, can you explain like what is poor breathing and what is goodbreathing?
Poor breathing is what you see when you look at around90% of thepopulation.
It includes breathing through themouth.
It includes breathing up into thechest.
It includes unconsciously holding yourbreath, breathing toomuch,snoring, sleepapnea,asthma, on and on andon.
And what are the consequences ofthat?
How does that impact a person'shealth?
Because I think peoplethink,well, if as long as I'm likebreathing, I'malive,right?
Well, on the milderspectrum, the consequences are moreasthma, morepanic, moreanxiety, morestress, on the more severespectrum.
If you continue having very dysfunctional breathing habits throughout yourlife, especially atnight, that can lead to increased risk ofstroke, heartdisease, periodontaldisease,diabetes.
So all of these major chronic diseases that we're contending with have some sort of connection to how we'rebreathing.
You call breathing like this a lostart.
When did we loseit? It's hard to trace the exactmoment, but you can trace a lot of this to the age ofindustrialization.
We lost so much 400 yearsago, 300 yearsago.
So we lost our food supply that used to be whole foods and natural and require a bunch ofchewing, which allowed us to expand our mouths and tone our airways and breathebetter.
But we've also lost our ability to have properposture.
And without having properposture, it is very difficult to take a properbreath.
If you are hunchedover, you can't extend yourbelly.
You can't take thatsoft,slow, deepbreath.
All your breath gets caught up in your chest and that is extremelyinefficient.
You'reright. There's noroom.
I just caughtmyself. I'm leaned over my laptop and there's nowhere for it togo.
The air just has to go up because whatever happened to stomachs and shouldersback, that's what I used to betold.
The olddays,yeah. So if you are ever apprehensive about how you'rebreathing, look at how a healthy dogbreathes, healthy infantbreathes, acheetah, ahorse, acow.
They breathe verydeep.
Their stomachs expand very gently when theybreathe.
They breathe very slowly and they breathe in and out of theirnoses.
So the problem with chest breathing is that the majority of the area of the lungs that absorbs oxygen are those lowerlobes.
So if you're just breathing into yourchest, you're taking air in that you neveruse.
About50% of that air you won't beusing.
And so that causes you to breathemore.
And the more youbreathe, you start sending stress signals to thebrain.
And if you have dysfunctional breathing habits in theday,absolutely, it's going to affect your ability tofocus, to get oxygenefficiently, to regulate your emotions andmore.
I'm thinking someone might be listening andwondering, do I dothis?
I don't even know if I dothis.
What is a way that we can really see how well we're breathing during the day while we are trying to do ourwork?
It'shard. Youknow, you can go into a lab and be assessed thatway.
A few people are going to dothat.
HRV is one thing that can provide a good general outlook of your stresslevels.
HRV heart ratevariability.
This is the latest craze inwearables.
Everybody's measuring itnowadays.
So rightnow, if you were to place your hand over yourheart, if you're really focusing as youinhale, your heart rate speedsup.
And as youexhale, it slowsdown.
So the more space you have between those heartbeats on the inhale and exhale are indicative of your stresslevels.
You want more of adifference, more of a variability between those twothings.
That's funny also because I always thought a nice steady heart beat is what youwant, but actually youdon't.
That is a harbinger of disease and futuredeath.
That's what I've been told bycardiologists.
Once they start hearing a heartbeat that sounds like aclock, they get reallyscared.
I worryabout,well, I worry about adding more worries to people'splates.
There's a lot to worry about thesedays.
And I don't want people to belike, oh mygod, please tellme.
Don't tell me one more thing that I need to measure or need technologyfor.
I need to think about whatis, I don'tknow, a moreholistic,somatic, internal way of checking in with yourself during theday.
So nobody needs more boxes tocheck,right?
I think that breathing doesn't have to become aburden.
Maybe for a couple of weeks as you develop betterhabits, that might require you to spend a little more time andenergy, but once you develop thosehabits, you don't have to think about it because no one wants to have to think about the 20,000 breaths they're taking every singleday.
You want to have good habits so your body automatically doesthat.
When we comeback, James takes us through the reset breathing exercise that you can do to get back on track with yourbreaths.
You'll also hear my manifesto for breathing whiletyping.
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We'reback. James Nester is a science journalist who ended up writing a best-selling book about the art ofbreathing, the lostart.
Butfirst, he had to teach himself to breathebetter.
He did one exercise regularly until his body learned to do itautomatically, to breathe better without him having to constantly remind himself while he wasworking.
Are you ready to give it atry?
The first thing I would ask people to do is taking yourhand, placing it around where your belly button is just lightly over yourstomach.
And as youinhale, you want to feel that slightexpansion, that abdominalregion.
And then as you continueinhaling, try to lift that breath up to your chestarea.
So you start low and you work it up a littlehigher.
And then if you slow that down breathing in and out of your nose at a rate of around five to six secondsin, five to six secondsout, you'll start to notice your shouldersrelaxing.
You'll start to notice the muscles in your facerelaxing.
You'll feel your heart ratelower.
If you are looking at your bloodpressure, most people see a significant drop in blood pressure because this is your body re-entering its naturalstate, the state in which it was designed to be in that we are so divorced fromtoday.
So this is taking some concentration on my part and it'slovely.
It's going to take some concentration at thebeginning, especially with people who have never taken afocused,deep,easy, softbreath.
But then tomorrow when you doit, you're going tosay, this is a little biteasier.
And then the next day it getseasier.
And a few weeks fromnow, you're going to be doing thisunconsciously.
I cannot tell you what a difference this is going to make for your stress levels atwork, for your ability tofocus.
There's been studies that have found that people make significantly better decisions when they are breathingslowly, when they are breathingcalmly.
It helps you regulate your emotionsbetter.
Breathe this way for two minutes aday.
And I think even that's going to make adifference.
What I love about our conversation is that it feels like it's something that you could workon.
And then maybe your body would take over in someways.
That feels like a relief tome.
That's exactly the point of so many of thesepractices.
Once you establishit, you don't have to think aboutit.
And once you don't have to think aboutit, you start to notice that you're feelingdifferent.
And this is backed up by any wearable that you happen to have on yourbody.
And then you feel so much better that you want to go further intothis.
You want to explore what else breathing cando.
That's JamesNester. His book is called Breath the New Science of a LostArt.
So in preparation for thisepisode, I started collecting the results of my own heart rate variabilitymonitoring.
I started wearing an Applewatch, gathering data on myphone.
Look, I'll behonest, the numbers are not terriblyencouraging.
But I have decided not to engage with more tracking and data on thisone.
Keep thinking about the cellist that Linda talkedabout.
What strikes me is that this person has made peace with her workinstruments.
Imean,granted, that is way easier and enticing than me making peace with mylaptop.
But I do love what my technology makespossible.
Maybe I'm not producing soothingsonatas, buthey, I wrote this episode onit.
So what if I started thinking of myself as a professional performer who needs to regulate their body in order to do their bestwork?
What if we take inspiration from the pilot who is able to keep his anxiety and stress in check for the well-being of himself and therefore hispassengers?
Whatif, like thedancer, we accept that we do our best work when we feel loose andlimber?
We are informationworkers.
And instead of that sounding depressing and like a totalgrind, what if we treat ourselves like the mentalathletes?
We kind ofare. And accept that there is a body attached to our brains and it needs oxygen and breaks to function best to keep the plane fromcrashing.
We've been doing five minute episodes for you to listen to as you hopefully take brief breaks from yourwork.
Check out the body electric feed to hear from all kinds of different people who are trying to balancework,technology, and theirhealth.
This is not aone-size-fits-all.
Youknow, some people are countenancesteps.
Other people absolutely arenot.
I hope you will listen along as you take a break from yourscreen.
If you are not takingbreaks, we have a quick start guide to get you going and a weekly newsletter with more info and motivation to keep yougoing.
Go to npr.org slash body electric to signup.
And if it's yourthing, I'm on Instagram atmanouch.z.
I am posting more there about this episode and tips from all the other topics that we cover on bodyelectric.
I'd love to see you over theretoo.
Again, only if it's yourthing.
Okay, this episode was produced by Katie Montellione and edited by Sana's MeschkinPoor.
Original music comes from DavidHerman.
Our audio engineer was RobertRodriguez.
Special thanks to ColinCampbell, FionaGearen, and ArielRedding.
I'm ManouchZomerodi, and you've been listening to Body Electric fromNPR.
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