👋 Greetings and salutations!
I’m glad you’re here! Thanks for joining us.
This month I have continued to focus on how to slow down my life, and as a result, I rejigged my blogging frequency to allow more time to work on my book, which had been suffering a little. If you missed it, you can see my previous book update in the January edition of this newsletter. Unfortunately, it’s still taking longer than I would like, but I love the editing and rewriting process. So it will get done when it gets done.
I had a bit of a debacle with my art blog where someone had inserted all manner of nastiness, and I couldn’t upgrade the back end a couple of weeks ago. So I ended up having to rebuild it from the ground up. Unfortunately, the process took far more of my time than anticipated and caused much consternation. All good now, though! Everything is back up and running.
😸 Curiouser and Curiouser!
Where did it go?
I was swiping through Instagram reels earlier in the month and came across one of those obnoxious “I was today years old when I learned...” posts that said something about most weight loss coming out through our breathing process. Which, of course, made me do a double take and, shortly after that, down a curiosity rabbit hole. If I am being completely honest, I had always assumed that we “burned” off the extra calories through exercise, and it just dissipated through heat/sweat, with some of it lost down the toilet. So when I heard that breathing played the most significant part in the process, I was sceptical. I wondered what this person was selling. It was on social media, after all!
I have used breathwork for stress reduction and meditation before and found it very helpful. So I figured there might be something to this claim too.
I will summarise some of the things I found particularly interesting in my curiosity adventure, and if you would like a deeper dive, I have included some links below.
First, I needed to determine if the Insta-person was on the money.
A University of NSW study published in the British Medical Journal (linked below) found that when weight is lost, most is excreted via the breath as carbon dioxide. They found that the lungs are the critical organ for weight loss! OK...so the Instagram person was speaking the truth! Ha! Will wonders never cease? They also pointed out that these findings did not negate the need for reduced calorie intake and increased activity in developing a healthy lifestyle leading to weight loss. Bummer.
While digging up that nugget, I discovered that some specific breathing exercises could augment the usual weight loss methods. Diaphragmatic breathing and something called the Senobi Breathing exercise. In a nutshell, it works to get more oxygen into your system, which boosts the body’s ability to burn calories. It’s stoking the fire.
The Senobi breathing exercise (SBE), in particular, has been shown to help weight loss in overweight individuals and soothe asthma. Tick tick!
A Japanese study (linked below) found t“The participants included 20 healthy women and another twenty who were overweight.1 For the obese volunteers, up-regulation of sympathetic nerve activity increased significantly, between 33-54 percent, after one minute of SBE. They also experienced higher secretion levels of noradrenaline, estradiol, and growth hormone. Low levels of these hormones have been associated with obesity.” The healthy group did not experience the same uptick in secretion levels.
Concerning asthma, the same study found: “The asthmatic participants in the study were instructed to practice SBE for one minute, three times per day. After one month, the team found a majority of the patients “showed a decrease in the frequency of asthma rescue medication use.”
I decided to give it a go — I love to experiment on myself — and have noticed an improvement in my asthma symptoms. As for weight loss...I am none the wiser; I don’t know whether it’s my gym work, nutritional adjustments, the SBE or a combination of all of the above that makes my clothes looser. But it cannot hurt to spend a few minutes deep breathing, so why not!
Other benefits of deep breathing mentioned in other studies:
stress reduction
regulation of the nervous system
can help with depression
lower heart rate and blood pressure
Do you want to see how it’s done?
Watch the first part of this video... if you can keep a straight face and ignore the miracle stuff, give it a go :
And here’s another one…
Would you like to know more?
British Medical Journal - When somebody loses weight, where does the fat go? UNSW study
The “Senobi” breathing exercise is recommended as first-line treatment for obesity - PubMed
10 Breathing Techniques for Stress Relief and More - Healthline - This one includes how to do diaphragmatic breathing.
✒ Things I hit publish on this month
🎥 You get to see it first! I filmed a video of me setting up my new lightweight nature journalling field palette, and it won’t be live for everyone else for another week or so. I hope you enjoy it!
🎨 My favourite creation this month
I had an absolute ball painting those stone steps!
👀 Curious things that caught my attention this month
💄 Women Before & After Removing Their Makeup
🗣️ The radical reinvention of the English language (insidehighered.com) - via Kottke
⛽️ Life’s a gas. – Present & Correct (presentandcorrect.com) - via SwissMiss
📔 A woman’s diary entry during WWII
🐌 Why Knights fought snails in medieval manuscripts
🦟 Wow! Look at this REALLY old praying mantis!
🤣 These altered Op Sop finds had me laughing
🧐 What if...we had a chat?
Do you do any breathwork? What do you use it for?