Week 1: Breathing With A New Mindset

This week was a lot of yoga and webinars. Kundalini yoga is something that my on-site advisor Pilar Tumolo introduced me to. I’ve known Pilar for my whole life, as she is one of my mom’s closest friends, and I immediately reached out to her to ask about being my advisor due to her specialty of being a yoga instructor and psychotherapist. The first thing she recommended was that I sign up for this Kundalini course, which is known for incorporating movement and sound into yoga while mostly focusing on the breath. I’ve completed one week of this practice so far, and I still have very little idea of what it is or what I should be doing. This is a bit of an overstatement, but it is definitely unlike anything I have ever done before, and I am grateful for that. So far it has mainly been focused on various different ways of breathing depending on the situation, but it has already given me a better idea of what can benefit from focusing on the breath. Something else that I attended this week was a webinar about breathing hosted by James Nestor, author of Breath. I first read Breath early on in quarantine before my AP exams and was immediately fixated on the concepts that he talks about. This book places an emphasis on the daily dedication to focusing on the breath and proves how we can benefit from doing this. The webinar I attended on Monday was essentially a 101 about the topic, so it was covering topics I already knew about, but it’s always nice to get a refresher. Here were some interesting findings: almost all of our ancient ancestors had perfect teeth, which is because they breathed through their noses instead of their mouths, breathing in for 5.5 seconds and out for 5.5 seconds has been shown to be the optimal time and can reduce blood pressure and heart rate, breathing through the mouth changes our facial shape.

Thank you for taking time out of your day to read this, and please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.  

Webber Sloan