A physiologist argues that cognitive strategies alone won't fix chronic stress, and that training your nervous system through resonance breathing works better than the popular physiological sigh. The sigh's benefits come mainly from being slow, not from anything special about the technique itself.
because I truly do feel, Ben, like we are on a really unsustainable path as a society because we're so overstimulated, we're under-recovered. I feel like we are constantly bombarded with like this cognitive engagement and being like enmeshed with our smartphones and almost like never physiologically regulating ourselves. And so I've just come to the conclusion that like we can't think our way out of this. Uh, we can't think our way out of a dysregulated nervous system. So now I'm just kind of trying to answer that question. Of like, how do we go back to like the roots of training, like our underlying physiology, so that we can create a nervous system that's less chaotic, become less emotionally reactive, and then also improve things like sleep and recovery. So that, that really was like the impetus for getting me back into like the studying of interventions for nervous system functioning and got me connected to what I'm doing now, which is working at Ohm Health and building some really cool technology. The next wave of therapeutics that I think is going to make its way into mainstream is resonance breathing. They're like, if we truly want to make like an efficient change of the nervous system really quickly, um, I don't think like things like the physiological sigh that gets like purported as being like this magical breathwork technique is truly the way to go. I think resonance— you mean like the— yeah, that one, that thing. I mean, I kind of exaggerated, but yeah, that thing. And the reason, and the reason being, and again, I don't want to get on, you know, too much of a tangent, is that That might be effective, but the reason I think that the sigh is effective is because it's just slow-paced breathing. It slows you down. I don't know if that, that last inhalation or sip of air is actually physiologically changing you to the point of, or to the extent as something like resonance breathing is.
The Solution to Aging Might Be Closer Than Anyone Realizes - With Ben Goertzel
