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Summary: Guest: Ed Harrold, author of “Breath for life.” Ed Harrold discusses pranayama breathing, its health effects and sleep.
- Ed talks about how he learned about yoga and pranayama breathing.
- His 22.5 mile Around The Island swim and his life transforming experience.
- Ed leads listeners through a pranayama exercise.
- Ed discusses different specific breathing methods aimed at sleeping better.
Episodes Habit Hack: Using a Cue to initiate a healthy habit.
Hosted by Dennis Trumpy. Recorded: January 16, 2019
Links mentioned in the show:
Ed Harrold’s website: https://www.edharrold.com/ (with animation of the lung’s diaphragm)
Alternative website: www.gobegreat.com
Book: Life with Breath: IQ + EQ = New You.” https://www.edharrold.com/lifewithbreathbook
“Breath in Sleep Health” video webinar on March 6th, 2019, https://www.edharrold.com/events/life-with-breath-in-sleep-health-webinar,
(Show notes with time they occur in the episode)
1:50 – Ed Harrold tells a bit about his personal life.
3:20 – Ed talks about how he learned about yoga and pranayama breathing. Ed’s body was becoming arthritic and weak, and he was not leading the most authentic life. He learned about yoga and pranayama breathing and was attracted to how it gave him more energy and life,
5:10 – The concept of calm energy. Calm energy is not from anxiety or stress.
6:00 – The Around the island swim in 1996, a 22.5 mile swim in New Jersey. About three-quarters of the way through the race, when he felt like giving up, and the trainer was going to take him out of the water, he began to tap into an energy in his body that he’d never felt before. Tapping into that calm energy allowed Ed to finish the race and was life-transforming for him. However it also left him without energy and exhausted for weeks afterwards. This was before he started becoming aware of yoga.
10:20 – He leads the listeners through panorama yoga breathing exercise. Prana means energy, Jama means to control the energy.
16:50 – Doing controlled breathing while he is driving to achieve relaxed, laser-like focus. It keeps his blood pressure down. He also talks about ocean sounding breathing. The first awareness we have of our in-breath or out-breath is at the top or throat. Ocean sounding breathing forces you to slow the breath down without any straining. In nostril breathing, the brain secretes nitrous oxide, a natural inflammation reducer and it dilates the sacs in the lungs. The longer exhale, sets into motion burning of fat, reduces acidity, mucus, etc. and you are alkalizing the blood of your body. A simple formula is that your respiration rate, the number of breaths that you’re taking per minute, will reflect your heart rate. More breaths per minute, higher heart rate. Lower breaths per minute, lower heart rate. Lower heart rate, lower blood pressure. You’re not using as much energy during the day, so you have more energy to sleep at night to sleep well and simply sleep. Lower blood pressure helps to relax the brain. When the brain is relaxed, it senses safety and then the body only burns fat, not as much protein or precious glucose stores.
20:50 – Ed talks about how his awareness of yoga led into his current life passion as a life coach. He has always enjoyed relationships with people, and helping others.
22:30 – Ed talks about how he’s able to help many types of organizations from athletics to corporations in many different areas of their life from health to better relationships. In our inner world it’s all the same.
25:30 – Summary of why yoga and pranayama breathing is so effective in so many areas of our life. From a scientific perspective: First, the physical component, when breathing in through your nose, it exercises the diaphragm muscle which is critical to good posture and keeps the spine straight. Optimal physical posture is one of the keys to psychological success. You’re not using as much energy to hold the body upright.
Second, when you inhale, it vertically presses down towards your navel. You get a massage of your gastrointestinal organs, for assimilation of nutrients and elimination of waste. It also stimulates the enteric nervous system where 90% of the serotonin, and 50% of the neurotransmitter dopamine is created. So are you getting great posture, good digestion, and great neurochemistry. Ed takes the pranayama breathing out of the yoga studio and brings it into the real world where it is needed.
30:15 – The difference between breathing through the mouth and breathing through the nose. The diaphragm is strengthened more when breathing through the nose. You can sense or feel the difference just by breathing yourself through your nose, and through your mouth, and noticing the differences.
31:40 – The specific benefits that pranayama breathing has on sleep if you can t sleep and one of the ways of how to cure insomnia as one of the sleep solutions so you sleep well. Inhaling stimulates the nervous system, exhaling calms our nervous system. If you can learn to exhale longer than you inhale, it will calm down the nervous system. So stay on your exhale during the day to help you be calmer and sleep better at night.
33:45 – The amount of daily practice required. Ed recommends starting with short periods of time, noticing the improvement, and then extending the practice. Stress might be one of the reasons you wonder why can t i sleep.
35:00 – Dennis talks about a habit hack, which is to tie that new behavior of pranayama breathing to something you already do so that when you do the current habit you automatically do the new habit.
36:40 – What to do at night when you wake up and wonder why can t i sleep. One of the things to help you to sleep and to sleep well is to treat it as an opportunity to learn something new about ourselves as one of the things to help you to sleep. Try to be at peace with it.
Next you want to stop the secretion of adrenaline and cortisol going into the body. By inhaling in through the left nostril and exhaling through the right nostril, you can calm the mind down with the parasympathetic response. Try to discover what it is that woke you up in the first place because it might be something important for you to know about that you’re not aware of during your waking hours.
To breathe in through your left nostril and out through your night right nostril, bring your hand up to your nose, press a finger on your right nostril so you inhale through your left nostril and then on the exhale put your finger over your left nostril so you can exhale through your right nostril. Repeat breathing as slowly as you can. In 5 to 10 breaths you should be falling back to sleep and helps you to sleep well. This helps when you ask yourself why can t i sleep and want to simply sleep.
39:40 – The best time of day to practice a pranayama breathing. He recommends first thing in the morning. He fine tunes his practiced based on his current situation. Doing it early sets in motion cam success during the day and help give a restful sleep.
42:30 – Things to watch out for in pranayama breathing such as overdoing it, as you can become almost addicted to it and the good feeling. His advice is to go slow. It is a powerful tool.
42:40 – Ed’s parting thoughts on pranayama breathing and getting a good night’s sleep to sleep well. Ed recommends pranayama breathing regardless of your state of health, whether it is to become healthier or to sustain your good level of health and sleep health.
43:40 – Ed gives his resources, https://www.edharrold.com/, www.gobegreat.com. There are instructional videos, a ton of scientific research, all broken down into many different platforms. Ed also has a book out called Life with Breath: IQ + EQ = New You.” https://www.edharrold.com/lifewithbreathbook. It has a 30-day program in it and the science behind it.
45:30 – Ed has a webinar on Life with “Breath in Sleep Health” on March 6th, 2019, https://www.edharrold.com/events/life-with-breath-in-sleep-health-webinar. Ed does monthly webinars on different topics. Humans are the only animals on earth that have trouble sleeping.
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