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My Favorite Kind of Pain

I had been hearing about an impressive tai chi teacher named Gregory Fong since moving to Portland in 1997. It was about five years later that I convinced Briana to… Read More

16 Ways to Treat Migraines Naturally

About 25 years ago I worked for a company that made high end sports goggles. Though the front of the building was covered with posters of pro swimmers and skiers… Read More

The Gift Inside Our Pain

What do you know about hormesis? It’s the phenomenon that (kind of) explains the expression “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” Technically, hormesis refers to biological processes in which… Read More

From Suffering to Grace

Early in my practice, people told me I should choose one area of medicine to specialize in, but I was resistant to it because of the lack of variety. Also,… Read More

Mind (Breath) Over Pain

If you’re interested in health and breathing, you’ve probably heard of Wim Hof, AKA the Iceman. He’s best known as that crazy Dutch guy who has broken all sorts of… Read More

Suspending Judgment

One of the greatest sources of pain I’ve witnessed during the pandemic is the perception of restricted freedom. There have been some measurable restrictions on our freedoms, like the freedom… Read More

The Basic Mechanism of Pain and Suffering that Every Human Should Know

Early in my career, I found it gratifying to treat pain and I was pretty good at it. The art of choosing the right acupuncture points is fascinating, creative, and… Read More

Once More with Feeling

If you’ve ever done something reactionary, without thinking it through, there was a certain element that spurred you to act even though you might not have been aware of it…. Read More

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I shut my mouth, which required me to deepen my breathing through my nose, and soon my mask felt less stuffy and the anxiety was gone. It occurred to me that I mouth-breathe a lot when I have a mask on, and I’ve resolved to stop. A few years after moving to Colorado I realized that I had been mouth breathing while asleep and increasingly while awake, too. During the same period of time, I noticed my sleep had been worse, I felt more anxious, I had a harder time concentrating, my energy was lower, and my gums had receded significantly. It might sound like a stretch to attribute all of that to breathing through my mouth rather than my nose, but I’m convinced that mouth breathing was a contributing factor. Mouth breathing begets more mouth breathing. When we breathe through our mouth over years, the facial structure can change – especially in children. The face may become longer and narrower. The palate narrows too, which causes a higher arch, infringing on the airways above. Teeth become crowded and crooked. The tongue drops to the floor of the mouth all day instead of resting against the upper palate, and this can contribute to sleep apnea and snoring. Mouth breathing tends to be more rapid than nose breathing, which may promote a feeling of anxiousness and may be misdiagnosed as Attention Deficit Disorder. Breathing through the mouth is less efficient at oxygenating the body than nasal breathing. Mouth breathing can raise our blood pressure. It causes dryness of the mouth, bad breath, and increased susceptibility to tooth decay and gum disease. When we breathe through the nose, we inhale more of a gas called nitric oxide (not “laughing gas” which is nitrous oxide) that is produced in the paranasal sinuses. Nitric oxide kills bacteria. The nose also warms and filters incoming air. For all these reasons, nasal breathing reduces our chances of getting sick via airborne germs. In terms of spreading sickness to others, we exhale many fewer “respiratory droplets” through the nose than through the mouth. Some doctors propose that nasal breathing is an easy intervention to reduce your risk of contracting COVID-19. If wearing a mask causes you to mouth breathing, this may partly or significantly negate the protective value of the mask. I recommend trying to remember to breathe through your nose especially in public spaces and when wearing a mask. Nose breathing carries the nitric oxide from the nasal airways down into the lungs, where it decreases blood pressure and increases oxygenation of our tissues. When we mouth breathe we don’t get these benefits. Interestingly, studies have shown that humming increases nasal nitric oxide production, so your homework assignment is to hum throughout the day. For most mouth breathers, switching to nasal breathing is mainly just a matter of remembering to do it. But there are three times when it can be more tricky: while sleeping, while congested, and while exercising. If you keep your mouth closed while sleeping, chances are you’ll sleep better, snore less, wake up with sweeter breath, and without a sore throat. Some scientists have also proposed that mouth breathing during sleep increases the need to urinate during the night, so switching to your nose may reduce your trips to the bathroom. I’ve found that blowing my nose before bed and simply intending to keep my mouth closed while asleep works fairly well. If that doesn’t work for you, consider taping your mouth closed. I know it sounds weird and perhaps unpleasant, but it’s not bad. Just use a small piece of medical tape (about an inch) vertically over the center of your lips. 3M paper tape is a good choice. If this makes you psychologically uncomfortable, try taping your mouth half an hour before going to sleep so you can get used to it. Or try taping just one side of your mouth. (Don’t tape your mouth if you’re drunk or have a health issue that may necessitate an urgent need to open your mouth or an obstruction of your nose. It’s also a good idea to leave at least a corner of your mouth not taped.) Having a bedroom that’s cool, airy, and clean will help. It’s totally normal to breathe through your mouth while engaged in intense exercise. Just watch people jogging down the street and note how many have an open mouth. It takes practice and effort to break yourself of this habit, and it may feel at first like you simply can’t get enough air in through your nose. But you’ll find that your nasal breaths are longer and deeper. Your breathing rate will slow down considerably and so will your heart rate. Plus, you’ll get more oxygen into your body and at the end of your workout you’ll feel invigorated. If you have a hard time breathing through your nose because you’re congested, there are a few options. Obviously if you’re sick you may just have to wait for it to pass, and if you have allergies you’ll have to do your best to avoid allergens and treat your allergy symptoms with whatever works (some natural options include quercetin, nettle extract, liposomal vitamin C, n-acetyl cysteine, and a supplement called Antronex made by the company Standard Process [I have no relationship with them]). But simply breathing through your nose anyway can often encourage it to clear. At the beginning you may have to enlist your mouth to assist, but if you continue to breathe exclusively through your mouth your nose will be less apt to clear. Just try to breathe through your nose and notice its ability to clear itself. Finally, there are some specific breathing techniques for unblocking your nose, one of which is simply to hold your breath for as long as you can while nodding your head up and down or swaying your torso from side to side, then releasing the breath through the nose. Within five breaths this usually works. Here’s a video of it. You may also benefit from nasal rinsing (AKA “neti”) followed by nasal lubrication. We make a Nasal Oil for this purpose which I formulated. I would love to hear about your experience with mouth breathing and nose breathing. Share with us in the comments section. Be well, Dr. Peter Borten [post_title] => The Magic is in Your Nose [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => the-magic-is-in-your-nose [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2020-08-01 19:35:03 [post_modified_gmt] => 2020-08-01 19:35:03 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://thedragontree.com/?p=7958 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 8 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) [1] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 8470 [post_author] => 3 [post_date] => 2022-01-30 21:17:23 [post_date_gmt] => 2022-01-30 21:17:23 [post_content] => In high school and college, I spent hours every day playing my guitars and writing songs. Music was the main outlet I had for the angst and depression I felt in my late teens and early twenties. In grad school, I began to emerge from those dark days, and as I increasingly found myself in the company of people who were really psychologically healthy, I noticed my music changing. One day I was jamming with a good friend. He would play me one of his tunes and I’d improvise on that for a while, and then I’d show him one of mine and we’d play that for a bit. At some point, I started playing one of the old songs from my troubled period. The best I can remember is that the words had something to do with losing hope. He liked the tune, so I showed him the chords and taught him the words so we could sing it together. Only, as I started playing and singing it, he didn’t join in. He stopped me after a moment and said, “Sorry, man… I’m not singing that.” I really didn’t understand it. “Why not?” I asked. “Because it’s all about losing hope and how life sucks. I don’t want to say that.” “Oh,” I was a bit bewildered. “Okay, let’s try something else.” And we moved on. I was a little bit offended. I didn’t always relate to the subject matter of his songs, but I didn’t mind singing them. It wasn’t like you had to believe what you were saying – it was just a song. And what about all the popular songs that we sing along to because they’re catchy? Lots of them are about topics we might not care for, but they’re still good songs. Well, I let it go and didn’t think about it again for a long time. But years later, I had become more acutely tuned in to my thoughts and words, and I had experienced in a more definite way the way my words affected my experience. One day, I remembered that event and thought, “Wow. Good for him.” You Are What You “Eat” Have you ever used an affirmation? The idea is that by repeating key words, we can reprogram our mind, shift our emotions, heal our body, and even change the circumstances of our life. When done right, they really can work. I wouldn’t place all my eggs in the affirmations basket when I want something in my life to be different, but they have their place. What’s arguably more valuable than the actual practice of repeating an affirmation is what they demonstrate: the thoughts we choose can have a huge impact on our life. Apart from whatever objective ways they might affect our lives, the subjective impact of our thoughts is that they color our experience – our internal environment and outlook – in a way that makes the objective circumstances almost irrelevant. For instance, if you think life sucks, it doesn’t matter whether you have delicious food, warm clothes, people who love you, a winning lottery ticket, and blue skies – life still sucks. And if you think life is an utter gift, you could be in rags and have no limbs, and yet see beauty and grace in everything. It’s difficult for most people to remember to repeat an affirmation all day long, or to choose to focus on a positive idea as often as possible. But it’s quite easy for us to sing a song in our head all day long … say, Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” or Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” (later covered by Johnny Cash). It’s easy to listen to ranting on talk radio. It’s easy to read a daily newspaper that’s filled with more negativity than positivity. And it’s easy to barely register that we are making choices that degrade our lives. If we want our life to go a certain way – happy, healthy, long, etc. – we need to pay attention not only to what good things we’re doing to ensure this, but also to what destructive things we’re doing to sabotage it. We all know “you are what you eat” – that what you feed your body affects the quality of your health. In the same way, the thoughts we cultivate, the way we speak, the media we consume, the people and social institutions we associate with are all part of what we’re feeding our consciousness. So, it should be no surprise that they affect the quality of our experience. When my friend refused to sing the depressing song I had written, it’s because he was tuned into – and respectful of – the effect our words (especially repeated ones) have on our consciousness. We can easily learn to perceive the qualitative differences between certain words, thoughts, songs, movies, and organizations. When we bring our awareness to their influence on us, it becomes clear that the majority of news articles, movies, radio shows, and television programs are relatively degrading to our consciousness (and, therefore, to our entire being). According to a study by the UCLA Center for Communications Policy, sixty-one percent of television programs contain some violence! A common rationale we use for reading, listening to and repeating tragic stories is the necessity of staying informed. In actuality, there is very little utility in keeping up with misfortune and deadly events. This habit speaks more of our collective addiction to conflict and drama. If our consumption of negative media and ideas is not purposeful, it is destructive. It is like eating a rich dessert (but considerably less satisfying): if we choose to consume it, we should stop the moment we have had enough. If we are five sentences into descriptions of dismembered bodies and we have pretty much gotten the picture, it’s time to put the article down. Usually the headlines are more than enough. When we consume media with a violent or hopeless tone, its impact on us is determined partly by our perspective and our psychological health. Sometimes we resonate strongly and persistently with the pain we witness, and other times we are able to remain detached and let it pass through us without being excessively influenced by it. Until we develop our sensitivity, however, we usually can’t perceive how it hurts us. If we are interested in whole health, we need whole honesty with ourselves about our reasons for consuming unhealthy media and surrounding ourselves with people and organizations that propagate negativity. As with diet, I’m not suggesting that we must always make the best possible choice; I’m only advising that we be as conscious and truthful with ourselves as we can be. More important that banishing any destructive influences from our lives is staying aware and honest about the nature of our relationship with these influences. In all cases, we’re better off fully experiencing the effect of a given influence rather than being unconscious of it. I recommend, in the presence of questionable media and conversation, you feel what happens in your body – as willingly and completely as possible. If you find yourself getting tense or tight, or feeling not at ease, listen to your body. Then let these feelings go, and consider altering your consumption. Luckily, there is a world of beautiful, uplifting, positive, healthful stuff out there. Surround yourself with positive people, listen to music that makes you feel good, check out some beautiful art, read some lovely poetry. And notice how it changes your life. Much love, Dr. Peter Borten [post_title] => Programming Ourselves for Misery or Happiness [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => programming-ourselves-for-misery-or-happiness [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2022-01-30 21:17:23 [post_modified_gmt] => 2022-01-30 21:17:23 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://thedragontree.com/?p=8470 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 5 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) [2] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 8275 [post_author] => 1 [post_date] => 2021-06-04 00:24:53 [post_date_gmt] => 2021-06-04 00:24:53 [post_content] => I have a cousin who’s a brilliant dog trainer. Years ago he used to train dogs to sniff out drugs and weapons, and he’s shared stories of some of his ride-alongs with cops. A recurring theme was pulling people over who were trying to hide something by wrapping it up in something scented – for instance, marijuana wrapped in coffee. The dogs were never fooled. “What these people don’t understand,” he told me, “is that one smell doesn’t block another smell for a dog. Their sense of smell is like seeing a whole landscape. Adding something else to the picture – like a balloon – doesn’t change the rest of the landscape. With people, if the coffee smell is stronger than the pot smell, that’s the one we notice. But with dogs it’s like those two smells are side by side.” I love dogs and I find it fascinating to imagine what it would be like to smell in so many dimensions. Beyond crime applications, research has shown that dogs can be trained to accurately detect certain forms of cancer and even whether or not someone has COVID. The coffee and cannabis phenomenon popped into my head recently while some negative thoughts and feelings were dominating my awareness. I marveled at how these stressful feelings could effectively eclipse everything else, like the mostly awesome circumstances of my life, the power to choose my perspective, the beautiful world I live in, the gift of being alive and healthy, etc. It was as if the incredible truth were wrapped up with something smelly, and all I could notice was the smelly part. Becoming free of the pain and limitations of a narrow mind is a lot like learning to smell like a dog. Rather than giving ourselves over to the stink that stands out, we have to stretch our consciousness to perceive the broader landscape of our total experience. Besides the things that seem to be going wrong, this landscape is full of things that are going right. Beauty. Grace. Kindness. Peace. Friendship. If we include the spiritual dimension in this landscape, it’s a vastly expanded state in which the stinky parts are much less significant. And it becomes clear that, just as coffee doesn’t negate the smell of marijuana, neither do our unpleasant thoughts and feelings negate the truth of being a boundless spirit in the material world. Meanwhile, dog-like perception can also help us observe the resisted aspects of life with greater depth and detail. When we “widen the aperture” in this way, what we perceive and resist as simply bad can be sensed more holistically. It’s like leaning in to a bad feeling for a better sniff. A variety of olfactory notes are revealed and we learn more. We experience that attraction and repulsion are two sides of the same coin. The intensity dissipates. And the feeling ceases to dominate our awareness. The two most powerful exercises for developing this landscape-view of life are meditation and mindfulness. In meditation we practice not engaging with the thoughts and feelings that arise. As we watch them come and go, we learn how our attachment and resistance to them is what gives them power. We develop a broader, less reactive awareness. Initially it may feel hard to continuously choose to be the space rather than following our thoughts, but it soon becomes a deliciously restful break from the habit of incessant mentalizing. In mindfulness practice, much like my description of widening the aperture above, we choose to be with whatever is happening in the present moment. We don’t try to change it, judge it, hold onto it, or get rid of it. Nor do we depart from the here and now into thoughts about anything else. It takes work but yields an incredible return: true peace. The “strong smells” (negative thoughts and feelings) cease to overwhelm us as they take their proper place in the broader landscape of reality. I encourage you to give it a try for this coming week. Be well, Peter [post_title] => How to Be Happy Like a Dog [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => how-to-be-happy-like-a-dog [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2021-06-04 00:24:53 [post_modified_gmt] => 2021-06-04 00:24:53 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://thedragontree.com/?p=8275 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 8 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) ) [post_count] => 3 [current_post] => -1 [in_the_loop] => [post] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 7958 [post_author] => 3 [post_date] => 2020-08-01 19:30:37 [post_date_gmt] => 2020-08-01 19:30:37 [post_content] => I was wandering around in a hardware store the other day, feeling rather hot and stuffy in my mask – and also a little anxious – when I realized my mouth was wide open. I shut my mouth, which required me to deepen my breathing through my nose, and soon my mask felt less stuffy and the anxiety was gone. It occurred to me that I mouth-breathe a lot when I have a mask on, and I’ve resolved to stop. A few years after moving to Colorado I realized that I had been mouth breathing while asleep and increasingly while awake, too. During the same period of time, I noticed my sleep had been worse, I felt more anxious, I had a harder time concentrating, my energy was lower, and my gums had receded significantly. It might sound like a stretch to attribute all of that to breathing through my mouth rather than my nose, but I’m convinced that mouth breathing was a contributing factor. Mouth breathing begets more mouth breathing. When we breathe through our mouth over years, the facial structure can change – especially in children. The face may become longer and narrower. The palate narrows too, which causes a higher arch, infringing on the airways above. Teeth become crowded and crooked. The tongue drops to the floor of the mouth all day instead of resting against the upper palate, and this can contribute to sleep apnea and snoring. Mouth breathing tends to be more rapid than nose breathing, which may promote a feeling of anxiousness and may be misdiagnosed as Attention Deficit Disorder. Breathing through the mouth is less efficient at oxygenating the body than nasal breathing. Mouth breathing can raise our blood pressure. It causes dryness of the mouth, bad breath, and increased susceptibility to tooth decay and gum disease. When we breathe through the nose, we inhale more of a gas called nitric oxide (not “laughing gas” which is nitrous oxide) that is produced in the paranasal sinuses. Nitric oxide kills bacteria. The nose also warms and filters incoming air. For all these reasons, nasal breathing reduces our chances of getting sick via airborne germs. In terms of spreading sickness to others, we exhale many fewer “respiratory droplets” through the nose than through the mouth. Some doctors propose that nasal breathing is an easy intervention to reduce your risk of contracting COVID-19. If wearing a mask causes you to mouth breathing, this may partly or significantly negate the protective value of the mask. I recommend trying to remember to breathe through your nose especially in public spaces and when wearing a mask. Nose breathing carries the nitric oxide from the nasal airways down into the lungs, where it decreases blood pressure and increases oxygenation of our tissues. When we mouth breathe we don’t get these benefits. Interestingly, studies have shown that humming increases nasal nitric oxide production, so your homework assignment is to hum throughout the day. For most mouth breathers, switching to nasal breathing is mainly just a matter of remembering to do it. But there are three times when it can be more tricky: while sleeping, while congested, and while exercising. If you keep your mouth closed while sleeping, chances are you’ll sleep better, snore less, wake up with sweeter breath, and without a sore throat. Some scientists have also proposed that mouth breathing during sleep increases the need to urinate during the night, so switching to your nose may reduce your trips to the bathroom. I’ve found that blowing my nose before bed and simply intending to keep my mouth closed while asleep works fairly well. If that doesn’t work for you, consider taping your mouth closed. I know it sounds weird and perhaps unpleasant, but it’s not bad. Just use a small piece of medical tape (about an inch) vertically over the center of your lips. 3M paper tape is a good choice. If this makes you psychologically uncomfortable, try taping your mouth half an hour before going to sleep so you can get used to it. Or try taping just one side of your mouth. (Don’t tape your mouth if you’re drunk or have a health issue that may necessitate an urgent need to open your mouth or an obstruction of your nose. It’s also a good idea to leave at least a corner of your mouth not taped.) Having a bedroom that’s cool, airy, and clean will help. It’s totally normal to breathe through your mouth while engaged in intense exercise. Just watch people jogging down the street and note how many have an open mouth. It takes practice and effort to break yourself of this habit, and it may feel at first like you simply can’t get enough air in through your nose. But you’ll find that your nasal breaths are longer and deeper. Your breathing rate will slow down considerably and so will your heart rate. Plus, you’ll get more oxygen into your body and at the end of your workout you’ll feel invigorated. If you have a hard time breathing through your nose because you’re congested, there are a few options. Obviously if you’re sick you may just have to wait for it to pass, and if you have allergies you’ll have to do your best to avoid allergens and treat your allergy symptoms with whatever works (some natural options include quercetin, nettle extract, liposomal vitamin C, n-acetyl cysteine, and a supplement called Antronex made by the company Standard Process [I have no relationship with them]). But simply breathing through your nose anyway can often encourage it to clear. At the beginning you may have to enlist your mouth to assist, but if you continue to breathe exclusively through your mouth your nose will be less apt to clear. Just try to breathe through your nose and notice its ability to clear itself. Finally, there are some specific breathing techniques for unblocking your nose, one of which is simply to hold your breath for as long as you can while nodding your head up and down or swaying your torso from side to side, then releasing the breath through the nose. Within five breaths this usually works. Here’s a video of it. You may also benefit from nasal rinsing (AKA “neti”) followed by nasal lubrication. We make a Nasal Oil for this purpose which I formulated. I would love to hear about your experience with mouth breathing and nose breathing. Share with us in the comments section. Be well, Dr. Peter Borten [post_title] => The Magic is in Your Nose [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => the-magic-is-in-your-nose [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2020-08-01 19:35:03 [post_modified_gmt] => 2020-08-01 19:35:03 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://thedragontree.com/?p=7958 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 8 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) [comment_count] => 0 [current_comment] => -1 [found_posts] => 143 [max_num_pages] => 3 [max_num_comment_pages] => 0 [is_single] => [is_preview] => [is_page] => [is_archive] => 1 [is_date] => [is_year] => [is_month] => [is_day] => [is_time] => [is_author] => [is_category] => 1 [is_tag] => [is_tax] => [is_search] => [is_feed] => [is_comment_feed] => [is_trackback] => [is_home] => [is_privacy_policy] => [is_404] => [is_embed] => [is_paged] => [is_admin] => [is_attachment] => [is_singular] => [is_robots] => [is_favicon] => [is_posts_page] => [is_post_type_archive] => [query_vars_hash:WP_Query:private] => abc0a708f21a4a25cf3ac0d6f0870b02 [query_vars_changed:WP_Query:private] => [thumbnails_cached] => [stopwords:WP_Query:private] => [compat_fields:WP_Query:private] => Array ( [0] => query_vars_hash [1] => query_vars_changed ) [compat_methods:WP_Query:private] => Array ( [0] => init_query_flags [1] => parse_tax_query ) )

You may also be interested in:

The Magic is in Your Nose

Programming Ourselves for Misery or Happiness

How to Be Happy Like a Dog

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