Exposure 5 Key Quotes

BREATH 1​While seated or lying down, take 30 to 40 full conscious breaths: Breathe fully in to the belly and the chest, then letting go, without force. 2​On your final exhale, let the air out and hold it out for as long as you can without discomfort. Listen to your body and don’t force it! 3​When you feel the urge to breathe again, take a deep breath in, hold for 10 to 15 seconds. Then release and relax. 4​Repeat the steps above two or three more times, paying attention to how you feel and adjusting your breath as needed. 5​Rest in this elevated state until you are ready to move on with your day. Alternatively, use the energy you just generated for your morning workout or yoga practice. Experiment with what feels right for you. Congratulations! You just influenced key drivers of your health, increased your vitality and focus, busted your stress, reduced inflammation factors, and optimized your immune system. FOR COMPLETE WHM BREATHING INSTRUCTIONS AND SAFETY GUIDELINES, SEE CHAPTER 4. MIND Your post-breathing practice state is the perfect time to program your mindset. Try this: 1​Before you get up from your breathing practice, bring up a thought in your mind like “Today I’m going to stay in the cold shower for 15 more seconds than yesterday,” or “I feel happy, healthy, and strong.” 2​Reflect on this thought and notice how your body feels. 3​If you identify any inner resistance to your intention, just keep breathing steadily until you feel an alignment between your body and mind. With practice, your sense of your inner experience, or interoception, will sharpen, allowing you to more consciously observe and control your body and mind. SEE CHAPTER 12 FOR DETAILS. COLD 1​At the end of your warm shower, turn the water to cold. 2​If you like you can start by first putting your feet and legs, than your arms, then your full torso under the water. 3​Do NOT do the WHM Basic Breathing Exercise while standing in the shower. 4​Gradually extend your exposure every day until you can handle two minutes in the cold. 5​If you are shivering when you get out, try the horse stance exercise. (See “How Long Can You Hold a Horse Stance?” for details.) Success! You just improved your metabolic efficiency, regulated your hormones, further reduced inflammation, and are enjoying the endorphins and endocannabinoids released in response to the cold.

The benefits of a diet anchored in an abundance of plants is clear to see. The healthiest and longest-lived societies are scattered across the globe, whether it be the mountain villages of Sardinia, the forests of Costa Rica or the Japanese island of Okinawa, but they have one thing in common: a diversity of plants in their diet. The Hadza people of Tanzania are among the last hunter-gatherers on Earth, and they probably consume a diet closest to that which humans have adapted to eat. They forage wild berries, honey and fibre-rich tubers, and eat lean, wild meat. This consumption of between 100g and 150g of varied fibre a day results in a beautifully diverse and robust gut microbiome.4 This could not be more different from the industrialized West. Americans, on average, eat around 15g of fibre a day – half of the recommended amount and ten times less than the Hadza – resulting in poor microbial diversity.5 The so-called Standard American Diet (with the apt acronym SAD) has replaced fibre-filled plants with refined grains (plants stripped of their fibre), processed meats, sugar-sweetened drinks and deep-fried food. We all know that the modern Western diet is not good for physical and mental health, but the reason is that it’s essentially an anti-biotic diet. Without providing the food for healthy microbes, we end up overfed yet undernourished. Add to this mix an overuse of pharmaceutical antibiotics and a lack of exposure to a variety of environmental microbes due to home-cleaning products and urban living, and no wonder the industrialized world is a desert for microbes. A diet low in plant-based fibre results in a vulnerable microbiome.6 This increases the likelihood that the defence system loses balance, resulting in chronic inflammation and, eventually, a host of physical and mental health conditions.7 If it’s clear that a variety of plant fibre is the key to a microbiome-friendly diet, how do we practically implement this? The American Gut Project is a large citizen science project in which individuals across the world volunteer to send stool samples for analysis by a team at University of California San Diego School of Medicine. In 2018, they published the results of over 10,000 participants, finding that eating thirty different plants a week was associated with increased microbiome diversity.8 This was regardless of whether you were vegetarian or vegan. Most of us in the West manage only around ten plants a week. While not a necessary requirement for good health, thirty a week is a sensible, evidence-based target. It’s important to remember that plant foods aren’t restricted to fruit and vegetables; nuts, seeds, herbs, spices, grains and legumes also count. While you can add as many layers of complexity as you wish, getting a diverse, healthy microbiome is really as simple as aiming for thirty types of plant a week.