Enter Label: How to Decide Between Breath and Stillness
5 Reasons for Each: Breathwork & Meditation
Dear Companions,
Anxiety feels like this: I suddenly have a cochlear implant connected to a mixing board of sounds—passing dog, cricket, car—and the person talking to me grows distant, while I fill the space between us as an echo.
I feel the sensation of dying as my heart pulses wildly. If someone suddenly becomes emphatic about a point I care about, it gets worse. I’m not just nervous—I’m panicked. I’m pretty sure that after months of no laughter, sudden, deep laughter escaping from me at velocity causes arrhythmia. At that point, anxiety feels like being massively stoned.
But I’m still talking. I’m still in the game. I’m like McConaughey, lost in a tesseract from Interstellar, desperately trying to send a message through a hidden bookcase. I struggle to steady my inner core—a fragile Matryoshka missing half its scratched-off encasing. My words run on autopilot as I attempt to wind down the conversation, like clearing out a fire-sale. I’m surprised that I can even finish.
Here's the thing. I can tolerate this self-styled charade during a blood draw—a survivalist legacy from the battlefields of my ancestors—but not during a casual chat with a random person outside a local bakery. I refuse to let this inner hydra, complicated by COVID isolationism, take root like a portly possum in a dilapidated roof. I’m honing my attentions on extracting the possum.
Anxiety has always been present—it's the compulsion to please, the pressure to excel in even the most trivial interactions, the urge to move forward, to get in, to go higher. It’s the fear of messing up, disappointing others, or being perceived as boring. I used to push it aside—until illness threw my control centers into disarray. Now, despite improvements (better sleep, resuming daily functionality, a steadier system, deeper understanding of these issues), I still encounter panic in certain situations. Recently, it worsened amid a series of challenges—multiple rounds of IVF, strep, antibiotics, head pain, and a sick child at home. I get weak against myself. But that’s life lately.
I yearn to move seamlessly between the Healingvrse and everyday life. I want there to be a billboard in the Healingvrse that says, "Keep Calm and Carry On," emblazoned with my face. I want my mental clarity to sort reality and perceived threats—after all, interacting with a guy outside a bakery who is talking about the Golden Drum cult out of Greenpoint and death, doesn’t constitute a crisis, right?
A neurologist’s advice
As many of you know, I started these Away Messages to document my healing journey after a post-viral condition and vaccine injury. When my neurologist mentioned that meditation might offered similar benefits to transcranial stimulation, I pressed him for concrete, science-based reasons.
Neurologists often provide rushed, fragmented explanations—snippets of neuroscience that may or may not resonate. This is due to time constraints, and because, as
pens, neuroscience is theory starved, for this reason:P1: Consciousness is the primary function of the brain.
P2: There is no well-accepted theory of consciousness.
But still I listened when my doctor says to meditate because it can reshape the brain and calm neurogenic inflammation. Or when he says Yuval Harari meditates at a Vipassana silent retreat 60 days a year, and it’s an approach worth following. Or when he urges me to focus on slowing my breathing during injections.
Here’s my dilemma. If I have to choose between breathwork and meditation for a more enduring practice, which path should I commit to?
The power of both
I’ve learned the power of both methods. I do this 15-second end-feeling visualization meditation because it is effective. Perhaps though I’m more practiced in breathwork. Coherent, Resonant, Box, Humming Bee Breath, etc.
You don’t have to choose. You can and should do both. They’re interconnected and work on similar pathways. Communication between the body and mind is bi-directional. Messages travel along the vagus nerve, connected to the brain stem and every organ of your body.
Time and teachers
Yet, understanding the differences in these methods is valuable for establishing a routine. My neurologist noted significant improvements between 20 and 45 minutes of meditation. Yuval Harari meditates for two hours a day. At the same time, some will suggest not to do breathwork (at the start) for longer than 20 minutes per session.
Plus, you’ll work with different teachers. My TMS therapist focused on coherent breathwork. I went to a special teacher for the third eye meditation.
Below are 5 pros for both.
BREATHWORK, a.k.a the “handy dandy”
Best for: Immediate Altered States, Physiological shifts, and Embodied Experience.
Provides immediate control over the body’s stress responses. Is accessible and can be practiced during a stressful conversation or moment, although regular practice is required to have it work quickly
Extended breathwork sessions—typically around 40 minutes—are designed to train your body and mind to reach a deeply relaxed, regulated state. Over time, this practice makes your stress response more efficient, so that even a single, intentional breath during a stressful moment can trigger the calming effect you've cultivated. However, you don’t have to do the 40 minutes all at once. You can start with 2x 20-minute sessions per day.
When your breathing is compromised, your body doesn’t receive the oxygen it needs for energy. Breathing in oxygen naturally produces CO₂, which plays a critical role in driving oxygenation deeper in your body. Exhaling too quickly in breathwork, or hyperventilating during stress, strips away this vital CO₂. Therefore, techniques that promote deep inhalation and a slower exhale—thereby balancing O₂ and CO₂—are ideal for rewiring your stress response.
Breathwork has a more immediate, measurable impact on HRV because it directly influences your breathing pattern and stimulates your vagus nerve. The strength of your vagus nerve activity is your vagal tone. The stronger that is, the better your body is at distinguishing between real and perceived threats.
It provides a bridge to meditation by grounding the mind in the present moment. If you’re facing something difficult, where heavy meditation feels overwhelming—breathwork almost always helps fast.
MEDITATION, a.k.a. the “brain gain”
Best for: Long-Term Cognitive Rewiring, Deepened Self-Awareness, and Integration of Insights to Fundamentally Shift Worldview.
Can increase gray matter density in various brain regions—especially those involved in emotional regulation, attention, and self-awareness—seen on brain scans. Why this matters? Research shows gray matter loss is a significant change in the aging brain.
Meditation influences white matter connectivity and brain function. White matter connectivity refers to the network of myelinated nerve fibers (axons) linking different regions. Changes in this connectivity can impact communication between brain parts, affecting cognitive performance and brain health.
Meditation practices, such as loving-kindness meditation, have been shown to increase compassion towards oneself and others. Regular practice can foster empathy by encouraging a deeper understanding of one's own emotions and the perspectives of others, leading to more meaningful and supportive relationships.
Helps you change your perspective by differentiating what’s “real” and what’s not, something you have trained in your body in breathwork.
Meditation provides a profound opportunity to observe and understand the patterns of the mind that lead to suffering. By cultivating awareness and acceptance of unpleasant realities without reacting impulsively, meditation helps individuals recognize that suffering often arises from internal mental reactions rather than external circumstances. This insight can lead to greater emotional resilience and a deeper sense of peace amidst life's challenges.
Yuval Harari says:
I just had to observe reality as it is. The most important thing I realized was that the deep source of my suffering is in the patterns of my own mind. When I want something and it doesn't happen, my mind reacts by generating suffering. Suffering is not an objective condition in the outside world. It is a mental reaction generated by my own mind.
A couple great resources
Heart, Breath, Mind, by Leah Lagos, PsyD, discusses the link between heart rhythms and stress and shares a breathwork technique and program component to control the body’s fight or flight response.
Full Catastrophe Living, a Kabat-Zinn classic, is a large, seminal text on mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) widely used in clinical settings. Its approach to stress, pain, and illness has made it a cornerstone in clinical practice and personal meditation journeys.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on your preferred approach or if you’ve found another balance.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
With much love from the Healingvrse,
Rebecca