Leah Lagos - Heart Breath Mind: Train Your Heart to Conquer Stress and Achieve Success

If you have a known heart condition, high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma, or another chronic health condition, speak to your health care provider before embarking on this program. Heart Breath Mind is not meant to be a substitute for treatment.

Names and identifying details of some individuals have been changed to protect confidentiality.

Copyright 2020 by Leah Lagos

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

hmhbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lagos, Leah, author.

Title: Heart breath mind : train your heart to conquer stress and achieve success / Leah Lagos.

Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019057828 (print) | LCCN 2019057829 (ebook) | ISBN 9781328604408 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781328603524 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Stress (Psychology) | Stress (Physiology) | Stress management. | Mind and body.

Classification: LCC RC455.4.S87 L34 2020 (print) | LCC RC455.4.S87 (ebook) | DDC 155.9/042dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019057828

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019057829

Cover design Zoe Norvell

Author photo Rod Goodman

v1.0720

To my daughters,
Madeline and Felicity:
may you always thrive by
embracing your resonance
and cultivating a life
based on your inner light.

We spend years of our lives training to perform, whether its on the field, on a stage, or in a boardroom. No matter how well prepared we may be, the pressure of performance often sabotages us when it matters most. When a challenge presents itself, will you rise to the occasion and perform at your best? Or will you become overwhelmed, paralyzed, or derailed?

To a great extent, the answer depends on your physiological stress response. When facing a moment of intense pressure, whether youre an NBA player at the three-point line, a parent managing multiple children, or an executive preparing to give a presentation before a large audience, your body responds: your heart rate increases, you breathe at a faster rate, your blood vessels constrict, and you feel a burst of energy from the release of stress hormones.

All these things happen automatically because your body is biologically programmed to respond to stress as if youre in physical danger. The autonomic nervous system (ANS)the master controller of those bodily functions that occur without thought, such as breathing, heart rate, and digestionbegins preparing you to either fight or flee. This is called the fight-or-flight response.

Heres the problem, thoughnone of the stressful situations I mentioned above actually require fighting or fleeing. And the fight-or-flight response leaves you in a physiological state that is hardly conducive to peak performance. Its nearly impossible to think clearly, make wise decisions, and perform confidently when your heart is racing, your breathing is ragged, and your hands are shaking. Surely, youve experienced this firsthand.

Thanks to the burgeoning field of sports science, we already have plenty of stress-reduction techniques to boost performance. A quick search reveals a multitude of books filled with well-researched cognitive and behavioral approaches to battling stress. Most of these focus on techniques to control your thoughts and modify your behaviors.

The problem with these methods is that our physical response to stress is not only in our head. Its not just our thoughts that are causing stress hormones to flood our system or creating an erratic heart rate and breathing pattern. We cant access a state for peak performance through mind-set alone. Thats because your stress lives in your body.

There is, however, a scientifically proven, safe, natural way to rewire your bodys baseline stress response and optimize your health and performance. The breathing exercises and peak performance strategies described in Heart Breath Mind will take you on a journey from merely surviving stress to thriving despite it. A critical part of our work together will be developing your somatic awarenessa heightened consciousness of how your body is feelingso that you will recognize when you are stressed and can take action to shift yourself out of a state of stress and into what is called parasympathetic dominance. You will learn how to rewire and optimize your bodys natural, immediate, and automatic response to stress. You will learn how to replace negative emotions such as anger, guilt, and anxiety with healthier responses such as compassion, forgiveness, and gratitude, changing your heart rhythms in the process. You will become adept at accessing flow, or what I call resonance, during critical moments so that you can more consistently perform at your prime across all of lifes arenas. Well start by using technology to help you find your ideal breathing rate, but with dedicated practice, youll be able to breathe without the technology, accessing your best self on demand and linking together your heart, breath, and mind in the way nature intended.

And it all begins in your bodys most superb instrument: your heart.

Most people are under the impression that their heart beats with the monotony and repetitiveness of a metronome. On the contrary, when you inhale, your heart rate (the number of times your heart beats per minute) naturally rises; when you exhale, it slows down again. This is true for everyone.

But the exact amount the heart rate accelerates on inhalation and how quickly it decelerates on exhalation vary quite a bit from person to person. This range from your maximum heart rate to your minimum heart rate is your heart rate variability (HRV).

In an ideal world, if electrodes were connected to your chest, your heart rate would show up on-screen as big, beautiful oscillations that rise and fall like rolling ocean waves. The greater the difference between the peaks and the valleys, the higher your heart rate variability. High heart rate variability is what you need to thrive under pressure; it signifies the bodys ability to quickly ramp up and feel a full range of emotions and energyincluding stress, when neededand then swiftly and efficiently let go, or recover. This dynamic allows you to effectively prepare for performance situations, navigate any challenges that arise, and then swiftly recover in between peak moments. Individuals with high heart rate variability have greater control over how their heart reacts under pressure and how quickly it recovers. If youve ever found yourself feeling in the zone, like youre sinking every shot you make (be it at work or on the court), then you know what this feels like. Its a state of flow when your mind clears, muscle tension dissipates, and you feel confident, making great performance easy.

But prolonged stress decreases heart rate variability, diminishing the amplitude, or height, of your heart rate oscillations. If I hooked you up to electrodes and studied your heart rate on a screen on a day when you had lost money in the stock market, had a clash with your spouse, or arrived 30 minutes late for an important meeting, those beautiful oscillations would decrease in size, and your heart rhythms might appear more erratic, signaling a system on high alert. With less variability in your heart rhythms and autonomic nervous system, you are unable to pivot efficiently between different emotional states or to adapt flexibly to the stressors in your specific situation, including work, competition, and relationships.