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Although I work out for an hour after work every day, occasionally bike home for another hour, and sleep for over six hours, thinking I am proficient in resting, after reading this book, I realized there is still much to learn about rest.
This article will introduce three effective methods for efficient resting (Mindful Breathing, Dynamic Meditation, Stress Breathing Technique).

This is an article I suggest you bookmark. When you feel that rest is never enough and always feel tired, come and practice Ryo Jugetani's set of "Efficient Resting Methods" - Mindfulness. Even mastering just one of these methods can effectively improve your quality of rest.

Regarding Mindfulness, there may be a more colloquial explanation in China, called Meditation. It doesn't matter what it's called, but remember this: mindfulness does not mean achieving a blank mind (which is actually quite difficult to do). On the contrary, it requires you to consciously be aware of the present moment.

Real Cases#

• One of the founders of Apple, Steve Jobs, was a practitioner focused on mindfulness.
• Among the companies that have introduced mindfulness, Google is quite famous for naming it "Search Inside Yourself (SIY)."
• Antai, which fully introduced mindfulness, successfully reduced employee medical costs significantly, and each person's productivity increased by $3,000 per year.

Why is Mindfulness Needed?#

• The fatigue we generally feel is actually a brain phenomenon, not a physical one, known as brain fatigue. It differs from physical fatigue; even if the body gets sufficient rest, brain fatigue can accumulate unconsciously.
• Nearly 80% of the brain's total energy consumption comes from the Default Mode Network (DMN), which operates automatically when the brain is not engaged in conscious activities, akin to habitual thinking. This mode of operation can be understood as the car being in neutral, meaning the human brain is always in a state of "engine running."

How to suppress the excessive operation of the DMN? Mindfulness is one of the methods.

How to Start Mindfulness?#

Here are what I believe to be the three most effective methods. The original book contains seven methods, which you can check out after reading this article.

1 Mindful Breathing#

When feeling dizzy, use the mindful breathing technique; it will help us regain the innocence of encountering this world for the first time.

🏁 Four Steps

1. Take a basic sitting posture: back away from the chair back, relax the abdomen, place both hands on the thighs, keep legs uncrossed, close your eyes, or relax your gaze about two meters ahead.

2. Consciously focus on the sensations in your body: feel the contact with the surrounding environment such as the soles of your feet with the floor, your hips with the seat, and your hands with your thighs, and feel the sensation of being pulled by gravity.

3. Focus on your breath: breathe naturally through your nose, pay attention to the rising and falling of your chest and abdomen caused by the air coming in and out, the pauses between breaths, the depth of each breath, and the temperature difference between inhalation and exhalation. You can also number each breath, "1, 2, 3...".

4. If distracting thoughts arise: return your attention to step 3. Remember, breathing is the "anchor of consciousness". It is normal to have distracting thoughts; there is no need to be hard on yourself.

⚠️Tips

• "Eliminating distractions" is not the goal. Due to the activity of the DMN in the brain, various distractions will naturally arise without any pattern. If you get distracted a hundred times, just return a hundred times; that's all. If you can see how your mind becomes "full of distractions," that is a gain.
• Brain fatigue comes from "the past and the future," either being preoccupied with things that have already happened or being anxious about things that have yet to occur. Therefore, liberating oneself from the pressures of the past or future is the goal of mindfulness. In this regard, we should learn from children, who are filled with freshness towards everything, they invest great attention to the present moment and do not worry about other things while doing something.
• The human brain loves habits, so maintaining the same time and place every day makes it easier to achieve results.

2 Dynamic Meditation#

When feeling heavy-hearted, use dynamic meditation; it can enhance our concentration on the task at hand.

🏁 Four Steps

1. Walking meditation: Decide your walking speed, but it is recommended to walk slowly at first, paying attention to the movements of your limbs and joints, as well as the sensations of contact with the ground, and similarly label your actions, "right, left, up, down...".

2. Standing: Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, extend your arms to the sides and slowly raise them, focusing on the changes in your wrist muscles, the sensation of blood flowing down, and feeling gravity. Repeat the action of raising and slowly lowering your arms.

3. Sitting: Feel the state of sitting on the chair, slowly rotate your shoulders from back to front, focusing on the subtle movements and sensations of muscles and joints.

4. Others: Dressing, brushing teeth, driving, eating, exercising, focus on the movements and sensations of the body during these dynamic processes, which essentially avoids habitual thinking.

⚠️Tips

• Why do people feel more fatigued in "autopilot mode"? Because we are not only focused on one thing at hand; while doing one thing, we are also thinking about and executing other tasks, which is precisely the loss of "the present," such as "walking while using a phone." If you get used to such "multithreading," the brain easily loses an "important function" - concentration. Mindfulness can enhance your concentration on the task at hand, and later you can complete multitasking more quickly. PS: In Apple's recently launched iOS 15 system, there is a focus mode switch worth trying.
• Mindfulness can effectively suppress the secretion of stress hormones, thus anticipating its indirect beautifying effects. Stress hormones are factors that lead to increased sebum (skin acne, pimples, hair loss), dry skin, and autonomic nervous system imbalance.

3 Stress Breathing Technique#

When stress leads to poor physical condition, use the stress breathing technique; it can help us confront stress.

🏁 Three Steps

1. Realize the impact of stress: take the basic posture of mindful breathing, summarize the cause of stress into "one sentence," silently repeat this sentence in your mind, and feel your inner and physical reactions.

2. Focus your awareness on your breath: similarly number your breaths, feeling the relaxation of your body.

3. Expand your attention to your whole body: imagine your whole body is breathing.

⚠️Tips

• When inhaling, it is recommended to imagine sending air to the body parts that feel discomfort from the first step. Each time air passes through, it will carry away stiffness, and the body will become softer. Experience this feeling of openness.
• To eliminate fatigue, exercise is indispensable; exercise can change the human brain. I also believe that the physical consumption brought by exercise is only temporary; in the long run, it will lead to an increase in overall physical capacity.
• Those who can run continuously are not overly attached to "goals." Try to think about how you often feel more motivated when nearing the finish line during a run, because the finish line is in sight. Therefore, to avoid exhaustion on an extremely long journey, focus not on the distant finish line but on the present moment.

Conclusion#

The secret to starting mindfulness can be summarized in one sentence: " Focus on the present, feel your breath."

Nowadays, people excessively pursue methods necessary for making money and improving abilities, while undervaluing methods of rest. However, rest is indispensable on the path of growth. I hope that after reading this article, you can gain something and ensure your rest ♨️～

Additional Insights#

• The three stages of mindfulness experience are: 1) Initial stage - feeling excited due to focusing on "the present"; 2) Intermediate stage - realizing distractions and being able to refocus on "the present"; 3) Later stage - no need to exert effort, the mind is often in "the present."
• Interestingly, research on the correlation between the gut and the brain shows that transplanting the gut bacteria of old mice into young mice accelerated the aging process of the young mice. Therefore, adjusting the gut microbiota is also beneficial for the brain. For secrets about the gut, you can read my previous article: A Little Science | Those Little Thoughts About Your Gut You Might Not Know.

1. Maintaining exercise can increase your energy capacity.
2. When you are already sleeping later than usual, do not worry about the reduced sleep time affecting sleep quality. Reflect on that almost sleepless night; comparing it, you might find that you can still sleep this long now, which might make you feel happy. Maintaining the awareness of "not resting is also okay" can lead to deeper rest.
3. When you don't want to continue studying, make good use of this time to rest fully, such as sleeping, meditating, or getting a massage, rather than engaging in energy-consuming activities that make you less inclined to return to studying.
4. Give yourself a 5-minute buffer time in the morning after waking up; you can try the breathing methods mentioned above. Remember to set an alarm for this 5 minutes, or you might easily fall back asleep.

🔚 That's it for this rest-sharing session. Feel free to leave a message for discussion!

WeChat Reading link: “Efficient Resting Methods: How the World's Elites Relax Their Minds” - Ryo Jugetani