Once you have liberated the face from its narratives and can be fully receptive to the flow of breath, without blowing it from the mouth, your impulse for ‘doing’ can be sourced from the body’s intelligence rather than being orchestrated from above.

One long-term study of over 12,000 men and women found that, independent of any aerobic training, those who did strength training for less than an hour a week lowered their risk of heart attack and stroke by up to 70%.

The equation is pretty simple: the stronger and bigger a muscle is, and the more intensely it contracts, the more myokines it produces.

When you are dulled to the body’s sensations, you are also dulled to its deeper resources—and

We can actually get stronger over the years, rewriting the narrative of what it means to grow older.

The strength a muscle can exert, then, isn’t determined only by the quality of the muscle fibers; it is also affected to a significant degree by the quality of the neural signal from the brain that activates the muscle.

muscle strength is the bedrock on which our metabolic health rests.

being present cannot be understood as an accomplishment; it is a surrender, an attunement. It’s not about building a bridge of awareness between you and the present. There are not two separate entities: the present ‘out there’ and me ‘in here’.

Exercise is beneficial to the whole body because when we engage muscles in work they release hormone-like proteins that support every one of its systems.