Mariner Books Heart Breath Mind: Conquer Stress, Build Resilience, and Perform at Your Peak

This book has been transformative for both me and my partner. I've battled with sleepless nights and chronic anxiety for years, finding no relief until now. Dr. Leah Lagos' 10-week HRV training is incredible. Her book serves as a hands-on guide. Each week she takes you through a breathe training exercise that you must do twice a day. After just 3 or 4 weeks I was sleeping through the night and my anxiety was significantly reduced.The 10-week program was so effective that, 6 months later, it has become my daily practice. My sleep and anxiety have vastly improved. Healing my sleep has made me feel limitless. Change is truly possible with effort. My heartfelt thanks go to Dr. Lagos for introducing me to HRV training. I am so grateful and share this technique with anyone willing to listen. :)

Excellent

A great book for everyone who breathes. Nice to see the power of breath appear, backed by science and clinical research. It is a practical and useful work without any mystical or spiritual distractions. Thank you dr. Lagos and thank you dr. Tyson for giving this wonderful branch of science some light.

This book has had a huge impact on me. I have been tracking my heart rate variability for several years now, but I first came across resonance breathing and the work of Dr. Lagos through Tim Ferriss, who on his podcast mentioned the impact it has had on his recovery journey from childhood trauma. While I was not trying to address any trauma myself, 2020 had definitely been a difficult year, and for the first time in my adult life, I experienced something I’d describe as anxiety. So I was eager to give HRV biofeedback training a go and picked up Dr. Lagos's book.Our heart is just like any other muscle in that it has a muscle memory that can be trained. The ten-week program outlined by Lagos in her book aims at exactly this, using our breath to help our heart unlearn bad patterns, ingrained through trauma, anxiety, or just bad breathing habits, and relearn patterns that make our heart more responsive and resilient. In doing so, we also address the balance between our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, which are responsible for fight-or-flight and rest-and-digest respectively. For many of us, this balance has shifted far too much to the sympathetic side.I followed the 10-week program through its entirety, practicing resonance breathing twice a day for 20 minutes. According to Lagos, completing the program can have numerous and varied benefits, including: Less mind chatter and more control over your thoughts, decreased stress and anxiety, relieved medical conditions related to ANS dysfunction, getting better at connecting with positive emotions and triggering them, increased stamina, better emotional regulation and overall mood, and more empathy. And I was very impressed that the method lived up to the claims. With the exception of “relieve of medical conditions” (I didn’t have any concrete condition I was trying to address) and “increased stamina” (I wasn’t really active during that time in a way that would have allowed for me to really notice or quantify this), I can say that I feel like I have personally perceived all of the promised benefits.Overall, I’ve been feeling much better during and after completing the program outlined in the book. I’m planning to continue with resonance breathing, using it not just for stress relief, but also performance optimization, and the book has inspired me to dive much deeper into this topic in the future, and even combine it with some of my professional interests.

First off, I am not from the science world and do not have a medical study background. But after hearing Dr. Leah Lagos on Shane Parrish’s Knowledge Project podcast with her client, Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla, I decided to pick up this book. "Dr. Leah Lagos's 'Heart, Breath, Mind' presents a compelling alternative to talk therapy, highlighting how heart rate variability (HRV) training can profoundly impact stress management in high-pressure environments in business, sports, or anywhere in life.By prioritizing your physiological state, you'll impact your psychological state, not the other way around. Recognizing this is a game-changer. I highly recommend this book and the strategies within it to anyone looking to optimize their health and life.