Lie down! — How breathing shapes reality. Recommendation of an interview with a neuropsychologist

Andrea Zaccaro, psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of Chieti-Pescara, studies how breathing shapes the mind. In a recent conversation he describes how air drawn through the nose stimulates mechanoreceptors in the olfactory epithelium and entrains oscillations across the cortex, how the heartbeat is perceived more accurately during exhalation than during inhalation, and how disturbed interoception runs through schizophrenia, depression, panic and trauma. His most striking material comes from practitioners of Nidra lying on the floor, whose breathing pauses without effort and who report consciousness without an object, and from expert monks who can no longer simply rest. He is open about how little is known of the mechanism behind these findings. A note on the commercial context of the interview and a personal recollection follow.