Welcome to episode 2813 of the Daily Meditation Podcast. I'm Mary Mechley and I welcome you to your brand new year.

This week our series is all about new beginnings. Every week we focus on a theme and the theme is carried throughout each day's episode as you meditate.

And on day three of a series, which is today, you're guided using a breathing technique. So yesterday was day two, you're always guided using an affirmation.

Day three is always a breathing technique. And when you begin to become familiar with these different techniques as you meditate,

you'll find that you can easily weave these techniques throughout your day, creating a true meditation lifestyle.

In today's episode, you're going to be guided using a breathing technique that strengthens your vagus nerve.

This is an important nerve in your body that starts at your brain stem and traverses all the way down through your abdominal area.

And it passes through several major organs, including your heart, your lungs, and your digestive organs.

And what this nerve does is it helps you manage stress better. So it's very important to tone this nerve.

You can actually tone it just like you tone a muscle. And there are a few ways you can tone this nerve.

And one of the best ways is by doing a breathing technique. You can also tone it by immersing yourself in cold water, such as maybe spending 30 seconds to a minute in your shower, the last part of your shower.

Also, you can use a sauna or do high-intensity interval workouts, hit workouts. These are ways where you stress your body.

And as you stress your body, you begin to tone this nerve.

So you're not putting too much stress on your body. You're simply exposing your body to stress so that it can better adapt to it.

In today's breathing technique, I'll guide you through this process.

So as you settle yourself down and get ready to meditate, again, I invite you to take a look around your meditation space.

I invited you to do this in the very first episode of this series. With a new year comes a new perspective.

It's a great time to freshen up your meditation space. Think of ways that you could enhance it and personalize it.

And in yesterday's episode, you were guided to select a word of the year. This is a word that defines your year. It could be an anchor word that reminds you of what's important in your life.

So you might want to place this word in a little frame in your meditation space or on a note card.

And that will remind you of what you're trying to achieve this year.

So you could bring how you want to feel in regards to your word of the year into your meditation.

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