Book Selection, Mouth Taping, Worldly Wisdom
Three Point Thursday
The best book is the one that doesn’t feel like a chore.
Don’t give too much weight to what people tell you to read. Recommendations from friends or suggestions from people on the internet can be valuable. But nothing should take precedence over your own unique curiosity. The most important thing is that what you’re reading is enlightening and enjoyable. Fun is the North Star, and everything else is secondary.
Mouth taping for sleep is not safe for everyone, but if it’s safe for you, be prepared to have absurdly vivid dreams.
I’ll never forget the first time I slept with mouth tape on. It was around 4 years ago, and I had a dream that felt so intensely real that I woke up in shock, while also feeling deeply rested. I was instantly hooked. Around this time, my aunt had also given me the book Breathe by James Nestor, and sometime around then I also listened to Andrew Huberman talk about mouth taping and nasal breathing on his podcast. It may sound like a weird thing to do, and I get it. It is. But I don’t care. I never realized that nasal breathing is so much better for you than mouth breathing in pretty much every way. The important caveat is that mouth taping is not safe for everyone. People can’t reliably breathe through their nose for a number of reasons: deviated septum, cold, allergies, obesity, alcohol, sedatives, sleep apnea, and much more. To risk stating the obvious, I’m not a doctor! I don’t really think anyone would start mouth taping blindly without asking a medical professional just because I’m writing it here, but I still wanted to say it for my own conscience. All I’m saying is, as someone it is verifiably safe for, mouth taping has had a profound impact on my sleep and recovery.
Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom.
“Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.”
