I replayed this in honor of quitting smoking, Peter Jennings and Earnestine Nix, a wonderful woman and incredible role model for mothers and educators. mgw

The news a while ago of the death of Peter Jennings brought back a flood of emotions.  My sister Nancy wore cigarette smoking as a glamour symbol from her teenage years right up to her death from a lung cancer that spread throughout her body and suffocated the essence of her life force.

Nancy, as courageous as she was in so many ways, was never able to stop smoking.  Stress management or coping with life’s challenges and rewards became the calming pleasure of a cigarette. It was that cherry on top.  She would repeat, “Don’t smoke if you can. Don’t smoke if you can!” 

 I would add, “If you have a history of smoking and you muster up the strength to quit…

• Find a healthier process for managing stress and depression and addictions. It is as simple as learning the skill of optimal healthy stress managing breathing of O2. No expensive drugs. 

• Know that stopping unhealthy habits and changing unbalanced dysfunctional breathing habit can usually improve the damage done to lungs by cigarette smoking and other unhealthy habits. No expensive surgery. No expensive drugs. No alternative unhealthy side effects.

It is such a natural and simple solution. Improve your breathing. But I did not hear this subject mentioned even once in all the broadcast news I listened to about the death of Peter Jennings.  As babies and young children we instinctive practice optimal breathing skills.  Powerful and traumatic experiences in life, however, force us into unbalanced and dysfunctional and unhealthy breathing pattern that can over stimulate the sympathetic nervous system and lead to an impaired immune system.

Unlike Nancy, Peter was well known for being in the news and in the know…I could only wish that he had realized the power of redeveloping his lung capacity and optimal breathing. I can only wish I had known about optimal breathing a few years ago so I could have told my sister Nancy.  If she had learned optimal breathing skills to increase vital capacity, I would bet a bundle that she would have lived a lot longer.  Maybe I could have enjoyed her raunchy good-hearted sense of life, humor and story telling for just a few more years.  Too, Peter Jennings was a voice too soon suffocated. A video of his exposing the food industry for sponsoring exercise program to get people to eat more was a landmark event.