A way to happiness, health, love, and wealth.
By Dave Ellis – August 3, 2026 (revised August 7, 2026)
This draws together a set of ideas I’ve developed and tested on myself for over 40 years. The physiology is not in dispute (see note). The specific claim that talking, singing, laughing, and crying share one underlying mechanism — a long exhale — isn’t new: it was argued in a British medical journal in 1897, and it’s well supported by current research on the vagus nerve (see note). What I haven’t found taught or published elsewhere is the deliberate, prioritized practice built on that physiology — using these behaviors on purpose, ranked by effectiveness, with close attention to the content of what you sing and speak. What is also unpublished is that volume of the exhale is a key contributor to the effectiveness of the practice.
My claim is simple and includes many of the oldest and most innate human behaviors: weeping, laughing, whistling, humming, singing, and speaking. The breathing technique recommended is also facilitated by crying, chuckling, chanting, mumbling, and praying or reading if done out loud. It works even better if the sounds are loud and exaggerated, and if the humming and whistling is done to a tune, either established or made up.
All of this can be accomplished alone by singing or talking about what you are doing while you are doing it. When done while exercising, the benefits are greater because the volume of the exhale increases. For years my running thousands of miles have been done talking with a running partner or more often talking on the phone with a co-worker as we created our teaching curriculum.
All these actions, which are fully in your control, share a single underlying physiology: your exhale is long or contains a lot of breath as when you weep, laugh, or sing or talk loudly. The longer and larger the exhale, the more the benefit. You can ignore your inhale since it happens naturally and without effort.
The list of these behaviors is prioritized by effectiveness. So, the short of it is, to have a better life filled with more happiness, health, love, and wealth:
- Weep a lot.
- Laugh a lot.
- Whistle often.
- Hum whenever you can.
- Sing.
- Speak.
Alone, all that will change your life. To go to another level, pay attention to content:
The content of the singing and the speaking matters as does the act itself. The exhale delivers its physiological benefit no matter what you say — but what you say is also what you rehearse and reinforce. Sing and talk about the past that worked: the wins, what you’re proud of, what you’re grateful for. Sing and talk about the future you want. Minimize sad songs, and minimize talking about what you fear or what went wrong. You are, quite literally, practicing what you say — so say what you want more of.
My encouragement to do these behaviors as often as practical comes from my own results, tracked over decades and particularly of the last year: major increases in mood (happiness, peace), energy (less sleep needed, more steps per day), creativity, and production (hours worked per week). This is self-experimentation, not a controlled study — but the pattern has held up consistently enough for me to trust it and to recommend it.
It is easy to test the strategies by timing the length and estimating the volume of the air you exhale.
P.S. Since 1580 BCE, the practice of structured breathing has been taught. A long, loud exhale also shows up, usually unnamed, as the consequence of much older practices. Tai chi and qigong are built on exhales markedly longer than the inhale. Chanting, kirtan, and Gregorian chant sustain a vocalized exhale over many syllables. Native American powwow singing and drumming pair sustained, often loud, vocal lines with the drum. Didgeridoo playing requires continuous, forceful exhalation. None of these traditions names the exhale itself as the active ingredient, but in each one it’s what is being extended and amplified. In 1897, physician Harry Campbell published “The Therapeutical Aspects of Talking, Shouting, Singing, Laughing, Crying, Sighing, and Yawning” in The Lancet, making essentially the same physiological argument I open with here: that these acts share a pattern of short inspiration and prolonged expiration, and that this pattern is what makes them beneficial. In the last several decades, laughter as medicine has been popularized, as has singing as therapy, and the vagus-nerve mechanism behind extended exhalation is now well documented. Praying out loud and chanting have been practiced for over 2000 years.
(note)
The physiology behind this is now reasonably well understood. A long, slow exhale stimulates the vagus nerve and shifts the body toward the parasympathetic state — the “rest and digest” mode that slows the heart, lowers stress, and restores calm. A 2018 review by Roderik Gerritsen and Guido Band, “Breath of Life: The Respiratory Vagal Stimulation Model of Contemplative Activity” (Frontiers in Human Neuroscience), gathers a wide body of research showing exactly how slowed respiration and extended exhalation stimulate the vagus nerve and quiet the fight-or-flight response. Vocal practices add a second pathway: humming, singing, and chanting vibrate the vocal cords and the muscles at the back of the throat, which further engages the vagus nerve.
Prior art: Harry Campbell, “The Therapeutical Aspects of Talking, Shouting, Singing, Laughing, Crying, Sighing, and Yawning,” The Lancet, 1897 — an early statement of the same core mechanism (prolonged expiration relative to inspiration) across these behaviors, cited here for completeness rather than to diminish the practice: the physiological observation is old, the deliberate daily use of it, prioritized and content-aware, is what I’m offering.
