Years ago, while studying with my mentor-professor at NYU, Zoran Josipovic - who was looking at brains scans of monks - I decided to stay for a few months at various monasteries. One of them was Deer Park - under the guidance of Thich Nhat Hanh.  It was an eye-opening experience. We engaged in many meditation and mindful breathing practices.
These practices taught me the power of our breath.
How it is a bridge not only between brain, body and Mind, but also a bridge between conscious and subconscious forces that play a role in our behaviors, feelings and reactions.
In neuroscience we talk a lot about the brain.  We often forget that our circulation system was the first to form in the womb. And the master pump that orchestrates so much of our life is indeed the heart.
The heart picks up on a lot of things. It’s a system that serves as part of a bridge between body and brain. Its rhythms link with how we feel.  
And how we feel is a critical factor of what we will do next.  
How we feel internally drives both our conscious and unconscious behaviors.   Our heart and how it slows down or speeds up is intricately connected to how we move, what we pay attention to, what we decide.
 

In fact, the heart has a lot of different networks that actually can give it the title of its own 'little brain'. 
It even has an endocrine function, which means it actually releases hormones like serotonin. 
As much as our brains are part of our experience, our hearts integrate massive amounts of data that are critical to our optimal functioning.
For example:

a heart condition that can result from losing a loved one can cause an outpouring of adrenaline and abnormal contraction in the left ventricle - this is known as Takotsubo cardiomyopathy (named after the Japanese trapping pot for Octopus that resembles the heart)
High social connectedness may be associated with better outcomes after stroke
By contrast, reduced social interactions caused by panic and anxiety disorders have been associated with reduced parasympathetic tone, a known contributor to cardiovascular disease risk.


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Within that heart-brain network, there is a way for us to have more control.
 
Having control over our attentional systems is possibly one of the most important skills we can have in order for any other kind of progress or technique to work.
 
One way we can work these attentional systems is to focus on and control our breath.
Even if it is fast initially, there is still a rhythm to it, and it is always with us. This makes it an ever-present tool for improving our attentional control.  Focusing on this and using our voluntary somatic nervous system tools to extend it or slow it down also works inhibitory control networks.