Latest / Your Money, Your Rules | Financial Mastery, Wealth Mindset, Leadership Principles, Intuitive Decision-Making, Human Design / Ep. 79 Breathwork Explained: The Science and Benefits Behind It (with special guest John Hall)

Transcript

Ep. 79 Breathwork Explained: The Science and Benefits Behind It (with special guest John Hall) · Your Money, Your Rules | Financial Mastery, Wealth Mindset, Leadership Principles, Intuitive Decision-Making, Human Design

• 0:00
  Erin Gray: You're listening to Generate a Life Well-Lived podcast.
• 0:02
  Erin Gray: I'm your friend and confidant, Erin Gray.
• 0:04
  Erin Gray: On this podcast, we will explore all things money, business and self-development, including human design.
• 0:10
  Erin Gray: I hope you enjoy the journey where I share everything that I know and am continuing to learn along the way, as I honor my heart's desires while inspiring and encouraging you to do the same.
• 0:20
  Erin Gray: On today's podcast, I invited John Hall, who is a former Fortune 100 tech leader turned executive performance coach.
• 0:29
  Erin Gray: John now helps founders and entrepreneurs unlock their full potential through his revolutionary BPM, which is Breath Physiology, Mindset Method.
• 0:39
  Erin Gray: As the creator of the Founders Group, he guides ambitious leaders to transform stress into a performance advantage, make better decisions under pressure and achieve extraordinary results in both business and life.
• 0:52
  Erin Gray: I absolutely loved this conversation with him.
• 0:55
  Erin Gray: I'm a big proponent of breathwork.
• 0:58
  Erin Gray: It's been a huge modality for me that has helped move so much energy through my body.
• 1:03
  Erin Gray: I love it probably more than meditation.
• 1:06
  Erin Gray: I think you're going to enjoy this episode today and the wealth of knowledge that John provides.
• 1:13
  Erin Gray: Before we dive into today's episode, I want to ask for a quick favor.
• 1:16
  Erin Gray: If you've been enjoying this podcast and the conversations we're having, it would mean so much if you could leave a review.
• 1:22
  Erin Gray: Your feedback not only helps this show grow, it also lets me know what's really connecting and resonating with you so that I can create more content like that to support you.
• 1:34
  Erin Gray: All you need to do is pause the show right now, go over to Apple or the podcast platform that you listen to and leave a review with a few words.
• 1:43
  Erin Gray: I read every single review.
• 1:45
  Erin Gray: Thank you for being here, for tuning in and being part of this community.
• 1:49
  Erin Gray: Now let's dive into today's episode.
• 1:51
  Erin Gray: Hey, hey everybody.
• 1:52
  Erin Gray: So thank you, John, for coming on the podcast and having a conversation with us today.
• 1:57
  John Hall: Aaron, thanks so much for the invitation.
• 1:58
  John Hall: I am so excited about this.
• 2:00
  Erin Gray: Yeah, it's going to be a good one.
• 2:01
  Erin Gray: So let's talk about if you're willing to share just a little bit about your story and how you got into breathwork, because I don't think it's a popular opinion of a lot of women today, but I do think, you know, part of the feminist movement is we've kind of gone all the way over to the other side, where we're kind of doing to men what we've been, what has been done to us, and so I think that men experience this and they probably stay silent a lot as well.
• 2:27
  Erin Gray: So I would love for you to share your story if you're willing to.
• 2:31
  John Hall: Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:32
  John Hall: I'm trying to think how to open this up, but I appreciate your.
• 2:35
  John Hall: I appreciate your perspective on this because it is, you know, something that people don't realize is the.
• 2:41
  John Hall: I was doing some research around this and they talk about the level of abuse in relationships and it's one of every four women, but it's also one of every 10 men and what's surprising is that they actually think that number for men is also underreported, because there is a huge shame to a man saying I was in an abusive relationship, like I was receiving the abuse on that, and what happens is, I mean any.
• 3:08
  John Hall: I've been doing a lot of reflection about this has been a lifelong journey of kind of what led me to that, what led me to that relationship in the first place and what took so long for me to get out of it.
• 3:18
  John Hall: And you know I joke that God literally took a two by four and smacked me on the back of the head.
• 3:24
  John Hall: I have a number of stitches on the back of my head that are real because that set in in play a series of events that got me out of that situation, got me to realize the situation I was in.
• 3:36
  John Hall: But you know, my first marriage was an abusive relationship and it was a very difficult situation because I had, you know, I could look at all, tell you all the childhood reasons.
• 3:48
  John Hall: Right, I grew up, parents got divorced.
• 3:50
  John Hall: Um, you know, I had, uh, my mom was a child of alcoholic parents, um, so I had some, you know, some of that chaos, some of that played in, right, you know, that's my, my work to uncover that.
• 4:01
  John Hall: And then I looked for a relationship and swore I would never get divorced.
• 4:06
  John Hall: Right, that's what ruined my childhood is I got divorced.
• 4:08
  John Hall: So if I never get divorced then I'll make sure and unfortunately I hadn't dealt with a lot of my own wounds and attracted in somebody in a relationship that took advantage of that.
• 4:21
  John Hall: And I think one of the things I've done a lot of reflection on.
• 4:23
  John Hall: I work with men on very much.
• 4:26
  John Hall: What I'm working on with men directly is how much our childhood impacts our definition of love and relationship and self-worth.
• 4:37
  John Hall: I am paraphrasing to some degree, but I think Genghis Khan it was like Genghis Khan, or somebody, said you know, give me, give me a child before the age of three and I'll mold them into anything I want them to be.
• 4:48
  John Hall: And you know, all of these values that we are just incapable of the self-awareness you know, even gosh, even before, I think 25 years old we're incapable of this level of self-awareness that we need and we're absorbing everything.
• 5:03
  John Hall: It is setting.
• 5:04
  John Hall: Our childhood sets the patterns up for our relationships and our definition of love.
• 5:08
  John Hall: So if we don't understand what that is and my definition was that I had to prove my worth I had to prove my value.
• 5:15
  John Hall: So if I was in a relationship that said, well, you're not worthy, you're not worthy, you're not doing this right, you're not doing that right, what am I going to do?
• 5:22
  John Hall: My childhood program is going to be well, let me go prove.
• 5:25
  John Hall: Let me go prove.
• 5:26
  John Hall: Let me prove, improve, improve and overcome and show you that I actually have value, instead of knowing my own worth.
• 5:32
  John Hall: So that's probably the segue into it.
• 5:35
  John Hall: We can explore from there.
• 5:36
  John Hall: But that's the maybe setting up a little bit about, about what happened and why I stayed in that relationship for as long as I did.
• 5:43
  Erin Gray: Yeah, and I think, regardless of your sex right, like you saying that you had to prove you didn't feel worthy like women feel that same way.
• 5:51
  Erin Gray: It's just.
• 5:52
  Erin Gray: How does it show up?
• 5:53
  Erin Gray: It may not show up in the marriage, it shows up in when we're asking for money, it shows up in business, right.
• 5:57
  Erin Gray: And so I always like to level the playing field in the sense of like we're, we're all human, we're all like.
• 6:04
  Erin Gray: We all have, you know, these experiences and just how it shows up and manifests in our life just may be a little bit different, but we all have issues with, not not issues, but you know, we all have those, those wounds of worthiness and lovability and deservedness, and just how it, how it manifests, is different.
• 6:22
  Erin Gray: So let's talk, then, about how how did you get into breath work?
• 6:27
  Erin Gray: And I want to dive deeper into breath work, because breath work, for me, has been so pivotal in moving a lot of the the emotions right through my body.
• 6:37
  Erin Gray: You know, it's just like I've tried a lot of different modalities and I and I always encourage everybody to try different things, because some things, you know, someone might be listening and be like breathwork doesn't work for me, you know, and that's okay.
• 6:49
  John Hall: Yeah, a hundred percent.
• 6:50
  John Hall: You know, breathwork was a an evolution, right?
• 6:53
  John Hall: So what happened was after my marriage, after this 25 year marriage that I had collapsed, kids went to college and you know, like I said, just series of events set in a place that God, literally, is like okay, you're going to pay attention to what's going on here and you're going to exit the situation.
• 7:09
  John Hall: And so I went down this path of like, what the heck happened and how do I make sure this never happens again?
• 7:14
  John Hall: Right, well, of course it does, but you're getting better every time that you go through it, right?
• 7:19
  John Hall: You don't really get a free pass of like, oh, this will never happen again.
• 7:22
  John Hall: I don't really get a free pass of like, oh, this will never happen again.
• 7:24
  John Hall: I'm going to make sure this, yeah, that's, yeah, that's not how life works, but we get better every time we grow and we become aware and we grow.
• 7:29
  John Hall: And so I set down a path of just different.
• 7:32
  John Hall: You know, starting with what's the traditional thing?
• 7:34
  John Hall: Let's go out, go to talk, counseling, go, start talking about all your problems, talk about your issues.
• 7:38
  John Hall: And you know, unfortunately, you can talk a lot and you can talk to yourself in circles, and it's great.
• 7:42
  John Hall: I think it's great at a gosh, I think of like going into the ER.
• 7:47
  John Hall: It's great if I'm going into the ER, I'm going to get stabilized, I'm going to get out of the hospital, but it's not really the best if you're looking to grow past that point of you're no longer in dire straits and about to die right so now if you want to grow, you've got to start looking at other options.
• 8:04
  John Hall: So you know, I got involved in men's coaching.
• 8:06
  John Hall: I got involved with, you know, different personal development aspects, and breathwork was one that really opened up and what I loved about it was the fact that you could do it anywhere, anytime.
• 8:17
  John Hall: Of the breathwork of let me go to a breathwork session, which I think is fantastic and is amazing to be able to do breathwork sessions, but as I studied just the science behind it and learning how to breathe on a regular basis, learning how to become aware of my breath and pay attention to it, learning how to completely shift my physiology and the impact that that had on my mindset, and so that was really what opened up to me exploring breathwork further.
• 8:47
  John Hall: In fact, I had my gallbladder removed just prior to the end of my marriage and I think I wouldn't have had that, had I known how to breathe properly, like if I knew how to shift my breathing out of my chest and into my diaphragm, I wouldn't have had this just issue that came up because nothing, nothing was getting moved to my gut.
• 9:05
  John Hall: Right, you're sitting all day, most of us are, and so what happens?
• 9:10
  John Hall: We are not built, our body's not built this way.
• 9:12
  John Hall: So breath is just.
• 9:13
  John Hall: It's amazing in that aspect.
• 9:15
  John Hall: But also I love the mental clarity that comes out of it.
• 9:18
  John Hall: I find it's great at reducing the mind chatter or eliminating the mind chatter and letting me get deeper.
• 9:25
  John Hall: And then from a spiritual aspect as well.
• 9:27
  John Hall: You know, I'm Christian, that's my story, that's my reference point as I go through this and I recognize not everyone has that same point of view, but as I research breath, you know it's prana, it's chi, it's.
• 9:43
  John Hall: You know in the Hebrew it's ruach.
• 9:44
  John Hall: I slaughter that because I don't speak Hebrew, but you know if you get someone who does, they'll pronounce it properly.
• 9:48
  John Hall: But there's what's amazing is and pneuma in the New Testament is pneuma, which is where we get pneumatic and pneumonia, but it is pneuma and there's always this aspect of breath that has a spiritual connotation to it and I find there's just so many neat nuances around breath from a spirituality perspective that it's this crossover, it's this thing in this physical space, but it's also got the spiritual aspect to it too, and there's there's so much that I've run down on that path that has been really just made me fall in love with breath work in this space.
• 10:21
  Erin Gray: So if someone's wanting to get started, what do you suggest that they they do?
• 10:26
  Erin Gray: Because I have done some and I'm not a fan of it the Wim Hof, you know and what I've noticed for me is I've had to tap into my own body, even though that the facilitator might be saying breathe at this rate, do it this way, or whatever.
• 10:41
  Erin Gray: Sometimes it's either too fast for me it's, more often than not it has been too fast, and so, really, honoring what does my body need in this moment?
• 10:49
  Erin Gray: Versus I'm trying to keep up with what the facilitator is saying.
• 10:52
  Erin Gray: So I would love your your view on that I totally get it.
• 10:56
  John Hall: I'm going to share a little bit of a story.
• 10:57
  John Hall: I love Wim Hof breath.
• 10:59
  John Hall: I love structure.
• 11:00
  John Hall: There's a holotropic breath.
• 11:01
  John Hall: There's a lot of structured breath that I've explored and I love, but the breathwork style that I've really been trained in, which is trauma informed breathing, is much more like you said.
• 11:10
  John Hall: It's much more informed to your body.
• 11:12
  John Hall: It's much more informed to okay, what am I feeling?
• 11:16
  John Hall: Here's some guidance, but what am I feeling?
• 11:18
  John Hall: You know, I hired I'll share a little story on this when I was in my mid forties I'm like you know, I'm going to get serious about about my physical health and I hired a personal trainer to work with me in the gym and my first personal trainer was about he was like 20 years old, he was half my age.
• 11:35
  John Hall: He was like you know, dude, we're going to go, we're going to go right.
• 11:37
  John Hall: He was just like bumped up and push through, push through, no pain, pain, no gain.
• 11:42
  John Hall: And I loved him.
• 11:44
  John Hall: He was great.
• 11:45
  John Hall: But I had to stop him after about the third week because I'm like Alex, I can't move.
• 11:50
  John Hall: Like the day after we worked out, I can't move.
• 11:54
  John Hall: I'm 45 years old, I'm not 20.
• 11:57
  John Hall: I can't do these same things that you do.
• 11:59
  John Hall: Nor am I.
• 12:00
  John Hall: Nor is my goal to go bulk up and go to go get a world championship or national championship.
• 12:07
  John Hall: And so my next trainer, jake, was very good because he's like, ok, what are your goals?
• 12:12
  John Hall: And let me line it up with this Right, and it was much more built around where I was at and what I wanted to achieve and it was much more guidance.
• 12:21
  John Hall: He would keep me very much on point with the form, but it was much more informed with my body at that time and what I really needed and it worked much better for me, right.
• 12:29
  John Hall: So my point is that breathwork to me is very much the same way.
• 12:34
  John Hall: You know, wim Hof, I love it, I love to go out holotropic breathing, I love it.
• 12:38
  John Hall: I love that at experiences.
• 12:40
  John Hall: But what I have found is being more of a invitational breathwork where I'm guiding you through the process, I'm building it up more towards what's going to work for you.
• 12:51
  John Hall: But even on top of this, I think it's been an evolution of my own awareness of how to achieve change in my life, because my early days in personal development were breakdown to breakthrough.
• 13:03
  John Hall: Right, you got to break through those walls, you got to bust it down.
• 13:06
  John Hall: You got to go like it takes effort to change, right, you know we're going to effort our way to change and, as I've gotten to reflect a bit more on it, it's like the real change comes through awareness.
• 13:17
  John Hall: The real change almost comes through a moment of surrender rather than a moment of powering through, moment of surrender rather than a moment of powering through.
• 13:29
  John Hall: And that is a damn hard concept to accept and understand, especially in the West and especially as a Western man.
• 13:34
  John Hall: Right, surrender is a bad word.
• 13:36
  John Hall: I think surrender for most of us in the West is a bad word Like don't tell me to surrender, don't tell me to submit, don't tell me to surrender.
• 13:42
  John Hall: Those are, those are bad words.
• 13:43
  John Hall: But I think that using a breath, work that allows us to be more in a moment of awareness and be aware of what we are, how we're acting, bring that awareness into our day-to-day life, bring our breath into our day-to-day life, is really the practice that I invite people into.
• 13:59
  Erin Gray: Yeah, I think and this is it's interesting because you know I typically the work I do around is, you know, helping people change their relationship with money, and how we outsource our power with our advisors or whoever it might be.
• 14:13
  Erin Gray: But we outsource our power with our bodies too a lot.
• 14:17
  Erin Gray: You know the healthcare industry like I don't even want to go down that rabbit hole right now today, but I will on a different podcast but you know we outsource our power with health um advisors or healthcare industry, whatever, and exactly what you're saying of how many times have people been in a place where it's like this doesn't feel right in my body, but we've been so conditioned to not speak up and say hang on a second, I don't want to do it this way, or what feels good for me.
• 14:43
  Erin Gray: So I just always encourage everyone in the listeners Like you always have to tap in, like take everything that we say as education and knowledge and then bring it into you.
• 14:55
  Erin Gray: How do you want to do that?
• 14:56
  Erin Gray: Right, like we're giving you information.
• 14:58
  Erin Gray: But this isn't the like, this is the way you have to do it, and I think a lot of people look at it that way you know 100.
• 15:07
  John Hall: There is um man.
• 15:08
  John Hall: When I was, uh, in the 80s, um peter gabriel released an album and he has a song on there called milgram's 37.
• 15:16
  John Hall: Of course I'm like you know what the heck is no like like looking that up and if you've ever read, read about that psychology experiment that was done in the 40s and 50s.
• 15:23
  John Hall: There's all kinds of questions around it now, but basically it was.
• 15:26
  John Hall: It looked at what happened in germany in world war ii and how people could just submit to authority and do things that went completely against their will, just because there was an authority figure in the room and they gave him a lab coat and they gave him a clipboard and they said, please continue the experiment.
• 15:47
  John Hall: And that's all it took for the people to go push past their will to do something they didn't want to do.
• 15:53
  John Hall: And I know it sounds extreme when you read that and that's an extreme example that I'm using, but at the same time, how often do we do that?
• 16:00
  John Hall: We go well, that's the authority.
• 16:01
  John Hall: It doesn't feel right to me, but you know what I'll defer, because the authority says and we're trained that way through school, through the modern school system, and I can get out of soapbox about this one, but we are trained that way through the modern school system.
• 16:28
  John Hall: You don't want to let go of that again.
• 16:30
  John Hall: You want to keep attuned to that inner voice, to that inner conscious that is like, hey, no, this doesn't quite feel right.
• 16:36
  John Hall: My body's saying no, my consciousness, whatever it is something, saying no.
• 16:40
  John Hall: Let me pause and explore that, as opposed to just muting it and pushing on and then having stuff start coming out, you know, sideways in the future as a result.
• 16:50
  Erin Gray: Yeah, you know, I think the self-development world is kind of like this, in the sense of like, go big or go home Like they.
• 16:57
  Erin Gray: Really, you know, you always have to be evolving and growing and and it's just this like overnight success and just all of this stuff that we look at and then we judge ourselves because we aren't doing that, which I don't think that's actually what the path that we need to be doing, because and I would love for you to talk about window of tolerance, because I think if we go too big, too fast, we can shut down our nervous system.
• 17:21
  Erin Gray: So what are your thoughts on that?
• 17:23
  John Hall: Yeah, you know a hundred percent, and that's such a great.
• 17:26
  John Hall: I love that segue to the window of tolerance because it is such a beautiful illustration of going outside of what we're capable of, so kind of backing up a little bit from an evolutionary standpoint.
• 17:38
  John Hall: Right, our bodies were designed with a certain stress response in mind, and so if we were just out in the woods and all of a sudden we had a pack of wolves come up around us, right, and if you actually see a wolf in real life, like it's, it's a big deal.
• 17:53
  John Hall: I can't imagine seeing a pack of these.
• 17:55
  John Hall: And so all of a sudden you you've got a fight or flight situation.
• 17:59
  John Hall: Your body is priming, it is like I'm ready to fight, I'm ready to run, I am like I'm shutting down the prefrontal cortex, I am sending blood to these places, I'm dumping cortisol and adrenaline and everything else in the system and it's very much geared for survival.
• 18:15
  John Hall: And then on the other side God forbid, something horrible happened to us, right, so that's hyper arousal.
• 18:21
  John Hall: And then on the other side, if God forbid, something terrible happened to us, we would just shut down, withdraw, like literally the blood goes into our core, away from our limbs.
• 18:30
  John Hall: It is built in a survival situation, like something terrible has happened, I'm just going to completely withdraw, shut down, disconnect myself even from pain awareness in the hopes that someone can rescue me.
• 18:41
  John Hall: It is the same response when, oh gosh, the body keeps score and I can't think of the author's name right now, but if you know the book and he talks about, like right before an Impala is about to die, it goes through the same state.
• 18:55
  John Hall: It just, it just disconnects, like it disconnects from its body, shuts down to, to to allow it to not go through that experience.
• 19:02
  John Hall: So we have to keep in mind evolutionary standpoint.
• 19:05
  John Hall: This is how our bodies are built and those are the two extremes of the window of tolerance is inside of that space.
• 19:11
  John Hall: The window of tolerance is our ability to handle chaos and adversity without going into hyper arousal or hypo arousal.
• 19:19
  John Hall: Now, those are kind of extreme examples, but again, it's a lens right.
• 19:24
  John Hall: So as we get to these edges, we start getting a little bit of hypo arousal and then into extreme hypo arousal or the other side.
• 19:30
  John Hall: So if we are pushing ourselves and there's one thing to get to the edge and allow our body and our mind to say oh, I can live at this edge, I'm safe, it's okay.
• 19:42
  John Hall: It is another to go past that, because what we are doing is we're training our body to, like, put it in a place of distress and say you're not safe, I will push you beyond the point of safety, right.
• 19:57
  John Hall: And so I agree there is a.
• 20:00
  John Hall: What I do with breathwork and through the BPM toolkit is I'm allowing individuals to expand that window of tolerance without breaking past it.
• 20:08
  John Hall: That's really key, and the trauma-informed training is actually okay.
• 20:12
  John Hall: If it does go too far and someone goes into one of those two states, how do we gently lead them back into a place of safety?
• 20:18
  John Hall: Because a lot of what comes up in breath work as we go in and we balance the autonomic nervous system, which we can talk about if that's not something your listeners are familiar with, but when we balance this, a lot of things will come to the surface that we have held back, we've suppressed, we've not been aware of, and so the ability to maintain a very clean, safe space for people to operate in is really critical to that, and that starts with them respecting their body's awareness as well.
• 20:47
  Erin Gray: So two things come up.
• 20:48
  Erin Gray: One I always look at the window of tolerance, like, imagine a rubber band of like just slowly, with time it gets bigger.
• 20:56
  Erin Gray: Right, we don't try to just blow it out at the first, which I think a lot of us so if.
• 21:02
  Erin Gray: If you have clients that aren't in tune with their body, how do you get them to learn how to be in tune with their body?
• 21:12
  John Hall: Yeah, that's a.
• 21:13
  John Hall: That's a great question.
• 21:14
  John Hall: So there's a.
• 21:15
  John Hall: There's a couple of things, and part of the training is for me to maintain awareness, whether it's virtual or it's in person.
• 21:21
  John Hall: It's to maintain awareness of an individual, of a group, to be able to identify signs of distress that may be coming up or which someone may be going past the window of tolerance, signs of distress that may be coming up or which someone may be going past the window of tolerance.
• 21:34
  John Hall: But also it starts with a much more.
• 21:38
  John Hall: The invitational language that I use is intentional, because it's inviting people to do this.
• 21:40
  John Hall: So they're making, instead of just me saying, do this breath, do this pace, do this style, let's go, go, go, right, and I'm now taking control and leadership of what's going on.
• 21:50
  John Hall: And invitational language if I say you know, Aaron, I invite you to close your eyes and take a deep breath through your nose, Right?
• 22:00
  John Hall: That invitational language is immediately getting you to go.
• 22:04
  John Hall: Well, do I want to do that?
• 22:05
  John Hall: Right?
• 22:06
  John Hall: Do I trust him to do that?
• 22:07
  John Hall: Do I want to do that?
• 22:08
  John Hall: Does that feel good to me?
• 22:08
  John Hall: Does a deep breath through my mouth feel better than my nose?
• 22:11
  John Hall: Right?
• 22:11
  John Hall: So that invitational language, just without words.
• 22:16
  John Hall: Subconsciously, people are evaluating whether they want to do it, as opposed to just falling into the authority of.
• 22:24
  John Hall: I must do this because the breathwork instructor says so.
• 22:27
  Erin Gray: Yeah, I love that.
• 22:28
  Erin Gray: Can you talk a little bit about?
• 22:30
  Erin Gray: You used the acronym BPM, but explain what that is and then how that is.
• 22:36
  Erin Gray: I mean you said a little bit how it's different than Wim Hof or other breathwork, but yeah, just dive into that a little bit.
• 22:43
  John Hall: Yeah, that came a bit from understanding the science and it came from BPM is normal, it's beats per minute, that's your heart rate, right.
• 22:54
  John Hall: And so there was a correlation.
• 22:55
  John Hall: Because I started thinking about when people go into a stress response and their, their heart rate tends to go up, right, we tend to.
• 22:59
  John Hall: You know, we tend to.
• 23:01
  John Hall: When, when the report is late or something collapsed in our business, or we found out that our in-laws moving in for six months, right, we tend to all respond to those same things as if we have a pack of wolves coming at us.
• 23:12
  John Hall: It's that evolutionary response sending the stress, the cortisol, the adrenaline, the heart rate goes up.
• 23:18
  John Hall: We're prepared to fight or flight.
• 23:19
  John Hall: And I started thinking about that and going well, okay, what's a very simple tool that I can give clients that allows them to go hey, my heart rate's going up, let me.
• 23:27
  John Hall: That allows them to go hey, my heart rate's going up, let me do something about this.
• 23:29
  John Hall: And then it branched out into a much bigger tool set from there.
• 23:33
  John Hall: But the basic is the very first thing is breath, right.
• 23:35
  John Hall: So breath is really neat because it's part of our somatic nervous system, but also our autonomic nervous system, so we can intentionally think about breath and take a deep breath and we don't have to think and we still, fortunately, breathe.
• 23:52
  John Hall: So it's one of these crossovers that can go either way.
• 23:55
  John Hall: There's only a handful of them, right, like I can't choose to digest my meal or not digest my meal, it just kind of happens that's fully under autonomic control.
• 24:03
  John Hall: So breath was the first one, and so the very first thing that I encourage people to do heart rate starts to go up is that deep diaphragmatic breath, right, so that deep breath into the belly, right, training people to shift from chest breathing, which most of us have learned as a bad habit over time, and moving into a diaphragmatic breath.
• 24:22
  John Hall: So that's the first thing, and the neat thing about that breath is that the vagus nerve, which just wanders through our body, going up through our brainstem into our brain, that when we take those deep diaphragmatic breath it is sending a signal via the vagus nerve to relax.
• 24:41
  John Hall: It's sending a signal that we're safe.
• 24:43
  John Hall: So that's the very first thing to do is we're sending that signal, through the breath of the brain that we're safe, which is starting to release that hijack that I spoke about on the brain.
• 24:54
  John Hall: The second step is physiology.
• 24:56
  John Hall: So there's a mind-body connection.
• 24:59
  John Hall: We often think about the Charlie Brown visual with the sad music and we think Charlie Brown hunched over and sad, walking down the sidewalk, right, and we think, well, he's sad, that's why he's bent over doing that.
• 25:11
  John Hall: But the reality is that science has shown that if our physiology impacts our mindset, it's a double, it's a two-way channel, it's a two-way street and in fact in the UK they did a study and they found that smiling in a mirror for 10 minutes in clinically depressed patients was as effective as Prozac.
• 25:28
  John Hall: So just let that sink in, right.
• 25:31
  John Hall: Smiling, forcing yourself to smile for 10 minutes in a mirror, was as effective as a pharmaceutical in changing your state of mind.
• 25:42
  John Hall: So the next thing we do is we're going to go into physiology.
• 25:44
  John Hall: Right, there's some different physiology cues, but a very big one is opening up our chest, allowing our shoulders to relax, right, getting that tension out of there, bringing our shoulders, dropping them back right.
• 25:55
  John Hall: Opening up our chest is again a sign of safety that is signaling from our body to our brain that we are safe.
• 26:01
  John Hall: And then what happens is, by using the breath and using the physiology in response to this physiological response, this fight or flight response, we're releasing the hijack that happens from an evolutionary perspective.
• 26:15
  John Hall: And now we're allowing the mindset portion to come in.
• 26:18
  John Hall: Now we can actually plant the mindset focus, right, what's the mindset that we want to have?
• 26:23
  John Hall: And then that allows us to open up opportunities to see things completely differently and that over time, it's a practice that expands your window of tolerance.
• 26:32
  John Hall: So when I work with a CEO or an executive, I say look, how would you like to be able to handle more chaos, more adversity, more uncertainty in your world?
• 26:41
  John Hall: Right?
• 26:41
  John Hall: What's that worth to you?
• 26:42
  John Hall: Right?
• 26:43
  John Hall: What's that worth to you to be able to do that?
• 26:45
  John Hall: And it's, you know, it's exceptional with everything else that we're doing.
• 26:48
  John Hall: It's exceptional edge that they can pick up by doing this work.
• 26:53
  Erin Gray: Do you typically notice that once someone gets in the practice of breath work, it's just like any other skill and it's like working out, it's just something that you do on a consistent basis.
• 27:06
  Erin Gray: It's not like, okay, I'm been having or experiencing these traumas and I need to get through this, and that might be it in the beginning, but then you recognize and realize this feels really good.
• 27:16
  Erin Gray: I feel like I was just telling a friend and colleague the other day I said I can never put words on it how I have to feel, you know, like with breath work or energy work, but it just feel calm and peaceful, like that's probably you know.
• 27:29
  Erin Gray: And so I'm curious if you have people that once you start to do it and you teach yourself I mean obviously work with a professional in the beginning but, like, once you know how to do your breath, is it something that you find and encourage people to do, just as you would working out or eating healthfully or anything else?
• 27:47
  John Hall: A hundred percent, I mean a key part of what I do.
• 27:49
  John Hall: Right, my goal was not to just be like, oh, now, for the rest of your life, you have to keep hiring these or breathwork.
• 27:55
  John Hall: It's how do we build a practice up that you can adopt into your day-to-day life, because to me, breath is just breath, is just a part of day-to-day life that you incorporate in, just like mindfulness, just like gratitude, just like awareness.
• 28:07
  John Hall: And I don't know if you follow Dr Joe Dispenza.
• 28:11
  John Hall: Oh yeah, Okay, and so Dr Joe has done a tremendous amount of work around meditation.
• 28:16
  John Hall: What he's found in meditation is that you know, you kind of circle all around it and it takes a while, but once you get to kind of drop into that deep state of meditation, your body learns the path.
• 28:27
  John Hall: I mean, he has set people up with brains, with EKGs and everything else to look at this and what happens is you get there faster and faster and faster.
• 28:36
  John Hall: He's proven.
• 28:38
  John Hall: Meditation is a skill that you can drop into, just like any other skill that you build, and breathwork, I find, really helps people facilitate to that meditation state a lot faster.
• 28:51
  John Hall: And then you learn how to do it and all of a sudden one day you're sitting there, you go, wait a minute, like I have no mind chatter right now, Like my mind is totally like this is this is unbelievable.
• 29:01
  John Hall: There's no mind chatter, I'm perfectly relaxed, I'm here in the middle of the day feeling energized and good about myself, and you, just you find you go, you start building a new groove right Through neuroplasticity that did not exist before.
• 29:18
  John Hall: So with that guidance you absolutely learn the skill and you absolutely build it into something that just is a tool that you can access any moment.
• 29:27
  Erin Gray: Do you, do you see breathwork and meditation as different modalities?
• 29:30
  Erin Gray: Let me ask that question first.
• 29:31
  Erin Gray: No, I don't.
• 29:32
  Erin Gray: Okay, I have found that I enjoy breath work a lot more than I enjoy meditation.
• 29:38
  Erin Gray: Do you find that with other people as well?
• 29:41
  John Hall: It depends what you define meditation as.
• 29:43
  John Hall: Okay, so, um, so I, uh, a few years ago I was out walking with my, my nephew, who was nine or 10 at the time, and we decided to take a walk.
• 29:52
  John Hall: It was around Christmas time so it was dark early, it was like seven o'clock at night, but it was dark and we go out to walk and the neighbors had talked about rabid foxes.
• 30:01
  John Hall: There were some rabid foxes in the neighborhood, so that was like front and center in everyone's mind on this nighttime walk is rabid foxes, and we made the mistake of giving the flashlight to my nephew.
• 30:14
  John Hall: So here's a 10-year-old rabid fox on the mind, he's got the flashlight and that flashlight is just jumping all over the place.
• 30:21
  John Hall: Right, it's like in the gutter, up in the tree behind us, to the side of us, in our face.
• 30:26
  John Hall: Right, the flashlight is all over the place in our face, right, the flashlight is all over the place.
• 30:33
  John Hall: And so we finally had to take the flashlight away, because you cannot walk with a flashlight going all over the place.
• 30:37
  John Hall: You've got to get that flashlight in kind of a central zone, and now every now and then there was a sound that would take a look at, but otherwise the flashlight was on the path ahead of us.
• 30:45
  John Hall: And what happens is, I think, sometimes for meditation is people think, right, we live our life with that flashlight jumping all over the place.
• 30:55
  John Hall: Yeah, and people think that meditation means I just turn off the flashlight and I'm just supposed to be clear, limit, clear my mind and I'm going to think about nothing yeah that's what a lot of people think yeah that's right and that is.
• 31:08
  John Hall: I mean, that is some advanced stuff right there.
• 31:11
  John Hall: That's like the most advanced form of meditation is.
• 31:14
  John Hall: I'm just going to clear my mind, right?
• 31:17
  John Hall: So what meditation really is is us taking the flashlight that's jumping all around all over the place and we're taking out of the hand of our 10 year old and we're putting it in our adult's hands and we're saying I'm going to focus the flashlight on what I want it to focus on.
• 31:31
  John Hall: Yeah, and I'm going to practice that, and the more I practice that, the better I get at recognizing when the 10 year old has the flashlight and when I need to take the flashlight back and I need to bring it in and I need to focus it.
• 31:46
  John Hall: And what I love about breath work is that it, it, it really is.
• 31:50
  John Hall: It enables people to get that focus very, very quickly, because I'm telling them to focus on their breath.
• 31:58
  John Hall: I'm guiding you through a breath.
• 32:00
  John Hall: I'm guiding you through a specific practice, and so your mind goes to.
• 32:04
  John Hall: Well, okay, I need to focus on my breath.
• 32:06
  John Hall: I need to focus on, especially when you're first doing this.
• 32:08
  John Hall: I need to make sure my breath is going down to my belly.
• 32:11
  John Hall: I need to make sure my breath is coming in through my nose and out through my mouth.
• 32:14
  John Hall: To make sure my breath is coming in through my nose and out through my mouth and I'm doing this count and it naturally focuses people's minds.
• 32:20
  John Hall: So by the time I get to the phase in the breath work right, when I do an hour-long breath work it has a very specific arc and so by the time I get to the arc of meditation, where I'm now like, okay, breathe naturally.
• 32:31
  John Hall: Now I'm going to guide you through whatever we're going to work on, their mind's's like, oh, this is kind of nice.
• 32:36
  John Hall: I can focus on one thing.
• 32:37
  John Hall: Let me focus on this.
• 32:38
  John Hall: So, without the aid of breath, they drop into a meditative state, and that's something I hear consistently from clients is how they they're like I've never gone this deep in meditation.
• 32:50
  John Hall: This is the deepest I've ever gone in meditation.
• 32:52
  John Hall: Was what you just led me through Right First time, working together?
• 32:56
  Erin Gray: ever gone in meditation was what you just led me through right first time working together.
• 32:59
  Erin Gray: Yeah, do you find that people cry or yawn or like how is the energy moved?
• 33:03
  Erin Gray: I always cry typically and yawn is typically what happens with me.
• 33:06
  Erin Gray: So I'm curious like is that?
• 33:08
  Erin Gray: Is that what a lot of other people experience when they do breath work?
• 33:12
  John Hall: yeah, totally.
• 33:13
  John Hall: You know I have to.
• 33:13
  John Hall: I have to reset expectations, especially in a group.
• 33:15
  John Hall: I'd like I'm likeawning is good.
• 33:17
  John Hall: If you're yawning in front of me, I am excited.
• 33:20
  John Hall: Yons mean, I'm doing the right thing as I guide.
• 33:24
  John Hall: You's the sympathetic and the parasympathetic.
• 33:25
  John Hall: Sympathetic you can think of that as the accelerator.
• 33:42
  John Hall: Right, like that is the fight or flight, that's the go mode.
• 33:43
  John Hall: That is the mode that we tend to be jacked up in the moment that we walk through an office door until you know sometime when most people collapse in front of the TV with the bowl of Cheetos.
• 33:54
  John Hall: And then parasympathetic is our break.
• 33:58
  John Hall: That is the rest and digest, that's the create and procreate.
• 34:01
  John Hall: That is the part that is like, okay, I have energy that can be spent in repairing the body and creativity in something other than just go, go, go.
• 34:12
  John Hall: And we are not meant to be in, in, in, stuck in.
• 34:17
  John Hall: Especially in the West, we tend to be stuck in sympathetic mode all the time.
• 34:22
  John Hall: Right, it is like a gazelle that is just a hundred percent locked into.
• 34:26
  John Hall: I am already always ready to be chased by the cheetah on the Serengeti.
• 34:31
  John Hall: So when we do breath, work what we are doing and, by the way, that's a big cause of erectional dysfunction sexual dysfunction, right of a lot of anxiety, is because we're so jacked up and our autonomic nervous system isn't balanced.
• 34:44
  John Hall: So when we do breathwork, what we're doing is we're doing a reset of the autonomic nervous system, and so part of the safety briefing that I give before any breathwork session is you know you're going to yawn.
• 34:56
  John Hall: You will have different types of arousal.
• 34:59
  John Hall: That could be an emotional arousal, which means that emotions start to bubble up.
• 35:02
  John Hall: It could be a sexual arousal, because we're resetting the autonomic nervous system.
• 35:06
  John Hall: It could be a physical arousal, like you want to start banging your fist on the ground because something's coming out.
• 35:12
  John Hall: Something's coming out.
• 35:14
  John Hall: But again, when we rebalance that autonomic nervous system, all that stuff that we have bound energy around to try to keep jammed in position instead of feeling it, processing it, let it flow through us right, starts coming out, and so that is absolutely a normal response during breathwork is to have emotions come up.
• 35:35
  Erin Gray: Yeah, you said something without really diving into it and I want to go back to it is how much we don't, at least in the Western world.
• 35:42
  Erin Gray: I think it's like that through all the world.
• 35:44
  Erin Gray: But, like in the Western world, we don't value stillness, we don't value being quiet, we don't value checking in with our body, and I think sometimes in the beginning, I think we almost need I call it like training wheels, like you almost need something like breath work or scheduling stuff like that to get you in the practice of like 30 or an hour, depending on how long it is, like this is the time for me, like we talk a lot about like self-care and you know, talk a lot about like self-care and you know you know massages or things like that, but like taking care of yourself and like your emotions and allowing yourself to process is, I think, is huge and I think a lot of us aren't practiced at that yet.
• 36:29
  Erin Gray: Um, and value that in the society.
• 36:35
  John Hall: There is such a, and especially because I spoke earlier about personal growth, right, is not about breakdown to breakthrough.
• 36:45
  John Hall: It's about the awareness.
• 36:46
  John Hall: It's about just, oh, you know what I could have handled that without judgment.
• 36:50
  John Hall: I could have handled that differently, I could have done something here.
• 36:52
  John Hall: Or I'm noticing something.
• 36:53
  John Hall: Let me explore that.
• 36:54
  John Hall: And that requires stillness for us to be able to get there right, otherwise, we're paying more attention to the movie that's outside.
• 37:02
  John Hall: Then that stillness allows us to go oh, okay, let me look at this a little differently than I did before.
• 37:08
  John Hall: And so having downtime, breathwork, meditation, whatever it happens to be, is really I think it's really valuable to that growth.
• 37:20
  John Hall: But I'll share this awareness as well.
• 37:23
  John Hall: It does not even have to be like okay, I can hear people right now going okay, great, aaron and John, you guys are saying I need to set aside this time.
• 37:30
  John Hall: You don't know how busy my day is.
• 37:31
  John Hall: You don't know what this is really like.
• 37:33
  John Hall: I call BS on this.
• 37:34
  John Hall: There's no way I can actually carve out an hour every day to be mindful and this is what I talk about for micro mindfulness, right, so little moments.
• 37:46
  John Hall: It does not have to be an hour of undeserved time.
• 37:48
  John Hall: It can be little moments that we practice just awareness.
• 37:52
  John Hall: I got on the elevator the other day.
• 37:54
  John Hall: I was going to the third floor.
• 37:55
  John Hall: The two people with me in the elevator.
• 37:56
  John Hall: I was going to the third floor.
• 37:57
  John Hall: The two people with me in the elevator one was going to the second.
• 37:59
  John Hall: We got out the first right, not even like a basement Got out.
• 38:02
  John Hall: The first One was getting off on two, I was getting off on three, the other was on five.
• 38:06
  John Hall: The first thing I noticed when I get in the elevator is they both have their phones out the moment they said what floor and they pushed the buttons.
• 38:15
  John Hall: One guy was already on his phone when he walked in.
• 38:17
  John Hall: Other than saying what floor, he didn't even look up.
• 38:19
  John Hall: And the woman who asked what floor went right back to her phone.
• 38:22
  John Hall: And we are assaulted by not only screen time, but now AI back screen time, and it is.
• 38:32
  John Hall: It is doing a number on our nervous system, but it is also keeping us totally numbed out to self-awareness, right, it is everything drawing our awareness outside of us, and so just micro moments like okay, I'm getting in my car, let me take a breath.
• 38:50
  John Hall: I'm getting in the elevator, let me take a breath.
• 38:52
  John Hall: I'm about to head into a meeting, let me take a breath.
• 38:55
  John Hall: I'm about to head into a meeting, let me take a breath.
• 38:56
  John Hall: Right?
• 38:56
  John Hall: So just these micro moments that we can do to reground, to refocus, to um, to reset.
• 39:00
  John Hall: You'll get an hour easily out of a day by just doing those micro moments and stacking them together.
• 39:07
  Erin Gray: Yeah, I love that you said that, because I used to be that person.
• 39:10
  Erin Gray: I would have been that person listening to this podcast and be like you guys are full of shit.
• 39:13
  Erin Gray: Because I didn't do any of that and I remember I always tell the story I had to start with like taking a walk around the block or actually.
• 39:20
  Erin Gray: First, my first step was I'm actually going to take a lunch break and not work, you know, seven hours straight.
• 39:26
  Erin Gray: So that's where I started.
• 39:27
  Erin Gray: I started with okay, I'm going to turn off my phone, I'm not going to answer the phone for the employees, they're going to have to figure it out.
• 39:32
  Erin Gray: If they call me for 30 minutes, I'm going to sit and I'm going to eat my lunch in peace.
• 39:37
  Erin Gray: That's where I started, and it felt really uncomfortable, like this isn't?
• 39:41
  Erin Gray: I mean, if we're used to doing something that you've done for?
• 39:45
  Erin Gray: So, however long the the you know self-development world pipes around with, like, get comfortable.
• 39:51
  Erin Gray: You know, get comfortable, being uncomfortable.
• 39:52
  Erin Gray: Being uncomfortable means I'm not going to answer this phone and I'm going to feel a lot of guilt when somebody calls me.
• 39:57
  Erin Gray: That's what feeling uncomfortable looks like, right, and so I just want to encourage you, like what John's saying.
• 40:02
  Erin Gray: It's like I had to start with like okay, every time I transition when I walk through from my office to the bathroom, through you know just what are those little things, like what he's saying of, like going to your car or getting a glass of water, or going to the bathroom, like those are times for you to even just ask yourself, like what is my breath?
• 40:21
  Erin Gray: Like, how am I even breathing, you know?
• 40:23
  Erin Gray: Um, so I don't think here we go back to like start slow, start small.
• 40:29
  Erin Gray: It's like it doesn't it?
• 40:30
  Erin Gray: You may not start with an hour breath work.
• 40:32
  Erin Gray: You might just start with oh, I checked my breath 10 times today and I noticed a lot of times, it's like you know, from my upper rib cage area.
• 40:42
  John Hall: You know, it reminds me of um, it reminds me of something I learned in my own journey with chiropractors, right?
• 40:49
  John Hall: So initially I go to the chiropractors and you walk in and they're pop, pop, pop, snap, you know doing all this stuff.
• 40:59
  John Hall: And you're like, oh, I feel great.
• 41:00
  John Hall: And then you know, but then I'd be like, oh, I've got to go back now.
• 41:01
  John Hall: Next week, I've got to go back every week, and it wasn't until I met a chiropractor who was like you know, no, I'm like you're not doing all this stuff.
• 41:07
  John Hall: And they're like, if I don't fix the muscles that your skeletal structure in place, it's just going to shift back right.
• 41:21
  John Hall: And so I think that the same thing can happen in our personal awareness of you know, we go in for these jumps, that's a great experience.
• 41:26
  John Hall: And we go, oh, this is fantastic.
• 41:27
  John Hall: Right.
• 41:27
  John Hall: Then, three days, the experience is worn off.
• 41:29
  John Hall: We find we can be chasing experiences because we're just trying to get that.
• 41:33
  John Hall: We're trying to get that constant experience.
• 41:35
  John Hall: And you brought up such a beautiful example, which is, you know, again, you took the time off to have a lunch by yourself and go I'm not going to answer the phone, right, which gave you the awareness of wow, I'm really feeling guilty not answering this phone call, right?
• 41:50
  John Hall: Which, then, if we shy away from that, right, oh, that doesn't feel good.
• 41:55
  John Hall: Let me pick up my phone and see what's going on on Twitter, right, you know, let me distract myself, right?
• 42:00
  John Hall: But if we can sit with that discomfort, go.
• 42:02
  John Hall: What's under that discomfort, okay, well, what's under that discomfort is that I start to realize that, oh, my value is based on my availability, yep, okay.
• 42:11
  John Hall: Well, what's driving that?
• 42:13
  John Hall: Right, yeah, let's get to what's underneath that.
• 42:18
  John Hall: And so, again, I think there's just this beautiful awareness that comes out when we allow ourselves to not only sit and be still, not to just be comfortable with discomfort, but to actually be able to sit and be still in discomfort, because that's where, right, that's where stuff starts bubbling up, and we get beautiful awareness that comes out of that where, right, that's where stuff starts bubbling up and we get beautiful awareness that comes out of that.
• 42:38
  Erin Gray: Yeah, curiosity, I love the.
• 42:39
  Erin Gray: I love curiosity because when we are curious and we're not judgment right.
• 42:43
  Erin Gray: I mean in the beginning it didn't start with curious, it was judging myself, but it got to curious and, like John saying, I mean I had my whole worth tied up into what I produced, what I did, what I, how much value I provided all of that stuff, and that didn't.
• 42:58
  Erin Gray: I wasn't able to get to that place until I stopped.
• 43:02
  Erin Gray: It's almost like for for a lot of us, cause I think a lot of us are recovering overachievers.
• 43:07
  Erin Gray: It's like we have to take away stuff right To actually get down to.
• 43:11
  Erin Gray: It's not adding more stuff for us, it's removing stuff for us to see what's really underneath there and what's really.
• 43:18
  Erin Gray: You know all of the emotions that we're experiencing.
• 43:22
  Erin Gray: Yeah, yeah.
• 43:24
  Erin Gray: Is there anything else that you want to add that maybe we didn't talk about?
• 43:27
  Erin Gray: That you want to discuss?
• 43:38
  John Hall: discuss.
• 43:38
  John Hall: You know, one thing that I have spent a bit of time working on and developing a course around but develop my own understanding of as well has really been around overcoming imposter syndrome.
• 43:43
  John Hall: I know it's probably a very niche group.
• 43:45
  John Hall: I imagine no one ever listening to this podcast has ever felt like an imposter at any point in time, right?
• 43:51
  John Hall: But it is kind of interesting because when I sat down to do this course and I thought about it, I thought, well, you know, what's amazing is the people that feel imposter syndrome are actually the people that are typically doing something, because if you don't stretch yourself, if you don't go beyond more than just what you're used to, you don't feel like an imposter, right.
• 44:11
  John Hall: But the moment you try to stretch and go, start expanding into what's even possible for you, this imposter syndrome is kind of it's kind of that rubber band that starts pulling us back, like, oh, I'm not used to being stretched this way, let me put, let me yank you back.
• 44:24
  John Hall: So there is, you know, and I built this course out, and one of the things that I give as a gift to to to different listeners is, again, if you go to that site, you can sign up.
• 44:34
  John Hall: I'll give you six weeks of access for free.
• 44:36
  John Hall: It's a beautiful course.
• 44:37
  John Hall: It incorporates breathwork and mindfulness practice, as well as explaining some of the concepts behind there.
• 44:42
  John Hall: And so if you've ever experienced imposter syndrome and you were like what the heck is going on and how do I move past this, without just telling myself, hey, suck it in, go do it right, which is not going to work, and I explained the reason why.
• 44:55
  John Hall: Uh, anyway, that is a gift that I offer out there as well is, uh, is the overcoming imposter syndrome, or so?
• 45:02
  Erin Gray: funny you say that, cause I was just experiencing this yesterday and I'm like oh, here we are again, like you know, and I think I'm curious if you feel this way, and then this way with clients, it's like it's just a new level, right, like, or just or I call it like peeling back the onion, right, like it's just always going to be there.
• 45:17
  Erin Gray: I finally made peace with it, right, and it's just like oh, here we are, we're just doing some stuff that we may not be like totally, you know, totally copacetic on and okay.
• 45:29
  John Hall: It's a hundred percent.
• 45:30
  John Hall: It is our.
• 45:31
  John Hall: Our bodies are used to um the familiar and we get safety and comfort from the familiar.
• 45:39
  John Hall: One of the one of the challenges I gave myself was finding a church that was much more representative of community than a lot of churches tend to be right.
• 45:47
  John Hall: A lot of churches, I think a lot of people, a lot of people in church are going to be like you know what the heck?
• 45:50
  John Hall: Like Jesus was middle Eastern, like no, he's not white.
• 45:53
  John Hall: Like a white blonde hippie Like this.
• 45:54
  John Hall: This is crazy.
• 45:55
  Erin Gray: Yeah.
• 45:56
  John Hall: So you know, the first time I went to a church that was predominantly black church and it was like, oh, I'm like the lone white guy in here, like this is really awkward.
• 46:08
  John Hall: This feels very uncomfortable for me to actually be in this moment.
• 46:10
  John Hall: Like there was a lot of self-awareness because I'm like this is a different experience for me and it took a little bit of time for me to go.
• 46:14
  John Hall: Oh, wait a second.
• 46:15
  John Hall: Okay, this is perfectly normal.
• 46:17
  John Hall: This is actually family, this is, it's perfectly normal.
• 46:20
  John Hall: We're all people, we all are focused on the same thing.
• 46:23
  John Hall: But it took time for me to actually be able to get to that situation and then it got easier and easier, right as I changed churches, things like that.
• 46:31
  John Hall: It's like, okay, this is, I've been in this experience before, like this is normal to me, this is like I can understand this.
• 46:37
  John Hall: But we we we've confused familiarity with safety.
• 46:41
  John Hall: There was no danger to me walking into the you know like there's no danger to me, but it was just that self-awareness that was like this is unfamiliar to me.
• 46:48
  John Hall: So my body, my mind, everything's going.
• 46:50
  John Hall: This is not safe simply because it's unfamiliar.
• 46:53
  John Hall: I think that's what happens with imposter syndrome is there's an element in there.
• 46:57
  John Hall: That is like this new role, new responsibility, new scope, whatever it happens to be, is unfamiliar to me and therefore I'm going to default to the wiring of it's unsafe and trigger all that stuff around it to try to pull me back to safety.
• 47:13
  John Hall: As opposed to, this is just different and, like you say, the more you get used to, oh okay, this is just different and I know this feeling and I know what this is about.
• 47:22
  John Hall: I'm totally good with this the better you get at moving past that segment and into okay, now what are the skills I need to grow to to fill out this new role?
• 47:31
  Erin Gray: Yeah, and I think also too, here we go back to slowing down.
• 47:34
  Erin Gray: Bringing it all the way back home again is like we might not actually be aware that that's what's happening.
• 47:41
  Erin Gray: If we're just going so quickly and moving so quickly, it's when I have noticed, when I really am in on it.
• 47:48
  Erin Gray: I guess I should say I catch it sooner, the earlier, you know, the earlier, because I have slowed down and I'm like oh, here we are, like it shows up very sneakily if that's a word, I don't know if it was- but you know it shows up in that way, but I've been able to get it or be aware of it much sooner because I am pausing, I am reflecting, I am in the body and doing those things versus next step, next step, next step and then, before you know it, oh, this is what's happened.
• 48:19
  John Hall: I love the word sneakily.
• 48:21
  John Hall: I love the word sneaky because that that is how our ego is right.
• 48:24
  John Hall: Our ego is kind of sneaky and it's like, okay, let me, let me try to do it this way and this way and this way.
• 48:29
  John Hall: And it is, it's like you, you, you think you get all the tricks, and it's like, oh, I know what you're doing.
• 48:34
  John Hall: And then it's nope, nope, new trick, new trick, new trick, let me try it this way, right, so you're absolutely right.
• 48:39
  John Hall: It is not an elimination, right, like my bold statement of you know, I'm never going to get divorced again.
• 48:46
  John Hall: I'm never going to let this happen again.
• 48:48
  John Hall: Right, it is not that absolute.
• 48:51
  John Hall: It is a process of, like, catching it faster and faster and faster, right.
• 48:56
  John Hall: So you know, it's like, ooh, that that only took me five minutes to come back and go.
• 49:01
  John Hall: That's, that's fantastic.
• 49:03
  John Hall: I didn't wait eight years to do this one.
• 49:05
  John Hall: I've got it in five minutes.
• 49:06
  John Hall: That's that's progress, right, yeah.
• 49:08
  Erin Gray: And I will say too, like compassion self-compassion has really helped as well, because I think I used to get frustrated, like here we are again, like it's almost was a form of resistance versus I don't know.
• 49:19
  Erin Gray: I remember, just like remember when, like Winnie the Pooh would like kind of sit into his little chair and get like Ooh, it's just like that's kind of how I feel, like now, like okay, we're going to just settle in and this is where we are and it's okay, versus that resistance of like why are we here again?
• 49:35
  Erin Gray: You know, getting almost like a frustrated parent or coach with us might be, you know, versus no, this is, this is what our ego does to try to protect us, and it's sitting on the same bench as our heart is right, it's not like the ego against us, it's like the ego is just really trying to do to to protect us and to keep us exactly where we are, so we can be all nice and comfy.
• 50:01
  John Hall: Exactly.
• 50:01
  John Hall: It is there you know it was the same as our mind is there to keep us safe, not happy, but it has a role of safety and it's like you know you've been hurt before, you've been burnt before.
• 50:09
  John Hall: This has happened or could happen.
• 50:10
  John Hall: I've seen this happen and you're so spot on with the judgment because we can be.
• 50:16
  John Hall: You know, you see, online or in person sometimes, people judging another person so harshly and you see that come out, but that's nothing compared to what we do to ourselves, nothing compared to what most people do to themselves on a regular basis.
• 50:32
  John Hall: And so, learning to love yourself and be able to be lovingly aware of you know, this is something I did and I could.
• 50:40
  John Hall: I could do it differently, right and without judgment, and harshness is is a skill that, um, when you achieve it and you know you teach clients like you and I are both on the same path of how do we teach clients to do that, and it's so life, it's sort so game changing when they're able to reach that state.
• 50:57
  Erin Gray: Yeah, it's a lot more fun to go through life.
• 50:59
  Erin Gray: It's like people want to say, oh, it's better, it's worse, it's not better or worse.
• 51:02
  Erin Gray: It just feels better in the body that when I'm having a tough time, I'm not berating myself.
• 51:07
  Erin Gray: At the same time, I'm like what do you need in this moment, sweetheart, what do you need in order to get through this?
• 51:12
  Erin Gray: You know, and and sometimes I think people confuse self-compassion with oh, I just let myself off the hook Sometimes the most self-compassionate thing is Aaron, in this moment it's to do the thing.
• 51:23
  Erin Gray: I know you're scared, but it's to do the thing.
• 51:25
  Erin Gray: And sometimes in the moment, it's like you have been working so much.
• 51:29
  Erin Gray: You just need to take a nap right now.
• 51:31
  Erin Gray: So getting clear on self-compassion does not mean condoning and getting out of things.
• 51:37
  Erin Gray: It just means having some I call it softness, tenderness and curiosity to get to like what, actually, what, what is going to you know, help you in the long run.
• 51:50
  John Hall: No, I love the nuance that you introduced there because it's so important, right, Self-compassion and self-care and self-love is not like, oh well, I'm just going to step back and do that I mean, there are times.
• 52:01
  John Hall: I'm in the gym, I'm like pushing myself out of self-compassion because I know, okay, I need to get this next rep out, I need to get this next set in.
• 52:08
  John Hall: Right, this is important.
• 52:09
  John Hall: I push through and get this deadline or stay up late or do whatever needs to be done, but I'm doing it from a place of.
• 52:15
  John Hall: This is the best thing, as opposed to you know, hey, john, you're you're lazy.
• 52:20
  John Hall: You know just the beratement that can come out sometimes, right, that would come out to me in my past, right, where I just berate myself to push myself to do something, instead of doing it from hey, this is the best thing to do.
• 52:30
  John Hall: Let's make it happen, right, yeah.
• 52:33
  Erin Gray: I love it.
• 52:33
  Erin Gray: Thank you, john.
• 52:34
  Erin Gray: Where can people find more about you, learn more about you, connect with you?
• 52:39
  John Hall: Yeah, johnhallcoachingcom.
• 52:40
  John Hall: Or just Google John Hall Breathwork.
• 52:43
  John Hall: I am going to show up.
• 52:45
  John Hall: Yeah, johnhallcoachingcom.
• 52:47
  Erin Gray: Okay, I'll put it all in the show notes and to each of you.
• 52:50
  Erin Gray: Thank you for listening and watching and thank you, john, again for coming on and sharing your time with us.
• 52:54
  John Hall: Erin, thanks so much for having me as a guest, okay.