Latest / Heal Yourself Podcast / Episode 23: Unlocking Wellness through Transformational Breath

Transcript

Episode 23: Unlocking Wellness through Transformational Breath · Heal Yourself Podcast

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Heal Yourself Podcast, where we dive deep into all things healing.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: I'm Denise, a speech-language pathologist and a self-love coach for adults and teens.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: And I'm Kira, a traditional naturopath and functional nutritionist, and we are here to guide you through the transformative process of healing your body, mind and soul.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: From the latest in functional medicine to nurturing your relationship with yourself, healing trauma and even transforming your money story.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: We're here to empower you with the knowledge and tools to create lasting change.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: So, whether you're looking to heal physically, emotionally or spiritually, join us as we explore the many paths to wholeness and wellness.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the podcast.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Today we have a guest for you.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately, denise could not join us, but I am here with Mary O Dwyer, who very cool bio, by the way.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: She grew up near Ireland's Blarney castle and later moved to the U?
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: S to pursue a PhD in food science and chemistry.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Her career was focused on balancing family and science until her son's autism diagnosis sparked a search for holistic healing and, mary, we can chat about that I've got a kiddo on the spectrum and that journey transformed her, reconnecting her to her own divine potential.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: And now she's the founder of the breath of new life, helping women release pain and finding lasting relief through breath work and spiritual growth.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Thank you for being here, mary.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Oh, thank you for having me Kira, it's wonderful.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's start.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit about your story.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, however you want to dive into that.
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: You know it's funny, it's always a meandering path, right.
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: And what's ironic is growing up, I always wanted to be a doctor or a vet and after spending a summer working with a vet and understanding exactly where your hand had to go to birth a cow, I'm like, yeah, not my career path, unfortunately.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: And then I really wanted to be a doctor and in Ireland the system where I grew up there and the system to get into med school is different than it is here and basically I didn't get in on the first go.
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: So I decided, well, I'll pursue a degree in science and maybe try and come back in the back door.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: And then I realized I hated blood and needles and injections and probably not a good path for me.
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: So by hook or by crook, I ended up in Nebraska and met my husband after I graduated with my doctorate work there in food science and kind of focus on biochemistry as well.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: We ended up moving out to California.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: We both had family out here and had our children, and as soon as our second child was born we kind of began to realize, hmm, his older brother never did that, never did that, never did that.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: And the penny started to drop and he got a diagnosis with autism and he did really well.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: We got a lot of support through some of the local school districts here and I have to say they were great.
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: You know, aba was great for him.
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: They got him speaking by about age four and it was perfect because he his brother was coming up to two at that point, so they kind of learned to talk together and so he had this built in peer at home and he did pretty well.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: And then at about seven he started to hit a wall and I remember when he'd been diagnosed, them telling me that he would probably never live independently, that he was moderately affected, and there was a part of me that never really was going to settle for that or kind of say, if that's the case.
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: My attitude was like, if this is the case, this is the case, but I'm never going to stop looking for solutions.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: And so when he started to hit that wall, I started to do research and I was at a space my husband's, you know, my husband and I we were in a space where I was able to stop working and stay home full time and I feel really grateful for that and I just decided to start to apply all of my science background and knowledge to researching what was going on.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: So this was kind of what got me into the holistic and back into that healthcare.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: You know kind of long story, but getting back to this, starting out wanting to go doctor went to food science and now I'm kind of coming back looking at health and I've always been a really clean eater because I grew up in a home where my mom cooked everything from scratch.
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: She grew up in the country on a farm.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: She's always sourced local fresh ingredients.
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: My mom is in her 80s now and she still cooks all of her meals from scratch.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: It's still rare that she will go out to a restaurant and, you know, and it's serving her well.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: You know, she and my dad are both still in great health, so it wasn't difficult for me to choose to eat well.
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: But I had fallen into some of the traps of feeding my kids some of the standard American diet, right, you know the chicken nuggets, the macaroni and cheese and stuff that they were.
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: You know that they wanted or that my husband grew up with and that he, you know, wanted to feed them.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: And I began to realize how detrimental that was.
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: So that I started to work with him, started researching all sorts of alternative protocols and met with doctors and I started to see real shifts in my son.
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: And so then I went on, became a health coach.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: Years later, five or six years later, when he was kind of stabilized, I became a health coach, I went into personal training and as I was transitioning into that, around the same time I discovered breathwork.
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: And all I can remember like on this flyer was like peace and joy, and the workshop was 25 bucks and I'm like peace and joy for 25 bucks.
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: That sounds a lot because I had everything the world told me I should have and yet inside I was feeling worn out.
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: I was feeling unfulfilled.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: I put all of this time and effort and energy into my son.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: We had the financial resources to support him.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: I had the intelligence and the background in science to be able to navigate all of that.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: My husband and I had a good relationship and yet why was I feeling so empty?
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: So this peace and joy really struck me and breathwork was a life changer.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: My first session was just a game changer for me and as I continued in the health coaching and personal training, I was simultaneously exploring breathwork and becoming a facilitator.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: I was learning about essential oils.
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: I was learning about meditation.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: I was simultaneously exploring breath work and becoming a facilitator.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: I was learning about essential oils.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: I was learning about meditation.
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: I was learning about energy work and how we can work with you know Reiki, energy and mindset and how we can clear all of that and resolve all of these conditionings and patterns.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: And about 2017, I began to realize that as much impact and importance there is to taking care of your physical health through movement and eating well, that was no longer my calling and I had to go into breath work, and so I started my first company, mary's Blue Door, in 2017, and then transitioned into the Breath of New Life in 2022.
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: And here we are, 10 years later, and it's been a journey.
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: It's been a journey and it's been it.
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: Really.
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: I'm still healing people, but now coming from a completely different angle than what I thought it was going to look like.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: And yet I still recognize that I had that calling to help people from a very young age and never expected it to look like this, and I'm really grateful that it did.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that and that's I think so many of us get into the space thinking this is what we're going to do, because my first degree within holistic nutrition and I thought I'm just just gonna help with prenatal nutrition and I'm doing nothing like that right now and it's beautiful.
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: And I think it's wonderful that we live in a time where we can change, where we can start with something, a foundation, because that points, and nobody can ever take away our education.
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: So for me, everything I've learned in every step, even if I'm not using it, there's no such thing as a wasted education, because that knowledge has brought something to me and experience a person.
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: I can remember my professor, who I did my doctorate work with me.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: I remember him telling me Mary, you're a really good teacher, you should consider teaching.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: I'm like at that time I was like not going to become a teacher.
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: And now here I am.
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: I'm like let's, kind of a big part of what I do is teacher.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: And now here I am.
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: I'm like let's, kind of a big part of what I do is, you know, coaching and I I speak to groups, I go into companies and I and I do programs for them and I'm teaching and just just not in the way again that I thought it would be.
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: So it's interesting to see.
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: But he was the first one to plant that seed of Mary.
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: You're a really good teacher.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah Well, let's talk about breathwork a little bit.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: We've got a variety of listeners, from people who are like I don't know what breathwork is, to those who've been, you know, doing it for years.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: Let's just start with the basics.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: We're all breathing.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: Is that breathwork?
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: Like what?
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: What is breathwork?
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: So there's three types of breathwork, is the way I like to explain us.
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: And so there's our breathing, that we do every single day and that's just our automatic breath.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: We're breathing in and out and we're doing it.
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: It keeps us alive.
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: We're not connected to it necessarily, we're not conscious of it.
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: And yet if we look at the word breathing, it also means it could be spoken as respiration, which is re-spiritization.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: And then we hear you know a lot of religious or spiritual teachings would be.
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: You know a lot of religious or spiritual teachings would be.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: You know, the breath of life is representative spirit, holy spirit, right.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: And so, going back to that very first flyer, I saw you know peace and joy.
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: Well, our breath can bring, connect us to our spirit, our spirit of what we have faith in.
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: And so when we're breathing automatically every day, we're not harnessing the power of it.
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: And so then there's we'll go to the second form of breath work, which is a regulatory breath work, and this will be things like a box breath, breathing in for four, hold for four, out for four, or, if you're into yoga, ujjayi breath, or even if you're doing weightlifting and you're using your breath, maybe inhaling as you lift to weight and exhaling as you do something else.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: You're working with your breath in a regulatory way and what this means is it's working on a physical level and it's bringing oxygen in.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: You're working with your breath to create something, to regulate a movement, to regulate your mood maybe, because with that box breath you're trying to calm yourself, trying to calm that nervous system.
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: And when you breathe with your diaphragm and you actually take oxygen into the lowest part of the lungs, the low lobes, different lobes in the lungs you have to get oxygen into the lowest part of those lungs in order to activate the receptors there that will actually trigger physiologically the relaxation response in the brain that turns on the parasympathetic nervous system, turns off the sympathetic nervous system.
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: So that's the second type of breathwork very powerful and everybody should be doing some of that all the time.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: The third breathwork and this is the one that really is the game changer breathwork, and this is integrative breathwork and there's a number of different kinds of integrative breathwork and this is integrative breathwork and there's a number of different kinds of integrative breathwork.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: Some people might have heard of holotrophic breathing.
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: There's somatic breathing.
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: Now there's rebirthing was one of the original.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: So holotrophic and rebirthing, they come back from their day.
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: They go back to at least the 60s, maybe even earlier, so don't quote me on that.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: And then transformational breath is the one that I work with, and this came through in the 1970s through a woman, judith Kravitz, and she has an amazing story.
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: I won't get into it here, but anybody who wants to just look up Judith Kravitz go to her website, transformationalbreathcom.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: And so it has some elements of holotropic and rebirthing and, so far as it's a connected breath work and any type of integrative breath work is going to heal on a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual level.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: And so you're getting those physiological responses that you're getting from a regulatory breath work, bringing oxygen into the lowest lobes of the lungs, triggering that relaxation response, soothing the nervous system.
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: But when you're connecting your breath, you're also taking a lot more breaths per minute than you would normally.
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: So you're bringing in a lot more oxygen, which means that you're getting a lot of detox, because 70% of our detox happens on our exhale.
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: So much more oxygen coming into ourselves, which means so much more debris and carbon dioxide can be released from the cells.
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: When you're breathing with your diaphragm, you also are moving the abdominal organs and this creates a peristalsis type massage which is moving the gut, associated lymph, which is the largest part of our lymphatic system.
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: So you're not necessarily getting as much of that in a box breath, let's say, just because you're not getting the same repetition, the number of breaths per minute, let's say.
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: But you're really getting that in an integrated, connected breath work.
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: And then, because you're breathing in a connected way, you get into a little bit of an altered state.
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: And when we get into this altered state with the breath, you're bringing in this really high vibration of the breath and it's acting like an energy that's coming in.
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: And my metaphor for this is if you were to heat up water on the stove for lasagna or for spaghetti, you have to turn on that flame.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: Right, I have a gas or your heat source, yeah.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: So you turn on your heat source and you have to keep that heat source on in order for the water to boil.
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: And so, in breath work, when you keep that breath coming in and without any pauses, it's like keeping the flame on, so to speak, or keeping that heat source on, and so that water, the energy, is going to build in the water.
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: So that happens in our bodies.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: The energy is building and as we create this high energy or high vibration, high frequency in the body, it can activate some of the heavier energies we are holding on to, which is the things that we have been repressing and suppressing, the old emotions, all those times that we held our breath.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: I don't want to deal with that.
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: We stop those emotions in their tracks when we hold our breath as a way to manage them, but if we don't process them, they get stuck in our body, much like we can store stress everyone can recognize we store stress, generally speaking, in the shoulders, right the neck.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: We store everything that we don't process and so when we get into a connective breath, like transformational breath, you can activate or stimulate some of those old emotions and release them.
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: And it's much like having a big, huge cry Afterwards.
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: You know you feel so much lighter, right, because you released all that energy.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: Or you know if a deadline has passed, you're like, oh my gosh, I feel such a relief, like that burden has been lifted, right.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: Well, you get to feel that in a breath session, without having to cry for two hours or without having to stress to get to that deadline.
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: But you get to have that release and you also get to access some of the beliefs that we have, because we all have a lot of beliefs.
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: We've inherited some of them.
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: We've heard some of them, you some of them.
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: We've heard some of them you know.
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: The classic one is that story.
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: Are you familiar with the story about the lady who was cooking the pot roast and her daughter?
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: She's teaching her daughter?
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: This is a great one.
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: This is an example of a belief that we have that's not necessarily a harmful belief, but something that's a belief that we adhere to, but we don't understand why.
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: And once we let it go, it changes everything.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: So this woman was teaching her 10-year-old how to cook a roast and she's like well, you get the roast and you cut off both ends.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: And the little girl goes well, why do we cut off both ends?
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: And the mom goes you know, actually I don't know.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: Let me call my mom.
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: So she called her mom.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: And the mom goes.
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: You know, I don't know, that was just great-grandmother goes.
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, my pound was too small.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: I always have to cut the ends off.
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: I did hear that one.
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: I did.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: But this is an example of some of the beliefs that are taking up real estate and are.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: There's no harm in cutting the ends off of the thing, but it's an example of something that we do, and we all have beliefs like it has to be this way.
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: And if someone comes in and tells us, no, don't do it that way, we get all upset and like, no, it has to be done this way because it's been done this way for whatever.
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: So it's just kind of a silly story to represent how many things are in our brain that we're just not aware of.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: And so we get to clear some of that without arguing with the belief, right, because sometimes we'll get stuck.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: Well, my mother's always done it this way and I don't want to disappoint my mother, and you know why would my parents have told me that that wasn't true?
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: Well, maybe it's not that it's not true, it's just outdated or it's not needed anymore.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: There were certain things that we believed as a five year old, as a five year old.
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: A five year old believes that you know, oh, I need to hold my parents hand crossing the street, and that's valid and true for a five-year-old, but a 15-year-old doesn't need the same belief, right?
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: And so those ones we can all agree to.
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: But yeah, we all have beliefs and I still uncover them and I've been doing this work for 10 years and there are still beliefs that every now and then I'm going like why have I been believing that?
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: And when you work through it in a breath session, we can just release it.
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: So we get to clear a lot of our mental and our emotional clutter, all of that stuff that's been interfering with us, maybe keeping us stuck and spiritually in a session, when you do any kind of integrative breath work, after you have released, you feel so much lighter and then it's much easier to connect with yourself because you're pulling back the veils, you're pulling back all of the cloudiness and you're beginning to get back into the driver's seat and no longer letting these conditioned responses or conditioned beliefs or emotional charges be in the driving seat.
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: You get to be back in the driving seat and you get to start to go oh, actually I don't like wearing the color orange or I actually don't enjoy going to, you know, greek restaurants or whatever it is.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: But you start to realize what your heart and you get to connect with that in a deeper way and you also get to connect deeply with whatever it is that you have faith in and that becomes a way more tangible experience.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: You know, for me I grew up in Catholic Ireland and that would be my wording is, you know, I thought I had an encounter with Jesus and I always said after my first breath session, I didn't believe in God anymore.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: I knew God there was never.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: I never doubted it.
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: I think everyone goes through some stage In a way.
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: I hope everyone goes through some stage in a way.
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: I hope everyone goes through some stage of doubt so that you can really test the waters and get recommitted to whatever it is that you have faith in.
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: And I just knew in my heart and it never, I never doubted anymore.
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: And I also don't need, never needed to convince anybody else because I understood like God's going to be there for everybody when they need that and it's okay.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: Everybody's on their own journey, on the unique journey.
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: So I'm hearing breath work is going to help with our physical health right on a multitude of ways.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: It's going to help release emotions and I've got a question about that and it's going to help us with our spiritual growth Correct With the emotional piece.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: I'm always asked this question and I'm curious myself with emotions when they're suppressed.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: What if we don't remember them?
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Does it matter when it comes to breath?
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: work, it doesn't matter.
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: Sometimes not, I mean very often people will have experiences where they will be like tears flowing down their face and they have no idea, yeah, why they're crying, and it's okay and I always share that.
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: At the beginning of the session you might have an experience and you've no idea what the source of it is.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: You don't need to know because the breath has its own divine intelligence and so if kind of puts you on a need to know basis, I say so.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: If there's some benefit to you and knowing where the tears are coming from, that information will be given to you.
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: But often we don't need to because maybe it will color our perception of somebody or bias us in some way, and we just don't.
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: It's not helpful, and so it's okay to just not have any idea of what it's about and to release it.
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: It still releases and people will start to feel differently right after the session.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: But then what they'll start to notice is they'll start to notice certain things that triggered them in the past no longer trigger them.
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's really neat, it's, it's, it's fast.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: It still fascinates me to this day, the experiences that I have and that that clients have.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: And, yeah, it's, it's, it's miraculous, it's just, it's simply incredible.
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's a free tool.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: We've all got breath and it's a free tool.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: And I am so focused on on teaching people the tools so that, yes, we all need support and to come into a facilitator from time to time, but I am all about empowering you to be able to take care of yourself so that when life happens and it's, you know, 10 o'clock on a Saturday night you're not going to get, I'm going to be asleep.
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to be there for you.
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: You need to be able to know your tools so that you can talk yourself off a ledge, you can get your body back into a feeling of safety and stability and then, yes, come and get support when you need it, but not as a go to yeah, I mean, I'm always saying that too.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: I tell my clients if you need me for life, there's a problem.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: I want you to have the tools and the resources to go out and be your own best self healer, and there's a multitude of tools available out there, you know.
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: I love to fire my clients.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes and I.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: You know that's a whole other conversation, but I think, unfortunately, there is a piece of the industry where it's like well, just keep working with me for years on end, you need it.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: I'm like I don't buy that.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: I really don't think that people do.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: There's seasons of life where you need to come see us, but the healing comes from within.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: It doesn't come from us.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: Exactly, you need to learn the tools.
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: And once you've learned the tools and sometimes we forget our tools and life happens and we have to come back and get a refresher course.
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: Of course, but it needs to.
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: We all need to have a practice, but we can lead a lot of our own practice, for sure.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: So what about someone that's brand new to breathwork and is I'm just gonna use it because a lot of I'm sure a lot of our listeners extremely stressed out, dysregulated nervous systems, don't know how to calm down, highly anxious.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Where do you start with breathwork with that?
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: So I start very simply by having people just lay on their tummy and breathe, because when you lay on your tummy you put a little bit of pressure on the diaphragm and that actually activates or stimulates the diaphragm, which eliminates any need to like, think am I doing it right?
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: Am I taking a deep breath?
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: It will actually force you to take a diaphragmatic breath so that you are going to get more oxygen into the lower lobes of the lungs, to start that physiological response where we calm ourselves down, turn off the fight or flight.
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: And I like to encourage them to do a three-part breath where, in your mind, you can either take three small breaths or just three parts to a longer breath, with the idea that you fill the bottom of your lungs.
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: You're thinking about your lungs or visualizing your lungs, or just having that intention filling the bottom of your lungs, fill the middle of your lungs, fill the top of your lungs and you can release.
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: And when I get people started who are, you know, listening to me, haven't worked me I don't specifically know what's going on with their breath.
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: That's always going to be a no brainer, great place to start, where you're going to definitely start to feel the impacts, and it's always good to practice this before a stressful space.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: I think it's a great idea.
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: When you wake up in the morning, you're already in bed.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: Just roll over and start, maybe five, maybe you only can do five or 10 breaths, maybe you can do five minutes.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: Maybe you can do that same going to bed at night.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Before you go to sleep, take five, five, 10 breaths or five or 10 minutes of deep breaths, and if you can do that, just listen to some music and do it.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: That's going to be a great start because that's actually going to quote unquote work out your diaphragm, because it's a muscle like any other muscle in our body.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: So the more you work it out, the stronger it's going to be, which means when life happens and you have those stressful moments, your body is going to know what to do.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: Oh, all I got to do is take a breath and then we can start reminding ourselves.
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: When we're in a stressful situation Somebody's shouting at us as a situation at work, road rage the thought will occur more easily.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: Take a deep breath, because your body will know the benefits of it and will have had that feeling of that experience of the relaxation response.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and what a simple thing to do.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: Everyone can find the time to roll over on your stomach and take a few breaths.
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and if you're a busy mom maybe you're a busy mom listening to this and you've got some small kids at home you can lay on.
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: If you have to lay on your back, lay them on your tummy, because even that weight on your tummy will act as a stimulant as well, and so you can do that and just breathe.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: Breathe with your children.
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: We can teach.
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: Imagine if we could all teach our children to just breathe five, six, seven breaths when they feel stressed out, when they feel aggravated, when they're throwing a temper tantrum, when life isn't going their way.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: Teach them that tool so that they have it forever.
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: I, you know, my children were 10 and 12 when I discovered this and it changed our teenage years.
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: I know the teenagers would not have gone as smoothly as they did without those resources, but I know it would have been even more powerful if they had learned it when they were younger.
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: I'd have been a different parent.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: My kiddo is eight and when he gets overstimulated, overwhelmed, frustrated with something, he'll do it on his own.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: Now he'll go.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's wonderful.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: Take a deep breath and he'll just do that on his own completely.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: And I noticed like if I can regulate with him then and do it in that time, it makes a big difference.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: He feels better, it calms him down.
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: It calms him down, and then his diaphragm is going to be just a stronger muscle on a purely unphysiological level.
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: You have to get nothing else out of this conversation.
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: The diaphragm is a muscle and you need to work it out, and that just means that he's going to be always taking deeper breaths.
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: So he's going to be turning off his fight or flight more often and turning on his relaxation response more often.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah and yeah.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: So probably my last question, but what are challenges that people face doing breath work?
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: You mean in a session or just in general, like coming in the door.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: Coming in the door.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's start with coming in the door.
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: I think there's two ends of the spectrum.
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: So there's the end of the spectrum where people know that there's trauma and they are afraid to open that can of worms.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Because it's been so painful and up until now they haven't had the resources and maybe you know, there's been triggering situations that might have activated some of that trauma and it's just too painful and they haven't the tools.
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: And so for them to learn the trust to okay, no, this is actually going to help me.
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: I always try and ensure my clients I've worked with thousands of people you are never going to do or experience anything I haven't experienced, or that I haven't held space for a client to to move through.
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: I think that's that's the fear that people are that will have.
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: Just, they will just get into a spiral and not be able to come out.
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: And that's not what breath work.
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: You actually resolve emotions, often in two to three minutes.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: Sometimes, if it's something really deep, it might take a little longer 10 minutes.
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: We might be sitting in a soup or something, but you're supported and you move through it.
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: And the other end of the spectrum is people that just haven't made the connection between the fact that how well you breathe and how well you feel is deeply connected to how well you're breathing.
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and they, they're.
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: They're maybe very heady and you know this is, you know, exhibit a over here very heady when I came to this.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: How can this breath work?
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: You know, bring me peace and joy and.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: But when you can start to realize, no, that your breath is deeply connected to how well you feel, then you can get the buy-in and then people start to trust it.
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: So that would be the.
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: So there's trust on different, different ends, trust that you won't spiral, and then the trust on the other end is like, no, there really is, there really is a connection.
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: And you know, I think so many people have been raised and I'm talking about my generation, 50s, 60s or older, even some people in their 40s raised with this idea no, you just stay strong, you stay stoicic, you suck those suckers in.
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: And what we don't realize is how much energy we're extending on holding it together.
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: And when we can free these emotions and resolve them and integrate them, we free up so much energy, and then we have energy to travel, we have energy to get up in the morning, we have energy to think, we suddenly get more focused and it's, it's, it's incredible, it's just incredible.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I think that was a beautiful explanation because that's the thing People are going to have fears going into breath work and so that's helpful to know for them too, like you're going to be supported and you're going to be able to work through it.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: And breath is huge.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: I don't talk about it to the extent that you do.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Obviously I'm not a breath work facilitator, but even with my clients we do an optimal breathing assessment and I show them like look, if you're taking 20 breaths per minute all the time throughout your day, you're constantly in fight or flight we need to take those deeper breaths, it needs to go into your diaphragm, all of that.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: So they that connection to health is no joke, guys.
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it'd be interesting for you as you work with clients.
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: If you give them the exercise, I want you to go home and breathe, for you know, between now and the next time I see you on your belly, every day, you're going to see their breath pattern change.
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: It's incredible.
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: We all have a unique breath but we didn't even get into that today.
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: That's a whole other part of the science of this.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: Work is like our individual unique breathing pattern, but you can actually shift how we breathe so that those, those deeper breaths are really become automatic.
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: Love it.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: Well, anything else that you feel like you need to share in this moment.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: Anything I'd share really is just get started.
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: Just get started somewhere.
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: It's like saving money.
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: Right, you've got to start with that first dollar, start with that first breath, start somewhere and start today.
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: There are days that I am flying around and sometimes I only have, you know, feels like 30 seconds to sit down and do deep breaths.
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: But if that's all I have, then it's still important that I sit down and I clear my mind for those and generally it's rare that it's only 30 seconds, because what happens is you create that 30 seconds and then suddenly the 10 minutes appears and it just all unravels.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: So just get started somewhere and start today.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: Don't wait, don't wait.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, lovely, well, where can people find you?
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: You can find me in Southern California.
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: I do a lot of work here locally in the area in the Temecula area.
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: We're about an hour north of San Diego.
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: You can also find me online at wwwthebreathofnewlifecom.
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: I'm on Instagram.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: It's where social media I'm most active at Breath of New Life, and then I'm also just starting to build content for my YouTube channel, which will be also the Breath of New Life, so you can go find that and I'll make sure I send the show links.
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: If you want to just get a taste of working with me, I do offer free guided meditations every Monday.
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: So if anybody would like to get the Zoom link for that, that's your listener just email me at mary at thebreathofnewlifecom and just reference this podcast so that I'll know that you're one of the listeners and I will get you the Zoom link, and that's completely free.
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: It's about 30 minutes every Monday from 10 AM to 10 30 Pacific time, and they will also be added to my YouTube channel over time as well.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: What a value you're giving everyone.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: Awesome.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: Well, we will add everything to the show notes.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: Um, thank you so much, mary.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: This was great and we'll see you guys on the next episode.