Latest / The Karen Kenney Show / A FAST WAY TO SHIFT YOUR PHYSICAL, MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL STATES

Transcript

A FAST WAY TO SHIFT YOUR PHYSICAL, MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL STATES · The Karen Kenney Show

0:01
Karen Kenney: Hey you guys, welcome to the Karen Kenney
0:03
show. I'm so excited to be here with you today, and one of my
0:07
goals in this new year was I wanted to share some helpful
0:12
tools with you guys, like some stuff that I use to help myself
0:16
when, like, my panties are in a bunch or your nick is are in a
0:23
twist, or you're stressed out or freaking out, or low energy or
0:27
whatever, right? So along with being, oh my god, I always hate
0:32
doing, like, the list of things, but along with being a yoga
0:35
teacher, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, there's lots of different
0:38
like certifications and things that I've learned and that I
0:42
teach and I use with my clients, but I don't always talk about
0:45
them, you know what I mean? So I am a certified breath coach, and
0:49
even before that, I mean, well, when you when you're a yoga
0:52
teacher, for as long as I have been a yoga teacher, like since
0:55
1999 you know, you learn about pranayama in yoga. And if you're
1:01
listening to this and you're like, What is this? How is this
1:04
helpful to me? Just like, buckle up for safety, stay, stay in the
1:07
car with me, right? Come for the drive. Because learning about
1:11
breathing is such a powerful thing. I'm not going to get
1:15
wicked in depth. My whole point is to be helpful, but also
1:20
practical. I want any tool I share with you to be immediately
1:23
applicable, like you can use it right away to help yourself out.
1:27
And so today I'm just going to share a little bit about several
1:31
different kinds of breathing practices that you can do that
1:34
will help your ass. Okay, so I'm going to
1:39
break it down into a few different sections. I'm going to
1:41
talk about it just a small just a smidge, and then I'm going to,
1:45
like, tell you the different ones. And then I will, like,
1:47
kind of show you very quickly. And I will, hopefully, if you're
1:51
not somebody who watches the show on YouTube, even if you're
1:54
just listening, my hope is to break it down simply enough that
1:57
you can do it, you know, as without having to see my face.
2:01
Okay? So the first thing I want to tell you is that so in yoga,
2:06
so often we just think of like yoga as being like the asanas or
2:10
the postures or the ways that we're moving our body. But
2:13
there's eight limbs to yoga, right? Again, I'm not going to
2:17
get into all the limbs, but I will tell you this, that
2:19
pranayama like breath control. Breath practices, right? It's
2:24
one of the eight limbs of yoga, and think of it as a
2:28
concentration that is a concentration practice that is
2:32
focused on the breath. That's an easy, simple way. There's
2:34
different ways to kind of break it down. Some people will say
2:38
pranayama means like, breath control, whatever. I just want
2:42
to keep it as simple as possible. But prana means life
2:46
or life force, right? It's that energy. So in other traditions,
2:49
they might call it the key, or the Chi, right? So the way that
2:53
we breathe really makes a difference on our energy level.
2:57
And a lot of times, we'll say the quality of your breath
3:00
affects the quality of your life. And I made some notes to
3:03
myself here to just again, to keep it as simple as possible.
3:07
So pranayama, or breathing right, not only prepares you for
3:11
meditation, it also decreases your heart rate. It can lower
3:15
your blood pressure. It can lower your cortisol, your stress
3:18
hormones right, their levels. It can drop those down. And there's
3:22
also research that says that it can affect your vagal tone. And
3:26
if you know anything about nervous system regulation, I
3:29
mean, these days, it's just like all over the place, right? You
3:32
have undoubtedly, probably have heard about the vagus nerve. The
3:35
vagus nerve is called the wandering nerve because it
3:38
basically think of it as like, being at the base of your brain,
3:43
and it runs down along, and I'm dragging my fingers down. It
3:46
runs down both sides of your neck, and then it goes into,
3:49
down into, like, all your major organs. So think about, like,
3:52
your heart, your lungs, your intestines, this nerve. If I
3:55
showed you a picture of it, it would blow your mind. And it
3:58
plays a really big role in in our resilience, in our stress
4:04
reduction and all these things. So when we have breathing
4:08
techniques that allow us to help with vagal tone or to stimulate
4:12
the vagus nerve, it helps us to, kind of like regulate the
4:16
nervous system, to tap into the parasympathetic nervous system,
4:21
which is relaxation response, rest and digest. It's like
4:25
turning, I always think of it like a dial, right? There's a
4:28
way to turn down the dial a little bit, right, to regulate,
4:31
to down regulate. There's a way to send that sucker up, send us
4:35
into sympathetic that's what gets us into fight and flight
4:38
and very reactive, right, anxiety, all that stuff, stress.
4:41
And then there's ways where we can kind of just set that dial
4:44
for the middle, and that's kind of what we're getting at. And so
4:47
I wanted to just give you a couple of different breathing
4:49
techniques that will help you when your energy, when your
4:53
mood, when your state of mind, is maybe not in the most ideal
4:56
place, and we want to shift it. And knowing that. You can shift
5:02
your state of mind is in your physiological like through your
5:06
physiological body, and that's the thing. The body and the mind
5:10
are not separate, right? Those suckers are deeply intertwined,
5:13
body, mind and spirit. We cannot separate these things. So when
5:17
we feel nervous or excited, our breath tends to be a little bit
5:20
more shallow. But when we deepen the breath, the mind will start
5:25
to follow. It'll start to slow down, right? The brain wave will
5:30
just look as I think of it. It's like riding a wave, right? We
5:33
want to ride a slower and gentler wave. There are times
5:36
when we want to turn things up. So I'm going to, I'm going to
5:40
break it down like this, okay, so there are breaths that we can
5:45
think of as being like down regulating. You might call those
5:50
in different traditions, right? Different teachers use different
5:54
language. So some people would call the down regulating ones
5:59
like cold, right? They would say that we're turning it down,
6:02
right? We're turning the temperature down. It's more
6:05
cool, it's more cold. And some people might call that whiskey,
6:09
right? If we're gonna, I'm just giving you different ways to
6:11
think about this. So if you drink alcohol, which I'm not a
6:15
fan of alcohol, I don't drink alcohol, but if you do, I'm just
6:17
saying, right, it can have a relaxing effect, right? So this
6:21
is what some people will think of, it like, a down regulating,
6:24
cooler whiskey relaxing that's tapping into the
6:28
parasympathetic, the rest and digest the relaxation response
6:32
part of the nervous system. Then we have things that are
6:36
stimulating, right? They bring us up. And those might be like,
6:39
when we get hot, it's like, We're hot, we're on fire, right?
6:42
It's like, let's go, let's go, let's go. That's think of it.
6:44
Some people might call that instead of whiskey, they'd call
6:47
that coffee, right? That caffeinated state, okay? These
6:50
are the stimulating breath practices. Okay? So we have the
6:54
relaxing ones, we have the stimulating ones, and then we
6:57
have kind of the middle of the road ones. These are more of the
6:59
balancing ones. And these help us kind of stay in like an
7:03
optimal state, or return us to our optimal state. It will
7:06
either help us, if we've been really low, it might, you know,
7:09
balance us out. If we've been really high again, it's going to
7:11
bring us down and balance us out. So you can think of this
7:14
instead of, like, hot or cold, think of this as, like, room
7:16
temp, you know what I mean. And instead of whiskey or coffee,
7:19
think of it like water, just nice water is good anytime you
7:24
know what I'm saying. There are certain times when you don't
7:26
want to be pounding coffee. You don't want to get
7:28
overstimulated, like, right before bed, you know what I
7:30
mean, but that might be great first thing in the morning when
7:33
you're trying to get your ass in gear. Okay? There are times when
7:37
you don't want to be more relaxed. It's like, okay, I need
7:41
to, like, move things up, or I need to come back to balance. So
7:44
it's unbelievable to think that, you know, breathing exercises
7:48
can do all of this for us. And why it matters is, is there are
7:52
a ton of nervous system regulation tools out there,
7:55
okay? And we're going to talk about some of these over this
7:58
next year. But things like tapping, right, literally,
8:02
Emotional Freedom Technique, right, sometimes called tapping.
8:05
You're like, tapping on different points on your body,
8:08
and I'm mimicking it right now. I'm tapping on my head. I'm
8:10
tapping on my forehead. I'm tapping under my eye with my
8:13
fingers, right? And that's great, but there are times when
8:16
it's like, I don't you. You may not want to. I mean, I don't
8:18
mind being weird. I tap all the time in public, but you might
8:21
not want to be doing certain tools out in public, because
8:24
you're like, people are going to look at me funny, or they're
8:26
going to think I'm weird, or, like, whatever, right? There are
8:30
things like havening techniques where you, like, stroke your own
8:33
arms and you can touch your face, and, like, you can do all
8:35
these things. And again, you might be like, I don't want to
8:38
be doing those things. But here's the thing about the
8:41
breath. The breath is free, right? We don't have to pay any
8:44
money for it. It's available most of us, right, unless you
8:48
have a respiratory illness or whatever. For most of us, or,
8:51
you know, cancer of the lungs or something, reason why you can't
8:54
breathe on your own, but most of us can, right, and it's always
8:58
available to us. What we're usually lacking, though, is
9:01
information, education, knowledge. And so I'm just like,
9:05
hey, we're in times, and we have been in times for a long time
9:09
where the world is just a little extra fucking crazy and
9:12
stressful and whatever. And I'm always like, what are the things
9:15
that I can do, and whether it's like, before you have to, like,
9:19
if you if you have a business and you have to have a difficult
9:22
conversation, or you have to do a speaking gig or be on a
9:26
podcast, or that you have to be front facing and be out there,
9:29
and that makes you anxious. It's like, oh, what breathing could I
9:32
do to, like, calm me down? Maybe you're going through a lot right
9:35
now and you're feeling overwhelmed and stressed out and
9:38
just like, right tweaking, like at your wits end, like, what can
9:41
I do to like? Help me like? So the 1000 reasons why a breath
9:47
work practice or just some knowing, knowing a couple of
9:51
breaths could come in Wicked handy. You can share them with
9:54
your children, right? The only ones we want to be careful about
9:58
is with the very stimulus. Dating breath. And I'm only
10:01
going to teach you one, I'm only going to tell you about one, and
10:04
you want to be careful with those, because sometimes that
10:07
kind of breath work can be like, it can increase your blood
10:09
pressure. So you want to be careful if you have high blood
10:11
pressure, pregnancy, glaucoma, if you have any kind of
10:15
respiratory disease and stuff like that. You just want to be
10:18
smart. You know, all throughout history, people have said that,
10:21
like, you know, Weston is should not be doing long, extended
10:23
periods of pranayama on their own, because they'll go crazy.
10:27
Because breath work, right? Think about it. It shifts your
10:31
energy, right? So if we're not careful, and we're not doing it
10:34
smart, right, so I don't want, don't go overboard on these,
10:37
right? These are just to be used. I think of it like,
10:40
instead of chugging, think like Sip, sip, as my friend Linda Ty
10:43
says, just sip, sip on these suckers. Okay, alright, so I'm
10:46
going to teach you just a nice and easy balancing breath. Okay,
10:50
I'm going to teach you a couple I made. These are some of my
10:53
these are some of my favorites. And I will, I will. Some of them
10:57
can actually be in like both categories, but just as just a
11:01
simple number one, a simple letting go breath, or the
11:04
sighing breath, or what I sometimes call like the dramatic
11:07
breath, because it makes me laugh, okay? And all you're
11:09
going to do is you're going to, if you can right, you're going
11:12
to inhale through your nose, and as you inhale, you let your
11:15
shoulders go right up towards your ear lobes. Just let your
11:18
shoulders lift right up as you breathe in, right lift the
11:20
shoulders up towards your ears, and then, after you inhale
11:23
through the nose, you exhale through the mouth,
11:28
and you drop your shoulders, and you use sound like a big sighing
11:33
breath. So if you've ever been in a relationship where you have
11:37
a partner who wants you to know that they're unhappy with you,
11:42
but they're not or unhappy with you, or they're upset, or they
11:45
want attention, or whatever. Your kids do this too. I call
11:48
this kind of sometimes the teenager, the teenager breath so
11:54
they're not quite slamming the cabinet doors and things like
11:57
that, but they're just kind of sitting there and they're like,
12:02
like, they're just sighing and whatever, you know, I kind of
12:04
laugh, but really, part of that also is their nervous system
12:07
trying to, like, help get some regulation. So that's a nice way
12:11
to, like, calm down, just a simple letting go sighing breath
12:14
you inhale through the nose, let your shoulders go up towards
12:17
your ears, and then drop those suckers down right away. Breathe
12:20
out through your mouth and use sound. Relax the jaw and use the
12:24
sighing sound. That's a nice, simple, easy breath. Okay.
12:29
Number two, the physiological sigh, okay, the physiological
12:34
sigh. And what's so interesting is different teachers now, like
12:37
so Huberman. Andrew Huberman has kind of made the physiological
12:40
sigh, kind of famous, but these are breath works that have been
12:44
in yoga for 1000s of years. I just have to give credit to the
12:47
originators, right? But so in the physiological sigh, right?
12:51
I'm going to describe it first, then I'll do it with you once,
12:54
in case you're watching this, and then you can practice it if
12:58
you want, and if you're listening to this, right? Just
13:00
pause after each one of these. Give it a practice, because I
13:03
want you to figure out for yourself and to feel for
13:06
yourself, which ones feel best in your body. I'm just going to
13:10
throw, this is like throwing pasta at the ones, throwing
13:12
spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks for you. Okay, so
13:15
the physiological side, this is when you take two, I would say
13:20
kind of quick and stacked inhales through your nose, and
13:25
then you do one long exhale out through the mouth. Okay, and
13:29
this is a variation on another, another fantastic breath, which
13:34
I'll tell you, it's just even more simple than this one. Okay,
13:37
so here's the deal. You're going to inhale twice through the
13:40
nose. The first one is like a quick it's like this. You inhale
13:44
through the nose, and while retaining that breath, holding
13:47
that breath in, you just fill it up a little bit more. Imagine
13:49
you were just trying to expand your lungs just a teeny bit
13:52
more, and you'll take another quick sip. So it sounds like
13:55
this. The first one is this, so nice, inhale through the nose
14:01
and then top it off like you were topping off a little cup of
14:04
water or whatever. Top it off with one more nice, quick inhale
14:08
and then exhale out through your mouth twice as long. That twice
14:16
as long is the important piece. So two inhales in through the
14:21
nose, stacking on top of each other, and then twice as long
14:28
exhale out through the mouth. This is the physiological side,
14:32
that twice as long exhale is what activates the
14:35
parasympathetic nervous system rest and digest, the down
14:39
regulation, the relaxation response, that's what we want.
14:43
Okay, so that's number two, physiological sigh. Notice on
14:47
that one, right? You're breathing in through the nose
14:51
and you're exhaling out through the mouth. Okay? Same thing with
14:54
the first one, the letting go breath. You're inhaling through
14:57
the nose, you're exhaling out through the mouth. And even.
15:00
Simpler version of that is just what you can call it, the two
15:03
one breath, right, which is, or the one two breath, or whatever
15:06
you want to do, is just basically you're inhaling
15:08
through the nose as deeply as you can, as long as you hand
15:11
can, and then you exhale out through the mouth twice as long.
15:16
That's it. It's an even more simple version. I will tell you
15:20
this when I'm about to have to speak in somebody's group or go
15:25
on stage, or even lead a yoga class or whatever, right? I
15:29
really like to bring myself into a deeply kind of relaxed and,
15:32
you know, I'm, like aware I'm awake, but I like to just bring
15:35
my nervous system down, because my nervous system,
15:38
unfortunately, still from a very traumatic childhood, I often say
15:44
that my nervous system doesn't know the difference still
15:47
between when I'm excited and when I'm scared. So even when
15:50
I'm going to do something that I'm just wicked psyched about,
15:53
my hat will be hammering like all kinds of physiological
15:56
responses will just start in my body. My body starts to go into
16:00
fight and flight when I'm really in, like, excited delight, but
16:04
it doesn't know the difference. So I use the physiological sigh
16:09
and that just long inhale through the nose, twice as long
16:13
exhale out through the mouth all the time, like every day, when
16:19
I've had panic attacks when I've gotten anxious, like I use I use
16:23
breath so much, and again, it's free. It's available to us. Why
16:27
not learn these things and put them into practice? The very
16:30
least, if you don't need them, you can teach them and pass them
16:33
on to somebody you love, who does. And a little addition to
16:37
that is when I do that big inhale in through the nose,
16:42
twice as long, exhale out through the mouth. I often use
16:45
sound, and now sometimes, while I'm making sound, also tap my
16:49
chest, like, Ha, like that vibratory thing, right? These
16:54
are my little quirky, weird things that work for me, and how
16:58
I've discovered what works for me is I actually give it a shot
17:01
and I practice it. I don't worry about looking weird or sounding
17:04
weird or whatever. I'm like, This is what helps me. And if
17:08
I'm in a more balanced and regulated state, I show up
17:10
better for myself and everybody else. So like, why not do them?
17:14
Okay? So that's like, three different breasts that can be
17:17
super duper helpful. Now I'm going to give you just what we
17:22
might call, like a balancing breath, right? So those there
17:28
were very much like bringing you into and I'm going to, actually,
17:31
you know what? I'll teach you one more of these. I'll teach
17:34
you one more of the of down regulating, what we might call a
17:40
relaxing breath. Okay? So Andrew wheel loves this breath. He
17:45
talks about it all the time, and he calls it the 478, breath. And
17:50
this technique is specifically right, helpful for stress and
17:54
anxiety. And this is what he says. If you know who Dr Andrew
17:58
wheel is, he says this of all the techniques and remedies I've
18:01
found over the years, the 478 breath is the most effective,
18:06
I'm quoting him, is the most effective anti anxiety, anti
18:10
stress thing you can do. The 478 breath is the most powerful
18:15
method I found to access the relaxation response, and it's
18:19
the most powerful anti anxiety measure I've ever come across.
18:25
Okay, those, those are important words like, that's a big deal.
18:29
So the 478, breathing, it slows down your heart rate. It lowers
18:33
your blood pressure. He says it improves digestion, and it can,
18:36
for some people, it can warm up your hands. And this is how you
18:39
do it. Okay, you're gonna breathe in number one. This is
18:43
like four. Just think of this, 478, okay, you're gonna breathe
18:47
in quietly through your nose to the count of four. So I don't
18:52
just go 1234, with me. I always go one, 1002 like when we were
18:56
kids, right? One, Mississippi, two, Mississippi, whatever. So
18:58
one, 1002 1003 1004 1000 so that's your breathe in through
19:02
the nose to the count of four, and then you hold the breath in.
19:06
You hold your breath to the count of seven, and then you
19:12
breathe the breath out. And we say forcibly. It's like, right,
19:17
with some force. Like, I don't know if my mic is picking it up,
19:21
but if you see my face, I'm kind of making the thing with my
19:23
lips, then you forcibly breathe out through the mouth. That's
19:26
that twice as long exhale again, right? For the count of eight.
19:31
Now, what's happening, though, is you're doing that breath hold
19:34
in between. So that's what makes it a little bit different than
19:38
just breathing in and then exhaling twice as long, right?
19:42
This is you breathe in quietly, again through the nose, count of
19:45
four, hold the breath in to the count of seven, and then
19:49
forcefully. Think of like you're aggressively blowing through a
19:54
straw or something, right, forcefully blowing out through
19:58
the mouth. For the count of. Eight. And he says you can do
20:03
this twice a day. He says, do it four times, like four cycles of
20:08
this. He says, after one month, right? You can go up to eight
20:13
breath cycles Max, though that's the maximum, but don't start
20:17
there. Build up gradually, please. And he says it takes
20:22
about four to six weeks to really notice real effects. But
20:25
I will tell you this when I have done this sitting in my car
20:29
right before I'm about to go into a place or whatever, when
20:32
I've been feeling stressed or anxious or whatever, I do this
20:35
like four times, along with some other tools, like tapping
20:38
whatever and other things I'll share with you as the year goes
20:41
on, and I have found it is incredibly, incredibly helpful.
20:45
Okay, so that's the 478,
20:48
breath, and it's a rapid state. You're trying to change your
20:52
mental state and your physiological state, and the
20:55
breath is one of the fastest ways that we can do this, okay?
21:00
And again, like I said, it's available to us. It's right
21:03
there. It's just like whoever really taught us how to breathe?
21:07
Nobody, nobody really sat us down and said, Oh, you're
21:09
feeling stressed. What do they say? Take a breath. Relax Right?
21:13
Like they say it sarcastically, calm down. Like when you're
21:16
wicked up. They say, calm down. But they don't teach you how to
21:19
calm yourself down. So from my heart to yours, I'm sharing
21:23
these pranayama practices, and hopefully they will be helpful
21:26
to you. Okay, let's talk about a nice balancing breath. Think
21:30
what we might call a water breath. Okay, so think of this
21:33
like when you want to bring yourself back to that optimal
21:36
state where maybe if you've been too high or too low, this is
21:39
going to bring you back to the middle a lot of times I'll use
21:42
like a balancing breath like this, like, if my yoga students
21:46
are coming out of shavasana, right, that final relaxation at
21:49
the end of class, okay, well, they're going from this state
21:52
where they were just fully surrendered on their back, some
21:54
people falling asleep, right? Whatever. And then I'm asking
21:58
them to come out of that state and to bring themselves back up
22:02
to a seated position. Well, yeah, and then right after that,
22:05
they got to go drive a car, like, operate heavy machinery.
22:08
So I always like to offer like a nice little balancing breath or
22:11
something to bring them back to, like an optimal state of
22:14
awareness so that they can function, so they're shifting
22:17
out of that really down regulated state. So that's a
22:20
good example of of when you might want to use it. But
22:23
there's lots of times, right when maybe you just want to do a
22:26
breath, but you don't want to get overstimulated, and you
22:29
don't want to, like, go down, you just want to kind of bring
22:32
yourself to the middle, okay, room temperature, as we would
22:34
say. Okay. So think I want you to imagine, for those of you who
22:38
are visual, visual people, because this is really helpful
22:40
with what you can call this box breathing, or four by four
22:44
breath, four by four breathing. Some people call it square
22:47
breathing. I mean, it's known by a lot of different names, excuse
22:51
me. So visualize in your mind, or imagine in your mind a box,
22:56
like, literally just a four sided square box, okay? And if
23:00
it helps you to focus, because some people will sometimes lose
23:03
where they are in a practice, this is just very simple. So
23:08
imagine just if you're tracing, and I'm doing this with my hand
23:10
online, if you're watching the show, you can see, just imagine
23:13
you're going across the top of a box. That's your inhale, and
23:17
you're going to inhale to the count of four across the top.
23:21
Then you're going to hold the breath. So imagine you're going
23:24
down the side of the box, you're going to hold the breath in for
23:28
the count of four. Then imagine you're coming across the bottom
23:33
of the box, you're going to exhale out to the count of four,
23:39
and then you're going to hold the breath out. Imagine you're
23:42
coming back up to the top. The other side, you're going to hold
23:45
the breath out to the count of four. Okay, so again, how you do
23:52
box, breathing, square. Breathing, four by four.
23:54
Breathing, you inhale, right? And I like to do this through
23:58
the the nose. You inhale through your nose, count of four, hold
24:04
in the breath for the count of four. Exhale out through the
24:08
nose to the count of four, and then hold the breath out,
24:14
meaning don't take another breath in, right for the count
24:17
of four. And then you do it again. So again, inhale through
24:21
the nose, count of four. Hold the breath in, count of four.
24:24
Exhale out through the nose, count of four, and then in, and
24:28
then hold sorry, hold the breath out for the count of four.
24:32
That's box breathing. And you can just, again, use the image
24:36
of a box that has four sides. And it's been described that
24:41
like, like I said, Remember how I said at the beginning, these
24:45
breath practices can be used or can be labeled both things. So
24:51
this could be seen as a nice balancing breath, but for some
24:54
people, it will be a breath that is bringing you down from being
24:57
anxious or being stressed. So. Also, because it's, if you're
25:01
using the image of a box, you're concentrating your mind into the
25:05
present moment. You're focusing on your breath, so your mind is
25:09
not wanting running wild with all of its worries and what ifs
25:13
and worst case scenarios. Right? You're you're right in the
25:15
present moment. So when you get anxious or stressed, your body
25:20
is basically preparing to confront danger, right? So your
25:24
muscles might get test tense and your breathing becomes shallow.
25:27
So doing this when we're actually, you know, physically
25:32
and mentally, putting our focus on doing a little bit longer
25:35
breath and being very intentional and specific, that
25:39
also can help us. And there was a 2023 I just wrote this down, a
25:44
2023 study of breathing exercises that included box
25:49
breathing, and it suggested, in its outcomes that daily, five
25:53
minute breath work can reduce anxiety and improve mood, and
25:58
that there was not only an improvement in mood, but there
26:01
was a change in physiological responses, and some people say
26:06
for them, it is more effective even than just doing mindfulness
26:10
meditation. To me, breath work is a meditation if we're having
26:15
taking that temporary moment to really focus on our breathing,
26:19
breathing in through the nose, or breathing out through the
26:21
mouth or whatever, it forces us to be present, right? We're just
26:24
not because we take the breath for granted, because it's an
26:28
automated system in our body. We just assume like we don't have
26:31
to. We go to bed, we go to sleep. We're not thinking about
26:34
breathing. I mean, the only time you're thinking about breathing
26:36
when you're in bed is when your nose is stuffed up and you can't
26:39
friggin breathe, and right? We know too the nose is designed
26:46
for breathing. Right? We have the two nasal passages. They're
26:50
lined with little bits of hair. It those hairs filtrate out the
26:55
pollutes the pollutants in the environment, and it warms the
26:58
air, and it makes the air a little more moist, so that the
27:02
lungs and the body can receive the oxygen better, right? So
27:06
that nose is the breathing device. So many people are mouth
27:10
breathers, and it shows and it affects them. So if we can learn
27:15
to be intentional with our breathing, and you know, and a
27:18
lot of people are doing like their mouth taping at night in
27:20
bed, they're really trying to train themselves to breathe
27:23
through the nose. So they use the strips to open up their
27:25
nasal passages. Some of them have the little plugs that go in
27:28
the note, I'm widening out my nostrils with my fingertips a
27:31
little bit, right? They widen their nostrils. They tape their
27:33
mouths because there's so if you haven't read the book, I think
27:36
it's James nestor's book, breath. I should have brought it
27:39
upstairs while I was I think it's up here somewhere, James
27:44
nesters. I think it's James nesters book, breath or breathe.
27:48
But in that book, he talks all about this stuff, right? But
27:53
these are just simple things that you can do. Okay? So you've
27:55
learned a bunch of relaxing breaths. You've learned just now
27:59
a balancing breath. And then the last one I'm going to teach you
28:03
is a stimulating breath. But remember, I have to remind you,
28:07
we don't want to go crazy with the stimulating breath, right?
28:09
Especially again, if you're pregnant, you have high blood
28:12
pressure, you have glaucoma, you have respiratory illnesses. You
28:15
want to be smart about this stuff. Okay, so in Kripalu Yoga,
28:19
we have a breath that we call breath of joy. I have seen it in
28:23
other yoga traditions, where they do different things, where
28:26
they're putting their arms in the air and they're making
28:27
sounds, and they're doing all kinds of things, right? This, to
28:30
me, is the the simple one. It's the one that I've been doing for
28:33
forever, and it's the one that I love. So again, I'm going to
28:36
describe it first, and then, if you're watching this, I will
28:40
show it to you. I'll just kind of stand up away from my mic.
28:43
I'll just have to talk a little louder and I'll describe it to
28:46
you. Okay, so this breath is stimulating, because what you're
28:50
doing is kind of like the physiological sigh. You are
28:53
stacking breath inhale breaths on top of each other, through
28:57
your nose, and then you have a big Ha, like forceful, like,
29:01
forceful exhale out through your mouth with sound. Okay, so
29:05
imagine that you're standing up and your arms are just down by
29:08
your side, okay, when you take that first little sip of air
29:13
through your nose, it's just a little, like a quick little shop
29:18
and like, sharp little intake of air. And while you're doing
29:22
that, though, your arms are moving from being down by your
29:26
sides up to shoulder height. So as you inhale, you swing your
29:31
arms up to shoulder height in front of you. So you know how,
29:33
like a zombie would walk, or we wouldn't be like when somebody
29:36
is hypnotized and they walk with their arms out in front of them,
29:39
right, like in Scooby, doo right? That's the first
29:41
position. You inhale your arms both up in front of you at about
29:45
shoulder height. That's that quick. And that is paired with
29:47
that quick inhale. You hold that breath in, and then you let your
29:52
arms swing down and come up out to the sides at your body, like
29:56
the letter T, shoulder height as well. That's the second sip of
30:01
air. And then you inhale them all the way up over. They swing
30:06
down, right, so it's like, and then they inhale all the way up
30:11
by your ears, like, touch down. That's that first sip of that's
30:16
a third, sorry, that third sip of inhale that's stacked on top.
30:20
And then you so you basically just went like this, right?
30:24
You just stack three breaths in, and now you have that big
30:27
letting go, and you bend your knees. So you bend your knees a
30:30
little bit, you sweep your arms down, and you forcefully blow
30:36
the air out with a sound like a forceful like Ha, right? So
30:42
again, I'm going to bring it to you one time. So you inhale.
30:45
I'll stand up and do this one. And I don't mean to yell at you
30:48
guys. I'm going to talk kind of loud. Okay, so you inhale like
30:52
this, to the front, to the side, all the way up, like touchdown,
30:57
and then you bend the knees and go, ha, and you fold forward a
31:01
little bit and you blow out the breath. This is a highly
31:06
stimulating practice. So again, you want to be smart about it.
31:12
You want to be moderate with it. When I teach breath of joy in my
31:16
yoga classes, people afterwards will say they feel like they're
31:21
buzzing. They feel like they're tingling. Heat has come up in
31:25
their body. Their energy has risen. They feel more awake,
31:28
more alive. And we jokingly, I'll jokingly, say to them, who
31:31
needs coffee in the morning when you have breath of joy, right?
31:34
Who needs drugs to get high when you have breath of joy? Because
31:37
you can really stimulate your nervous system. So this is not
31:41
something that we want to do late at night, right, like,
31:46
right before bed. This is something you would do like, in
31:49
the morning, or maybe, let's say, you know, like around three
31:53
o'clock in the afternoon, when you start to get a little sleepy
31:56
and you want to reach for something sugary or chocolatey,
31:59
or some caffeine, or you know, some, excuse me, some beverage
32:04
that's going to stimulate your nervous system. Instead, you can
32:09
just do a little, this would be considered like a coffee breath,
32:13
right? It stimulates the sympathetic nervous system. And
32:17
it's kind of like that excitement effect, right? It
32:19
kind of brings you up. So remember, let's go back over
32:22
these again, the water breathing, we'll do the the
32:26
whiskey breathing, or the like the middle, as I would call it.
32:31
I put all these names down so I wouldn't forget myself, because
32:33
I get a little all over the place. I get excited, I get a
32:36
little over the place. So things that are down, regulating and
32:39
relaxing, right? What some people, I think it's Lucas
32:42
Rockwood from yoga body, who calls it the whiskey breath,
32:45
right? And this is when we want to bring ourselves to the
32:50
parasympathetic. We want to down regulate, we want to relax, or
32:53
we want to induce sleep, right? This is, this is when we would
32:56
use that breath. And it can be really, really helpful, okay,
33:00
when you want to just do that balancing breath, right? That's
33:04
when you might do the 4444, a very simple balancing breath.
33:08
Also that I do in yoga sometimes, is you breathe in
33:12
through the nose, count of four and simply exhale out through
33:16
the nose, count of four, in and out through the nose, count of
33:20
four each way, right? That's a nice balancing breath. Think of
33:23
that like room temperature. Think about it that like water,
33:27
right? It brings you back to center. So whether you've been a
33:30
little low, little high, it just brings you right back to your
33:33
optimal state. And then you have the really rejuvenating ones,
33:38
right? The ones that are stimulating, the up regulating
33:41
ones, the coffee. We call it coffee. We can call it
33:44
stimulating, but that's the one that activates the sympathetic
33:47
nervous system, gives you that kind of like excitement effect,
33:50
and we don't want to go crazy with that one. And that's the
33:52
one, right? So we think of it like this. When we do a
33:55
balancing breath that's always healthy, that's always good,
33:57
that's fine. You can do it anytime. It helps us to, like,
34:00
be in a state of well being and adapt to life situations, right?
34:03
It keeps us resilient. It keeps us, like, balanced. It's really
34:06
good, right? There are times when we really want to bring our
34:10
anxiety or our stress levels or whatever down, and so the
34:15
calming breaths, think of it like that. They're really good.
34:18
The relaxing breaths, those are really good, right, before you
34:21
go into bed, when you're trying to just like kind of drop in and
34:24
relax and bring yourself from an overstimulated place, and then
34:28
the coffee breath. You do not want to do it too often. Okay?
34:32
You can do it again to the side of your day, the Saturday, and
34:35
then maybe in the afternoon, around 3pm when you start to get
34:37
a little int and you reach for some sugar. You know what I'm
34:40
saying? You can do that instead. And I'll just tell you this,
34:44
like, breath work has made a really big difference in my
34:47
life. I teach it with all of my clients, right? Who, especially
34:50
clients who are stress prone or anxiety prone or whatever. I
34:55
just say, here are some things, like the very basics, like,
34:57
let's just start here. These things can be very helpful.
35:00
Fall. But here's the thing, with any tool, it only works if you
35:03
work it. And you you won't think to reach for the tool if you're
35:08
not accustomed to using it, and you forget that you even have
35:12
it. And that's, that's that's true about, like, pretty much
35:15
any kind of tool that you have is that you know. So often
35:20
people will say, you know, like, what can I do for this? And I'm
35:24
like, remember when I taught you that thing? Like, you know,
35:26
like, five, eight months ago, right? So we have to, how do I
35:31
say put these tools in rotation, I guess is what I'm saying. So
35:35
that when you get knocked off balance, when you're stressed
35:38
out of your mind, when you're overstimulated, you can
35:41
remember, oh yeah, because when we get in a fight or flight
35:45
state the front of our brain where we make our good decisions
35:48
and our conscious thinking, it goes offline. It's not really
35:51
available to us. But if something is already deeply
35:54
ingrained as a habit, and what I mean by that is, don't wait to
35:58
use it until you need it like need it practice it. Put a
36:03
breath, work, little practice somewhere into your life, into
36:06
your routine, so that your nervous system is already
36:09
benefiting from it. And then if you do happen to get thrown off
36:12
kilter, you know exactly what to reach for to help you bring
36:15
yourself back to a more balanced state, a more like cozy,
36:19
resilient, making good choices. You know what I'm saying, so
36:22
you're not flying off the handle and doing shit you're gonna
36:24
regret or saying stuff you're gonna regret later. Okay, I hope
36:29
that you stuck around for this, and I hope it was helpful in
36:31
some way. That's always my goal, right? Is to spread a little
36:35
more love in the world, to share stuff that's helpful for you and
36:38
stuff that I actually use myself, right? I'm not just
36:41
regurgitating this shit. This is stuff that I know has been
36:44
incredibly beneficial for me, and now I'm just passing it off
36:47
to you because I love you. Okay, so wherever you go in your day,
36:52
right? Take, take these tools right in your back pocket. Maybe
36:55
share it with somebody, okay, but I always say, make sure
36:58
you're sharing the correct information. Don't just wing it
37:01
right. Make sure, especially with these kind of practices,
37:05
just just not enough information can be dangerous. You know what
37:09
I'm saying, So be smart about it. But wherever you go, may you
37:13
leave. And I don't know, should I get a new sign off for 2026 I
37:18
don't know. I've been saying this forever, but wherever you
37:20
go, may you leave the animals and yourself and the other
37:24
people and the planet right the environment better than how you
37:29
found it. Wherever you go, may you be a blessing. Bye, bye.