Latest / The b.reathe Blueprint Podcast / Nothing Worked for Eighteen Years
Transcript
- Katie Harvey: Welcome to the b.reathe Conversations. This series explores how people operate as responsibility, ambition, and pressure grow over time. They are not all burnout stories and they are not about fixing anything. They're calm, honest conversations about awareness, capacity, and what helps performance last. Today I'm joined by an expert. I'm joined by Megan. Thank you so much for being here. How are you? Megan | Unity Breathwork: Wonderful. Thanks so much for having me, Katie. Katie Harvey: Amazing. Now why don't we start with a little bit about who you are and why you're here today? Megan | Unity Breathwork: Sure. So my name is Megan Ashton. I'm a breath work facilitator and teacher trainer. And I'm here just to talk about breath. I love sharing about it. I want people to realize that right under our nose is this power to regulate ourselves and to restore a sense of capacity and flow in our lives and to get out of this chronic fight and flight mode. Katie Harvey: It's definitely a problem out there, isn't it? Hustle culture has definitely taken over, especially entrepreneurs, business owners, the people that are listening to the podcast today, coming out of fight and flight is really difficult. so Megan | Unity Breathwork: Mm-hmm. Katie Harvey: yeah, what what's your journey into breath work been? Megan | Unity Breathwork: I'm wondering, is it okay if we actually just start with a grounding bre a few grounding breaths together? Yeah? Katie Harvey: Absolutely, let's do it. Megan | Unity Breathwork: Okay. I like to start most everything this way. And so if you're not driving and if you're able to close your eyes and you're listening to this, I'll invite you to close your eyes and maybe just roll your neck and shoulders if that feels good. And settling into a nice straight posture. And we're just going to consciously slow the breath down. And bring the breath deeper into the belly. Soft slow inhales through the nose, deep down into the belly, expanding the rib cage. As we breathe soft and slow, maybe seeing if you can make your exhale just a little bit slower than your inhale. Allowing these soft breaths to slow your mind down just a little. Connect you to this moment. Maybe even placing a hand on your heart as you breathe soft and slow. Just taking a pause to be with yourself. Remember that whatever life throws your way, you've got this. Remember your strength and resilience. Taking in two more soft slow breaths and whenever you're complete, gently blinking your eyes open. Thank you for that. And I'm very sorry, but I'm gonna have to ask you what was the question again? Katie Harvey: That's completely fine. I, by the way, love breath work. I love the power of it. So I'm super excited for all of the listeners today. and that was a nice gentle reminder for me as well to stop and pause too. so Megan | Unity Breathwork: Yeah. Katie Harvey: breath work, how did you actually get into it? Where's where's it come from? What's your background? Megan | Unity Breathwork: Yeah, so I was probably on eighteen year journey trying to heal myself, basically my whole adult life, trying everything. And I got trained in all kinds of modalities. I became a clinical hypnotherapist because I really believe in the power of our subconscious mind. I got a yoga certificate in India. I did a holistic nutritionist training. I considered becoming a naturopathic doctor, but nothing actually helped to heal. I was dealing with bulimia, alcohol dependency, and nothing helped to heal that or to heal the wounds of some toxic relationships I'd been in. And so I never felt authentic offering any of these certifications. And I just kept looking. And this eventually led me to a week of ayahuasca in Columbia, which also didn't help. It overwhelmed my nervous system so much and left me really sick for about a year and was just way too much. And so that really left me feeling like, you know, I've been trying for eighteen years and nothing has worked. So I guess I'm just broken. I'm hopeless. Nothing's gonna work. And then I found myself in Bali and a friend told me, you just have to try this breathwork class. And I was like, well, for my yoga training, we had to do 30 minutes of pranayama, which is focused yogic breathing, every single day. And it was actually my least favorite part. I was like, this is boring. I don't want to focus my breath for half an hour. I had all those monkey mind thoughts, and I was just like counting down the time in those pranayama classes. Not because there's anything wrong with it, but my nervous system was too activated at that point to just sit still for 30 minutes. And focus on a calming breath. But I thought, you know, I'm gonna trust my friend. She was such a big believer in it. I showed up a little bit skeptical within about 15 minutes of this particular style of breathing, which is conscious connected breathing. I was in a deep, non-ordinary state of consciousness. And I was brought back to my little inner child, about three-year-old self. And I was just bawling out for love and physical touch and affirmation. And these were wounds I wasn't even conscious that I'd been covering up with food and alcohol. They just were deep, so deep and buried within me that I'd just been numbing out my whole life not to feel this childhood grief. And I would never usually have these cathartic cries in a group of strangers. I'd like you can't do that. Like people are next to you, they're watching you, they're listening. But I didn't even care because I was in this non-ordinary state. And the facilitator and her assistant were offering me supportive touch intermittently, which was something that I was really craving as a child. And so when I was in this other state, And getting that touch just felt so life affirming. And because I finally allowed myself to just fully feel these things I'd been numbing out, I walked away feeling like a different human. Like I really felt like I just put this huge backpack down and the colors somehow seemed brighter in the world. And I literally that day I just started to feel like, you know what? I don't even care so much what people think about me. Who cares? And Suddenly, because I was able to feel that grief, I was also able to feel the lighter side of things. Before I couldn't access the lighter side of things because you can't pick and choose your feelings. So if you shut some down, you shut the good stuff down too. So suddenly I was able to feel like all of the human experience. And I felt so changed that I knew right away that this is what I want to do with my life. I want to bring this to the world. And something I love so much about it is just that it's our own breath. You know, we don't need to go to Peru and drink ayahuasca or hire somebody to fix us. We don't need a guru. We don't need this. We can just connect to our own breath anytime and it's always there for us. And it's such a direct pathway to our nervous system that it's just so powerful and so simple. Katie Harvey: Definitely, I love that. And I've got a couple of questions for the people listening. They this may be quite new to them. They may have heard of breath work Megan | Unity Breathwork: Mm-hmm. Katie Harvey: before. I think everyone's heard of breath work, but whether we actually utilize it or not is a different thing. What do you mean when you say conscious Megan | Unity Breathwork: Mm-hmm. Katie Harvey: connected breath work? Megan | Unity Breathwork: Yeah, so this is a question that's you very confusing for most people. So I'm glad you asked because breath work now can mean so many things and they're all quite different. They're all working with the breath and the nervous system, but in different ways. So what we just did earlier was primarily working with the parasympathetic rest and digest branch of our nervous system. And those are kind of what I consider everyday breathing practices. And they're just great tools to have in your toolkit. You can use it anytime. You can use it when you're waiting in the car in traffic or before you go into a big meeting or when you're feeling activated by an employee or a manager. Come back to your breath and get out of that stress state. Whereas conscious connected breath work is interesting because we're actually primarily working with the sympathetic nervous system. And it's called conscious connected because we have no pause between the inhale and exhale. They're typically a longer duration session. These types of practices you're usually doing lying down with music, guided by a facilitator, for at least 40 minutes. And after about 10 or 15 minutes, you start to go into that non-ordinary state of consciousness. And there's scientific studies where we're only beginning to understand what happens, but we do know that we blow off more CO2 than normal. And this causes a redistribution of oxygen and blood flow, particularly in the brain. And so Prefrontal cortex, which is our brain's kind of the CEO and the manager and all the executive thinking, it actually gets a little bit less blood flow. And when it starts to get that, it allows us to soften and go more into our subconscious states and the amygdala, which is our emotional and fear center, as well as the hippocampus, which holds all of our memories, they become more activated. And so we may have been suppressing emotions very well our whole life because our prefrontal cortex is like, nope, put that in a box, not today. But when we're in this other state and the prefrontal cortex activity softens, suddenly these feelings we've been suppressing can finally be felt. And everybody has a different experience. Cause when you're working with non-ordinary states, you can't predict it. It's different for every person every time. Sometimes it's very emotional. You know, you might feel anger, rage, fear, and then bliss, joy, connection. Sometimes you go back to an adverse experience and you gain some processing and release around it. So you can walk away feeling a bit lighter about it or finding the gift within it. Sometimes you connect to just your inner intelligence. Some people get so many downloads where they're like a whole new life path after one hour that they have to stop in the middle of it and start writing it down because they don't want to forget. And some people actually get colorful psychedelic visions and some people get all of it. Sometimes you just get physical intention to physical intensity in your body. And I don't know if you've ever heard of the the tension and release exercise where you go through all the different parts of your muscles from toe to head, tense them and then release them and you feel more relaxed after. So if you're Katie Harvey: Yeah. Megan | Unity Breathwork: doing this in a in another state and you're doing it for about an hour and your whole body's tense afterwards, you don't even know what you process, but you just feel so, so much more relaxed. And no matter what happens in these sessions, almost everybody when they check in a day later, they just feel kind of like they came back from A really rejuvenating vacation and they feel as though just their capacity to handle everyday stress is increased. And this feeling can last for a few weeks. And at the same time, we're always peeling some kind of layer of the onion back in these sessions that go deeper and can actually last like permanently. So for me, it created a permanent change where I I started to do these sessions a little bit more often and then suddenly the blame on alcohol dependency just went away because I didn't need to numb out anymore. Cause I'd given myself a space to finally feel. So it no longer had to be a daily struggle to abstain from it. It just wasn't even a thought anymore. And this works a lot for a lot of people that have certain types of addictions where they're mostly addictions are about numbing out our feelings, right? And a lot of that is rooted in trauma. So when we can go into these non-ordinary states and give ourselves a capacity to feel and release and process these things we're carrying, then we don't need to rely on these harmful coping mechanisms so much. And we can just navigate life without getting us triggered or activated. And little things that might have been really annoying to us, we can be like, not as big of a deal. We kind of gain a new perspective. Like, you know what? This stuff doesn't matter so much. I don't need to ruminate on this over and over and over. And so just, yeah, there's so many different, different benefits and types of experiences within it. It's hard to really explain. You kind of need to to try it to fully understand it. Katie Harvey: Yeah, and I think what you mentioned there about like handling life just generally better is definitely coming out with that fight and flight, isn't it? And actually being in your rest and digest mode, being more comfortable with that and actually being able to see things for how they are rather than as an urgent and scary thing, which is essentially what fight and flight does to us. Now, what I find really interesting is you went into this quite skeptical and you still, after 15 Megan | Unity Breathwork: Mm. Katie Harvey: minutes, entered this state. Now Megan | Unity Breathwork: Yeah. Katie Harvey: That means that surely it could it could go potentially wrong for someone if they aren't ready for it. What would happen w has have you ever noticed anyone have any negative kind of impact from breath work? Megan | Unity Breathwork: Yeah, so I think there's there definitely is a possibility if the facilitator isn't properly trained because trauma does come up, grief comes up, big things come up, physical intensity comes up. So in my sessions, like I've been doing this for about 10 years and I've had thousands of breathers, there's never been anyone that's left worse off, but it very much could happen. And for for it to be safe, it's all about empowering the breather with information and agency before they go into it. So I have a whole 20 minute speech, which sounds excessive, but it really is needed, that I give before they go into this 50 minutes of breathing. And I warn them about all the physical things that can happen, because it could be physically intense. And if you're not warned about it, it could be scary. And I teach them how to use the accelerator and the brake. So I empower my breathers with agency. And that's where trauma-informed facilitation comes in. It's all about empowering everybody with agency. So that way, even intense things don't feel scary because you know, you know what, at any time. Megan told me I could just soften my breath and slow it down or even return to a normal breath. So now I feel safe enough to navigate this and see what's on the other side. And each person gets to decide for themselves. So every everything I say in a session is a suggestion. I'll never give a demand. I do say in these sessions the breath is the medicine. And so if you want to have a macro dose experience, you take in more breath. You breathe faster and deeper. And if you're starting to feel too activated or you're just nervous around it, you just breathe a bit softer and slower, but keep it connected into the belly. You'll have a much gentler, softer experience. And so, with that, because you're in control and it's guided by your own inner wisdom, as long as you're pre-screened for contraindications, because it is a working with a sympathetic nervous system, there are certain health conditions where you need to do modifications. But as long as you don't have those contraindications, it's a very, very safe practice. It becomes unsafe when you're working with a facilitator that's chasing catharsis and pushing you past your window of tolerance. And giving you demands instead of suggestions and not properly preparing you for everything that can happen. Or also just some facilitators aren't giving any grounding or integration or aftercare support. So people go through these really big experiences and they're like, I don't even know what just happened. And then they're just getting pushed out of the studio to go and drive in their car and they're not even grounded yet. So that's, you know, it's it's the container that would make it unsafe, not the breath practice in and of itself, because it is our own medicine. We're not taking anything. Katie Harvey: Yeah, and it's it's interesting, isn't it? 'Cause I would say that kind of like burnout and your fight and flight and stuff is kind of trending at the moment. I don't know if you've noticed it as well. It's been Megan | Unity Breathwork: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Katie Harvey: spoken about a lot. And I can imagine that that actually opens up a lot of doors for people to facilitate these breath works that aren't actually qualified to do so. And that could lead to some instance Megan | Unity Breathwork: Yes. Exactly. Well that's the thing is the whole thing about this is we are primarily working the sympathetic nervous system, but it it needs to be in a safe empowered way where the breather chooses to go there and not the facilitator chasing it or pushing it. And there are, you know, there's some facilitators that think the person needs to be screaming and wailing and crying for it to be beneficial and that's not the case. That could actually leave their nervous system more dysregulated. The way that we make sure that their nervous system doesn't go Outside of what the tolerance is, is by giving them the choice at all times and really creating that safe container for them to explore gently. And if we're working with somebody that has, for instance, active PTSD, we do one-on-one. So we titrate the experience, we go a bit slower and do shorter sessions and gently build to longer and deeper, more intense sessions. So there's things you need to know about the nerve nervous system to do it safely. But something I want to speak to as well is, you know, you had mentioned how so many of us are stuck in this sympathetic state. And unfortunately, when you're in that state, are you do you know what the autonomic ladder is by the the polyvagal theory? Katie Harvey: No, I don't think I do. Megan | Unity Breathwork: So basically on this, this there's a ladder up for the nervous system. And on the lowest end is actually like the freeze, numb disassociation response. And you need to go through sympathetic is in the middle, in order to get to the ventral vagal, which is like the social, regulated, and it needs to go in order. So when you're like if you're like you've burnt out, for instance, you can't just go from burnt out to regulated and in this social state without moving through sympathetic first. And that's why it's beneficial to do more activated practices like the conscious connected breath work is you need to move through that activation in a safe empowered way to get back to the highest rung. And it always needs to be moved in order. And so if you were to tell somebody who is in a a burnout state, just do these gentle breathing practices every day, that's gonna actually be counterintuitive for them and is gonna keep them more stuck. So you need to move in that order. Katie Harvey: Really, really interesting. And I guess that's probably why ayahuasca for you didn't feel safe and made it worse because you didn't have that control over how far you went. It just happens, doesn't it? Megan | Unity Breathwork: Mm-hmm. Katie Harvey: I haven't done it myself, but I know a couple of people that have and they've had quite intense experiences with it. Megan | Unity Breathwork: Yeah. I think the the shaman too I didn't choose very well and I didn't do the preparation. I think when you're taking outside medicines, you do need to prepare. They say doing like a special diet they call the dieta and cleansing and I think already having some capacity to regulate yourself and not get overwhelmed is really important. But I was coming from fifteen, eighteen years of alcohol and food numbing and running around the world to just numb out my ex my feelings. So I was very dysregulated. And then to have the shaman giving me these superdoses without my consent. And then I tried to get out of it after the first session. And he told me, you know, if you don't come back and finish the rest, then you're gonna just be miserable for the rest of your life, basically. And I was like, whoa, okay, I guess I have to do this. And so I was just kind of stuck in hell for the whole week. And it lasted like 18 hours. And when your nervous system's already burnt out, that's just way too much. And then in the mornings we were doing a a frog medicine called combo. And so it was just vomiting and going into this hellish experience and then vomiting. It was terrible. And I'm not saying I think there is a time and a place. I think with the right preparation, the right guides, all of that, it could be great. But it needs to be approached with a lot of care. And 'cause it's not your own medicine, there's just so much more risk versus with the breath for one hour and you're not taking anything and you get to choose. At that point, then it's so much more safe and there's so much more capacity to work through nervous system in a gentler way, but equally as powerful, maybe even more so. I have not just myself, I've had so many breathers come and say, you know, I've done psilocybin ceremonies or ayahuasca or even ketamine assisted therapy, and yet they found this breathing practice, this one hour of breathing, to be more beneficial for them. And I think because it's our own medicine, it can't really go wrong. It knows what we need. Katie Harvey: Yeah, I'm I'm a big believer in that your body you may unlearn those habits and how to do it, but your body knows what it needs to do. there's one got the physiological Megan | Unity Breathwork: Mm-hmm. Katie Harvey: side, the double inhale and the exhale, and it's really funny Megan | Unity Breathwork: Yeah. Katie Harvey: because when you're a kid and you're crying, it's what you naturally do. But as an adult you don't do that anymore. Yeah. Megan | Unity Breathwork: Mm-hmm. Katie Harvey: And I always found it really interesting is that I think we do subconsciously know what we're meant to do as humans, but we've lost that memory and it's just not at the forefront of our mind. But talking about Megan | Unity Breathwork: Exactly. Katie Harvey: facilitators, how do you find a good one to make sure that you are in a safe place and that you are under control and that you're not gonna kind of go the wrong way? Megan | Unity Breathwork: Yeah, I think it's something you do need to do your due d diligence with. I think a lot of people think, it's just the breath, so it can't be dangerous. But you as the person who's gonna breathe need to choose with care and start by looking on the Global Professional Breath Work Alliance, or GPBA for short. They are the closest thing we have to a regulating body. Unfortunately, because this because this practice grew so fast, it's not fully regulated yet. But the GPBA is almost the equivalent of the Yoga Alliance, and they're starting to certify schools and they have really deep ethics and boundaries built into it and they ensure that your training is at least having the basics covered to make sure that it's going to be safe. So they have safety standards in place and they're actually they're pretty rigorous. You have to like submit your whole curriculum to them. So anybody who's been certified from a school through the GPPA and they're international, you can trust that you're going to be in you're probably going to be in safe hands. If you can look on top of that for trauma informed, because not all GPPA schools have an emphasis on trauma informed. That's a huge icing on the cake. It's really helpful to have a facilitator who is aware of nervous system states and nervous system safety and how to hold space for trauma in a safe way without pushing people. And on top of that. I would say even just looking at their website or their social media, if they're sensationalizing it and they have videos of people screaming and wailing and they're promising anything, those are red flags for me. Like they should not be saying heal 10 years of trauma in one day or let go of like there's no we can't guarantee anything when it's someone's own inner healer doing the work. You could say may lead to deep stress relief or life changing insights, but it has to be like a may. So anyone who's promising things, that's a big red flag for me. Katie Harvey: Yeah, of course, 'cause I guess if someone was overwhelmed in a session and they did decide to kind of keep it light, then it's gonna take them a few sessions to work through that trauma that they're looking to get past, isn't it? Megan | Unity Breathwork: Exactly. And not everyone's ready for it in the first session. Sometimes you have to work through some physical debt dent like tense vis physical tension in the body before you could even get to those emotional layers. And it it is different for every person every time. Sometimes it takes three or four sessions to get to some kind of breakthrough. But you are always getting that kind of relaxation effect afterwards, which is pretty amazing. There's something called the, I think parasympathetic rebound effect. So by bringing the sympathetic online but in a safe empowered way, the parasympathetic actually comes more online. So you feel more rested afterwards, more relaxed afterwards. But only when you're choosing. When you go into sympathetic state because of things outside of your control and you feel powerless, that doesn't create the rebound effect that we're looking for. Katie Harvey: It's so interesting. All of this stuff is just incredible, like how it works and how you can achieve such incredible things with the breath. Now, you went through quite a few different kind of trial and errors, seeing what worked for you, trying to heal 18 years worth of trauma for yourself. Do you apply any of the Megan | Unity Breathwork: Hm. Katie Harvey: practices that you previously used alongside breath work? And would you actually recommend any of them to work kind of together side by side or Megan | Unity Breathwork: So inherently when we're working with these non-ordinary states, we do get access to the subconscious mind. And so I think just my training around the clinical clinical hypnotherapy really helps me and I teach it to my students as well, just how to speak to the subconscious. You're not supposed to ever say negative or future or past. You have to speak in the present and positive. I can't say in these sessions people's People are hyper open at this point. So I can't say you are not unworthy, because their subconscious might just hear unworthy and like, I knew it. I've always known I was unworthy. You are more than worthy. Or and not you will be loved. You are love. So you're always speaking in the now. You are safe now and positive. And so these types of things I've integrated into it, just the subconscious reprogramming and the importance of choosing our words wisely. From my yoga training, I probably, it's not needed. I just incorporate some of the the stuff that I would do at the end of a yoga session where I I like to like just give a little bit of body work to the shoulders and the feet. And then from the nutrition course, I don't really integrate anything from that. I think just learning to hold space though as a yoga instructor really was a part of helping me to step into this role more naturally, already having that in my system. Katie Harvey: Yeah, it sounds like you kind of went on the journey you needed to to arrive kind of at this destination. Yeah. It it really does sound like it's Megan | Unity Breathwork: Yeah, I'm a believer in that. Yeah, always. Uh-huh. Katie Harvey: everything's happened on the right half the right journey and ultimately now you really can help people in the best way possible with all of the information that you've gathered. Megan | Unity Breathwork: A thousand percent. And I didn't even mention that I was a wellness writer for about fifteen years and I was doing all kinds of research and writing on not just mental but emotional and physical health. And I would say I integrate that as well. But the thing about this is that when I first started becoming a facilitator, I got to write for eight of the other international breathwork training schools. So I got to see inside all of them. I got to write some of their curriculum. I was writing their website copy. And I learned so much. And this is also why I'm such an advocate for safety, because I saw some really amazing things. And I also saw some things that weren't as amazing and and maybe a little bit concerning. And I'm seeing now there's trainings for this conscious connected breath work that are about 50 hours and they're saying it's trauma informed. And there's no way you can be a trauma-informed anything with 50 hours of training. It's just not possible. You can't be bringing people to their greatest depths with an activated nervous system safely in 50 hours. And so the bare minimum by the GPBA is 400 hours. So you want a school that's you know, you want a facilitator that's trained for at least 400 hours. in order to be able to even start to hold that space safely. Katie Harvey: Yeah, definitely. I think it's so important with stuff like this that you do find the right person. And that it might not even just be down to the qualification, I guess it's someone that you feel comfortable with as well. That Megan | Unity Breathwork: Residents Katie Harvey: must be a really, really important part of the breath work to actually let go of yourself a little bit around people that you don't know. Megan | Unity Breathwork: Mm, absolutely. You need to the facilitator's job is to show up with their own regulated nervous system because that sets the space for the entire room and to create a really safe space. And it starts even before they show up, even in the preparation email, letting people know don't plan anything back big afterwards, because if you have a big release, you might need some downtime to ground and integrate. So preparing people before they even show up, breaking the ice before you put them into it, getting everyone to share their name and an intention, making it really intentional and almost ceremonial helps to get that nervous system feeling more relaxed and safe and creating just a really warm open environment. And I believe you have to show up authentic as a facilitator. And I think who's going to be drawn to you is the perfect people for you. And you should never put on airs about who you are or try to be something else. If you're not the type of person that wears feather earrings, don't wear feather earrings. You know, don't do these things because you think this is what needs to be done. And when you do that, when you show up authentically yourself unmasked, I think that o automatically helps people to trust you and feel safer with you to then let go. Katie Harvey: And when you just said about making it intentional, for those who want to explore this and maybe they have they're not quite sure what it is that they're trying to get out of it. That they maybe they attend therapy already, maybe they've had the the hypnosis kind of work done, but they're just looking to go deeper. What would their intention start with? How would they discover what that intention is? Megan | Unity Breathwork: Yeah, so very often people will say my intention is openness, and that's beautiful. Because what I say anyways is I say that it's really great to set an intention, but then we lovingly let it go because very often our inner guiding intelligence is gonna take us somewhere completely different. And the only job of the breather is to breathe and feel. There's no we really shouldn't be guiding or forcing towards the intention. By setting the intention, there's a much higher likelihood we will get it, and it just makes it more intentional in general to have that there. But your intention could be openness. And that's a beautiful intention to have. And that really creates the the open field for whatever wants to happen to come in. So it doesn't you don't need to have a specific reason for showing up for it. Katie Harvey: I love that. And for anyone that might be a little bit skeptical, like you first were, they don't necessarily have a friend to push them in this direction, but they are curious. What would you recommend their next steps be? Megan | Unity Breathwork: Hmm, that's a good question. I would just say, honestly, just go for it. The thing that the reason why I'm so passionate about this work is because the skeptics end up becoming the biggest believers. Like I absolutely love it when somebody brings their skeptical husband who's like, I don't believe in any of this shit, but she made me come. And I'm like, okay, you. I'm just gonna get you to breathe. And then at the end, he's like, my God, what just happened? How did you, how did you make me cry? I haven't cried since I was three. I'm like, I didn't do that. That was the breath. And that's what I love about this practice is because you're changing the physiology in this way, you don't even need to believe in it. It just does something for you. As long as I can get you to follow the technique. So as long as you commit to following the technique, you don't have to believe anything's gonna happen. Something will happen. Sometimes it's more subtle and sometimes it really is a massive breakthrough. It's always different, but you will feel different afterwards if you just follow the technique in the thousands of reathers. I've never had anyone come follow the technique and be like, Yeah, I don't believe in this shit. Like, that's never happened. I hope you don't mind that I just said shit. Katie Harvey: No, go for it. I'm all about I don't care about any of that stuff to be honest. So we're Megan | Unity Breathwork: Yeah, yeah. Katie Harvey: following the technique. It is it difficult if someone's never done breath work before, is there people that just can't quite get it or is it Megan | Unity Breathwork: No. So it's difficult in the sense of resistance, but it's not difficult in the sense of technique. And so this is part of what I explained before the session begins. I say, you know, the first 10 or 15 minutes, your ego, it's not inherently bad, but it is very scared of change and it's gonna sense some things are shifting. It's gonna get scared. It's gonna try and talk you out of this. So the first 10 or 15 minutes, not just first timers, for myself, for my regulars, for my students, we all get this. The ego's like You can't do this for an hour. This isn't gonna work. It's just not working today. When can I go eat dinner? Can I sneak out of here? This is irritating. That is irritating. And as long as you're you're already warned, you know, this is normal. I was prepared for this. And I'm just gonna keep following the technique, anyways, after the 10 or 15 minute mark, then you're in that non-ordinary state. And then the time flies by. And by the end, most of the people can't even believe it was an hour. Like an hour of breathing sounds like a really long time, even for me, but the time flies by because you're not, you're in a timeless state. It's like if you ever get into flow state doing something you love and suddenly the the day's gone, you're like, how did that happen? It's that similar timelessness type of state. So you're not, you're not clocking where you're at. And by the end, half of my breathers don't even want to come back to a normal breath. Like, Megan, we just want to stay out here. Leave us be. So I just tell everyone to take comfort in knowing this is normal. You will probably get resistance. If you can just choose to keep up with the the connected breathing, anyways, it will go away and it will go by so fast after that first couple of songs. Katie Harvey: Amazing and Megan | Unity Breathwork: But the technique itself to just follow a deep breath in and out through your mouth is very, very simple. I've never had to train anyone. We do like three rounds together and people are good to go. Katie Harvey: Yeah, I'm this is quite funny timing actually because I'm reading a book called Psycho Cybergenics. I don't know if you've heard of it, and it's it's all around the Megan | Unity Breathwork: How interesting. No Katie Harvey: self image, and actually it goes into hypnotherapy quite a lot and how a lot of the time we're kind of hypnotising ourselves into negative thoughts and who we believe we are. And I am a big believer in kind of you become what you think and what you believe in. and this book is very much around that. It it's from a a guy who was a plastic surgeon. He did facial reconstructions and he noticed that almost immediately after people had surgery, their whole personality would change because they suddenly believed Megan | Unity Breathwork: wow. Katie Harvey: they were they were different. but there were few people who were so convinced that nothing had happened and that they hadn't had any work done at all. And I imagine that some of the stuff that he goes into, I haven't quite finished the book yet, but in it you kind of have to do certain tasks daily and one of them is like visualization and breath work for half an hour a day and I did my first one today and like you just said that time goes so quickly. At first I was like, how am I gonna sit here for 30 minutes and just visualize, Megan | Unity Breathwork: Yeah. Katie Harvey: not do anything else? And it went so incredibly quickly. I couldn't believe when my alarm went off. I was like, what's just Megan | Unity Breathwork: Ha ha ha. Katie Harvey: happened? so I I can imagine when you're in a different state as well. That that goes super Megan | Unity Breathwork: Mm-hmm. Katie Harvey: quickly. Megan | Unity Breathwork: Yeah, it really does. It's it's just that first initial resistance. And as soon as you start, it's like you've already pulled the band-aid off. And so it's not even that hard. Like I've never had anybody get up in the first fifteen minutes and like this is enough, it's enough. I'm getting out of here. I've never had anyone start a session and not finish a session. So just show up. That's really all you have to do. A lot of the resistance is just showing up. Very often on the day of people suddenly, you know, have a little tummy ache or they have a million reasons, just not today. I have too many other things going on. I didn't sleep well last night. Whatever it is, a million reasons, we'll talk ourselves out of it. Buy the ticket for the event, show up for it. And if you're not gonna, if you can't find a facilitator nearby, you can do this online. Because it is your own breath that is the medicine, you can be guided by a facilitator online. They'll be watching you and guiding you with their voice and with the music and playlist. And it's a very similar experience. The only difference is you're not getting supportive touch, but not all facilitators give touch anyways. Katie Harvey: Wow, and one thing that I'd be interested to know is do you ever get people th this is very different breath work than what I guess most people would talk about. But a lot of people that I do I do kind of like small breath work sessions in my community, but more like the physiological side for five minutes, not extended periods of time. And people start Megan | Unity Breathwork: Mm. Katie Harvey: to feel sleepy while they're doing it. Do you get that with this breath work or is because it's in a different state this doesn't tend to happen? Megan | Unity Breathwork: Yeah. Almost never, like potentially two people in ten years have actually Katie Harvey: Wow. Megan | Unity Breathwork: fallen asleep. And I think it's because we're not doing like the physiological side is a relaxation practice. This is an activating practice. So it actually kind of like wakes you up. You're in this, you're activating your nervous system. And when like you're never gonna be in this really stressed out state and then just accidentally fall asleep. That doesn't happen. So even if it's an empowered stress state, you're still not gonna fall asleep because you're you're activated. So the chances are just basically slim to none. The only reason it would happen is if you showed up and you're just like, Now I'm not gonna follow the technique and now you're lying down and listening to music, then you might fall asleep. Katie Harvey: And before we close off for today, is there anything else that you want to add about what you do or about your story and your journey? It's been very, very incredible having you on. And I think that people are going to gain a lot from this and definitely be a bit more curious into exploring breath work. is there anything else you'd like to add? Megan | Unity Breathwork: Yeah, I would just like to speak in general to breath practices and the stress bucket. Did you ever talk about the stress bucket, Katie? Katie Harvey: Not on the podcast, no. Megan | Unity Breathwork: No. So I kind of think of us all having this just as an analogy to make it easier to visualize. We all have this bucket, right? And we're born with maybe one or two drops in there if we had a traumatic birth. And then everything that happens to us that isn't fully processed just g adds to it. So by the time we become adults and living in this highly stressful society. Most of our stress buckets are pretty darn full. And that's why even just a little bit of traffic or one unexpected thing, just one little drop in that bucket, can make our systems overflow and we feel really overwhelmed and activated. And a part of us is like, we know this isn't a big deal, but why are we shaking with anger right now? Or why can't I handle this? Why am I so activated? And it's because the bucket is full. And Doing these these everyday beating practices and and the physiological psi, these are great. If you do it every day, it can help to to lower the the bucket a little bit. But for me, I feel like a lot of the parasympathetic ones you need to do regularly to create a real change in your nervous system. Whereas the reason I love connected breath work is I feel like we're almost poking holes in the bottom of the bucket. Because we're processing these things we've carried around for a whole life. So we actually start to drain out that whole load and it restores our capacity to then flow between sympathetic and parasympathetic with more ease and more appropriate to the situation. And we're able to just handle everyday stressors much more easily because it's not already full. At this point now, we could throw a cup in there and we're like, it's okay, it's not a huge deal. You know, like life goes on, I can handle this. And we can really regulate ourselves by getting to the root. It's, you know, it's more of like a bottom-up. Let's work with the body and feel these things and process them and release them so that we can actually navigate everyday stressors in a much calmer or more capable way. And the benefits are so, so huge because when your bucket's full, you're not thinking creatively. You're not thinking calmly or necessarily even rationally. And so even your creative powers become larger and you can problem solve better. So instead of trying to thinking your way to a solution. When you're regulated, the solution can actually just be felt and come to you. And so there's just so many benefits to helping to reduce this load. And I really don't think I feel like we just can't throw a band-aid on it and just keep breathing softly and slowly every day and expect to get to the root cause of why are we so stressed to begin with. We need to start to give our space selves the space and time to fully feel everything we've gone through in our life, because I believe all of us have some form of trauma and to process it and release it so that we can just navigate life in a in an easier, more flowy, less activated way. Katie Harvey: A hundred percent. And I think this is just so relevant for entrepreneurs, business owners, people that going and kind of putting themselves in more and more stressful situations. And Megan | Unity Breathwork: Yeah. Katie Harvey: like you said, it will allow you to add that cup and it will be okay because you're letting other stresses go. And that's super important. Thank you so Megan | Unity Breathwork: Mm-hmm. Katie Harvey: much for sharing this so openly. Conversations like this to normalise experiences that many people go through quietly as life and responsibility grow. If anything in this episode landed, I'd love for you to do one of two things. You can take the success hangover check-in using the link in the show notes. It just takes a couple of minutes and it will show you exactly where your performance is costing you. Or you can get in touch with Megan. How can they get in touch with you? Megan | Unity Breathwork: Yeah, so they my my company is called Unity Breathwork and my website has all kinds of information on there, including research and benefits. And I even have a directory on there of about seventy of my own graduates from around the world who you might be able to breathe with if they're in your neighborhood. Or you could just reach out to me through my website or Instagram, which is also Unity Breathwork. I offer free sessions four times a year. I have one coming up September twenty-seventh. And it's an online session. So you could do it from the comfort of your home own home. So you could try that. And then I also offer three eight day retreats a year in this beautiful beach town of Mexico if you really have the time for just a real reset. It's kind of a two in one vacation and breath work experience. So you get a lot of downtime to regulate. And then you also do these breath works and a sound healing session and a couple other things to really restore your capacity and your nervous system flow. So yeah, all of those different ways. And Katie, thank you so much for having me on. Katie Harvey: You're very welcome. I will definitely be looking at that online breath work on September the 27th myself. And if anyone listening found this useful, please leave a review, please contact Megan, contact myself if there's anything I can help you with, and just share it with someone that you think needs to hear it because that's how we grow and that's how you really reach out to someone that needs the help. I will see you all next week.