Speaker 1: Breath work can be a little bit disturbing because you
Speaker 1: have experienced as yourself. You're really changing body chemistry, and
Speaker 1: very quickly. I mean we're talking alt coliming your blood
Speaker 1: to a certain degree within twenty seconds. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the
Speaker 1: importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Oliver James. He's a
Speaker 1: body lead, psychotherapist and breath worker known for integrating breath
Speaker 1: movement and body work to support personal transformation and self exploration. Today,
Speaker 1: Eric and Oliver discussed his book twenty one breath Hi Ali,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Hey Eric, how are you doing.
Speaker 1: I am excited to have you on. We're going to
Speaker 1: be discussing your book called twenty one Breaths, and you've
Speaker 1: done a lot of study on breath work, which is
Speaker 1: an area I'm really interested in, and so we're going
Speaker 1: to get into that in a minute. But let's start
Speaker 1: like we always do with the parable. In the parable,
Speaker 1: there's a grandparent who's talking with a grandchild and they say,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks
Speaker 1: about it for a second, looks up at their grandparents,
Speaker 1: which one wins, and the grandparents says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. So I have loved listening.
Speaker 1: I've listened to quite a few of your podcasts and
Speaker 1: really enjoyed them, and I was really looking forward to
Speaker 1: this question. I'm not a big fan of it. Actually,
Speaker 1: more of the more people are saying that, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't sort of take away from it. I think it's
Speaker 1: a beautiful parable. But from my own point of view,
Speaker 1: I think, are you open to role play for a moment?
Speaker 1: So I'm wondering if you can say the final part
Speaker 1: of it again and if it's okay, I want to
Speaker 1: play the kid? Is that all right? Because I think
Speaker 1: the parable is missing something all right? So the grandparents
Speaker 1: says there's a bad wolf which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear, and then the granddad obviously says
Speaker 1: who wins, and that's the one. The one who wins
Speaker 1: is the one you feed. So as the kid, I
Speaker 1: would say, it sounds like the bad wolf is going
Speaker 1: to be incredibly hungry grandad. Isn't it dangerous to have
Speaker 1: a hungry wolf? And here in lies the issue for
Speaker 1: me that I think a hundred maybe a few thousand
Speaker 1: years ago, the good and the bad was incredibly important
Speaker 1: for us as humanity, just to work out some morality
Speaker 1: and kindness and how to treat human beings. But sort
Speaker 1: of roll onto where we are today. I think the
Speaker 1: black and the white is really hurting us to sort
Speaker 1: of be so fixed with it. Of course, good is important. Bad,
Speaker 1: let's face it, let's challenge it. But when it comes
Speaker 1: to feeding one over the other, my experience as a
Speaker 1: psychotherapist and really just as a person, If I just
Speaker 1: keep feeding this good part of myself, at some point
Speaker 1: I'm human, I'm going to fall down. And I worry,
Speaker 1: but people I worry for for us if we are
Speaker 1: unable to handle those darker moments, because they will happen,
Speaker 1: they absolutely do. We all trip up, we will fall.
Speaker 1: We have greed, we're cruel, and anyone that thinks they're not,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's wonderful for you, But from my own perspective,
Speaker 1: I'm interested when that sort of shadows off for the
Speaker 1: dark side. There's so much energy there that we can use,
Speaker 1: and in my own work we use it's body lead psychotherapy.
Speaker 1: So if someone sort of all light and good, that's wonderful,
Speaker 1: But often you never get to the real crux of
Speaker 1: the situation, and you can see it in their body,
Speaker 1: you can see it in their posture. So just getting
Speaker 1: them to breathe and move in a particular way and
Speaker 1: suddenly this kind of darkness comes out and it's laughter
Speaker 1: and it's growling, and it's these incredible qualities that have energy,
Speaker 1: have sustenance in it, and we can use it. We
Speaker 1: can use that energy for good. So I would just
Speaker 1: say I would be very in mind full of the
Speaker 1: black and white? Where's the gray? And when that dark
Speaker 1: side comes out? Why is it there? What do you
Speaker 1: know about it? How are you going to handle it?
Speaker 1: And also how do you prevent yourself being pulled apart
Speaker 1: by it? Yeah, that's a great response. Isn't a hungry
Speaker 1: wolf dangerous? And it's interesting because I am such a
Speaker 1: middleway kind of guy. It's interesting that I started show
Speaker 1: off with a parable that is sort of in some
Speaker 1: ways black and white. You know. I always sort of
Speaker 1: returned to just the idea of choice, the direction we
Speaker 1: turn with choice. But I am interested in what you
Speaker 1: said they're about. I don't have it exactly right. A
Speaker 1: body body leads psychotherapy, body leads psychotherapy? Tell me about that, Okay,
Speaker 1: So I think most people are quite familiar with psychotherapy
Speaker 1: or talk based therapy. You go to a therapist for
Speaker 1: a particular reason. People tend to go when something is
Speaker 1: very challenging in their life. And you would talk about
Speaker 1: the issue and share what's going on, splore consciousness through
Speaker 1: predominantly speaking, certain things are changing a little bit. So
Speaker 1: in my own work and or I guess anybody leads psychotherapist,
Speaker 1: we are very interested in what people have to say,
Speaker 1: but we're also interested in the conversation the body has
Speaker 1: to say. There's a saying that we often talk about
Speaker 1: that the body doesn't lie, so someone can say whatever
Speaker 1: they would like to say, and in session often you'll
Speaker 1: find that the gift of the therapist is to spot
Speaker 1: where someone has said something that may be not authentic
Speaker 1: to themselves. As a body leeds psychotherapist. It's really simple.
Speaker 1: You can read it in their posture, in what their
Speaker 1: eyes are doing, how their faces flickering, how their tissue
Speaker 1: colors or discolors all kind of shines there, and it's like, oh, really,
Speaker 1: so that's what you feel. That is not what your
Speaker 1: body is saying. Let's see what that would like to do.
Speaker 1: And so you can use breath, posture mirroring all of this,
Speaker 1: just start moving the body and suddenly a different side
Speaker 1: normally comes through something that it has that authenticity, and
Speaker 1: you know, things like trauma often the speaking about it
Speaker 1: can set things off for it never really touches it,
Speaker 1: but using really gentle movements, breathing again, but also maybe
Speaker 1: some touch, like agreed and trustful touch just sort of
Speaker 1: slows the whole nervous system, every part of the body
Speaker 1: down and beautiful things can happen from that place. So
Speaker 1: with body lead psychotherapy, one level of it is looking
Speaker 1: for where what the person is saying is not matching
Speaker 1: what's happening in their body. And it also sounds to
Speaker 1: me like you're using, as you said, breath, touch, different
Speaker 1: things to try and get clients to be able to
Speaker 1: access places that the conscious mind is not able to
Speaker 1: go absolutely not connecting with avoiding blocked too, and tissue
Speaker 1: holds many of those blocks. So you can just do
Speaker 1: a very easy movement, moving the arms, moving the spine,
Speaker 1: all of that and slowly freeze up. You can really
Speaker 1: tell if someone's very rigid and tight in their thinking.
Speaker 1: You hear it and how they think and express themselves.
Speaker 1: Often that tightness and rigidity is all in the body,
Speaker 1: maybe in the neck, maybe in part of the spine.
Speaker 1: If you watch someone move, you can see these these
Speaker 1: tightness is it's something that you sort of want to
Speaker 1: be gentle with it also requires a lot of trust
Speaker 1: and a lot of agreement. So I wouldn't go around
Speaker 1: reading everyone at the bus stop, for example, and being like,
Speaker 1: oh my goodness, what's that about. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I did it in the beginning when I was training,
Speaker 1: and it was actually tiring and painful to do it.
Speaker 1: But yes, you're getting permission and then sort of observing
Speaker 1: and just taking someone in. And also there's a lot
Speaker 1: of in therapy. There's always relationship, so that comes out
Speaker 1: in body let's psychotherapy as well, placing yourself in the
Speaker 1: first session, just even walking up to someone standing back,
Speaker 1: finding out where they are most comfortable with you and why,
Speaker 1: or turning the body getting them to move around. And
Speaker 1: but when you find them really energized, like oh I
Speaker 1: love you being literally five ms away that is comfortable
Speaker 1: for me, and some people you can walk right into
Speaker 1: them and sort of smack chests and then you're like, wow, okay,
Speaker 1: so maybe no boundaries at all. Yeah, they're like, yes,
Speaker 1: it's fine. I think it's interesting to look at the
Speaker 1: places these modalities crossover. You know, in my own life,
Speaker 1: I've done a lot of different practices of all different
Speaker 1: kinds over the years, but they've primarily been sort of siloed.
Speaker 1: I can see the connections between them, but they're not
Speaker 1: actually happening at the same time. So, you know, I've
Speaker 1: been to therapy a lot, and it's sitting there talking.
Speaker 1: You know, I've done an awful lot of meditation and
Speaker 1: it's sitting there quietly. You know, I've done breathing, but
Speaker 1: it's just breathing. One of the things that I noticed
Speaker 1: in your book that I thought was in Tristan was
Speaker 1: there's certainly breathing happening, but there's a fair amount of
Speaker 1: movement happening as well. I did notice right away across
Speaker 1: over there, you know, between breath and movement, and it
Speaker 1: sounds like, you know, in your private work you do
Speaker 1: with people, you're layering psychotherapy even on top of that foundation. Yes,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, we listen, we're gonna have to
Speaker 1: do a session sometime because you've done breathwork and it
Speaker 1: was just breathing. For me that it's very rarely just breathing.
Speaker 1: And I got a little bit confused by my working identity.
Speaker 1: A few years ago, I was a pilates teacher, and
Speaker 1: then I noticed things coming out with with clients. I
Speaker 1: could see something wasn't right with their body. And also
Speaker 1: suddenly they started sharing a lot with me, sharing about
Speaker 1: their private lives. And I remember my teacher at the
Speaker 1: time saying, you are not a therapist, don't get involved.
Speaker 1: And I suddenly realized, wait, but what if that is
Speaker 1: going to be helpful for someone. So then I started
Speaker 1: training as a body lets like a therapist, and it
Speaker 1: has opened up a whole new world to me. It's
Speaker 1: not separating breath from psychotherapy from body work, it's bringing
Speaker 1: it all in. And sometimes you need that segregation because
Speaker 1: to do breathing could be very intense. You can read
Speaker 1: it in the body. In fact, if someone has in
Speaker 1: particular what we call a very young wounding, so perhaps
Speaker 1: something happened inside the womb or maybe the first year.
Speaker 1: If they had no words at the time when that
Speaker 1: trauma happened, it can be very difficult to talk about it.
Speaker 1: So you might go into something different. You might lie
Speaker 1: them down and there's no words in this place, just
Speaker 1: let them make sounds and movements, and suddenly stuff comes
Speaker 1: out that was very unexpected. And so sometimes breath work
Speaker 1: can be a little bit disturbing because you have experienced
Speaker 1: as yourself you're really changing body chemistry and very quickly.
Speaker 1: I mean we're talking alkalining your blood to a certain
Speaker 1: degree within twenty thirty seconds. And as that happens, it
Speaker 1: has incredible impact. But for some people that impact can
Speaker 1: be quite stressful. It can be quite anxiety making and
Speaker 1: it feels like they're out of control. And that's a
Speaker 1: brilliant place to be if you're okay to go there,
Speaker 1: But if you're not, then it's it can be shocking.
Speaker 1: So you just referenced how powerful breathwork can be and
Speaker 1: how it can happen quickly. And you and I sort
Speaker 1: of started wandering into this territory before the show, and
Speaker 1: we paused so we could do it here, and so
Speaker 1: let's wander in there now. My question to you is this,
Speaker 1: So you did I think you called it Days of Breathing,
Speaker 1: which went on a long time, where like all you
Speaker 1: did was you immersed yourself deeply in breathwork, right, and
Speaker 1: it has this very transformative effect, right, And you then
Speaker 1: talk about breath work very glowingly and meditation people go on,
Speaker 1: you know, month long retreats and then they talk about
Speaker 1: meditation very glowingly. I'm right. My question is this because
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about this a lot lately, is that
Speaker 1: I think for a lot of people, what ends up
Speaker 1: happening is they're not in a position where they can
Speaker 1: do days of breathing. They're going to do fifteen or
Speaker 1: twenty minutes a day of breathing. They're going to do
Speaker 1: fifteen or twenty minutes a day of meditation. And this
Speaker 1: has happened to me over the years as well at
Speaker 1: different points. So I do that, and I have an
Speaker 1: experience that is fairly mundane, and I hear these other
Speaker 1: people talking about this stuff as if it is completely
Speaker 1: life changing, and I go, well, jeez, I did it,
Speaker 1: you know, yesterday and today, and it's not life changing.
Speaker 1: They're saying it is either a I'm doing it wrong,
Speaker 1: or be it's not the right thing for me. I've
Speaker 1: started to worry about this is meditation in our culture.
Speaker 1: I think we have way over sold the benefits of mindfulness.
Speaker 1: I think mindfulness is hugely beneficial, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1: It's foundational to all the healing that's happened in my life.
Speaker 1: Yet I think sometimes we oversell it. And as I
Speaker 1: was reading your book, I was thinking about a couple
Speaker 1: of things because You're actually pretty good at talking about
Speaker 1: this in the book about saying like, hey, the first
Speaker 1: few times you do this, you may not have a
Speaker 1: lot happen. You may need to stick with this a
Speaker 1: little bit. But just respond to kind of that whole
Speaker 1: long question slash non question. Yeah, I mean that's a
Speaker 1: huge question. I think where I would go with this
Speaker 1: is I'm someone who started in some form of self
Speaker 1: work yoga breathing from quite young, probably about sort of
Speaker 1: fourteen and fifteen. I know because my mom was doing it.
Speaker 1: She was doing pilates. I thought it looked strange, and
Speaker 1: I was laughing at her, and she's like, try it,
Speaker 1: and she was doing roll lots with her feet under
Speaker 1: the bed and stuff. And I was laughing my head
Speaker 1: off as I was doing this. Nothing roll onto Like eighteen,
Speaker 1: did my first yoga class really hated it? Nothing come
Speaker 1: on to? Like twenty two did another yoga class hurt
Speaker 1: my wrists, hurt my neck? Hey to it? And so
Speaker 1: this kind of went on and on and on. And
Speaker 1: what I would say about it is I believe there
Speaker 1: is an element of finding it, experiencing what you need
Speaker 1: to experience when you're ready. And so if something's feeling mundane,
Speaker 1: then let it be mundane, Like, how are you eric
Speaker 1: with the mundane? Do you need a lot of excitement
Speaker 1: in your life? Do you need big breakthroughs for you
Speaker 1: to continue doing something or would you be okay cleaning
Speaker 1: a toilet and getting it spick and span and just
Speaker 1: feeling absolutely rewarded from connecting with something and making a
Speaker 1: space that someone else and everyone else can enjoy. And
Speaker 1: my point being that when it comes to any practice,
Speaker 1: find the one that you enjoy. I think that's really important.
Speaker 1: If you're not enjoying it, I wouldn't say stop, pause,
Speaker 1: find something that you could enjoy. And from my own perspective,
Speaker 1: and I talked about this in the book a little bit,
Speaker 1: but I'm also writing another book. From a body leads
Speaker 1: psychotherapy point of view, I would say, and I'm aware
Speaker 1: practitioners may try and shoot me down, and so I'm
Speaker 1: open to bring it on. But you can look at
Speaker 1: someone's physicality and I feel I would be able to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what, the mindfulness is going to be boring
Speaker 1: for you. Your system needs something a bit more intense.
Speaker 1: Go and do whim hoff that is going to attract
Speaker 1: your attention, calm that very spinning mind of yours, and
Speaker 1: suddenly you will find that place. From there you will
Speaker 1: be able to work towards the more subtle forms of meditation.
Speaker 1: And then there's another system that I would look at
Speaker 1: and I'm like, wow, okay, a lot of startle in here.
Speaker 1: If they went into a whim Hoff session, they would
Speaker 1: be distraught. I have not experienced it within a large group,
Speaker 1: but I imagine people might leave the room, not come
Speaker 1: back after lunch all of If that's you, then it
Speaker 1: don't worry. Your system is just too sensitive. Go to
Speaker 1: the more subtle, Go to the mundane, as Eric described,
Speaker 1: because your system can handle that, and within that is
Speaker 1: the richness for you. And then from there you can
Speaker 1: build and what we call build your container, sort of
Speaker 1: toughen it up, and through physical gentle work you can
Speaker 1: get more fierce, stronger until you can handle the really
Speaker 1: intense stuff. So if something happens, particularly I know in
Speaker 1: breath work and Kundalini in particular, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've experienced Kundalini, you get people talking about having Kundalini psychosis,
Speaker 1: and it really is just that their system has exploded
Speaker 1: somewhere within the energetic structure, and we sort of need
Speaker 1: to plug that come back in again. Calm it down.
Speaker 1: You went too quickly for yourself. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that explains the question. But we're all different, so we
Speaker 1: all need different things, and so many things you said there,
Speaker 1: I think the last being really important. We're all different,
Speaker 1: we need different things. I beat my head against the
Speaker 1: wall of breath meditation unsuccessfully for a long time, pre internet,
Speaker 1: just basic following your breath, you know, like basic I did.
Speaker 1: But it was interesting because if you go back we're
Speaker 1: talking eighties nineties, right, there's no internet, there aren't teachers
Speaker 1: on every corner, there's nowhere to go. And I'm drawn
Speaker 1: to certain Buddhist thinkers the way that they think and
Speaker 1: they explain I'm like, yes, yes, yes, Like finally I
Speaker 1: found a philosophical system that resonates with me. And they're saying,
Speaker 1: sit quietly and do this type of meditation for thirty minutes.
Speaker 1: And so I try years of of on again, off again,
Speaker 1: on again, off again. And there were several things that
Speaker 1: helped me break through that. One was starting really small,
Speaker 1: just being like, all right, I'm gonna do way less
Speaker 1: of it. But the other was that I discovered sound meditation.
Speaker 1: I discovered that what I would do instead is just listen,
Speaker 1: and I would go outside and my object just became sound,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden it changed. And then to
Speaker 1: your point, as I developed some concentration that way, then
Speaker 1: as I went back into breath meditation, I went, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm getting a little bit more traction here because I
Speaker 1: was able to develop concentration in a way that was
Speaker 1: more suitable for me, you know. And so I think
Speaker 1: had I tried to learn all this in today's day
Speaker 1: and age, I probably would have come across that a
Speaker 1: lot more quickly. It just was a different time when
Speaker 1: I was trying to learn this stuff. In Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's something that I hear a lot. I remember
Speaker 1: going to a psychotherapeutic community in Holland that's where I trained,
Speaker 1: and when I first arrived, I was like two, was like,
Speaker 1: and I was young in the community, and I could
Speaker 1: see people who were in the sixties and sixty we
Speaker 1: were chatting and they're like, I wish that I had
Speaker 1: found this when I was twenty six, because my whole
Speaker 1: life would have been different. And I was like, I
Speaker 1: just felt so grateful at the time. Roll On a
Speaker 1: few years and maybe let's felt a little bit smug
Speaker 1: about it. Oh yes, I'll developed an eye to be
Speaker 1: here at twenty six. But then suddenly eighteen year olds
Speaker 1: were turning up and I was like, oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: and I found myself stopping almost saying to them, you know,
Speaker 1: I wish I found this when I was your right,
Speaker 1: And it's like, you know what, it's not about wishing
Speaker 1: anything different to what I have been doing, trusting, And
Speaker 1: I think for those people that had to really do
Speaker 1: the research and turn up at that club on fifty
Speaker 1: Street and really put the effort in, there was beauty
Speaker 1: in that and you found it when you found it.
Speaker 1: And for those that are sort of speeding through it
Speaker 1: at the moment, it's amazing what's possible. But also maybe
Speaker 1: you might miss a little bit of that effort and
Speaker 1: finding you know, things are a bit difficult, and you've
Speaker 1: got to claim it for yourself. There's something there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, some of us who were around way before,
Speaker 1: you know, as old people. You know, I often think
Speaker 1: about like, if you wanted to hear us long, you
Speaker 1: had to go to the record store, and often they
Speaker 1: wouldn't even have the record. Because I was always into,
Speaker 1: you know, odd music, and so I'd go to the
Speaker 1: record store and they'd be like, well, we can order
Speaker 1: it and it can be here in four weeks. And
Speaker 1: so when I started realizing, like the first time, I
Speaker 1: don't know whether it was Spotify or Napster or whatever
Speaker 1: it was, when I was like, wait a minute, I
Speaker 1: can listen to nearly any song in the world like that,
Speaker 1: I was like, this is the greatest thing that ever happened.
Speaker 1: And I still generally feel that way. But there was
Speaker 1: something to the effort, the anticipation, and the slowness with
Speaker 1: which you would engage in that piece of work. As
Speaker 1: you describe it, I'm like, you know what I think
Speaker 1: the word is as patients. Yeah, it's something that has
Speaker 1: to be learned, and there's many ways of learning it,
Speaker 1: and one is going to record store and needing to
Speaker 1: wait four weeks for your record. In today's standards, that
Speaker 1: would not work. They would be uproar. Someone would go
Speaker 1: to another provider and they would want it within twenty
Speaker 1: four hours. And you know, if that's you as a
Speaker 1: post and it's like, oh, that sounds juicy to walk on. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I do think it is interesting to think about if
Speaker 1: we all sort of collectively agree, which I think most
Speaker 1: thoughtful people do collectively agree, like, all right, things are
Speaker 1: happening altogether too fast, right, There's too much coming at us,
Speaker 1: There's too much information coming in. I do think a
Speaker 1: question that we all have to ask ourselves is what
Speaker 1: ways and in what places are we going to choose
Speaker 1: to slow that flow down a little bit so that
Speaker 1: we are able to engage more deeply with things. So
Speaker 1: the benefit of today's world is I don't think somebody
Speaker 1: would spend fifteen years trying the wrong type of meditation
Speaker 1: for them because you'd be like, well, there's fifty different practice.
Speaker 1: You know, I can contact twenty different teachers in two minutes,
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to just keep doing that. So
Speaker 1: that's the positive of where we sit today. The negative
Speaker 1: is and I think we see it, and I contribute
Speaker 1: it to it by making a podcast like this is
Speaker 1: a new idea every day, a new practice every day.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because I really like the way you said,
Speaker 1: if you're not enjoying the practice, don't stop, but pause
Speaker 1: and think a little bit about it. And I really
Speaker 1: like that because there is a certain point with practice
Speaker 1: where practice becomes practice, like you have to show up.
Speaker 1: None of us want to show up all the time
Speaker 1: for anything, at least no one who's wired like me.
Speaker 1: And so there is a certain point where we go, Okay,
Speaker 1: I want to keep with this because I know there's
Speaker 1: depth here. I recently went through this with my Zen practice,
Speaker 1: and I was like, Okay, I've been very deep in
Speaker 1: this Zen practice. I've been doing Coen work for a while,
Speaker 1: and I'm at a point where it feels very dry
Speaker 1: to me, and I feel really interested over here. Like
Speaker 1: I really called over here, and I have a spiritual
Speaker 1: director and we talked, you know about it, like, and
Speaker 1: he was like, I think this is just the dry period,
Speaker 1: the desert. You've got to go through it. And that's
Speaker 1: not what I chose to do. I chose to ignore
Speaker 1: my spiritual director's advice because I have a long standing
Speaker 1: general feeling, which is trust to my curiosity, trust my enthusiasms.
Speaker 1: When I started then, I said I'm going to commit
Speaker 1: for X amount of time knowing my tendency. And I
Speaker 1: was way way past that original commitment, and so I went,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna trust my curiosity this time. But I think
Speaker 1: that's an ongoing question for all of us as we
Speaker 1: do this type of work is where do we dig
Speaker 1: in deeper where we are and where do we explore
Speaker 1: more widely? How do you think about that in your
Speaker 1: own life? For me, it's where there's discomfort, discomfort in
Speaker 1: my body, then I'm to explore it rather than say
Speaker 1: ignore it. And if there's discomfort in a conversation, if
Speaker 1: I find myself triggered old behaviors coming through, you know,
Speaker 1: I've had a lot of psychotherapy, so I feel very
Speaker 1: fortunate to know what they are. It doesn't necessarily help
Speaker 1: my partner or my friends and family, but at the
Speaker 1: thing time I can spot it relatively quickly. That to
Speaker 1: me is where there's interests and there's little bit of
Speaker 1: juice to explore, so that I would take to my
Speaker 1: therapist or taken to a practice, a self practice. Listening
Speaker 1: to you, the word that came to mind was impulse,
Speaker 1: like follow your impulse. I think that's really important, and
Speaker 1: in there there's an ability to gain confidence of self,
Speaker 1: you know, working out what you need to do. And
Speaker 1: also there is a place where I remember doing a
Speaker 1: passionate I don't know if you've done those. It's like
Speaker 1: an eleven day silent retreat and loved it for the
Speaker 1: first three days, Day four and five, hated it, wanted
Speaker 1: to leave, and a sort of confusing one. I knew
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to go, but I allow myself to
Speaker 1: think how nice would be just to get in my
Speaker 1: car and drive away. And that's where I was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: here is now the work begins. Yes, the welcome it
Speaker 1: was stunning. You have to get to that point. And
Speaker 1: you talk of the desert, and the desert can seem
Speaker 1: so lacking in any signposts or anything. So for me,
Speaker 1: I find maybe the intensity is a bit easier to
Speaker 1: work with. That's the discomfort, I guess little discomfort in
Speaker 1: the desert. Beyond boredom, there's discomfort there as well. It
Speaker 1: just takes a bit longer to go through. I've talked
Speaker 1: about this before that my most prominent situation in life
Speaker 1: is a I've talked about depression, and my depression for me,
Speaker 1: when it feels like it's around, is mostly a complete
Speaker 1: barren nous. It's not a sadness. I can work with sadness.
Speaker 1: I can work with anger. There's lots of things like
Speaker 1: I feel like I've got some skills. Working with nothing
Speaker 1: is harder and I think that's kind of what you
Speaker 1: were just saying, right, how do you engage with that
Speaker 1: sort of complete disconnection or empty it's a numbness? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I mean with clients. There are clients that I'm
Speaker 1: working with right now. They're in that place, and what
Speaker 1: I say to them is to make friends with it.
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of almost a cop out to
Speaker 1: say that, But what I mean by and make friends
Speaker 1: with it is within that numbness as a protection, and
Speaker 1: there's something that your consciousness doesn't feel as ready or
Speaker 1: it's blocking it in some way. So finding peace with
Speaker 1: that is a very beautiful key to open that door.
Speaker 1: For as long as you're judging it, then that is
Speaker 1: the bind that is holding you back from the numbness.
Speaker 1: Whereas if you're just like, okay, I'm numb, and rather
Speaker 1: than be like, damn it, I'm numb. I don't know
Speaker 1: what do I need to do? Really, that is the
Speaker 1: same trauma that created the numbness. The gentleness I like
Speaker 1: your affirmation of I will do this for this period
Speaker 1: of time, day with the numbness, for five days, ten days,
Speaker 1: a year, whatever it is you decide, stay with it,
Speaker 1: and then afterwards explore something different. Yeah, befriending one thing.
Speaker 1: I know, well, all right, not turn this into a
Speaker 1: personal therapy session in any way, But these are the
Speaker 1: sort of questions that that I think lots of listeners have. Also.
Speaker 1: One of the things with my depression is I've alternated
Speaker 1: between two views with it, and one view is sort
Speaker 1: of similar to what you said. I just sort of
Speaker 1: welcome it and I go, you know what, it feels
Speaker 1: like it rolled into town. I don't know why there's
Speaker 1: nothing here. The analogy I've often made is it feels
Speaker 1: like an emotional flu It just feels like I got sick.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. I check. Am I taking care
Speaker 1: of myself? Am I doing all the things I know
Speaker 1: how to do? And you know what, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to make a big fuss out of this, And a
Speaker 1: few days later it kind of just rolls out of town,
Speaker 1: which it does. So that's one approach that has served
Speaker 1: me pretty well. The other view, though, is more the
Speaker 1: view of what you just said, which is, is there
Speaker 1: something that unwilling to feel that is causing this to
Speaker 1: recur and come back, and so should I be digging
Speaker 1: into it in some way versus just sort of like,
Speaker 1: you know what, relax, let it come, let it go, okay.
Speaker 1: So I think the question I would ask is where
Speaker 1: is your liveness blocked when it happens? Where is it
Speaker 1: that life is restricted restraints? And perhaps it's with relationships.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it's with food, either we withhold from it or
Speaker 1: use it too much. Maybe it's with substance use. And
Speaker 1: I think it's knowing the parts of you that are
Speaker 1: compensating spotting them. You may need someone to help you
Speaker 1: spot them if you haven't spotted them already, And it's
Speaker 1: always helpful to speak to someone because yes, you may
Speaker 1: know the two or three, but there might be another
Speaker 1: one that's there and you just didn't know that it
Speaker 1: was an issue. If there is a compensation, that's where
Speaker 1: I would dig. Whereas the numbness itself, I don't know
Speaker 1: that finding peace with it is in my experience, more
Speaker 1: healing because you don't judge it and suddenly you're like, ah,
Speaker 1: it's just how it is. I love your sort of
Speaker 1: rolling in and roll out again. So it's almost like,
Speaker 1: let it roll in, let it roll out. But during
Speaker 1: that time, how are you compensating? And it would be
Speaker 1: within those compensations that I would unpick with someone and
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, you're pulling at your hair at the moment.
Speaker 1: For the rest of the session today, let's not pull
Speaker 1: your hair. See what happens, and you'll see the hand
Speaker 1: go to the hair like some people pull their eyebrow,
Speaker 1: for example, and you'll see the hand going and they're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, it's happening. For then that opens up
Speaker 1: what it is that the numbness might be there to
Speaker 1: protect something. You said, they're triggered a question that I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you about breath work, but you led
Speaker 1: me into it, which is a question about breathing. In
Speaker 1: the book, you start off with some tests ways of
Speaker 1: testing how well you're breathing, and I've done versions of
Speaker 1: those tests. They all make sense to me. Here's the question, though,
Speaker 1: that arose for me as I looked at those and
Speaker 1: as I think about breathing, as I thought about breathing
Speaker 1: more broadly, when I think about breathing, I know how
Speaker 1: to do it correctly. You know, I've done enough of
Speaker 1: these interviews. I've done enough. I mean, I know how
Speaker 1: to breathe correctly. When I think of it. It's the
Speaker 1: thinking of it, it's the being conscious of it, And
Speaker 1: I think that this is a problem far more fundamental
Speaker 1: than breathing. I think this is a fundamental problem that
Speaker 1: most of us face, which is that we know a
Speaker 1: lot of the ways to respond wisely and skillfully to life.
Speaker 1: We might have practices, we might have tools, We've got
Speaker 1: a lot of things. It's just that the pace of
Speaker 1: life and the dizziness of life makes it very difficult
Speaker 1: for us to remember to check how my breathing. And
Speaker 1: I'm curious if you have any thoughts on how, in
Speaker 1: the midst of a busy life to touch base more often, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: how I am I breathing? You know, because the twenty
Speaker 1: minutes that I practice breathing is great, it's good. It's
Speaker 1: certainly better than doing nothing. But then there's still twenty
Speaker 1: three hours and forty minutes that I'm breathing in whatever
Speaker 1: my habitual pattern is. Okay, so listen. I think that
Speaker 1: is the beauty of breathwork over perhaps almost any modality.
Speaker 1: You are breathing all the time, You sure are, and
Speaker 1: your body has been breathing from since not only the
Speaker 1: moment you were born, but in essence. The fetus has
Speaker 1: something called breathing movements that practices breathing movements in the womb,
Speaker 1: and it's aspirate the fluid in the womb and then
Speaker 1: sort of pushing it out again, and that's preparing the lungs.
Speaker 1: So this sort of mechanism is is expanding and contracting,
Speaker 1: so this thing is going all the time. So the
Speaker 1: first thing I would say is, and I talked about
Speaker 1: it in the book, many people think, oh, I don't
Speaker 1: know breaths than me, and I sort of smile a
Speaker 1: little bit because I'm like, oh, did you know you're breathing?
Speaker 1: So you think breathing or breath work isn't kind of
Speaker 1: important to doing it, And you're doing it because you
Speaker 1: are yawning, sighing, you're holding your breath during a stressful moment,
Speaker 1: you're hyper ventilating during exercise. You're already doing it. So
Speaker 1: the first thing I would say is, rather than worry
Speaker 1: about connecting with breath every decond of every moment, that
Speaker 1: comes with time, and that comes into that days of
Speaker 1: breath where you've chosen seven days, ten days a year
Speaker 1: of just sort of solid breathing. That's what I want
Speaker 1: to do myself. At the moment we were speaking at
Speaker 1: the beginning I'm a little bit out of sync with
Speaker 1: breathing and with self care because I'm doing a very
Speaker 1: sort of human project of renovating my house and it's
Speaker 1: very difficult. It's dusty, my body doesn't like breathing in it,
Speaker 1: and wearing face masks a lot. So for me, rather
Speaker 1: than sort of do the breath work, I've just sort
Speaker 1: of let it go. And I find myself in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night waking up, spinning mind and I'm
Speaker 1: back into some very interesting stress, very interesting in a
Speaker 1: voice that I have not heard in a really long time,
Speaker 1: and it's painful and it's traumatic what's happening in the morning.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I know better than this. I know what
Speaker 1: to do to calm those voices, to come back to myself.
Speaker 1: Why am I not doing it? I'm just so grateful
Speaker 1: for this period of time because I feel more compassion
Speaker 1: and more sort of like understanding when someone says but
Speaker 1: I don't know, how do I sort of come into
Speaker 1: that breath when I need it, And it's kind of
Speaker 1: like relax into it. You'll know when you need it,
Speaker 1: and you'll practice it when you can. And at the
Speaker 1: same time, for myself, when I wake up at three
Speaker 1: in the morning and my mind is spinning. Then I
Speaker 1: guess it's a sort of familiar sensation. I'm there again,
Speaker 1: it's happened, and I will take a breath exhale and
Speaker 1: there's a breath in the book that's really good for sleep.
Speaker 1: I will begin it and suddenly I'm like, oh, thank
Speaker 1: goodness for that. And then suddenly, without knowing it, mind spinning, spinning, spinning,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I guess it's just noticing the sensation
Speaker 1: that is the discomfort. I'm like, oh, my goodness, I'm
Speaker 1: tensing my stomach. Let it go. I've forgotten to breathe again.
Speaker 1: It's knowing your body, knowing what it feels like when
Speaker 1: that darkness hits. Yeah, you said that earlier, noticing discomfort
Speaker 1: and going into it. I think in this program I
Speaker 1: teach called spiritual Habits, the question I'm trying to answer
Speaker 1: is the one I just sort of posed a little bit,
Speaker 1: which is like, how do we bring this into more
Speaker 1: of the moments of our lives? And like you just said,
Speaker 1: I feel like the most powerful trigger we can have
Speaker 1: triggers like remind me, like my phone reminds me. But
Speaker 1: if my own internal discomfort can start to become a
Speaker 1: trigger in internal family systems. I think they call it
Speaker 1: a trailhead. If I can use that to sort of
Speaker 1: catch my attention and go, oh wait, now I can
Speaker 1: do something with this. You know, it's sort of an
Speaker 1: awareness based trigger, which we all have mostly for the negative. Right,
Speaker 1: We're not aware, right, we have the emotional trigger. There's
Speaker 1: no awareness to it though. It's just it's like emotion
Speaker 1: and response, and it's happening at almost if it's a
Speaker 1: subconscious level, but it's happening outside of like we're not
Speaker 1: really aware it's happening. And so I think, to your point,
Speaker 1: the more we can sort of recognize like oh, okay, yep, tension, discomfort, suffering,
Speaker 1: racing mind like okay, it's a chance to practice. It's
Speaker 1: a chance to practice. And I think the wonder of it,
Speaker 1: and I've really noticed over these last seven months, is
Speaker 1: that I've lost a lot of that electric connect the
Speaker 1: sort of neuro connections that I had developed that was
Speaker 1: so helpful for me just to feel incredible all the time,
Speaker 1: and slowly losing them because I wasn't practicing it. It It
Speaker 1: made me realize the importance of practice and the importance
Speaker 1: of giving some time each day. So I'm very aware
Speaker 1: that I'm like, oh, you know, you'll find it when
Speaker 1: when you're ready for it, etcetera. Um, there is a
Speaker 1: place to practice and develop the tools that you will need,
Speaker 1: and it will just happen. So I really noticed it
Speaker 1: when I first started pilates. I had a lot of
Speaker 1: neck and shoulder issues, and my polates teacher put their
Speaker 1: hands on my shoulders and just said breathe, and I
Speaker 1: found my shoulders lifting their hand up and they just
Speaker 1: kept holding it, and suddenly my shoulders dropped. And actually,
Speaker 1: although it felt very nice, it was unremarkable. And I'm
Speaker 1: making it sound better than it was. It was unremarkable.
Speaker 1: Where it was remarkable is I then answered my phone
Speaker 1: and I realized my shoulder has lifted and it dropped
Speaker 1: mid while I was on the phone, and I just
Speaker 1: burst into tears. I was like, oh, my goodness, there's
Speaker 1: so much reaction and I just didn't know that it
Speaker 1: was happening. So finding the signs, you know, this is
Speaker 1: why we do need others to help us. Yeah, others
Speaker 1: are so helpful. I just did some Alexander technique lessons.
Speaker 1: It's just something I've been curious about and heard about
Speaker 1: for years, and I thought, well, I wonder if there's
Speaker 1: anybody in Columbus doing it, and sure enough there was
Speaker 1: a guy. And I don't know that it's the thing
Speaker 1: for me, but I was really struck by the core
Speaker 1: idea of habits of motion, these habitual ways in which
Speaker 1: we move that we are completely aware of, and like
Speaker 1: we talk about a lot in mindfulness or you know,
Speaker 1: bringing some awareness to the habits of the thought patterns,
Speaker 1: it's really about bringing awareness to the way the body
Speaker 1: habitually moves. They've got a phrase for it that I'm
Speaker 1: missing that says it better than that, but that was
Speaker 1: the essence of what I took from it. I love.
Speaker 1: Alexander technique was one of the first practices that I
Speaker 1: really connected with when I was in a lot of pain,
Speaker 1: and I didn't understand it in the beginning. It was
Speaker 1: up and down, up and down, held my neck up
Speaker 1: and down, up and down. And if there's anyone that
Speaker 1: practices Alexander technique and going, oh my goodness, this guy's
Speaker 1: not selling it. That's what my practitioner did with me.
Speaker 1: I was so boring and I sort of hated it.
Speaker 1: What was interesting is week three or four, suddenly was like,
Speaker 1: oh my goodness, I am fighting this guy in the
Speaker 1: same movements I thought, don't fight him, and suddenly things
Speaker 1: were muscles were dropping and releasing, and I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: I fight. I really have so much fight in me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful practice. Something else I was struck by
Speaker 1: in your book because of its absolute absence in most
Speaker 1: other places, which has consistently surprised me because it's sort
Speaker 1: of an old school technique that I have always found
Speaker 1: helpful but seems to have not made it into the
Speaker 1: modern mindfulness breathwork world very much. Is this clenching of
Speaker 1: muscle and relaxing of ussel. You have a lot of that,
Speaker 1: and I've always found that for myself. I think they
Speaker 1: used to call it progressive muscle relaxation, but I've always
Speaker 1: found that to be a really helpful technique. Talk to
Speaker 1: me about why that seems to be a fairly core
Speaker 1: part of a lot of these exercises. Okay, so it
Speaker 1: is not a core part in the work I do
Speaker 1: one to one or in group sessions. It is a
Speaker 1: core part if I don't know someone and I want
Speaker 1: to support them to a feel their body and be
Speaker 1: for their muscles just to get a rough idea of
Speaker 1: what is possible for them, whether that be tension because
Speaker 1: the muscles are completely chilled out and not engaging, or
Speaker 1: tightness because they're walking around like a not the contraction
Speaker 1: of everything. Since I wrote this book and I am
Speaker 1: not going to get the opportunity to meet every person
Speaker 1: that's reading this book, it's just such an incredibly effective
Speaker 1: and easy way of someone feeling their body noticing where
Speaker 1: they are today because it's different depending on the day,
Speaker 1: and it's safe compared to other practices that I might
Speaker 1: do with someone. So we have groups free Wednesday online,
Speaker 1: but also we have live groups. In those sessions I
Speaker 1: don't do necessarily. I do other things, things that feel
Speaker 1: a little bit more embarrassing, and that if I wrote
Speaker 1: it in the book, people would be like, I'm out
Speaker 1: of here, and they would close the book and never continue.
Speaker 1: There's a sort of warm up process and that and
Speaker 1: then letting it go. Everyone gets it, and no one,
Speaker 1: as far as I'm concerned, it feels concerned by doing it.
Speaker 1: I think I would be a negligent interviewer if I
Speaker 1: did not weighe into what's embarrassing. Every listener is like
Speaker 1: what is it? So now I have to ask the
Speaker 1: question when you say things that are more embarrassing, give
Speaker 1: me an example or two. Shaking. Yes, interestingly, I do
Speaker 1: put it in the book you do, but again I
Speaker 1: sort of talk about it as as exercise. So it's
Speaker 1: shaking and shakes hard as you can until your breath
Speaker 1: starts s getting labored. And what that is doing. It's
Speaker 1: a very subtle way of a releasing tension, be improving
Speaker 1: circulation in your whole body, because we just know that
Speaker 1: we're going to be a little bit lacking in that
Speaker 1: full body blood flow and oxygenated cells. And people aren't
Speaker 1: moving enough, not walking enough, not dancing enough, whatever is,
Speaker 1: they're not doing enough have a good shape for three minutes,
Speaker 1: and that would be embarrassing. Another one might be a
Speaker 1: fast breath practice where you would like So my partner
Speaker 1: came to when we met, I told him that I
Speaker 1: ran a breath group, and he's like, what does a
Speaker 1: breath group? And I was like, come along and have
Speaker 1: a go. And anyway, I had done enough breath groups
Speaker 1: to really not worry about looking at his face as
Speaker 1: he was practicing, but you could see scrunching up and
Speaker 1: turning around and sort of he just wanted to leave,
Speaker 1: and after he had the bravery to say I didn't
Speaker 1: like it, And I thought, why didn't you like it?
Speaker 1: What didn't you like about it? And he's like, everyone
Speaker 1: sounded like trains and I couldn't get out of the
Speaker 1: sound of it. And he was like, it was just Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got stuck on that. If I wrote that in
Speaker 1: the book and people beginner, if that is embarrassing for them,
Speaker 1: then they'll stop it and then that breath is lost
Speaker 1: on them. But there's some beautiful things you can do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that fast breathing practice is one that I find. I
Speaker 1: don't know that the word I would use is embarrassing,
Speaker 1: but I am more hesitant to do it in my
Speaker 1: house and my partners totally on board with all this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, And I don't know why. There's something
Speaker 1: about it. Maybe it's just the noise that it causes.
Speaker 1: It's a noisier practice than say a four seven eight
Speaker 1: type thing, so it causes a hesitation. Yeah. So without
Speaker 1: turning this into a session, and this goes for myself
Speaker 1: as well, where do I make myself small? Where do
Speaker 1: I hide myself or put someone else's experience above my
Speaker 1: own then that would be an interesting question. So I'm
Speaker 1: always saying to people in my classes. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: and this, so I do body tapping. So that's another
Speaker 1: one that some people find very embarrassing. We had one
Speaker 1: person walk out in the middle of the body tap.
Speaker 1: I really wanted to go up to them and just
Speaker 1: be like, please just hold my hand a moment. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to body tap with you. Sam, please come
Speaker 1: and leave the class body tap. I didn't because everyone
Speaker 1: it was a big, sort of high energy body tap class,
Speaker 1: and I thought, you know what, just let that person
Speaker 1: go because I think they'll find this in their own time.
Speaker 1: But as I'm doing this, I'm always planting the seed
Speaker 1: and everyone when you're on the bus, body tap, when
Speaker 1: you're in Walmart, over here at with Tescos or Sainsbury's,
Speaker 1: body tap, move, shake at the milk. I'll just do it.
Speaker 1: If you feel that tension, just take a moment, jake
Speaker 1: and check, check and check and check. Breathe. Everyone's gonna stare,
Speaker 1: everyone's gonna look, and you are healing the world. But
Speaker 1: because you're just opening, when they see that next when
Speaker 1: they go to a class, that's what that widow was doing.
Speaker 1: We just lost of our listeners. They're like, goodbye, I
Speaker 1: am not shaking your body tapping at Walmart. Fella. If
Speaker 1: you just if you logged off already, you would definitely
Speaker 1: want to go into that discomfort. Let's talk about a
Speaker 1: practice or two specifically, and I was wondering if you
Speaker 1: would share with us geometric breathing. Beautiful choice. Well, it's
Speaker 1: beautifully drawn out in the book. Those are very lovely
Speaker 1: pages in the book tell us about geometric breathing. So
Speaker 1: geometric breathing, I've trademarked that interestingly because when I when
Speaker 1: I started creating it, I was like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: this could be huge. And not that I believe any
Speaker 1: breath work should be owned by anyone, but just the
Speaker 1: sort of name it and what it's about, I just
Speaker 1: think it's beautiful. So sorry to blow my own trumpet there,
Speaker 1: But anyway, what is basically about shapes? In looking at
Speaker 1: a shape and breathing it so easy one would be
Speaker 1: a triangle, what everyone knows, a square breath or box
Speaker 1: breathing inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for four,
Speaker 1: hold the breath out for four. So there was this
Speaker 1: very clear geometric shape, and then a triangle inhale, hold exhale.
Speaker 1: So I was doing this and I really loved these
Speaker 1: sort of shaped breaths. And then within my days of breath.
Speaker 1: We're probably gonna lose more listeners here, But basically what
Speaker 1: started happening was my mind. It became visual rather than breath,
Speaker 1: and I just saw this black line into the distance
Speaker 1: as I inhaled, and then it kinked when I held
Speaker 1: my breath, and then it kinked when I exhaled, and
Speaker 1: I was like, all right, so this is box breathing.
Speaker 1: But then I sort of it zoomed out and it
Speaker 1: went to the next one, and the square got bigger,
Speaker 1: and then the square started turning and then shifting and shifting,
Speaker 1: and this geometric shape started forming. In my mind, I
Speaker 1: like a mandala. And I was just blown away by it,
Speaker 1: and I thought, this is a way of breathing. It's
Speaker 1: a way of teaching it. So what's beautiful about it
Speaker 1: is the shape starts very small. It's very easy and practical.
Speaker 1: Two counts, everyone can and then the next one would
Speaker 1: be three counts, four counts, and then the shapes as
Speaker 1: I'll have sort of describe it, but they expand and
Speaker 1: they stretch across the page and then they disappear off
Speaker 1: the page. Basically with the knowledge that some people can
Speaker 1: take these shapes and keep going with them. And I
Speaker 1: think that's the beauty of geometric breathing, that you find
Speaker 1: your level and you can stretch yourself to your absolute
Speaker 1: boundaries if you would like to. There's no end to this,
Speaker 1: and you can lose yourself with geometric breathing. I will
Speaker 1: want to make an app with it, actually, And I
Speaker 1: just think this opportunity to breathe even sacred geometry. I
Speaker 1: mean selling my ideas here, putting them out there, but
Speaker 1: sort of taking something that has structure and formula and
Speaker 1: breathing it. It's beautiful. And so if we were to
Speaker 1: practice it, like you said, we might start with when
Speaker 1: you say two, you mean breathing for account of two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this is the thing about breathing. Many of these
Speaker 1: sort of counted breaths helpful to see them like a ratio,
Speaker 1: and you'll see people count like one, two, and but
Speaker 1: people get a bit confused that the breath is seconds um.
Speaker 1: Seconds can be unhelpful, particularly if you don't have a
Speaker 1: clock or a stopwatch or anything. And your timing is
Speaker 1: not right and people like one, two, three, And you
Speaker 1: see this all the time. If I hand a breath
Speaker 1: out in a class, everyone's breathing it differently, so you
Speaker 1: sort of want to work with that. So account is
Speaker 1: just a ratio. Basically, do you recommend that you sort
Speaker 1: of go up, up, up, so you know I'm doing
Speaker 1: it for a two count of three count of four
Speaker 1: count of five count which is given it the geometric piece,
Speaker 1: and then get to like where your highest level is
Speaker 1: and stay there. Or do you sort of ascend and descend.
Speaker 1: You can ascend and descend, as I talk about in
Speaker 1: the book, go to your level that is maximum for you.
Speaker 1: If it's uncomfortable, come down one or two levels day
Speaker 1: within the comfort, but a stretched comfort, rather than going
Speaker 1: to a place that is hurting you or stressing you out.
Speaker 1: As soon as your system is stressed with the breath,
Speaker 1: you've gone too far. The breath wasn't designed. It never
Speaker 1: wanted to stress you out. You have stressed yourself out
Speaker 1: because it's just too much for you. So just come
Speaker 1: back a level. So there's another breath called the dive,
Speaker 1: and that is a breath that gets used by free
Speaker 1: divers and if you are not careful, that is a
Speaker 1: very painful breath because it seems like a test, a
Speaker 1: competition with yourself to hold your breath. And the free divers,
Speaker 1: that's not what they're doing. They're not trying to get
Speaker 1: to the point where they're like dying all the time.
Speaker 1: The training is to stretch their limits to a comfortable level.
Speaker 1: And then when that happens, your body is like, got it,
Speaker 1: I'm all right, I'm happy to do this with you.
Speaker 1: Whereas if you always go to like and you're sort
Speaker 1: of afterwards, you've just you've blown your fus a little
Speaker 1: bit and your body was probably not want to do
Speaker 1: it next time. Yeah, you talk. In the book, there's
Speaker 1: an exercise in there about as you exercise trying to
Speaker 1: breathe only through your nose. I try it when I'm
Speaker 1: writing that, when I'm doing the cycling. It's an interesting
Speaker 1: gauge of fitnesses. You know, to what level can I
Speaker 1: push and still breathe with my mouth? Incredible? What's the
Speaker 1: benefit of that? What is the benefit of that? So
Speaker 1: if we start by saying that a physiological design is
Speaker 1: to breathe through the nose, and I know we can
Speaker 1: breathe through the mouth. But if you look at the
Speaker 1: structures around the mouth and the structures around the nose,
Speaker 1: the mouth is not capable of doing what the nose does.
Speaker 1: And for that reason, mouth breathing is long term quite
Speaker 1: dangerous literally quite dangerous to be doing. If you're in
Speaker 1: an environment that's very dusty, for example, your opportunity to
Speaker 1: breathe in particular in some way is magnified a lot
Speaker 1: basically compared to the nose. So then there is this
Speaker 1: misconception that if I push myself through exercise that I
Speaker 1: have to breathe through my mouth. The reason that you're
Speaker 1: doing it is because there's a part in your brain
Speaker 1: called the brain stem right at the back of your neck,
Speaker 1: and it is reading not oxygen, it's reading carbon dioxide.
Speaker 1: It's in fact it's reading hydrogen ions. But it basically
Speaker 1: has carbon dioxide increases hydrogen process the blood barrier, and
Speaker 1: there's brain stems reading it, and it goes, oh, come on,
Speaker 1: we need to breathe quicker because carbon dioxide is going
Speaker 1: up and that's not good for us. It breathes faster.
Speaker 1: Now our mouth can breathe much faster, meaning we can
Speaker 1: get to a more relaxed breathing very quickly. It's a
Speaker 1: discomfit thing. Again, I'll just breathe through my mouth. But actually,
Speaker 1: if you force yourself only to breathe through your nose,
Speaker 1: as they talk about in the book, if you're going
Speaker 1: to do that in an exercise class, if you go
Speaker 1: to a hip class and you breathe only through your nose,
Speaker 1: you're not going to make it. If you haven't practiced
Speaker 1: this before, so it always goes just a six. Your
Speaker 1: hit instructor will probably be very furious that you do
Speaker 1: it anyway. Um, so go to just go to that
Speaker 1: edge where you're like and you're just breathing as best
Speaker 1: you can through your nose. Then what will happen is
Speaker 1: you'll begin to train your system to handle higher levels
Speaker 1: of carbon dioxide. That's the first thing. So we can
Speaker 1: handle higher levels of carbon dioxide. And interestingly, when that happens,
Speaker 1: like a chemical change happens in the blood called the
Speaker 1: bore effect, and your hemoglobe in the red blood cells
Speaker 1: start dropping oxygen. They don't want it, they want something else,
Speaker 1: So they're dropping the oxygen, and all the cells in
Speaker 1: your body that need oxygen and like, thank goodness, and
Speaker 1: they're sucking up this oxygen. So even though you feel
Speaker 1: out of breath, it's got nothing to do with oxygen.
Speaker 1: Your body is fine. Your body is taking in probably
Speaker 1: more oxygen breathing this way. Also, your lungs are going
Speaker 1: to get serious opening because your whole muscular chode is
Speaker 1: going to have to breath either a lot harder. But
Speaker 1: the circulation from that, the lymphatic movement from that, we're
Speaker 1: talking just incredible for your health and your well being.
Speaker 1: And on top of that, nitric oxide to your nose.
Speaker 1: You've got cells in your nose that released nitric oxide
Speaker 1: and that's really amazing for blood pressure, libido, particularly for men.
Speaker 1: It's really good for erections, and it's an incredible molecule
Speaker 1: that they're just really exploring now. I guess it's been
Speaker 1: around for a while, but that the benefits to our
Speaker 1: health from this nitric oxide and nose breathing and you
Speaker 1: don't get it from mouth breathing in the same way
Speaker 1: is remarkable. The book has so many wonderful breathing exercises
Speaker 1: that are very different from each other. Each one has
Speaker 1: a reason to do it, and you explain the science
Speaker 1: in them really well. We just got a taste of
Speaker 1: it there at the end of the interview. We didn't
Speaker 1: get it earlier, but like I said, I think it's
Speaker 1: one of the better breath books I've seen out there
Speaker 1: by a long shot. It's it's really good. So, listeners,
Speaker 1: I'm going to have Ali leader through a breathing technique
Speaker 1: in our post show conversation. If you'd like to get
Speaker 1: access to post show conversations, to add free episodes to
Speaker 1: a special episode I do each week where I share
Speaker 1: one of my favorite poems, one of my favorite songs,
Speaker 1: and I do a teaching You also get access to
Speaker 1: that by becoming a member of our community at When
Speaker 1: you Feed dot net slash Join Ali. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming on. I really enjoyed the book. I've
Speaker 1: enjoyed this conversation UH and getting to know you. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me on. Eric spion
Speaker 1: role privilege to share breath with you. If what you
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