Speaker 1: Do you ever feel like life is just one problem
Speaker 1: after another. You finally feel like maybe there's a break,
Speaker 1: and then bam, another problem. This is how it is
Speaker 1: for many of us. But there is a better way
Speaker 1: to respond, a way of responding that brings greater ease
Speaker 1: into your life and returns some of the energy that
Speaker 1: the problems drained from you. We are hosting a free
Speaker 1: live masterclass on Sunday, February called Learn the Spiritual Habit
Speaker 1: to unlock energy and ease in your life, even if
Speaker 1: each day seems to bring a fresh pile of problems
Speaker 1: in it. I will teach you how to tap into
Speaker 1: the resources that are already within you so that life
Speaker 1: feels less like a never ending fight and more like
Speaker 1: an ever evolving dance. You will learn the number one
Speaker 1: source of unhappiness that drains your energy and keeps you
Speaker 1: feeling stuck, and a simple mindset shift you can make
Speaker 1: right away so that life doesn't feel like such a
Speaker 1: constant struggle. This will be a live event and you'll
Speaker 1: have a chance to interact with me and with each other.
Speaker 1: I've really grown to love these community events where we
Speaker 1: get to meet each other and deepen our connections. I
Speaker 1: hope that you can become part of that. Go to
Speaker 1: one you feed dot net slash live to learn more
Speaker 1: and register for this free event. Again, that's when you
Speaker 1: feed dot net slash live and I really would love
Speaker 1: the chance to meet you and see you there. It's
Speaker 1: one thing to react to your life, it's another thing
Speaker 1: to train yourself to respond. Welcome to the one you feed.
Speaker 1: Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think ring true. And yet for
Speaker 1: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is Josh Trent, the founder of Wellness Force Media,
Speaker 1: host of the Wellness Force podcast, and creator of Breathe,
Speaker 1: Breath and Wellness Program. Josh has spent the last nineteen
Speaker 1: years as a trainer, researcher, and facilitator discovering the physical
Speaker 1: and emotional intelligence for humans to thrive in our modern world.
Speaker 1: The Wellness Force mission is to help humans heal mental,
Speaker 1: emotional and physical health through podcasts, programs, and a global
Speaker 1: community that believe in optimizing our potential to live life well.
Speaker 1: Hi Josh, welcome to the show. Eric. Thank you for
Speaker 1: having me. It's such an honor. I'm excited to have
Speaker 1: you on. We're gonna be talking about a lot of
Speaker 1: different aspects of your work, one of the big ones
Speaker 1: being breath work. But before we do that, let's start
Speaker 1: like we always do with the parable. In the Parable,
Speaker 1: there is a grandparent who are talking with their grandchild
Speaker 1: and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside
Speaker 1: of us that are always a battle. One is a
Speaker 1: good wolf, which represents things like kindness, bravery, and love,
Speaker 1: and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops
Speaker 1: and thinks about it for a second and looks up
Speaker 1: at their grandparents as well, which one wins and the grandparents,
Speaker 1: says the one you feed. So I'd like to start
Speaker 1: off by asking you what that parable means to you
Speaker 1: in your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: I just got chills in my whole body because I
Speaker 1: heard you say that so many times on your podcast,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty surreal answering this question to you in
Speaker 1: real time. You know. I was thinking about this last night.
Speaker 1: It I was I was preparing for this question, and
Speaker 1: for me, it's about the singularity and the duality that
Speaker 1: we're living in this world. And I'm not a religious man, Eric,
Speaker 1: but Isaiah seven, I formed the light and create darkness.
Speaker 1: I make peace and create evil. Either Lord do all
Speaker 1: these things. In that scripture, we're being told that whether
Speaker 1: it's good or bad, black or white, and the two wolves,
Speaker 1: they're all the same and they live inside of us.
Speaker 1: So if I'm feeding the wolf that's jealous and rageful
Speaker 1: and resentful, then that's my choice because I'm made in
Speaker 1: the image of God. And again, I'm not a biblical man.
Speaker 1: I'm not a religious man. I'm a spiritual man. And
Speaker 1: then if I feed the wolf that's loving and that's
Speaker 1: filled with forgiveness, well then I'm being God and it's best,
Speaker 1: most beautiful form. But also it's the reverence for the
Speaker 1: fact that inside of the singularity there is this duality.
Speaker 1: There is this dark and light, this love and hate
Speaker 1: and honoring the mystery of all that. It's beautiful. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like that singularity duality and zen we would say
Speaker 1: emptiness and form. Form and emptiness, they're the same thing.
Speaker 1: They co exist, that one won't exist without the other.
Speaker 1: Or the yen young right, the snake eating its tail.
Speaker 1: It's like, these are all things that we can intellectualize,
Speaker 1: but to actually feel them and be them, that's a
Speaker 1: lifelong wisdom journey. Amen. All right, that's a great place
Speaker 1: for us to start. Just tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about your wisdom journey. You know, this is not a
Speaker 1: show where we explore people's stories a whole lot, But
Speaker 1: I'm kind of curious how you got to where you are.
Speaker 1: My mom had managed bi polar when I was young,
Speaker 1: and so I didn't have the right tools from a
Speaker 1: nutritional standpoint or a mental standpoint, and my dad left
Speaker 1: home when I was about two months old. So the
Speaker 1: universe put me in some dark contrast. To be here
Speaker 1: in Earth flash forward, I'm like twenty years old, I'm
Speaker 1: two pounds, I'm in a job I hate, I'm in
Speaker 1: a relationship that's not good for me. It was the
Speaker 1: ultimate spiritual awakening and I ended up losing and gaining
Speaker 1: over a hundred pounds and moved to Hawaii and found
Speaker 1: spirituality and honestly found God through the ocean, through the
Speaker 1: feminine waters of Hawaii, and it was a beautiful time
Speaker 1: for me. And I found fitness there too, And it
Speaker 1: was ten year journey and personal training and being a
Speaker 1: fitness professional, then more graduating into wellness with really my Heart,
Speaker 1: my Soul, wellness Force dot Com and the Wellness Force podcast.
Speaker 1: That's really my journey in a very small nutshell filled
Speaker 1: with about three or four dark knights of the soul.
Speaker 1: But really it came from a space of contrast where
Speaker 1: I would move towards what my heart was guiding me towards,
Speaker 1: which is more loving, coming from the contrast of contraction
Speaker 1: of really fear and a lot of beliefs from my
Speaker 1: parents that didn't necessarily serve yep. So, breathwork is a
Speaker 1: big part of what you teach, what you do, You've
Speaker 1: created programs around it. Why have you chosen to go
Speaker 1: so deep into that area. I think that in our
Speaker 1: world of wellness and especially personal development, people are always
Speaker 1: attuned to what's the latest and greatest, hot new thing,
Speaker 1: whether it's ayahuasca or psila sybin or fill in the blank.
Speaker 1: But I don't think plant medicine is for everyone. I
Speaker 1: think plant medicine deserves ultimate reverence and respect and so
Speaker 1: in order from myself personally, and also I've seen with
Speaker 1: students and clients, to truly heal and to become whole,
Speaker 1: and to become loving of self, we have to have
Speaker 1: alternate experiences. We have to have altered states of awareness.
Speaker 1: We can get it through meditation, we can get it
Speaker 1: through vipastana, we can get it through loving kindness, meditation
Speaker 1: or float tanks. But I found eric that for me personally,
Speaker 1: the more I dive deeper into the breath, the more
Speaker 1: my stuck energy and stored emotions and memories that are
Speaker 1: physically residing in my tissues arise. And for me that's
Speaker 1: the most powerful thing, because all of us, everyone is traumatized,
Speaker 1: whether it's capital ty or lower case tea, we all
Speaker 1: experience it. And so I think for me personally and
Speaker 1: for everyone that I communicate with the breath is more
Speaker 1: safe than a lot of these anthe agens. The breath
Speaker 1: is more safe for people than going to the jungle
Speaker 1: and sitting with people that you don't know and possibly
Speaker 1: putting yourself in harm's way. So that's why I think
Speaker 1: that breath work is both spiritual and scientific because it
Speaker 1: it accesses all the same points. It accesses d MT,
Speaker 1: It opens up the pineal gland, it does so many
Speaker 1: beautiful processes for our biology and the vagus nerve, in
Speaker 1: the entire nervous system. But it's also safe, right. It's
Speaker 1: a place where with the right practitioner, no harm can
Speaker 1: be done, no harm can be done. But that's not
Speaker 1: the case for all plant medicines. That is certainly true.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about when we say breath work, what
Speaker 1: do we mean. It sounds like that could be all
Speaker 1: away from what you're describing. Sounds a little bit like
Speaker 1: stand growth and holotropic breathing to you know, taking ten
Speaker 1: deep breaths before I you know, yell at my kids,
Speaker 1: like I mean, there's a lot of breathwork covers a lot.
Speaker 1: So for you you're interested in that whole scope, is
Speaker 1: there an area and there you lean more towards or
Speaker 1: So what is the sort of breathwork that you're really
Speaker 1: working on and teaching people? The personal practice for myself breathwork,
Speaker 1: we can only do three things, right We inhale, we exhale,
Speaker 1: and we hold. So that's it. I'm interested in those
Speaker 1: three things. Uh that specific fickly specifically, what I teach
Speaker 1: and what I practice is box and circular breathing. So
Speaker 1: in this realm of breath, we have box breath and
Speaker 1: boxes more grounding. It'll bring you down to the earth
Speaker 1: rather than blast you up. Box breath essentially is when
Speaker 1: you inhale, hold, exhale, hold. You can do it in
Speaker 1: multiples of four or five six seconds. Circular breathing is
Speaker 1: conscious connected breathing, so you would inhale and exhale with
Speaker 1: no hold, with no pause. Those two styles of breath
Speaker 1: is what we talk about in the Breathe Breath and
Speaker 1: well in this program, it's what I put into my
Speaker 1: own personal meditations. And actually, you know it's been lighting
Speaker 1: me up the most lately. I just remember this last
Speaker 1: week for the program, I recorded some binural beats meditations,
Speaker 1: so I would overlay my voice with a conscious practice
Speaker 1: of visualization practice and we would do circular in box
Speaker 1: breathing in these binarial meditations that I believe is the
Speaker 1: next frontier eric of breath work because, as you know,
Speaker 1: with binural beats and isochronic tones, they can induce different
Speaker 1: theta and alpha two brain waves, which puts people in
Speaker 1: a different energy state, both spiritually and scientific. And I'm
Speaker 1: really loving that lately. So that's my scope, that's my
Speaker 1: lens of breath work. But really, at its simplest form,
Speaker 1: breath is the only autonomic lever that we can pull
Speaker 1: in our nervous system. Autonomic meaning automatic. We can't digest
Speaker 1: our food faster, we can't beat our heart faster. All
Speaker 1: we can do when it comes to the automatic nervous
Speaker 1: system the a n S is we pull a lever
Speaker 1: between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic, the rest and digest
Speaker 1: and the fight, flee or freeze. And so what breath
Speaker 1: is is truly a lever that is connected to ourselves
Speaker 1: but also connected to nature herself, and it's the most
Speaker 1: powerful tool for modulating stress. Yeah. I often think about
Speaker 1: two things in sort of our wellness world that are
Speaker 1: both automatic and we have some control over. You mentioned
Speaker 1: one which is breath, right, It happens automatically, but we
Speaker 1: have some control of it. The others, I think attention
Speaker 1: right attention is one of those things, like it automatically redirects.
Speaker 1: You know, the example I always use if somebody lit
Speaker 1: a fire, are off behind your head right now, like
Speaker 1: your attention is going to go back there. You don't
Speaker 1: need to do it right. And we have the ability
Speaker 1: to redirect attention, we have the ability to do things
Speaker 1: with it. And so both those things are are really
Speaker 1: powerful ways of working with our systems because they are
Speaker 1: both automatic and controllable. One of the things that fascinates
Speaker 1: me the most about breath work is its relationship to
Speaker 1: the default mode network. And I know you've had so
Speaker 1: many incredible people that talk about behavior change and neuroscience
Speaker 1: on your podcast, so maybe you have done a little
Speaker 1: bit into the default mode network, but just on a
Speaker 1: super high level. It's the posterior single it the prefrontal cortex,
Speaker 1: and the amygdala. Obviously there's other structures, but those are
Speaker 1: the very important three. And what happens when we do
Speaker 1: conscious connected breathing, we do our breathwork properly, is we
Speaker 1: can actually turn down on a physical level. We can
Speaker 1: turn down the volume of the default mode network. Um
Speaker 1: and what that does is, so the function of the
Speaker 1: default mode network is when you're doing a singular task,
Speaker 1: when you're doing a myopic task, it's the thing that
Speaker 1: allows you to achieve that flow state when it's at
Speaker 1: a low level. But when the default mode network has
Speaker 1: turned up really high, you're ruminating. You're reflecting on the future,
Speaker 1: and anxiety, you're ruminating on the past. For depression, and
Speaker 1: so people that have a default mode network through trauma,
Speaker 1: and there's no shame because we all experienced trauma. But
Speaker 1: when our default mode network is shifted into overdrive, we
Speaker 1: start getting less vagal tone, we start being more in
Speaker 1: the sympathetic the fight or flight, and so that default
Speaker 1: mode network is powerful. And actually learned this from Michael Pollen.
Speaker 1: I was at an event he did here in Austin.
Speaker 1: He was talking about this with psychedelics, and I wondered, Eric.
Speaker 1: I was like, I wonder if the same thing applies
Speaker 1: to breathwork, because breathwork and psychedelics are are brothers and sisters.
Speaker 1: And I dove into the research and there it was,
Speaker 1: I mean, multiple studies on pub med, multiple studies from colleagues,
Speaker 1: and I put it into the program, and it was
Speaker 1: so beautiful because truly, when you breathe properly, and when
Speaker 1: you're doing conscious breathing, there's no other focus, there's no
Speaker 1: other thing to do. You are actually engaged in a loving,
Speaker 1: myopic self care practice. And depending on the degree of
Speaker 1: your trauma, that's when your trauma will actually come up.
Speaker 1: Yet when you're doing that breathwork, and you'll notice that
Speaker 1: you're shifting over to the default mode network, default of
Speaker 1: fear or default of calmness. Yeah, the default mode network
Speaker 1: is so interesting because having read so many books, it's
Speaker 1: one of those things that shows up over and over
Speaker 1: and over, and depending on the author and what they're
Speaker 1: talking about, they're either saying you've got to turn it down.
Speaker 1: These are people who are talking about relaxation, about focus,
Speaker 1: about dialing down trauma. And then other people are like,
Speaker 1: you need more default mode network because it's where daydreaming, creativity,
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, free association happens. And and
Speaker 1: I've always been like, well, which is it. And we
Speaker 1: had a guest recently, Johan Harry, who is a brilliant guy.
Speaker 1: In in in his usual way, he sort of summarized something
Speaker 1: that was difficult to understand very quickly, which was essentially,
Speaker 1: if you're in a good place, whether that be in
Speaker 1: that moment or in general, the default mode network can
Speaker 1: be your friend because it allows you to wander, create
Speaker 1: and do all that. If you are not in a
Speaker 1: good place, though, the default mode network very quickly becomes
Speaker 1: your enemy because where you go is into intense rumination
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a creator of misery. So that
Speaker 1: just really sort of helped me clarify in myself this
Speaker 1: sort of default mode network good, default mode network bad.
Speaker 1: You know that I was ping ponging between as I
Speaker 1: was reading all these different things that just came to
Speaker 1: mind as you were talking about it. I think that's
Speaker 1: so powerful because I'm I'm forty one, and I think
Speaker 1: you're in your thirties or forties, so like, we have
Speaker 1: an opportunity. So that's incredibly kind of you. You need
Speaker 1: to increase your estimate there, my friend. Okay, okay, well,
Speaker 1: well you have a young soul, so you appear very
Speaker 1: very vibrant. Thank you. And and what I can tell
Speaker 1: about people that are on purpose is that or at
Speaker 1: least people that have gone through the dark night of
Speaker 1: the soul I'm familiar with your past. We've endured you before,
Speaker 1: and so I know the process you've been through in
Speaker 1: the threshold you've been to to get where you are.
Speaker 1: I'm the same way, and I'll tell you everyone here
Speaker 1: with us is the same way. They're on the own
Speaker 1: hero's journey. So to the degree that we have made
Speaker 1: peace and we have unpacked on an emotional, physical, spiritual,
Speaker 1: mental level, all the things that have happened in our lives,
Speaker 1: that's the degree that I think the default mode network
Speaker 1: could be either quote bad or quote good, because it's
Speaker 1: our friend. I'm not here to demonize the default mode network.
Speaker 1: I'm not here to demonize the ego. I'm not here
Speaker 1: to demonize any of it. These are all checks and
Speaker 1: balance systems that are in our physiology that create homeostasis.
Speaker 1: So if something comes up for me where I'm noticing
Speaker 1: that I'm way high on the volume form my default
Speaker 1: mode network, that's actually a gift. That's an opportunity for
Speaker 1: me to look at why that's occurring, and then for
Speaker 1: me to do the conscious work, you know with yourself
Speaker 1: as a coach doing a program, doing a breathwork practice,
Speaker 1: you know, these are the things that are guiding us.
Speaker 1: And I don't think we could even say that these
Speaker 1: things are good or bad. Sometimes I think that they
Speaker 1: are just what they are, even when something appears bad.
Speaker 1: It's like the dragon in the cave is actually your
Speaker 1: soul trying to direct you to the thing that's causing
Speaker 1: you the most pain, to the thing that's breaking your heart.
Speaker 1: And I think that's part of the default mode network too, totally, totally.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the three phases of breathwork. What are
Speaker 1: the three phases? And then then I'd like to maybe say,
Speaker 1: you know where people begin with this, Yeah, written to
Speaker 1: my arm in Italian. I have a Sicilian background, so
Speaker 1: half my lineages from Sicily, and I wrote on my arms.
Speaker 1: And what that means in Italian is if I can breathe,
Speaker 1: I can choose. And the reason I wrote it on
Speaker 1: my arm is because I wanted to remind myself every
Speaker 1: day that if I can consciously breathe, and I mean
Speaker 1: consciously like go to it, regardless of how I feel,
Speaker 1: my fear, my sadness, whatever, then that's called acute style practice.
Speaker 1: So the first phase of breathing is acute practice. Acute
Speaker 1: meaning I'm in a state of stress, I'm in a
Speaker 1: state of anxiety, I'm in a state of depression, I'm
Speaker 1: in a state of anything other than peace and homeostasis.
Speaker 1: That is a cute style. That's the first phase. That
Speaker 1: could be breath of friar parana yama. It could be
Speaker 1: doing a longer breath hold retention practice. It could be
Speaker 1: doing alternate nostril breathing, which is very powerful for connecting
Speaker 1: and activating the brain hemispheres. So there's many, many ways
Speaker 1: to do acute style breath and this is honestly eric
Speaker 1: where most people really want to begin. They want to
Speaker 1: begin when they're the most triggered and when they're the
Speaker 1: most in fear right, and then from that place you
Speaker 1: start doing the secondary phase. And the secondary phase is
Speaker 1: more meditative breathing. This is where it's proactive breathing. This
Speaker 1: is you sitting in the morning doing a seven or
Speaker 1: fifteen or twenty one minute practice, and this is where
Speaker 1: you're actually teaching over time, you know these new neural
Speaker 1: connections the axons and the dendrites in your brain to
Speaker 1: have a better action potential for being at peace while
Speaker 1: you're breathing. And so through this proactive breathing, through this
Speaker 1: meditative breath that's going to allow long term changes over
Speaker 1: time for the neural plasticity. As you know, you've talked
Speaker 1: about this quite a bit. On the one you feed.
Speaker 1: Our brains are plastic. We have this neural plasticity that exists,
Speaker 1: and so the more we can groove that plastic over time,
Speaker 1: the more it's going to change. So that second phase
Speaker 1: we go through the neural plasticity first phase as well,
Speaker 1: but second phase is really like the most important because
Speaker 1: it's one thing to react to your life. It's another
Speaker 1: thing to train yourself to respond, and that's what we
Speaker 1: get from the meditative And then the third is what
Speaker 1: most people have popularized. The third phase of breathing is
Speaker 1: catharsis breathing, and catharsis breathing is more like the whim
Speaker 1: off the thirty sixty ninety minute journeys. And I'm not
Speaker 1: demonizing those either. I think there's a time and a
Speaker 1: place for those. But let me ask you this, if
Speaker 1: you had never been in outer space, would you just
Speaker 1: want to get blasted up to outer space or would
Speaker 1: you want some training first? As an astronaut? Right, you
Speaker 1: want to get trained a little bit. So I don't
Speaker 1: think that people should jump right into catharsis. I think
Speaker 1: it's really important to take two or three weeks. In
Speaker 1: our breath program, it's three weeks. We take people through
Speaker 1: phase one and phase two, and then we lovingly introduced
Speaker 1: them to phase three, and then we connect them with
Speaker 1: a practitioner like myself or someone or a network, because
Speaker 1: that's a very deep vein that third phase, that catharsis phase,
Speaker 1: and if you don't have the right practitioner or if
Speaker 1: you yourself haven't done enough conscious stillness practice, it can
Speaker 1: be jarring, it can be very emotional. A lot of
Speaker 1: times in that longer practice, people get tetani, which is
Speaker 1: where their arms cramp, their mouth gets smaller, and it's
Speaker 1: because of the hypoxia they're experiencing. So I don't recommend
Speaker 1: people start there. So those are the three phases of
Speaker 1: really how we breathe and how we do breathwork. So
Speaker 1: we've got the acute phase, which is the old saw
Speaker 1: of you know, when you're angry, take ten deep breaths, right,
Speaker 1: you know. So that's that's sort of the acute. The
Speaker 1: proactive is more I sit down and I make time
Speaker 1: to to do some you know, focused breathing, so I
Speaker 1: get better at it and I learned how to do it,
Speaker 1: and then the catharsis is really where I'm trying to
Speaker 1: really achieve a stronger altered state via breathing. Yes. And
Speaker 1: the only thing I'd add is on that catharsis, it's
Speaker 1: actually where we if you look at Bruce Lipton's work
Speaker 1: or Joe dispenses work, this is where the issues are
Speaker 1: quote in the tissues. So the issues we have, the
Speaker 1: trauma we're experiencing, whether it's the capital T, lowercase T,
Speaker 1: if it's physical trauma, if it's sexual trauma, if it's
Speaker 1: emotional trauma, it lives within us. The body keeps the score.
Speaker 1: I think you've maybe even interviewed this person or not.
Speaker 1: It's best Vandercole, but the body keeps the score of
Speaker 1: the book. I'm sure you've referenced it. Huge resource for
Speaker 1: people that want to understand scientifically logically that your trauma
Speaker 1: lives physically in your sarcomares, in your muscle tissues. And
Speaker 1: when you do breathwork through that intimittent hypoxia in that
Speaker 1: third phase of catharsis, this is where everything starts to
Speaker 1: bubble up and you really need to be ready for that.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it can be quite overwhelming for people. It's beautiful,
Speaker 1: but it also needs clear facilitation. I want to spend
Speaker 1: a few minutes on those first two phases, and maybe
Speaker 1: we'll wander more into the third phase. Do you find
Speaker 1: that the ability to use breath in acute circumstances is
Speaker 1: greatly improved by spending time in the proactive or said
Speaker 1: another way, if I practice breathwork more consistently, is it
Speaker 1: going to be a better tool for me in times
Speaker 1: of stress? And is it going to be more useful
Speaker 1: to me in dealing with what's happening? I think it's both,
Speaker 1: but with the caveat of if you spend time cultivating
Speaker 1: that neural plasticity through the prorocative breathe, being through the
Speaker 1: wellness breathing, your body is going to request or is
Speaker 1: going to default more over to doing something that's more acute.
Speaker 1: So another way to say it would be, let's say
Speaker 1: for a month, I've been practicing my morning breathwork and
Speaker 1: then I've been doing my meditation. Well, after a month,
Speaker 1: I'm at work and my boss throws down another report
Speaker 1: on my desk and I feel that same trigger, that
Speaker 1: same floodprin and I'm like, what's going on right now?
Speaker 1: So if I can remind myself in that moment to breathe,
Speaker 1: and this is really a reminder practice. As you know,
Speaker 1: through behavior change, you have these cycles of recommitment. So
Speaker 1: the cycles of recommitment will shorten over time as long
Speaker 1: as you're doing that proactive breath. And then when the
Speaker 1: acute trigger comes up, what is a trigger? Really, a
Speaker 1: trigger is a message from your nervous system that is
Speaker 1: created by your mind, that is accessing a subconscious file
Speaker 1: that tells you you're under threat. And so if I'm
Speaker 1: under threat, well what can I do to make myself
Speaker 1: feel safe? I can either scream my boss and say
Speaker 1: I'm not doing your reports anymore, or I hate this,
Speaker 1: I hate my job. Or you could take a huge
Speaker 1: deep breath and this is the key, with your lips closed,
Speaker 1: with your jaw relaxed, and that's the big one. Relax
Speaker 1: your jaw three times, and this goes for all of
Speaker 1: us as human beings. Roll your jaw three times. We
Speaker 1: hold most of our attention in our jaw. So if
Speaker 1: I can relax my jaw three times and then take
Speaker 1: six circular breaths in through the nose. So doing that
Speaker 1: style of breath six times before you do anything else.
Speaker 1: Don't allow your tyrant inside, don't allow your subconscious memories
Speaker 1: inside to take control. Remind yourself in that moment, all right,
Speaker 1: before I lash out, before I do anything at all,
Speaker 1: I know how good I feel in the mornings. How
Speaker 1: can I make myself feel safe and good right now
Speaker 1: when I'm mostly triggered? And then you do that conscious
Speaker 1: breathing that that I just did twice. The key, and
Speaker 1: this is the physiological key. You want to breathe um,
Speaker 1: not vertically. You don't want to breathe up and down.
Speaker 1: You want to breathe horizontally. So if you look at
Speaker 1: an animal in nature, like a zebra, they breathe like
Speaker 1: a bellow, so they breathe horizontally, not vertically. And I
Speaker 1: learned this from Dr Vlissa Brandwich. She trained me and
Speaker 1: I took her certification, and she also wrote Breathing for Warriors,
Speaker 1: and she talks about this in her work because we
Speaker 1: get trained as children to breathe through a mouth and
Speaker 1: to breathe up and down, and it's actually the opposite.
Speaker 1: I have a seven month old son and I read
Speaker 1: in her book and I've heard from Dan Brule and
Speaker 1: a lot of breathwork teachers out there that when we
Speaker 1: come into the world, we naturally just breathe through our nose.
Speaker 1: We never breathe through a mouth. And I plugged my
Speaker 1: son's nose. Don't worry, I'm not like choking my son.
Speaker 1: But I plugged. I plugged his nose just for a second,
Speaker 1: and he started to choke. And I thought, well, why
Speaker 1: is that? Like what? This is so real, This is
Speaker 1: so visceral. We are born into this world through nature's
Speaker 1: wisdom to breathe through our nose and to breathe like
Speaker 1: a bellow horizontally, and or it was I knew exactly
Speaker 1: what that was. When we breathe horizontally, we actually expand
Speaker 1: the diaphragm, and that pushes on our vegus nerve, And
Speaker 1: when it pushes on our vagus nerve, it interacts with
Speaker 1: the entire nervous system. It increases what's called vagal tone.
Speaker 1: So when we're breathing, we're naturally at a state of peace.
Speaker 1: If we're breathing properly, we are naturally at a state
Speaker 1: of peace. And I verified this with my son. It
Speaker 1: was just surreal. I mean, he breathes through his nose.
Speaker 1: It's the most beautiful thing. And so we all need
Speaker 1: to breathe like a baby. Eric, we need to learn
Speaker 1: how to go back there. So what is breathing vertically
Speaker 1: versus horizontally mean? Like, how do I know which way
Speaker 1: I'm breathing? So if you breathe horizontally, then you can
Speaker 1: actually feel. So for example, if I take it inhale
Speaker 1: through my nose, so inhale nose, my bellies should go out,
Speaker 1: my belly should protrude. And as you get deeper into
Speaker 1: the practice, as we talked about this in the program,
Speaker 1: you actually breathe three hundred and sixty. You breathe into
Speaker 1: your kidneys and you breathing to your belly button. So
Speaker 1: the diaphragm, for people who don't know, it's a dome
Speaker 1: shaped muscle, but it runs the entire body. If if
Speaker 1: you slice the body in half, you would look down
Speaker 1: and the diaphragm would wrap around all the rib cage
Speaker 1: front and back. And so when I'm doing that deep
Speaker 1: breath through the nose, my belly should go out. I
Speaker 1: can't tell you how many clients I've had over here
Speaker 1: to the studio, Eric or how many people that we
Speaker 1: work with us in the Breath program, they're actually reverse
Speaker 1: breathing pattern people. So breathing horizontally means when you inhale
Speaker 1: through your nose, and everybody can do this right now,
Speaker 1: place your hand in your belly, take a big breath
Speaker 1: into your nose, your belly should go out. If your
Speaker 1: belly doesn't go out, and especially if your belly goes in,
Speaker 1: you have a reverse breathing pattern. And so the way
Speaker 1: that we correct that is by laying on the ground
Speaker 1: placing you know, a five pound weight on your belly,
Speaker 1: and when you inhalth your nose, you can actually push
Speaker 1: the weight to the ceiling. You can start to retrain
Speaker 1: your physiology to breathe properly. That's what I've seen, and honestly,
Speaker 1: I've seen it to be about people that have a
Speaker 1: of ourse breathing pattern. Yeah, I think I have a
Speaker 1: semi reverse breathing thing, because I'll find myself sometimes when
Speaker 1: I'm paying close attention to the breath, noticing exactly what
Speaker 1: you said, I'll be like, wait a second, my stomach
Speaker 1: actually just went in words. I know it's supposed to
Speaker 1: go outwards, and you know, then I start getting you know,
Speaker 1: sort of mixed up, but I think I must do
Speaker 1: it to some degree for it to show up occasionally
Speaker 1: like that. I bet you everyone that did that with us,
Speaker 1: they just had like a lightbulb go off in their head, like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the proper way to breathe and to close
Speaker 1: the loop. If we're breathing vertically, we have tight scalings,
Speaker 1: we have tight packs. Were people that work in jobs
Speaker 1: where they're you know, maybe at a desk or they're
Speaker 1: driving a lot, their their posture will flex them forward.
Speaker 1: And so I always tell people start with your posture first,
Speaker 1: then start with your awareness second, and then start with
Speaker 1: your breath and your processes third, because if we're if
Speaker 1: we stack head, shoulders and spine that are at the
Speaker 1: waist instead of sitting back too far or sitting forward
Speaker 1: too far, that can actually create dysfunct and as well.
Speaker 1: So posture, then your awareness of what's going on with
Speaker 1: your physiology, and then your awareness of breath. So in
Speaker 1: that order, I had like four different questions pop up.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to decide which I most want to pursue next.
Speaker 1: When we talked about acute style breathing and proactive style breathing.
Speaker 1: You rattled off, you know, four or five six different
Speaker 1: ways of breathing. I could do prana yama, I could
Speaker 1: do box breathing, I could do you know. Liked right,
Speaker 1: So where does somebody who wants to get started start?
Speaker 1: You know, I know you've got a great program on it,
Speaker 1: so we'll have links in the show notes to that.
Speaker 1: But if somebody is like, all right, I'm just listening
Speaker 1: to this podcast, I want to start doing a little
Speaker 1: bit of breathing. And where do I start? Okay, think
Speaker 1: of the rule of thirds or the Fibonacci sequence that
Speaker 1: we found in nature, and we know that there's always,
Speaker 1: at least in our mind as many women, a beginning, middle,
Speaker 1: and end, and so for all practices, and where you
Speaker 1: start with the breath as you start by just being
Speaker 1: aware and just activating. And so in the program we
Speaker 1: have activation, we have integration, and we have mastery. So
Speaker 1: each week has a focus. And where you start is
Speaker 1: you start wherever you are. And this is the big key.
Speaker 1: And I'm not waxing poetic here, I really want all
Speaker 1: of us to feel this. You start where you are
Speaker 1: without judging yourself. That's the big one, because if you
Speaker 1: go into this breath practice and you're worried about doing
Speaker 1: it right, or you're having negative thoughts about your how
Speaker 1: your body feels, or who you are as a person.
Speaker 1: That's okay, but you need an inventory practice right there.
Speaker 1: You need to work with Eric or you need to
Speaker 1: have an emotional inventory integration practice. Because the one thing
Speaker 1: that I'll say is like, yes, you start where you
Speaker 1: are and you do it without judgment. That's like the
Speaker 1: number number one. If you do notice judgment arise, well,
Speaker 1: then there's your work. There's the monster in the cave
Speaker 1: that's calling you in and saying, hey, I got something
Speaker 1: for you. I want to teach you something today. But
Speaker 1: what happens Eric is and and unfortunately this is the
Speaker 1: case with a lot of students in the Breed program.
Speaker 1: They'll have the things come up and it's the things
Speaker 1: that they weren't breathing through. It's the things that they
Speaker 1: were doing that vertical breath to keep those emotions packed down.
Speaker 1: So this is the big one, Like, no matter what
Speaker 1: you guys do, start by activating. Start by doing a
Speaker 1: seven minute morning practice. That's that's in the program. It's
Speaker 1: a boxer circular. I like the box because most people
Speaker 1: are very up. Most people are out of body, and
Speaker 1: what we want to do is get people into their body.
Speaker 1: So I really really like the box breath. In the morning,
Speaker 1: you start by doing twenty Warrior breath, which is just
Speaker 1: an inhale and excel through the mouth. You do two
Speaker 1: rounds of the box breath, and then you do a
Speaker 1: retention hold and you do that twice. And so in
Speaker 1: those seven minutes, what we're doing is we're giving your
Speaker 1: physiology a chance to give you a lesson on what's
Speaker 1: there right on an energetic level, on a somatic level,
Speaker 1: and then from that place, then you start doing the
Speaker 1: other weeks where it's like, Okay, I'm gonna start integrating
Speaker 1: what's coming up for me. And then in your third
Speaker 1: week you start to have mastery over this. And I
Speaker 1: tell you, I know in your show you've had a
Speaker 1: lot of behavior change people. It's like the science can
Speaker 1: either be twenty one days sixty six days. Everybody's got
Speaker 1: an opinion as to what happens with real behavior change.
Speaker 1: Myself and my students, it's about three weeks to really
Speaker 1: have that narrow plasticity start to come online. And I
Speaker 1: don't know how you feel about that. Have you seen
Speaker 1: that in your programs and your teaching as well. About
Speaker 1: three weeks to really get going. You know, I think
Speaker 1: it depends on a lot of factors. You know, what
Speaker 1: is the habit we're trying to build, how difficult is
Speaker 1: it to do, how chaotic is our life? You know,
Speaker 1: a habit for a twenty five year old man who
Speaker 1: lives by himself, it's going to be easier to build
Speaker 1: a seven minute breath practice than a single woman with
Speaker 1: three kids, right. I mean just that the number of
Speaker 1: things that will get in his way versus her way
Speaker 1: are very, very different, and so it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to say. I've sort of moved away from saying, well,
Speaker 1: if you do something for X amount of time, it
Speaker 1: will automatically become a habit, because not everybody's the same.
Speaker 1: That's a beautiful point. I got some of this awareness
Speaker 1: from Michael Gerveis. We did an in person podcast at
Speaker 1: this rock Stock event a few years ago. I was like,
Speaker 1: what's the definition that you really feel about awareness? And
Speaker 1: he's like, awareness is being at peace with yourself without judgment.
Speaker 1: And I thought it was the most powerful thing I'd
Speaker 1: ever heard. And so if we truly want awareness, then
Speaker 1: we have to be willing to deal with what is
Speaker 1: there right like what we're holding onto. And I'll tell
Speaker 1: you in my own life, Eric, personally, the things that
Speaker 1: I've been scared of feeling are the things that take
Speaker 1: away my breath. They're the things that make me breathe shallow.
Speaker 1: They're the things that make me breathe vertically instead of horizontally. Really,
Speaker 1: this is a practice of courage. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: sugarcoat this breathwork is courageous. It's not for everyone. It's
Speaker 1: for the person that feels they want to experience life
Speaker 1: differently first and foremost. And I've dealt with anxiety in
Speaker 1: my life quite a bit, lots of depression, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't until I had my dark Knight of the Soul
Speaker 1: that allowed me to meet Mark Divine, learn about conscious
Speaker 1: breath practice, go deeper into the art, and then eventually
Speaker 1: create the program after going to Thailand for a month
Speaker 1: and going to Sedona and Costa Rica and like learning
Speaker 1: from all the world's best teachers, because I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: if this feels so good and I'm getting so much
Speaker 1: a result from this, how do I feel better? How
Speaker 1: do I feel the best I can possibly feel well.
Speaker 1: The breath is going to unlock all the emotions that
Speaker 1: are taking your breath away, because once you start breathing,
Speaker 1: there's nowhere to hide. It's like being any kind of ceremony.
Speaker 1: You can run, but you can't hide when it comes
Speaker 1: to your breath. What in your mind is the role
Speaker 1: between breath practice and a meditation practice. Do they have
Speaker 1: different benefits? Are they the same thing? Do you do both?
Speaker 1: Talk to me about how you think through that. I
Speaker 1: was recently on a different podcast and I had a
Speaker 1: lot of controversy around my answer, and I'm always open
Speaker 1: to my interpretation of the breath changing. But today this
Speaker 1: is how I feel. The key difference between breathwork and
Speaker 1: meditation is that meditation is something that you sit and
Speaker 1: do nothing with. It's the art of practicing being. So
Speaker 1: there's work involved with meditation, but really meditation is about
Speaker 1: letting go and being with. What is the key difference
Speaker 1: with breathwork is that with breathwork, you are consciously performing
Speaker 1: a physiological action, So you are priming your physiology. You
Speaker 1: are priming your nervous system to be myopic and to
Speaker 1: focus on your breath. So the key difference is one
Speaker 1: is the art of letting go in the practice of
Speaker 1: being with what is. And then breathwork is the art
Speaker 1: of using that involuntary and voluntary lever so that you
Speaker 1: can prime your nervous system to be more at peace.
Speaker 1: They both elicit a beautiful result. But I've learned and
Speaker 1: I teach that if you have trouble meditating, breath work
Speaker 1: is your deepest ally because breath work will turn down
Speaker 1: your default mode network. It will get you out of
Speaker 1: anxiety and depression. And I've had lots of students tell
Speaker 1: me that whether they do the breathwork before meditating, or
Speaker 1: whether they go through one of our binural beats, one
Speaker 1: of our binural meditations with breathwork, when you combine the two,
Speaker 1: something really beautiful happens. Because for most of us, Eric,
Speaker 1: we are a slave to our phone. Our notifications are responsibilities.
Speaker 1: When do we ever carve out thirty minutes to just
Speaker 1: be with ourselves. Sometimes when people try to carve out
Speaker 1: minutes for a meditation, they won't get that positive result,
Speaker 1: they won't get that stillness and that spaciousness because their
Speaker 1: brain is going so fast past and then unfortunately they'll
Speaker 1: kick out meditation and they'll say, oh, well, this meditation
Speaker 1: doesn't work well. I promise you if you were to
Speaker 1: do a seven minute breath practice, like a guided practice
Speaker 1: before you meditated, it could change your life. It could
Speaker 1: change your meditations because you are priming your neurology and
Speaker 1: your physiology to be more still so you can actually
Speaker 1: meditate and get the gift of the stillness. I can't
Speaker 1: find anything controversial in net. Did you say something different
Speaker 1: on the other show? No? No, because some people say, well,
Speaker 1: what about blinking your eyes? That's an autonomic practice, which
Speaker 1: is true, and a lot of people will say that
Speaker 1: through the art and science of meditating, you are actually
Speaker 1: performing in action. But I disagree. So I had a
Speaker 1: lot of people on Instagram going back and forth. I
Speaker 1: think when it comes to meditation, so two parts. The
Speaker 1: first is, yes, we do blink autonomically, but it's not
Speaker 1: something that has a direct impact on our stress, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't mean blinking my eyes twenty times or once
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily going to impact my lever for stress, me
Speaker 1: consciously breathing has a dramatic impact on my stress. So
Speaker 1: it's a minute argument, right. And then on the other
Speaker 1: side of it, I had someone who was messaging me
Speaker 1: and saying, well, when you're meditating, you're actually practicing a skill,
Speaker 1: which is true, but you're practicing not doing anything. You're
Speaker 1: actually practicing just being, which can be energetically efforting. They're
Speaker 1: in the same camp, but there are two different recipes.
Speaker 1: When you're breathing, you actually have to perform your breath work.
Speaker 1: With meditation, you're focused on not performing at all. I
Speaker 1: think that's very, very true. And to your ladder point
Speaker 1: around breath work being a segue into meditation, you know,
Speaker 1: I kind of have this. I call it a meditation
Speaker 1: on ramp. I didn't make that up. Some podcast guests
Speaker 1: use that term, but I have these what I call
Speaker 1: meditation on ramps. They've changed over time, but they're the
Speaker 1: things that I do. I sit down, I'm kind of
Speaker 1: near meditating. I'm on my meditation cushion, but I haven't
Speaker 1: started whatever my core practices yet, and there are a
Speaker 1: variety of things that I do, and one of them
Speaker 1: is what I would call, you know, it's breath work.
Speaker 1: I am consciously controlling my breath and breathing in a
Speaker 1: certain way, and it is a way of settling for
Speaker 1: me before I start meditating. For me, it's the only
Speaker 1: thing right here in the studio. I have a jew
Speaker 1: light and a stool, so I meditate in the morning,
Speaker 1: get some red light on my skin, and I'm doing
Speaker 1: my breath work when I'm sitting in front of the
Speaker 1: jew light. You can describe it however you want, but
Speaker 1: I call it synergy stacking. So whatever synergistically works together,
Speaker 1: I'll just stack that. If I'm going for a walk,
Speaker 1: I'm listening to the one you feed. If I'm sitting
Speaker 1: in front of the light, I'm getting photobiomodulation and I'm
Speaker 1: doing my breath work. If I'm in the sauna, same
Speaker 1: thing if I'm in the cold. So I love stacking
Speaker 1: these things because I just enjoy getting the most out
Speaker 1: of the day, you know. And and and regardless of that,
Speaker 1: I have to be really cautious because my striving to
Speaker 1: be perfect, or my striving to get as much done
Speaker 1: as I possibly can, that can be delitarious. So I
Speaker 1: have to watch that stack a few things, but don't
Speaker 1: stack like seven things. Yeah, well, I think that's a
Speaker 1: great point that I'd love to spend a minute on.
Speaker 1: Since you walked us right into that territory, which is
Speaker 1: the number of wellness practices or spiritual practices or psychological
Speaker 1: work that we could do is essentially infinite. Right, you
Speaker 1: could in a morning gather more practices that you could
Speaker 1: spend the rest of your life doing them. Right, So
Speaker 1: I think we have this thing happening, and our show
Speaker 1: contributes to this. Right, we I contribute to this. We
Speaker 1: all do is throwing lots of things at people in
Speaker 1: a sentence listed like five right, sauna and breath work
Speaker 1: and meditation and red light, and you know we've got
Speaker 1: all of them. And so there is this sense, and
Speaker 1: I see it in people who come to me for
Speaker 1: coaching all the time, which is I'm not doing enough.
Speaker 1: You know. It becomes another way to feel bad about ourselves.
Speaker 1: You know, are we doing enough? Am I doing enough
Speaker 1: self improvement? Am I doing enough well inness practice? How
Speaker 1: do you think about that for yourself? That's so powerful
Speaker 1: That brings up a lot of emotion to me, because
Speaker 1: I too have people that bring this up in our community.
Speaker 1: Am I doing enough? Am I doing enough? It's this
Speaker 1: incessant uh frenetic loop, the monkey mind. It's really interesting
Speaker 1: and it'll come in when you least expect it because
Speaker 1: it's been doing push ups in the dark, this monster
Speaker 1: that says you're not enough, you're not doing enough, and
Speaker 1: it's very you'll know that it's coming from fear and
Speaker 1: lack because really, what the monster inside of us feels
Speaker 1: is that we're not loved, we're not good enough, we're
Speaker 1: not enough. And we learned it at a really young age.
Speaker 1: And sometimes it can be epo genetic and sometimes it
Speaker 1: can be a family constellation. We can actually inherit this.
Speaker 1: If you look at Mark Wolan's work, it didn't start
Speaker 1: with you. So on a cellular level or on a
Speaker 1: behavioral level, we can start to believe that we're not enough,
Speaker 1: we're not doing enough. I mean, Eric, there are multimillionaires
Speaker 1: in this world that hate themselves. Now why is that
Speaker 1: they have the trappings of life. They have everything they
Speaker 1: could ever want from a monetary perspective, but they don't
Speaker 1: have a living relationship with their children, or their wife
Speaker 1: or their their husband. And that's very sad because they
Speaker 1: have believed the barking monster inside of themselves that says
Speaker 1: they're not good enough. So the conscious awareness practice for
Speaker 1: this is to notice the narrative of the monster inside
Speaker 1: of your own head, and when that monster occurs, this
Speaker 1: is what I learned when I had a psychic break.
Speaker 1: I had a psychic break from plant medicine a few
Speaker 1: years ago. It crushed me and I had looping O
Speaker 1: c D thoughts for six months. They just kept coming in, coming,
Speaker 1: in coming in. I learned through my mentor pul Check,
Speaker 1: who actually had to teach me how to do this,
Speaker 1: and so I could heal myself instead of me trying
Speaker 1: to bark back or trying to fight the monster inside
Speaker 1: of me, or when that thought comes up that says
Speaker 1: you're not enough, you should be doing more. It's a
Speaker 1: very dominating, almost like an animalistic washing of my nervous system.
Speaker 1: I have now learned to take a deep breath to
Speaker 1: make sure I'm breathing like a bellow, to physically turn
Speaker 1: my body to the thought wherever I think it's coming from,
Speaker 1: and asked the thought, what are you here to teach me?
Speaker 1: I am the parent of this child. If you're here
Speaker 1: to teach me something great, I'm open to your teachings.
Speaker 1: But if you are here to bother me, or if
Speaker 1: you are here to try to entangle yourself and me,
Speaker 1: then by the power of God invested in me, I
Speaker 1: ask you to leave. And I send you love for
Speaker 1: the journey. You're not allowed in my inner sanctum, and
Speaker 1: so be it. I send you love for the journey.
Speaker 1: So instead of me fighting the thought or trying to
Speaker 1: bark back at the thought, I physically turned to the thought.
Speaker 1: I emotionally open to the thought, and I asked the thought, like,
Speaker 1: what are you trying to teach me here? And that's
Speaker 1: really it? And I think that's that's what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Is all of us in that moment can go Ah.
Speaker 1: If I take a few breaths here and try to
Speaker 1: learn whatever this thought is or whatever this barking not
Speaker 1: enoughness is, there's wisdom there. There is some powerful ass
Speaker 1: wisdom inside of me pausing and turning and learning. And
Speaker 1: then of course there's also wisdom and discerning, you know,
Speaker 1: just like you would to your son. Right, we have children,
Speaker 1: And for all the parents out there, the way that
Speaker 1: you parent your child, it's the exact same way you
Speaker 1: parent your child inside of you. You either get angry
Speaker 1: at your child, you start screaming at your child like
Speaker 1: you're not doing enough. When would you ever tell an
Speaker 1: infant that they're not doing enough? Like when I hold
Speaker 1: my son, I would never even have that thought. But
Speaker 1: yet I have been conditioned by our world, and we
Speaker 1: have been conditioned by the world, and this is what
Speaker 1: we need to throw up. This is what we need
Speaker 1: to get out of our system. Really, what we need
Speaker 1: is a lens of curiosity instead of a lens of judgment.
Speaker 1: Because when I'm feeling the barking of that monster that
Speaker 1: lives inside of myself that's saying you're not doing enough,
Speaker 1: the first place is to turn to it, ask it
Speaker 1: what it's there to teach you do your process. The
Speaker 1: second place is to be really curious, Okay, why did
Speaker 1: that come up? And also I'm curious when I look
Speaker 1: at ABC what I want to improve. I want to
Speaker 1: be a better breathwork student, I want to be a
Speaker 1: better podcast, I want to be a better husband. Anything.
Speaker 1: Can I be curious about what it would take to
Speaker 1: embody that because curiosity is a much less pressurized lens
Speaker 1: than white knuckling and judgment and sting it done you
Speaker 1: fill in the blank negative thing, right, And that's the
Speaker 1: big lesson here for me, and of course in this moment, Eric,
Speaker 1: it's easy for us to pontificate about this. The real
Speaker 1: work is when I feel the monster in the cave,
Speaker 1: come up and I practice what I'm telling you right now.
Speaker 1: That's embodied wisdom. That's the kind of wisdom that the
Speaker 1: world is thirsty for. We're freaking drowning and information. We're
Speaker 1: drowning in PDFs, we're drowning and certifications. What we need
Speaker 1: is to slow down, breathe, and start to get wise
Speaker 1: from the challenges that are coming to us. Myself included, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's beautiful. I love what you said. They're my partner.
Speaker 1: Ginny and I were talking about this. Uh, just last
Speaker 1: week we were talking about the inner critic. We were
Speaker 1: bringing up two approaches that that we often hear. Right.
Speaker 1: Approach one to the inner critic is oh, it must
Speaker 1: be trying to teach me something, so thank you for
Speaker 1: your input. I appreciate what you're trying to teach me.
Speaker 1: And it's a welcoming It's like, hey, come on in,
Speaker 1: you know. And I would say, this doesn't go just
Speaker 1: for inner critic, but we'll keep it on inner critic
Speaker 1: for now, but it goes to emotions in general. There
Speaker 1: is one school of thought that says, come on in,
Speaker 1: welcome it. You know. In the Buddhist schools, they talk
Speaker 1: about inviting Mara in for tea. You know, the Buddhists
Speaker 1: supposedly invited Mara in to have tea with him, Mara
Speaker 1: being the you know, the bad stuff, right. So that's one,
Speaker 1: come on in, sit down, I welcome you. The other
Speaker 1: approach is very much one that says, uh, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna let this voice run through my head unchecked. I
Speaker 1: am not going to let these negative thoughts just have
Speaker 1: the ability to run throughout my life without me doing
Speaker 1: something about it. I look at both those and I
Speaker 1: go interesting, Okay, those are two kind of different approaches,
Speaker 1: and I love what you just did. Was you just
Speaker 1: put them together. And this is kind of where I've
Speaker 1: arrived with this stuff too, is that I first turned
Speaker 1: towards it and I say, Okay, what's here? What do
Speaker 1: I have to learn? What is this teaching me? What's
Speaker 1: the information that's here? I allow myself to see what
Speaker 1: it's about, and then at a certain point when I go, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is just a repetitive, old pattern that has nothing
Speaker 1: more to teach me, then it's like enough, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to let you run unchecked. And I think what
Speaker 1: you just described as a beautiful practice of that. And
Speaker 1: I think That's a great way to think about it,
Speaker 1: because these are two very different approaches that I hear
Speaker 1: over and over. I sort of refer to him as
Speaker 1: the cognitive and the mindfulness approach, right, you know, the
Speaker 1: mindfulness is like let it be and the cognitive is
Speaker 1: like think it through. There two approaches, and I'm really
Speaker 1: interested in how do they work together. God, I really
Speaker 1: appreciate your reflection. And I was feeling something when you
Speaker 1: were talking. I was visualizing this that whether you're a
Speaker 1: parent or not doesn't matter, because every single human being
Speaker 1: is a parent. You're either parenting yourself the child inside
Speaker 1: of you or not. And the same way that we
Speaker 1: parent our daughters and sons. It truly is a mirror
Speaker 1: to how we parent ourselves. When I'm feeling that monster
Speaker 1: in the cave come up that says you're not doing
Speaker 1: enough and fill in the blank, it could be in
Speaker 1: any category you're not doing enough, with like an exclamation
Speaker 1: point at the end of it, Can I breathe? Can
Speaker 1: I turn to it? Can I actually parent the child
Speaker 1: inside of me that is feeling the fear, feeling the lack,
Speaker 1: feeling the absence of love, And can I give that
Speaker 1: to myself? I will never forget this moment I had,
Speaker 1: which is exactly what we're talking about. And when I
Speaker 1: had the psychic breakthrough plant medicine, I really got down
Speaker 1: to the core of it with my mentor Paul, and
Speaker 1: he was like, well, what's causing you the most pain?
Speaker 1: I said, well, how am I going to do it all?
Speaker 1: How am I going to be a father? How am
Speaker 1: I going to be a successful podcast host? How am
Speaker 1: I going to be a pillar? How am I going
Speaker 1: to be healthy? How am I going to do it all?
Speaker 1: That's a story that I've recognized in my life. How
Speaker 1: am I going to do it all? Because if in
Speaker 1: order for me to fill one cop I have to
Speaker 1: take from another, which is not true, but that's a
Speaker 1: story that I learned. And he touched my shoulder and
Speaker 1: he grabbed me and he said, well, who's doing it anyways?
Speaker 1: Who's doing it anyways? And it was really interesting because
Speaker 1: I felt what he was saying. I am either connecting
Speaker 1: with my child and with God. I remember, I'm not religious, man,
Speaker 1: I'm in the awareness that there's something higher than us,
Speaker 1: there's a higher intelligence of some sort. And so to
Speaker 1: the degree that I'm connected to my child and to
Speaker 1: higher Intelligence. That's who's doing it. It's my relationship to me,
Speaker 1: the child and me and to intelligence, the creator of
Speaker 1: all things, the thing that makes you breathe, and the
Speaker 1: thing that makes nature live. And he looked at me
Speaker 1: with this really kind eyes and he said, when you
Speaker 1: learn to parent the child inside of yourself, the universe
Speaker 1: will put one in your arms. And it makes me
Speaker 1: feel emotional right now because it has been a long road.
Speaker 1: It's been a really long road to get to be
Speaker 1: a father, and I'm really grateful for it. But I
Speaker 1: had to learn through some pretty severe training how to
Speaker 1: love my child, because then the universe chose to put
Speaker 1: nova in my arms. And it's very emotional because I
Speaker 1: think every parent can realize this. We learned so much
Speaker 1: from our children. We learned so much it's like you
Speaker 1: can't even quantify it. And it's beautiful and it's wild
Speaker 1: at the same time, you know, you think about you
Speaker 1: having a six month and I see you as somebody
Speaker 1: who has to use your phrase, and I think it's
Speaker 1: a great phrase, embodied wisdom. It's a beautiful thing to
Speaker 1: be having the degree of embodied wisdom you have and
Speaker 1: be shepherd in a new life in you know, my
Speaker 1: embodied wisdom came a little bit later for me. Not
Speaker 1: that I didn't have some when my son was little,
Speaker 1: but I took some detours, right, you know, right through
Speaker 1: the middle of all that you know. And there are
Speaker 1: times I'm like I would, I'd like a chance to
Speaker 1: do it again, but I don't think I really want that.
Speaker 1: I'll practice on my grandkids maybe someday. But we're about
Speaker 1: to wrap up. Do you have a few minutes when
Speaker 1: we're done to do a post show conversation for our
Speaker 1: Patreon guys. Okay, yeah, right, let's talk now about the
Speaker 1: space between knowing and doing. This is one of my
Speaker 1: favorite topics. What is it that causes us to be
Speaker 1: able to know a lot but not put it into practice?
Speaker 1: So when you think about that, you know, what is
Speaker 1: that space? What what's your thinking on that topic? I
Speaker 1: think if you look at the Libra, you know, the
Speaker 1: Lady Libra scale where her ficked balance means the scales
Speaker 1: are flat. You know, one's not high, one is not low.
Speaker 1: If you put awareness in one of the scales and
Speaker 1: if you put a lack of awareness in the other scale,
Speaker 1: I think that every single time, much like the wolf,
Speaker 1: the one you feed whatever one you are defaulted to,
Speaker 1: whether being aware or not aware, that is what is
Speaker 1: going to dictate the course of your life. So it's
Speaker 1: a beautiful parable with the wolves because the same thing
Speaker 1: exists with Lady Libra. Whatever we're aware of or we're
Speaker 1: not aware of, it's our degree of that state of
Speaker 1: being that is going to dictate our path. And so
Speaker 1: when I think about not knowing and I think about knowing,
Speaker 1: knowing and not doing is actually more powerful than not knowing.
Speaker 1: It's the thing that will direct you. And I learned
Speaker 1: this from Dan Party and I've heard this from many people,
Speaker 1: But knowing and not doing is actually the same thing
Speaker 1: or worse than not knowing. And I believe that because
Speaker 1: when you know and you don't do, or when you
Speaker 1: know and you don't do, the training to be this
Speaker 1: is really what it is is. It's not about frenetic doing.
Speaker 1: It's about intelligently doing so that we can embody our
Speaker 1: true self, so we can embody an effortless, peaceful way
Speaker 1: of being. The way to do that is by having courage.
Speaker 1: We've talked about on the show. But I'll tell you
Speaker 1: this the gap. How do we how do we bridge
Speaker 1: the gap between knowing and between doing, and especially between
Speaker 1: knowing and not doing. It is understanding ourselves. It is
Speaker 1: knowing ourselves sabotage patterns. It's knowing the ways that we
Speaker 1: sell ourselves short, that we don't love ourselves, that we
Speaker 1: listen to the barking monster that says you're not doing enough.
Speaker 1: There's three or four archetypes and a really good book
Speaker 1: for this for men and also for women. But but
Speaker 1: this book was written, i think primarily for men, and
Speaker 1: that's King Warrior, Magician Lover. It's a phenomenal book. And
Speaker 1: they talk about the high chair tyrant, which is one
Speaker 1: of the archetypes in this book. And the high chair
Speaker 1: tyrant bangs his fist on the table and says, I
Speaker 1: want what I want, and I want it now. That
Speaker 1: is I think, living inside of all of us, and
Speaker 1: especially if you look at our politicians and the major
Speaker 1: media companies in the world, the high chair tyrant is
Speaker 1: on full display and we're all witnessed to it. And
Speaker 1: so the reason it triggers us, if we're conscious, is
Speaker 1: because that high chair tyrant lives in me, lives in
Speaker 1: all of us, and so how do we do this?
Speaker 1: How do we close the gap between knowing and doing.
Speaker 1: We close the gap by being courageous and being curious
Speaker 1: those two things, like your left eye could be courage
Speaker 1: You're right eye could be curious. How can I have
Speaker 1: the courage to be curious right now about why I'm
Speaker 1: knowing what to do, but why I'm not doing it?
Speaker 1: So just let that land for a second. That's the
Speaker 1: place you start, and then from there, have an emotional
Speaker 1: inventory practice where it's very quick and very simple. I'll
Speaker 1: share it. I take a blank journal and on one
Speaker 1: side of the journal, I will write ten things that
Speaker 1: are causing me the most pain, so literally just a
Speaker 1: simple journal, and on the left side, all right, ten
Speaker 1: things that are causing me the most pain. I do
Speaker 1: this after breath work and meditation, is preferably in nature,
Speaker 1: just in a still space. And then on the other side,
Speaker 1: I write ten things that I'm truly grateful for. Now,
Speaker 1: this seems like a really simple task. It's like, well, Josh,
Speaker 1: what's that going to do for me? You know? And
Speaker 1: just know that that's coming from the same monster inside
Speaker 1: of you, because there's so much wisdom and simplicity. So
Speaker 1: if I write ten and ten, then I have the
Speaker 1: courage to circle the thing that's causing me the most pain,
Speaker 1: because we all know, we all know, out of the ten,
Speaker 1: we know the one that's hurting us the most. And
Speaker 1: then on the other side, I circle the one that's
Speaker 1: causing me the most joy. And this is the kicker.
Speaker 1: You reach out to someone who you can actually share
Speaker 1: this with. So if you were my friend or you
Speaker 1: were my coach, I would email you and I'm like, Eric,
Speaker 1: I took a practice of my emotional inventory. Are you cool?
Speaker 1: If we jump on a call and for ten minutes,
Speaker 1: I just share what I found. But it's because I
Speaker 1: trust you. So be very very careful about who you
Speaker 1: share your emotional inventory with because the wrong person who
Speaker 1: doesn't hold you in high regard or doesn't want the
Speaker 1: best for you, they could sabotage you. And there's another
Speaker 1: deep trench where you probably have those people in your
Speaker 1: life because you want to have the contrast so that
Speaker 1: you can heal, and they're going to provide you that contrast.
Speaker 1: If you're conscious anyways, then you tell them I took
Speaker 1: the practice. This is the thing that's caused me the
Speaker 1: most pain, this is the thing that's caused me the
Speaker 1: most gratitude, the most joy, and I'm willing to change.
Speaker 1: I'm willing to do something different about this negative thing
Speaker 1: because I love this positive thing so much. Can you
Speaker 1: support me in that? You ask your coach, you ask
Speaker 1: your friend, can you support me in that? And hopefully
Speaker 1: if they're great, they'll mirror back to you. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: by when when would you like to do this? How
Speaker 1: would you like to accomplish this? And you can actually
Speaker 1: get some progress instead of just rattling around with all
Speaker 1: these thoughts that go in the head. So it's a
Speaker 1: long answer, but it's a really simple practice that all
Speaker 1: of us can do. It's just a quick emotional inventory practice. Awesome. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that is a really powerful practice and and
Speaker 1: I love the idea of of then sharing it and
Speaker 1: kind of coming out of it with like, what's the
Speaker 1: one thing I can do? You know, We've got an
Speaker 1: old program we released that we give away for free
Speaker 1: now to people who sign up for intro Call with
Speaker 1: Me about coaching. It's called the one You Feed Stress Reducer,
Speaker 1: and I think the method is really good. The video
Speaker 1: quality of the program is not what I would create now,
Speaker 1: but we do something similar in it where we just
Speaker 1: sort of write down, like what is everything that's eaten
Speaker 1: at me, you know, and then what is one thing
Speaker 1: that I could do for each of those things? Like,
Speaker 1: just what is one thing, you know, one step, because
Speaker 1: there is something really beneficial about moving into action of
Speaker 1: any sort about the things that are really weighing, honest,
Speaker 1: that is really helpful. So tell people where they can
Speaker 1: find your breath course real quick before we wrap up here.
Speaker 1: If you have been sparked in curiosity, or if you
Speaker 1: feel in yourself that breath is something that you want
Speaker 1: to do, or if you just liked some of the
Speaker 1: things that I said and you're just curious, right, whether
Speaker 1: whether you're courageous or whether you're curious, it's exactly what
Speaker 1: we talked about. Just go to breathwork dot io and
Speaker 1: at breathwork dot io you can learn everything about our
Speaker 1: breath breath and wellness program. It's the three phases that
Speaker 1: we talked about at breathwork dot Io. Awesome, and we'll
Speaker 1: have a link in the show notes to that. Josh,
Speaker 1: you and I are going to stick around in the
Speaker 1: post show conversation and talk a little bit more. We
Speaker 1: may talk about the Wellness Force, seven pillars of well
Speaker 1: being and Uh, I'd like to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about the O C D thoughts that you were
Speaker 1: having also, if you're open to that. So listeners, if
Speaker 1: you'd like access to the post show conversation to add
Speaker 1: free episodes to a weekly episode I do called teaching
Speaker 1: song and a poem and the joy of supporting this show,
Speaker 1: you can go to one you Feed dot net slash join. Josh,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for coming on. Every time you and
Speaker 1: I have interacted, it has been a genuine pleasure. I
Speaker 1: feel a lot of affinity towards you, so I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed this. Likewise, what a joy to be on your
Speaker 1: show too. When I started my show, your show was
Speaker 1: one of the ones that I looked up to because
Speaker 1: I thought you had such great wisdom. So it's been
Speaker 1: a pleasure to have this conversation with you and to
Speaker 1: be here at this time. If what you just heard
Speaker 1: was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation
Speaker 1: to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join
Speaker 1: our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots
Speaker 1: of exclusive members only benefits. It's our way of saying
Speaker 1: thank you for your support. Now. We are so grateful
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Speaker 1: to do what we do without their support, and we
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