EP55: Take a Deep Breath

Explore the inner fabric of yourself and start to pay attention to your breathing.  People typically use breathwork to improve aspects of their mental, physical, and spiritual well-being. Breathwork is a Central Nervous System regulator and health optimizer. We use various breathing techniques to either up-regulate or down-regulate the CNS. It's incredibly effective at assisting those suffering with stress or anxiety. Conversely, the breath is used to create optimal physical conditions for performance and recovery.  Sam Johnson is here telling me about how breathwork changed his life around, and how anyone can get started exploring this space. Breathwork can be healing and it can also be a means of exploring consciousness beyond the physical body.  

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Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;22;21
Unknown
If you're searching for the answers and you're on a quest to better yourself, improve yourself and find the answers, enlighten yourself or whatever it happens to be, I just offer you the opportunity to take a deep breath and in the knowledge that you're already perfect and you've already got whatever it is that you're looking for. A few quick things I want to share before we get into this amazing episode.

00;00;22;26 - 00;00;46;20
Unknown
February 29th in Greenville, South Carolina, we're hosting a lucid dreaming and dream work workshop Details will be in the description, so go ahead and sign up and you can read about different ways you can support the podcast as well. So back to today's guest, Sam Johnson, who is a Breathwork practitioner. He's going to talk to us about what is breathwork and how revolutionary it can be.

00;00;46;22 - 00;01;08;28
Unknown
Hey, hey, we made it. I don't know if you can say this, but I want my dream as t T-shirt today to fit right in with you Dreamers. US dreamers. I'm one of you. Now to You've been recruited as a dreamer. You started writing your dreams. Now this is a new thing for you. I'm kind of. It was never a new thing for me to have very powerful dreams and to have significant dreams.

00;01;08;29 - 00;01;28;24
Unknown
But that element of who I am and that part of me, it was out of action for quite a while, I suppose you would say it was about a ten year dream. I think it was. I think I remember having dreams really vividly about ten years ago, and then I haven't really been able to pinpoint the exact time or if there was a particular precipice for it.

00;01;28;24 - 00;01;47;11
Unknown
But there's a few different exercises to break through. So. So yeah, I'm proudly one of you now. That's wonderful. And welcome to the Dream World podcast. I'm excited to have you here and I would love to hear a little bit about who you are and what you do and what your journey has been like. Absolutely. Cool. Thanks very much for having me.

00;01;47;11 - 00;02;31;11
Unknown
Mina. It's it's really exciting to be here, and I've been a solid fan of yours for a little while since Maltby been such a big, not so silent fan of yours the whole time. So. So I've been silently cheering along on this on the sidelines as well. So how I came here, I suppose it's been an interesting, I suppose, two year turnaround for both my wife, Melissa and I in terms of our lifestyles and various various aspects of our lives, really, because I think it sort of helps to really help you to understand how not only just how I got here right now, but also how miraculously the universe brought both Michelle and I together

00;02;31;13 - 00;02;55;15
Unknown
and also got us out of a lifestyle I suppose, that we were living that wasn't wasn't what we wanted to be living in. And it didn't it wasn't very conducive to the type of life that we wanted to be living in and beautifully. And thank goodness we both found something very special to us that that brought us out of those spaces and into into a better space.

00;02;55;15 - 00;03;30;09
Unknown
And for her, it was dreaming. And for me it was breathwork so beautifully. There's there's also some amazing synergies between both of those things that and it's really nice because we've each found our own way out. They were both so beautifully intertwined with one another's. The essence of what those two things are so, so closely intertwined that it was really nice that while we found our own thing, though, both so very similar and we had some so many things that we could connect over while doing our own thing at the same time, I suppose rewind two years from now.

00;03;30;12 - 00;03;58;03
Unknown
For myself, I was living in such a dysregulated way in terms of my nervous system and completely unaware of it. In all seriousness, as I like to think that I've always been a person with relatively good awareness of what's going on around me, but even even I, with what I felt like, was a good awareness, was completely unaware that I was just always this far away from exceeding my window of tolerance.

00;03;58;03 - 00;04;37;29
Unknown
And I was always so, so close to my central nervous system being disregulated to the point where it was always reactive or where I would shut down or where I was just so overstimulated that I was behaving in ways that just didn't feel like my true self. And I was very, very confused about what it was to be a human being, really, even because I was feeling so uncomfortable in my skin and uncomfortable on in this life and really just a bit lost, honestly.

00;04;38;07 - 00;05;05;25
Unknown
And I started to notice some cracks in my own well-being. I suppose there was a lot of shame and guilt around them, but I was immersed in any way and the areas that started to really come forth for me were aggression. I was becoming quite easy to temper. I was disproportionately angry almost all the time, which doesn't make any sense to me.

00;05;05;25 - 00;05;45;07
Unknown
And anybody who knows me and has spent more than 5 minutes with me knows that I'm not an angry person and that for me to like, get angry, it seems like a far a long way away from the usual way that I like to walk through the world is is not that person. So so I was very quick to temper and and I started to resort to a lot of numbing through substance abuse whether it was alcohol on a mid-afternoon or a couple of drinks on a Friday afternoon would easily become a couple of drinks of an afternoon rather than just a Friday afternoon and then a couple of drinks at lunchtime rather than just

00;05;45;07 - 00;06;15;20
Unknown
waiting for the afternoon and substances like cannabis. But to excess, I am prescribed cannabis for medical use, but I've certainly been had different relationships with it throughout my time where I used it to numb what was going on around me, other far more or less illicit substances and drugs, cocaine, ecstasy, MDMA, ketamine, you name it. Basically using all of these things and numb my central nervous system from something that I didn't even realize that I was numbing.

00;06;15;20 - 00;06;41;18
Unknown
So this is the noise that I was sitting in for a number of years that I really didn't understand. And these were some of the things that were helping to just make that window of tolerance even smaller and smaller and smaller. So I was getting to a point where it just didn't take anything at all. And I always lose my temper, or I was just completely overwhelmed by everything that was going on around me.

00;06;41;18 - 00;07;08;07
Unknown
You have two daughters, as you probably know, of one year old and a four year old, and one of them makes a bit of noise in the kitchen that it's a bit of noise in the kitchen window of a makes a bit of noise in the kitchen that's competing noise in the kitchen. And that would honestly be all it would take for me just to lose my shit and just have to leave or or yell at somebody and leave and create issues that way, or just be overwhelmed to the point where I just couldn't handle that that environment.

00;07;08;07 - 00;07;38;06
Unknown
And that's not a very nice way to to move through the world. So I realized when I was being very, very easily overstimulated, like in that like I'm just giving you that example, something wasn't right. So decided to look for alternatives to to regulate myself and to to just experience life in a more pleasant manner. I never I don't think anybody really wants to truthfully walk through the world in a negative way or I think, honestly, a people's core, that people are actually all very good deep down.

00;07;38;06 - 00;07;59;28
Unknown
And and I think that we all really want the best for ourselves and for others in this world. So I think intrinsically where we have it in is in us that if something's not right, I think we typically know if we're tuned into ourselves. So I certainly knew something was going on, but I just didn't know what it was and I knew that it was sending me up here and whatever I needed.

00;07;59;29 - 00;08;23;07
Unknown
I wanted it to help me to bring myself, even if it was just a little bit back down that sliding scale I wanted back down. So so I started to research and Breathwork came forward in a number of different ways. And yeah, it was I couldn't ignore it and I'm glad I didn't because it's a, it's a beautiful, beautiful way to do exactly what I needed for it to do, and that was to regulate my emotional state, my, my physical state as well.

00;08;23;07 - 00;08;48;24
Unknown
And also some spiritual connection is as well, which is beautiful. But it's also opened my eyes to a whole other realm of amazing possibilities as well. So it was a matter of necessity, honestly, but it was also one of the most beautiful and amazing disposal evolutions in life that I think we're all bound for at some point in our lives.

00;08;48;24 - 00;09;13;14
Unknown
And we will find these answers for ourselves. Some stage just a matter of when. But it was one of those for me and and it was it was monumental. So and here I am talking about it and I'll happily talk to anybody about it because it's been such a big shift for me personally, and it's done so many great things for myself and my family and my friends and and even me professionally now as well.

00;09;13;14 - 00;09;36;27
Unknown
So that's that's the long version. So what exactly is Breathwork and what are the benefits of consciously paying attention to your breathing, which is something that we just do naturally. So Breathwork is a very broad term. It's also very basic. When you think about it, you break down the word breathwork what is it? And it is working with our breath and it is as simple as that.

00;09;36;27 - 00;10;02;28
Unknown
And I think for me, the easiest way for me to explain just some of the effects, but for the most part, the physiological benefit that we get from Breathwork is that when we breathe, obviously our breath has has an impact on our overall state of arousal, right? So it impacts our central nervous system. Now our breath is the only system that we actually have control over, right?

00;10;02;29 - 00;10;26;17
Unknown
So the rest of the systems within our body, it is automatic and they do what they need to do without any input from us. Our breath, however, it is automatic. However, we also have an opportunity to control that as well. So we have so the metaphor is we have a foot on the throttle essentially, right? We can we can either go harder or take it a foot off the throttle and go a little easier with our breath.

00;10;26;17 - 00;10;56;03
Unknown
So so Breathwork is using the breath, depending on the technique, to either elevate or lower where we are or where we sit on as our state of arousal within our central nervous system. And that can be for different reasons. So we want one to elevate ourselves and in charge our central nervous system. Wim Hof is a very good example of a charging Breathwork okay, people use this quite often to energize themselves or to be able to be really present and sit with pain.

00;10;56;03 - 00;11;30;02
Unknown
And so this is very helpful breath practice for that and know for a few others that do a similar sort of thing. And conscious connected breath is another charging one which we can get into into the whole topic space and whatnot. But there's also plenty of breath practices like box breathing and parasympathetic nervous system activation breaths which do just that, which lowers down into a state of rest, and then digestion can get us out of that stressful state of either arousal of your doing things like anxiety or depression or being a heightened.

00;11;30;02 - 00;11;50;22
Unknown
We can bring ourselves down. Or when we're when we're down, we can bring ourselves up. So it's basically just using techniques of breath to either raise or lower our state of being relative to our central nervous system. I think the the consciousness is probably where for me, the power of the breath really starts to come into its own.

00;11;50;22 - 00;12;16;07
Unknown
And and I mentioned in a moment ago the physiological effects, and that's just one very small part of breathwork. And, and I'd like to, I suppose, elaborate a little bit on that because it's just it's just one very small part which on its own is very, very powerful. Please don't get me wrong that the physical element and the physical vitality that we can create from Breathwork is marvelous.

00;12;16;13 - 00;12;53;14
Unknown
But personally, for me, the depth of connection that you can give an individual to themself and to their own spirituality is one way to put it, I suppose. But just connection to your inner self is profound when it comes to using your breath consciously. And it's as important for me as the physical and the emotional regulation, the spiritual connection element of breathwork because it's brought me back to being the spiritual being that I know that I am and that I had honestly also forgotten about for maybe maybe the ten years that I wasn't dreaming.

00;12;53;14 - 00;13;23;24
Unknown
Hey, maybe there's some correlation there, but there was certainly a massive disconnect between who I am and my spiritual self and, you know, the version of me that walks this earth every day. And there was a massive disconnect between those visions of my being that breathwork and also dream work have helped to reconnect. What a beautiful journey. So can we get into some specific different types of breaths and some techniques that people can try?

00;13;23;27 - 00;13;47;08
Unknown
Yeah, for sure. So one of the great ways to get started with Breathwork is just to be conscious of your breath and just to not even not to force anything, not to set any expectations on yourself to necessarily achieve anything. Because the moment that we start to decide what we need to achieve out of a breath work is the moment that we set ourselves up for failure.

00;13;47;08 - 00;14;06;27
Unknown
And I think that that could also probably be said for the dream space when it's nice to have an intention. But let's not get too hung up on the intention. Let's just allow whatever wants to come through, to come through. That's that's the first tip that I have to give people. And I think that's probably the most important tip, because otherwise our stories get in the way.

00;14;06;27 - 00;14;24;15
Unknown
And and before we know it, you know, we're sitting in this beautiful opportunity for breath practice and all we've done is ask ourselves in the last 5 minutes why I can't sit, sit, sit still, and what's, oh, what am I going to do after this? And I'm not doing it right. I think I'm supposed to do it this way, you know, And we get this story that goes on and on and on again about it.

00;14;24;16 - 00;14;47;03
Unknown
It's set no expectation for yourself and and you'll be fine. So that's tip number one, a practice that I would recommend for people is to start to go into a little bit of breath awareness. And a conscious, connected breath is one where you can breathe in through the nose or in through the mouth. But I highly recommend starting with a nasal inhale.

00;14;47;03 - 00;15;20;01
Unknown
And just to begin by finding a space that you are comfortable in where you are not likely to be interrupted for a short amount of time, be it 5 minutes or something, just start small and just sit with your breath and just start to notice it. So sitting comfortably upright, eyes closed, no distractions, nasal in inhale. Nice, big, deep, long nasal inhale and just to notice the sensations of the breath and the temperature of the breath and notice where you're breathing into what part of your torso that you're breathing to.

00;15;20;01 - 00;15;48;16
Unknown
And just notice it without judgment. That's the best way to get it to breath. And then on the exhale, as you exhale, a beautiful opportunity. Every time we exhale is one that we get to just let go of whatever, whatever is for us. Right. And we get to make that conscious yet partly imaginative release of tension of that which doesn't serve us of anything that you that you would like to be rid of or let go of.

00;15;48;17 - 00;16;14;04
Unknown
That exhale is an opportunity to do just that. So so that's, that's my, my recommendation to, to begin with Breathwork is just to find somewhere to sit and just breathe. And even if it's if you feel uncomfortable, if your mind's racing, that's fine. Put a timer on for 5 minutes and just know that you've got 5 minutes to yourself to with your breath and just be with it and start to become familiar with it and have a relationship with it.

00;16;14;06 - 00;16;33;05
Unknown
Nice. Yeah. I like how you said now, like not to have too many expectations or ideas about work that happen. I hear that a lot. Like I'm imagining this is like, you know, a form of meditation, right? And so it's like, you know, a lot of amazing things can happen, but sometimes it's better for just take it for what it is and explore it.

00;16;33;07 - 00;17;00;10
Unknown
Yeah. Cool. Yeah, you're right. It's it is 100%. It's a form of meditation. And and to be honest with you and to go back a step, I suppose meditation is how I found Breathwork. Really It was. I knew that I needed to regulate my nervous system, and I think most people would probably agree that meditation is the most widely spoken about, or at least until recent years anyway, has been the most widely known form of nervous system regulation that that's out there.

00;17;00;10 - 00;17;20;27
Unknown
That's that's, you know, socially accepted and people are a little bit knowledgeable on it. So that's where I naturally went. And yeah, thankfully for me I was shown a few more techniques after that and in my, my knowledge of the breath started to expand. But, but yeah, I started with meditation and, and it is a meditation and every breath practice is, and is a meditation.

00;17;20;27 - 00;17;41;04
Unknown
And just like every dream journey is a meditation of sorts. And, and, and I actually, this is, this is cool. I had this conversation with somebody very recently, and there were, there was a bit of a profound conversation there. The question was kind of put forward is like when we're in these altered states of consciousness, like where Iwe, where are we actually and what's going on?

00;17;41;04 - 00;18;14;07
Unknown
And I'm like, I don't know, because I don't know that anybody truly does know. They have the full answer to that question. But there is most certainly and no doubt in my mind there are connections between all these places. And if they're not the same place, they're a very, very similar place. And for me, it's a it's an opportunity to access a deeper version of myself and to not only connect with a deeper version of myself, a more grounded version of myself, but also connect with that more elevated version of myself as well, and and have that communion between the two.

00;18;14;11 - 00;18;38;26
Unknown
So so for me, that's what a breath practice or a meditation practice or a dream journey or or a sound bath, even an ayahuasca journey or something like that. That's for me. This is where these things take us. And in those spaces where we have an opportunity to meet ourselves more deeply, that's where the beauty is and that's where we can also learn so much about ourselves and also achieved so much more.

00;18;38;28 - 00;19;01;06
Unknown
I feel as well. So beautiful place for growth and to harness what wonderful things we're capable of in those areas as well. That is so fascinating. And I think although science hasn't fully been able to understand this, we are definitely more than our physical bodies. And I've heard some incredible stories of people having out-of-body experiences through breathwork and meditation.

00;19;01;11 - 00;19;18;19
Unknown
So it really shows that there is more out there when it comes to this kind of stuff. Yeah, it's a conversation that you can it can take so many different directions, but ultimately I think it all kind of comes back to the same place as well, which is, which is beautiful. So yeah, maybe, maybe a conversation in for another podcast.

00;19;18;19 - 00;19;40;08
Unknown
But yeah, but I truly do honestly believe that if it's not the same place, there's at least some tether to the same plane for all of those, all of those things. So we're very lucky that we all get to go and experience them more these days and with a little bit more insight and and knowledge that these places are real places for healing.

00;19;40;11 - 00;20;06;29
Unknown
Definitely. Could you share any, like personal journeys you've taken due to breath work, any realization or travel that you've done? Yeah. Yeah, sure. The reason I laugh because when you ask is, is it because there's there's there've been a lot of big ones lately and it's a little hard to to decide what to tell you about because I've had the pleasure of being able to dive into breath practice very regularly lately.

00;20;06;29 - 00;20;35;16
Unknown
And I've been, I've been exploring the possibilities and the power of the holographic tropic breath or the conscious connected breath, which is essentially it's it's a way of encouraging our brains to release DMT. And as all the wonderful dreamers out there would be aware, DMT is a big part of the dream space. And if you weren't already aware, GMT is also a part of a component of holographic breathwork.

00;20;35;16 - 00;21;03;08
Unknown
So when we go into the conscious connected breath pattern, which is a full mouth breath in and then out without any break in between, it kind of looks like this. We go, we continue to breathe, breathe like that in a very conscious way, and you have to stay with the breath. And when doing this, and it actually takes quite a bit of effort to breathe like that and to maintain that that pattern consistently over a period of time.

00;21;03;12 - 00;21;35;23
Unknown
But when we do breathe like this, what we do is we stimulate the pineal gland in the back of the brain and and that stimulates or generates DMA release, which as we know it's called the God particle. And it allows us to to peel back so many great layers and and delve into the depths of our psyche and start to understand what it is that our subconscious is, is holding on to or or is playing with and looking to get rid of or is just just waiting back there to come forth and throw something at you and say, if you ready to deal with it.

00;21;35;23 - 00;22;04;28
Unknown
So the holographic breathwork for me has been my my flavor, so to speak, lately. And I've been I've been going deep, as you might say, and in really getting amongst these holographic breath practices. And now that I'm a little bit more experienced in, in the in the breath space. So I have built the ability, I suppose, to use the throttle, like I use that analogy before where I can get myself into this altered space or altered state of consciousness.

00;22;04;28 - 00;22;26;00
Unknown
And then while I'm there, I still have the small tether back to reality, or this reality, I should say. And while I have that small tether there, it gives me the confidence to to push a little harder in the hollow tropic space or to to just go a little bit deeper and to peel back a little bit more.

00;22;26;02 - 00;22;48;04
Unknown
And I've learned this skill lately. So I've been flexing it, I suppose, and I've been I've been hiding that skill in when I'm in these breath practice, I've been digging a little bit deeper and just breathing, breathing more consciously and more, more purposefully, I suppose, to get that, that, that release that to release. I suppose, and explore and, and be curious about what's there.

00;22;48;10 - 00;23;11;23
Unknown
And that's been really fun because that's where all the healing is. Honestly, in something that I didn't mentioned before when, when you introduced me and one of the reasons that I did find breath work and one of the reasons certainly why my central nervous system like I did mentioned was completely overwhelmed and it was completely out of regulation was because I was in the Army for 15 years.

00;23;11;23 - 00;23;38;01
Unknown
And as I'm sure most people could understand, it's it's a space where we're very, very heightened a lot of the time and is also, for a lot of us, a lot of very traumatic events that take place in the dreaming and breath in meditation and other ways to explore that in his psyche have been a beautiful tool for me to start to integrate some of the things that have been present for me.

00;23;38;01 - 00;24;08;04
Unknown
But I haven't really allowed them to see the light of the light of day until until recently, until until I've found Breathwork to be able to gently and deliberately go back into those spaces and allow them some room to breathe and allow them a little bit of space to be and to just witness them for what they are and not, I suppose, compartmental lies things that really need to be understood and be embraced rather than hidden.

00;24;08;10 - 00;24;36;02
Unknown
So I've been loving my breath for that lately, and I know that that doesn't perfectly answer your question. I know that's very broad, but the breakthrough I suppose in that for me is that my breakthrough lately has been that I have now finally harnessed this skill of control in a breath practice that enables me depth or enables me some shelter if I need it.

00;24;36;05 - 00;25;01;19
Unknown
And that's the been the breakthrough for me lately, has been my ability to really optimize my breath practice and get as much out of it as is on offer. I'm very interested in this tether that holds you to physical reality. I've done some breath work and I've experienced a bit of separation from my physical body. So do you ever, like, get scared of like where you're going or if you'll get lost or something like that?

00;25;01;22 - 00;25;18;15
Unknown
No short answer that. No, I'm not scared. I don't think I feel you. I don't know. I can I can kind of hear, feel Why why you would ask that. But I know that you're not scared at all. And that's why I smile, I suppose, is because. No, there's nothing to be scared of, right? Like it's me in there, right?

00;25;18;16 - 00;25;39;07
Unknown
And there's nobody else in there. It's all me and nothing to be afraid of. Everything to be gained. And yes, I used to be a little bit afraid of like, what's in there. And I don't it's it's an unknown space for a large portion of people I suppose. But so yeah, I used to be a little bit of a afraid of, you know, how deep is too deep or, you know, where am I going?

00;25;39;07 - 00;26;08;28
Unknown
What even is this space? But after a few practices, it's, it's it's certainly become a much more comfortable space for me. And that tether is I think everybody has it. And it's for me, it's just been familiarizing myself with firstly entering those altered states for one is is the first step and it's going there a couple of times, a few times, and then reassuring myself after that, Hey, I'm still here.

00;26;09;00 - 00;26;48;04
Unknown
There's nothing wrong, nothing catastrophic has happened or can happen in those spaces. And every time I've done that and reassured myself and grown in that I really start to feel more connected to this plane during the next journey. In some way, I feel I feel that although I am able to drop in and allow myself to breathe into these spaces and really surrender into them, I always have acknowledged that I'm still connected to this, to this room, and whether or not I might feel that at the time is dependent on what's going on for me in that moment.

00;26;48;04 - 00;27;08;01
Unknown
But but at my core, I know that there's always a tether back to to this this realm. And knowing that and just having that and just going in with that intention and that mindset enables me to rest in that knowledge and be conscious and not conscious to be to be confident in the knowledge that nothing can go wrong.

00;27;08;01 - 00;27;32;10
Unknown
So that gives me all the more confidence to to, to push what I mean in a breath practice. So get a little bit more out of it really. So it's hard to explain that tether and what it means to me. I think it would mean something different to everybody, but just having a bit of a conscious confidence that everything's fine and and there's everything to gain just by being curious.

00;27;32;13 - 00;28;00;12
Unknown
Yeah, it's very similar to when we dream, you know, the same tether keeps you safe in your own body. We're able to explore different worlds and we're literally in another dimension. So that's why I see dreams, meditation, breath work, even hypnosis. They're all tools that let us explore our own consciousness beyond physical reality. So I tell people all the time, you know, not to be scared, to explore and just see what there is beyond the self.

00;28;00;15 - 00;28;18;18
Unknown
Yeah, exactly. And it's almost it is laughable, really, once you've spent a bit of time exploring these places. But at the same time, I completely understand why people are a little bit nervous and can be a little bit scared going into them for the first few times as well, because it's, it's, it's a whole new plane of existence.

00;28;18;20 - 00;28;39;12
Unknown
So yeah, to be a little bit, a little bit concerned. So what about the benefits and uses of nasal breathing versus mouth breathing? Can we talk about that a little bit? Yes, there's a bunch of different reasons that we would breathe through the nose or through the mouth. And firstly, it's to regulate how much oxygen you take in.

00;28;39;12 - 00;28;59;20
Unknown
So quite often, if you were to look to do a practice that activate your parasympathetic nervous system or you want to calm down or you want to bring yourself down into a more regulated state of being and bring your nervous system into a more regulated state instead of being More often than not, you will use a nasal inhale.

00;28;59;28 - 00;29;24;13
Unknown
It regulates the amount of oxygen that we have in for a star, and that's one of the things that does greater capacity for for in inhalation inspiration during a mouth breath. Right. So certainly we've got greater capacity and to get it in more quickly, but we don't always want oxygen in more quickly. So this is why stress relief techniques will almost always involve a nasal breath, right?

00;29;24;13 - 00;29;51;02
Unknown
Because it regulates the amount of inhalation we can do likewise when we want to charge the body and when we're looking to do these holographic breath practices and when we're looking to create some stimulation in the central nervous system in the cells in order to potentially create charge and then have a release. And that's one of the ways that we can release trauma during all the tropic breath practices is to generate charge and then to and then to have a physical release.

00;29;51;04 - 00;30;17;02
Unknown
And the release can come through things like shaking or or toning sounds and things like this, this natural ways that our bodies do release trauma. So building charge through your mouth, breath will allow us to get to those states, but via nicely breathing will help us to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and get into that rest and digest state that a lot of people unfortunately, just don't get into.

00;30;17;02 - 00;30;36;25
Unknown
And that's actually one of the things that I see so much of is people firstly just not understanding that there's two different gaits that is so, so important and that we can very easily be living in fight or flight or being overstimulated, you know, nervous system and not even notice it. You know, that was certainly the case for me.

00;30;36;25 - 00;31;04;23
Unknown
I was like I said, I was in the Army for 15 years and around things that blow up and, you know, highly stimulated and and switched on and, you know, always moving forward and, you know, in the masculine and in this very overly heightened state of being. And to to go from that, we need to we need to be a little bit more connected to our breath and and and to we need to lower this side of of aroused in the central nervous system.

00;31;04;23 - 00;31;24;27
Unknown
And so the nasal breath for me was the first place that I started and started with a very cool little practice that that, that I'll happily show you if you're interested in seeing it. It's a nasal breath in for a nice, slow kind of doesn't really matter what, but for the sake of the exercise will pick, say, a full count in and then hold.

00;31;24;27 - 00;31;43;04
Unknown
And then when we do, after our breath hold, we're going to take another little sip in through our nose again. So as a second inhalation. And then as we exhale, we do a little bit of a resisted exhale. So we kind of have some resistance in the throat. And as that as the air comes out, we kind of have to kind of just.

00;31;43;06 - 00;32;05;29
Unknown
Yes, resisted on the way out a little bit. And just three breaths of that can help us get into a very relaxed state. So if you like, we can we can do we can do a couple of breaths. I'll show you a couple. So the first thing we do is obviously, like I said before, you want to sit and be comfortable because if we carry tension in here, if we're breathing into our chest, will often just maintain tension and not really let it dissipate.

00;32;05;29 - 00;32;55;21
Unknown
So the first thing we want to do is just first relax your shoulders and focus a little bit more lower into your diaphragm, because that's where we're going to start our breaths in as we inhale through the nose for 4 seconds and hold now an extra sip in and hold that exhale for seven six, three, two, one in four, four, hold and sit at four, seven, six, four, three, two.

00;32;55;23 - 00;33;06;23
Unknown
Or do one more in four, four, three, two, one, hold, sip.

00;33;06;25 - 00;33;43;28
Unknown
And then have a seven. And just at the bottom of that, our breath. Just relax and notice what sensations you feel from that. I'm very confident that with just three breaths in that pattern that you probably automatically feel just a little nicer. So that's a really good one for performance. So keynote speakers, people who are getting up and speaking in front of a lot of people or high performance individuals and you're looking to just be really switched on and have mental clarity.

00;33;43;28 - 00;34;05;03
Unknown
That's a really good tip for just bringing your your state of arousal from here to here and therefore just bringing your awareness from here to here as well and just being a little bit more behind your eyes, I'd like to say, okay, thank you. That's a good one. And my next question is what about some ways that Breathwork can be used in combination with dream work?

00;34;05;05 - 00;34;27;27
Unknown
Cool. Yeah, this is an exciting one. So this is one that I've been talking with Mal about lately, actually. And intention is one of the really cool things that I think dream Work and Breathwork share beautifully and what they also share is that what's going on with us physiologically at the time has a big part to play in, in the power of our breath and the power of our dreams, I think.

00;34;27;27 - 00;34;46;16
Unknown
So the synergies between the two different things are, well, they're very broad, but they're just two of them. And I love to use Breathwork as I set myself up for sleep like we just did. Then I can use a breath practice to wash away a little bit of this stress in the tension in my body, and I can be like a meditative body scan.

00;34;46;16 - 00;35;10;08
Unknown
I can use it to evaporate physical tension in my body and I can use it to charge my cells and and just be connected with my physical self before I drop off into sleep. And I think that's really important. And, you know, taking an opportunity to move into the dream space mindfully is so important. And one way to do that is to connect with your breath.

00;35;10;08 - 00;35;39;07
Unknown
And I find that a really nice segway into the dream space is the breath practice or breath breath generally. And it doesn't even have to be a fancy special timing breath, practice nicely, extra anything. It doesn't have to be anything special. Just just a connection to your breath. And just noticing your breath is very, very powerful and a very, very simple way to prepare yourself for for the sleep space and for for meaningful dreams.

00;35;39;09 - 00;36;16;14
Unknown
Dreams that may be useful to you, something that you may be able to actually, you know, go back and work with rather than going into the dream space, heightened, overly stressed, perhaps overly caffeinated from the day and still rigid and still, you know, sitting up in that energetic space. Maybe you may be carrying some anger or some frustration of your day into your sleep space, which could play out in any number of ways that, you know, give you misleading information in a dream that you might not be able to actually understand or interpret or use moving forward.

00;36;16;14 - 00;36;34;29
Unknown
So so I find it a very good way of helping myself to get into that dream space and to do it with a little bit more clarity and a little bit more purpose and intention. I love that. I definitely incorporate Breathwork into my evening routine and I'm going to start playing around with it a little bit more. Now.

00;36;35;05 - 00;36;56;00
Unknown
I've also found that I do it in the morning when I'm laying there trying to remember a dream and it can actually be really helpful for a dream recall just to do some conscious breathing as I'm trying to let the dream come back to me. MM Yeah, you're right. And I hadn't really actually considered that in the past, but you're 100% spot on and I find myself in the morning sometimes.

00;36;56;02 - 00;37;18;16
Unknown
I'm sure your listeners can probably relate to this when I've woken up and. And I know there's a dream there. I know it, but something's happening in the next room or my phone's just gone. Ding or something. Something is trying to take my attention away from that dream right? And I know and you all know the once it's gone is gone.

00;37;18;18 - 00;49;02;14
Unknown
So breath breathwork is another or just consciously connecting to that breath and just taking a moment to be present and not let the distractions and the noises or the chatter or those things take front of.