‘WTF is a Nervous System?’ with Jonny Miller

Welcome back, everybody. On today's episode, we have another special guest, this time Johnny Miller. Johnny Miller runs the school called Nervous System Mastery and the Curious Humans podcast, and he's coming on the podcast today to talk with Joe about what is a nervous system. I hope you like it. Hey, Johnny.

Hey, Joe.

How are you?

I am great. Really good.

I'm glad to hear it. So let's get started. What the fuck is a nervous system in your world, in your terminology?

Yeah. So I'm also really interested to hear your kind of map of this and perspective as well. I think the frame that I like to explore is that our nervous system is like the lens through which we view reality, and that when we're in different nervous system states, our experience of other people, our experience of ourselves, of the world shifts. And being able to kind of map those states and knowing what our nervous system is doing at any point in time is incredibly helpful. And in this conversation, I'm super interested to hear how you think about the nervous system in the work you do and almost compare the maps that we have.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm happy to share, but I want to dig in a little deeper before I do that. How would you make a distinction between, say, the nervous system and the emotional system and the intellectual system or the prefrontal cortex or intellect?

Yeah. So, I tend to lump the nervous system in with the emotional system., and a lot of my training is informed by breathwork and polyvagal theory, which I imagine you've come across, which we can get into if that's relevant. So I tend to see that there are certain emotions which are connected with safety, with what's known as ventral vagal. There's certain emotions which are connected with dorsal kind of collapse, freeze states. And then there's other emotions, let's say, like frustration or anger, which are more in the sympathetic realm. So I kind of use that as a way of mapping different states.

Okay. And so for the audience, can you give us a brief overview of the polyvagal theory?

Yeah, sure. So it was developed by a guy called Dr. Stephen Porges. He basically says that there are three main branches. There's the the sympathetic branch and the parasympathetic. And then the parasympathetic, which is rest and digest, that has two branches. One is known as ventral and one is known as dorsal. And the ventral is basically like connection. It's like the place where we can play, we feel safe, we feel grounded, we can make eye contact, we kind of in tune with ourselves. Dorsal is in a kind of low tone, healthy state, is rest and digest. So when we're sleeping, when we're relaxing, lying down. But it's also responsible for when we go into freeze or shutdown, which is like an adaptive survival response to stress. And some people, as I'm sure you know in your work, some people, when they get stressed or triggered, they go into either like anger, kind of sympathetic intensity, or they go into collapse, freeze, kind of shame, shutdown, and disconnects. So that's generally how I think about it. And the sympathetic is— it's also important to mention that these states can be online at the same time. So right now I'm probably in some degree of sympathetic and some degree of ventral because there's this activation, there's alertness. I'm talking to you and there's a sense of, oh, I can feel my body. Make eye contact with you, I can feel connected. So, these states can be blended. It's not just one on and off switch for each one.

And then, you mentioned a third but you didn't name it.

So, ventral sympathetic and dorsal ventral.

Okay. So, in the theory, ventral and dorsal aren't part of the same, it's an actual third branch because I believe that there's some theory out there about the social nervous system too, right? That —of the vagus nerve. And so, how does that fit into the—

So, the social nervous system is another way of saying the ventral vagal, which is part of the vagus nerve, the vagus brake. Yeah, that's the kind of attuning part where when we feel safe and grounded, that can be online for connection, for play, creativity, all those things. Okay.

And then, what does a healthy nervous system look like?

So this is a really interesting question. I think some people have this view that we should be totally regulated and calm the entire time, which might work for some people, but I think it's certainly setting unrealistic expectations.

It might work for some people, but I've never seen anybody do it. Yeah, neither have I.

So the two words that I think are helpful to use are capacity and resilience. Capacity is basically, um, I'm able to hold intensity and I have a, a strong ventral vagal tone, meaning that I can be with intense experiences without going into shutdown or going into overwhelm. Yeah. Um, the other piece is resilience, which is basically your— how efficiently can you downshift your state of arousal after a stressful experience and find kind of healthy relaxation without relying on substances or crutches or alcohol, whatever it is, which a lot of people do. So a healthy nervous system is basically very dynamic. It responds adaptively to the situation.

Great. One more question for you around this is that there's a theory. I'm trying to remember the name of the person, but basically it's like I think it's in some of the emotional literature of Lowen, but maybe it's the core energetics. There's core dynamics, core energetics. I always get it all confused. But basically, there's a cycle of activity. And part of that cycle of activity is activation. And then part of the cycle of activity, I think it's 4 or 5, but I always think about the last 2, which is So you're finished with something, then there's a release, and then there's a rest. They're not like release and rest aren't the same thing. They're two different things. And so when I hear you talk about how quickly you can get back to like a rested nervous system, in your world, is there getting back to rested nervous system? Is there a release and relax in it? Is it just a relax? If so, what's the difference between the two, like to get to that resilience of being able to get back to a restful state?

Yeah. So, I think what you're referring to is the activation or the mobilization response, which typically has the kind of intensity, which is the sympathetic. And then, like you say, there's usually the release.. And then there is the rest-digest, which is where whatever occurred integrates and actually gets rewired in the nervous system. And in terms of how that maps onto polyvagal, the activation is the sympathetic where there's the intensity. Then the ventral comes online usually during the release. And then it's actually really important, as you say, to have a period, particularly if someone's doing like a breathwork journey or going through an emotional process, that there is that complete deep rest, which is where the actual kind of rewiring from the point of view of the nervous system takes place. And I believe there's roughly a 5-hour window of neuroplasticity, which if someone is able to rest deeply after an experience like that, then whatever emerged will kind of go from a state to a trait. It'll get rewired.

Yeah. So just to make it practical for a second, somebody has, goes into a meeting and they are activated because they get called out on performance and they go through the activity of the meeting and let's say it comes out well. They're like, oh, that was good and successful in that meeting. What does the release look like? What would a variety of releases look like and what would the rest look like? In a healthy nervous system?

Yeah. So what I could imagine happening is, let's say, in the boardroom or in the meeting, they're unable to fully come into contact, but as they walk out, they realize, oh, I'm realizing there's actually a lot of anger in my system. So let's say they go home later that day or they find some private space, they're able to let that anger move. And then usually there's a space where, like, there's a feeling of, like, ah, like, I feel whatever the tension is, whatever they were experiencing shifts. And after that, it's usually really helpful to have as much kind of rest or spaciousness as possible for that to integrate. Great.

Yeah, just to say, it reminds me of I think it's, like, one of the foremost, like, biathlon, like, the people who, like, cross-country ski and shoot or something like that from Norway or something like that. That's a thing. And he was saying that, like, 7 hours a day, he just sits and watches television. Not the best way to rest, but that resting was such an important part of him being a gold medalist. Mm-hmm. Like, he said, so underrated. Like, I do really intense workouts, but I do a tremendous amount of resting so that I can be be at top performance. And I think that a lot of people underestimate that same capacity in doing any kind of self-transformation, how important the rest and not doing is. And something that I notice is when somebody's like critical voice in their head is constantly, they never get the rest. So integration is harder. Yeah. It's like oftentimes when people change the relationship with the negative voice in their head, their transformation happens quickly, and I think a lot quicker. And I notice that a lot of that happens because they're actually getting rest. They're not under attack all the time.

There's a phrase that Kevin Kelly says where he shares that most people think about having a good work ethic, but very few people try and cultivate a good rest ethic. And that's honestly one of the main pieces in the the work that I do with Nervous System Mastery is helping people to strengthen that ventral vagal tone, which is basically capacity for rest. It's like, how able are we to find safety and actually relax without needing substances? So practices like yoga nidra, NSDR breathing practices are super helpful for kind of retraining that that ability to find relaxation. And what's interesting is the voice in the head will often, like, if you change the body, if you change the physiology with a kind of a bottom-up approach, the thoughts spiraling tend to kind of diminish naturally. At least that's what I've noticed.

Yeah, I notice it works both ways, actually. Like, you can directly address the voice in the head and then it creates more relaxation, or you can use the breath. I think somebody said you can't control your emotions, but you can control your breath, which controls your emotions. Exactly. And I'm not a huge fan of controlling emotions because I think that goes down a very dark, deep rabbit hole of misery. However, I think creating a fertile soil of healthy emotions is a really important thing, which is where I would put the— I would put the breathwork or the yoga or like, how do you like— what I would say is, can I create a soil for a healthy lifestyle is a really important piece. As soon as that turns to I'm going to control my emotions with breath, then it can be very destructive. Then it can be like very up and out and very like overriding and denial. Whole bunch of other stuff can happen.

Yeah. So I actually have a question for you around that. Where do you view the line between, let's say someone is experiencing a lot of anxiety, what is the line between beginning with some kind of self-regulation to allow them to feel grounded enough to kind of even feel their experience and be with themselves, versus you can obviously take that too far and someone they just use, let's say, a breathing practice to just calm down, but then ignore the underlying emotion? Because I feel like there's risks in both. Like, one side, someone could just get overwhelmed, shut down, and then that's not helpful. But then, like you say, if someone's always using a breathing practice to calm themselves down when they're feeling an emotion, they're likely never going to be able to experience the beauty of that emotion. So how do you think about guiding people through that?

Yeah. So I would add the intellect on it, which you've already actually said, which is like, oh, the negative voice in the head is going to reduce if you're doing the breathwork. So on one level, you have 3 systems. On another level, it's one system. It's us. Right? But I think it's a good distinction to break them into the 3. And as anybody who's listened to my podcast knows, to me, the prefrontal cortex is the very human. It's the very rational. It's the thought-centered area. The emotion is the mammalian part of the brain. And then, the nervous system is the part of the brain that's more reptilian. It is that immediate reaction area. And, a lot of that is in that fight and flight area. And so, anything that happens in any of them can affect all of them, right? So, to me, you're addressing all three. And so, I'll take access points wherever I can get them with somebody,. So, if the breath thing works to get enough access to the other two components, I'll take it. But, I'll make sure that the work is done on all three levels as much as possible. So, all of our courses are thinking about it in all three levels. In general, most people in society are far more head-oriented. So, if you can crack open the intellectual trap that they put themselves in, that's often the first step. For people because that allows them to be able to pay attention to their emotion and/or their nervous system. What I notice is unless they're fully committed, unless for some reason or another they're like, okay, breathwork is there, I need to do breathwork, and I have the kind of intellectual structure that allows me to have a disciplined approach to something, which is not a huge amount of Americans anyways, then I would rather work on the intellect, deconstruct that enough, deconstruct the stories enough for them to be able to start finding the enjoyment in the breathwork, and then they'll do it naturally, or the enjoyment of the emotions, and then they'll do that naturally. But usually, the intellect doesn't have enough space for it. However, there's definitely times I'm working with people where it's like the emotion has to be addressed first or the nervous system has to be addressed first. So, if I see somebody who's very what I would call hysteric, not in a bad word, not hysterical, but it just that terminology is from the Reichian and Lowen work. If I see somebody in that hysteric, then that nervous system work is going to be really, really critical for them. So, they're the people who are kind of in a society, they seem a little more flighty, they seem like they are interacting with crystals and energy more. Typically, their emotions typically are bigger, that kind of human being, then nervous system work is a really good, important part, first step for them because they're so in touch with it that they'll feel that breath and immediately react and know, oh, this is a good thing that I can enjoy and do. So it's more a person-by-person situation. In general, the idea is to give them all 3 tools and allow them to work on all 3 tools instead of just doing one. And I think that's generally the issue with most work out there is that they're working on one or maybe 2 of the places. And so really effective for some people, but there's a missing component for others. Yeah, that makes sense. So, yeah. And at some point, I think, you know, I view it. So I had a teacher, I can't remember who it was, say that they thought development was like a whole bunch of pencils with rubber bands. And you could like pull one of the pencils up, but there was like the tension of the other ones. And so on one level, you pull one pencil up and then everything else wants to come up. But if it's down, there's this tension. And so the there's a certain way in which development worked where you had to kind of work on all the pencils so that it wasn't creating this tension between them. And so I noticed, like, if I'm working with somebody who's done a tremendous amount of intellectual work or a tremendous amount of emotional and emotional work, then the nervous system work, when they find it, it just makes a huge difference really, really quickly, right? Because that tension has been built. They've got some really tense rubber bands and all of a sudden, it can make a huge difference because it uplevels everything.

And how do you distinguish between the nervous system work and the emotional work? What's that line for you? Yeah.

So, the way I think about it is it's like a bit of causation. When you said, oh, I'm not great at the terminology you're using, I apologize. I did read the the theory book, like, but basically you were talking about how one of those things could have two different emotional outputs, right? Like, the way I would say it is like you could do freeze or fight or flight, like, depending. For me, those are three different. And because there's three different emotional reactions to that instead of just one emotional reaction to that, that's how I kind of layer the cause and effect. So for instance, And if you think about how they're built on top of each other, it's like the nervous system is kind of the primary quickest reaction. And you know that from the studies that of, like, people can react without ever going into the intellect whatsoever. Like, just have a snake jump at you and you know what your nervous system is because you'll be halfway across the room before you even realize there was a snake. And so to me, it's like a cause and effect chain. So, for instance, I could have the thought, my boss loves me, and I could have lots and lots of emotional reaction. There could be like a plethora of emotional reactions to that. And so, to me, the primary level is the nervous system. The secondary level is the emotional system, and the third is the intellect. However, the dance goes both ways, meaning I can have, like, every time a certain thought hits my brain, a certain emotion is going to come up. And it can go, every time I have a certain emotion, I go, oh, that, that, and I tie it to a thought. So both of them can come up. Like, you'll see people, they get a little agitated because they haven't had enough food. And then they'll start a fight and everything will start looking binary in their world. Right? It's just like, ring, ring, ring, ring. So, But the way I would look at it is generally, if I was to say what the nervous system was, I'd say the nervous system is close to fight or flight, fight, flight, or freeze as you can get. And then the emotional level is on a muscular level. So it's like you hold the emotions in the muscles and then the And then the intellect is the world of thoughts, and they all, they're all dancing with each other.

Yeah, yep, yep. That reminds me of an experience I had when, during a meditation retreat, where I could almost— I was still enough that I could notice when a certain looping thought would arise, there was a corresponding tension in my body. And kind of really mapping that connection and seeing those, those things co-arising was was fascinating. And I think that was another piece that I wanted to mention in this conversation, is the idea of interoception and building this somatic awareness. Because for most of my, certainly my teenage years and most of my 20s, I was fairly numb from the neck down. I had emotions, but I didn't have any kind of definition or attunement as to where they were or what I was actually feeling. Me too. Right. And a huge part of it was actually realizing the there's so many different flavors of sensation that are alive in the body. And increasing that capacity has made the emotional work just like 50 times easier. Because for me, at least, if I'm feeling something, I may pay attention to the story, but more often than not, and I see you in the live coaching, like, you will often, you'll see when they go into the head and then you're like, okay, bring it back down into the body. What's the sensation? Right. And that's, at least in my experience, usually what enables it to move by actually feeling the interoceptive sensations that are associated with whatever the emotion is.

Yeah. Yeah. For me, there's kind of a phase depending on where you are with the emotional work. There's the identification piece. To be able to identify it is really useful. And then to be able to feel, have the somatic experiencing of it is another really important piece. To be able to express it is another— to actually have the movement and the expression of it is another really important piece. And then to see that it is not particularly cause and effect related is another really important piece. Like that, like you were saying something to the effect of, I realized every time I had a thought, I had a corresponding somatic experience. What I've also noticed is that's true. And then that thought leaves and then a replacement thought comes in and then creates that experience. So, for instance, I had a relationship with my father that for a long time, every time I thought about my dad, I had the somatic experience of like, oh, I'm not getting enough of his love somatically. Then, I stopped living with my dad and that got replaced with money. Oh, I'm not getting enough money and the same somatic experience occurred. So, there's this— Yeah. Just anyways, a really cool relationship between that so that it's it is like a dance between the three for me, for sure. I have another question. This is a question I've never gotten a good answer from, from anybody. So no, no. And I don't have a good answer for it either. No pressure. Yeah, exactly. And I think it's, you know, if I look at just even the research on it, for instance, it's like, the intellectual cognitive development has so much work, so much research behind it. And then the emotional stuff is far thinner. It's starting to get popular now, but the emotional stuff is far thinner. The nervous system is pretty thin. The very worst is the energetic system. So what is in your mind, if you can create a distinction between energetic and a nervous system, if there is one, what's the distinction for you between an energetic system and a nervous system?

Yeah, wow, that is a tough question. Right. So experientially, I'll say that I only even became aware that the energetic system was a thing during the breathwork training where it became obvious that by moving breath or breathing in certain ways, there was more aliveness sensation in certain parts of my body. And the more that I meditated and the more that I did the breathwork, the more that that even became a thing. And so I think I'll preface this by saying, for most people, they might not even know what feeling their energetic system might be like. So I actually listened to a really interesting podcast recently with a guy called Dr. Jack Kruze, and he he's a very kind of contrarian type figure, but he talked about this theory that our cells, our mitochondria, actually produce light. They're kind of like light factories and that it is in theory possible, and I think this has been done in non-human cells, to measure the very low bandwidth of light that is created by these cells. And so the working theory that I have, and I have absolutely zero proof of this, is that when cells are healthy, they are kind of releasing this low bandwidth of light. And that when we have trapped emotion, trauma, incomplete reflexes from, from childhood, that, that in some ways reduces that area's capacity to produce, produce light, produce energy. And that by going through these somatic releases, these, these processes, we're kind of rejuvenating the cells in that way. In terms of defining the energy system, I mean, without kind of going to Chinese medicine or any— some of the more like esoteric literature, I don't think that modern science has a compelling definition, which is largely why it's mostly ignored, right? There's very little— you know, most people get laughed out of the room if they start talking about the energy body in a neuroscientific way.

Yeah, it's amazing that— so to me, I think when I like look at anything, like if someone's talking about science or emotion or dreams or energy work or like they have a language that makes sense to them, but it doesn't really make sense to potentially other people who are speaking other languages. And so you can look at something like the energy body. And like you said, there's no, not a really great definition, but you can see scientific research about how Ayurvedic medicine, traditional Tibetan medicine, or traditional Chinese medicine has really good results and things like ulcers. So, there's a system that's completely based on the energetic body that has really good results, but we still don't particularly have a definition or know how to work with energy. And, it is the only thing that I can do in a session that would turn more people off than you know, like, let's talk about your chakras, is to be like, let's talk about God and how, like, Jesus's wisdom there. It's one of those things that creates, that those particular languages create so much defense in the system. And I think for good reason, frankly, I think that there's been a lot of attack. A lot of people have been attacked through the language of religion. And a lot of people have been attacked through the language of energy, right? It's like this, you just have bad energy, so I can't be around you. And it's like, what the fuck do I do with that? Like, you know what I mean? It's like this thing that's undefined that somebody apparently understands that you don't understand that you're being condemned/judged for and you can't, there's no way to protect yourself. And so I feel like there's good reason why people get really defensive around that languaging. Yeah.

And I think there's a couple of the other two interesting directions that are, I think, pointing to this, both the research with HeartMath where they will measure the, I believe it's the electromagnetic resonance of the heart. That's what they're measuring. You can kind of track people's heart rate variability will entrain when they're singing together or or dog owners and their dogs, their HRV will also entrain when they're in kind of sympathetic resonance with each other. And I think that is one way in which it is measurable through kind of like charts. You can see where these numbers become aligned. So I think that's one way. And then the other is that during these kind of, let's say, practices like using breathwork as an example that create these altered states of consciousness, there are both kind of certain brainwave states and also changes in the blood chemistry, which can be measured quite easily, which correlate with these kind of energetic experiences that people report. And so I think that there's almost like adjacent things that we can measure and quantify, which point to there being there. And we're several years, maybe decades away from being able to actually take a photo of it or measure it in a meaningful way, as far as I'm aware. Yeah.

I mean, the amazing thing is that as the one, like, so for instance, like, you do certain breathwork, then your nitrogen level in your blood goes up. It has a certain experience, like, you can feel like your body tingle. You can call that an energetic state or you can call that a, like, increased nitrogen in my blood. Right? And so, on one level, it's like the energetic system or the people trying to describe the energetic system, it's like, to me, it's like they are describing something that's happening, potentially happening scientifically. But when science defines it, they're not going to define it as energetic. They're going to define it as, and that's the thing that I think happens in all of the areas is that, like, because we're one system, This language is learning to describe the whole system. The intellect describes a part of the system a lot better than the energetic system. The energetic system will describe something a lot better than the intellectual system. But over time, you can see that they're pointing often to very similar things with different language.

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. And I think you're also right that the art of, I guess, the work that we do is kind of finding the languaging that resonates with the person. Like, if they're doing a yoga teacher training, the energy stuff might resonate. And if they're— Exactly. —leading a company, it's probably going to be more on the intellect or the somatic realm.

That's right. That's right. So, tell me how— So, you've been pretty dedicated to this nervous system path for how long?

I'd say kind of 3 to 5 years, depending on how you define it.

Great. Let— we'll define it as 5 years. And what's the changes? What has shifted in you? What has shifted for me?

Yeah. Wow. Well, I'd say that I have a background in— I was a startup founder 11, 12 years ago. I went through a burnout experience. And then 6 and a half years ago, I lost my fiancée. She had an anxiety attack and ended up taking her own life. And that kind of journey through grief really completely opened me up to my entire emotional experience. And I realized how numb I'd basically been for the last 5 to 10 years. And in the process of discovering meditation, breathwork, and then more recently, how the nervous system kind of ties those together. I feel like a completely different human. I think my life has changed fundamentally, and I actually find it in some ways difficult to relate to myself 10, 15 years ago. But tangible pieces are like the quality of connection in relationships is beyond anything that I think even comprehended when I was younger. I think that's been a huge piece. The capacity for joy and honestly love as well. And the kind of the way in which I think my body is constantly giving me feedback about any moment or experience. And as you guys teach with decision making, and I used to be the guy that made a spreadsheet with ranking things with 1 to 10 and weighted variables and just really doubling down on the intellect for everything. Now I just move through the world in a very different way. And I think another piece as well is confidence in my capacity in new situations. Before, I think if I was triggered, especially in social situations, I'd shut down and I'd feel very kind of like almost like a victim of my own body in ways. And now having both kind of toolkits to downregulate if needed, or even better, just like feel the thing in the moment and then move through. That's been life-changing as well. So, I mean, there's so many areas that my life has shifted. And I'd say also the doing somewhere between 150 to 200 breathwork journeys with this guy in Bali, his name's Ed Dangerfield. Kind of coming into relationship and learning to love, as you guys teach, like loving these different emotions that previously I'd disowned. I think initially for me it was grief and then anger and then shame and then helplessness. And I can kind of track my journey to exploring those emotions in a somatic way and learning to welcome them more fully.

And how has been your journey of teaching it to others. What, what has been the— like, for those who aren't— who don't know, uh, Johnny has a Nervous System Mastery class. And I'm— and my question is like, how have you personally changed in that process?

I would say in a number of ways. Um, one, I, I feel like I've kind of found work that I truly love, in that it feels like the intersection between communicating complex kind of scientific ideas in ways that land and resonate with people, sharing some of my own story and kind of what has been important in my life and seeing the impact that that's had on other people and feeling the kind of, I guess, like satisfaction and joy of other people having meaningful breakthroughs and experiences in their life. That's been immensely rewarding. And it's also been, as with, I think, any business or work, it's been its own arena of challenges, particularly in the early days. I remember the first time I did a workshop for 100 people online, and I was in Mexico at the time, and the town had power cuts every once a week. And there was a power cut that had, and there were like 100 people on a Zoom call, and some of them were like CEOs and leaders and stuff. And I raced down to my friend's house to get this backup generator. And just ran back and managed to get the power back on. But I was in a state. I was just so expanding my capacity, let's say, in that experience. And now, yeah, I think now I feel much more comfortable leading groups of that size and much more. I'd say if I had to kind of pin it down to one thing, there's more trust in life and more trust in myself to show up in a way that, yeah, where things work out and flow.

One of the things that I really appreciate about you as a teacher that I don't see with a lot of teachers is that you're transparent about your learning process. So you're not like, when I see you on Twitter or when I see you out in the world, you're, you're, I would say you're far more interested in learning than teaching. For sure. Like if I just look, if I just look at the time spent, maybe it's because in the situations I see you, but even on Twitter, I see you more interested in learning almost than teaching and, and also very much happy to share what you're learning, even if it's not a part of your teaching. Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm just, which is rare for teachers. A lot of times teachers get caught in the kind of the knowing aspect of things and not in the like learning aspect of things. And I think, and I think there's at some point also a natural tendency that happens after years of doing something that you have to be really specific about who you learn from. Right. So everybody wants to teach you, but that's, that can, that cannot always be a useful or fruitful things. So, yeah, I'm just wondering, like, so the question behind that is, is that natural? Was that a learning? Is there been a bit of a dance with that? What's been your experience and journey with the being a learner and being a teacher and finding that balance?

Yeah, it's a really great question. I think the honest answer is I love learning and very selfishly, I think part of the reason that I'm doing what I'm doing is that it's a fantastic excuse to continue learning. Like, it gives me a platform to invite people like yourself and other genuine specialists and experts in other fields that I can then learn in real time with them in front of a big group of people. And so I kind of view both the podcast that I have and the course as like a a forcing function to continue my own learning. I think that there's certainly a point where, um, like, you can kind of— or I can gain a certain level of, like, I feel like this topic makes sense to me now. And then for me, it's like, okay, what's the next— what's the next experiment? What's the next thing I want to really learn about and go deep in? And, you know, recently I've been fascinated in, um, neurodivergence. And there's a number of students that come in with ADHD with a constellation of different symptoms. And I find it fascinating talking to them, figuring out how their experience maps onto what I know. And, yeah, honestly, I would hate to one day become an expert and stop learning. That actually terrifies me a little bit. And I think something that I heard on your podcast, you guys were speaking about this, about how that kind of teacher-student dynamic can create disconnection in a way. And whilst I think it's obviously important to present with a level of professionalism and expertise, the more that I am able to view my students as people that I learn from as well, the less that disconnection happens.

Yeah. You spoke a little bit about the breathwork. You said I did, you kind of offhandedly said I did X amount of journeys and breath journeys can be a whole, I mean, my, I think, I think you know this, I did breathwork like every week, if not every other week, depending on my travel schedule for like 7 years, like hour-long sessions. So, and I did this. I didn't know it was that much. Yeah. So pre, you know, it was It was one of the— she's passed, dead, but she was the last person who was doing kind of the pure Reich breathwork that hadn't taken the Reich breathwork and like modified it. Right. I think a lot of the modifications that have been done to it, like Lowen's work, I think is great. So, so I'm not suggesting that it was better by any stretch, but, but I've also done a whole bunch of other kinds of breathwork in my life. Like, coherent breathing and all sorts of— I have a book this big of an Indian breathwork person, and I'll literally— that my friend gave me, and I'll just open it up and I'll be like, let's try that for a bit, and I'll try it and see what it does to my system. So what do you mean by breathwork journeys and what's the result in your mind? Not the result, but what's the experience like for one of your breathwork journeys? Yeah, sure.

Well, I think it's helpful to categorize breathwork into— there's many categories, but the two main ones in my mind are the kind of real-time shifting, either upshifting or downshifting your state. So something like triangular breathing or humming will calm people down. Or if you do Breath of Fire, Kapalabhati, Wim Hof hyperventilation, that will amp people up and you'll feel more alert.

Can we just stop for a second? Yes. So everybody who's listening, just big deep breath in. That's what he's talking about as far as like a breath to regulate a state. Your state is different after a single deep breath in. I just want to, I want, I want, I love that visceral experience, not just the, the explanation. Okay. Go ahead.

Yeah, it's great. And we could do another full breath and then humming on the exhale also releases nitric oxide. And that's one of the most effective ways of downshifting is just like a long hum all the way to the end of your breath. And again, you'll feel so much different after just one or two hums. Want to do it? Yeah, let's do it.

Okay, we'll do one just because we don't want it to be too boring.

Yeah, get comfy. So Full breath in through the nose. Inhale. And then humming through the nose.

Fuck that, it feels too good. Let's do another.

The rest of the podcast will just be Joe and Johnny humming for 20 minutes.

Yeah, it has that same thing with the— that's like the, the ujjayi breath has that same thing where it, like, you can feel it, like, toning the, the, the vagus nerve, vagal, whatever. I'm not good with words, but yeah, the, the nerve, you can— the constriction that the hum causes also creates like a vibration in that nerve corridor. That's cool.

I've never done that one. Yeah, it's great. I did it this morning in the cold tub as I was trying to find my breath. So that's one category. And the other category has many names, but transformational breathing is the general category. And that includes holotropic, Reichian, conscious connected breathing, rebirthing. There's all different types and names. The particular branch that I trained under was called Facilitated Breath Repatterning, which is a form of Conscious Connected Breathing. But the practitioner will basically read the breath during a journey and make certain adjustments, certain verbal cues, nerve flossing, different things to both create more ease in the exhale and sometimes more activation and energy on the inhale.. And generally speaking, once someone kind of drops into this circular breathing pattern, the journeys go from anywhere between an hour to 2 hours. And once someone's kind of dropped into the breath, these incomplete reflexes or stored emotions will tend to kind of rise to the surface. And for me, it was almost like layers of an onion. Like, one thing would come, I would move, express whatever the thing needed to be felt would feel. And then there was a brief integration, and then the next piece would come up, and it was just like so many different things would arise. And for me, it's always like, I don't recommend that people do this online because I think there's a huge amount to be gained from having an in-person facilitator, like, really out of safety reasons, such that if something big arises, they can be there to help co-regulate and help you to ground.

Totally agree. Yeah, we do our version of breathwork, and— but we'll only do it in our in-person stuff.

Yeah, I think it's, it's really important. And, and also having a high facilitator to breather ratio as well. Um, in, in the, the place that I trained, it's, it's 1 to 4, um, is, is what they tend to—

we do 1 to 3, 1 to 4. Yeah, nice. I totally agree with you. Got to have it. Yeah. Because I've seen people go comatose. I've seen people have massive trauma response. I've seen so much puking. So much stuff happens in those rooms.

You really want that high ratio. And it's not that— I know there's people out there that do breathwork to crowds of 200 or 300 people and it will work in the sense that big emotions can arise. But what we talked about earlier with that mobilization, cycle, it's much harder for people, especially if they don't have that kind of downregulation capacity to feel through and to find the ease and calm and integration on the other side. So I've known people that have done some of these holotropic, let's say, and then they've been in this kind of semi-triggered state for the next several weeks or even months, and they found it really hard to downshift.

Yeah, I worked with somebody who did some version of a breathwork journey and didn't sleep for fucking a decade. Well, yeah, no doubt there is like— and I would offer that there's one, not knowing how to downregulate is part of it, but there's also— that's the— or a trauma gets released and they don't know how to actually integrate the trauma is another potential thing. But the And so, so there's a retraumatization that happens. And, but there's another too, which is like, you brought all this stuff up, but you didn't heal it. So maybe it doesn't retraumatize, but like, great, you had the experience. And I've seen this with like, with both some drugs that'll do or medicines that'll do the same thing and breathwork where they get these big states, they get these big outs, but there's no integration of it. So you're not actually seeing transformation of a person over time. Like, I did another ayahuasca journey and I had this other big experience, but the way you're living, your relationship, your friends, your level of connection, your level of emotional fluidity, your thought patterns aren't particularly changing. I've seen the same thing with breathwork where someone's doing breathwork that doesn't have the integration care afterwards where they're having big experiences but they're not actually integrating into transformation or development. Yeah, absolutely.

And, um, one interesting piece that I love about breathwork in particular is that when you're— if you're breathing someone, especially in a one-on-one capacity, you can, you can see the changes in their breath kind of before and after. And you can tell, has that, has that thing landed? Has it been integrated by the way that they're breathing? And, you know, if they come, if they come for another session the next day or the next week, then it's like you can see if that actually landed in their system. Whereas with a lot of other modalities, particularly psychedelics, things like that, it's very difficult to know was there actually a meaningful shift or was it just a big cathartic release that didn't have any lasting impact on them as a human.

Honigurschen. Yeah. So, I know that at one point I was suggesting that you might do some live in-person ones. Has that happened or do you have plans for it in the future?

Yeah, I've been doing one-on-one sessions with people here in Boulder. Oh, great. Mostly friends and also the odd kind of client as well. Awesome. Which is kind of a good mix because I do really miss the in-person live interaction that I know you get with Groundbreakers, which has felt like a good balance for me.

That's great. Fantastic. Glad to hear it. Yeah, I mean, that absolutely changed my whole world. That's the 7 years that I did. I mean, it changed the way that I had an orgasm. It changed the way I laughed. It changed the, like, my capacity to— my resilience, my stress level. It changed so much. My armoring, the physical musculature armoring, it had a huge impact at 7 years. A lot of the impact happened in the first little bit because I was very ripe, and then there was just like something that happened like over time that there was an eroding and a wearing away that happened over time that was really useful.

Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned laugh. Both my laugh and my voice have changed. Even I listened to a podcast episode I did 4 years ago, and my voice sounds noticeably different then compared to how it sounds now. And I think a lot of that is because the tension in my lower belly and lower diaphragm, a lot of it's kind of been released.

And so when you're doing your breathwork, I could geek out. Inhalation, exhalation, body position. I could completely geek out, but it would bore the crap out of everybody. But, at some point, I'd love to chat with you about it. But, I'm just curious, when you're doing the in-person breathwork and you're watching somebody breathe, are you making adjustments in any way to help them deepen into their breaths? Or, is it an interactive thing or is it a prescription thing?

No, it's constant real-time adjustments. So, there's hands on the body usually most of the time. Um, and generally what, what we're looking for is both seeing like what is someone's window of tolerance, what is their capacity, and keeping them within that window. Yeah. Um, and then titrating, or pendulating is another term, the breath to either increase more energy, usually by like deepening the inhale. Yeah. Sometimes getting like hands under the rib cage and allowing more, more air to go into the upper lungs. Yeah. Or more often than not, especially with kind of Type A high achievers, it's helping them find ease in the exhale. So often people will have like holding in their throat or their lower belly.

Oh, wow. It's really similar. It's really similar to the work that I do. Sorry to interrupt. No, that— Yeah. It's all— Doesn't surprise me. It's all— for me, it's the same thing. It's the most full breath inward capacity breath. Yep. Like a stretching. Like, how do you increase the both in the belly and the chest and other places? But like, and how do you release with no effort? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So it's really actually really similar. Fascinating.

And then finding out what are all of the blocks and tension to either a full kind of vibrant inhale or a relaxed effortless exhale. That's right. And usually starting around the rib cage and then kind of working up or down depending on— and also bearing in mind how many sessions is someone going to do and do you want to open up a big piece knowing that you'll have 3 or 4 or 5 sessions afterwards to help integrate it if something big arises.

Well, I could geek out after we turn this off. I want to keep on. Okay. I have to go to another podcast. So it was a total pleasure to have you. Is there anything that you want to leave our audience with? Any thought process, any good wishes, or tell them about anything you're doing?

Yeah. Well, thanks so much. This has been so fun. I have a podcast as well called Curious Humans Podcast. You've been a guest. If you enjoy this conversation, there's a chance that might resonate too. And if people want to learn more about the Nervous System Mastery course, we have a spring cohort coming up in mid-March, and the website is nsmastery.com. And I love seeing how much overlap there is between our two communities. There's a bunch of people joining that have taken AOA, and I know vice versa. It's really cool to see that overlap. Very sweet. Pleasure to have you on, Johnny. Yeah, you too, Jay.

Yeah, pleasure. All right, see you soon. Yeah. Thanks for listening to The Art of Accomplishment. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and rate us in your podcast app. We'd love your feedback, so feel free to send us questions or comments. You can reach out to us, join our newsletter, or check out our courses at artofaccomplishment.com. Accomplishment.com.