#34 PTSD Relief Starts Here: 3 Body Awareness Tools That Work | Recovery Secrets Series

Welcome to the Overcoming PTSD Podcast. My name is Brad Schipke, and this is the limited series called Recovery Secrets Daily Coaching. Now, these were private sessions that I originally ran as a paid coaching program, but now for the first time ever, I'm making all 100+ sessions available for free for all of you podcast listeners. And this series is over 100 days of practical strategies that have helped thousands of trauma survivors fully heal. So make sure to subscribe because I'm dropping a new episode every single weekday until the archive is complete, and you definitely do not want to miss it. So without further ado, let's dive on in.

All right, we are live here. Welcome everyone to our Recovery Secrets Daily coaching call. It is awesome to be here with you all. We have a great topic that we're gonna talk about that's gonna lean into what we do next week, and next week is our first ever processing bootcamp week. So I'm super excited about that, but I'll let Brad do a little intro here.

So good morning everybody. Great to see you all bright and early as always. If you're new, Great to have you. Great to have you part of the team, part of the family. And if you don't know, I'm Brad, but it's today we're going to have an exciting episode. We're going to be talking about a few different relief tools that will also help you build some awareness around your body and the emotions that you're feeling inside of your body that will help you with next week's processing bootcamp. Because one, you might've heard us talk about this before with processing is that there's different channels. There's different ways. To access a trauma, right? So one is the actual memory itself. One is the thought, like different thoughts can lead you to the root of the trauma. What's in our different beliefs and different emotions. So today we're going to be helping you become more aware of the emotions that you're feeling while also, you know, working through these different relief tools. Because sometimes it's hard to become aware of something until it's gone. And these tools, like it will remove so much of the tension, it will reveal what is still there, what is still present, what is still Trauma. So that's what we're gonna be talking about today. It's gonna be a great episode, very practical, very hands-on. We'll probably have you guys do some stuff, so it'll be kind of like a little workshop here.

Really, the, the theme today is gonna be body awareness, and the, the theme today is body awareness because we're leading into, excuse me, a processing tool next week. We're gonna do a deep dive on a processing tool that is based around emotions and based around basically having that body awareness. Now, you don't have to have excellent body awareness to be able to have success with that tool, but we're gonna start to develop that skill even more and And set you up for success. And we're gonna use these, these tools and these skills next week when we're introducing this topic. So there's 3 tools really that we're gonna teach here today. And do you, do you have any stories or experiences with these tools that you wanna, do you like to share before we jump into teaching them?

Yeah, I think what I wanna say is like, like Kayleen said, and like I said earlier, next week we're going into protectors, which is very much based around the body and emotions, at least starting out. And then it kind of moves into a visualization exercise. But you don't need to be an expert at these tools. The beautiful thing about these tools is that you only have to do them a handful of times to really grasp the concept, and then you get it, and then the skill's with you. And then we're gonna be talking about breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and body scan. And then basically what you'll be doing is you'll always be scanning your body, right, for the tension. You'll be aware of how your body's reacting to your environment. You'll be aware of how your body's reacting to different triggers. And then from there, you can use that information, you know. The emotions that you're feeling in your body to then go further and process more. That's the beauty about this is that your body's a very, it's very simple to become aware of what's going on in your body, right? It's one of the easiest things to become aware of. It's a little more challenging, obviously not impossible, but it's a little bit more challenging to become aware of all the thoughts that you're having 24/7, right? But it's very easy to, you know, scan your body really quickly and just be like, I'm feeling a lot of tension here. Let's do some processing on that. So But my point was, it's very simple to develop that skill. And you, you should try all of these tools. If you've seen these tools before and you haven't done it yet, take the time to do it a few times over this weekend. You know, do each one, you know, tonight, tomorrow night, Sunday night, and you'll at least start developing that skill because you don't have to do it too many times. And you'll actually probably really enjoy it because they're very relaxing tools. So I remember for me, We're gonna teach a kind of a, a longer version of progressive muscle relaxation and also a quick, I think we call it like the 2-minute progressive, progressive muscle relaxation, which I remember I kind of like developed. I can't, I don't think developed, I made it up. I just like, I was, I was like too lazy.

Develops it, develops something.

I know it sounds, it's developed, but it was just like, I was, I was basically too lazy to go through the whole progressive muscle relaxation exercise, which is where you tense every little muscle in your body and then you release it. And I was like, there's gotta be a faster way. This takes like 20 minutes. And I just like, I want to get it and fall asleep because I was doing it before bed. So then I just, you know, figured out a quick one which we'll walk you through. And I remember doing that laying in bed and it would just relax my whole body except for, like I was saying before, that the biggest of traumas and sometimes it would help release that as well. But usually doing that exercise or doing that exercise in that moment revealed to me the thing I needed to work on. So that's a story for me where it's like doing this exercise So it removed all the extraneous stresses and tensions from my body and just revealed that one big trauma that I had to work on. So that, that's something that this tool has helped me with processing everything else.

So I love these tools and I love what you shared about these tools, right? And we, we had a kind of a running joke for a while, right? When we were like seeking help and we were going to different therapists and like trying to figure out what was going on, you know, we'd always go to a therapist and basically kind of like get a lay of the land and We'd always be like, can you give me something that I can— like homework, basically. Give me homework. Here's where I want to go.

What can I do?

What can I do to make this better other than just show up here every week? Right. And so every single time that we went to see a new therapist or whatever it was, every single time they assigned progressive muscle relaxation and breathing and breathing exercises. Right. And so these are not rocket science exercises. Many of you have heard of all of these, if not some of these, at some point on your journey. Now we're going to kind of show you our versions of them and show you how to make them practical. But what's most important is that you take action on these. It's easy to write them off. It's easy to say, okay, a breathing exercise, progressive muscle relaxation, body scan, whatever. Definitely practice these tools because they're going to set you up for success in your processing. They do become essential. And that's something I feel like I missed. Well, there's so much I missed in like those experiences with like the therapist. There's so much that was missed. And one of the things I felt like was the importance. You know, you're not telling me why I'm doing these things. You're not telling like, Breathing, yeah, sure, it can help you get into a calm state, but that doesn't really matter if you don't have a long-term plan to fix what's causing that elevated state, right? So really powerful exercises for a lot of different reasons. And what I want to hone in on, and I think it's a quote by Jim Rohn, he says, what's easy to do is easy not to do, right? And so Brad said, we want you to practice these a couple times this weekend. Now, you don't have to obsess over them. I mean, you can practice them while we're teaching them right here, but Spend a little bit of time on them this weekend so that next week you have a baseline, you have an understanding for what we're going to be doing and what we're going to be teaching. And I love that quote, what's easy to do is easy not to do. Okay? Because these are typically some of the simplest exercises. I would say they're the simplest exercises, which is why I typically pair them up. They're super straightforward. Breathing, you already do all the time. You're making small tweak there. PMR and body scan, really super simple. Right. So they're the easiest tools to do, which means they're the easiest tools to not do as well.

Yeah. And what's really beautiful about this and what you guys are learning right now is because you do learn the why and you, you, you're learning other skills that you can utilize with these exercises. Right. So another story with breathing exercises that I have is that I'll, I'll actually tell that a little bit later, but you can use these for processing and I'll, I'll go into a story later once we talk about breathing, which we can dive into right now if you want. So the first thing we'll talk about is breathing, right? Breathing is important. Breathing is something you do 24/7. And if you imagine yourself in a stressed out state, like just how, what does your breathing look like, right? When you're stressed out, when you're anxious, when you're on edge, how is your breathing, right? And we talked about this before with like awareness and physiology and like being aware of your body and how it's reacting and, and things like that. Your breathing is shallow, right? You're taking small breaths and you're not really Your body's not getting as much oxygen as it should be. So one thing with breathing, when you start learning how to take deep breaths, is that you, you start, you know, giving your body the oxygen it needs, your, your brain the oxygen it needs. And it's, it's also triggering your body to, or basically telling your body, telling your mind that everything is okay. Right? Because you can influence your thoughts, you can influence your mind through your body. And we did talk about this before, but if all of you right now just start, you sit up a little bit straighter. And you just have like a little smile. It doesn't have to be like a huge smile on your face, but it could just be a little smile on your face and you just start taking in deep breaths.

Right.

And Deline right here says, I hold my breath. And like, I found myself doing that too. You know, when I have been stressed, I'm like, I find that I'm like, I hold my breath and it's weird. And then you do a lot of shallow breaths, a lot of shallow breaths. So what this does, it's twofold. It relaxes you and kind of can change the way that you're thinking and feeling by replenishing the oxygen in your body and also just You know, that physiology, you know, signaling to your brain that you're not stressed out by taking control of your breathing. So that's something that this is where like the interactive part comes in. Everybody sit up straight. I would recommend a little smile, cuz, cuz if it'll feel good, you know.

Feel good. It always feels good to smile.

Yeah, it does. And, and that's kind of like the, the point of all this, but you don't have to. And then just start taking deep breaths. So what I like to do in the beginning is just, I like to take as big of a breath as I can. I like to keep it really simple. You know, some people say Breathe in for 5 seconds, do box breathing, do whatever, do whatever, whatever. I never really understood. Like, I've done all those things, but for me, the thing that always worked best, like, I'm gonna take, I'm gonna breathe in as much oxygen as I, as I possibly can, fill my lungs up as, as much as I possibly can, and then let it out slowly. And then what I usually do is I blow it out through my, through my lips to let it out slowly.

Mm-hmm.

Because then it's relaxing. Mm-hmm. And then you don't have to like constrict yourself so much. You just like let it out slowly through your lips. And that's what I personally like to do. I know you, you kind of laughed at that, but— No, no, no.

I was just picturing a, like a whale.

Oh, like a—

no, no, it's not just like, you know, like a whale, their, their blowhole or whatever.

Yeah. So everybody here, and we'll talk about diaphragmatic breathing, but everybody here, take it, take, take that deep breath, bring as much oxygen into your— much air into your lungs as possible. Hold it there for a few seconds. And what you'll, you'll realize is that you'll start feeling a little bit of tension in your body. And then let it go slowly. And then just do that again. Do that 3, 4, 5 times just right now.

Just breathe.

And there's no limit to like what you can do. I'm just saying 3, 4, 5 times just for, for right now. You could do that for the rest of the session if you want to. But that's as simple as it gets. But knowing the reason why behind it makes it that much easier to actually put into action. And I never really appreciated breathing cuz I always thought it was like, honestly, just like a stupid, like you're gonna tell me to breathe?

Yeah.

It's like I have. PTSD and you're going to tell me to breathe. But if you do that exercise of filling up your lungs, you sit up, you sit a bit, sit up a little bit straighter, you fill up your lungs, you hold it for a few seconds and you let it go slowly. It's incredibly relaxing. And this is where I'll tell my story, because when I started doing breathing like that, every time I exhaled, I could feel a little release of trauma. I could feel a little bit of release of emotion coming out. And we talk about this all the time. Like, We, we talked about a whole, we had a whole coaching session on releasing emotion, right? So this is where you can even bring processing into a relaxation exercise because the more you relax, the more the trauma will, the more you let your walls down and the more the emotion will kind of come front and center, which is good, right? Because we want to become aware of the emotion. And I, I was able to kind of turn breathing and that's not the point of like this coaching session, but just to give you an idea of how I was able to use it. In a different way was I was able to use breathing to let the walls down, become aware of a certain emotion that needed to be released, and then I released it, allowed myself to feel that. And it was beautiful. It was a beautiful way to process and let go of that specific emotion. So that's, that's my 2 cents.

I love that. I mean, that's, that's all amazing, right? And I think the most important thing that I love that you bring to the table is do not overcomplicate this. Well, is the blowhole, right? But is do not overcomplicate this. You're already breathing all the time. One of the reasons I love the breathing exercises is because you're breathing all the time, like ready or not, like it or not. Like that's what we're doing. So all we're doing is making a little bit of a tweak to how we're kind of doing that. Now Brad said like there's multiple reasons why we do these exercises. So these exercises specifically are going to help you build body awareness, but all of the recovery toolbox tool exercises are going to help you Deactivate what we call your stress response system. So we have something in our brain, it looks— this is a very, very simplistic version of it, right? But it looks something like this, right? And so our stress response system, basically what happens is we experience some sort of potential danger, some sort of stressor, and our body sends signals to, you know, it basically sends hormones to the rest of our body to tell it to turn on certain alert systems. And so it turns on anxiety, it increases your heart rate, it increases your respiratory rate. And so it turns all these things on, and this is your— Freeze, fight, or flight mode. So it turns these things on. But when you have PTSD, that kind of, that stress is always there. So these things stay on all the time. So not only is breathe— so breathing's gonna help kind of shut some of these switches off. And in addition to that, it's gonna help you build awareness of what's going on in your body. And in addition to that, you can use it even when you are doing your processing to help you release and let go of emotions. So now, Something I like to incorporate into breathing, and I need this more all the time because I'm just like constantly speaking too quickly, right? But it's something we call diaphragmatic breathing. So I teach this in The Art of Trauma Relief. Most importantly is to not overcomplicate this process. But when you are breathing, when you're doing this breathing, what you want to do, and there's, there's a lot of benefits to diaphragmatic breathing, and diaphragmatic is just like a fancy word for saying your diaphragm, breathing with your diaphragm, which is a fancy way of saying, saying belly breathing. Okay, so really all that you want to do Is when you're doing this breathing, make sure you also fill your belly.

Okay?

And there's a tool I, or a way I teach to explain that, a little exercise, exercise I teach to explain that, which is if you've never done this belly breathing before, if you're a singer, specifically if you're like a professional singer, an opera singer, you know how to belly breathe. Yoga, I think also is common for that belly breathing. But for those of you who have never done it, you're going to breathe and you're going to fill up your chest. And it's going to be hard at first actually to fill up your belly as well. So lay down on the floor, put a book on your stomach, and then breathe so that you get the book to rise before your chest. And what that's going to do is help you build basically the muscle, and it's going to take sometimes tremendous amount of like concentration to get that book to rise first, of understanding how to actually breathe with your belly. Okay, and so again, what you're really doing there is you're increasing the, the amount of oxygen that you that you take in or the amount of air that you can kind of hold. So what I like to do is a 5-count exercise. You can do this in all sorts of ways. The numbers don't really matter. All that matters is that you're doing something that's comfortable for you, right? So for me versus Brad, I mean, if you can imagine, you might not be able to see how different we are in size. And so you can imagine that me counting to 5 and him counting to 5 is gonna fill different amounts in each of our respective lungs and stomachs.

I didn't even think about that. That's probably why I was like, none of these Really make sense because I feel like I'm not taking a full breath. So then I just changed it to, I'm just gonna fill up my lungs as much as I possibly can. And then it started working for me.

Right, right.

Yeah. So I'm like, why would it—

yeah, works for me. It might only take me like 3 seconds, right? Like 3 Mississippi.

Surprising.

I never realized that. I'm not even halfway there, right? And so the numbers don't matter, but what I like to do is like breathe in for 3, a count of 3, hold it for a count of 2, so that makes 5, and then exhale For a count of 5. So, that's what works best for me. That's what I found feels best with my more natural rhythm of the way that I breathe. So, it just feels very natural to breathe. Now, it's effort-based, right? So, I actively breathe in and 1, 2, like slow it down, 1, 2, 3, and then hold it and then breathe out for 5. But, that's where it fell into what feels best for me. Now, again, the numbers don't really matter. Also, they don't have to be exact seconds, okay? Just count.

Yeah.

It doesn't matter if they're 1 Mississippi or they're 1, 2, 3, doesn't matter. Most importantly is that you are doing it. And so what I would tell myself, and I still have to tell myself this sometimes, but for different reasons, is like, hold on, slow down, breathe, pause, breathe.

Okay?

And just get myself to stop for a second and to do that breathing. All right? So that's breathing. Again, most important thing is don't overcomplicate it. If you can get that diaphragmatic breathing, that's just going to benefit you even more when you're doing this breathing. Now, You can also work to kind of make this habitual and work to bring this type of breathing into your day, into your life, into maybe more specifically stressful activities. I know there are studies done that people typically hold their breath when they reply to emails. So, being aware of what times you might need these breathing exercises, but super, super simple to implement. Again, the most important thing being not to overcomplicate it.

Yeah, yeah. So, First thing, do the book exercise. Lay down on your back, back on the floor, put a book on your belly and learn how to do that diaphragmatic breathing. Like a textbook is probably like ideal, but it doesn't really matter. And then you only have to do that once, cuz once you know how to breathe through your belly and you're getting it, and you might already know how to do it, you might just be able to intuitively be able to do that. But do that once and then do some of these breathing exercises. And also like, how many of you guys are doing the breathing exercises right now? I would highly recommend as you're listening to this, it's something you're doing anyways, you're breathing, might as well get the most out of your breathing and start relaxing through this. And not only will it help you feel more relaxed, but it'll also help you learn more and retain more. 'Cause when you're more relaxed, you can retain more. So.

I just wanna breathe for the rest of this session.

I know I do.

So good. So the next couple of tools that we talk about, they piggyback on each other pretty well. We're gonna fly through one of them and then PMR will spend a little bit of time on. Okay. So body scan, we're going to fly through this exercise. This is going to be really important next week. Okay? So I'm going to spend very little time on it because it's very simple, but don't dismiss it. Okay? Body scan, super duper simple. All that you're doing is actively searching your body in a systematic way. You can go from bottom to top, top to bottom, you choose. In a systematic way, you're going through each and every muscle in your body. So like, okay, how's my forehead, my jaw, my face, my neck?

Mm-hmm.

My shoulders, my traps.

Oh, what are those called? Traps are in the back. Belts. Deltoids.

Right. So you're just kind of going systematically through your body. Now you can go top to bottom, front, top to bottom, back. Do whatever works for you in regards to that system. And you're basically checking in with yourself and asking, is there tension? Is there tension there? Now, if there is tension there, what you can do is notice that tension and then actively release it. And now sometimes what's cool about the body scan, sometimes that's all that needs to be done, right? So sometimes you can kind of feel that stress in your shoulders and you can just kind of relax your shoulders a little bit, right? Or you can feel that tightness in your jaw and you can just relax a little bit. I know for me, I used to hold a lot in my chest, but also in my hands, right? And so sometimes I do this, I would be laying down before bed and I would notice my hands were all balled up. Okay, so that's all that it is. You're systematically going through when there's tension, Actively releasing it. Now you can add breathing to that to, like, release that tension. And what I want you to do with this exercise is notice where you commonly hold tension. Sometimes you're just gonna be able to release the tension and it will be gone. What you'll typically find is there's gonna be a handful of spots where you do this body scan exercise and you're like, oh, there's that tension there again. Right? So I just mentioned my chest and my hands. Right? Or for some people, it's their, their jaw. Right? There's that tension again. There's that tension again.

Mm-hmm.

That is information that we want you to have for next week. Okay? So all that you're doing is scanning and releasing and just taking note of where things commonly pop up, where you commonly hold tension in your body.

Yeah. So action time, workshop time, everybody right now, cuz this is something you can do 24/7 too, right? You can just do it really quickly. As Kayleen was talking, I was scanning my body and I was releasing some tension cuz I just like, I kind of like naturally just do that. And we all do, you know, like You're just a little bit more on and like, you kind of have to be, or else like we would just be like super zen. And I mean, which is like fine, but not the energy I really wanna bring. But something that you can do 24/7, and we call it the 24/7 body scan cuz you can do it 24/7 anytime, anywhere in front of people because it's just scanning in your mind. So start from your toes right now, right? Start from your toes. Go through all your toes, scan your toes, relax them. If there's any tension, feel if there's any tension, top of your feet, bottom of your feet. Ankles, calves, and just like move up. And you can do it quickly. You can do it slowly. In the beginning, it might be helpful to do it slowly, muscle by muscle, so you can like really learn where you hold the tension. And then from there you can start doing it a little bit quicker. And then you just move your way up and do that right now. Do it right now. When you feel the tension, just relax it, release it, you know, and just sit back in your chair or wherever you are a little bit better. If you're driving, still stay alert. So say nothing happens, but you can still relax. But, uh, yeah. Yeah, that's, that's, that's it for that.

That's it. I mean, super duper simple.

Simple and simple, but powerful. Simple, but powerful. And that's where you build most of the awareness is just by scanning and be like, oh, here's a tension that I'm trying to release, but I'm having some trouble releasing it. And that's one that you want to just log for next week.

And that leads in really well to progressive muscle relaxation because what progressive— now I want you to think about that and I hope it doesn't come off as condescending, but I want you to think about the name of progressive muscle relaxation. It's easy to sometimes have a name for something, say a name for something, and not really be in tune to what the words mean and what we're saying with those words. Progressive muscle relaxation is relaxing muscle in a systematic way, right? So progressive muscle relaxation, okay? That's what it is. Now, what the exercise— how the exercise is like classically designed is basically you're doing that body scan But instead of just looking for tension and releasing it, what you're doing is you're going to start systematically again from top to bottom or bottom to top, and you're going to tense certain muscle groups. So if you stop— excuse me, if you start at the top of your head, right? So forehead might be the first thing that you want to kind of work with, right? And you want to really tense that up so you can see my eyebrows.

Actually, do you know there is a muscle up here? Have you ever seen a bald person?

Yeah.

And like, you, like when they do something, like their whole tops of their head moves.

So you start with head and that like is kind of like, I don't know how to do it, but your eye, your eyebrows a little bit. I, I, I don't know. I typically like to start people here cuz that, that can be a little bit of a challenging one.

Right.

But you, if you can, if you can tense them up, if you can tense your head, great. Do it. Right. And start there. But then go like systematically go down your body. Right. So, and what you wanna do is, again, classically what you wanna do is you wanna tense those muscles, whatever that muscle group is. Right. So if you're gonna do your forehead, tense that. As much as you can, as hard as you can for 20 seconds and hold that tension for 20 seconds and then release it and then breathe for 10 seconds and then move on to the next muscle group, right? So then move on to your jaw, for example, right? And hold that tension for 20 seconds and then release it and then move on to your neck. And for some of this, it's going to be like, how do I tense that muscle, right? It can be a little bit strange at first to get used to. Tense for 20 seconds and then move down to your chest.

Mm-hmm.

And you want to get as minute with as possible. Then move to your biceps, you know, hold for 20 seconds as tense as you can, and then release. Okay, then you move to your forearms, right? So there's going to be muscles where you're like, I have no idea how to tense that, right? And you have to kind of move around and figure it out. And then of course, you know, your, your back, right? So your upper back, your lower back, your triceps, your, your hands, your wrists, your fingers. Okay, so there's all these things. And so the idea is to go in a systematic way and go down And, with each thing, that's each muscle basically, tense it for 20 seconds and then release it and kind of lean into and relax that for 10 seconds. And, the idea is to go through your entire body. Okay. Now, this typically takes a while. If you imagine how— now, we're talking about 20 real seconds. 20 seconds is quite a long time when you're tensing something, you're going to start to feel it, right?

Yeah.

And it's a great exercise in full, great exercise. Typically though, it's going to take between 30 and 45 minutes, maybe 20 and 35 minutes, right? Depending on—

Depending on how small you go.

How many muscles, you know, you do and kind of what you cover. And so that's a great exercise. And if you have the time and you're willing to put in the time, I absolutely recommend doing it because what it's again going to do, it's going to allow you to relax and release a lot of attention, excuse me, a lot of tension. And then what you're going to start to notice is places that, that tension is still there, right? Where, where you're still holding that tension. Again, that's gonna be important for next week for this tool that we're gonna do. But Brad kind of engineered, designed, cultivated, you know, when we were kind of going through our journey, it was like, this exercise feels great. It feels great at the end, but like, I'm so exhausted already. Like, it, you know, I don't wanna spend 45 minutes doing it. It becomes a chore. It's great once or twice a week if you can spend that time. But if you can't spend that time and you still want the benefit, we use something we call the 30-second progressive muscle relaxation. Okay. And what it is, do you wanna explain it?

Yeah, sure. I do have one point on the progressive muscle relaxation. When you're, when you're counting like 1 or 10, 9, 8, you can kind of get into like a zen mode and like just move like very like, like rhythmically through it. And you can kind of like, you just like kind of get into the zone of counting. Very steadily, and counting itself can be relaxing. So I want to say that. But in regards to the whatever it was thirty second two minute progressive muscle relaxation, basically the way you think about it is like well when I thought about it, I'm like okay how do I how can I basically minimize the amount of time and maximize the amount of muscles that I flex right? And I was thinking about like when you think about it like a joint like your arm, you have the bicep and you have the tricep right? One is One is what? Pulling. One is pushing, right? And I thought about that with like most things. It's like you kind of have like a, even with your fingers, you have like a pulling and then you also have like a pushing and those are different muscle groups. So what I kind of thought was, you know, I'll do that. I'll do one motion, which will be basically like all of the front of my body. So like, I'll, like, I'll scrunch my face. I'll tense my, my chest, my abs, my, my quads, quadriceps. The front of my shins by like pulling my feet up. And then also the same thing with my toes, pulling my toes up. And then also like my neck, it looks really, really crazy. And then also like shoulders, but then you just like, you flex everything and you do it for 10 seconds, flex everything and you do it for 10 seconds and then you release it for 10 seconds. And then you do the same thing on your back. And my gosh, it works beautifully.

Beautifully.

Oh, you're so relaxing. It's almost more relaxing because you're exerting more energy. It's a different type of relaxing. Like, have you, have you done it?

Yeah. Yeah. I've done it.

It's beautiful.

Like, I love it here. What's most important is the action. It's not like the time isn't so important if you want to do that for 10 seconds or 20 seconds or 30 seconds or right, right, right. Whatever feels good to you. Right. And so this is part of being an independent healer, like doing this exercise. The time is the specific time is not important. What makes you feel good at the end of it? 10 seconds might be perfect, but you might be like, I want a little bit more, right? And so 30 seconds might be perfect, or you do it twice or 3 times, whatever works for you, right? So there's the little hack, the little shortcut to condense the time that you're doing that, but still get the tremendous benefit of that exercise.

Yeah, try that before you go to sleep.

That's a great one. That's a really, really good one because it relaxes your body, man. And if you've never done progressive muscle relaxation, you're going to go through and be like, I know that there's a muscle here. I just, I have no idea. How do I flex my forearm or how do I flex like my shin or my calf? And like, it's, it's actually, it's a, it's very, very fun. I remember the first couple times going through, it's, it's kind of like a puzzle. It was very, very fun to figure out how to kind of make that stuff work. So that's what I have for your, our exercise.

And I just wanna say, how many people are still doing their deep breathing? Just another reminder to start that up again. Because I'm sure, like, I've been doing it. I've been scanning my body this whole time and I'm feeling more relaxed than when I started. So I'm hoping that you guys are doing it. You're implementing it, you're trying it, you're practicing it right now as we're doing this, because this is a great opportunity to get some practice in, especially now that I'm reminding you. And now you can also see how easy it is to like forget and like why you need these reminders, like maybe throughout your day or these times to just like take a second. So that's all. Just wanted to remind you, right? I know.

It slows me down. So it doesn't take long to get wound up again though.

Okay.

So those are exercises for today. Some amazing exercises to start to implement. Remember, what's easy to do is easy not to do. So take a little bit of time today, tomorrow, over the weekend to practice these a little bit. They're gonna help you build the body awareness. We're gonna use them next week. They're gonna be important. Take a note. It could be physically, digitally, just mentally. Take a note of where you're finding that tension is commonly lingering. That's gonna come up next week. Okay, so a lot to look forward to next week. We're doing a deep dive, we're doing a processing bootcamp on one of our processing tools. Again, everything that we covered here this week is going to tie into— I mean, everything always ties into everything else, right? But is going to tie into what we cover next week. So super, super excited about that. I want each and every one of you to give yourselves a pat on the back for this week. You made it through another week. You did an amazing job. You showed up for yourself, you took action for yourself, and you deserve the time that you put into you.

Mm-hmm.

So let's keep that going. Let's keep that rock and rolling for next week.

Carol is already saying, I'm feeling very calm now, my muscles, and very relaxed.

Very relaxed.

How many, how many other people have been doing this, have been doing the breathing? Let us know how you feel right now. Do you feel calm? Do you feel calmer? Because it's good. And also the Processing Bootcamp, it's going to be, it's going to blow your mind. It's going to be one of the best coaching weeks ever. Honestly, I'm not even hyping it up too much. I'm not hyping it up enough because that one tool will change your life. And the amount of depth that we're going to be going into next week is going to be Incredible. It's going to be incredible. You're just going to get a great foundation for processing, for the tool and everything else.

So Jen asking, why is breathing deeply so difficult or why am I resistant to doing it? That's super common too, right? We tend to kind of get amped up, right? Even, even me now, right now I'm amped up for different reasons. It's because I'm excited and I have like a lot of energy and like there's so much I want to say in such a short period of time. That's like kind of my natural energy and my natural mode of being. You know, so I mean, if you can just kind of do with, with what you want in your life, you know, it's not necessarily a bad thing to, to be a certain way or act a certain way or kind of do a certain thing. Like deep breathing is something I need to remind myself of. And I try to remind myself before I start a training, also depending on who I'm doing a training for, to just slow down. 'Cause I get so excited about things because I love what I do because it, I'm just like constantly.

Yeah.

Excited and happy and have all this energy. So it's not necessarily a bad thing to have that resistance, but it is really going to help your body work more efficiently. So you can just remind yourself, like, it's okay. And you don't have to do it for long, right? You can just pause for literally 10 seconds, not even 10 seconds, 5 seconds. Just take a deep breath. And then that, even just doing that, is going to change your outcome there.

Yeah. And Jen, sometimes I had some resistance to this as well, as well as some other relaxation exercises because It relaxes you to the point, like I was saying before, where it starts letting walls down and emotion starts to come up. And sometimes that can be uncomfortable. And I know, Jen, you're, you're pretty far along and you'll, you know, quite a bit. But for some people, they're not sure about how to deal with those emotions and then they stop. They don't like to do those things. And that for me was, was a little bit of a struggle for a while. But once I learned how to safely release my emotions and process those emotions and let them go, let them out, the breathing and the relaxation.

Mm-hmm.

Like I was saying before, became a way for me to access those emotions and actually get deeper levels of healing because it let my walls down. So that could be something that maybe is, maybe you, you find the more you relax, the more the emotions come up, but you can use that to let them go, to just feel it, you know, release those emotions or use it to go deeper into processing.

That's a great point.

But at the end of the day, you can ask yourself why, like you, like introspect and why, why am I having trouble with this?

Because those are like, that's just a Carol's sharing, I didn't know specifically that the deep breathing, or should I say deep exhaling, turns the always-on stress responses off. Yeah. So basically everything that we teach are designed to shut those switches off, to just kind of piece by piece manually go in there and shut those stress response systems down. You think about, okay, there's a dinosaur in front of me, right? What's your body going to do? Your body is getting you ready to fight or run typically, right? Or just like pause.

Right?

Okay. And so when we run, when we fight, the respiratory rate increases, right? Your breathing is going to increase. Your heart rate is going to increase because you need more blood flow to your muscles, to your body. So it turns those things on ahead of time. It's like starting your car in the winter to warm it up so it's ready to just jump into action. That's what's kind of going on there. So when we slow that down, when we take ourselves from an elevated state of breathing into a Slow state of breathing, we're shutting that switch off if that switch is on, right? And by shutting that switch off, what can often happen is a little bit of a domino effect. So now that I slow my breathing down, now my heart is getting that cue. Oh, okay. So actually we can slow down too. And so there's all these things getting these cues like, oh no, actually there's no dinosaur in front of us. Judy sharing, when I try to belly breathe, it almost makes me feel like I'm getting too much oxygen. Does it take a little time to get used to it? Judy, yes, I experienced this too when I started doing deep breathing and diaphragmatic breathing, almost like it almost being uncomfortable because I didn't know kind of what to do with that breath. And so part of that is going to be getting used to what is going to work for you in regard to timing, right? And so for me, what was really challenging and what made me feel like that, Judy, was trying to follow a formula that was like, like Brad mentioned, like box breathing, right? And so I would try to kind of like force my breath into someone else's formula. And it made me feel like uncomfortable, almost like kind of stressed, like I'm not, I'm not getting what I, I need to in regard to oxygen and, and almost like it's challenging to breathe, right? So it's just not very natural and it's, it's, it's very uncomfortable. And so what I would, so part of that is kind of getting used to having kind of more, and then part of that is getting comfortable with what feels good to you and to your body. With those exercises, so trusting yourself and understanding that you know you're changing from your normal state of breathing into a slower state of breathing. You don't have to fit into anyone else's formula, including ours, including mine. You know I shared that five count exercise. You don't have to fall into that. You're going to be able to just by practicing this. You're going to get more comfortable with the kind of timing that works for you in that regard. So. A little bit of just continuing to work through it and you'll fall into a rhythm that kind of works for you. It's a good question. Carol sharing, with previous ongoing scanning, I've been very fast to notice and release tense muscles. That's amazing. That's amazing. Lisa sharing, yes, awareness, breathing, and relaxation. That's what we're doing here. And it's amazing. It's fantastic. It's going to help tremendously. Carol sharing, I do deep breathing when I do my stretching exercises and it allows me to gently stretch further. That's one of, at least my coach talks about that as part of like one of the 3 essential things in stretching. Is for it to be progressive and to breathe and lean into it, right? Because it allows you to to do more. Good. Carol sharing: I'm feeling very calmed down. My muscles feel very relaxed. That's what we want. That's what this is going to do for you. That's what this breathing is going to do in these exercises. Dale asking: Should deep breathing be constant? So it's not. It's not necessarily going to be 24/7. I don't know. I mean, this might just be me as a person. I don't. I've never met anyone who quite literally is. Only doing that type of breathing 24/7, but you wanna, you wanna bring it forward as much as you can. Anytime you feel like, like I said, like I'm not in an anxious state, I'm in an excited state, I'm in a passionate state. You know, I have that, this is just my energy level. This is who I am as a person, right? So it's not necessarily a bad thing, but even, even now, I pause myself and bring myself back just to, to take a deep breath every now and then. So it's not necessarily gonna be 24/7, but it's something that you wanna kind of integrate. Joanne sharing, I just tried the 30-second tighten and muscle relaxation. It feels great. That's awesome. Great job, Joanne. Jen sharing, I need sticky notes all over the house with breathe. That's not a bad idea, to be honest with you. Little cues to breathe, right? So it could be, and you can think about this right now, where are the times where I commonly hold my breath or, you know, my breathing isn't slow or I need to slow it down or I need to relax a little bit, right? Like answering emails, answering a text just before you get on the phone. I mean, there's all little kind of things like that. Where, you know, we kind of hold or we change the way that we're, we're breathing based on really our emotion towards a certain situation. So there's all sorts of, I know I hold my breath when I make a phone call. I don't know what, like, I'm just like waiting. I'm like, I have to be silent. Otherwise this call is just not going to go through. And then I stay silent for so long. I like hold my breath for so long. Then I, I, I think—

Right when I pick up, you have to be like, that's funny.

So Rich sharing, I breathe best and feel most relaxed. And present while I'm working out. Being a personal trainer, I try to implement this to my clients. The struggle I have is incorporating that in my life. I get stressed with anxious thoughts and performance pressure, especially in the evening. I'm naturally high energy. Trouble is slowing my mind down while living and working. Trying to implement this while training, I get irritated because clients want to talk and draw energy while I'm in my head implementing recovery tools and breathing. It's like I want to say, be quiet, I'm trying to relax. I realize I put a lot of this on myself with unrealistic Expectations of always being on, up, and confident and strong. Any suggestions? So this is this is a really good share, Rich, and this is really good awareness of kind of what's going on here, right? So for for those of you like naturally high energy and and naturally like you you have this kind of movement, you have this kind of momentum. It can be counterintuitive because you don't want to lose that, right? Because that's that's what makes you feel good. That's what makes me feel good. I love the energy level that I have. I don't want to slow down. I don't feel the need to slow down. You don't have to necessarily slow down to relax. And I think that can be a little bit strange to kind of put those things together. You can be high energy, you can be passionate, you can be excited, you can move fast and still be relaxed.

Mm-hmm.

So, I mean, what I would recommend honestly is, is introspecting on where that kind of stress is coming from. So like throughout this whole journey, we're gonna be working on healing the root. And I mean, Next week we're gonna talk a lot about healing the root, right? But you know, you're, you're having that kind of, so you're saying like trouble with, you know, per— performance pressure, being anxious, and it sounds like in front of clients, right? So like them wanting to talk and you, you just trying to like kind of calm yourself down so you're not feeling that anxiety, so you're not feeling that pressure. So there's a couple things that we can do. Most importantly, we wanna heal the root of that, but going into that situation, so you're aware of that situation. So what you can do is actually if you have a little bit of time just before that situation. To do a little bit of relaxation there to see if you can bring a little bit more of a relaxed state. Now, there's a lot that could be going on here in regards to, it could be beliefs that you hold about yourself, the way that, you know, maybe you, for lack of a better term, judge yourself when you're in front of others, or the way that you think about who you have to be or are supposed to be for certain people, for those clients. So there's a lot kind of going on in the background that we wanna make sure that we heal. We wanna make sure that we get to the root of. What I'd recommend for right now is if you can get a little bit of time beforehand to do that relaxation so you can bring a little bit more of a relaxed energy into that situation. And then while you're in that situation, just reminding yourself with some, some very gentle cues, some very, very gentle, like, mental cues, just like, hey, you know, part of it's, it's okay to relax and have a conversation. It's okay to enjoy this. You know, we have a saying, relaxed action. It's okay to be relaxed and high energy. Right. And so just remind yourself with those things. So they're just little things rather than they're taking all your focus and you can't do that and hold a conversation at the same time, if that makes sense, as like a place to start.

I think that's, I think that's great advice. So like doing something beforehand, I think taking a, a next step is developing that into a routine, developing that into your morning routine, ideally before the day starts. Because I find that, you know, when I do meditation before the day, I start, I start the day in a calmer state and I bring that forward through everything that I do, right? So if I can start the day in a more calm state, I'm able to bring that forward just kind of naturally. Also, the second thing I've also wondered that too, cuz like I go to the gym and then I see personal trainers and I'm like, it feels like all they're doing is chit-chatting or like, like it's, or it's like a personal trainer cuz I go to the local YMCA. It's like a personal trainer with like a, like an older person and like the older person's just like lifting weights and just like Talking, I'm like, like when you when you work out. But so I think that's funny because I always wonder that too. But I think the other thing is like accepting and understanding that there's certain things you can't control. Like if you're going to have clients, they're likely going to talk to you, and that's something that you're probably going to have to accept. And then you can have a goal for how you want to feel in that situation, and you can visualize yourself going through that right with that goal. Because it's easy to be like, oh, that's just that's just frustrating. Whatever, whatever, whatever. And Not accept it. Like you have to accept that, you know, you can't control that. And that if that's been happening for maybe your whole career, that clients talk to you, that's something you'll probably just have to come to peace with and be like, all right, this is just the way it is. How can I, how can I, you know, or what's the goal I wanna feel? Or like, what's the goal state that I wanna be in while doing this? And then you can visualize that. And sometimes visualizing that is just solidifying it earlier. So I would, like Kayleen said, you know, do something beforehand and ideally build that into like a daily routine. So you're just doing that daily. So you're in a calmer state.

Yeah.

And then I think visualizing and coming up with a goal state for that would be very helpful as well.

Okay. So I often wake up with a tense mouth jaw. When I woke this morning, the very first thing is that— so that tension, any reason why someone wakes up with this, especially on a regular basis? So that's going to be stress that you hold at night. So the very short, quick answer to this, Lorena, is all about we want to make sure that we heal the root. So there are certain relaxation things that we can do before bed to try to alleviate that, and those can help tremendously. Doing visualizations, doing the things that we talked about here today, progressive muscle relaxation, body scan, breathing, can all help you get into a relaxed state going into bed and can help alleviate that. But what's most important is making sure that we get to the root of what's causing that. So that's common to wake up with tension, to wake up maybe even a little stiff, a little sore, and there's nothing wrong with you. It's just kind of that stress. Awesome job with this whole, whole week. Remember, next week is our processing bootcamp week. We have an amazing, amazing kind of lineup planned for that week, so I can't wait to do that with you all. It is just fantastic and amazing. So I love you. I believe in you at the highest level, and I will see you next week. Yep.

And breathe.

And breathe.

Last reminder.

Bye everyone.

Hey everybody, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you want to learn more about how you can coach with me directly, there's a link in the description you can check out. There's absolutely no pressure. The main thing is I wanted you to get value from this episode here, but I hope you have a fantastic day and I'll see you in the next one.