YOUR Breath Holds POWER | How Breathwork Works

Wim Hof or maybe any of these other practices. We'll be covering how the breath affects the nervous system. We'll be covering somatic techniques and practices. And we do have a live podcast with Exhale Boise, which is going to be really exciting. This is a group of practitioners that came together three and have created something really, really wonderful, something really impactful, something they've made a lot of waves in the community that, that they're serving and it's just tremendous what they've been able to do in as little as a year. So again, get situated, get comfortable and we'll see you here in just under 10 minutes. Welcome everybody. Back to day two. We have a lot to cover. I have a couple questions. I'm gonna put a poll up before we get in about five or so minutes. We are just getting the links out to everybody and we know that everybody has a busy day and it's Monday, but if this is your first workshop or actually, how about this, maybe just throw in the chat. What one of your biggest takeaways was from yesterday. The. All right. If you missed yesterday, not a big problem, not an issue at all. We will have those. Actually, the replay is up and available now and so we'll be sure to get that link in the Facebook group. I think it's already there, so you can certainly access that biggest takeaway. Your stoma's wounded. Your psyche is going to be compelled to create stories about the world. That is huge. Yes, it is, Justine. Our psyche is, is a master artist and has the ability to paint magnificent pictures.

Let's see. Foreign.

I'm gonna throw up a question. If this is your first time ever joining us for a three day workshop, just let us know, yes or no. It's always nice to know who, who here is, you know, who's new here. Well, thank you so much for everybody that's returned. Thank you for trusting us, us to deliver this information to you. We appreciate it. No, we'll get going in just about five more minutes. I know sometimes people need a little extra time just to get settled and you know, Somatic is all about space and grace. So we'll give that to them. All right. Yeah. And of course, please share wherever you're, you're located. It helps a lot. Again, connection really matters. And you know, who knows, maybe there's even opportunity to create some new community. Tucson, Arizona. Arizona's home. Let's go. Bend, Oregon, first time. If you missed yesterday, not a worry. Inside the Facebook group we have the replay link and replay from day One is posted in there. So you know, when you have some time this evening, certainly encourage you. Check it out. There was a. There was a lot of good nuggets in there. A lot of good nuggets. We did a somatic practice as well. But don't worry, today is going to be as eventful. We have a lot to cover. We have a special guest coming on towards the end of the call, which is Exhale Boise. And we're going to be talking about power of collaboration and the impact that they've been able to make in as little as just a year. Yeah, a lot of information. That's right. That's right. There was a lot of information yesterday. Thought Jaggers did a wonderful job delivering. I don't know about you, maybe a thumbs up or heart, if you thought so too, but I remember about three or four years ago. No. Yeah, about three years ago. Just under. I've known the man for a few years now, and I took the training for the first time and watching them teach, I'm like, who is this guy? Who is this person? It was like a different. Something was coming through him. And I remember I had another teacher that said, it's not the person teaching, it's the wisdom coming through the person. It's the wisdom coming through the channel. And that stuck with me. That did. All right, let's see. So I'm gonna throw up another question. Just how familiar are you with the concept of somatic breath work and somatic wellness? I love that. Thank you. Lots of people are joining right now. Thank you, everybody. Who's joining in? We're excited to get started. Jaggers is an anointed teacher. Love that. Jagger. Really taking time to talk and discuss holding space, presence and witnessing. I found this most important and essential in my work with others and honestly, why my clients come to me. I. I mean, you hit the nail on the head, Jen. That's exactly right. Within, you know, practitioner training, one of the. We begin with holding space and creating space. And, you know, we are, we are quick to say that, you know, I'll speak for myself, but this is what we do, teach and preach, is that I am not a healer. I do not heal anyone. I help create a space for the individual to heal himself because their body has immense intelligence. Their body knows what to do so long as the space is provided where they feel safe to express themselves. That can be felt. That's beautiful. Yeah. Charlotte threw the link in the chat. If any of you need to get the replay of yesterday, you can access that in the Facebook group and encourage you to watch it tonight.

Right.

And go ahead and share this wonderful. Yeah, it's always good to get a finger on the pulse, on just where people are at in their, their somatic journey, in their health and wellness journey, you know, because somatic breathwork is just one tool. It's one tool amongst minis. And the beauty of somatic breath work and somatic practices is that it's a very low barrier to entry. What I mean by that is it's your breath. We have it until we don't. Right? And nobody's handing you a cup of ayahuasca, nobody's handing you a handful of mushrooms, none of that. And you have your foot on the gas pedal. If we want to speed it up, then we can speed it up. We can breathe deeper, fuller. If it's too much, then we can slow it down. Right. And I think there. How many of you have received a session before? I asked this question yesterday. I'll ask again, just because if you have, then you'll be able to speak to. What I'm saying right now is that maybe it's been very intense, maybe you've had an intense session, but you were able to dial it back or maybe you wanted to go a little bit deeper. And we'll talk about how the breath impacts and affects the nervous system. That's what today's session is going to be about. It's going to be. This is day two is my favorite day of these workshops because this is when we start getting into the science of it, right? And for those of you that like the science of it, this is it. Like we're going to get into it. What we speak about often at somatic breath work is that this work is about nervous system sovereignty. It's about how to have a self governing nervous system, how to regulate your nervous system, how to co regulate. Very important, Very important. A lot of parents come through our trainings, right? Whether to become practitioners or whether to just develop their own ability and cultivate more range to help their children co regulate. It's very impactful. It's very special. All right. Are there prerequisites to be a part of these courses? For this workshop, there's no prereq. You're here. The prereq is are you breathing? Wonderful. Welcome. For our actual training. So for those of you who are new here, we do a 12 week online certification so that you can do this work. We also have a four day in person training. Really? This workshop's not about that right now. And like, we're not here to sell that on this workshop. If you want to connect with us later, we'll send a link where you can schedule with the somatic mentor because it's not for everybody and we want to make sure that this is a good fit and, you know, not waste your time. We'll certainly throw those links in here. Is 12 week equal four day in person? No. So there's a 12 week online certification. So those are for individuals who maybe are restricted to travel or want more time with us. And then we have a four day in person training. Okay. And so like we have one coming up December 7th through the 10th in Phoenix, Arizona. And in regards to what you will learn, it's identical in terms of the curriculum and the material. It's just that when we're online, we need more time and we need more space. Right. Whereas in person it's a very visceral experience. Right. We're here together and you get a lot of direct in the moment, hands on feedback. Right. And so I wouldn't say there's pros and cons in person or online, but believe they're both equally as wonderful. We've, we've certified more people online than in person and that's because of the amount of people that we can reach. And we have lots of practitioners from all over the world. In fact, we have three on here today that will be speaking from Exhale, Boise. Three practitioners and they've come together and created something incredible within their community. And I don't want to spoil it. I'll wait for, wait for that opportunity. But oh wow, we have a lot of questions coming about trainings. I tell you what, if one of the mentors could throw the link in there for anybody who does want to schedule a call about the trainings, you can, you can schedule a call with us and we'll certainly talk more about it later maybe at the end of this call or tomorrow and we'll, we'll answer any questions you have about the training. But nonetheless, I'll go ahead and bring on Jaggers and we can get started for today while people start, continue to jump on. People are coming in shooting for June or Austin. Yeah, we have, I guess while we're waiting, I can speak to it. We have an upcoming in person training December 7th through the 10th in Phoenix, Arizona. We in our next online training begins January 9th. That is a 12 week training and that begins January 9th. It's going to be a incredible, it's going to be marvelous. It really will be ooh Olympia, Washington. I lived in Olympia for a little bit. That was a. Actually I lived in Yelm. Very interesting city. But I loved Washington. That was great. And no nothing in Olympia, Washington right now we do three trainings per year in Austin and we do one training in Phoenix. Those are the in persons. But for the onlines you can be anywhere in the world and we have lots of practitioners in Seattle. Jaggers, welcome on brother. Thank you so much. I know we have a big day to cover and I know people are still rolling in, so I'm gonna hand the mic over to you and do what you do best, man.

Yeah. Thank you good sir. Appreciate it. Turn the music down a little bit here. Welcome everyone. So excited to delve in for today. We got a lot to cover. First off, I do want to speak a little bit just about the difference between the online and the in person and then we'll get into today's actual curriculum because I see a lot of questions coming in. It is the same material. It is a certification training that you will take to basically learn how to utilize this modality for the people in your life. Your clients, which we will be talking to Exhale Boise later, they've created a really cool way that they are doing sessions in the world. So we'll cover that later in person. Um, I usually say is is best if you find yourself doing in person training or in person sessions online. It's usually best if you find yourself doing online sessions, but we teach the same stuff in both of those. Both of them will equip you to do both in person and online sessions. So it just depends on, you know, obviously four days is an intensive and it's a lot versus the online is 12 weeks and you have more time and space to digest it. But that's all I'm going to talk about as far as the training goes. If you are interested, you can always reach out to us and ask us more questions. I think one of the somatic mentors posted a link so you can absolutely schedule that and we'd love to chat with you, but let's go ahead and dive in for today. So little recap on yesterday. I saw that quite a few people were not able to make it yesterday.

I.

That's okay. You will get the replay soon. I'm not sure if it's been posted. It takes us a little while to edit it and get it upload, so be patient with us. But yeah, if you are just tuning in today, it's totally okay. If you missed yesterday, you will have a Lot more context if you did tune in yesterday. But yesterday was basically all about somatics understanding the mind body connection, understanding the intelligence of our defense systems, how those defense systems have been cultivated, what happens if they get state, if they get stuck active for too long. And then we also dived into the very specifics around how to hold space for yourself and for other people. So it sounded like that was a hit. And I usually do not teach that on this workshop because a lot of the times it, it can be specifically for practitioners. But we personally believe that it's information that everyone should know. Truly yesterday I joked but I have thought multiple times about renaming this like how to human 101 versus somatic breathwork. And as you continue learning with us, you will soon realize that it's, it's so much more than breathwork. It's. It's really how we are relating to another person and how we are co regulating. We're going to dive into all things breath work science around the nervous system, what the different types of breath work are actually doing to your nervous system. So you can understand, if you try lots of different types of breath work, you can actually understand what the goal of them and what they are trying to do from a nervous system perspective. Because there's a lot of dogma inside the breathwork space. Right? There's you should only breathe this way or this is the only way to do it. And truly my perspective is they are all great for different things. Somatic breath work is great for trauma release, stress release, really becoming clear mentally, really deepening your connection to yourself and your body. Right. It's somatic. It's reconnecting the mind back to the intelligence of the body. You know, I'll talk about Wim hof, I'll talk a little bit about holotropic or perhaps some pranayama and yogic breathing. And then also you know what the difference is within some of like the athletic performance breath breath work styles because that's a whole different thing as well. So we're going to dive in on all things nervous system regulation today. Let me know. I'm curious, does anybody have their own definition about what regulation means or nervous system regulation? I'm curious. While you type that in the chat, freedom of choice. Kara's spot on while you type that in the chat. Would love to hear your definition. I'm going to give just a couple minute break here to get a journal, get some water. I'm going to pull up the curriculum. We'll dive in for today. We'll go for about 45 minutes and then we'll move into our live podcast with Exhale Boise. So I'm so excited. Take a moment break and then we will dive in.

All right. Wonderful. Seems that a lot, a lot of individuals have taken or have experienced a session before, which is wonderful. Tomorrow we're going to be doing a live session. So tomorrow's going to be a very special day. I encourage if you can make it, please do. It's, it's going to be a big one. Let's see. There we go. All right. Yeah, we've got, there's about another 120 people who've joined. So for everybody that's jumping on, we're going to be covering stress physiology today, the way the nervous system impacts breath, the differences between breath work. If you are just jumping on, please do share maybe some nuggets of wisdom that came through from yesterday. It was a lot yesterday. All right. To maintain para and sympathetic nervous system so one can release and experience their motions with ease and flow. Yes, very much so. Because think of it like a water hose. Sometimes we just get kinked up and that water hose gets bent and that emotion gets pent up, things maybe start festering. Who here has ever let emotions fester? You just kind of blow a gasket and not, not fun. Not fun. We end up taking that frustration out on the people around us. And so tomorrow is going to be about prevention. We say prevent, to prevent some so that you do not vent on others in the world. And that's what tomorrow will be. It'll be an opportunity to prevent a lot of individuals. Let's see anybody that's raising their hand, if you have any questions, we ask that you please put them in the Q and A. Our team will answer them. And of course, we will open at the end of the call for questions as well. See, I'm pregnant too, so it's harder to restrain frustrations. You know, Andrea, I cannot relate. I cannot relate, but I can imagine. I can imagine.

So.

All right, welcome back, Jaggers.

All right, so I see a lot of answers coming in that are, that are pretty spot on. We talk about this understanding of homeostasis. And for me, and I think it's important to really understand this, homeostasis means balance, equilibrium, the body, all of life, all living things are striving for two things. They're striving for balance and they're striving for growth. You could look outside. All of nature is striving for balance. Right. These trees that are outside of my window here. They're striving for growth and also in a balanced way. And so we might get into the concept of reenactment, which is a really interesting understanding within the somatic space. But let's dive into regulation now that we kind of have this understanding of homeostasis. If you, you know, if you think about homeostasis just from a physical perspective, just your physical body, your posture, some people can think of your posture as like your body's trying to maintain homeostasis. Well, it's not a static position. Posture is never static because life is. Movement change is the only thing that's certain. You're changing all the time. And as you move through life, right, we went over yesterday that, you know, life is a wave of experience. You experience high emotions, you experience the low emotions. And that's part of our human experience, is this wave, is this change. And so your ability, ability to regulate, maintain homeostasis. It does not mean that you're in balance all the time or you're static in this perfect posture all the time. It's that when you actually go through hard things because stress is guaranteed, does you, are you equipped, are you resourced to bring yourself back into balance? And that's truly what like being in, in perfect posture is, or being in alignment or having homeostasis. It's the understanding that it's a dynamic process and can always try to bring myself back because I'm going to get thrown off, we're going to get dysregulated. It's part of our human nature. And do we have the tools to be able to bring us back into balance? So let's go ahead and let's dive into some of the physiology around the nervous system. So let's talk through this a little bit. When it comes to our nervous system and breath, we're going to talk about how breathing actually affects the nervous system. We need to have a basic understanding of our autonomic nervous system. When you hear the word autonomic, what you can think of, it just means automatic. The autonomic nervous system is the automatic part of your nervous system that you actually don't need to think about. It just happens in the background. How many of you understand the difference between a sympathetic nervous system state versus a parasympathetic nervous system state? Let me know. Just type a yes. Give me a thumbs up if you've heard this before. If you have not, let me. Okay, I see a lot of yeses. We're just going to go over the basic physiology of what's going on in those states. And maybe, maybe you have heard this before, but maybe it lands in a different way. So when you're. So you're constantly moving between these two states as you move throughout the world, when you are in a sympathetic state, your system is activated. A lot of this is where most of us operate a lot of the time throughout our day. If you are, how many of you are like a go, go, go, do, do, do, accomplish, get things done all the time and have a hard time shutting it off, let me know. Not anymore. That's good. So when you are in this go, go, go mode, your body is in a sympathetic state. And what happens inside of your body, your autonomic nervous system, when you're in a sympathetic state, you're preparing the body for action. And what's happening is the body pushes all of its resources to the, to the outsides of your body, to your extremities, to your hands, to your feet. It starts to heighten your vision, your hearing, your eyesight. Because it's preparing your body to take action, to move right, specifically if you are in danger. But also if you are just getting things done, or you're playing sports, or you are in a very active state, your body is pushing all of its resources to the outside. And what it's doing is it's taking away resources from some of the repairing functions of your body. So when we move into parasympathetic state, parasympathetic means that we are taking our system into a relaxed state. And what happens is the body brings all of the resources back into the center because it's not worried about taking action or fighting something off or running or needing to listen or needing to, you know, have heightened sensitivity to the external world. You could really think when you're in a parasympathetic state, your body has heightened sensitivity in your internal world. And so when we, you know, we create space for us to go into a parasympathetic state, it's bringing all of your energy back into your center. And most of that energy goes to your digestive processes. Because digestion, especially the digestion of food, or you could also say, like we learned yesterday, the digestion of emotions, the digestion of information. Digestion is an energy intensive process for our system. And so when we are in a parasympathetic state, we are able to digest our food, repair on a cellular level. It is a healing state. Um, and so if you have a hard time getting into a parasympathetic state, well, there's a lot of people out there that spend, you know, all their life and sympathetic and actually don't have. They're not digesting their food. They're probably living with so much undigested food inside of their stomach. Same thing, probably emote like we talked about yesterday. Most of us are, you know, overloaded with undigested emotions we haven't had the opportunity to express. And so the thing that you also need to understand is that both of these states are very necessary for our nervous system and neither of them are better or worse than each other. It's our ability to flow and fluctuate in between. So we'll talk about respiration. Our respiration is closely connected to our autonomic system. Our breath actually controls. And it's either we're controlling our breath and it's changing the state of our nervous system or, or if we're not aware of it, then, you know, it's. It's actually controlling our breath. So we'll dive a little bit deeper into that. Let's talk about regulation here. So let's go into nervous system regulation. And yes, we will talk about burnout, because I've experienced burnout so much. So nervous system regulation. This is obviously a topic that's gained a lot of popularity, especially on, you know, I see it on social media all the time now and it's so cool to see people wanting to learn about how to regulate my nervous system. And the world is truly waking up to realize that. That our nervous system is the energy system of our body and it's controlling, you know, it is the bridge between our mind and our body. How many of you know what the primary function of our nervous system is? Go ahead and type it in the chat if you, if you can take a stab at what it is. I see survival, which is. Right. There's more though. Communication care has been on this before. Keeps us alive. Yes. That is probably the biggest concern of our nervous system info pathways. I like that. I like that. So my perspective on the number one function of your nervous system is communication. And also survival is correct as well. Stress regulation, all of these things are correct. I haven't seen any that are not necessarily correct. But it is a system of communication. It is your communication highway between your mind and your body. And also outside of your body, it is the electrical system. If you look at it from an eastern perspective, it is your energy system. From a Western perspective, you could just say it's the electrical system. But that electrical system extends beyond your body. We are Electromagnetic beings. We are electrical beings. And you have an electrical bubble around you. You can feel when someone is approaching behind you. If you're sensitive enough. Your nervous system is communicating not just internally to, you know, between your mind and your body and to all of your glandular functions and your musculoskeletal functions, but it's also communicating outside of you and it's picking up on everything around you. And it does this to keep you safe. Is this evolutionary biological function of our nervous system has been so subtly adapted to pick up on all little tiny things, right? The sensitivity that we were talking about yesterday. A nervous system that is sensitive has awareness and minute details of energy fluctuation going on around you. Neuroception. Absolutely. That is spot on. And so it also is. And we'll get into co regulation because that's co regulation is the way that our nervous systems are communicating together. And it's important to understand this is that we all don't speak the same language, right? We have so many humans that are from all over the world joining this. And although a lot of people speak English, not everybody speaks the same language verbally, but every human speaks the language of the nervous system. It is our ability to feel ourselves and other people. And so I'll circle back to that. But let's get in back into energy as a language. It's reading the book of life, right? You're able to tune into all of the energy around you. And some people call this intuition, right? It can be thought about as a woo woo thing, but it truly is a function of your nervous system that's picking up on so many different things. So regulation is not that I'm maintaining a state of relaxation all the time. It's not that I'm in parasympathetic state all the time. Regulation means that I have choice. It means that I'm maintaining my state of choice. Choice is the human superpower, right? And the thing about your breath is that we can all take a deep breath in right now and we can choose to take a deep breath in right now or I can continue teaching and I don't actually don't have to think about my breath. And so I either have choice around it or I don't have to. The thing about regulation is that can we actually a nervous system that is able to regulate itself can maintain its state of choice. So how many of you said that you have a hard time like your go, go, go all the time and you have a hard time shutting it off versus the opposite side might be that you, you maybe you find yourself in like a low energy state a lot of the times and you have a hard time turning it on. You have a hard time like finding passion and purpose and drive in your life. And maybe you've experienced both. I myself have experienced both so many times in that that is, that is a symptom of burnout. And what burnout is, is a nervous system that spent too much time in dysregulation. So let's. So a nervous system that can regulate itself, manages its energy well, and has the ability to fluctuate and flow between states. I can turn it on if I need to, and I can shut it off if I need to. Your ability to turn it on is just as important as your ability to shut it off. It's the same thing from a body perspective. You know, when I was studying a lot of yoga or studying a lot of body work, I think in the beginning stages, you think that, okay, well, people have knots and tension here or, you know, they're having a hard time getting into this position or this stretch or I'm tight over here. We'll just release all these muscles. Let's just. There's tension over here. Let's just release, you know, the knots over here. Right. Well, as we learned yesterday, the body is incredibly intelligent. And, you know, if, you know, as a body worker, I had to ask myself if the body's creating this tension over here and it's creating these knots, if you will. It does everything for a reason. The body does everything for a reason. And so why is the body creating this tension over here? Well, it's because those muscles, a lot of the times need to learn how to turn on. We need to be able to run life force energy, meaning electricity through our nervous system. We need to be able to turn it on to turn it off. And so both of those are very important. And so let's talk a little bit about dysregulation. A nervous system that is dysregulated does not have the ability to discharge energy in a functional manner. It doesn't have a healthy, healthy outlet of expression. It has a hard time letting go and get stuck easily in stimulation. Meaning that I have it turned on all the time and I don't know how to shut it off or I don't know how to turn it on. And it's just kind of low energy all the time. And it starts this ping pong effect. And I've experienced this so much in my life where I might actually draw this on here. Let's see. Can I do a whiteboard here? Oh, I resonate with you, Amber. Being an educator is exhausting. Nervous system is always on high. I've had to work through that. Let me pull up.

The whiteboard will be on the bottom. It is available.

Okay, here. Looks like there's some new functions here. So let's just say that this is the scale of your nervous system. This is the duality of your nervous system system. You have, you know, when you're relaxed over here, you're in this parasympathetic state. When you are activated, you're in the sympathetic state. Go, go, go. Do, do, do all the time. And a nervous system that is regulated can fluctuate and flow in between these two. Because, you know, there's going to be times where I need to turn it on and go get things done, and then I need to shut it off and relax and tune out and, you know, be present with my family. And what happens is a dysregulated nervous system is I'm stuck up here, and then I get flung to the other side, and then I spend time there, and then I get flung to the other side, and then I'm up here. Right. Life is a flow. Life is way a wave. And if I spend too much time in sympathetic, well, I'm going to get flung to the other side and I'm going to get put in a forced timeout. How many of you have experienced a forced timeout? What I call that is a forced rest where you actually get sick.

You.

If you spend too much time in your sympathetic state, you will get flung to their side. Your body will say, hey, you spent too much time going. And we actually need to force you into. You're going to sit there and you're going to relax, and we're going to force you to relax. And usually that can be an injury. That can be a. You can get sick, you can get burnout. It can lead to all different types of diseases of energy. Right. We talked about stress and how that weakens the body. And so a nervous system that can regulate itself, can overcome stress, can grow from stress. And what happens is if I spend time in my sympathetic all the time. Well, a lot of the time that gets paired with anxiety, meaning that my nervous system's on high all the time, and I'm go, go, go, do, do, do all the time. And it's this humming of my system that's ah, right. We have a hard time shutting it off. And then I'll get flung to the other side. And then sometimes if I get put in a forced timeout, it can lead to, like, depression where I need a deep rest. Right. Has anybody ever seen that Jim Carrey video where he's talking about the depression that he's gone through? He needed a deep rest from the Persona that he was running all the time, this sympathetic state. And so, like I said, a nervous system that can regulate itself has the ability to choose. I can go into sympathetic, I can turn myself on, and then I can shut it off, meaning that I don't get. I. I don't get forced into this, like, oh, my God, I got to do something with my life. And then, holy shit, I burnt myself out. And then I'm flung back and forth, and I'm actually at the fate of my dysregulated nervous system. And that really takes a toll on you, becoming the conscious creator of your life. So let's actually get into how breath affects this. Okay? So breath is the number one way to effectively regulate our nervous system via this basic rule. Via this basic rule. And if you understand this, if you're doing any sort of breath work practice, you can understand, what is it actually trying to do on a nervous system level? Well, when I elongate my exhales, you take a breath in right now in through your nose. And then I just elongate my exhale. Well, it's sending me into this parasympathetic state. If I elongate my inhales well, that's going to activate your system. And like I said, neither of these are bad or good. They're all good for different things. When it comes to somatic breathwork, we utilize both because need to be able to turn it on to turn it off. We utilize elongated inhales in the beginning to activate our system to turn it on fully so that we can shut it off. And then in the second half, which you'll experience tomorrow, it will oftentimes take you into a deeper relaxed state. Now, how many of you have experienced when, say, you are stressed out or someone else in your life is stressed out, and you said, just, hey, let's just chill out a little bit. Let's just calm down. You seem stressed out. Just chill out. How well did that work for them and has that worked well for you? Not well. It does not work most of the time. That will annoy the person even more because their nervous system is activated and they don't have the opportunity to go into a regulated state. How many? About as well as a laugh at a funeral. That's a great one, right? Well, it's counter, it's. It's counter to your thinking that, okay, say I'm like, I'm stressed out and I'm in a state of chronic stress. Okay. I just need to bring myself back into a relaxed state. Well, a lot of the times if you're in that chronic stress state, you actually need to take yourself a little bit further and let the body go full on into the stress state. Because we're living in a lot of times the chronic stress is the issue where we're living in this middle stressed, like prolonged stressful experience that we actually haven't let ourselves go fully into the stress state so that we can fully shut it off. And that is what that discharging that we talked about yesterday. I'll give you an easy example. For me, I can always relax so much more. If I have pushed myself physically, if I have done an intense workout, if I've sat around all day on the couch, well, it's going to be really hard for me to like relax and unwind. If I've gone for a run, if I've went and played pickleball, if I went and played basketball, if I went to the gym, right. What am I doing? I am actually giving my organism an opportunity to express the stress, which I'm taking myself further into that sympathetic state. And what goes up must come down, right? If you send yourself into an activated state, well, you're going to be able to go down into such a deeper state of relaxation and you will experience that tomorrow. So within somatic breathwork, we utilize both. We spike the nervous system. So we show your system how to turn it on fully. And that way it can shut off fully. And we'll talk a little bit about the difference between nose and mouth breathing. But I want to show you one thing here. And this is what you're going to be experiencing tomorrow. Excuse me, Sparkling water.

So we call that a somatic expression.

That would be a somatic release. I just expressed the pressure that was building up in my. In my belly there. We love it. We love it. Okay, so I don't always show this, but this is the structure of what you will be experiencing tomorrow. So this is the structure of our session tomorrow. You. This is about an hour long. And so what we're going to be doing is we're going to be taking you through the first somatic belch. Okay, I gotta laugh. I gotta let it out, right? You gotta express and not repress. Okay, Reel it back in. Let's reel it back in. So this is, this structure is following that understanding of we are going to spike your nervous system in the first half. And what happens is we're giving your organism, your body, an opportunity to discharge, to release. And so we'll take you through three rounds of activating and upregulating your system. And then once we've spiked the system, let's show it how to come back down into a relaxed state while helping you re pattern elevated emotions. And you'll experience this tomorrow. But let's talk about. So why does the emotional release happen from breath work? Why does it bring up these repressed emotions? And a lot of people don't understand this about breathwork, but when you are breathing heavily for an extended period of time, what I'm saying to you is that we are mimicking a stress state in the body. We're activating. We're taking you into a sympathetic state. And there are benefits to that, especially in a safe space, in a safe container, your body will become, you know, it's becoming activated. It's going into the sympathetic state, which a lot of the time you're mimicking a stress response, which brings up a lot of the stuff that you didn't process the last time you were in a stress state. So most of us, we go through something stressful or traumatic per se, and our default state is to just suck it up, hold it in, and just hold on to it. Right? How many of you were told as a child to just suck it up, hold it in, be strong, right? Stuff it down. Which, you know, it's unfortunate that we're, we're told to be so strong all the time, but really, if you listened in yesterday, strength is a, is a byproduct of our sensitivity, our ability to feel ourselves so that we can feel other people. And so we show the nervous system that it's safe to go into this release, this discharging. And then once you're in that place, well, let's show the nervous system that, okay, it's okay to express, it's okay to release. And then let's show it how to come back down into a relaxed state, using elongated exhales and helping you re pattern elevated emotions. Because once you allow yourself to feel some of the, you know, negative stuff that you've been holding or suppressing or repressing, your body has so much more access to feeling states of joy. Because when you block yourself from feeling, you're blocking yourselves on both sides. Numbness is not just numbness of, you know, some of the stuff that you push down, it's also numbness to your own joy and your own felt sense of happiness. Right. We are full spectrum beings. We go through a wave and so let's, let's go ahead and let's let that digest for a moment. Let's take like a minute or two. Break. I'm going to come back and I'm going to talk a little bit about the differences between different types of breath work. I'll pass it over to Nadeem. Let me get some water. Some regular water, not sparkling water.

No more somatic belches. Oh, that was great humor. Laughter is big medicine. I don't know if you agree, but I. So who here has ever received a session and had an absolutely hysterical laughing fit? Yes. Yeah, A lot of people. I'm that person. I am that person. I have an absolutely laughing fit. And it is even more funny because sometimes I'll opt in to do the partner sessions during our trainings. If you ever join one of our trainings, you will learn how to do these sessions both in person and online. And we do partner sessions throughout the training. And sometimes I'll opt in to do this. And in the beginning, the practitioners in training, if they get partnered with me or somebody similar, like, I just hysterically start laughing and then they'll match me and they'll start laughing and then the whole room starts laughing. And it is just absolutely magical. But that's great. I have a session a few weeks ago and we didn't get into somatic work, but we laughed a lot and that was enough. Well, thank you for sharing this. This was a, this was a, a month ago and man, what a powerful session I am. Like I said, one who laughs a lot. And this was a session where I asked to just be an open vessel and I cried a lot. Cried a lot. I did. If you were on here yesterday, you heard me say, I finally had my ugly cry. And it felt good. Felt really good. It felt really good. So, yeah, thank you, Jaggers, for holding that space for me. And wow. Tears are sacred. Yes, they are as they are. I try and try. And there was something we learned at that, that workshop where that picture was taken in. It's like if you can direct the tears into your mouth, do it. Because those tears hold a lot of special, special hormones, special chemicals.

Let's see.

It was a beautiful release, Shannon, and certainly was. I have a question. And how many people here, when you, when you had, when you experienced a session, how many? Because there are. There were a lot of people who have had a session before. I'm curious. Let's see if I can repost this. Oh, looks like I can't ask it, so I'll just ask the question maybe just by a show of like, thumbs up. Who here has had a, like a physical experience with somatic breath work? Yeah, how about a spiritual experience? Maybe you can throw another emoji, like a heart. Yeah. And then who here, here's a specific question. Who here, over time, has experienced maybe improved interpersonal relationships? So relationship with yourself and with others? Yeah, absolutely. A lot of people. That's a big one. That is a really big one when it comes to this work because we're going to spend the most time with who, with ourselves. Right. And this gets into regulation, how to regulate our nervous system and then with others. So how to co regulate with others? I use somatic breath work with my clients struggling with grief. Oh my gosh. Three out of five calls we take are about dealing with grief. So we'll talk a lot more about that towards the end of this. So Jaggers, welcome back and passing it on.

Yeah, I want to. One thing that I skipped over is talking about CO regulation. Now, CO regulation really speaks to what we were talking about, holding space. Ideally, it's holding space yesterday. It's the way in which our nervous system communicate to each other. You think about how many of you have ever been in love before? When you're just around this person, it's like, oh my God. It just, it creates chemistry, right? Which is a powerful, like one of the, one of the strongest drugs that a human can experience. Right. I love love as well. What's happening is that we are co regulating with each other and our nervous systems are communicating. Right. I have electric, I have an electrical bubble around me. You have an electrical bubble around you. And when we are together, those electrical bubbles are communicating electrically. And then what happens is that creates chemistry. It really, it taps into our internal pharmacy that starts releasing, you know, oxytocin and adrenaline and all of. Yes, our bubbles merge. And so CO regulation is really what I spoke to yesterday about learning the language of the nervous system. And how do we speak, how do we, how do we speak safety into each other's nervous systems. How many of you have heard the term, you know, being seen and heard before? Like humans want to be seen and heard and that, that is that concept of, of an empathetic witness, right? Well, it's beyond being seen and heard. People want to feel like they're being co regulated too. People want to feel like they're understood beyond communication. We want understanding. And what that understanding is is that I feel you and you feel me and we feel each other, right? You feel me. It's beyond. Because if it's just being seen and heard, I can look at you, I could see you or I could hear you and I can hear what you're saying. But do I feel you right now? Let's just try this little experiment. One of my mentors does this with me. I am actually happening inside of your nervous system right now. As you listen to me, there is a Steven that is emerging inside of your nervous system. Because when I speak, it goes through, goes through into your ears, your eyes and it's going to your brain stem and then you're processing what it is and then you're feeling me, right? And you can feel if I'm congruent or you can feel if I'm a little off, right? We're all off sometimes. And then I can actually feel if you're feeling me. And that means that I feel understood by you. Right? We're co regulating together or we could be co dysregulating, which can definitely happen, especially if you are, you know, maybe you're going to your families over the holidays and it can be a co dysregulating experience, right? And so we want to be felt by each other. It's beyond being seen and heard, it's about being felt. And some of us, you know, I call this like the wound of co creation. A lot of us have experienced the wound of co creation. So what is co creation? It means that we are in collaboration, creating together and all of us are co creating on this planet. The wound of that is that we actually feel like whatever we do does not make an impact in others lives or it makes no difference in the world. It's really, you know, I call it, you know, or it's, it's apathy really. That's what it is. And so you can say as a child per se, you know, when you're a child. Let me back up for a second. We learn how to co regulate first and this is why being a practitioner is so powerful. Because we're helping people with co regulation so that they can self regulate. When we're a child, we're not able to self regulate. We need the loving care of our mom and our dad and we are so attuned to them that if they're dysregulated, well, we're going to feel and we're going to pick up on all of it. And so we are constantly co regulating to our parents and co regulating to the people that we're around when we're a child. And then eventually we start to individuate ourselves, create boundary, we start to say, no, I want to go do my own thing, right? We go through teenage years and where we have maybe a rebellious state. And what that state is, is our individuation process of finding ourselves out, right? But we learn how to co regulate first and it's so important. And I'll give you this example, I use this example. Say you are on an airplane and it's your first time being on an airplane and you've never been on an airplane before and you're like, oh my God, we're about to fly through the air at, you know, really fast, right? We're flying through this man made thing in the air and say the airplane starts to experience turbulence and you're like, oh my God, what's going on with the plane? Is it going down? Like we, I've never experienced this before. And you look around, you look around at everyone else on the airplane and everyone else is just calm, maybe listening to their music, just chilling. And you're like, okay, well if everyone else is chill then I guess everything's okay and I can relax. We co regulate to each other, right? If everyone else is chill, then we're chilling. Especially in states of emergency or when something's really happening. Our ability to have a regulated nervous system to be the person that can, can help everyone else co regulate is so important. And what happens is then we learn how to self regulate later on and if we did not. You know, for me, I grew up with parents that were dysregulated all the time. And so it's been a process of repatterning safety within my nervous system to actually regulate myself. Show one other thing on co regulation and this is, this is what I call understanding the language of the body or understanding the language of the nervous system. Oh, that's the wrong one. I see my messy desktop. So everything that you are being is being communicated. Everything that you are being, what you embody is being communicated before any words even come out of your mouth. This is the language of energy. You, what you are being is being communicated and you're also receiving everything from your environment. The nervous system does not speak English, Spanish, French, but it does have a language of its own to measure connection and safety. It is a universal language beyond words. And we are not taught this language, right? This is the language that all you don't need to see the bottom yet. We'll just go to here. That's okay if it's cut off. The language of the nervous system is constantly scanning the environment for relational signs that convey security, safety and rapport. Your nervous system either feels safe or it does not. There is no in between. And it took me a while to really be honest with myself that, you know, for a lot, a long period of my life, I went throughout my life not feeling safe, not feeling safe and comfortable in myself, in my own shoes, my own body. And therefore a lot of other people, you know, would feel that from me. If you know how to speak security into other people's nervous systems, you can deepen connection and you can deepen permission. And these are all the things that we teach within the training is how to actually embody that. What are the techniques to learn how to speak the language of the nervous system when we are co regulating with another? Our nervous systems are in each other's care and we can improve the level of that care by becoming more fluent in this language. And we teach all the ways in which we communicate through space, through sound, through words and through touch. And you know, I don't want to go over this because this is like definitely beyond. But let's, let's bring it back. How many of you enjoyed and have heard this concept of CO regulation before? It's one of my favorite topics. I find it so fascinating because it is, it is relationships, right? All of life is relationships. At the end of the day, you know, I think it's so important. Whatever you're doing in your life, it's important to continue to ask yourself like, why are we doing this? I ask myself, even with somatic breathwork, why are we doing this? Why is it important? Why is healing important? Why is doing this breath work important? And it is to, if you boil it down, it is to heal relationships. And that first is a relationship with yourself and the connection to yourself. Because you cannot connect with other people if you're not connected to yourself. You can connect to other people from a disconnected version of yourself and that will throw you into burnout. It will be incredibly taxing on your system. But I think about myself on my deathbed later on and it's not going to be what I've created or how much money you have, or your, your assets, or it's going to be the quality of the relationships that you have. And I can only speak for myself, but that's what's going to matter at the end of the you Know, I've worked with so many people that have, you know, hundreds of million dollars companies and you know, the biggest thing that is the, is the happiness factor of their life is the quality of their relationships to their significant other, to their family and their community. And that's really what this is, is developing a deeper connection to yourself, learning the language of your own nervous system and so that you can actually speak the language of the nervous system to other people and speak safety and security into other people's nervous systems. And I'll go back to that wound of co creation because I went down a rabbit hole with that, is that, you know, say you're a child and you know, you're expressing like I, I have a need, I have a want, right? I'm crying, I need something. I want my mama's love or I want, or I want dad's attention. And no one's there, no one comes to, you know, no one comes to give you that need. Well then you start to feel as if whatever you say and do does actually, it actually doesn't have an impact on the world. No one's listening to me, no one understands me. And then you start to feel like whatever you say and do, I just have to. I'm living in a world that's created by other people and it doesn't matter. What I do, when really, you know, I look at this on a collective level, and you could look at it in your own, you know, community, is that we are co regulating and we, what I do is directly affecting everyone else around me because we are co regulating. And that same disconnect that happens between our mind and our body is the same disconnect that happens from, you know, me being here in Austin to anyone else on the other side of the world. Because every cell in your body, you are a biological entity. It knows that you are connected to all living things. Your cells know that you're connected to all living things. That intelligence in your body and it knows that if you dump toxins in the water, even if it's hundreds and hundreds of miles away from you, eventually that water will make it to the water in the bodies of your children. And it knows that we're all connected. And so that same disconnect, that same wound of co creation is what we are trying to heal within our inside of ourselves. You know what I like? If I can heal the connection between my mind and my body, well then I can heal the connection between me and another person and that ripple effect that starts to happen into our family, into our community into the world. And this is truly our mission. It is collective healing. Right. And especially when you start getting into the group sessions within Somatic Breath Work, it's powerful. It is collective healing. And so I'm going to wrap up because I want to get us into this podcast here soon with Exhale Boise. I want to bring them on Nadeem. Should I go into some of the different types of breath work, or should we save that for kind of maybe a Q and A, like after the podcast? You let me know on timing here.

Well, let's ask the audience. So would you like us to bring on Exhale Boise, or would you like Jaggers to explain the difference between breath work? Let's just type breath work in the. In the chat if that's the case. Okay, cool. Let's cover Breathworks. I know it'll only take five or ten minutes, so let's do that. And then we'll bring on Exhale and dedicate the rest of the time to them.

Okay. So we have this understanding that if we elongate and focus on our inhales, we're sending us into a sympathetic state. If we elongate our exhales or taking ourselves into a parasympathetic state, a relaxed state. So you look at something like Wim Hof. Wim Hof is a powerful technique. It's great. It is for, you know, it's more for your own, like, daily practice. What his whole concept is, is putting the body through hormetic stress. Hormetic stress means that. It means that I'm going to intentionally stress my body out to make it more resilient. Right. He did all those tests about, like, training his body to be able to fight off different bacteria and viruses. So it's. It's powerful as a daily practice. The difference between somatic breathwork. Somatic breathwork. The beauty of it is it's done with at least two people. It is a practitioner and a client. Because we're working on the relational dynamic between two people. And like I said yesterday, healing happens in the presence of an empathetic witness. And so you are there guiding somebody else. It is a modality that you are guiding somebody. It's not a self practice, which self practices are great, but it can only take you so far. How many of you have felt like you, you know, you're maybe you've been single or you spend a lot of alone time and you're like, wow, I feel. I feel pretty enlightened right now. I feel like really good in myself and Then you go and get in a relationship or you go and spend time with your family and you're like, wow, okay, I'm all types of activated. I got a lot of stuff I got to work on. It's because those, there's no one there to actually trigger the trauma responses in between you. Most of our trauma responses, they're stored in the body, but they don't come up unless there's a relational dynamic, right? And that's what we teach in somatic breath work. It's like how to learn the language of the body, to be able to create safety in relation, to give permission for someone to express, and then how to follow those expressions and guide someone through those expressions. So somatic breath work is powerful for that release, but it's not, it's never about the release, right? It's never about the. I, I see so much becoming popularized around emotional release and somatic release, which is great, but it's about the space that's created from that release to bring in how you actually want to feel and what you want to become and what you want to embody in the world. That clarity, bringing it back in and showing up as the embodied version of yourself right here, right now. Because that's what matters. You know, you go into, obviously I can speak on holotropic breath work. How many of you heard, have heard of holotropic breath work? Anyone before? Holotropic is incredibly powerful and it was created by a man named Stan Grof, who was a well known psychologist in the 1960s and he was, before they criminalized LSD and other psychedelics, he was using these substances to create an altered state of consciousness with his patients. And he found immense amount of benefits within these altered states of consciousness, allowing someone to kind of remove themselves from the perspective that they have all the time and take a different perspective on the things that they're going through. And so holotropic is done intensely. It is like that sympathetic breathing, focusing on your inhales for three hours. And it's oftentimes way too intense for most people. I have found that it can be incredibly powerful. But it's a lot. It's a lot. And I highly recommend don't not starting with that. And sometimes it's, you know, it is designed to create a psychedelic experience within your body and within your being, if you will, which can be, it can be powerful and beneficial. Within somatic breathwork, I have found that, you know, 30 minutes of the holotropic breathing and then, and then leaving space to show the nervous system how to come back into a relaxed state is so important. I see so many breathworks that don't give time to bring someone back into a relaxed state. And it's just, it's so, so important. The differences in the actual breathing technique. I saw someone speak to us, you know, circular connected breathing or conscious connected breathing. That is the type of breath work that we utilize. How many of you have heard of like a two part breath or that can be, that can be powerful. But from a practitioner standpoint, if I'm working with another person and someone's doing this two part breath, well, it takes away some of the subtleties that I start to be able to see within the breathing. So I have people utilize circular conscious connected breathing where it's one smooth wave. And as a practitioner you start to notice where are there skips in the breath because you're respiration. If you haven't found out by now, I'm definitely a nerd for etymology. Respiration means to respire, means to re. Spirit. Every time you take a breath in, you are breathing spirit life force energy back into your body. And truly you are being breathed. You are not breathing. So you can try to stop and you'll find out pretty quick that you're actually being breathed. And so as a practitioner I can start to tune in to where is there little skips in the breath and you start to see it in the body where there's skips in someone's respiration cycle and all those little minute details will tell you actually where to work with somebody and, and it will be like a little thread that you can follow as a practitioner to help them move through. You know, if you, if you've ever felt really sad and you try to take a breath in, well, maybe there might be a little quiver in the breath in the lip or you know, if you take a breath in right now, you take a deep breath in, you might, and you do it slow enough, you might feel where does my breathing rhythm, where does my respiration cycle like feel blocked at? And then maybe it'll take you to a place in your body and maybe there might be an emotion around it. And so that is what somatic breath work is doing, is teaching the practitioner how to help, support and guide someone through that process versus a lot of other pranayama, yogic breathing. That's a powerful practice. My own perspective and obviously I have an opinion on things. I think that pranayama and yogic breathing can be absolutely powerful. But I try to strip it of all of the dogma as much as it can. What is it really trying to do? Well, there can be a lot of different things within pranayama. It's like breathing through the left nostril and then the right nostril and squeezing the sphincter. And those can all be great different things. But what is it really trying to do? And I think within that, pranayama is really just a daily practice to set you up to have a baseline, a regulated nervous system throughout the rest of your day. Right. And obviously play with kundalini energy, which is life force energy in your body. And your breath is controlling your life force energy. It's your electricity. It's the same thing. I forgot where I was going to go with that. I had something but it slipped me. Okay, so let's actually take just a couple minute break. We're going to bring up XL Boise. I will, I'm, I'm free later on after this podcast, so I'll try to stay on. For those that want to stay on and ask questions, I'll be here. Would love to chat with you, but let's take a moment break and then let's bring on the team here. Love that.

Thank you, Jaggers, very much. And yes, feel free to get a drink, everybody. Use the restroom if you need. We'll give it just maybe two or three minutes and then we'll, we'll be bringing on Exhale Boise. In the meantime, I, I'm going to throw up another question because it always helps to just gauge where individuals are. And if I, I do see a lot of questions on the back end coming about the, the trainings and practitioners. And a lot of that might be answered throughout this, this little live podcast, which will go for about, you know, 30 minutes or so. And of course we'll stay as long as everybody needs to answer questions afterwards. So I'm going to go ahead and ask, what aspect of Somatic practices do you find most challenging? So yesterday we talked a lot about defining terms, holding space that could be considered as theory. So understanding theory, maybe implementation of these techniques, finding regular time to practice. We have a lot of daily practices. Um, you can certainly find those in the Facebook group and we'll make sure to share those after. Um, we have a whole YouTube channel. Daily practices. Morgan, she's one of the somatic mentors. I think she went live today on our Instagram and did a daily practice. She does those regularly. She's great. I think I saw like 50 people on there. It was excellent. So engaging clients in somatic exercises. Okay, this is great. Um, because I'm going to let Exhale speak to that when they come on. They're working with some incredible groups. I mean, this, this team has made. Has made strides in the practitioner game. And so let this keep rolling through. Just one moment. Okay, let's see. And then what is your primary reason for attending today's workshop? So a lot of you are saying professional development, interest in somatic practices. I know a lot of people are new here, so I'm not surprised by that. Seeking new techniques for clients, curiosity about mind and body. Yeah, I think this is a great tee up for Exhale. Exhale, Boise. So today is going to mark one year that they have been certified practitioners, which is incredible, what they have been able to do in just one year. And it's three somatic breathwork practitioners that collaborated and they teamed up to maximize their ability to bring somatic breathwork to as many people as possible and their surrounding area, which they're in Idaho. And I know that they've worked really hard to become the gold standard and really set the bar as high as possible. And by doing so, they've really started to crack some interesting doors open. They're working with frontline workers, veterans, active duty military. They're working with drug and alcohol rehabilitation. I know Charlotte, on our team is doing the same when it comes to rehabs or has working with correctional institutions and a lot more. And so they're opening more doors that all of us have the ability to be a part of as well. And I know that if you're close to them, they're looking for more practitioners to bring onto their team. So I'd love to go ahead and bring them on Exhale. If you're there. Feel free to go ahead and open your video and. And mics are on. Let's see what's up. Mariah.

Hey.

All right, Lovely. Mike, how you doing?

I'm doing great.

Excellent. Pete, how are you? Good, Lovely. Yeah, man. What a. What an honor to have all of you here. We're stoked. Was any of that information that Jagger shared, was it new to you? Was it refreshing? Any thoughts on. On some of that that he shared?

Yeah, all of it. It's. It's so refreshing to go through and hear that stuff again. And you know it. I would love to come back and take another course because I know there's. There's always so much wisdom that comes out, and for anybody considering becoming a practitioner, there's so much gold. So much gold.

Yeah. Thank you. We appreciate that. We really appreciate that, Mike. And so what I would love to do to kind of kick this off is. Would love to just hear a little bit about your story and give others an example of what can be done. You know, feel free to move in any order that you would like, and we'll take from there, because this is an open conversation. It's an open flow. Our team's still working on the back end. So, participants, if you have questions for Exhale, please do put them in the chat and we will address them.

I'll start off, actually, first, before you guys go in. I'm excited to hear you all speak and to really hear the process of how you guys came together. But it's been such an honor to watch you guys learn this modality and really run with it and just make such. Each one of you and all together have been such a pillar for your community. And just watching your journey, like, I can feel the ripple effect in every one of my cells, and it really. It brings tears to my eyes just to know just. Yeah. How much of an impact you all have made. So I'm so thankful that you hopped on here and are willing to have this conversation. And my. My heart truly goes out to all three of you so much.

If. If I may, there's a great question, and because the chat moves so fast, I feel that this is a great entry point. And one of the questions from Stacy is, how did you go about coming together and starting a business? I think this is a big question amongst practitioners. This is why we. We have our Somatic Creators. You all did take the Somatic Creators, which is our business and marketing coaching for all of those that are registering for the workshop. We're including that for free when you register. But nonetheless, how did you go about coming together and starting a business?

Yeah, I'll take the lead here. Just in the beginning, but it was very unique on how we got together. Me and Pete had known each other, but not. We hadn't met personally. And the first time we met physically was at the training.

We.

I looked across the room and seen Pete sitting there, and I was like, wait a minute. We had met on the online course, but we had never.

Yeah.

So after experiencing the course, me and Pete were both just so blown away that we knew this was. Was going to be our path forward. We wanted to bring this to the Treasure Valley. And Pete knew that Mariah had been certified through the online course a couple months prior. So initially we were like, let's get together and see if there's Synergies and how we can make this work if there's something that we can put together. We hosted one event. It was a sold out event right out of the gate and it was such a powerful event that we literally all dropped our individual plans and collaborated on XHL and it's been nonstop since.

That's epic. I didn't even know that you didn't. That you guys had met. That's cool. That's really cool. So we all have co founder on here. Specific roles. I come from an operational background and operational perspective. It's important to have roles within a business. And so many of us and many practitioners, we wear many hats. Right. And so can we maybe speak to what each of you do within the company to, to get the most out of it? Yeah.

And that's unique as well that each of us, we all have our own things that we're good at, but we collaborate together on, on most areas. So depending on what it might be, we've had to designate some people like Mariah for our marketing. She's definitely the one that powers into that. But me and Pete work together collaboratively to do development, business development, working through the different areas that we, we want to be able to focus and take somatic to. So for instance, one of the, the new things that we're cracking the door on is we're going to host, we're actually visiting the prison on Wednesday. So we'll be hosting for inmates in January.

Wow.

And that's just one of those things that, you know, me and Pete could, could both go in and make the right contacts and develop that relationship and grow forward. Rehab centers and things like that. So yeah, we share a lot of the responsibilities. We all have a little bit different backgrounds and it's kind of fit together really nicely and we're learning as we go. So it really is a collaborative effort in all ways.

Yeah, that's really special. And so I actually saw something come through. It's. Somebody said, you know, it's a bummer that there's still a lot of stigma around this work. And I will, like I opened up with is that there's, it's a less barrier to entry when it comes to breath work. But I know, I think what this individual might mean by stigma is people look at it as woo woo. So like how have you been able to like approach correctional facilities, prisons, rehab facilitations and they take you seriously?

Well, you are starting to see a lot more people come around to the book. The Body Keeps the Score is one that we hear A lot of, especially in police, law enforcement, they're starting to really understand the nervous system and how it affects people's ability to just show up in the world. So we are, we definitely come across some of those walls. We've had, we've had some therapists that are like, oh my God, don't do that. And then we've had other therapists that come to our sessions because their client experienced it and they want to know what, what they experience. And then even the therapist tells us they didn't realize how bad they needed it. So it's really through the experience. Woo woo is something that we've even used in some of our openings. You know, some people think that, but then after they realized that it's real, they realized that it literally got to the deep core of whatever their issues, whatever they were holding in their body, and they had a beautiful experience. And from there we've grown most of our contacts and our business has grown organically. So it's word of mouth. We started with, we look back at March and April was our first events and we had our first event that was really big. And then we started to look at different places and we would get, you know, only a couple people showing up, five or six people showing up. And then those started to sell out. And it was always because somebody else had heard or they were coming with a friend or they were bringing somebody. So yeah, it's grown like wildfire.

So, so what are, what are your backgrounds though, before getting into this? I'm curious on that.

Yeah, I'll give you mine and then I'll pass it over to these guys through. I'm 52 years old. I have, I've started a couple businesses in my lifetime. I was actually a CEO in a logistics business for a long time. And then that's when I realized that no matter how much money I made, no matter what I was doing down that path, it wasn't bringing me the happiness that I needed. And through my own healing is where I tapped into breath. And then that brought me to Somatic and it changed everything.

Amazing. A lot of us start on our own journey, that's for sure. What about you, Mariah?

Yeah, so I taught yoga for a while and it wasn't providing me the amount of impact that I was hoping to have. I was just on this journey of discovery and you know, moving out of my parents house and seeing all of the triggers and seeing the ways that I wanted to grow. So I just kept seeking and I did a mindfulness program and it's expand. And Jaggers was one of the guest speakers in that program. And I deeply, deeply value like the not woo woo. You know, that's the term that we're using. Like I love how rooted in reality your guys program is and that's what pulled me to it. And so I experienced it the first time and I felt it in my body in a way that I didn't feel yoga. I mean, yoga is still very important to me in my process. But just experiencing the breath work for that first time, I was like, this is what I want to share. And so I started building my own business on my own Bridge Wellness. And a few months, months after starting that, I met Pete and Mike and I was like, okay, well I guess you know, the collaboration is where the world is taking me. And so I just trusted that and yeah, look back.

Love this. Beautiful. Thank you. What about yourself, Pete?

Construction management. I was just a regional manager of a big construction company. Project management. And I mean high stress, lots of hours, which actually like put me in the state of what am I doing with my life. And so it shifted to change and into service. And I joined Fit for Service and went to a workshop and was laying down in a breathwork workshop and thinking to myself, what is going on right now here? And Stephen actually came up to me and, and worked with me a little bit. And I remember you telling me, man, just, just breathe, just breathe. And the only thing, the best way that I can describe it after that, it was just like it just happened. And I experienced a level of healing that I hadn't been able to experience up until that point. And I knew that I had to share this. Saw Stephen on the same mindfulness program expand and thought, that's it, that's it. I got to get that training.

So yeah, brilliant, brilliant. I love this shift. Real quick, somebody had asked, how'd you come up with your name? Because I see the branding's on point here. I know we throw around a lot of names, but I mean, I understand Exhale, but you know, who came up with it? Where did it come from?

Go ahead, you take the lead on that one.

Yeah, you know what? I was thinking of something that people would, would connect to, that would be easy to remember and that made a lot of sense. And it didn't come to us till after. But, but, but you know, the breath, when you take a, an inhale in, that's for you and an exhale is for others. And that's what really resonated was we want to give back to Others, the power of somatic breath work and exhale just fit the mold. It was like, yes, that's it.

So that is solid. I did not look at it from that perspective. Yeah, very, very well put. So someone had asked when. When you start, when you are working with these rehabilitation centers, and do you have, like, a gradual release process for them or, like, do you guys jump right in? What does that process look like when you are hosting 10, 15, 20 people?

Pete, you want to take the lead on that?

Yeah.

To speak to the rehabilitation centers, we dove into really taking them in. I. I actually was working in admissions at a rehabilitation center and kind of involved in that community and stuff, had some background in that. And, man, we just, we took in a full session the very first time that we went in there, and the response was amazing. A lot of the individuals that are to that state, I believe in their life, where they're really needing changes because it's, it's. It's life or death at that point. But a lot, A lot of times they're not sure what it is they're looking for. And what we have found is through the somatic breath work process, they're able to like, really figure that out in a sense of. It's not so much about the substance. It's much more than that. It's. It's everything else that I'm experiencing that is leading me to, you know, reaching for that substance. So I just believed in this process and this program so much that we delivered it exactly how we were taught. We went full speed ahead.

Brilliant. Jaggers, I know you have some questions before you do. Elaine said Excel Boise. I'm signing up for Somatic Training. Thank you so much. Just know that that Somatic Creators business and marketing coaching is included in there, but she said would love to learn and grow with you in Canada. So what I'll do for everybody on here that does want to connect with Exhale in the post workshop email, I'll include a link to their website. Is that the best place to reach you?

Yes. Instagram.

Yeah. Cool. Or Instagram, is it just Exhale. Boise.

Yeah, Boise.

Beautiful. I'll include all that in the post workshop email. But Elaine, way to jump on it. That's a smooth move, Jaggers. Go ahead. You're muted, brother.

Highly recommend giving them a follow on Instagram and watching their journey. So if we can put their. Their links in the, in the chat, that'd be great.

Yeah.

One of the things that I'm hearing from each of you is just, and this is what's been true for me, I am a natural skeptic. I would say I've gone through my life just being a natural skeptic of a lot of different things. And with somatic breath work, especially when I first started doing sessions, I didn't realize how powerful it was. And then I worked with enough people that I'm like, wow, okay. People are getting a lot from this. And to hear all of you say, like, going through your own experience and actually having the felt experience of it working for you, and then, you know, wanting to show up in service to other people and offering it to them. I'm curious, have you, like, and I have my own perspective on this, but have you experienced, like, in your community that there's like a shortage of this work? Or is there, like, are there people that are, you know, are you having a hard time filling out these sessions or are people just wanting the experience?

I would say recently we have had a drop off of attendees. I'm not sure if it's the holidays or just the time of year, but there are not a lot of breathwork practitioners in Boise. We are the first ones doing this. There are a handful of individual practitioners that are offering small sessions, which are usually under 10 people. They're a lot smaller. So I think the struggle that we have in Boise is that people just don't know. Yeah, there's people just. They don't know at all. And so that's been a lot of our process is education, you know, letting people know that this is an option. Because I think so many people are searching for this work and they're wanting it, but they just don't know that it exists. So that's. That's kind of the challenges that we're facing, is figuring out how to get it out there in a way that people understand and, you know, get past the resistance and the fear that's involved in holding them back from actually experiencing it.

Yeah, yeah, it's so it's. It's such an interesting place to be in because it is like breathwork is becoming more and more popular. And obviously I still tune in. I mean, Fish, who is another one of our founders, he was just in Maryland and around a bunch of people that he was talking about what he did. And you forget that the mainstream general population has no idea what breath work is. And it's still at the, like, we're still at ground floor. And I can speak from our side of things. We just got, you know, accredited by a university, so we are able to offer continuing Education credits for any health and wellness practitioner that's out there. So there is a light at the end of the tunnel and the world is waking up to this work and they're realizing how powerful it is. But that being said, and I know you all know this, but before you're a practitioner, it's so important that we are all educators, right? And that's our job, is to educate our communities and our population on this work. And it'll reach mainstream here soon, I have no doubt.

I like to think of it like where yoga and meditation was 20 years ago. I mean, we talk about that internally. And I've listened to many meditation facilitators, teachers, great teachers out there, some like Sam Harris and Joseph Goldstein, who like, their work was like on the line, you know, they were made out as kind of like quacks and kooks, you know, and now it's, it's implemented in like high level athletes, it's utilized in military, it's utilized in businesses all across the board. It's, it's being brought to schools. I mean, we, we work with a company that brings mindfulness meditation into schools, you know, and that is incredible. Like, start young. Start really young. We have a lot of youth advisors and youth counselors that have become certified practitioners, you know, which is tremendous.

I would love to ask each of you, what is your favorite part of holding a session? What's your favorite part of the session?

Go ahead, Mariah.

Well, a specific one is coming up for me. So the other day we went to a, the. We did a session for the guards at the prison. And seeing that transformation from the beginning to the end was unlike anything else. And you see it in public sessions as well. But this one specifically, because they walked in, they were all rigid and tight and uncomfortable. And, you know, some of them were congregating in the back and by the end of it, they were opening up and sharing. They're like, wow, I didn't know I needed that. That, like we've been taught to suppress and to not get emotional about anything. And they call that emotional intelligence, you know, and it was just so cool every single time that seeing that transformation from the beginning to the end of a session, especially for somebody's first time, that's what I love. Because you feel it in them. You feel it in the way that they are present in that moment with you. The walls just, just melt away.

Yeah, I'd say I'm to the same flavor of that. It's, it's setting that container because so many people Even in many sessions that we hold come in, and you can almost see and sense the fear in their eyes, or they're nervous about it, and they. They just don't know. And when you create that container where they can actually just let a wall down and relax.

That.

That connection that is made in those moments is probably one of my favorite parts. But I'm torn because, I mean, to hear the experiences that individuals have at the end. Being a new practitioner, I thought for the longest time, like, holding. Holding the sessions and watching people. Well, I used to gauge, like, how we did on a session in the amount of expression that occurred, like that. That was, like, what I looked for, and that was something we really grew through. And then I realized that this, like, really embodying the power of this modality and knowing that that has nothing to do with it. I can think a certain way, but if we deliver this thing well, at the end, where I thought maybe it went a certain way or this person was feeling a certain way, I'm just blown away to hear people's experiences with it.

That's awesome.

Those breakthrough moments are always just something special, and they're different every time. Like I said, I have laughing fits, and Jaggers threw up that photo of me having my ugly cry fit. And I've done upward of 100 sessions, so they're different every time. Um, Mike would love to. To hear from you, and then I'd love to address something in the comments.

Yeah. So what Pete said, for me, it's the. At the end of a session, hearing and seeing the transformation, we. We've had so many different types of sessions, and one of the ones that comes to mind now is our men's session. We host a men's only session because we found that a lot of times in our community sessions, men hold back their expression because they don't want to let it go in front of women. And hosting the men's only session, you see these guys come in, and they're big bodybuilders, or we've had UFC fighters and these guys with these, you know, like me, big beards, and they're just holding back, saying, my wife sent me. I have to do this, or whatever. And at the end, they're like, I was feeling emotions, and.

And like, it was coming up, and I started crying.

And it's this community, and you have. You have people that are. And these guys are now hugging, and they're brothers that just went through an experience together that maybe they've never had another man cry around them or you know, be able to express anger in a healthy way. And these guys come back and they bring their families and they're starting to just. It grows and it's just beautiful. So they. For me, it's the ending. We walk out of every session going, holy. You know, just like, wow, what happened? Like, how did. So many different things have happened in that one session? And that's the gratitude that we have, the. The purpose that it gave us coming out of those sessions. We just know that the work we're doing is making Jaggers, you said it earlier, is it's ripples, like ripples are turning into waves that are just changing our community and the people around us. So it's such a beautiful thing to witness.

Thank you. I want to. I want to address something in the comments. I do feel it's really important, and this is a beautiful and a safe container. So I want to honor you for sharing this. Shannon. Shannon had said, I'm so grateful for the work you're doing and bringing forward to the world. However, I find I'm working hard to continuously stay tuned in with the wisdom and teachings you're bringing through, because as an indigenous honor runner from Turtle Island, I'm so distracted by the obvious lack of feminine two spirits or indigenous representation in your circle, especially since you're breathing on these territories. I say this because these teachings are not new to the many stewards of these lands, and they actually have amazing other insights about the breadth of the land your. You are on and your relationship to it. Again, I'm super grateful for all of you, but feel the need to send this seed forward to you, and I thank you. And if I understand that it may be the male presence that you're referring to here and 80, more than 80% of our practitioners are women. And I bring this up because. And this I'm piggybacking off of Mike right now, you know, and thank you for doing these, these specific men's sessions. You know, I see a lot of practitioners, they do women only sessions as well, and then we have co ed sessions. But the more we can bring this work, men and women bring this work to our communities. The more collective healing we can do, the more we can make it more accepted. Right. Regardless of the vessel that it's coming through.

You know, speak to that as well. Yeah. Thank you so much for, for speaking to that. I have struggled with this in my own process, studying and visiting and being with a lot of other indigenous wisdom keepers and studying different types of shamanism and Native American animism And I lived in Hawaii for a while, studying the Hawaiian culture as well. And a lot of their healing modalities and it's. But a lot of them are trying to do the same thing. And I realized when I would speak through those lenses that it would not actually get to the mainstream. Right. My perspective is like, yes. And like I said yesterday, if you tuned in yesterday, the reason why these modalities are becoming popular is because we have weeded out all of our innate somatic practices that so many of these traditions used to do. Ceremony, right? Being together in ceremony, allowing each other to express, to release, to dance, to cry, to yell, to scream, to be with each other in a sacred way that we've, we have weeded that out of our culture. And that's why we are having so many issues. And so I take the perspective of trying to simplify it as much as possible to get it out to the general population, because that is going to, that is what's going to make change. And absolutely honoring the, the wisdom keepers that have kept these, you know, these are not new techniques. I'll say that right before you. These are not. Breathwork's been around for a very long time. I've just tried to put a Western understanding and use language that is going to break through to the mainstream masses. So that's the perspective that I have and I really appreciate you bringing that up. And that's where we move forward from.

Yeah. Thank you, Jaggers. Lindsay just registered. Thank you, Lindsay. We will, we will see you in the January training. Jessica said, I'm a trauma therapist doing telehealth. No current space to do it in person as I'm experiencing van life across the U.S. love that. Can this be adapted to telehealth? So quick note is that one of our mentors on our team, Adam Carberry, he is, he is doing the nomadic van life and he crushes the online sessions. So it absolutely can be done via telehealth. I have a good friend who has a telehealth business and he's been speaking and asking if we can bring it into his, into his locations. And that's just the online, the online training, the online sessions. We teach how to do these online and in person sessions. And so we'll actually be doing an online session tomorrow for those of you who want to experience it. And so make sure you are here for tomorrow. We do have a question for you three and it's, and this is, I feel is a really important question. How do you maintain regulation health like in Balance doing this work? Maybe, I think this person was asking maybe for yourself, like, how do you maintain your own regulation and your own health. Health balance through this work?

No, I mean, we do many different practices. One, but we hold each other accountable to that, you know, truly believing that if we're going to. To hold space, we have to be in the position to hold space. So, so often we're checking in with one another. What are you doing? Are you taking time for yourself? Are you meditating? We do breath work with each other often. I mean, we can come into a room now and just see it in one another, like you need a session. But, but really what's been beautiful about the collaboration is the support that we give one another. That being a huge component is just holding each other accountable to make sure we're taking the time for each of us individually.

Yeah. Are, are you, are any of you doing like, individual sessions or is when you host an event, is it always like, collaborative, all three of you?

We don't hold any. Like, I don't personally hold a group session by myself, but I am wanting to do some women's sessions soon, so I think that I will be doing that on my own.

Yeah. Yeah. Lovely. Amazing. Is there, is there anything that you realize, like, or notice when going into a session that seems to be a recurrence? Like, what do you notice in the participants? Maybe it's body language, maybe it's the expression. Is there anything that comes up.

You'Re talking about, like pre session that we might notice?

Yeah, like, like, like when you. So like, I notice some things usually within the first five or ten minutes that individuals start expressing. And I'm wondering if, if you notice anything as well. Before I, before I say what it is or what I notice, is there anything that comes up that's like a recurring pattern.

Or perhaps after as well too? Like, are there any, like, specific things that you notice after, as far as similar realizations that people are having? Yeah, because I know, I see that as well.

Yeah, that's a great question.

Yeah.

I think in the beginning you notice, you see in people's eyes the hesitancy, maybe like the fear of the unknown, what they're going to experience. And we've learned that setting the container is probably the most important part. I know this is something that's part of the training, but setting the container and really becoming comfortable in that space, letting people have a chance to just settle in, understand what we're going to experience and, you know, hopefully we can figure out a way to break the ice a little bit. And then after the session, we're noticing that there's just this. This overwhelming clarity. People have this sense of relief. You can see it in their faces. Like, it's just stress is gone. You can see the lightness in people.

At the end of the session.

Yeah, I certainly can. Can feel and see that lightness. I always love the, the joy and the laughter and the connectivity that happening afterwards. And, and, and, you know, again, for those of you joining tomorrow, you'll see, you'll experience kind of our, Our intake process, our onboarding for these sessions, and then what that post integration will be like, you know, so. Thank you. You know, something I notice when going into a session, and I notice this within about the first five to seven minutes. This is once we begin the breathing. I noticed that with men, I see a lot of, like, fists, right? I see a lot of jaw clenching. I see this thing come down, right? And that, to me is this is the language of the body, right? And they're. And that's. They're saying, I'm angry, right? And then, you know, we might approach them and use the techniques that we teach. And it's always with our voice first. You know, what are you holding on to? Right? And then we're doing our best as practitioners to just elevate that emotion 10%. Like, we're never. I'm never over somebody, and I'm like, what are you holding on to elevate their. Their emotion? And so I'm wondering if you. If you've seen that at all. Oh, Pete.

Yeah. As far as, like, comment. Yeah. I was thinking why you said that is like, man, just in general.

Yeah.

I see a lot of anger, especially in men that comes forth. You know, as far as an expression.

Goes.

What I feel most often, though, is that these people have just realized, like, when that first expression really hits, like, there's almost a sense through the entire body that I'm. I'm safe. I've now entered a place where I can, like, really be myself. Wealth, I guess, no matter what that expression is that I see commonly, like, I mean, no matter what the circumstances are, I mean, those are obviously different. But what I also find that's a common occurrence is like, for example, Mariah asked that everyone share their intention or when people share at the end circumstances, why we end up in those, you know, workshops are also unique and different.

But.

But we're all looking for the same thing. You know, it'll be peace and joy and love and forgiveness, and I just love it. When people actually realize, like, this is the spot where I can. I can look for that. You know, I can go for that.

Yeah. Those breakthrough moments, it's. I find it so interesting. And, you know, maybe other people have experienced this. Let us know in the comments. But a lot of times people are feeling a little scared in the beginning, like before a session. And the body is. The body knows that it's about to go through something powerful. And it's so interesting how many people have messaged me and commented, like, I don't know, this looks scary. And I'm like, well, you are being with yourself for an hour and your breath. And maybe that is the most scary thing for you. It blows my mind how people are not afraid to take different medications or even eat food with all kinds of different chemicals, or you're not afraid of that. But to be with yourself on a mat, going inward for an hour of your time can be pretty scary for people. But it's so cool and it's so powerful to watch those breakthrough moments of people being with themselves and breaking through that fear of actually reconnecting to their body. Right. Because if you. Your life is measured by breath. I've said that multiple times. When you take your first, eventually we will all take our last. And if you are afraid of your breath, well, then you are afraid of life. And what I see is people moving through that is they break through the fear of actually being alive and being human. And there's no greater feeling than that.

Yeah.

I will speak to one more thing that I've noticed is, you know, especially people that come in for their first time, they won't be super committed to the breath. And that's something that we learn in the training, is how to help somebody when they're really resistant and to help them maybe get a little movement in their body, coaching them through the breathing, really just supporting them through that.

And.

I've found that even if people are not having those, like, big, deep belly breaths that look like they're moving a lot at the end, I realized that that person's body knew exactly what it needed. Yeah, they weren't breathing super deep, but they were breathing into the areas that they needed to at the depth that they were able to based on where their nervous system and their body is at. And, you know, so that's a reminder for me constantly, is that what you see on the outside of somebody's expression and how deep they're breathing doesn't really speak to what's actually happening inside. That is. Is all the Time just constantly reminding him, like, it's not the expression, it's not the breath, it's. They're having their own process and trusting their body. Like you always speak to Stephen, trusting the innate intelligence of their body.

It's refreshing. It's refreshing. And this still happens for me to get my mind blown often as a practitioner because our humanness comes in and our minds like, is that person really getting something out of this? Or they like, it looks like nothing's going on. And then you hold enough sessions and you hear enough people say, oh my God, that was the most powerful thing I've ever went through. Like, I need to call my, my wife, I need to call my children. I need to like, spend time with them. I need to do the things that are important in my life. And for me as a practitioner, oftentimes I'm like, that looked like nothing was going on over there. But sometimes that can be the most powerful part. Right. I love, love, love just getting my mind blown over and over and over again. And. And it's not the person that is like having. That's always having a massive expression or release. That is the person that needs support. It is the people that are having a hard time getting into a rhythm. But there's always something going on. Right. There's always just people being with themselves for an hour in their breath. They will get something out of it. They will. And like you have all said, if you set the container up right. Right. And that's a, that's, it's so cool to just see how, how beautiful the container that, that you have all created together. Which I think is, is the true magic of Exhale Boise. It is the container that all of you are holding and bringing to the world.

That's lovely. A couple questions. After you facilitate a session, what does your post integration or your post follow up look like with the participants? What does that look like? Some. A couple, I saw a couple people in the chat to ask.

For group sessions.

Yeah. So, like, what's the aftercare look like?

So we're actually in the, in the process of like redeveloping this to provide more concrete steps, more of a clear path, I would say, for people to go down because we recognize that we are the facilitators and the guides in this work and that people may not know where to go after their session. We're actually talking about this yesterday. But currently our email, that's an automated email that goes out after our sessions. It's asking some questions like, how are you feeling? Is Anything coming up for you? Like, do you feel like you need to take action in your life? And then we actually have a list of integration journaling prompts for them to go to. And we're also looking into support, creating some, like, monthly online calls, kind of what you like, what Somatic offers in the community. Just community support for people to be able to come together and to share their experiences in a place where other people understand it. Because I know for me, that's been a really big challenge with this work is having people that understand, to connect with, like, who they understand what I've been through. They've experienced the breath work as well, because people that haven't been through it just fully understand. So, yeah, we're definitely in the process of creating more support for that because I do think that people need more. More guidance for how to dive deeper into their practice and how to integrate their experiences into their life.

Yeah, you hit the nail on the hammer, Mariah. Or hit the hammer on the nail, whatever you want to say. I don't think, like, integration is something that a lot of people need to understand what, what it actually is and what's going on and for. For us. And my belief is that community is the biggest thing that helps integration. So you are all doing it, whether you realize it or not. Because from a somatic lens, integration means healing. Healing means integration. Somatic breath work is an internal integration modality. You're creating a space for people to integrate their experiences, for people to have this internal integration process where they're connecting to maybe some of the things that they push down, they've repressed or they're connecting and they're integrating, maybe they have clarity around the direction that they want to go in their life and how they want to show up, and that is that internal integration integration process. Now, when what I think this question was trying to ask is, like, okay, what does it look like to externally integrate that and to, like, take this out into the world and show up as this connected, integrated version of myself? Right. Well, the biggest thing in that, because no one can externally integrate for another person. Like, you have this internal integration experience, and now it is your, like, your journey to become that. That version of. Of yourself in the world. But the biggest way that we can support with that is to create community and to create a community where people can show up as that connected version of themselves and be seen and heard and felt in that place. It's not that. Like, I think a lot of people around integration think that it's like, okay, let's have a person, you know, kind of hold their hand while they're, you know, and check in and be a coach, which that can be so powerful. You know, a lot of people need accountability, which can be great. But what I've seen is having community and having other people that honor and will encourage and will support you becoming this new version of yourself and being able to, like, act that out and show up in that place because it's unfortunate. And for those of you that are listening, you know, one of the biggest things that I see and I hear from people, it's like, well, you know, after this session, like, how do I go back to my normal job? Or how do I go back to my. Because maybe there's so much stuff that I've repressed and I haven't been listening to that internal voice or my heart that's saying I need to do something different with my life. And it's like, how do I go back to my relationship or my current job and. And live with these new realizations? Right? Because ignorance can sometimes be bliss in a way. But it's, you know, a lot of the times it's taking inventory of the community that you're around. Is your community supportive of your growth, of you becoming a new person? And do they. Do they see you as a verb, as a process, as a change? Because we're all changing. Change is the only thing that's certain. And are you surrounded by people that will honor you in that process and honor you in that change? The biggest thing for that is community. And so you are already doing that, whether you realize it or not. You are holding these internal integration processes for people, and you're creating the community for. And as you continue to build, it takes time, but you're creating a community for those people to feel, to be felt while they are. While they are going through that growth process.

That's so incredible. That speaks to the flavor of the modality itself, though, a little bit. I mean, if integration is something that has to be done by the individual. But what's so powerful about the somatic breath work? Like, when I had my first experience, it was like a whole bot embodying felt sensation of what I needed to. To do to make a difference or shift and change in my life. It was no longer being told to me. It was like this internal understanding that came through me. I don't know if it was of me, but it came through me. So it just landed in a way that it was like, really propelled me to make a significant change.

Yeah. That bring anything else up for either Mike or Mariah. And if not, I'm curious, you know, we'll maybe wrap this up here in a moment, but I'm curious if you're open to sharing any of your, any of your like biggest breakthroughs from receiving this work, like in your like biggest things that you've moved through yourself. If you're open to sharing, obviously that's a little bit more personal, but within your own patterns, within your own humanness. Because I know that it's brought so much up for me and it continues to.

Yeah, I'll speak to that for a minute. One of the things that was characteristic of my personality was to control situations. It always has been. And through this work and through this collaboration and it's allowed me to be able to realize and recognize how my energy affects others and how others energy affects me. And by focusing on controlling my energy in a way that gives back to others, it's just made, it's made my life so much more beautiful in my interactions and in what we've been able to create. That realization that came from somatic breath work and through this, this work has been one of the most powerful transformations in my life.

Thank you for sharing that, Mike. Either of you want to share?

Yes, it's. I would say so. For me a big part of my role is the marketing, the social media and with that a lot of judgment can come up.

Oh yeah.

And you know, it's been a process to work through, finding my voice, finding my confidence and finding love within myself to be able to create.

Yeah.

And another piece of that creating, I've been navigating currently. Right now I'm kind of in this process of figuring out how to, to navigate my own personal well being and also creating and showing up online.

Yeah.

Because I've kind of been in a low place right now. You know, it's winter, turning more inward, very reflective. I'm like, I don't really want to create right now. So you know, it's, it's a challenge, it's honoring myself and where I'm at, you know, remembering that it's okay to be where I'm at. And again that judgment, not judging, allowing myself to be where I'm at and you know, honoring that. Things come in waves. So I continue to learn, I continue to do the daily practice through all of the resistance. I still face so much resistance to the breath, to continuing to show up and, and you know, I just, it's a day by day thing, moment by moment truly. So it'll continue to evolve.

You go through seasons, right? Like, it's okay that you're in a winter time right now. I think a big part of a lot of our, A lot of the ways we get in our own way is that, like, you're not designed to be in a summertime where you're creating all the time. Like, you got to have. Have those winners where you go back in and fully allow yourself to do that. Because then when it's time for spring, you will have all your energy and you will be able to show up fully. Right? So honoring that time for yourself. And I really relate to that. You know, showing up and expressing outward into, you know, especially social media is. It's a, that is a healing process in itself, right? You look at somatic breath work that's helping you express a lot of the stuff that has been, you know, pent up and held in the body. Well, eventually that expression breaks free so that you can also utilize your expression in other ways and share your story and share your medicine and share your perspective with the world. And it's such a. It's such a challenge to break through that. And especially like putting yourself out there on social media, it. All of your own ways in which you judge yourself and your own self doubt and, and it's such a. It's a spiritual process. It has been for me. Because as soon as you put yourself out there, what you're saying to the world is like, here, judge me. Look at, look at me. This is what my perspective is. And it's much easier to not share your perspective. I can understand in the world right now too, like how, how easy it would be to just stay quiet, how easy it would be to just not put yourself out there in the world, but it's, it's so worth it. So keep going. Mariah. Got this. What about you, Pete? Then we'll, then we'll wrap it up here.

Yeah, I think it. I think it's self acceptance is what I've learned most through this work. You know, as a man and younger, I thought everything that my value was, it had to be monetary or tangible, like what I brought to the table so much. And oftentimes I'll look to Mike and be like, what am I really doing here? You know, and. And he's just like. I mean, just. Just showing up is enough and being of service and. And these two remind me of that a lot, and I need that. So thank you to you both, but that's probably it. And to, to get uncomfortable and know.

That.

The growth is in the uncomfortable. You know, before this call, me and Mariah had a session. She's like, what day is that call? And he said, that call's on Monday. She's like, oh, crap, I'm nervous. I said, growth. That's growth. So this whole process has taught me a lot about that.

I love that you all did a phenomenal job and thank you again so much for taking some time to hop on and just looking at the comments of people, love hearing, sharing your own personal journey and your own personal story with this. And once again, just from the bottom of my heart, I hope you realize and you truly feel how much of a difference and how much of a ripple effect you are making in the world.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you all so much for taking the time. And again, I mean, one year, one year today. So congratulations, Happy birthday. You made such a ripple effect in a simple as one year. I'm going to put Excel's website in the chat one more time. I'll include it in the post. Workshop messaging. You of course can connect with them there. You can connect with them on Instagram. You know, we are a very community oriented company and we certainly facilitate that and encourage that with our practitioners as well. And I feel strongly that our practitioners would stand behind that. Many of you are asking about where can I find sessions? We have a practitioner database that will be available very soon, very, very soon. I would like to say by January 1st. But all of you, you will, if you're on this call, you will get the notification about that. You'll be able to find Excel Boise on there. You'll be able to find any of our practitioners that are in the uk, they're in the Middle east, they're in Australia, they're all around the nation in Canada. So that will be available. That's something that we place you on. When you register for the training, you will be listed on that database for a time. And just want to thank you all. Tomorrow's session will be, you're going to probably want 90 to 90 minutes to two hours. It'll be a full somatic breathwork session. It's not going to be lecture and training, so I just want to prepare you all for that. But again, if any of you want to connect with XL Boise, XL Boise.com we appreciate you so much. Excel. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Pete. Mariah, thank you.

Jagger, thank you so much. Thank you guys. Sandeem, what do you think? You want to stay on and maybe we take like a moment break and stay on and answer some questions or.

Yeah, I'm actually seeing quite a few questions come through about the training. Where do I sign up? I love that people are asking that. That and. But yeah, let's field some questions maybe about the training or about today's. Today's work.

Yeah, go ahead. Let's. I do need to use the restroom real quick. So maybe if you want to hop on or if you want to take a break, definitely put your questions in the Q and A. If they're around the training, we can, we can definitely cover that. If it's around the curriculum that we went over or anything that Exhale talked about, I would love to. Would love to dive in. So.

Yeah, absolutely.

I'll be back in a minute or two.

Sure thing. One of the questions right away is do we help with anybody who's on disability? We do have a scholarship program. I think we take three to five people per online training. You can click the link that says Somatic Breathwork. Let's connect. And you can connect with one of our mentors or if one of our team members can throw the scholarship link in here for the application. It is limited space on those. So that is one solution that we have in that regard. Oh, there it is right there. Thank you so much, Charlotte. She's always on it. You're just the best. For those of you that are asking about the actual training, here's a link. We'll send all of this to you tomorrow as well. Who want to learn more about the training about Somatic Creators, which is what we offer during these workshops. We include that. That's that 12 week live business and marketing coaching that goes hand in hand with practitioner training. It begins after practitioner training once you're certified. I love that you're doing this workshop again. I'd love to share it. Amazing. Thank you, Sabra. Appreciate you. I would like a conversation with organizers regarding the funding ideas outside the workshop. How could I do that? Yeah, please just schedule a call with one of our mentors. We do have installment options. We do have payment plans. These are things that you can take advantage of. At the checkout option, there's what's called after pay. And you can finance the whole training. I think if you qualify for that, you can get it as low as like $300 a month to start, which is really awesome. So we do have solutions, but that's not what this calls for. Just book a call with one of our mentors and they can certainly knock that out for you. So I need a calendar for the in Person trainings after March. Yeah, there's going to be one in, in, in, in September in Austin, Texas and there's going to be one in December in Phoenix, Arizona after March. So actually March, April, May. So June, September and December. Oh, look at that. Jess is on it. You're awesome. See, someone asked Santiago Ramirez asked, have you taught it in the school system? So Somatic Breathwork, the company, we have not brought this to the school systems but there's certainly room for it, there's opportunity to do so. Maybe that was a question for Exhale, you know, and as you could kind of gather from the conversation, I mean they've, they've entered many different sectors of the industry and so schools are abundant and they're certainly necessary to bring this work too.

I can speak on that a little bit. We obviously train a lot of different practitioners, but we have quite a few practitioners that have brought this. Some of them are educators, are teachers. And it's interesting because I have so many people that ask, you know, can I do this with my children? Should I do this with kids? Right. Well, a lot of the times kids are already so connected to their innate processes, right. They don't have as much filters and societal impression that's been pushed put on them. So really what I suggest a lot of the times is doing this work. And it's so interesting because I've had lots of parents that have had powerful experiences that are like, oh my God, my kid needs to do this. Like it's so important for my kid. Right. And I'm like, well a lot of the times the kid is co regulating to you. So the more that you do this work for yourself by proxy, that will affect your children. And a lot of the things that we discussed yesterday around the process of discharging, the stuff that we talked about today with co regulation, they don't always need a full breathwork session. A lot of the times they just need permission to express and being taught healthy ways of expression and healthy ways to regulate their nervous system. So appreciate that question. What have we got next?

Yeah, so, so let's see, we have quite a few here. What does it mean when you are constantly on a self healing journey but avoid or put off seeing a therapist?

Say that one more time. What does it mean when you are constantly on a self healing journey but avoid or put off seeing a therapist? I mean I can relate to this especially in our modern world where going to a therapist can be a little scary. It can be off putting. Not always. Is it effective? Right. I mean you look at a therapist or a doctor, there is the full scale of effectiveness within that, you look at a body worker, some people are really good, some people are maybe not so good. And with therapists, that can be the case as well. And like I said yesterday, no one modality is a one size cure all thing for everything. Right. I have found massive benefits from going to therapy myself, but I had to find the right practitioner for me and also someone that had a somatic approach. Because it's unfortunate, but a lot of therapists are taught unless they have, you know, some sort of somatic background, a lot of it is around, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy or cognitive processing, but they miss out on a lot of the body aspects of things. Things. So finding, you know, trust your body, if you like, therapy can be great. But while you're in that session, if you don't feel a resonance with that person, if you don't feel a resonance with any practitioner, then listen to your body. You know, I, I oftentimes I have, you know, so many people that I've asked, you know, they're like, oh, I had a negative experience with emdr.

Right.

A negative experience with breath work. Right. A negative experience with any sort of emotion or any sort of modality. Right. And truly, I've asked them multiple times, did you feel safe with the practitioner? How did your body feel in the presence of that practitioner? What is your body telling you? Listen to that.

Thank you, brother. And Mary's asking. So, like, do you recommend continuing sessions to process more releases and to integrate as more comes up?

Yeah. There's a multitude of different ways that this modality can be used. And we've talked a lot about the expressing and the discharging and the release aspect of it, which, you know, I talked about today that it's, it's never about the release, but, but it's the space that's created, the clarity afterwards and to create elevated emotions to deepen the connection to yourself. And a lot of the times we have to move through some of the stuff that we haven't let ourselves process and then this modality can become sort of like a personal development modality in a way where a lot of the times, sometimes I'm doing a session and I have all these creative ideas. You know, I just, we held a session not that long ago. I had a woman pop up right after the session and was like, I just got the name for the book that I'm writing. It just came to me. So clearly, a lot of times you just need to get out of your head and into your body, and those creative processes will come through. And so it's about connecting to and integrating a lot of the stuff that you've pushed down and moving that through yourself so that you can connect to your strengths, so that you can play in that realm, so that you can find your own unique expression in the world. We talk about that, how to work with somebody ongoing, because sometimes it's like, you know, sometimes they need preventative health. You know, I. A lot of times I have people do sessions once a month that are preventative. It's like, can I prevent. Can I get this all out so that I'm not venting on other people? And then sometimes there's not a lot there, and I can play in that space of creativity and clarity from. From a mental perspective and an embodied perspective as well.

Yeah. Wonderful. Two questions. First, I want to address Kelsey's, which is a common question I think it's important to address. My objection for moving forward as a practitioner is that I don't feel that I've completed the work yet. I am on a healing journey and want to share, but don't feel ready just yet.

This is one of my favorite questions, and it comes up so much. And, yeah, the root of that feeling is a feeling of lack. In a way, it is. And it's like, I haven't done enough to be able to show up for other people. And of course, like, you're on. We're all. You have to be aware of the trap of being on a healing journey of I'm not healed enough. Like, I'm not where I want to be. Right. Yesterday I shared my own process of, you know, offering myself grace and also commitment that it will take commitment to continue on your own healing journey. But you're never going to be fully healed. It's not a state that you get to while you're alive. You're human and you're. There's. There's cells in your body that are dying off and your body's healing at the same time. You are dying and you are healing, and it's a. It's a verb. It's a process. You never get to that end point where you are healed. And if you constantly have that perspective of, like, I need to get to here before I can start showing up for other people. Well, a lot of the times my own healing journey actually started, truly started when I started working with other people because it started bringing up all my own stuff, and I started feeling other. Like one of the most powerful Parts of this work is you start to see how similar we are as humans in the stuff that we go through. There's only a couple core wounds that a lot of us have. And a lot of times you'll watch someone else go through this process and you'll be like, wow, I really, I've gone through that, that as well. And so just because say you're in, you know, you're in elementary school of your, of your healing journey doesn't mean that you can't show up for people that are right behind you. Right. That are in preschool. Just because, you know, I'm teaching at like, say a college level doesn't mean that there's not other people out there that can, that, that can teach at an elementary school because the world.

Is.

At an elementary school level and you just being on your healing journey. Most people aren't even on their healing journey. They just need a doorway. And so, and oftentimes we find our deepest purpose and our own healing while showing up in service to other people.

Lovely. You know, this one might kind of go hand in hand with like contraindications and who should and who shouldn't do this. And I know you'll touch more on that, that tomorrow, but someone had asked, have you seen, have you seen this work help like with post, post pregnancy, any type of anything around that?

Yes, absolutely. So with contraindications, as far as breath work goes, you know, there, as far as research and studies, there are not necessarily a ton of research that's been done on a lot of different breathwork modalities. You know, holotropic breath work, which I talked about earlier, is a very intense three hour long thing and it's probably been studied the most when it comes to doing a breath work journey. Now, you know, pregnancy is something that I've seen different practitioners say, yes, it's contraindicated or no, it's not contraindicated. And for me, it's usually a little bit too intense for someone who's pregnant because especially, you know, they teach you breath work while you are going through labor. We call it Lamaze. Right. And so what I always say is that after, you know, after you've had a child, a lot of times women will go through postpartum and that breath, like giving birth can be absolutely traumatic, especially the way it's done in our western world, it's done in fluorescent lights, in a sterile environment and not in a natural positioning in any way. And it can be really, really healing. And I've had a lot of Women that have gone through and done sessions that have healed traumatic birth processes. So it can be very powerful.

This is a great question and a very common one. And a lot of people, if you resonate with this, maybe throw up a harder or thumbs up. So one of the things I've noticed when I'm holding space for others is that when they're releasing and crying, I cry too. I feel like I shouldn't be connecting on that level of emotion. Any suggestions in holding space to be more neutral?

Oh, yes. This question. Has anybody else ever felt that before? I'm curious. Yeah, I get this question so often. How do I, you know, how do I maintain my own alignment as a practitioner? How do I not lose myself in going to the depths with other people? And that. It can be really. It can be really tough. And that's why this. Becoming a practitioner, taking this role as a practitioner is not a career, it's a lifestyle. And part of your career is that you are on your own healing journey as well. And you can only take others as deep as you've gone yourself. A lot of the times someone's nervous system won't feel safe to go to the depths because they can inherently feel that you don't have capacity to hold that. And it's a beautiful thing when you're holding space for somebody and something comes up and it actually activates something within you. And it's. A lot of it has to do with our own comfort of feeling emotions and being around other people that are feeling emotions. Like I said yesterday, a lot of the times when someone is feeling something like, notice this urge inside of yourself to go over and to comfort them or to coddle them and see where that's coming from. Because a lot of the times we want to run over and say, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, versus can you be with them and can it be okay that they're feeling and not have to change it? And a lot of the times it comes from your own comfort in feeling and having developed a relationship to your own emotions. And so, you know, and a lot of the times it's when the mind comes in, because feeling an emotion is not necessarily inherently bad or good. It's when the mind comes in, and especially as a practitioner, you know, someone's crying, oh, my God, it's hitting me in a deep way and I'm starting to cry. Well, well, if my mind comes in and says, well, why am I crying? Or why am I feeling angry? Then you have to figure out A reason behind it. And then it's like, okay, this is bad or good. Instead, you start to realize that there's so many sessions where I have tears. That photo of me and Nadeem, when I was holding space for him, I had tears coming through my eyes. And you start to be able to see the beauty in. In all things. And you get out of the head of like, why am I feeling this emotion verse? It's an emotion moving through me, and it actually allows me to be a better space holder because I can actually feel where they are at. And it's the process of being able to stay in yourself and feel comfortable with emotions. And this is. Now I'm talking about it. And it's one thing to speak to it, but it's another thing to embody. And that takes practice and that takes time.

Yeah, I know. Sometimes after our group sessions, our big sessions, we might do a. When everybody leaves, we might have a collective shake or a collective yell, you know, just to leave it all out. You know, we're near a body of water, so I like to go jump in the spring or get to a shower. You know, we all have our own ways.

Yeah.

Um, question is, how do you feel about people doing this work with clients if they only just are practicing breathwork for the first time? How long should a practitioner practice before having clients?

Well, when you go through the. The process, you know, you're put through quite a few different sessions, quite a few sessions. And, you know, there's obviously a practicum as well. You're having supervision while you're, you know, you're holding sessions for each other in class for a while. That's being kind of monitored and supported by the instructors, myself and the rest of our instructor team. And obviously, the more, for me, I learn best by actually receiving sessions. So the more sessions you receive, the more you will learn. You'll learn what feels good, what doesn't feel good, what things this person said that really landed for me, what things didn't land right. And so there's not necessarily a specific number of sessions, but if you are using a modality, you also need to be receiving it. And a lot of the times I can tell when I haven't received a session for a long time, when I go to receive a session and the practitioner is working with me, and I'm like, like, oh, okay. So that's what it feels like when I do this. Maybe I might do this a little bit differently next time. So it's important that you just, you know, if. If you are a practitioner in any sort of way. It's so important that you are receiving. It is part of your job to receive.

Yeah, thank you. I think we might. Well, let's see. Did you ever have group sessions with live music? My wife's music has been recognized as having the ability to. And is currently used to treat ptsd. And there's another question about, like, can this be used to treat ptsd? I know it's a common question, but, yeah.

Yeah. As far as live music goes, you know, we cover music. Obviously, music is a massive part of this. It is controlling the felt sensation of the container that you're holding a session. And. And you know, what I have done with live music, and it's. It can be difficult to be on the same page as whoever the person that is playing the music, because there is a specific journey that we're taking people on, and the music has to match that. And so, you know, I've had multiple people that have. That are musicians that come through and then they understand the flow of the journey, and then they. They. They have a deeper understanding on the journey that they're trying to take someone on. And that can work well and seamless. You know, I have some people that use, like, more relaxing or meditative instruments towards the end. Singing bowls, those sorts of things can be absolutely great for me, I. I am a deep, deeply loving musician. I play multiple instruments and love music so much. But a lot of the times, you know, I've gone to sessions where, you know, people are using rattles and drums and different shamanic tools, and those can be great. But a tool can be a medicine or a poison, depending on when it's utilized. And so I teach from a place that's like, let's actually learn how to do this work with just you by yourself. Because the tool is actually carrying the intention. And so if you can do it yourself, well, then you start to add in these different tools. You start to add in sound healing, start to add in all these other things. There's an aspect of us, we want to combine all the different things we want to. I call it the kitchen sink complex. Humans want to. Want to combine all the different modalities and make this grand experience where if you learn it, simple for. Because simple can be profound. And there's less variables, which can create more safety for somebody. So it can be done and it can be great. But I highly recommend having less variables for yourself in the beginning.

Yeah, I think. I think that about wraps it up for today, Jaggers. I know I'm amazed that there are so hundreds of people on here, which is tremendous and an attachment, a testament to everybody's interest in learning about this. And thank you so much for giving us your time. And tomorrow we again will be going through a full somatic breathwork session. I'm going to get some emails out to you or a email out to you with everything that we spoke about today, resources, daily practices. And so thank you all so much. And to everybody who filled out the feedback form, thank you. I particularly the team, we love reading through these. It's really a special gift to hear your feedback, so thank you so much. Those of you asking for the replay, please you can check that in the Facebook group. They are pinned today's replay. Give us to the end of the day and it'll be uploaded as well. There's the link to the replays right there. Charlotte just posted it in there. So, Jaggers, if you have anything else, that'll be it.

Yeah. Thank you so much, everyone for sticking on. Obviously we're about two and a half hours in at this point. Really, really appreciate it. I hope you hope you got a lot from this. Would love to hear, you know, your biggest takeaways from today or yesterday. Feel free to, you know, reach out to us on social media. As you can tell, we all love nerding out on this stuff as much as possible, so I'd love to connect with you there. If you want to share your biggest takeaway and tag us on social media, that'd be great to help us get this out into the world. You know this. That's the goal of these workshops. We're holding these free workshops to get this information out into the world. So if you feel like you got a lot from it, it would mean so much for, for you to share and yeah, we really appreciate it. As for tomorrow, make sure that before the session, you definitely want to make sure you create a space for yourself. We'll have some information in the emails. You definitely want to make sure that you don't eat a big meal, you know, right before the session. Give yourself at least an hour or two of eating before the session and then also make sure you have headphones to listen to the music and I'll be guiding you and it's going to be a powerful session. We'll stay on afterwards for as long as I'm able to and take questions and have some community shares and some integration and I really look forward to that process and sharing this work with you all. So I love you guys. Thank you so much for all the love, all the participation in the chat. It's so cool to watch. Just so many incredible humans that are drawn to this work and this community, and it's. It gives me. It restores a deep faith in humanity, as Nadeem likes to say. So I'll see you all tomorrow. Have a beautiful rest of your evening.