339. Breathing Exercises to Reduce Stress and Improve Speaking Skills with Ori Keren

Welcome to the Influency Podcast. I'm Hadar and this is episode number 339. And today we are going to talk about breath and why it is so important for our health, for our well being and for our speaking in English. Hey everyone, thank you so much for tuning in for another episode. So today's episode is one of my favorites actually. It's a live interview that I conducted in my studio with a friend of mine who is also a breathing therapist. He's a yoga teacher. He deals a lot with breath and he actually coaches people on how to breathe better and how to improve their health by changing their breathing. And I wanted to have this conversation about breath because it is so incredibly important for how we use our voice and how we feel in a conversation.

Especially if you tend to have slight.

Anxiety or fear around communicating in English. So in this episode we are going to talk about the breath and you're going to learn about how the breath is created, which is actually super interesting. It's something that we do without thinking about. And yet, you know, we don't exactly know how this whole system works. Most of us. Most of us. I'm going to speak in the name of everyone here and also Orey, my friend is going to share some breathing exercises and techniques to help you stay more centered and also to increase your ability to breathe deeply, which is also good for communication, of course, and for life and for staying calm. Because we need oxygen, my friends, we need oxygen. All right, so let's not wait any longer and listen to the conversation I had with Ori Karen.

Foreign. Hey. Hey everyone. I am so happy to have you here. And Orey, I'm so happy to have you here as well.

Thank you for having me.

I have a live guest here on the show, Orey. Orey is a good friend and he is also a yoga teacher and a breathing therapist and he is going to talk to us today about your breath. Yes, your breath. Or would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself and.

Yeah, yes, of course. So as Adar told you, my name is Orey and I'm a yoga teacher. And what I do mainly is focusing my yoga practice and my yoga teaching on the breath because breathing is from, from my point of view and from my teacher's point of view is the main, the main character or the main factor that determines how your, how your life will be and by that, how your yoga practice will be.

So that's a pretty bold statement.

Yeah.

So your breathing effects, you're saying basically.

Everything yeah, not everything, but most of the things.

Yeah. Okay. And essentially the yoga practice, which is where you come from, you weren't always a yoga teacher.

No, I weren't. I used to work as a stock market broker for almost 13 years.

Okay.

And working in this, in this environment, this really stressful environment, and while practicing yoga, I noticed that. I noticed the, the differences in. In state of minds and how my breathing patterns changes when I. When I'm at work and when I'm at the office and while I'm practicing yoga.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah. So you, like, you really recognize that. Maybe we can ask everyone here a question. Have you ever noticed it, like, when. That you have a. You have different breathing patterns when you are in one situation or one setting in your life, and then a different breathing pattern, like, how do you even notice it? Like, it's not. Breathing is something that is very subconscious. You don't pay attention to it.

That's true. But because I'm used to. During my practice, I pay. Pay attention a lot to things, to my body and to the way I breathe, to the way I conduct myself. And I started to notice that while I was working, while I was experiencing stressful situations, my breathing patterns got like shorter and more superficial. And it affected not only the breath itself, but my mood and the way I carry my body, my posture. And that was on the one hand, it was a really important, you know, important thing to, to find out, but it was, it was also a bit shocking because I noticed that when I'm not paying attention, my body goes into like a closed posture and my breathing becomes very, very shallow. And I found like a direct connection between my mood and things that were going on in my office, which I.

Assume was a little stressful.

Just a little bit.

Just a tad. Yes.

It affected me. It affected me physically and mentally, and I had to do something with it.

Okay.

Yeah.

And you have, you did something about it?

I did. I absolutely did.

So one of the things that we're going to do today. So Orey is going to tell us about his personal experience and what he has learned about using his breath to manage stress and also to really, like, become more present in life when it comes to, you know, work, but also, I guess, your personal life, you know, like your family and everything. And one of the reasons why I asked Orey to come here is because I noticed that when my students or people in our community, when they make videos or when they speak or when they share their experience communicating in English, there is that experience of, you know, this anxious Feeling sometimes that that revolves around speaking in English because of the challenges that the language requires, you know, that you're facing. And I think. I don't know what comes first, but that anxiety affects the breath. And when you don't have a lot of breath or when you have shallow breaths, I think that affects your nervous system as well. And you're here to tell us why that happens.

An endless loop.

An endless loop. Right. So it's like one thing leads to another, and then you're like, on this rabbit hole of just anxiety and stress and not being able to use your voice because, you know, we talk about it a lot. That the voice is carried on the breath. Right. And the voice is. It's like the substance from which we, you know, create language. We have to use our voice, and we don't. If we don't have the breath, then it's going to be very hard to have a present voice and to have our voice carry our thoughts, no matter how well you know English. And this is why I want you to share with us a little more why the breath is so important when it comes to your stress and the nervous system. And then maybe a few exercises that help our students.

Yeah, of course. So when we're talking about. About breathing, we're talking about patterns of breath.

Okay.

And I have, like, a little. Like a little exercise for you. For you.

Okay. For all of us. Ready? We have an exercise. Yes.

Try to think about the last time you were really, really angry or the last time you really, really got afraid of something. Just try to. You can just close your eyes and do it with your eyes open. Just try to imagine you breathing within this specific emotional situation. You might have noticed that the breathing has different patterns for different emotions. Right. So when you're really, really angry, your breath is really rapid and shallow. Mostly breathe to your chest area. And when you're really, really sad, you tend to take a lot of breath out. You tend to exhale to, like, make this.

Yeah, a lot. Yeah.

And vice versa. When you. When you're happy, your. Your breathing pattern is really deep and easy and comfortable in your body. Okay. So by first noticing it, being really, really mindful to this, to this changing in patterns, you can manipulate the way you breathe and by that, manipulate the way you feel. It's. One affects the other.

So you're saying that first. The first thing we need to do is start paying attention. I like what you said about recall a moment where you were angry, because immediately when I thought about it, I felt that my breath is Starting to become faster, more rapid. Right. Like more powerful. But then also in the day to day life, it's important for people to just recognize if you know what they're. Would you say that they should just. If they feel an emotion, they should recognize their breathing patterns or should they have moments during the day where they check their breath and their emotion? What would you say?

You can do both. Mm. It's good. The way, the way I see, it's good to sometimes just stop what you're doing and observe your. The current state, your physical state and your mental state.

Yeah.

It's a good exercise just to be, to exercise your mind, to be mindful, to be present.

Yeah.

Okay. And when you get used to this way of thinking. Okay. To just not getting used to going through the day. But yeah, just make an intentional stops during the day to just observe your state, your, your emotional, your. The way you think and the way, the way you breathe. You might recognize that some things are habitual. Okay. You got like patterns.

Okay.

That you get used to. And by noticing these patterns, you can just intentionally change them.

Okay. So I'm just going to repeat what you're saying. So basically, you know, to recognize patterns that you have during the day, and maybe those patterns are associated to certain places you're at, certain emotions, certain state of mind, times during the day, morning, evening, afternoon. Really interesting. Now I would even add, like recognize your breathing patterns just before or while you speak English. Like does something happen there when you go into, let's say, practice mode? Or maybe when you speak to someone that you feel comfortable with or maybe when you speak to colleagues or to your boss. Right. So you want to recognize if your breath behaves differently in those situations as well.

That's true.

Okay, and then what?

And then you need to, you don't need to, but it's good for you to try to, to change it just a little bit.

Okay.

To step out of your, your habit. Okay. When, if you're noticing that you're breathing really, really rapidly or in a shallow way, in a shallow manner, just try to take like five or six deep breaths intentionally, even if it's not feeling natural.

Right.

Force your body to do it.

Yeah.

Take air in and then breathe air out. And just observe after that what happens if something changes.

Okay. By the way, a question that people sometimes ask. And breathing in and out. Should you breathe in through the nose or the mouth or in breathing out, nose or mouth? Like what would be the best way to breathe? And maybe you can teach us. I know that later on, you'll give us a few exercises around breathing, but when you say that, what does that mean? Even to breathe in a deeper way?

Okay, so let's address the first question.

Yeah.

The. The differences between breathing through the nose or through the mouth when you're breathing. Okay. If I ask this, these questions as a yoga teacher, I would say you should breathe through your nose.

Okay.

Yeah. Because of.

And breathe out, too. As a. In yoga, breathing in and out through the nose. Through the nose. Okay.

Okay. The nose is.

In yoga.

In yoga.

Yeah.

The nose. And during yoga practice.

Okay.

Not during running or anything like that.

Okay.

Okay.

Yes.

During your yoga practice, you should breathe through your nose.

So if you're practicing yoga right now. No.

Yeah.

No.

The reason is, it's really simple because when you breathe through your mouth. Okay. When you open your mouth and breathe, you will find it much more difficult to regulate your breath.

Okay.

Okay. When air goes through your nose, you can. You could control the way the air goes in and goes out.

Okay.

Okay. So it's. It's really, really important to have the ability to regulate your breath. Okay. So I would recommend bringing through your nose, in and out.

Okay.

I found it more beneficial.

Okay. So let's agree that when you take those moments throughout the day when you recognize that your breathing patterns are changing or you start breathing rapidly or even before that, you have to go before going into a meeting or before starting a practice group, then just breathe in through your nose and out through your nose five times. If that doesn't work for you, change it. Do whatever works for you. But if that works for you, then. Or recommends to stick with it.

Yeah. I will add that we're going to do some little exercise that will involve breathing through the mouth, but through a constricted lips. So it's not a natural breathing through an open mouth. We will try to regulate our breath using our lips. We'll get to that.

So stay till the end so we get all the exercises. Okay. So now that we know, we start recognizing the breathing patterns and we start recognizing it, and then we also do something on a regular basis. Why is it so important to regulate the breath? How does the breath affect our nervous system so much?

Yeah. So the way we are built. Okay. As humans, let's talk about two main characters. Okay. Two main players in this whole process that's called breaths. The first one is a muscle. Okay. It's our diaphragm, if you never heard of.

Where is it?

It's being located just beneath your ribs. It's attached to Your ribs. We have two diaphragm here and on our lower. Below our lower belly, attached to our pelvic floor. It's like the small diaphragm and the large diaphragm. And when we breathe, okay. When we inhale, we take air through the mouth or through the nose. The diaphragm constricts and goes down. Okay. So it pulls the rib cage down. This is what allows your. Your air to go through your nose. It's like you. You create like a vacuum. Okay. So air goes in, okay. While the diaphragm constricts and goes down. When you exhale, the diaphragm just relaxes, releases itself, and goes up again and pushes your lungs so the air go outside.

Maybe they can try it with us for a few breaths, just to try it. How can. Can they feel the diaphragm?

You can't actually feel the diaphragm, but we can do a little bit exercise that will utilize the diaphragm to its full potential. Let's call it, like. Okay, this way. Okay, so.

So this is an exercise. Let's all do it together, if you can. Okay.

Just find out on the floor. A comfortable. You can. You can sit on the floor if you want, but you can also sit feet. Feet on the floor. Yes. So find a comfortable position to sit. Okay. And keep your back really, really long and relaxed.

Make sure that your voice gets here.

Yeah. So keep your back really long and relax. And pull your shoulders backwards. Now pull your right hand, put it on your upper chest. And put your left hand on your lower belly. Okay. And just close your eyes. It's okay. Close your eyes. First of all, while your eyes are closed, try to observe the current state of your body. How your muscle feel, how your back feels. Just breathe really, really naturally. And then focus your whole attention to the area below your right hand. Okay. To the chest area. Just breathe in, expand your chest, and breathe out. And relax your chest. Only the chest area. Let's do it one more time. Breathe in and expand your chest. Feel your ribs expand to the side. Forward, backward. Next, focus your attention on your lower belly. Just breathe to your belly. So when you want to imagine you can fill your belly with air while you breathe in. It's like a balloon that's being filled. When you breathe out, your belly goes back inside and relaxes. So your whole attention is just being on the belly area. The chest is completely relaxed. Let's do two more breaths just like this. Now let's combine the two. So you breathe Air in, Let your chest expand, then let your belly expand. When you breathe out, let your belly goes back, go back, then your chest. Go back. Let's do five more breaths through the nose. Expand your chest, expand your belly. When you finished, five full, deep breaths, just release your hands and put them on your knees. Stay with your eyes closed for a second or two and observe again the current state of your body, current feelings, and then open your eyes very slowly. So what we just did by dividing the areas we breathe into and out from making the diaphragm contract very, very low. Yeah. And when we breathe out, diaphragm just releases. When we use this division. Okay. When we divide breathing to the chest and to the belly. Okay. We make our diaphragm reach its full potential, full range of motion. And this is really important because while our diaphragm moves. Okay. When we breathe while moving the diaphragm, it's not trivial. Some people can't do it. Some people breathe only to the chest area, and the diaphragm stays really rigid.

Yeah. And why is that not. Why would we want to change that?

Yeah. So when we use the diaphragm to breathe, we activate certain aspect of our nervous system.

Okay.

Which causes our body. Our body to go back and relax. Okay. There's a large nerve that goes through the diaphragm, and it's been connected to the digestive system and to your heart into your throat. And while we are activating the diaphragm, this specific nerve is being activated as well and causes our heart rate to reduce our throat to relax. Relax. Yeah.

Yeah. It's interesting because when you feel stress, you feel it in your belly, you feel it in your throat, you feel it here in your chest. And I think that, like, it's so easily resolved if you just recognize that you just need to first bring in more oxygen to your body.

That's true.

And.

And second, to really expand and start affecting that nerve that affects the rest of your body. And, you know, I'm also going to say that the reason why it's important to learn how to breathe into your belly and not just your chest. And again, I see that that is a habit for so many people, especially in yoga, they teach you how to do belly breathing. And if you've ever studied, you know, if you've ever taken vocal lessons, then you are aware of it. But usually, like, you know, you're not taught how to use your breath in school yet. It's one of the most important tools that we have, not just For a happy life, but really to use our voice properly, to use our breathing properly when we speak. You know, I keep bringing it back to the conversation because I know a lot of people are like, okay, how can that help me, you know, improve my communication skills? So not only that, it's going to really reduce your stress levels, being able to breathe into your belly. It's also going to help you expand your breath and manage your speaking in a much better way. Have you ever felt, and let me know in the comments if that has ever happened to you, where you're running, you're running out of breath while you're speaking, especially in English, if it's not your first language, you're running out of breath, and then you feel like you need to stop in the middle to take a breath, or you keep breathing in, and then you feel like you're hyperventilating. You have too much breath and you don't know how to use it. And then you're like, it's not in sync. Your voice and your breath are not in sync. So that creates more stress, and that makes you feel like you're not in control of your English or your native language. That can happen, you know, when you speak in public. It can happen when you're nervous in a meeting or speaking to your parents, you know, So I think it's really important to understand how these two things are intrinsically connected. And being able to control your breath will affect your stress levels, but also your speaking skills and your voice, which we're going to talk about really soon. So if you feel like your voice is not grounded, if people can't hear you, if you can't project your voice, then definitely focus on the breath first, and the breath will have the power to carry your voice, because breath is really, really everything when it comes to communication. Okay. So now we've learned why it's good to breathe into the belly, and you've given us this exercise, and I recommend for you to do it probably daily, right? Yeah. Maybe even a few times a day. Just like, you know, the exercise.

At least once.

At least once a day. Okay, good. Now, what else would you recommend for people who want to optimize their breath and their voice?

Okay. So we're gonna do a little sound exercise.

Okay.

Okay.

But I'm all about sounds. Yeah.

You know me.

Yeah, yeah.

Before we do that, I would like to go back and talk about a really important issue. Okay. That also.

Tell me all about it.

Yeah, yeah. Because we need to find, like, a direct connection between what we did, yeah. And the voice, right?

Yeah.

It's not just about how deep you breathe. It's about what effect does it have on your ability to speak. Okay. So when we mentioned earlier, this specific nerve, okay. This nerve also connects to your throat, to your larynx. And this nerve has like two branches. When you breathe to your belly, as we said earlier, you activate this nerve. One branch is responsible for your ability to open and close your vocal fold. So it will affect your ability to produce sound. It's that simple. And the outer branch is also connected to a different part of your, of your throat. And it's the thing that's responsible on your ability to control your pitch of your voice. So by doing this exercise alone, okay, you activate your diaphragm and by that you activate your. This nerve. It's called the vagus nerve. But yeah, the vagus, but we're not going go into that. When we activate this nerve, we also strengthening our ability to control the components of our, of our voice.

Wow. So this is really huge because a lot of people, again, like, you know, especially when we talk about intonation, I hear a lot of people saying, I don't know how to use my voice. My, my voice is really monotone. I can't control it. Now you can all control your voice. It's not like maybe it's just a false perception. We know, we all know how to change the pitch. I mean, if you're healthy and you're, you know, you have your vocal core folds or vocal cords. So that nerve that is connected to your diaphragm. Right. Really is in charge of those elements, like you said, that are directly connected to opening and closing the vocal cords or folds, the same, which is what you need to produce sound. Right. And then the frequency of the vibrations actually affect the level of your pitch. Pitch is the note or the tone of your voice. So both are controlled by this Vegas nerve. Our friend Vegas.

Our friend Vegas.

Vegas.

So, yeah, okay. It's really important.

It's really important. Okay.

Really, really important. So we're going to do like a little exercise, sound exercise, which I really, really like.

Okay.

Okay.

Should I be worried?

You can be weird. You don't need to be.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

So this exercise, we use it to reduce stress, but it's also really, really good to exercise your vocal cords. This example, Brahmari, or how can I translate it? It's like the breathing of the bees. Okay. Romari was the goddess of the bees, Hindu mythology. So what we're going to do is again, Find a comfortable sitting. Sitting position, please.

Sit.

Yeah. And place our hands on our ears. Okay. New. Yeah. Okay, so you need to block your ears. Okay.

But now I can't hear you, so.

Just open your hands. We'll do it together. Okay, what we're going to do. Okay, I'll demonstrate. Okay, what we're going to do is block our ears. Okay. Take breathe in through our nose, and while we're breathing out, we'll produce an M sound. We'll try to do it as low as we can.

Oh, okay.

Okay, so we'll do two breathing with a low, really, really low M sound. And then we're going to go up.

From that M sound. Okay, I'll follow you. Okay, so let's follow. Or.

Yeah, the blocking of the ear just increases the sound. Okay, so we'll do it. Take air in, breathe in through your nose, then make a. As long as you can. Again. All right. The next breathing out, make a little higher note. That's it.

Higher.

That's it. Let's do it one more time. Last time.

I love how I feel the vibrations of the voice in my teeth.

And.

Yeah, yeah.

This is one. One thing that happens when you. When you produce sounds while blocking your ears. It resonates, causing a vibration, which by itself is quite calming. Right?

Yeah.

But another. Another thing that we don't think about when we're producing like a monotonous, monotone sound is by doing that, we're making our exhalation longer because of the voice.

Because of the hum. Yeah. Right. Which is, again, a great exercise to expand your breath when using your voice. It's a great tool to have. It's a great thing to have to be able to not be controlled by the deficiency of your breath or just breathing patterns. But to be more. To have all these options, basically. Yeah.

And sound is a really, really important and efficient tool that help you regulate your breath.

Interesting. Yeah.

If you feel that your breath is really shallow or short, just try to breathe with a sound, any kind of sound, and it will automatically make your first exhalation longer. And by making your exhalation longer, your inhalation will become longer.

And I think, you know, one of the things that I think is if we connect it to voice again, you know, in doing this exercise, and it feels really good. Like, it really feels good. I really liked how I felt the tickles here. And if you don't, then it's something that comes with time. It's like, it really is like an instrument that you learn how to play. Play and if you don't hear a lot of vibrations, your voice is not broken. You just need to do it again and again and again until you find that right pitch or the right way to use your voice. Because sometimes we tend to push down our voice and to not allow it to be present or to keep it too low or too high where it doesn't resonate really in an optimal way. Now, this exercise is really good because the lower we go, and we start really low, the. This is where we work on our chest resonance. Right. Like where usually the sound resonates in the chest and we might feel more vibrations here.

Lower tones, right?

Yeah, the lower tones tend to resonate here. So if you tend to have. If your voice tends to be a little on the higher range and you want to bring those bass notes and to make it a bit more present sometimes, because the lower notes are the notes that you need to reach, to project, to reach out further, then this exercise is really good. Like, really explore that deeper, lower sound. And as you go up, you actually go up in your resonators too. So a medium sound, mid level sound would resonate more in your mouth and your face. And as you go up, it resonates more in the nose, in your cheeks and your forehead. And you will feel it more and more the more you do it, the more you get comfortable, the more you get familiar with your breath and your voice. And again, like, understanding that, becoming more aware, knowing how you can shift from a lower note to a higher note, using your different resonators is such a great tool to communicate, not just in English, but in your native language as well. Yeah. Okay. Onitsa says, I loved this exercise. Good. The thing is to value our English, not to compare with others. Absolutely. Oh, okay. It's not a good day for me to practice because I have a stuffy nose. What do we do when we have a stuffy nose and we can't breathe in through the nose?

We breathe through the mouth.

Breathe through the mouth? No, but then we can't hum. So maybe with a. Like. Because when you. When you have a stuffy nose, you can't. Humor.

You know what I have, I have one more thing for. For the day. The days you have a stuffy nose. Okay, again, again, a sound exercise.

Okay.

You can do it not only when you feel bad or when you have.

Stuffy nose, but not just when you're sick.

Not just when you're sick. No.

So when you're sick of sick. Sick and tired of the other exercises, you can, you can do this one.

Okay. So we're going to pick a movement.

Okay.

And we're going to do this movement during this exercise.

Okay.

The movement that I recommend, it's not. I sound like a doctor. I'm not recommending this. Okay. You can just do it. Yeah. I'm not prescribing you any motions or any exercises or nothing. Okay. Find a comfortable sitting position or align back position or anything that you feel comfortable with. And the exercise is going to go like this. You're going to put your hands on your chest. When you breathe in, you take your hands out.

Okay. Breathing in.

Open our hands. When you breathe out, we produce an ah sound and close our hands to our chest. Yes. And again. Okay. And then we can do an A sound. Can you go all. To all the vowels? Right. It's okay.

A.

One more time. Let's do once with an E sound. With an oo sound, And last time with an O sound. Just leave your hands and let the vibrations resonate with your body. That's it. Your hands. That's it.

It's so nice because ultimately, voice is energy. It's frequencies, frequencies, vibrations. And it's not just you within yourself, it's also you against the other person. Not against that. Maybe with. So my voice bounces off of. Or he comes back to me and his voice bounces off of me and comes back to him. So actually, I really like doing it together because I felt that it kind of like enhances the vibrations.

A harmony.

And you can create a harmony. Yeah. It felt different than when I would do it when I do it alone, because sometimes I do it as, you know, part of preparing for something. More vocal exercises. So it really is nice. So do it with someone like a friend or someone that you love. I think it's a really, really cool exercise.

What else?

What else do you have in store for us? So what about people who feel really rigid? And let's say, do you have any exercises related to people who hold a lot of tension, especially in the jaw, maybe neck, shoulders? I feel that when people hold a lot of tension here, it immediately affects their voice. Tension brings tension, and then that tension is carried over to their English or their speaking. But specifically in English, I think that, you know, when we think of vowels, for example, that are pure sounds. Ah, E, o. So it's all vibrations, all about your voice. Of course, we have pitch there, too. And for many of them, you need to open your mouth to get to the right frequency. Right. If your mouth is not open enough, the ah sound is Going to sound like an eh because your tongue is going to be too high. And then that doesn't create the frequency that you need for the ah sound. If you have a lot of tension, then it's really hard to open the jaw. It's going to feel unnatural. This is the case for you. Let us know in the comments so we know if this is something that happens to you. So as in cat like, you need to have this relaxed experience. So what would you recommend to people who tend to hold a lot of tension?

So when it comes to the jaw and the neck area and the shoulders area, we do, like, stretches that activates this whole area. Not just. Not the jaw specifically, but the whole area.

Okay.

And we have really cool, cool exercise that involves mindfulness.

Okay.

Okay. Focusing and movement.

Okay. Okay, let's do it.

Let's do it. Let's do it.

Okay.

Again, you can place your left hand on your left knee. Okay. And place your right hand on the wall over there. If you don't have a wall, imagine you have a wall. Okay. So your hand is not on your shoulders, not aligned with your shoulders, but being stretched just a little bit. And focus your eyes on the middle finger and the index finger and really.

Feel the stretch here.

Just take a really deep breathe in. And while you're breathing out, bring your right hand really slowly to your left shoulder. Keep looking at the fingers. Right. And again, breathe in. Follow the fingers all the way back. Breathe out. Follow your hands as slowly as you can. Focus on your fingers alone to your left shoulder. This is it. You can do that five times to each hand. Really simple, right? Yeah, it's really simple. And you're. You're exercising your focusing ability because your eyes are fixed on your fingers, right. And you try to synchronize the movement with the breathing. So that's one more thing that involves focusing. You're focusing on. Yeah, synchronizing something. You can't be thinking about something else. Right?

That's a good point.

Yeah.

Which is what we want to start doing more and more of. To be present in, you know, this moment and what's happening and in specific things. Again, back to English.

Yeah.

You know, I always like to bring it back to English.

Why?

Gee, I don't know English. This idea of mindfulness and being able to focus on one thing is so important because on oftentimes what happens when people communicate is that they get so caught up in, in their English what they are going to say, you know, trying to figure out what the other person says and how they're going to respond analyzing what they just said and if it was good enough or maybe they made a mistake. So it's kind of like you're never in the moment when you're uncomfortable with the language. Right. Like, you're always thinking about how you're going to be perceived, what they're going to think about you, you know, what you're going to say. What if you don't know? What. What if you can't understand what they're saying? I mean, all those thoughts about, you know, and all those fears will prevent you from understanding what the other person is saying because you're not present, you're not occupied with. You're not busy listening, you're busy worrying or. Of course that's not the case for everyone, but if it is for you, then I think that exercising being present and being in the moment and listening to what the other person is saying without thinking about what you are going to say is really going to help you with your listening skills or with, with, you know, communication skills. Because you feel it when someone is not paying attention, it's not with you. Right. Like is thinking about someone. It's like someone is playing with their phone. It's not the same, but like you can see if in their eyes, if they're not there with you. And I think that it can really reduce so much stress when you just like let go of all the thoughts and you look at the person's eyes or mouth or whatever you're comfortable with and just be present.

Yeah. Focusing on what's happening right now, what might have happened, not anything that is not basically what is not real. Okay. What. What's real is what's real. What's happening right now.

Yeah, I like it. Yeah. So good. Let's see if you guys have questions. I'm gonna look at the comments. So let's see. I have stress to speak. Speak, but for listening. Tatara, can you explain that a bit more so we can give you some advice? How many times do you recommend to do it? So he or she is asking, how many times do you recommend doing this? So let's talk about all the exercises. So we first had the breathing in and out. Let's do a little recap for those who joined us. We did five breaths to your chest, to your belly, to your chest and out.

Yeah.

So to do that at least once a day.

Yeah, at least once. Just to. To get accustomed with moving your diaphragm.

Yeah.

And do it as many times as you want.

As many times as you want as many, Especially if you feel that you're starting to get nervous or you feel like your. Your breath starts becoming more shallow. The second exercise that we did, we did the hum, the M exercise, where you start really low, and every time you start raising the pitch a little bit, you do five, six breaths of that. And how many times would you recommend doing that?

It's not. It's not something that I can say. This number is okay, and that number is not okay. Everyone is. Everyone is different.

So I would recommend, like, start small and start with once a day of doing all three exercises in a sequence or four even. Right. Like, do all four exercises that you've learned today in a sequence. And then like, whenever you feel that you need a little bit of support from your breath or before, as, you know, a meeting, a conversation, you can do it again. So the second. The third one. The first was just breathing in and out, Chest, belly, second M going up in pitch. The third one was with. With the vowels and opening, going from here to here and then back here, breathe, and then E, I, ooh, make a sound, whatever vowel works for you. It doesn't have to be the five neutral vowel sounds. And then that. This was my favorite, by the way. The. The vowels, of course. And then the last one was the stretch and focus.

This is just to prepare your body to do the breathing exercises.

So maybe they can start with this. Yeah, so you can start with the.

Stretching this or some. Any other stretch exercise that you feel. I mean, it's not. It's not. Again, it's not a prescription. If you feel like raising your arms or bending forward or anything like that, just do it. Just a free movement in order to just soften your body, your tissues, your joints, in order to.

Okay, free movement with focus. Right. Like, we want to make sure that we have, like, a focus point, focal point that we.

And I might add another one.

Okay, so we have another exercise.

Another one.

Okay.

Which is kind of like an emergency patch. Okay. Sometimes your mind is too occupied to do these exercises because it. It involves being present. Okay, so I have another one. Another really cool exercise. Again, it's a bit more simple because it uses very clear images of what we're going to do. So it's called the flower and the candle. So what we're basically going to do is imagine a flower. Right. If you have a favorite flower that you can imagine and smell, that's great. And if not just any. Any other flower, and just close your eyes and imagine that the flower is being placed right Next to your nose. Right? And then imagine a candle burning not far away from you while you inhale. Imagine the. The sand of the flower. Imagine the sand goes through your nose.

And just inhale the flower. Yeah.

Being absorbed in your body. And when you exhale, you take your air. You exhale really, really softly in order for the candle not to be.

Ah, so you don't want to blow it up. It's not like a birthday cake that you need to blow out.

You. You. You need to make. You want to make the. The flame just like flicker.

Flicker. Okay, let's flicker that flame. Yeah.

So you. Breathing in and smell this flower. Breathing out and make the flame flicker. So you just. You can see these images in your mind while doing this. This breathing in and out.

Good.

Wait. Okay, flower.

Which one is going to be a rose?

It's a lily.

It's a lady.

It's a lily.

It's a good choice.

My mom's name is Lily in Hebrew.

Really?

Shoshana. Oh, yeah. Okay, let's concentrate, Lily.

Make sure you're not blowing the. Putting down the candle. Right? Just make the flame flicker really softly. When you breathe in, you're not just letting air in. You smell the flower. You feel its smell. So in this exercise, you're actually using your mouth as well. We talked about it earlier. So you don't have to always breathe through your nose.

Thank God.

Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you. Interesting. When my daughter, my young daughter, Asia, she's five years old, she's a very passionate human and her emotions go from zero to 5,000.

I love her.

Yeah, I mean, you gotta love her.

You gotta love her.

You gotta love her. And maybe I should bring her to the show one day. So, Assia, what's gone. So when she gets really, like, either anxious or angry, upset, she wants a certain skirt, but it's, you know, in the dryer. And then she wants to, like. I want to calm her down. So I sometimes use this exercise and I tell her. Okay. Because when I tell her, breathe in and out, she just gets angry at me. But when I imagine that there is a flower, smell the flower. And she does it. So I get her to breathe in and out without recognizing that she's actually breathing in and out. Like by usually using this visual. Visual, yeah. Okay, let's see what other questions we have. Okay, Tatar, I think what you're saying is that you're struggling with understanding people, and this is why maybe you get nervous sometimes. You understand? Sometimes. Not my best tip. And I have a video coming up about improving Your listening skills really soon. But one of the things that you need to do is to really practice. You know, if you want to improve your breathing skills and your. To optimize your breath, you need to practice breathing. If you want to improve your speaking skills and your fluency, you need to practice speaking. If you want to improve your listening skills, you need to practice your listening. So listening to different people, listening to different accents, different types of English, and to really train your ear to recognize what it is to listen to people with the captions or the translation or without or I think everything works. See what. Like, what is good for you and what challenges you. But you really need to do it more, not just with one person. This is especially if you learn with just one person. And I'm assuming if you're here, you're doing it now as we are speaking. But I think that it's important to do it more and more, especially with different accents, because that's real life. Like, in real life, you don't have one standard accent. You have so many different dialects and foreign accents and native accents that are different. And we need to be able to understand how it all works together. And also, I think that knowledge loosens up the stress that we might be feeling. But if you are stressed while listening to other people, then I guess your next safe bet would be to practice your breathing while listening. So you're, like, opening yourself up, and when you're calmer, it's easier to understand things. It really is. Like, if you're stressed out, your level of comprehension really dropped down. Okay, how can I work about my intonation when I'm speaking, please? We do have videos about intonation. So you can just go to my playlist and go to intonation rhythm, stress, and all of that good stuff. And I have a bunch of videos there that can definitely help you. Okay. Someone is asking for an exercise to change a nasal voice. So if people tend to use their voice, I have something to say. Like, I think that sometimes the quality of a voice depends on the quality of the vowels that we have in our language. In some languages, Chinese, for example, there are a lot of nasal vowel sounds, and that makes the voice sound nasal. But it's not because the voice is nasal. It's because the vowels are nasal. They're produced with the air coming out through the nose. Sometimes we implement those vowel sounds unto English, so we use nasal sounds where the vowels are not supposed to be nasal. So it's just a matter of practicing the pronunciation of the vowels in English that are not nasal. And then that can clear out a lot of the nasality. But would you. Is there anything else that you would recommend if people feel that their voice is locked, like they're only using one.

Aspect of their voice, just the accent that we do with the vowels might be really, really beneficial.

Yeah. Yeah, I think so, too. Like the vowels, not. Not the m, because then it kind of like it. If you're already comfortable with the nasal quality, then yes, definitely go into doing the vowel exercises. And when you do, you can even do it a few times with plugging your nose or making sure that the air doesn't come out through the nose. Because sometimes even when we pronounce vowels, it can be nasal. Like if I leave the nasal passages open. So you want to imagine as if you have a cold or you don't want to smell something and just exhale the voice. Exhale and release the voice just through the mouth, and that can definitely help. And yes, like, I think all the exercises can be very, very helpful. Recognizing what it feels like when the voice resonates in the chest and adding a little bit of that. And again, having said that, a nasal voice is not a bad thing to have if this is your natural voice, if this is where your voice is most comfortable at. But it's good to balance between all the resonators, like the chest and the head and the nose. So it's not only, you know, in the chest or in the throat or in the nose, because we. We like versatility. And when. When we use all the resonators, the voice is usually deeper and more present, and we can express more emotions when we speak. Okay. Any final thoughts or questions or things that you'd like to share?

Yeah, maybe two points. Two key points just to think about. The first one is when you think of breathing or your breath, we tend to just to overlook it because it's there. Okay. But when you think about it, it's the first thing that you do when you come to this world, and it's the last thing that you do when you. When you leave this world. Okay. So the breath is always there. It's maybe the most important thing that you have in your life. So it's. It might be a good idea to just pay attention to it.

Yeah.

Just become friends with it because it's. It. It can really change your life. Just being mindful, just being present with the way that you breathe naturally. That's it. Without any sounds or any exercises, nothing. Just the. The way that you are. Just pay attention to this thing. And this leads me to the second point. Being mindful to stuff. Okay. To things in general, can really make a shift in your way of thinking. Right. It might help you get rid of, first of all, being familiar with the habits you have. And if you identify something that is not beneficial to your. To your life, it may be breathing wise or any other. Any other thing. But when you become aware of things, you have the ability to change them or to improve them. So it's, It's a good idea to just. Just stop like once in an hour, just stop and observe and see what it does to you like a month after.

And then I'm like, how do I remember to stop? Because you're like on the go, go, go, go. You forget to drink water, you forget to eat. Like, sometimes we're so wrapped up with, with life that we forget to do even those basic things like paying attention. Actually, I think this exercise can, can help you start paying attention to yourself. What you need, what you feel. Are you hungry? Do you need to go out for a walk? And how your breath is. Is doing. It's funny, like when you were talking about the first point and you said you got to pay attention, all of a sudden I realize that I'm holding my breath. Sometimes when I'm listening to other people, I tend to hold my breath, which.

Is not a bad thing. Sometimes it's.

It's not a bad thing, but it's something to be aware of.

Yeah.

Yeah. Am I doing it too much, too little? Like, is it something that happens naturally? What happens after I stop my breath? Am I running out of breath or. Yeah, it's interesting.

Cool.

All right, so everyone, thank you all so, so much for being here. And Orey, my friend, thank you so much. It was such a pleasure. It was so interesting. I always love listening to you. Really fun.

Really fun.

Yeah. Orey, how can people find you? A lot of your content is in Hebrew, but it, like, I think that there are some videos that they can watch as well. How can people find you?

Of course you can go to, to my website. That's oricaren.com or I K-E-R-E-N.com or orikaren yoga.com and you can visit on Instagram or Karen Yoga. You can find me over there. I share a lot of tips and exercises videos.

Yeah, and you do also breathing coaching with people you help. Yeah, I know that you've been helping a lot of people, people that had some illnesses. Like a lot of people with COVID that couldn't go back to deep breathing so you really help them optimize their breath after and anything else related to lungs. So this is like it's life saving. It can really, really change lives. Save lives. So that's amazing. All right, so thank you so much, Ori, everyone. Thank you so much for being here and for being brave and doing all the exercises with us. And this is serious stuff. This is, this is the core of everything that we talk about. So if you're saying to yourself, oh no, no, it's not a speech exercise, it's not about sounds, then it's probably more important than all of the things that we usually teach on this channel. So take that to heart, take that to mind and just think about it. If you feel any resistance, think about it and just try it and see how it feels. All right, thank you so much and everyone, I'll see you next time.

Bye.