Michael Stone┃From Anxiety to Inner Trust: Learning to Meet Life Without Fear

When I went to school, I wasn't totally fluent in English, so one of my first experiences with it was having other kids kind of laugh at me because I couldn't speak English the way that they did. And I also got a bit of discrimination with my Jewish heritage. I was awful at sports, so no one wanted me on their team. So I just had a very difficult time connecting in an open, vulnerable way with other kids. It didn't feel safe. I was anxious. And I was also anxious about my anxiety because I didn't understand it.

What if anxiety isn't always the enemy, but a signal that can either keep us trapped in fear or become a catalyst for growth? Today I sit down with Neurodynamic Breathwork creator Michael Stone to explore why some forms of anxiety can actually sharpen our focus and motivate us to take action, while other forms leave us caught in cycles of uncertainty, Rumination and fear. Michael shares his own lifelong journey with anxiety, how an unconscious belief that the world was unsafe shaped everything from his childhood behaviors to his adult relationships, and the profound breathwork experience that finally helped him uncover where that belief began. We explore why trying to think our way out of anxiety often isn't enough, how bringing awareness back to the body can help us relate differently to difficult emotions, And why learning to trust ourselves in the face of uncertainty may be one of the most powerful expressions of radical responsibility.

I'm really happy to be here today with my friend and colleague, Michael Stone. Michael Stone is the creator of the Facilitator Training Program, co-founder of the Train Your Brain Master Course, a certified holotropic breathwork facilitator, and the innovator behind Neurodynamic Breathwork, or NDB. With a Bachelor's in Science from the College of Chemistry at UC Berkeley and an MBA from the University of Southern California, his educational background laid the foundation for his pioneering contributions to consciousness expansion. In 2018, Michael introduced NDB, a unique form of breathwork accessible both in person and online, offering expanded states of consciousness through breath and music at an affordable cost. His vision extended to creating a breathwork facilitator training program in 2020, enabling others to facilitate Neurodynamic Breathwork sessions. As the founder of the Neurodynamic Institute and co-founder of the Train Your Brain Master Course, he equips individuals to master their minds for more effective and empowered navigation of reality. Michael offers free online Neurodynamic Breathwork sessions and has facilitated nearly 1,000 group sessions with participants from over 120 countries. His work has fostered a global community dedicated to personal and collective transformation, impacting over 100,000 people worldwide. And his website is breathworkonline.com. And we'll remind folks of that when we get to the end of our conversation here today. So, Michael, I know anxiety from— we've known each other for a while and you've shared your story with me a bit. And I know that anxiety was a big part of your early life. And you've had a journey around that. And so I wonder if you could share a bit what that was like for you personally and what your journey has been.

Sure. So when I grew up, I was an anxious little kid, and especially when I started going to school, that was kind of like, before that, I didn't feel like as anxious as I did when I went to school. But once I started going to school, it was really hard for me to kind of connect and be with other kids and kind of, you know, kind of work into the system, so to speak. I got a bit on the OCD side. So like, for instance, I walked to work every— I mean, walked to school every morning. And as I walked to school, I had to like in the sidewalk. There was like little lines every like 3 feet, you know, where they put the— where the pieces came together. I had to step on each line, and if I missed it, I had to go back. So I was always a bit late to school. It took me forever. And I developed these other habits to release my anxiety, like chewing my fingernails, twirling my hair, and it always worked temporarily, but, you know, it just came back. And my anxiety really stemmed from the fact that I thought that the world was a scary place, and I couldn't figure out how to control it, especially with you know all this other community stuff with other kids that was starting to happen. And so I turned into a bit of a control freak. And in school, my first experience was German was my first language. So when I went to school, I wasn't. Totally fluent in English. So one of my first experiences with it was having other kids kind of laugh at me because I couldn't speak English the way that they did. And I also got a bit of discrimination with my Jewish heritage. I was awful at sports, so no one wanted me on their team. So I just had a very difficult time connecting in an open, vulnerable way with other kids. It didn't feel safe. And I was anxious. And I was also anxious about my anxiety because I didn't understand it. So I thought I was a little bit odd, but I really had no idea where to go with it. I just kind of thought that maybe there was something wrong with me because it didn't seem like the other kids were anxious, just me. And I didn't tell my parents about it or my teachers or my friends. I was a little bit too embarrassed. So I just tried to work with it myself. And if I'd understood anxiety better at that time, Understanding that some types of anxiety are actually useful, I wouldn't have stressed so much about it, but I had no idea. I just thought I was a bit of a weird person, basically. So how did I respond? I was always kind of good at problem solving since I was a little kid, so I just figured, okay, I'm going to figure this out. So I was working every day on figuring out how do I reduce this anxiety? Because I was feeling really uncomfortable, I was incredibly motivated and persistent to try to work through it, and I wouldn't give up. So I started coming up with all kinds of ideas. My brain was kind of working nonstop to figure out how to have more control over my environment, basically, so I could get rid of that feeling. And what it came up with was that I decided to try and structure my life to spend more time around adults because I felt safe around adults. Kids I didn't feel safe around, you know, people my own age. And so what I did was, okay, what can I do to spend at least my time out of school, you know, with adults and not so much kids? I said, okay, I'm going to learn to play games that adults play and kids don't. So, so I started with a card game called bridge, which many people may not have even heard about it, but And I started to see that learning this stuff really actually helped me in some ways. Like, for instance, learning bridge improved my memory significantly because you had to remember all the cards. And I actually became very good at it. I became a life master before my 18th birthday. And at that time, I was the youngest life master in the United States. And I learned to really love doing these kind of puzzles, like brain teasers. And I found that I loved solving solving puzzles. And so I developed my problem-solving skills. I also started playing chess when I was 9 years old. And what I found was, was that chess significantly improved my visual memory, my attention span, my spatial reasoning ability. And like, I didn't think of it in those terms at that time, but I just saw that I was getting better. I was improving at stuff. And I started to get to a place where I could focus on doing things like brain teasers for hours without taking a break. And that skill set that I learned, you know, by doing these adult games has carried over to my adult life. And so having the anxiety and trying to avoid the discomfort of feeling it actually pushed me to develop skill sets that were incredibly helpful to me as I grew up later. And even though back then I thought that all anxiety was bad, and— but it's now known that that's completely untrue. There's actually useful or adaptive anxiety and also non-useful or maladaptive anxiety.

Well, tell us a little bit more about that, if you will. And I'm also curious how these skills you developed, how that unfolded into your adult life and the career you have now and all the amazing work you've been doing. But also, I know you've said anxiety isn't always bad. It can be helpful. So maybe you could draw that distinction between us from anxiety that can be quite debilitating for people. They may be experiencing it mentally, emotionally, physically. It can show up in all kinds of ways. It can be very debilitating, but you're also saying that there can be helpful forms of anxiety. So if you could help us understand that.

Sure. There are now studies that actually show that all activating emotional states, both positive and negative, can improve things like, for instance, creativity. And positive activating states do it through something called enhanced cognitive flexibility. But negative activating states such as anxiety also actually improve your creativity, but do it through increasing cognitive persistence and perseverance. So basically not giving up until you get the answer. It activates the prefrontal cortex and the— what they call the anterior cingulate cortex, which are the parts of the brain responsible for focus and performance. So some types of anxiety where you can actually find an answer and create a solution to what you're anxious about are actually useful. And it can actually push you to take action that unleashes your strengths. For example, I wanted to get good grades, and I was always a bit anxious before a test, so I studied hard. to make sure I would do well. So the anxiety actually pushed me to study harder. I would spend the last few days just focusing completely on the test. And after a while, when I started doing that, my anxiety level actually went down because it was a type of anxiety that actually I could do something about. But unfortunately, not all anxiety is useful. And on the other side, I also had anxiety that was what I call maladaptive. And that's the kind of anxiety that kind of feels vague, persistent, hard to pin down, and you may not even know why you're anxious. And that can make you feel even more powerless, and it often leads to chronic stress, rumination, and catastrophizing. And this type of anxiety is associated with overactivity in the default mode network, which loops self-referential worry and negative thought patterns. And it can paralyze decision-making and reduce access to emotional regulation tools. And there was actually a 2022 study that was published in Nature Neuroscience that found that anxiety becomes maladaptive when 2 factors are present. First, high uncertainty, and second of all, low perceived control. In other words, if you don't know what's going to happen and you don't believe you can do anything about it, That's when anxiety becomes harmful. And I now know that for me, that type of anxiety came from having this unconscious thinking pattern which was developed when I was very young, that what happened in the world was generally out of my control and that the world was in general an unsafe place. So to me, I just felt this general sense of dread without really knowing why. It was more kind of Free-floating anxiety. Just a sense that something bad was going to happen in my life, but I had no idea what it was, which made it impossible to identify what steps I should take to resolve it, which was totally different than when I was trying to do well on a test where I knew exactly what I needed to do. And actually, many years later in my life, I actually got to the bottom of where this came from in a breathwork session and was able to resolve this kind of thinking pattern that the world is an unsafe place, where I saw that that completely was not true. And now there's actually quite a bit of research on how one of the ways to alleviate this type of non-useful anxiety is by doing things that put you more in your body. By being in your body, you actually bring your focus onto the present moment, where your anxiety actually lives in the future. And the breathwork that I created, Neurodynamic Breathwork, which I'll talk about more in a bit, I also call an active embodiment meditation. And it's really perfect for dealing with and alleviating this type of non-useful anxiety. It's very different from what the medical model was when I was growing up in the '70s, which was basically, if you're anxious, take a Valium, and if one doesn't work, take 2. And in 1978, there was actually 2.3 billion Tablets of Valium that were sold in the US. There's only 250 million people, so it's like 10 tablets for every man, woman, and child. And the philosophy back then was, let's bury the anxiety. And what they didn't understand, that is, by buried emotions, they never die. It's more the opposite, that by burying them, you give them kind of eternal life. They stay inside of you and they continue to run your show, so to speak. In the Neurodynamic, which I'll talk about in a bit, the guiding principle with emotions is that you have to fully feel them in order to deal with them and release them.

So is it actually that there are useful, not useful, good and bad types of anxiety, or is it just more how we work with it?

It's more about whether or not when the anxiety comes up, if it's something where we can actually see that there's something we can do to fix the issue.

Yeah.

So, so if it's a specific thing, like whether it's getting an A on a test or whether it's resolving a problem where we can research, or these days go to ChatGPT or whatever it is, that's useful because it pushes you to, you know, to perform, to find solutions and that type of thing. If it's a situation where you just generally feel anxious, you know, like let's say you're going to bed and your body just feels bad, your stomach's upset, you're, you're just Feeling awful, but it's not a specific thing that you're feeling anxious about. More like it's just maybe a generalized anxiety disorder, so to speak. That's what we call maladaptive because there's nothing you can do to resolve it, basically.

Yeah. Well, interestingly, you said anxiety lives in the future and yes, I mean, we're often anxious about what's going to happen, right? So, and the uncertainty, but also, you know, you said one of the ways you resolved that kind of Unidentified or nonspecific anxiety you were experiencing was you discovered in a breathwork practice session the roots of it, which were in the past. So it can be that especially the anxiety that we don't know really even what it's about can often have to do with past experiences.

Absolutely, yes.

Yeah. You talk about embodiment. And so sometimes, I mean, people experience We all experience anxiety on one level or another, and it can be, sometimes it feels very mental, kind of cognitive, looping thoughts, racing thoughts. Sometimes it can feel very emotional, a lot of fear, and sometimes it can literally be physical or primarily physical. So if it is physical, how does going into the body, can that create an obstacle to embodied approaches to healing or ameliorating the negative impacts of anxiety?

Well, no, if it lives in your body, that's the perfect time to actually do practices. And neurodynamic breathwork is one. There's many others too that actually put you into a more embodied state so you can actually release what's stuck there.

Mm-hmm.

Sometimes it's felt as a pain in part of the body, and many times chronic pain is just from suppressed emotions, or a big piece of it is suppressed emotion. And when you start to actually live more in your body, you can actually work with that versus when you're living in your head, you're not even aware that it's there because it's kind of under the covers and you can't work with something till it's brought to consciousness and where you can actually do something about it basically. If it's kind of stuck where you've got this, let's say pain, and there's an emotional component to it, but you're kind of in your head trying to figure it out, trying to reason out of it, It can't work. If it's in your body, you almost have to be in an embodied state to work with it and release it.

Well, I know you've worked with many, many thousands, probably tens of thousands of people doing breathwork and taking them into their body through breathwork. I'm just curious if for some of us, especially if we're experiencing physical anxiety, we may do everything we can to stay away from the body. We may have developed all kinds of avoidance mechanisms and all kinds of ways to stay distracted and stay out of the body. and stay in head so that we don't feel because we don't want to feel the body.

Right.

I wonder what your experience has been of inviting people in to do that because that could bring up a lot of fear. It could bring up a lot of anxiety when you ask them to, okay, we're going to feel into the body now. No, I don't want to feel into my body. That's foreign. That's enemy territory.

Right. Yeah. And I would say that many people don't really see the body as their friend. So to speak.

Mm-hmm.

And that's why the breathwork— and by the way, I'm going to do a taster session at the end for the people who are listening, so you'll get an actual experience of what the breathwork can be like. But in breathwork, there's a mechanism when you're doing— and in the kind of breathwork I developed, you do a full, deep, diaphragmatic, little faster than normal connected breath. where it creates certain physiological changes in your body. So like the default mode network, for instance, goes offline to a great degree. And there's other things that are happening. Your blood gets more alkaline. It makes it easier for the limbic system to— which is generally suppressed to a certain degree by the default mode network— to bring up these suppressed emotions. But it kind of takes your— when your default mode network kind of goes offline, this kind of crazy thinking patterns that you're having, Aren't as active and don't run the show so much. So it allows you to feel more safe kind of being in your body. It kind of puts you in an embodied state, but you don't feel the fear because your default mode network, which has that kind of looping mechanism to it, is kind of offline. So it physiologically supports you in actually being able to dive in. And the whole structure of neurodynamic breathwork is a safety structure. So people do feel safe in actually diving into their body where there's a facilitator available. There's, um, you can connect with the facilitator during the session if you need to, even in online sessions. There's integration support afterwards. There's a huge, like, preparation piece with, with, uh, 30 minutes of prep work, like, before you start the breathwork. So the whole thing is structured so that people do feel safe in going to their experience and in being friends with their body versus seeing it as the enemy, so to speak.

I've also heard you say that in terms of how we can work with the anxiety we're experiencing, that a gratitude practice, that cultivating the mindset, the heartset, the emotion of gratitude actually can help alleviate, maybe even heal anxiety. Or the roots of anxiety.

And that's something that everybody has available to them. And this is another thing. When I was back as a kid, there really was no science behind how does gratitude work and what happens in your body. But now it's very commonly known and very scientifically available. You can just type into ChatGPT and all the studies come up. That gratitude activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is kind of where you're in the rest and digest mode. It reduces cortisol, it increases dopamine and serotonin, it boosts mood and resilience, it strengthens the prefrontal cortex, which regulates emotion and reduces amygdala activity, the fear response. And that regular gratitude practice kind of rewires the brain networks involved in emotional regulation. And so basically it actually changes your brain if you do a regular gratitude practice. So actually what I'd like to do right now is just take us through a brief 5-minute gratitude meditation, if that's okay.

Sure. Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, cool. All right. And so If you're able to, you can stand up, or if not, you know, sitting down also works. So just take a deep breath and just let it out. And just take a moment to check in. And again, if you're able to stand up, if not, just find a grounded position that feels natural. And now gently allow your shoulders to kind of slump forward and your head to drop slightly. And your face to go neutral or even a little tense. And this posture might feel familiar because it's how many of us carry ourselves when we're under stress or anxiety, often without realizing it. And notice your breath. Is it shallow? Maybe more in the chest than in the belly. And just let it be how it is, just noticing. And if you feel comfortable now, gently close your eyes. And just take a moment to notice what kind of thoughts are present right now. Are they fast, slow, busy, quiet? What emotions, if any, are in the background? And what do you feel in your body right now? No judgment, no fixing, just from a place of curious awareness. And now, remembering you should have your eyes closed at this point, and now we're going to begin shifting together. And now, as we gently begin the shift, bring your feet to about shoulder width apart. Just creating a stable, grounded base. Feel the ground beneath you supporting you. And now roll your shoulders back and open your chest and gently lift your head. Place a soft smile on your face, even if it feels forced at first, it's totally fine. And take a slow, deep breath and let your belly rise on the inhale, go back to normal on the out— exhale. No effort, just soft. Natural breathing, but into your belly, not just into your chest. And now bring to mind one thing that you can be grateful for right in this moment. It might be your breath. Someone you love, or simply the fact that you showed up today. And now let that feeling of gratitude. Gently expand, not just in your heart but throughout your whole body. Let it settle deep into your being. Now just taking another deep breath, keeping your attention in your body, feeling your diaphragm expand and then Go back to normal on the opera. And now thinking back to a moment in your life, in your past, when you felt truly grateful. Maybe it was a hug you needed, moment of awe, or a burst of laughter. And now step into that moment as if you were there. See what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Really let that memory come alive inside. And as you breathe, let that feeling of gratitude flow through your entire body. Just really be the gratitude. And now gently place one or both hands on your heart and take a breath into that place. And now send some gratitude to yourself. For the ways you've contributed to others in your life, for the strength it's taken to get to this moment, for your willingness to expand, grow, and show up today. Allow yourself to fully feel that gratitude. And now let that feeling of gratitude Spread into every cell of your body. Breathe it in. Really let it land. And when you're ready, gently open your eyes. Just stretch a little if it feels good, and just take a moment to notice how you feel now compared to a few minutes ago.

Nice. Thank you very much. Well, yeah, I don't go out.

That can be an amazing practice to do right when you get up in the morning. Because, you know, like for me, um, when I get up in the morning, if I don't do some kind of a practice, my mind's already spinning. It's like, oh, I gotta look at my emails, what happened? Oh, you know, that, that whole kind of thing. And if I just take a few minutes to really ground, and whether it's a gratitude practice or just a breath practice, it makes a huge difference in kind of the energy that I bring into my day.

I can attest to that. I have a whole suite or stack of practices I do first thing in the morning when I get up, and then gratitude is a big part of it integrated with breathwork. So, and it really sets me up for a wonderful day. So let's switch to breathwork. That's what you're best known for and it's been really at the heart of your work developing. You start off, you train in holotropic breathwork and then you developed your own version of that basically so you could bring it online and reach more people. And you figured out a safe way to do that, a workable way to do that. So I wonder if you could talk about, you know, how you discovered breathwork and then your path into breathwork and what you offer now.

Sure. Um, yeah, when I grew up, I had no idea what breathwork was. And even, even if I did know about it, um, there wasn't really any science behind it back then, so I probably wouldn't have given it a try. You know, I have an engineering background and business and some neuroscience, so if you couldn't prove it, I would— I was out, kind of. But then as I was getting older, you know, as I said before, I had this kind of feeling of the world being an unsafe place, which was getting in the way of really living in the moment, being joyful, having positive relationships, and everything that I really wanted for my life. And but I couldn't figure out what was going on. And because it wasn't really logical, it's like, well, you know, when I looked at my past, I'm okay, you know, like nothing horrible has ever happened to me. But I couldn't figure out where it came from. And then at a certain point, I ended up going to South America and ended up doing an ayahuasca journey. And at that time, I didn't even know what ayahuasca was. But I was down there with a woman that I wanted to create a relationship with because I was having failure after failure, couldn't figure it out why. And that evening, the shaman that went out with us said, hey, you guys want to do a religious journey? And I was going, what is it? I never say yes to stuff like that. And said, oh, it's very simple. I go out into the rainforest, I get these leaves and vines, boil 'em all up, you drink it and you have this experience. And of course my original reaction—

The things we do for love, huh?

Yeah, exactly right. And my original reaction was, you've gotta be freaking kidding me. I don't drink witch's brews in the freaking rainforest, 4-hour canoe ride from anywhere. But the woman I was with was going, oh, we have to do this. Oh my God, this is going to be great. Oh God, if I don't do this, I'm going to— the whole week will have been wasted. She'll think I'm a total wimp and that I got in the way of her enjoying her journey. So it was a breakthrough at that point because the spontaneous kind of thing came up in me that I didn't even know I had where, okay, I've had a good life up to this point. I'm in the rainforest. It's beautiful. If I die today, Whatever, you know, let's, let's just do it and see what happens. If they've been doing it for, for centuries, there must be something there. So we'll see where it goes. And that was the first time that I ever really felt kind of the safety in the world when I went on this ayahuasca journey, and it blew my mind. So when I got back, I'm going, okay, the receptors have got to be there in my brain. I'm not going down to South America to take ayahuasca every week. Not happening. So there's got to be other ways to access it. And that's ultimately how I landed on breathwork. Because when I tried different breathworks, I landed in holotropic because it was designed by a psychiatrist through his work with LSD psychotherapy. So it was science-based and I was having some very profound breakthrough experiences with it. And I ultimately did get to the bottom of why I felt like the world was an unsafe place. One of the things that happens in breathwork, you can go to childhood experiences and kind of see things that happen that you've totally forgotten about. Sometimes just forgotten, sometimes buried, because it didn't feel good to remember those things. And, you know, I, I went back to this incident when I was about 9 years old, was talking to my mom about her childhood, and she mentioned this experience that she had when she was— a German Jew in Nazi Germany and had to run for her life almost from one second to the next. She was like this kind of— her family were these heroes in the town. My grandfather had the Iron Cross from World War I, which was a really, really huge honor. They'd been living there for, you know, several hundred years to having to run for their lives. And she'd already gotten beyond that. She'd already worked through it. She'd done her own work and she'd even gotten to the place where she had gone back to visit her old town and stuff like that. But as a kid, I made a decision. If you can't trust your government, you can't trust people that have been supporting you for your entire life, they all turn against you, what can you trust? And so I carried that with me, but it was unconscious. And when it's unconscious, you can't really work with it. So in my breathwork session, when I remembered that, I could start to actually work with this thinking pattern that was really just completely messing up my life. It didn't allow me to feel joy, and it didn't allow me to feel safe in the world. So it completely transformed my life because— and it, you know, these things, they aren't magic pills. It's not like you just realize something and all of a sudden it's gone. It took me a lot of work to work through it and to, you know, shift it to a different thinking pattern that supported me more. And so, you know, it wasn't a question of days or weeks. It was longer than that, but it started me on this process, this really beautiful healing process that ultimately ended up with me, you know, getting into an amazing relationship and, you know, creating so many shifts in my way of looking at the world that really made a huge difference. And part of the reason that I ultimately developed Neurodynamic Breathwork was because One of the shifts in thinking patterns that I had was that rather than coming from a place of like when I was a kid, what can I get from life? What can I take from life? I completely shifted at a certain point to what can I contribute to life? That's what I saw, that that's what really made me happy, to be able to contribute to other people expanding and growing, not to say, you know, when can I get that next car? When can I get this? Or when can I get that? And that's part of what really pushed me to develop my own kind of breathwork, Neurodynamic. Because what I originally was trained in, Holotropic, you can only do in person. There are 3-hour breathing sessions. I mean, it's an amazing modality, but it's really difficult to access. The in-person sessions were 12 hours because there were 2 3-hour breathing sessions. You had a sitter and a breather. And so you had to charge a fair amount of money to rent a huge place, several thousand square feet, so everybody could lay out on mats and fly in facilitators to help you and that kind of stuff. And I wanted to create a breathwork that could be accessed by anybody that wanted to really— was called to dive into their unconscious mind, see what was holding them back in life, to expand and grow in a safe way. And, you know, in a Easily accessible way that didn't cost too much money. All they needed was a desire to expand and grow, to learn more about themselves. And so that's why I created it. I did testing for 9 months with— to make sure it was safe and everything could work online, and what was the ideal length of the session, all that kind of stuff. And ultimately, that's, that's where I landed on these sessions that I do now. Online, they're 2-hour sessions with a half-hour safety talk at the beginning so people are fully prepared. Because some things, if you don't prepare them for and they have these experiences, they will definitely freak out. Their ego mind will go, I'm not doing this. Like, I'm sure, you know, like you're aware of tetany, where you get this kind of stiffness in your fingers sometimes in breathwork. And if you don't prepare someone for something like that, They will freak out virtually for sure if they've never— if they don't know about it. So you talk about that, like sometimes people get this numbness in their body and the feeling comes back, they get this great release. But if they don't know about that stuff, they won't be able to stay safely in their process. So half an hour for that, 1 hour of breathing, and then a share circle at the end.

Hmm.

And in the share circle, one of the things that we bring in is gratitude. So this, it all kind of creates a circle where we, as part of the meditation we have to, like right before we start the share group to bring them back from their experience, we say, and now allow yourself to feel gratitude to all the breathers who supported you in your experience today, that type of thing. So we do bring gratitude into the breathwork experience also.

What if transformation isn't just about thinking differently, but feeling differently? Science shows us that true change happens when we align not just our minds, but also the neural networks in our hearts and guts. This heart-mind connection is the key to deeper healing, resilience, and expanded awareness. That's why I created the HeartMind All Access Membership and Community, a space designed to help you rewire your nervous system, cultivate heart intelligence, and live with greater clarity and purpose. With over 1,000 hours of transformational teachings specifically curated to meet your needs, you'll learn from world-renowned meditation teachers, neuroscientists, and experts in neuroplasticity, all sharing powerful tools to help you shift your mindset and heartset, regulate your emotions, and unlock your full potential. You'll also gain unlimited access to every summit and course we've ever produced, a treasure trove of wisdom worth over $10,000 and growing, plus live gatherings and an inspiring global community to support your journey. If you're ready to step into a more heart-centered, connected, and conscious life, I invite you to join us. Click the link to learn more and start your journey today.

So Michael, in just a moment, I'm going to invite you, if you would, to lead us in a brief session, a little taster session, as you said. I'm curious as what's coming up today in your groups, your breathwork groups and so forth, because as you mentioned, you realized you suffered your whole life not feeling safe in the world, like the world wasn't a safe place.

Mm-hmm.

You found out the cause of that and you found out that that's not actually true. And, you know, on some level, I completely agree with you. Vast majority of time we are safe. And, you know, our biology is very fear-based because survival is job one. So whether we know it or not, there's a conversation in the back of the brain going, I'm going to die, I'm going to die. There's fear everywhere.

Yes.

Which is not the case. And at the same time, There are people living in some places of the world, of conflict zones and war zones, where they don't experience— they're not safe and they don't feel safe. And I'm sure there are people in other areas here in North America and Europe, other places that are not in conflict zones, but they're, you know, they're stuck in a situation of domestic abuse or chaotic families with drug addiction, alcoholism, and so forth. So there's a lot of people that— are not experiencing safety. And then there are those of us who live more privileged lives that are experiencing relative safety, right?

Yes.

But even for all of us, really, there's, you know, life has always been uncertain and we can't really control the world out there. We can do our best to engage with it in the most intelligent, creative way we can. But it feels more uncertain than ever in so many ways. There's major conflicts happening in the world. There's political divisiveness. There's the changes that are coming about through artificial intelligence. It's so rapid. And so I think a lot of people are experiencing a lot of uncertainty, and especially if they pay very much attention to the news. And I really counsel people to really limit their exposure to the news because this news is just designed to fuel your anxiety. That's what it's designed to do, right? Sure. So, but regardless, there is that. So I'm wondering if the people that are coming into your breathwork sessions and community these days, are talking about this anxiety, this sort of situational environmental anxiety and uncertainty, and that they don't feel safe on some level because who knows what's going to happen next, right? Things just seem so uncertain. So I'm wondering how that's playing out and then how the people, if you notice that people are doing the breathwork, are somehow better able to deal with that, et cetera.

Yes. That's a really good question. And so first, let's talk just for a moment about how actually breathwork works. And so, and especially with anxiety. So during a neurodynamic breathwork session, we use faster, deeper breathing at the beginning of the session. And that stimulates actually So this is going to be a little bit counterintuitive at the beginning, but it stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, which is the part of your body that gets activated during stress. But in this case, it's intentional and it's also temporary. And as I said before, like this type of breathing, well, what it— how it works is it lowers the CO2 in the blood, it makes it more alkaline, which creates a mild physiological stress state. And why do we do that? Because, as I said before, it quiets the default mode network, which is the part of the brain responsible for self-referential thinking and overanalyzing. And that's the loop where anxiety tends to live. And so basically, when it's downregulated, it supports all this other stuff coming up. And as the session progresses, we tell people to start with that breath technique, but Once you dive into your process, you're in your journey to trust your body with the breath. So almost all breathwork out there, they say breathe this way all the way through. We don't do that. This is all about, you know, and it's non-directive. This is really important in Neurodynamic Breathwork and why it works so well with anxiety. Because we basically say, you know, we're not going to direct the experience as facilitators. We don't tell people breathe We breathe more deeply or connect to love or whatever. This is about them connecting to what I call their own inner guiding intelligence that everybody has. Different people call it different things. I think Joe Dispenza calls it the quantum field or the source or your higher self or whatever, but that deeper part of your psyche that already has all the answers that you need. And so Later in the session, what generally happens is, especially towards the end, the breath naturally slows. And again, so I tell people, don't force it, like to stay with the original technique all the way through. Let it do what it wants. And then when it slows, the body shifts into a parasympathetic state, which we call the rest and digest mode. And that's where the deep integration happens. So you move from activation to release To healing. And again, what makes this unique is that it's non-directive, so no one's telling people how to feel or think or what to work on. Their own inner guiding intelligence guides the process, and that's what makes it safe, personal, and powerful. And that's part of why it's so effective for anxiety. You're not just managing symptoms. You're actually addressing the root causes stored in the body. And the results speak for themselves. I mean, a recent survey, 89% of our participants reported experiencing relief from anxiety after sessions. So it totally works. And part of it is that especially, like, for instance, in trauma, and also for other people too, one of the unfortunate side effects is that people lose confidence in their ability to handle what's going on in the outside world. And, you know, as you were talking about, with all this stuff going on in the outside world, it makes a huge difference whether you are coming from this internal space of, no matter what happens in life, I've got it, or if you're coming from the space of, I can't handle life. I was overwhelmed, you know, when I was a kid by all this stuff happening, and that thinking pattern still being there. So, so part of the healing that takes place in Neurodynamic Breathwork is that people start to see as they dive into these processes that they can go through these things. They can go through feeling anxiety or feeling fear and open themselves up and get to the other side and feel much better. Because once you really go through this stuff, and we say in breathwork, feel it so you can heal it, and get to the other side, people generally find that on the other side of it is something deeply relaxing or love or some other, like, really different type of experience. What they Once they allow it to really be felt and expressed into the universe. And they start to feel more confident that they can handle life, that no matter what happens, even if it's fear, they can work through it. And so that's part of why it works so well, and not just in the breathwork experience, but when they go back into their lives, over 75% of our breathers say that they feel more confident in dealing with their life. They feel better connected to their inner guiding intelligence. They feel more calm, they feel more present. So all these things, and even with trauma, over 80% of people say they get relief from trauma from this breathwork too.

So this kind of short-term activation or short-term acute stress activation or sympathetic arousal activation kind of in service of then kind of a healing response, This is the similar mechanism in cold exposure as well, isn't it? And other types of things that put the body in a temporary state of acute stress and then you're released from that.

Exactly. Yes. Yeah.

Well, I think we learn by doing. So would you lead us in a little taster session of this?

Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to. So our normal neurodynamic sessions are 60 minutes long and they're really designed so like with The whole, like, with the default mode network offline and stuff. This will be a short session, just about 8 minutes of music. And so the purpose will be a little bit different. We're going to be doing a little bit of a different breathing style, more slow and gentle. The music will be more gentle, and it's really more designed just to kind of be more in an embodied state, to kind of reset your nervous system. And some people may have a deeper experience, but if— but for most people, It'll be more of a relaxation experience.

Mm-hmm.

Some of the experiences that people get in breathwork, and which you may or may not get here, is like body releases where you might get like shivers or shakes or whatever. You might get emotional releases. You might feel some emotions. In the longer sessions, people also get, many times get visuals where they might go back into childhood and see things from a different perspective or Transpersonal experiences where they feel connected to the universe, or past life experiences, or lineage healings, or rebirthing experiences. Um, so, or just deep relaxation experiences. So again, in the longer sessions, all that's available, and you may get one of those experiences even in the shorter sessions. I just want to bring those up. You may even experience a little bit of the tetany thing I called— talked to you about, although it's unlikely. Where your fingers get stiff, it's totally normal. Don't worry about it. It just means that you're getting a release of tension stuck in your hands. And for the breathing technique for this, what we're going to do is you're going to breathe, and again, to start with, in and out through the mouth, and full deep breaths into your belly. So your belly expands on the in-breath, going back to normal on the out-breath, but no stress in your body. Not like this. Not like that. Make it a full, deep, but enjoyable breath. And connected, so you're always breathing in or breathing out. And so you just want to have fun with the breath. And some people like to make a little sigh on the out-breath. You can either do that or not. Either one totally works either way. And, you know, as you get deeper into the 8 minutes, if your breathing wants to shift or change, that's okay too. Again, just like in the regular sessions, just trust your body. It's all good. Again, this will be more gentle music and just notice how your body feels right now, and then afterwards you can see if it feels any different or not. The 2 basic concepts in this, as it is in regular breathwork, in neurodynamic breathwork, is trust And surrender. Just let whatever wants to happen happen. And just knowing that even in these shorter sessions, your inner guiding intelligence will bring you what you're ready to experience in the way that you can experience it best. So just letting go, letting go of any expectations of what might happen during breathwork, and just allowing life to flow through you any way that it wants to.

Hmm.

Okay, and now you might want to close any other internet connections if that feels right, just like Chrome or Firefox or something, just so you don't get glitches in the music. And then close your eyes, and you can do this sitting in your chair, it's totally fine, or if you want to lay down you can too. Some people like to put some headsets on to get better sound quality. If you want to run and do that, you can, but it's all good. So at this point, you can close your eyes, take a deep breath, and bring your attention into your body. Just watching the breath for a moment. Now deepening the breath, starting to take full deep breaths in and out of the mouth, feeling the belly expand with each in-breath and go back to normal on the out-breath. But this is not a fast breath. Just normal pace, or even a bit slower can be really nice. So full, deep, either slow breath or at most normal pace. And make it an enjoyable breath, no stress in your body, just taking in the air of life. Taking full deep breath in and out of the mouth. And if during the session your body wants to move a little bit, just let it move. Or sounds want to come, let them come. Again, just allowing whatever Wants to happen to happen. And at the end, when the music's over, just keep your eyes closed just for another minute, and I'll just kind of gently bring— so breathing fully and deeply, deeply and fully, fully and deeply. And in a moment, the music will begin. Have a wonderful day. And now, if you haven't already, bringing your breath back to a normal rhythm, normal depth. And just being with yourself for a moment. You can either open your eyes or close them. Either is fine. Just taking just another minute to be with yourself, being with your body. This amazing vessel that the universe has given us to navigate this incredible journey we call life. I'm just taking a few more gentle breaths. Just taking one moment to allow yourself to feel gratitude. It's, I think, it's about a 1 in 100 billion chance that we come to life in this incarnation, with exactly the right sperm and egg meeting in exactly the right moment, and just allowing yourself to feel gratitude for this gift that was given to you that you didn't have to earn, and for this beautiful journey we're on. Right.

Thank you very much, Michael. That was wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.

And it really doesn't take long to change your state, in essence. You know, like you saw just in 5 minutes with gratitude, or just a few minutes of breathing. Just, you know, being in a more embodied state is just incredibly powerful, and it's Your body just loves it.

Yeah.

You know, where you're not, you know, most people spend, I have to put myself in that category for most of my life, spend almost all of our times in our heads, whether it's thinking about the future or remembering the past. And we very rarely take the time out of our day to just kind of check in with ourselves, be with our body and see what's going on. And just in general, as a practice, the more— if we can just take every once in a while, take a few moments to close your eyes, be with yourself, whether it's taking, you know, just 5 or 6 deep breaths and really checking in, seeing what's going on. If you're feeling a little bit of anxiety, to soothe yourself, do some deep breathing, do a gratitude exercise or whatever. It can make a huge difference to the quality of your life and the quality of your day. Wonderful.

Thank you so much for this, Michael. This is amazing. So where can people find out more about Neurodynamic Institute, about your work? I know you offer free breathwork sessions, the full 2-hour version. So where can people find out about that?

Yeah, so basically they just have to go to my website, which is breathworkonline.com. Either you can just go to the main website and click on Try a Free Breathwork Session, or breathworkonline.com/free is a direct page where you go to access the free session. We do 20 live sessions every month, different times of day, different days, so you can choose one that fits in with your schedule. As you saw today, really the only way you can know is to try it out. That's true of, I think, everything that's experiential in life, whether it's meditation, Thank you so much, Michael Stone, founder of Neurodynamic Breathwork, the Neurodynamic Institute.

And really a joy to work with you as always. And thank you for what you offered today.

All right. Well, it's, it's, it's been a joy and a pleasure. Thank you.

Be well.

Thank you for joining me on the Radical Responsibility Podcast. Remember, real change happens when we commit to our growth, face our challenges with compassion, and stay open to transformation. If you found this episode helpful, I encourage you to subscribe and help us spread the message of healing and personal empowerment. Until next time, stay grounded, stay present, and stay true to yourself. Take care.

Thank you.