Ep. 47-"Exhale" with Breathwork Expert Jeannie Kulwin

This is the You Winning Life podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights, and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, trainer and certified entrepreneur coach Jason Wasser.

So everybody, welcome back to the You Winning Life podcast. Today's guest is Jeannie Cohen, and she's a credentialed teacher, breathwork and meditation facilitator, sound healer, yoga instructor, and functional nutrition guide. She's also a health coach, and she's been on her own wellness journey for the last many years and spent a decade immersed in the personal growth and wellness community. And currently she helps hardworking entrepreneurs reduce stress quickly in order to achieve peak performance in and out of the office. So first of all, thank you so much for hanging out for us. I know you're all the way out in LA and we're here in Fort Lauderdale, so making this digital technology thing work really well.

Yeah, no, hi, hi everybody. Thanks so much for having me on. I know it's morning. I told my dad, 'cause I did do the social distancing yesterday for Mother's Day, and so I said, I have a podcast at night. He goes, 9:15, that's so early. I was like, well, East Coast people, so yeah.

We get our day going earlier than you Cali people. So, of the many things, so you've dedicated your life to health and wellness, and the four pillars of this podcast is psychology, spirituality, natural wellness, and entrepreneurship. And in a lot of ways, you're bringing a lot of that together. So you're a great guest for us to be hanging out with today. So I'm really curious, before we get into the actual practical application of everything that you're doing, What was that one thing in your own personal journey that got you to commit and dedicate your life to this path?

Yeah, I mean, definitely when I found you, I knew it was a great fit. Well, I had a really, really long journey. Uh, can you hear me okay too? Is it coming in okay with the sound? Okay. Um, I had a really long— I kind of feel like I was a little bit forced into it, but that was the way, you know, there's no accidents, and that was the way it was. It was meant to be. So my family doesn't really have a spiritual background or personal growth but I had a long history of chronic illness, chronic pain, really severe, had to take medical leave from work and saw every doctor in LA. And there's some good doctors in LA. So I went through a very tumultuous, very difficult, painful, physically and emotionally journey about 16 years and all this mystery symptoms and autoimmune. I did talk to Medical Medium Anthony William before anyone knew what gluten was and he's telling me to change my diet completely. Now it's kind of trendy in LA and around, but everyone thought it was crazy. So it really came from this necessity, this need, because I feel like when I started on this journey, it was, "Oh, you're in physical pain and you've got these physical symptoms, but that's just physical." And there wasn't that bridge and that gap for all the emotional pain that I was dealing with and all these emotions and feeling like, "What's wrong with me?" And, "I'm crazy." And, "Jason, I should never be sad because at least I don't have this," and not understanding how to validate my emotions. There's so much. Learning, meeting people that could help me, and then ultimately letting myself have— taking my power back. I think the biggest thing is when you realize you can take back your power and you stop— you know, I got labeled with diagnoses that I don't want that diagnosis, I don't want that label, and I don't have it anymore. And I think when you change your life and you take back your power, there's just like this natural need and want to help other people do the same thing too. So yeah, it was very, it was like a very natural progression.

Right, and I wasn't expecting to even go in this direction with our conversation, but I wanted to kind of break down, you know, you just said, "I didn't want these diagnoses." And I come from a world where my clients, my practice has moved over the last many years to a cash-based practice. And one of the main reasons why is because insurances, when you use your insurance for therapy in-network, you have to have a clinical psychological/psychiatric diagnosis that meets their criteria in order for it to get covered. So if you're coming in with general stress, but you don't meet the criteria for anxiety disorder, they'll basically say, well, put it under anxiety disorder. That's now on your personal medical record that, God forbid, if you get into a car accident, they can try to subpoena that insurance information to use against you. And then on the other side is you have these labels, these boxes that if you actually functionally solve the problem, like, better nutrition, better relationships, better boundaries, better health, then the diagnosis disappears. So the question is, is are we working to, uh, are we working to support the diagnosis, or are we working to get you to the most functional, optimal level, right? Which I think is one of the big things that you and I have most in alignment, is that my job is to get people off the medication. My job is to get them out of their stuck beliefs. My job is to get them out of stuck patterns and to realize the purpose and potential that they can live in. And especially when it comes to autoimmune and diet and nutrition and going from doctor to doctor, I had that same story— stomach issues, and maybe I'm celiac, and maybe I have this, and maybe I have that, and borderline thyroid. And everybody in Florida right now, I'm on a big rampage about everybody buying vitamin D supplements because there's an 80% to 90% increase in death rates of COVID if you have vitamin D deficiency.

Yeah, right.

So, and people can go on my Facebook page and you can actually see the research that's being published about that. So right now, like, if you're listening and you're not taking vitamin D, I'm not going to tell you what you should be taking, but you shouldn't be taking less than 2,000 IUs a day on minimum, right? The 60, 80, 100 that people are taking is not enough. And if you want to get into optimal functional levels, you need to be probably taking on average a minimum of 2,000, even if you live in Florida or Cali. So this journey of, of, of— I don't want to have that label. I don't want to have that diet diagnosis is what I hear so many people in the world either go through or are unaware that they can change that for themselves.

Yes, let's talk about that.

Go for it. So, like, what was that turning point? Like, the moment where you had not just the aha, but when you took control over your life and you realized it wasn't about a diagnosis, it's really about how am I feeling about how am I feeling?

Yeah, I mean, there's so many examples and it's— I love talking about— this is why I knew we would have so much good stuff to talk about. But a couple things, I mean, I remember I wasn't sleeping well, I was having insomnia, and I remember one doctor— and then we can talk about like functional medicine because that's what my life coaching is in and that's like some of the doctors, but then that gets confusing, Jason, because that's very expensive sometimes with the medical stuff. But I remember seeing a doctor who was the expert in the autoimmune that I was dealing with, and he was like, well, you're not sleeping, you have insomnia, that's That's what you got. That's the diagnosis. That's your illness. And that's what it's going to be. That was so disempowering. But I remember on the flip side, let's talk about when I felt really empowered. I saw my chiropractor and we were just working on getting my body to feel good. And I said to him, I said, my rheumatoid— it was one of these doctors. It wasn't rheumatoid. One of these many, many doctors that I saw was talking about this pain that I was having in my body. I'm a small frame, like I'm a thin girl, and he said to me, "Oh, you have small muscles, so your muscles are weak and you're not going to be power—" Like, "You have small muscles, yeah, like you're not going to be strong, Jeannie, because you're small and you have small muscles." How is it empowering to tell someone, "You're small, so you're not going to be strong." It was said to me, you take it. I mean, I've had so much experience with not believing everything that's been said, but things stick, and the guy with the white lab coat and the doctor, and he's the expert and he's the authority. I remember being in the chiropractor and he was helping me and I felt really strong in my body. I remember telling him what was told to me, the chiropractor, and then just having someone to validate that that is ridiculous. Oh, because I'm a thinner frame that I can't be strong and I'm just going to be plagued with having chronic pain my whole life? But actually feeling strong in my body because things were feeling good and learning how to breathe correctly and how to hold yourself. A lot of this fear, so much fear of, "Oh, you have to be sitting this and this is the way you sit." So many things that I just want to debunk, but there's like this mind-body connection, and I think that was one of those big, "Oh, I feel so strong in my body," and other people telling you things, and that's garbage, and taking your power back. And then also when you realize that this chronic pain is going away because my mindset's changing, "Oh, that means that you never had it in the first place." Then talking to my chiropractor too and saying— him saying the same thing. He's like, "I can't—" A chiropractor is not going to cure a disease, right? So really, it's you never having the disease or somebody getting labeled at it, right? So yeah, that was a big shift for me. And like, you know, my whole life I've been thin, and so I don't think I have like the biggest muscles, but it's a mental, internal, and it, you know, it's life-changing. It's amazing. Yeah.

Well, if you think about it, right, the chiropractic philosophy, they talk about vitalism, right? And the vitalism is that your body is constantly evolving, your body is constantly in a state of living. And when we expose ourselves to things outside of that, toxins, trauma. Yeah. But they— right, this is the triad, what they call the triad of health, right? Of what affects us from our optimal health is toxins, trauma, and autosuggestion, right? Autosuggestion back in the day is what we call emotions now, right? So in a world where we're living where, um, right, everybody has so much more food allergies or environmental allergies because we're constantly and chronically exposed to food and cleaning products and pesticides and non— right, all these things that are causing them to get much more, uh, racked and deficient, right? And then we have trauma that we haven't resolved, both physically and emotionally. That's also going to affect our immune system. We know for sure that stress automatically messes up your vitamin B levels, and your vitamin B is your stress handling, right? You know this as a functional practitioner, right? And then it's funny, like when you talk about drinking, people who then go to drink to relieve their stress— drinking also removes your vitamin Vitamin B from your body. So there you are, like back to back to back, like you're trying to relax by drinking, but you're already stressed out, so your Vitamin B is shot, and now you're drinking more, which is destroying more of your Vitamin D, and you're now in this awful whatever.

And then you're just escaping sometimes and numbing your emotions. And it was interesting too, Jason, because then with the chiropractor, I saw this dynamic of like, "Oh, my chiropractor is going to save me, and this is my route," and visiting him all the time. And then it gets like pulling back and then taking back your power again. I'm so grateful that during this time of separation, I don't need to see the chiropractor because there was this dependency before. So it's like always this arc and this curve of—

Yeah, and listen, there are times where we do need to go and rely on clinical professionals, and I'm much more in alignment with you on this. Like, I'm going to be going to a chiropractor first before I go to anybody else, but I'm only going to go to very specific types of chiropractors because there are two different types of worlds. There's the chiropractors who come in and say, come in 3, 4 times a week and then come in until, right? You have some type of change, or you have the people who are much more the integrative, applied kinesiology, those type of chiropractors, functional neurology, neuro-emotional technique, which is what I do as a therapist, right? Those are the chiropractors that I'm more likely to go to. Not saying that the other chiropractors are bad, but I know at this point in my career and my, my own personal research who I'm going to go to and who I'm not going to go to, right? Um, because I'm like, well, you can just muscle test that injury And then we can find out if it's emotions or toxins or nutritional deficiency, not just an injury, which is what NET talks about. And I don't need to go back 30 times if we can figure out that it's an emotional component or a toxicity component. I just need nutritional supplements to fix that, right, or a combination of all those. So we do have to become informed consumers, but I'm a big fan of what I tell all my clients is that you need to create a dream team, like the Olympics, NBA. Yeah. And you want the best practitioners that you can find that are experts in areas that you're not an expert in, but also will take the time to empower you, to teach you how to do it, or what at least you can do without having them to be there in that regard. So, yeah, so if you need a physical therapist or you need a chiropractor, you need— there's stuff that they can do that you can't, and you're not gonna be able to do unless you're in that world. But otherwise, how can you eat better? How can you stretch better? How can you sleep better? What nutrition can you take? What should you avoid? Right? That's all empowerment that you and I are very much in alignment about. So, but it's the one of the big things that I think it all comes down to. It doesn't matter how well you do all those things if you're not doing one basic function. And that goes all the way back to our reptilian brain, right, which is our basic instincts, and that's our breathing. And I know you're, right, you're the breathwork boss. That's your jam. That's your thing. So first of all, what's your definition of breathwork? Oh my God, everything.

Bliss. I think that word would be— what's my definition of breathwork? Everything. It is everything. I mean, breath I mean, you come into this world and the first thing you do is you take a breath. You leave this world, your last thing that you do is take your last breath. I mean, it really is life. It's life force. I think there's nothing that breathwork and breathing and mindfulness cannot do. I mean, we can change our life. So that's what I say.

So when people are going out and they're like, "Oh, I'm going to meditate today," or, "I'm doing these relaxation exercises," what distinguishes breathwork from that?

In my opinion, everyone has their opinion, but I think the uniqueness of breathwork is that we're actually processing and releasing some of our emotions and feeling them, as opposed to meditation. There's different levels. I don't want to blanket say all meditation or all mindfulness, but the idea for me when I was doing meditation is the idea is not to think and obviously to connect to my breath. It's amazing for calming down the nervous system, getting into the parasympathetic nervous system and relaxing the body. But for me, it wasn't really processing my emotions. I wasn't feeling these emotions. Like if I was really sad and I meditate, for me, it was a distraction from the sadness. "Okay, I'm angry. I'm going to meditate. Okay, now I'm not angry." But I just felt that I was suppressing it. I did get some clarity from meditation. I think that that's helpful, maybe not in that moment, but overall, I mean, definitely a sense of peace. And my goodness, if you can relax your central nervous system, I mean, amazing. We're not saying that's amazing, but for me, I had anger and I needed to process that in a healthy way. I felt like the meditation for me was just sort of escaping from it and not having to deal with the emotions. Through breathwork, I can feel those emotions. I can go on the floor, and my friends have said it too, once you're doing breathwork regularly, you can get on the floor, you're about to start, and the tears just come. Underneath a lot of this anger and this anxiety, Jason, we know is sadness, right? We're just masking it with anger because anger is more socially acceptable, especially I work with men and I work with a lot of male clients because emotion sometimes isn't so fun and— Locked up and stored and not easily expressed.

Yes. Vulnerability, all of that.

Vulnerability and this stereotype that if you're vulnerable, you're weak, which is a huge myth. So yeah, so that's why I really connected to the breathwork. It's like my go-to for sadness, pain, frustration, especially now in these times where— and I know like when you have a normal, just whatever normal is, you have a job, right? Something hits you, right? You get a phone call, you get a text, and you're in the middle of a coaching client, or you're like— for me, I used to be a high school teacher, and there was things that would happen. I'd get news, or I'd be in so much physical pain, chronic pain, and I'm supposed to be teaching with a happy smile, and you just— everything's perfect, and you're really— I did a good job, but that was the problem. It was too good. I pushed down emotions, I pushed down my feelings, and then where does it go? Emotions are in the body, and so unless I felt like I had the somatic practice to get this out, and when you talk about trauma, I mean, that's my jam. Am too, talking about little t trauma, big T trauma, stuff that you realize was stressful, stuff that you had no idea affected you, right? And that's the cool thing about breathwork and breathing is we don't have to talk about everything. You don't have to label it. Well, let's talk about labels. You don't have to label it. You just know that it's being released and it's ready to get released.

So yeah, so there is a distinction, right? When you're doing meditation, there really necessarily— there isn't always necessarily an outcome in that process. But what you're offering, at least what I'm hearing you saying is that there is breathwork is much more of an intentional, a different type of intentional where you are wanting to have a specific outcome that could hopefully happen for you when it comes specifically to emotions. Mm-hmm. And experiences. So what would be like a very simple beginner's thing that within 30 seconds someone could start implementing in their life the second they're done listening to this?

Yeah, I can walk you through just diaphragmatic breathing because I feel like most people don't even know that. And I want to say too that besides just emotions, stress— because I, when I was doing my live classes, Jason Wasser, I was actually surveying people. We was like this fun— so like, how do we tell if their stress went down besides people saying, oh, I feel less stressed? So we were actually surveying people, having them rate it 0 through 10. This is before COVID Like, 0 to 10, where do you think you're stressed? This was a normal Sunday night. What's your stress? Normal Sunday, not COVID. And the average of my people, I had about 15 people, was about 6, the average. And then, and that was, imagine what it is now, we're probably all functioning at an 8. And then after the practice, the average of everyone went to a 3. So besides shifts in a very short period. Yeah. And so that's the thing, it's like a very short time. And like, I don't know about, I'll be honest, I don't want to meditate for an hour. That's not going to happen for me. And breathwork, you get to do with music and there's coaching, etc. So yeah, so getting back to the, um Let me move back a little bit. So the thing that I can explain to you, so breathwork definitely has to be done— well, I definitely recommend, you know, lying down. And I've had people— it's so cool, Jason— I've had people do it in their car nowadays because they got kids in the house. I saw this girl come into her car and I was like, no, no, you can't drive. And she's like, nope, nope, I got 3 kids, I got this. And she put her car seat back. You got to do what you got to do. So normally, yeah, we got to get as—

we got to pivot as much and get as creative as possible.

Yeah, it's great. And you could do it sitting, but optimal is to be on the floor or on a bed lying flat. That's why I don't really want to teach people how to do breathwork because if they're in their car, they're driving or something, but just in terms of diaphragmatic breathing, what I can show you because we know that if you can get lots of oxygen into your body, you can change the pH of your cells and shift out of the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic. I could geek out on that for a long time, but anyway, just the basics to make you feel better. What are we doing? Let's stimulate the vagus nerve and make the body feel good. Who cares about the science? You want to feel good, right? You put your hand on your stomach. Stomach to start, and you could put your hand on your chest. And I like to close my eyes, so if you're safe and you can— and basically we're breathing deep into our belly. So you inhale and the belly goes out. You're making a big balloon with your body without, you know, shifting the body in your back. So you inhale and the belly goes out. Okay, and then when you inhale, we're going to bring the belly back in. So the belly is doing all of the work. So inhale, belly goes out. And then you exhale, the belly goes in. That's really so simple, diaphragmatic breathing. And I've heard so many different people say about when you inhale, inhale with your mouth, you know, inhale with your nose and you exhale with your mouth. And I've heard other people, the exhale has to be longer, you know. I recommend the exhales long. There's so many different— definitely with actual breathwork, your mouth is open, but there's a million different people saying what, what you should do, right?

I think that at the end of the day, it's whatever is going to work and be most comfortable for you, which is, which is going to be the step different than what you've been doing before you tried to do this new thing, right? That's, that's all I'm looking for my clients. It's like, what's the most— what's the next step we can take into uncomfortability land in a way that you haven't done before? That I love that land, comfortable. But when you do it the third time, will no longer be uncomfortable because then we can push you to another level., right? So it doesn't have to be like this big massive jump where you now got to do this 40 times a day for 20 minutes each, right? It's take 30 seconds and do this. And I offer that with the First Aid Stress Tool, which is this, uh, NET home do-it-yourself thing with our— with acupuncture points. And people can find that on my, uh, on my website, on the bottom, uh, of the website. But it's also on my Facebook page. But it's literally— it's 30 seconds where you're just hitting acupressure points, you're thinking about the issue, you're holding your forehead which is the hypothalamus points, the emotion points, while thinking about that experience, while breathing in through your nose, out through your mouth, right, again. And within a few seconds, you're hitting on all these different levels. What you're hitting on, acupuncture, which connects it to emotions and different body organs. You're going back into the breathing and parasympathetic, sympathetic nervous system stuff, right? You're also hitting a hard reboot on what could potentially be a trauma and allowing your brain to now start normalizing what didn't get processed previously because you're no longer in that fight or flight. This is why I'm such a big fan of what you're doing and how it's so powerful that I do believe that radical change can happen in 30 seconds or less.

Well, they say an emotion goes through your body in 90 seconds, and so that's huge. But I think even pivoting on the point of what you said before is that if people, besides actually doing, I think half of the battle is that you actually are aware and have the self-awareness to realize that you need to do your acupressure points and you need to do your breathing So if you realize, so many people are walking around and they're not even aware, "Oh, I'm angry. I'm stressed. I'm lashing out at my wife. I'm lashing out at my kids. I'm sad. Oh my goodness. I'm binge eating. I'm whatever, blah, blah, putting in—" Triggered at whatever level, if we want to use that word, right? A million different things. So half the battle is that they actually have tapped into themselves and have that self-awareness. And so when they actually get to the breathing, that's huge too.

Interesting thing about all of this, because 5, 10, 15 years ago, everybody like, oh, this is super hokey, this is so hippie-dippy, this is so LA, right? Right. And I clinically practice in the land of woo-hoo, because everything I practice that is in the land of woo-woo is all clinically researched and journal published. So here's the great thing for everybody out there, is that a lot of the stuff that you're doing has tremendous amount of articles and published journal articles on all of these different types of healing arts modalities. But we also know that, like, for years we know in sports psychology that when we have athletes do visualizations on what that experience is going to be like and breathe through it and what comes up and walk themselves through it 1,000 times, taking that shot or throwing that pitch, right, 1,000 times to 2,000 times, is really just a fancy level of breathwork. Yeah. And, you know, but if you call it sports psychology, it's okay. But if you call it mindfulness, if you call it breathwork, you call it healing, then all of a sudden it's woo-woo. But right, and that's why I love on my podcast having guests like you, because it's all right. Everything I'm, I'm pushing and talking about with my clients, with my coaching clients, my therapy clients, with the people who are connecting in this community, it's— this is real deal stuff. And this is how it's easily accessible Right now, anybody in the world can reach out to you and work with you because everything is digital at this point, right? And number 2, right, the world of functional nutrition, functional medicine, which is a whole pivot of going back to a different, the earlier topic, is, I 100% believe, is the wave of medical treatment in the future, and that if people start, if you're hearing that term for the first time, functional nutrition, functional medicine, they're interchangeable at certain levels, but if you're not doing research and you're only still figuring out why am I on these 3, 4, 5, 6 medications and I'm not feeling better, then you need to start doing some research and take some ownership and accountability for your life and stop giving over your power to all these practitioners who may or may not be able to solve it for you because you're expecting them to solve it for you versus solving it with you.

Yeah, and it's just a Band-Aid too at the end of the day. So for me at least, I mean, when I was offered the antidepressants, the antidepressants were because I was sad, because I was in chronic pain. Well, yeah, if you're physically feeling this pain. So then the antidepressant, it's tempting. And I knew, yeah, there's, there's a lot.

It's the easy, quick fix that doesn't solve the problem. It's the Band-Aid, but eventually the Band-Aid falls off, and then you change it with a different Band-Aid of a higher or lower dose or a different medication, but then that falls off, right? And I'm seeing that of someone who I know who reached out to me, and they're like, oh, I've been going through this really stressful thing, and I'm going— and they put me on an antidepressant, but I'm dating someone, and now I'm like having this issue in my relationship with them physically. I'm not having the energy, and like that's becoming an issue in my "Like, now I'm having panic attacks and now I'm having—" I'm like, "Dude, like, these are all side effects of the medication. Let's just solve the depression. Let's just solve what's making you worried and overwhelmed, and we'll figure all that out, but you have to be willing to take that risk of saying to your doctor, 'I want to do something different. I want to feel more empowered.'" So I'm not saying that there aren't people out there that do need to be on medication and they are lifesavers for the right people at the right time, but you also have to know, like, listen, I'm going to say this, psychiatry is not a hard science. It's hit or miss. They're not doing— 99% of psychiatric practitioners out there, 99% of doctors who are putting you on medication are not doing blood labs on a consistent basis the way functional medicine practitioners and integrative medicine practitioners will. And if they're not doing it based on blood labs, they're throwing darts at a wall and hoping it sticks.

Yeah, and I think another thing too, this is a little bit off a tangent, but it's on the tangent too. I saw this post on Facebook and they said something like, "Your antidepressant isn't going to fix your job that you hate." or your relationship that is not working, that's toxic. And I think it just goes back to the point with the coaching and the therapy that you're doing, and breathwork sometimes too. I mean, it's this deeper layer, right? You taking a pill isn't going to solve that toxic relationship or that, like we said, the job that you hate or you're not happy. And so we think that the pill is going to, even if it's depression and it's just so interesting, and no one's talking about that too. And so I've had moments after breathwork, or I'm sure you've had with your sessions with clients, you have the clarity, then you're like, "Oh man, oh no, oh crap." Like, there are changes I have to make, and that's uncomfortable. Shoot. Uh, so I've done, I've done breathwork, and then after, I'm like, oh no, I have to do this thing that's so uncomfortable. Maybe it's a conversation or make a big change, and change is scary. But going back to this comfort and getting out of your comfort, and that's been huge with breathwork with me.

I mean, that's the one-two punch, right? It's, it's the awareness, and then what do I need to do strategically different than what I've always done, and how do I think about about it differently, which is where I would come in, right? Where it's all about the perspective of the way that you've been looking at or trying to solve the problem got you into my office in the first place, right? So that's clearly not working for you. It doesn't mean you don't have all these amazing tools and resources at your belt, but you can't access all those tools and resources you naturally have if you're stuck thinking about a problem in the same way over and over again that's getting you back to the same results. So I think that's one of those things that like, when I'm I'm working with my therapy or my business coaching clients or whatever it is that I'm working with, any of my clients, that my biggest thing is to figure out their core beliefs about the issue. Why is it a problem for them and what do they believe about that? And a lot of times they find out that it's 99% of the time, and I had this this morning, where I literally saw their brain shattering and the wheels re— re— restarting to turn on again. I know the look on my clients, and it's a lot closer now that we're digital versus them sitting 60 feet across from me from my office now that we're all in isolation and my practice is fully online. But we will only think within the construct of what really doesn't hurt our brain because that's the pathways, that's the neural pathways. So in order for us to do differently, which is also the main beautiful thing about breathwork, you are re-evoking. The natural way, the homeostasis, the really natural, healthy way that our body should be working. And if we're not breathing properly, nothing else is going to go and fall in place.

Yeah. I mean, there's so much subconscious. Yeah. And what you were talking about too, the beliefs of our ancestors, of our parents, and then there's—

Culture, history, religion, relationships, trauma, drama, whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. Subconscious anyway. So to think that you're gonna— and that's the thing too, as I talk about too, which I think is really interesting, you know, emotions are not logical. So if you're gonna think your way out of your emotion, or like you said, think your way out of your own subconscious belief that you don't even know—

exactly, that's the three brain theory, the triune brain theory, right? Your neocortex, your rational brain, fully consciousness, is your logical side. I put it into categories: this makes sense, this doesn't make sense. That's your rational brain. Brain, neocortex, fully conscious. Then you go into your mammalian brain, which is where your emotions lie. And your emotions a lot of time are based on just like old experiences that something 20 years ago that happened will trigger the physiological biochemical result to make you feel the same way again because they're similar. The story might be different, the experience might be different, but somehow it feels similar and that physiology is going to be triggered in your body. Then we go to your reptilian brain. Right? And that is the whole part of, like, fight or flight or survival. And that affects your breathing, that affects your heart, that affects your nervous system. But once that's on, your heart rate goes up to a certain point, you're over— you're overpowering your rational brain, your conscious brain. So if those three things are not in sync, you're in what we call fight or flight, self-sabotage, chaos. So you can't talk your way out of a paper bag when you're in a place that is causing you you to be run by what we call— right, was it neurological hijacking?

Yeah. And I think— oh, yeah, sorry. Well, I think also—

That's what you're doing. That's what you're doing with breathwork. That's what I'm doing with therapy and my coaching and my neuro-emotional technique work, that we're resetting the neurological hijacking in different ways.

And it's also just all of that brain stuff that most people don't know about. But then there's just the stuff that you and I I love to talk about in terms of stress, a lot of the things that I was dealing with, with the health issues had to do with stress. And there was this— it's still prevalent in our society, the doing and the pushing and the productivity and the, "What do I achieve?" And my money is all wrapped up in how busy I am in my work. And work can be obviously a coping mechanism too. But so then people are just working and they're on this badge of honor of how busy I am. And I tell people, it's like, we're going to all have stress. Stress, but you got to come down. If you're just operating up here and it's just stress, stress, stress, the body's going to crash, right? So it's even, I just say, it's going to come up and it's going to come down. And people just don't even have, a lot of people, this awareness. It's like, you got to come down. Let's get you down. So doing the techniques that you're talking about, taking those timeouts and being aware. Yeah. Right, exactly.

So one of the techniques and one of the things you offer, so you actually offer, are offering right now. Now every Sunday. Yes. Yeah, let's talk about that first off.

Oh, awesome. Yeah, so it's international too now. So it's every Sunday, 11:00 AM Pacific Standard, so East Coast time.

Which is California time, people, so don't screw that up if you're in the United and mess that up.

11:00 Pacific Standard, yeah, so 3 hours difference from East Coast. And yeah, I've even gone international. I've had people all over Europe. And I was a little bit resistant, I'll be honest, because I've never done it online before, and I had taken a couple classes online, and it is different, right? But right now, it's really, really helpful, and to see everybody's faces on Zoom, and to connect with people, and I can see their bellies breathing, and I can coach them through it. And so it's become more than just the breathwork. It's breathwork, we have a share circle after, it's community, it's connection, it's clarity, it's stress, it's— yeah, it's amazing that I'm able to do just like what you're doing too, one-on-one with clients. With breathwork for people who want to go deeper, because I used to do private sessions in my house or in their house. So I'm doing that, and I'm still doing my coaching also, which has always been online, but it's just— it's— that's a great advantage because then you can do breathwork with coaching. And so I always tell people, especially when I work with men, which is kind of— I would tend to work more with men— it's like, we can talk about the emotions and go there, or the man who doesn't want to talk about emotions, we don't have to. That's the beauty of breathwork. It can just be the the experience.

So, so if they wanted to track you down, they wanted to be part of this really awesome experience, what would— how would they do that?

Yes, you can find me on social media. Do you want me to share my— yeah, okay. So social media on Instagram and on Facebook, it's @jeanniecolwincoaching. I'm sure you'll have some link or something they can check it out. Yeah. And then I have a Meetup group too, if you're in Meetup, uh, you're on Meetup too. So Meetup, it's— it used to be, uh, you know, more nichey for Los Angeles because Meetup was all in person, right? So now it's The Breathwork Tribe, uh, based here in LA. And then it's my website, which is www.jeaniecolwin.com. Yeah, you can get lots of information.

So guys, I think if you're— if you're going to— guys and girls, but guys meaning the general— yeah, people— if you really like— this is so easy, it's such a simple thing to do that like What are we doing? We got all this stuff going on in our life right now that's not going on. We have all these things going on in the world that are not going on. So, everybody's been talking about, "What am I going to try? What am I going to learn? What am I going to do during this isolation or if we're coming out of isolation?" But it's on a Sunday and it's a Sunday morning and give it a shot, try it out. You got some really great resources. You definitely, right, you're one of the people who knows their stuff, who's been through their own journey. So, those of you out there who are thinking about, "What's this breathwork thing? How can I tap into it? How can I become more centered, more grounded?" into some level of healing, this is really an amazing resource to do so. And I really want to thank you again for spending time with us today.

Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life Podcast. If you are ready to minimize your personal and professional struggles and maximize your potential, we would love it if you subscribed so you don't miss an episode. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Jason Wasser LMFT 🎗️.