Breath Your Way to Calm & Clarity with Dr Trisha Smith & Jim Kwik
In this Kwik Brain episode, host Jim Kwik welcomes Dr. Tricia Smith, founder of Expand Your Human and an early certified Wim Hof Method instructor, to discuss how breathwork and cold exposure can reset the nervous system and improve mental clarity. Dr. Smith emphasizes the importance of awareness—creating a space between stimulus and response—and introduces the mantra “trust your exhale” as a simple way to gain control over physiological states. She explains the science behind breathing, including how exhalation slows heart rate, the benefits of a longer exhale (often a 2.5:1 ratio), the double‑inhale technique discovered by Andrew Huberman, and the advantages of nasal inhalation versus mouth breathing. Practical guided exercises are led, covering a basic inhale‑exhale pattern, a 2‑second‑in/5‑second‑out rhythm, and a short box‑breathing sequence. The conversation then shifts to cold therapy, where Dr. Smith outlines why deliberate cold exposure is a “nervous system workout,” triggering healthy adrenaline spikes and fostering resilience. She recommends starting with cold showers (ending a warm shower with a brief cold blast), ice‑bucket immersions for 20‑30 seconds, and short, supervised ice baths (max two minutes). Outdoor exposure and reducing layers in winter are also suggested. The episode concludes with a community “cold‑shower challenge” – three mindful breaths in the cold – and invites listeners to follow Dr. Smith on Instagram and her Expand Your Human website, while Jim encourages sharing, subscribing, and contacting him directly for deeper learning.
Chapters
She's the founder of Expand Your Human, and she was one of the first individuals that was certified to be an instructor for Wim Hof here in the United States. And many of you listened to my interview with Wim Hof last week on Instagram, and we're going to play a different interview later today. He's in a different time zone, but I wanted to bring, uh, Dr. Trish here because she really communicates the science. of breath, the science of cold therapy, and really breaks it down into practical things you could do. So thanks for joining us and taking time out of your busy schedule.
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here with all of you.
Yeah, we are talking about resetting our brains, our nervous system. You work with some really high-level clients. I don't know if I can mention those people's names, but we have a lot of mutual friends, people that we work with. Where do you start?
So breath is one of them, which I'll talk about first. Cold is a great one, movement, and we can do some stuff with vision as well that I've learned from Dr. Andrew Huberman, who's an amazing neuroscientist. Yes.
Yeah, let's especially spend a good amount of time on the first 2.
Yeah.
I know We had such great feedback from the interview we did with Wim and how you trained with the Iceman. Let's spend a good amount of time on cold and breath. When people are a little bit nervous or they're frightened, those 2 modalities really work for me. Then I've had a lot of good experience with you.
Yeah. With breathing, Where to start with anything is our awareness. And you always talk about superpowers. I think that's one of our greatest superpowers is awareness, right? We have to know where we are to know where we want to go and how to get there first. And becoming aware of your breath is probably the simplest thing we could do that just starts bringing you into your body. Resetting, you know, is a lot about us being able to control the controllables. There's a lot of stuff we can't control, but we're learning more and more of what we in fact have. I, I, we, we kind of stay away from the word control when we're talking about physiology, but we have a major influence on how our body responds to things, how we can shift our energies, our states. And really, that's where the science is going. That's where Wim is going. I mean, Wim has shown us that there are things possible that we can do, you know, climbing cold mountains in our shorts, that we never believed were possible before. And we're learning a whole lot of science behind that. So becoming aware and also realizing we can influence a lot of our physiology. We are not just at the mercy of this meat suit, if you want to call it, if, you know, at the mercy of how our body's reacting. And I— the quote always sticks in my head and I always say it to myself over and over, but Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.
Hmm.
So Viktor Frankl was, was quoted as saying this before. He was a Holocaust survivor and then went into psychology. And so between stimulus and response, breath is the easiest way to create that space and allow us to bring it more under our influence of what's happening in the outside world and how we are going to respond to it rather than react to it. So the simplest thing is becoming aware. And the one, the one line I always use is trust your exhale.
Trust your exhale?
Trust your exhale. So with, with the breath, we know that relaxation is connected more with the exhale. Even, you know, the wearables we have, like an iWatch, the Or a ring that can actually tell your respiratory rate. Right. Well, how can it tell your respiratory rate? It's not around your lungs or your ribs to actually see you breathing. But what's actually happening when you're breathing— when you breathe in, your heartbeat speeds up a little bit, and when you breathe out, your heartbeat slows down. So if you trust your exhale and focus more on your exhale and lengthen it out, that can steer you into more of a relaxed, calm state.
How do you do it in a certain ratio or?
So the, some research says 2.5 times. So your exhale should be 2.5 times that of your inhale. But what also is relaxing is just you gaining control of your breath, whether it's 2 in, you know, 5 out, whatever it is, even just you counting allows for relaxation in your nervous system. So a long exhale, and then actually at Huberman's lab in Stanford, they discovered a new one, which is a double inhale. Followed by a long, relaxed exhale. So it's like this.
Can we do that with everybody?
Yes.
You could demonstrate first, please.
So it's a double inhale.
Yeah, I feel it.
Can you guys feel it?
Yeah, maybe we can walk everybody through this. Yeah.
Somebody said, somebody inhale peace, exhale stress.
Do you have like mantras like that yourself?
Sometimes I think about a wave coming in from the shore on the exhale and crashing on the exhale. Sometimes I think about that or yes, bringing in relaxation, letting go of stress.
And then, so exhale negativity, exhale.
Yeah, I think people are kind of like bunny breaths for yoga and kids.
Exhale the bad vibes. Maybe we could walk people through just a quick exercise right now where we do that with everybody and everyone can do this with us. I always talk about knowledge by itself is not power. It becomes power when we apply it. So maybe we could do a few so people can feel that reset right now.
Yeah, let's do a little breath journey. So I'll just call out—
Everyone do this with Trish, Jenna, and I, right?
Yes.
How many people are willing to do this? All right.
Yeah.
All right, we're going to keep it real simple. Most of the inhales I actually want you doing through the nose, and exhalings are all going to be relaxed through the mouth. And we'll just go through a couple different protocols. Why?
Why? Our people are really brain geeks, like, and I know you are too. Why is it, why is it that you breathe through the nose?
Well, for one, that was what breathing was given to, you know, the nose was given to us to breathe. And the mouth was given to us more to talk, to eat, and to breathe in a more stressful way. When you're doing workouts, right? But we should be breathing in through our nose because it's very protective. We have little hairs in there that are going to filter bacteria and particles. It's also a much tighter space, right? So if you breathe in through your mouth right now.
Mm-hmm.
And if you breathe in through your nose now, you can feel that resistance, right? So it has to go around. It actually spins around these little things called turbinates, and it warms the air, conditions the air to make it nice for the lungs. That resistance also allows a much better use of our breathing muscle, the diaphragm, and a greater lung capacity. So there's many reasons to be breathing in through our, through our nose. Breathing out through the mouth just usually allows people to relax a little more.
Also, when I breathe as a speaker and I have like a deviated septum, so it's kind of hard to get some air sometimes through my nose. And that is just never a good time to be able to take care of because I'm always doing these podcasts and these videos and everything.
When I find I breathe in my mouth, it dries out my mouth.
Also as well.
Yeah. It dries out your mouth. You're using more energy and you're more active on that nervous system scale.
Do you use like sometimes mouth strips? I know we're going to get into this, but I just, I'm just now personally curious because do you use those mouth strips to encourage nose breathing?
Yes, I do. And I like to keep them simple. You know, don't put this big old thing of duct tape or masking tape over your mouth. You can even just put a little strip across. Rock tape is also, also a good tape because it was made to, you know, stick on our skin.
Mm-hmm.
But you can just put a little bit over. People are doing this more and more, especially when they're sleeping because of sleep apnea. And usually that has a lot to do with us mouth breathing overnight, which tends to wake us up, snore. So if we can train ourselves, especially overnight when our sleep— when we're sleeping, to go back to our nose breathing, that can help. Some athletes do it. Training just nose breathing while you're, you know, running, walking is also a good option to start training that nose breathing.
Amazing. Well, thank you. Also, when people are asking questions about replays, things that we have covered, please everyone jump in and support each other. Yeah. So, let's go through this quick exercise.
Yeah. So, let's just, you can just get comfy. You know, you can close your eyes or not close your eyes. Just first bring your awareness to your breath. Just feeling where your natural breath starts. If you're inhaling through your nose or your mouth, how long are your inhales and exhales?
And exhales.
Now I'm just going to call out some times and how we're going to inhale and exhale. Again, inhaling through the nose, exhaling through the mouth. We're going to go in through the nose for 2 And out through the mouth for 5. So we'll start on this next breath, just a normal breath in, normal breath out.
Breathing in through the nose, 1, 2, and out through the mouth, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Let's go in for 3, 2, 1.
Out for 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. In for 3, 2, 1. Exhale, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Now we're going to do a quick box breathing. It's very simple. We're just going to inhale, hold, exhale, hold. And then we'll restart. So we're just going to do 1 or 2 rounds. We'll do 4 seconds on each part. Just listen to my voice. We'll start after this inhale and exhale.
Inhaling for 4, 3, 2, 1, hold.
Hold.
3, 2, 1.
Exhale.
3, 2, 1. Hold. 3, 2, 1.
One more round. Inhale.
3, 2, 1. Hold. 3, 2, 1.
Exhale.
3, 2, 1.
And last hold.
3, 2, 1.
And just back to your normal breathing.
Now I'm curious in the chats, both in Facebook, on Zoom, wherever you're consuming this right now, how's that feel?
Very relaxing. Nice. I want to take a nap.
Very relaxing.
Call me.
And it's amazing because it just, you know, most Time breathing is, it's automatic, right? And yet we have conscious control over it. And it's something we could do that takes how long? That was even like, like 60 seconds. And it's a wonderful way to reset. And when we're in that place, we're less likely to jump. Even when you're talking about stimulus response and in that space, you have choice. We're less likely to jump down someone's throat, right? Or make a decision that's gonna affect us Our finances are some of the topics I want to talk about, or maybe even eat that food that we're just reflexively going to, you know, that donut or whatever we have, you know, in that area.
Yeah.
No, thank you so much. I know some people are curious about cold, and I know you have to jump off and I really appreciate your time, but just for somebody brand new to cold therapy, Yeah. You could explain in 30 seconds how and why it works and where should they start? Should it be a cold shower, a 3-minute ice bath, cryotherapy?
I mean, what— where is it?
Right. So benefits really quick, like why the heck would we go in the freezing cold water, right? That just seems silly, but it's just very primal. You know, we have a system in our body that was made to adapt us to cold and hot. So it's very healthy. It's actually not very healthy to remain at room temperature all the time. That would be like remaining the same in your relationships or your business, right? To grow, we have to get outside of our comfort zone and, and challenge our, our systems, our bodily physiology. So we get a nice nervous system workout also, right? Because that's the great thing about the cold. It's Always going to be cold, even if you train for years, right, Jim? It's never going to be warm when you get in, which is a beautiful thing. So you're going to have that nice, that nice reaction, right? Adrenaline. Adrenaline is actually healthy if we get it in small doses and then we can recover.
Right.
Adrenaline is healthy. People pay money to jump out of airplanes and you can just turn your shower a little cold. So we want to get some adrenaline but be able to come down. So we have all these physiological benefits, but also for our character. I know Jim talks a lot about doing hard things, right? Life becomes much easier. The same thing with the cold. You can use it for a mirror for your life. How do I show up in stressful situations, in fearful situations? And using it to train Stress, turning stress and making it calm. So we use the same exhale, long exhale, when we're in the cold. So some easy places to start are always a cold shower. Take your regular warm shower first, then turn it a little colder at the end. Makes a— and that's a good variable to train, is to go right into the cold shower. But start out easy, right? Adapt. Turn it cold at the end. Use your breaths. Don't even think about how long you have to stay in. I want you to just do 3 breaths where each exhale you're going to lengthen it out more and more. Okay, just 3 breaths of cold. So that's a real easy one. Also, just putting your hands and feet in cold ice buckets are great. Maybe 20, 30 seconds, take it out and do a couple of rounds. That's an easy practical thing. Now ice baths are great, right? But they're not very practical because you need a lot of ice in order to make it cold, and ice is very expensive. But if you do do an ice bath, I highly encourage you to do it with a buddy. Um, Do it with a coach would even be better, but 2 minutes max. All right, if you're doing a full cold water immersion, you're only going to do it for 2 minutes max. That's going to be a good, good point where you're not going to get too cold. Your core temperature is not going to drop too cold.
Right.
And since we're coming into wintertime, just go outside. You have a whole Well, I don't because I live in San Diego, but most of us have a nice, you know, cold winter. Just go out in less layers.
Right.
It's a, it's a great tool to use that's there and free and just try not to— just use less layers as you go out. So those are some, some simple things. Just play around with it and make it practical in your life.
Yeah. So doing cold helps you develop grit. You're doing difficult things so that you could bring calm into uncomfortable situations. Like sometimes you need to perform in a meeting or take a test or do something like that. You bring calm into a chaotic storm in relationships or something to that effect. Um, also, does it help with inflammation?
Yes, some of the research does show that.
Okay.
What we're trying— what they're trying to nail down, of course, is what temperature and how long. I mean, that's a hard one to solve, you know, with, with research, and everybody's different. But we know from different pieces of research what's happening when we're in the cold.
Amazing. Dr. Ish, I, I— we could talk to you for, for hours. We have to prepare for our next guest. I want to thank you for taking time to, to share with with our Kwik Brain community. How can people find out more about you? I would encourage— actually, you know what I would encourage everyone to do is take a screenshot of this right now and, uh, and tag us both there. Uh, make sure you tag @kwiklearning because Kwik Learning, @kwiklearning, will actually repost, and we'll actually give away, uh, something also as well. Maybe, uh, Wim's new book. Uh, we'll send, we'll send one person a copy for that. And share if you've ever done What do you want to ask them? Should they like cold shower challenge or—
Yeah, let's do it. Cold shower challenge.
How long do they do it for?
Um, 3 breaths.
3 breaths. So it's not even a certain amount of seconds. It's like your breaths and long exhales.
Yep.
Share if you're up for that, that cold shower challenge. Tag us both. And then, um, how can people find out about you? Uh, social media, website?
Yeah, social media, mostly Instagram. I've actually been off of there for the last couple months, but I need to get back on. So just Dr. Tricia Smith is my Instagram. Also, my website's the same, or Expand Your Human.
Amazing. Dr. Trish, thank you so much for joining us.
I appreciate you. Thank you so much.
Take care. Hi, Kwik Brain.
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