👨‍🏫 Guest Masterclass: Intro to Optimal Breathing Habits w/ JJ Ruescas

A small break on the room.

Oh yeah, we were, we were in the, we were in our.

Yes.

Thanks for joining. Hi Norma.

Hi.

It's nice to be here.

Nice. Thank you for joining. Hi Ocean. Good to see you.

Hello.

Nice to see you. Nice. Okay, let's start. We have, we have just a few more minutes. So my name is JJ Rizkas. I a human optimization strategist and I'm a, I'm an avid student of breathing and nervous system clearly like all of us. So thank you so much for, for having the, the time for joining here and hopefully this is going to complement all the things that we're learning. Thanks to, thanks to the NS team. And please, this is, this is going to be more a conversation then move some questions at the end and but overall, please feel free to, to, to just chat and drop some comments and questions. Does that, does that sound good? Thumbs up. Anyone there?

Okay, all good there. Cool.

Just let me know so that we start. Some of you already told me where were you located? Just let me know in the chat. Where are you guys located right now?

Israel or Nice.

London.

Ocean, Normal, California, uk.

Max, New York. Ah, Max. You're in New York.

Cool.

Nice. Let's start in guys. Thanks for joining. Like I mentioned, I'm in Austin, Texas. So if anyone comes in, I was thinking we should, we should do. We should have N.S. london, N.S. texas and it's new York and have a gathering there. Let's see share my screen. Here it is. Okay, can anyone see in my screen? You guys see my screen? Nice. So today what we're going to do is, is summary of what I call optimal breathing habits. And the work of Johnny inspired me many, many years ago while I was also working on in parallel in my, in my own same, same journey. And at that time I was having this, this workshop called called Optimal Breathing Habits. And today what I decided to do is just a summary of all of this. And I have a question from Scott. Should we be in a physical spot that's conducive to quiet and breathe? No, that's okay. We're gonna, we're gonna have more an interaction, Scott. And it's, it's okay wherever you guys are. So just to start to sync all of us at the same pace, let's all take a deep, deep inhale. Hold at the top. Create some pressure with your abs. Hold it, hold it, hold it. Three, two, one, release. Two more second. Let's take a deep inhale. Hold at the top. Pack in a little bit more of air. Zipping hold it. Create some pressure with your abs. Hold it there for three, two, one, release.

Last one.

Deeper, deeper, deeper. Inhale. Packing a little bit more of air. Hold it there. Create even more pressure than the first two. Hold it there for three, two, one, release. Thanks guys. And yeah, as a human optimization strategist I go through different avenues. The psychological, the physiological and the emotional. And because my own path has led me to breathing, because it's the thing that connects our nervous system or influences our nervous system pressure on the apps. Does that mean flex apps? Yeah, basically like when you go to the restroom, something like that.

That's called Valsalva maneuver by the way.

Yeah.

So you create internal pressure and that pulls pushes the air to your head. Okay. So optimal breathing habits. How to hack our nervous system. And I mean hacking a positive way. So let's go for this today where we're going to talk about our optimal breathing. What does, what does it mean? What does habits, habit fundamentals mean? And also habit design. And okay, I'm going to explain this technique or I'm going to explain this technique at the end. The one that we just did at the end. At the end when we have the rest of the protocols. So what does optimal breathing mean? Something that I, while I was preparing for this presentation I realized is that tomorrow there is a fantastic presentation with David Jacko Jackson and he's one of the experts that is part of NS Mastery. So I said oh this is super cool because instead of re repeating what he's going to say, I'm going to complement what with the functional breathing techniques that he's going to teach us all. And so you can watch his, his episodes or his, his interview, his, his presentation tomorrow and that's going to match exactly what we are doing here. It's going to complement. So what does optimal breathing mean? Let's talk first about what are suboptimal breathing characteristics. So you can see here on the, on the right, I have a diagram here that is first. And that looks like it's chest breathing, right? That's called vertical or chest breathing. So vertical is even when we are breathing and our, our lungs, sorry our shoulders are going upwards and our chest is puffing up instead of our belly. That is vertical or chest breathing. Also over breathing. It is inhaling or exhaling more times than when we are supposed to. And we're going to talk about that. What is that we are supposed to in a second. And another pattern is inappropriate. Another characteristic is inappropriate pattern. What do I mean by this? It is instead of Doing instead of only doing chest, sometimes we do chest, belly goes back to chest. It's, it's such a, such a weird pattern. So those kind of patterns are. It's like our, our body has learned different and not optimal ways of breathing since we. Because when we are born, we are born with by default optimal breathing habits in everything, right? But those three things, between many of them, I should say between many are the ones that are clearly clear. A marker of suboptimal breathing characteristics. Like I mentioned, over breathing, breathing too many times, or hyperventilation, vertical chesting, vertical or chest breathing and an appropriate pattern. Now what does it mean the opposite? Well, optimal breathing at rest, at rest means horizontal breathing. And you can see here is the belly, which, which expands first, right? Then it's slow and hardly noticeable. So basically it's like even we cannot even hear sometimes our, our breathing. And also it is six breath, breath cycles per minute. In a minute we're going to talk about red cycles. So think about this, guys. The World Health Organization considers that normal respiratory rate, meaning how many times we breathe per minute is around 15 to 20. That's what the World Health Organization considers normal. But there is a little bit of a problem. Anything that is 12 or above is already physiological marker of stress already. Anything that is 12 or above. So have we, the question is, have we normalized the stress maybe, right? The optimal one, based on research from the last three decades or so, it is six breath cycles per minute. And if you think about it, it would be like five minutes in. Sorry, five seconds inhale, five seconds exhale. You have 10 seconds there, six of those ones. Now how can we do this? Right? How can we go back to revert to that one? We're going to talk about that one in the pattern, in the bread cycle pattern. Also, another characteristic of optimal breathing is at rest. At rest is using our nose. Now, I'm not saying that we should not use our mouth. It depends on the demands of our body at a certain, certain time, right? If we are exerting, if we are exerting too much physical effort while we are working out, let's say if yes, we need to inhale more volume and exhale more volume of air. Therefore, the mouth works better. But mostly we should be using our nose because of all the benefits of filtering, creating nitric oxide that we have in the back of our cavity, which increases our, or dilates our vessels for more, more blood, et cetera. Are you guys following me so far?

Okay, cool.

I'm simplifying many things because I know that jocko. He's going to give us a great lecture tomorrow. So I don't want to go into too many details here. Let's keep moving. Let's talk about the breathing cycle. Br. It has clearly four corners. The inhalation or the inhale, then the retention, exhale, and also retention. Now, when we are normally breathing, we. Those two retentions or holds are minimal, are minimal. They are even, not even noticeable. And obviously it all starts with the inhalation or that's how we're going to start counting.

Okay.

And there is also something called a tempo. A tempo, like in music, is a pace that it takes to complete an entire cycle. So in this case, for example, I can say that there is. We can do a tempo. Or like maybe right now we are. We have a tempo of 4, 0 or 0, meaning 4 seconds inhale, 0 retention, 4 seconds exhale, 0, 0 retention. That is our normal, very likely our normal breathing. 4, 0, 4, 0.

Right.

Theoretically, we can also become more conscious about that and practice those techniques. Another one would be, for example, 4, 4, 8, 4, meaning 4 inhale, 4 seconds inhale for retention, 8 exhale and 4 retention. In the, for example, XPT Life, which is another certification for breath work. And from so many that exist out there, they call it cadence. I like that name. This, this one is called cadence, right? And you see box breathings, 4, 4, 4. And then you play with that. Not only with the times of four, we're going to increase or reduce depending on our lung capacity, on our resistance or our tolerance towards carbon dioxide. And for every person is going to be different. So what, what we're going to do right now is let's start playing with those protocols. So I'm going to guide us through, through three different protocols. It's going to take a couple of minutes. We're going to start with using only our nose, we're going to do 4040, meaning 4 seconds inhale, 0 retention, 4 seconds exhale, 0 retention. And then we're going to move into a box breathing. And then we're going to push ourselves a little bit more using a cadence, but a 555 rate. And you can play with those proportions even at some point. Let's say 6, 6, 12, 6 or you can even, even digress, right? Like 3, 3. It would be 3, 3, 6, 3. So it depends on how your body works. So so far, let's start. Let's start with this. Quick practice, guys. Let's take, let's sit straight. And we're going to start with 4,040/seconds. Inhale and immediately 4 seconds exit and then I'm going to cue you to the, to the other two. Let's start in three, two, one.

Inhale for one, two, three, four. Exhale, two, three, four.

Inhale.

Two, three, Four. Exhale, two, Three, Four.

One more time.

Inhale, two, Three, four. Exhale, Two, Three, Four.

We move exactly to box breathing.

Inhale, two, 3, Four. Hold, two, three, four. EXHALE, two, three, four and hold two, three, four. InHALE, two, three, Four. Hold two, three, four. ExHALE, two, Three, Four and hold two, three, Four.

One more time.

INHALE, two, Three, four. Hold two, three, Four. EXHALE, Two, Three, Four. Hold two, Three, Four.

We're gonna move into five, five, ten, five. Let's start.

INHALE, two, 3, four, five. OLD 2, 3, 4, 5.

EXHALE slowly, slowly, slowly.

9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And hold two, three, four, five.

One more time.

INHALe, two, three, four, five dot hold two, three, four, five.

EXHALE slowly, slowly, Slowly.

7, 6, 5, 4th, 3, 2, 1. And hold two, three, four, Five.

Go back to normal breathing. Let's come back together. And this is how we play with protocols. Many people call them techniques, we're going to call them just protocols during this presentation. So protocols like I mentioned, are different. And answering or's question, the one that we were doing right now is inhale to the top and in this case full retention. Right. And that pressure that we were also creating, internal pressure was, was forcing our. Or was creating some stress, some sympathetic stress. But later by allowing it to relax, that is when we go deeper into relaxation. Does that answer your question or so far or let me know and let me know if anyone else has any questions by the way. Guys, Max, you have a question, go for it.

Yeah, and I don't know if this is a somatic versus an emotional component, probably both. But I recognize with myself that for the longer exhales, like that 10 second exhale, it can feel like that. It can feel like I'm not even capable of exhaling for 10 seconds. Almost like it stops like halfway. Like I have no more breath to exhale.

Got is it is maybe two, two situations or maybe you are exhaling too fast or really your lung capacity is not yet or is. Is decreased. Now we can increase our lung capacity. And also it's a mental game. I remember my mom, we used to.

You're gonna have hear a story by the way about that.

Every time that we were practicing with her breath work and I asked her to, to. To to exhale slowly.

First thing that she did is like that, like, no, no, no, slow down.

Slow down so many times. What I would suggest in this case also, Max, think about even using like, if you would be exhaling through a straw. So that forces you to do. To do that, exhale. And by the way, there is a device called commerce. There were the Japanese monks, the Komuso monks, that they used to practice meditation with long flutes, which enable them to inhale through there and exhale through there, forcing them to restrict the intake and outtake of those ones. Now, obviously, there are many devices. I have a Komuso thing that I don't have right now. It's in my bedroom right now, but I use it. It's just a straw. If you can do that, you're going to start increasing your lung capacity. And also it's going to allow your mind to relax. Like, oh, okay, I think I can handle it better. Does that help? Yeah.

And I'm thinking it might even have something to do with not inhaling correctly. So it's almost like maybe I don't have as much air to exhale.

Yeah, also, that is. That is very, very true. If you are partially inhaling here, not fully to the diaphragm, clearly you have lung capacity reduced. But like for example, Luis mentions in the beginning, inhale, exhaling slowly is hard, but over time, your diaphragm starts. Starts improving and therefore your lung capacity starts improving. And that's something that also tomorrow with Jaco, we will all see. So I can, I can go back to this or even. I would encourage you to check that one. And if you have more questions, just let me know when we can compliment on that one. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Cool. Now let's keep going into habits.

That is the key part of this, of this, of this presentation.

So let's talk about habits, guys. So what is a habit? Right? It's a routine of regularly repeated unconscious behavior. Routine regularly repeated in the unconscious. So in other words, habit is an automation. We have automated something within us to allow us more headspace for other things. And a habit usually comes with an if this thing, then this other thing. If, then in other words, and based on research. Now I know nowadays we know that at least 50% of our daily behavior is driven by, guess what? Unconscious behaviors. Because. Makes sense. Otherwise we would be wasting a lot of cognitive power. And if we keep going deeper into this, and I don't. I'm just bringing these two parts. Many people call it the unconscious and subconscious. I'm Calling it just unconscious in this case, but just for the sake of the presentation.

So.

So let's talk about horsepower or how much capacity we have of processing. Our unconscious is able to process about 40 beats per second of information, meaning from all this stimuli that we have right now in each one of our rooms or wherever we are right now, we are paying attention to this presentation. Even though regardless, there is sound of the fridge over there and maybe people outside on the street and the temperature and all the visual stimuli. We have so many, so many inputs, but we're just focusing on something super small. And that is because our conscious can only hold 40 bits per second. And that is also our focus. What we focus on, that is what defines our reality at some point. Now, the unconscious is interesting because it has 20 million butts bits of processing information. Basically 500,000 times more than the consciousness. Massive the difference. And this is where we store our habits. In other words, we store our habits in the unconscious, which also our nervous system is regulated by the unconscious side of our psyche. Does that, does that make sense, Guys, simplifying obviously all of this. Now what happens is that we need to also be aware of something that is called the high hierarchy of competence. Have anyone heard of the hierarchy of competence? Let me know. Thumbs up. Okay, so this one is a model developed in 1969 by Maxwell. I'm gonna remember right now the name Rolden, if I'm not wrong, used to be a strategic and an executive coach. So he used to say there are four levels of competence. First is the unconscious incompetence. When you don't know that what you're doing automatically is wrong or it's, in other words, bring bringing you something undesired, an undesired result. Let's say that, for example, I'm trying to play the guitar, to play the guitar, and someone brings me a guitar. And I, instead of strumming, I start.

That is. That is.

Can you hear me now?

What it help is that when I was tapping, I tapped over my microphone.

Thanks.

So thank you.

Thank you Ritz for the Wiki. That's perfect. So I don't know that I am doing it. So I. I don't know that I'm doing something wrongly in this case. But later someone comes and says, hey, jj. No, no, no, no. You need to start playing the notes like this, these chords. And it's like, oh, I was doing it wrong. Conscious incompetence. That is conscious incompetence. Then the next level is, okay, how do I do it right? And I Now I know that I need to play a C and D, a C and D. But it is so difficult at the beginning that I have to be fully focused. My 40 bits of information need to be fully focused. Basically, I'm, I'm, I'm fully focused on this thing and all my capacity, all my cognitive power is, is there, right? And if you come and talk to me and, and I get distracted and.

Instead of the, the note, the chord that I wanted to play is the wrong one, right? So it's like, oh, damn it. And I have to again rehearse and.

Again rehearse and rehearse again until at some point you, it becomes the unconscious competence. Meaning think about Jimi Hendrix.

Like the guy is like, he was like that played not even watching the guitar and he was in flow completely, right?

So that means that these two levels here, the conscious competence and conscious incompetence, require a lot of cognitive load. Honestly, at the end of a practice your hurt, your head hurts, that's what.

Is going to happen.

But these other two levels, the unconscious levels, are fully automated. In other words, those are habits in our nervous system. Are you guys following me so far? Oh yeah. Okay, cool. Nice. So let's keep moving on. So let's talk about those habits or how the habits. What are the stages of a habit? In this case there are four stages. The signal something that starts the process, right? We see something, we perceive something. Or in the case of our nervous system, we, our neuroception perceives something and there is a craving. That craving is to reach something or to escape something. In other words, pain or pleasure. Do we want to get something that is pleasurable? What we consider pleasurable? Or we want to avoid something that, that we, what we perceive as painful. That's a craving. Very, very internal craving. Then there is the response. This is actually what we call the habit. This is the actual action that takes place. And the third one is the reward. Like oh yeah, we avoided that painful situation or we avoided, or we were able to get this pleasurable situation. So we feel rewarded. That's a lot of dopamine there, by the way. Okay, so those four stages are very, very important because let's talk about now this. There are signal types. So starting with the first one, there are signal types and sometimes we do not realize what's it that starts our habits. So the five signal types are. First time anyone has it. I don't know how we say it in London, but where I come from.

At 5pm you need to, you have.

You have to have Your it's tea time at 5pm Regardless of whatever you're doing.

And he's like, what?

Okay, so.

But that is.

That is embedded in the culture, right? Or type two location. Oh, I like this one very much.

It's so funny.

My mom, she's very Catholic. So whenever she's walking a street in Latin America and she sees a church, first thing she does is this, right?

Like immediately based on the location. It doesn't matter where in the city. She does that automatically. And I'm fascinated. I'm fascinated by that.

Then.

Reed says, 4pm is actually drinking tea time.

Thank you. Nice. Another type of signal is a previous event. For example, we receive a message on our phone and immediately we want to respond. Think about it. Previous event, message, consequent event, we want to reply. Many, many, many times it happens. Another one is an emotional state. When an emotional rises, we habitually want to do something, whether to cope with it, whether to numb it, or hopefully after NS mastery, allow it to pass through us.

Hopefully that's going to become a habit.

And another type, and the fifth type is other people. Once we see where we think of another person, it also triggers something within us. Think about someone that you love. As soon as you see this person, you, you, you, you react habitually, right? Now you guys follow me so far? Are we good? Okay, nice. So now let's talk about sympathetic or dorsal activation habits. Think about this, guys. Some examples of signals. Maybe kids yelling at home, right?

You're like, oh my God, immediately like that.

Or meeting with a. You have meeting with a boss and that stresses you. You have work deadlines. Or public speaking is a signal for your system to go into sympathetic or maybe annoying comments, which is something I'm.

Going to talk about in a second.

What are responses of that? Following these four stages of the habit. Now, physiological ones are, for example, hyperventilation, pupils dilation, our heart rate goes up, start sweating. Probably stuttering is another very common. We become reactive, emotionally reactive, right? So this is basically emotional hijacking. So our emotions just hijacked our system. And. And we react. We knee jerk. We have a knee jerk reaction. This is, guys, what I call the emotional dojo. This is what I call the emotional dodger, where something triggered us, a signal triggered us. And I'm using, by the way, the word signal in. In a different meaning than trigger. I'm using signal so that we can all understand that there is a difference. And that created something that now I'm not able to not. I'm out of ventral vagal. Out of co regulation and therefore I tend to escape, fight or collapse. Are you guys following me there? Okay, cool. Nice. So now I need you in one minute, guys to identify two signals that activate your sympathetic or endorsal habits. And I left here also the five types. Just take one minute, one minute to identify anything that you think that starts this. This habit of getting into dorsal or sympathetic. Take one minute. Now let's go. Nice. Rich says sympathetic traffic and commuting in London.

Cool.

Nice. Thanks, Ritz. As we have 40 more seconds, think about what signals activate your sympathetic or dorsal or says someone is angry at me. Nice. Google calendar full of calls. Yeah. Ox. Ring, ring. Yeah, definitely Luis. Thanks, Max. Tests and calls from my mother. Yeah. David. Walking. Walking up late. Running. Yeah, late for something. Getting a phone call from my mom.

Yeah, okay.

Or Doris. All I forgot to do something important. Nice.

Three, two, one.

Nice. And for the sake of. And also respecting our time, I would love to do you. I wish you usually bring people and we do sharings. We're going to keep moving there and.

At the end we're going to do all the shares.

Okay, sounds good. Let's keep moving on then. Devin says, hearing about peers, professional accomplishments that make me think I'm behind. Yeah, yeah. So true. Thanks, Devin. Nice. So now let's talk about this. How to interrupt these patterns. This pattern interruption part is key, Bliss. Bless you, David.

Let's keep moving on.

So let me explain my story of my personal emotional dodger. For decades, my mom and I had a very rough, very, very rough relationship. We. There was a lot of friction between us. I used to be the one who created that friction. To be honest, I was the one. And I. Every time that she came with a comment or something like that, I used to explode and therefore become hurtful. Yeah. Not. Not proud to say that, but that was. That was the truth. And I did not live with her for decades probably at that point. And she was supposed to come to visit me here to Austin for two week period. So guess what?

I was traded. Right?

Like two weeks.

I can. I can handle this. I can handle this too.

Two weeks.

I can't handle this.

Guess what it was at the beginning of 20. 20.

20.

2020. Yes. And that is when Covet hit. So instead of two weeks, it turned into six months.

You can imagine. You can imagine the emotional dodger that I had there.

And I was exploding with her. Not good. Not good. And I said, damn it, jj. You must do something to change this. It's. She's not gonna change you must change.

Because part of my mind was thinking. She trains to provide annoying comments. That's what my mind was thinking.

Right?

She traced.

No, no, no.

I have to train myself to change.

The way that I respond. And it's.

This is one of my first things that I did. And I found this. This. This diagram. So I put this thing in my restroom.

Literally.

You see this photo from that day? So there was a trigger, which was a comment. And the first thing I used to do is sit.

Fight or flight? If it's.

If it's fight, wrong choice, come back and do it again. And then if it's flight, I used to go.

I jumped out of the conversation into.

The restroom, is like, you don't see me anymore here. Boom, I'm gone.

And I had to do that to take deep breaths. And after that, I asked myself, okay, what can I be grateful for? On freaking Covid. Okay, she's still alive, and she's with me. Okay, cool. Or I am alive and I'm with me. And then think about what's the source or the trigger of that one and.

Then go back, right? So, comment. I'm out of there. I have all of this protocol, and then I come super chill. Guess what?

It worked. It worked. Obviously, I had to do it over and over again. I had to do it over and over again until it became a habit. So why I'm talking about this. It is because. Let's see. Happen.

Here it is.

This is what it happens. And I come from a technical background, by the way. Troubleshooting software happens in something like this. Think about this. I know that none of us probably are technical, but this is my, my, my, my attempt to simplify something. When we're coding something, we define a function. Let's say this is a summation of two numbers that we're going to pass, A and B. So sum is A theoretically plus B. And that returns the result. That's a sum. Very simple for a calculator. What happens right now, what I'm showing you is that if I would try to do a summation between A3 and B2, theoretically, the expected result is 5. That's the desired result. But look at this sign. There's a little bit of a problem there. It's not summation. It's. It's abstraction. So the result is one which is undesired. That is where. Where as a developer or as a coder, someone would put a break or something here at this. This point here to stop the process there to see what's happening. Why are we getting an undesired and unexpected result? So that specific dot there that you see here is what is called a breakpoint or a pattern interrupt. That's called breakpoint in software development. So it pauses the process which allows you to analyze and make different decisions in the flows. Like, oh, now I understand I was using the wrong operation. And enables achieving better results. The results that you really want. Correct. Thanks Ritz. So the point is this. We now know that we have an automated, an automated process inside of us. And you guys may remember this thing from week number one, don't you? We remember that one correct stimulus reactivity. So what about troubleshooting our NS programming? In my case, I had this function here, comment.

The comment comes and then the result was angry and blowing up.

And that's what I was returning. I had to put a breakpoint there and inter. I had to interrupt the pattern. And so breathing is the break point between a stimulus and the reaction. Think about this, guys. With one breath we can change everything literally. So that is when we change from reactivity to response ability, we are able of responding instead of reacting. And that's what I call, that's what Johnny calls freedom. Freedom to choose.

Right?

I know it sounds very philosophical at some point. Are you guys following me here? Because we're gonna get into the, the practical part, okay? Now the problem is not a lack of techniques or protocols or ideas. The problem is that we forget their.

Existence when we needed the most. Forget them. So how to solve this?

This is where my computer allows. There you go. There is where habit design or optimal breathing habit design comes handy. This is when we can. Now, now we can design our own habits. So let's talk about this. We need to reverse the four stages of a habit. Meaning instead of starting with the signal, we're going to define rewards, we're going to define response. The craving. We know the craving. It's maybe having a better outcome, obviously avoiding pain and achieving a calm state. And also we're going to define our signal. When we start defining all of these elements by ourselves, we can construct our own habits. So in this case, let's talk briefly about rewards because a majority of the people forget about them. And this is very Pavlovian. I know this is very Pavlovian, but guess what?

At least this, this guy here works based on rewards. I have learned that one.

Okay, so rewards are the end goal of any habit. And they serve for two purposes. First, they satisfy a need that we have, whether escaping pain or achieving something pleasurable. And they also teach us which actions are worth remembering in the future. That is when we get into unconscious competence. In other words, like in the pyramid. And we act based on anticipation of the reward. That is so interesting. We do not act so much on the habit itself, but on the anticipation of the reward. That is the story of the Pavlovian dog that after ringing the bell, the dog was salivating. Right. Was the expectation. So in other words, no reward equals no habits. And the better that we can craft our rewards, our habits are gonna get quickly or efficiently installed. Like if there would be apps in our. In our. In our unconscious. Right. So the art of crafting, of crafting rewards. These are what I call strategies. They could be intrinsic, meaning my reward is feeling enjoyment, satisfaction, or a sense of accomplishment. Beautiful. I use it all the time, by the way. It could be extrinsic snacks, taking snacks or video games, or going for a walk. Something that hopefully it is not detrimental to your health. Another strategy could be using habit journals at the end of the day, tracking your habits, or what I call the habit snake. Have anyone used post its to track your habits?

It's beautiful. You start with a.

Post it here, the day after another one, the day after another, one of the other.

And you can start in your wall, creating a snake.

The point is never killing the snake. You don't want to kill the snake. For some people, it works so funny.

It's like, yeah, I don't want to kill my snake. So they keep going, right?

Or another one is called a paperclip strategy. Think about two jars, one empty and the other one with paper clips. So every time that you accomplish a habit cycle, Accomplish a habit. In other words, you get one clip from here and put it there. One clip from here and to the. To the. To the other jar. Just that act is. Is giving you some sense of fulfillment. So we can play with this big time. And I encourage you to be as creative to whatever works for you as you can. Okay? So now in one minute, guys, let's define our rewards. Refine two rewards that you want to give yourself after successfully accomplishing a habit. And that's okay. At the beginning, we may not get it, get really what we want, but over time, we learn. So that's the beauty of this process. Take one minute. Starting now. Let's go. What are two rewards? Coffee break. Great. And try to make them as small as possible. Nice. Yeah. Reads extra. 30 minutes in bed. Going for a walk with my dog in the woods. Yeah. Beautiful.

Beautiful.

And over time, you're Gonna keep refining.

Those ones, those rewards.

20 more seconds.

Let's go.

Food. Yeah, for me it works. Food very well. Snacks, nuts. In my case, matcha latte. Yummy minutes in the sun. Yeah. Habit stacking rates definitely. Okay.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Ocean says fruit.

Good one as well.

Nice. It's treating ourselves right. Cool. We have defined the reward. Let's keep moving on. Now let's define the responses. And in this case we're talking about what breathing protocols are we going to we want to install like I mentioned, install as apps in our nervous system. So for example, it could be 4,484 or maybe three boohams.

Well what happens right there?

Three boohams or two physiological sites, you name it. Or the one that we did at the beginning. The inhale, exhale, hold it and then let it go, etc. You, you, you play with that. So let's take one minute, just start dropping there your ideas. Let's go. Now. What's something that you would like to install? A breathing protocol.

Nice.

4484 on physiological sizes. Ocean or is with three boohams max. 4484 on boohams. Nice one that works very well for me is diaphragmatic breathing immediately. That works for me very well. Melissa. Deep inhale, lifting arms and shaking them.

Oh, that's a great idea. Got to copy that one.

Nice. Last five seconds with five five breathing. Nice. Okay.

Cool.

You got it guys. So now we have our response. We have our rewards, we have our responses. And now let me also incorporate something that is the ventral vagal activators. Right. So we can obviously use different techniques that are going to, to supplement what we're doing. Like I mentioned that pragmatic breathing, nasal respiration, long and slow exhales, mindfulness. And in this case counting the tempo of our of our cycle. It's already a type of mindfulness. We can also start using sign like we know flexion 9090 degrees is this position, this posture by the way on the floor. Great for activating ventral vagal relax, relaxing music or fragrances. Fragrances is key, key, key, key to, to enable us to get into relaxed states. Yesterday I was having dinner with a friend and she told me that she discovered one week ago that after pinching some lime she was doing this constantly. And she realized that she her body was doing that because that relaxed her that specific smell. And I said when did you discover that?

She said one week ago. I said go for it. Go all in. Right. Get essential Oils with. With lim to get into that state.

So become someone else in other words. Nice. So now let's define our signal. This is the last step. I need you in one minute to write two signals that you would like to start. So instead of allowing external stimuli to come and trigger you, I would invite you to define two signals. Time, location, previous event, anything that you would like to get. And we're going to go into use cases in a second with this.

Okay, Got it. There.

Now we're almost there.

Go for it.

Two signals. We're off. Nice. Or you got it? Nice. I feel my eyes are shutting down. And we're off.

Great.

Think about two signals. When I feel my heart rate increasing, then I feel my shoulders. Beautiful. Interception. Practice reads. Emotional state of feeling. Scattered brain max. Great. At least attention on right shoulder. Interesting. Only right shoulder.

That's super interesting.

Neck pain. Great. Spike of frustration at my kids. Yeah, those kids.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Thank you guys. Okay, now let me show you some, some examples on this as well. How to assemble it.

All right.

So habit design happens in this way. We have the protocol, we have the signal and also we have the reward. So the craving. I'm taking it aside because we understand what's the craving innately, right? So for example, body signal. In my case, every time that hand goes on the belly, then I remind of horizontal diaphragmatic breathing and the reward is like, oh, it feels great. Right? Could be intrinsic and extrinsic. You name it. You have already your rewards. What about this other one? Oh, this is super cool. I started incorporating this one like 5 years ago, way before I was doing this, this protocol that I told you that I showed you. So reading in bed while I'm in bed, automatically I train my body to go into lower exhales. So in 4, 4, 8. 48 normally. So now every time that I'm reading, automatically my, my. My body goes into. Into that mode. So that is perfect. So anywhere that I'm. That I'm reading, that's going to happen. He doesn't matter. The day, doesn't matter. The location. What about this other one? Arriving at work. So we're playing with location. As soon as someone crosses the office door, take a deep inhale and exhale for seven, let's say or more. I'm just giving an example, but it's a location based. Okay, another one. What about this one? At noon, right? Every day at 1pm, let's say. So protocol 444 plus one relaxing song. And maybe you can pair that up Also with food. Therefore you have a chance to stack in also your technologies there. Nice. What about this other one? This one is around physical exercise. This is my personal protocol, by the way. Before exercising, while I'm driving or while I'm walking to the destination or the gym. It is a 5, 10, 5. This one is called triangle, by the way. 5, 10, 5 or 4, 8, 4. Let's say 484. If you change the radio and the reward is like ah, feeling ready. Right. During exercise when the heartbeat goes up, I take a deep inhale. But slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly exhale. So I'm also wearing the polar, polar chest band which turns into a beautiful game because now you can see my heartbeat going down.

So it's, it's gamifying for oneself, in other words.

Right, that's another one. In this case, this one, Melissa is in for, in for five, hold for 10, exhale for five. And no retention at the exhale. So it goes again into inhale. That's called a triangle. 5, 10. 1 of the size is longer, right? 5, 10, 5. Does that make sense? We're good.

Nice, Nice.

And after exercise, a down, down regulating protocol. For example a 448. I don't know why it says five there. It says 4484. That's what, it's what it's used supposed to be. But you can play with all of these ones. Then at the end of the day when you lay down to sleep, in this case let's say five, physiological size. So you're starting to incorporate all of these ones. Why? Because, for example, once you have all of this installed and a trigger comes, literally a trigger, meaning a signal that gets you into an emotional dojo. Your body's already prepared for that. So we have more chances to catch ourselves that our breathing catches ourselves right there in the emotional dojo than trying to do the opposite. The opposite is also doable, but also this is a preventive strategy. Does that make sense? Nice. So also when driving, hands on the steering wheel and practicing another protocol here, for example. Right.

A longer one.

Nice. So now design your habits. Design two optimal breathing habits. Guys, this is the last part of the, the last practice. Let's take, let's take one minute. Let's do it. We can do it in one minute. Go for it. Remember your reward protocol.

And Watsi.

Nice. Reed says when I'm commuting in London, 4080 breathing before going down in the tube commute.

Great. Commuting.

Yeah, that's a, an event.

Ocean Says you're going to steal your workout. Well, plus the physiological size before bed grade.

Good night. Sleeve.

Nice. Shortness of bread. 5, 4, 4, 8. Four breads max. Nice. Ma eyes are tired. Three boo. Humps and snack. Great. Or last 30 seconds. Or last 10 seconds actually. Nice.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Stuck in traffic. Cycling cyclic sign to inbreds followed by physiological sign. Beautiful. Thanks Rit. Now you got the hang of it. Does that make sense? Does that make sense how we start coding, programming our nervous system? Lastly guys, let's design this based on experiments. I work with leaders of all sorts, helping them to regulate physiology, psychology and emotions. Many times what happens is that when we say, okay, we're going to go through this behavior, we start with great intentions and then we drop and we feel bad.

I've been there many times and I met some of you as well.

That's the reason I take this approach of experiments or experimentation. Meaning let's set a time frame and let's say 10 days of doing this at most, two weeks at most. And at the end of that time frame, let's perform our retrospective.

Huh?

Did it work for me? Was the design of my habit properly or do I need to inspect and adjust it and give it another, another, another try? And also celebrate. Celebration is like, hey, I did it. This, this inner sense of, of emotion that we're creating is not only aspirational, we're really creating a. We're really, really creating a physiological change. Right? So experiments take 10 to 14 days. That's something I will leave up to you. Also, I would like to supplement with something that are tools because if you're.

Like me, you like using tools. So habit journals, whether it's a piece.

Of paper that you check your journals there, whether it's a whiteboard or a wall or what we were talking about, the habit snake, all of those ones. Or you can also use habit tracker apps like Habitica. Habitica is such a funny thing. It is. It's basically a. A character is an RPG game and you start adding habits to this, to this character. You can also use things like stick with double K. Yeah, it's with double K. Very, very interesting thing. We can talk more about that as well. Or Fabulous. It's another. There are so many, but those are three that I recommend. Also if you want to get reminders at random times, I would recommend job reminders. This is fantastic when you want to get into the habit of timing, but based on randomness. And also you can also use location based reminders. Let's say when you're arriving home, that something tells you when you're arriving to a specific location. And you can code those reminders, they're based on location, or even when you're driving, etc. So now we have the tools. Lastly, how to validate your habits. Now, this is tricky. This is very tricky. And it's something that is still in progress for me. First thing is personal retrospective. I personally have weekly retrospectives with myself. It's like, jj, what did it go well this. This week? What could we improve next week? Right? And by doing this, this retrospective exercise, that's when I also understand or appreciate the habits that I try to install. And that is when I will say, like, oh, yeah, I did not realize that I did this thing. And that is a good point for. To say. Yeah, I think it's. It's.

It's in the nervous system, right?

So that is one and the other one is other people's feedback because it's in the unconscious. We're not gonna cut ourselves there. But there are chances. Yes, but it's more likely that other people are going to give us feedback. And that's when we know, like, oh, this is working. And you know that you get into unconscious competence. So that's it, guys. That's a. In a summary, we've talked about optimal breathing and obviously a compliment for whatever that Jacko is going to present tomorrow. We talk about habit fundamentals and habit design. So thank you so much. I really. Oh, yeah. Before we. We leave, something that I wanted to point out is we are what we repeatedly do. Right. Excellence and is not an act, but a habit. And also breathing. So thank you so much, guys. You can find more about me, jjrescas.com or all of those links out there in the. In the Internet. And I'm happy to. I know that we have two more minutes. I'm happy to. To answer any questions and follow up with. And just follow up with anyone that wants to. To hang out. Thank you, David. Really appreciate it.

Yeah.

And feel free if you need to drop, feel free to drop for the ones who would like to stay. All for you here. Bye, guys.

One question for you, jj, which was, you know that do you have to remove yourself from a situation for breathing to work as an interrupt. So. Like you did with your mum, right? So actually, when I'm getting into a conversation with my mother and I feel myself getting upset, I have to go to the restroom, do 10 breathing, you know, and then go back.

Do you.

Have you found. Is it possible to actually do this on the fly in the middle of a challenging conversation.

It is. It is. Initially. That's the reason. The one that I showed you. Ritz was my initial attempt. That was the best that I knew at that time.

But now, man, I see the comment coming and I see how my belly immediately.

Excellent.

That's very, very encouraging.

Yeah, it's beautiful. Thank you for that question. Anyone else? Nice. Thank you, Jay. It was brilliant. And really nice compliment today. If, if this is the next protocol.

NSM framing.

Nice. Thank you, Ocean. Thank you, guys. I really appreciate it. And like I mentioned, can find me. I'm gonna leave here my, my, the website, the podcast, the newsletter, everything there. Thank you so much. And I'll see you tomorrow, actually. See you guys.