How to Reduce Anxiety by Regulating Your Nervous System with Jonny Miller

Johnny Miller, welcome.

Great to be here.

Nick, before we dive in, can you give us the 1 minute bio of who you are and what you do?

That's a really tough question.

No pressure. Yeah.

The abridged version is I used to work in the startup world. Went through a burnout myself. I then became a teacher in London, taught entrepreneurship. I then went through a pretty intensive kind of period of grief where I realized how disconnected I'd been from my body, from my emotions, and became fascinated by the nervous system. Kind of did a deep dive into meditation, breathwork, free diving, psychedelics, and kind of became like a citizen science researcher, I'd say both learning for myself, running workshops, coaching, and then eventually running this course, nervous system mastery. That is now my full time passion. And yeah, just what I give all my time to.

That was, that was very good. I think under a minute.

I think that was less than a minute, wasn't it? Yeah. Great.

All right, so let's, let's dive in. We are going to talk today specifically I want to talk to you about kind of ways to reduce anxiety, which is something I talk a ton about, but from a nervous system perspective, kind of what we'll talk about as a somatic or a bottom up approach. So I'd like to have you just kind of dive in with what's sort of your first strategy or idea when it comes to. Yeah, working through anxiety, but from a nervous system perspective.

Let's see. I mean, I think the first thing that's interesting to comment on is the word anxiety itself. I looked into the etymology of it and it comes from the Latin word ango, which basically literally means to constrict. And the way that I think about anxiety is it is a constricting or a resisting of an underlying emotion which we either do not feel safe to feel, we do not want to feel, or we don't think is appropriate to feel. And so in my experience, the anxiety increases in parallel with the emotional intensity and the resistance to us feeling this underlying emotion.

Just to clarify, you're saying maybe I'm feeling anger, but I'm resistant to that anger or to expressing it or to even to acknowledging it. And then anxiety is manifesting as a result.

Exactly. And often this is happening in the level of the subconscious. So people experience anxiety, but underneath that there is in my opinion, almost always a kind of underlying emotion which is wanting to be seen, appreciated, felt, etc. And there are, I kind of think of like two main strategies to dealing with anxiety. Well, maybe three, I would say. And we can kind of go deeper into each of these. I would say interoception, self regulation and emotional fluidity. Those are like three, three different skills to cultivate. Starting with interoception, when we can notice the early like somatic markers as they're called. So basically like what are the, what are the, the canaries of anxiety? Like so maybe it's you know, like a little bit of like a tightening in the chest or maybe it's, maybe it's like a dryness in the throat. Everyone has different markers. And this, there was a study that I saw that showed there are very measurable changes that happen in people's body up to an hour or even longer before a panic attack kind of set sets in. And so a lot of people experience a panic attack. It feels like a tsunami that comes out of nowhere. But if you have like more attuned interoceptive awareness then you can actually track the early, the early sensations which are like the warning signs that something's going to arise.

By interoception you mean feeling sensations in your body like being aware of and.

Feeling your body, being aware of your internal landscape. Everything, everything that's going on internally. So that's that' piece. And then I, I have something that I call a self regulation paradox, which is a little bit of a mouthful, but one, I mean one kind of strategy when something like this arises, one bottom up strategy. And we kind of talked about this before hitting record that there's kind of like top down, bottom up and also outside in approaches. And a lot of what you focus on, I know is the more kind of top down mindset cognitive based approaches.

Yes.

And I tend to focus more on the nervous system based interventions which typically more bottom up. You can obviously combine the two. And you can also change your environment, change the people you're around, even removing yourself from the stressor. That's also an option.

Is that what you were talking about with outside in like kind of your environment?

Yeah, outside in exactly. Like we are constantly attuning to the people, to the environment, to the sensory stimuli that are coming our way.

Yes.

And so consciously designing or changing that is another strategy too. Yeah, so. So the self regulation approach, this is using, using our physiology, using bottom up practices to literally change our state. And there's this interesting stat that I read that we have four times more efferent neurons, which is like an efferent neurons and neurons going from our body to our brain versus afferent neurons which are those going from our brain to our body. And I view this as there's almost like a super highway of data going up and like a single lane of traffic going down. And I kind of, I mean it's not completely kind of scientific, but I view there's just being more information and more leverage changing our body than using things like mindfulness, which obviously does work, but I think it just takes more time. Whereas things like breath work can be really efficient at just changing your state in real time and that.

So something like breathwork would be an example of this kind of bottom up nervous system modulation approach.

Totally. So the breath is a great example of something which happens automatically and it can also be consciously controlled. There can also be also changes in the way that your visual system works. So kind of softening the gaze, moving the eyes from left to right, which Huberman calls optic flow, and kind of like relaxing the vision, also has this parasympathetic effect. But I find the breath is the most accessible and also kind of the most effective as well.

So what does that look like when you talk about breath work? This is becoming a more common term. I think people are starting to hear it more, but not exactly know what it is. So could you just kind of illustrate like what, what does breath work look like? Like it sounds like a fancy, pretty fancy term, but what does it actually look like in practice?

Yeah, totally. So there's many different forms of breath work, maybe even hundred at this point. There are different ways that you can breathe which directly influence the state of your nervous system. So to kind of reduce it down to really simple terms, if your inhale is more exaggerated or longer, more intense than your exhale, it will have a upregulating effect. So something like Wim Hof breathing, for example, where you're really like, like almost hyperventilating, that very quickly amps up the sympathetic branch of your nervous system, creates arousal in the system and is activating. On the flip side, if your exhale is longer, or at least let's say twice as long as the inhale and more pronounced, that will have a relaxing effect on the nervous system. It will activate the parasympathetic branch and calm your system in real time. And the way this works is our insula in our brains is kind of spying on the way that we're breathing. And when it tracks these changes, it sends signals to the nervous system. And then the HPA axis creates changes in our blood chemistry, which sends different signals across the brain barrier and it creates this kind of reinforcing loop. So there are many different breathwork practices, but typically what they come back to is this difference between is the inhale or the exhale emphasized.

Gotcha. So you could do, you might do a series of like, if some people know about like diaphragmatic breathing. Right. That for instance, is, is to my understanding, focused on kind of using your full sort of diaphragm and kind of lung capacity rather than this sort of shallow breathing that we typically do. Yeah. Would you consider that if someone just starts doing, practicing kind of diaphragmatic breathing, for instance, like, is that a form of breath work?

Yeah, I mean like I use the term breath work to speak to anything where you are consciously shifting your breath to have a desired effect. And so with diaphragmatic breathing, a, there's a kind of functional breathing component where if you're able to breathe down into your diaphragm and kind of into, into your rib cages and into the back of your lungs, it gives you more, more energy and more oxygenation all through the day, if that can be your default breathing pattern. There are also, I believe, parasympathetic kind of nerves down in the lower part of art for my kind of belly down. And so if the breath is, is reaching there, that also stimulates the parasympathetic system, which again amplifies the relaxation effect versus we have more sympathetic neurons up in our chest, up up in this area. So breathing into this area is kind of more activating and breathing into our. If you can breathe all the way down into your kind of pelvic floor, that's, that's ideal or, or a really effective practice. I, I sometimes do this if, if someone has anxiety during breath work, is lying on your front and breathing into a hard surface, just breathing into your belly and then sighing on exhale. So like with your belly kind of pressing against the floor. Or you could even put like a, sometimes I use like a belly stone where you put the stone on the belly, you breathe into it and then the weight of the stone pushes the air out. And that is a, that is a very effective mechanism of calming very, very quickly.

And do you think about breath work primarily in terms of, okay, I'm feeling, I'm feeling anxious, I'm feeling too aroused or whatever, so I'm going to stop, I'm going to do some breathing for, I don't know, three minutes, 10 minutes, whatever, to change my state now? Or do you think of it more as a. This is kind of an exercise that I'm going to do daily such that my, eventually my baseline improves in whatever direction I sort of want it to improve or maybe both.

Totally. Yeah, it's. It's absolutely both. I recommend people start with the daily practice because if you don't, if you haven't, you know, done this at least five or ten times, you're very unlikely to remember to do it when your system is stressed. Right. Because it's, it's really hard to. I think that's the biggest challenge for people is actually remembering to do practices like this. And so if you already have a daily morning practice, you're much more likely to think to do breath work in the moments where it really matters. There's also, there are also some different categories. I mean, I don't, don't want to go too deep into the weeds here, but say in the functional breathing world, there is this idea of increasing your carbon dioxide tolerance, your CO2 tolerance, and the, the higher your CO2 tolerance, the higher your resilience to anxiety. There's a kind of very clear correlation between, between the two. So some people will do daily morning practices where they will practice exhale retentions, and that's basically when you're. When your breath is out, CO2 in the bloodstream increases, and that creates a kind of low level of anxiety. Like you can kind of try it now holding your breath out for 15 seconds and you will start to feel this, like, air hunger, which feels really uncomfortable. And the more that you can train yourself to increase your capacity to be with that, the more that when your body experiences similar feelings, you'll be able to kind of be with that. There's also a bunch of health benefits to the CO2 as well.

Yeah, let me, I want to dive in there because I think this is really fascinating and the way you framed it especially is. Is interesting saying that your resilience to anxiety would improve as a result of improving your, your CO2 tolerance. Let me throw my interpretation of why that might be, and then you come back and see what you think about it. I want to talk about this, this idea of, like, when we say anxiety, what exactly do we mean? Because anxiety can involve, you know, like physical sensations, behaviors, emotions, you know, a lot. There's a lot of moving pieces there. But this idea that you're. If you become more resilient and tolerant of this, of breath, hunger, you might. I could imagine someone being able to experience a lot of the somatic side of anxiety, tension, you know, that nervous system, sympathetic nervous system activation, without immediately jumping to the cognitive and emotional side of anxiety, which is what I see so often in acute anxiety and panic in particular is that it almost always starts with some sort of catastrophizing of what's going on in the body. They notice that something is off or weird or strange in their body and they start worrying about it, which then leads to this overwhelming amount of emotional, like kind of the emotional side of anxiety. So I would imagine that if you get more, if that CO2 tolerance kind of increases, you would be less likely to make that leap as quickly. What do you think about that?

Yeah, super. Interesting. So firstly, I think a good definition of panic that I have is a negative feedback loop between attention and emotion. So exactly as you say, there's like a maybe it starts with a sensation or it starts with a story, but that feedback loop reinforces the two until it creates this like out of control sense of panic. And so by practicing in say, let's say exhale breath holds, for example, you're learning to increase the space between your story and kind of your mental thing and the sensations that are going on. Whereas what often happens for people is those two are so interlinked that it's impossible to separate the story from the feelings that they're having. And so by, by say practicing Excel breath holds, or you could also practice, it's slightly different but say time in freezing water where again, you're kind of really activating the stress response but you know that you're safe because you are completely controlling what is happening. And so by doing this you're able to kind of like mentally override or at least have more spaciousness from the sensations that going on. And I, I remember doing a, I did a free diving training. I've done several, but I was able to increase my breath hold time from 90 seconds to six and a half minutes. And it was exactly. Yeah, wow. This was like a, like a, like a week of training. And I would kind of do, I would do humming, I would do like very, maybe like three minutes of downshifting breathing. My heart rate would kind of go down. I go into this almost like floppy jellyfish mode. And then after kind of four, four and a half minutes, I'd start to have these like diaphragm contractions because the CO2 is increasing, the kind of urge to breathe is intensifying. But I was able to just kind of like witness these stomach contractions knowing full well that I had enough oxygen in my system to survive. Like I wasn't going to pass out for another four or five minutes. But it was, I was just like able to witness that kind of intense need to breathe. But at the same time knowing that I was fine. And then at some point it just, it did become too intense. I was like, okay, I need to, I need to breathe.

Wow.

That was a really. That was like a kind of extreme case of what I guess I'm, I'm talking about here.

So let's say, yeah, that's an awesome and extreme case. Let's say I am. I get panic attacks. Maybe I've seen plight performance anxiety issues. I'm at work and I have to like, whenever I have to give presentations or speak in front of people, I get this. Not like a full blown panic attack maybe, but my anxiety definitely peaks. I get these acute kind of bursts of anxiety. It sounds like what you're suggesting is that one kind of avenue towards making some improvements there might be to practice these exhale breath holds. And so what that if my understanding is what that might look like is just maybe you're doing something like diaphragmatic breathing, but after you've exhaled fully, you just kind of hold it before you start breathing in again. Is that. I know it sounds really kind of clunky, but is that basically what we're.

You can, you can even do it like when you're walking around. So I did this when I was living, living in Indonesia on the beach where I'd walk, I kind of take a breath, let it go, and then not breathe in and see how many paces I could walk. And I count the number of paces. That would go from like maybe 15 to 20 eventually up to like 1450. And that's another fun way that you can do it. Obviously don't do it if you're near water or driving or something like that, but most places it's kind of safe to experiment with this stuff.

I love doing it with walks I've gotten into doing after reading James Nestor's book Breath. I've been trying to be more conscious of primarily doing nose breathing, not breathing from the mouth. And so when I go for walks in the morning, trying to exclusively nose breathe. But it's fun because it's something you can do while you're walking, doing something physically good for yourself. And I can even. I'm listening to a podcast or a book or something. And so it's cool that you, I like that you point that out that you can do this all. You don't have to be in a dark room just doing your breathing exercise or whatever. You can do this all over the place. Okay. So that would. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that would be kind of an example of a self regulatory strategy for you is what these. Like, like a breath work type of exercise or. No. Am I. Yeah.

Interesting. I mean, so there's actually, I mean that's, it's kind of a different bucket in. I would say that's more like capacity expanding practices. So exhale breathing is an example. I would say self regulatory practices are more. When you're feeling the anxiety, let's say you're about to give a speech, do a podcast, something. Then that would be doing something like four, four, eight, breathing or humming, things like that. Or there's a practice called orienting where you kind of really come into your senses and that creates more safety and also downshifts the system to kind of balance the activation response that might be happening.

Okay, let's dive in there. Talk about orienting that. I'm, I'm. You piqued my curiosity by the brief way you described it. So can you, can you flesh that out a little bit?

Yeah, so. So it's a super simple one. You label three things that you can see and you kind of actually like notice them and see them. Two things you can hear. So two sounds and you actually like notice that you're hearing them. And then importantly, one thing that you can feel. And ideally I really like to kind of use my feet on the ground. So like bringing my attention and awareness down to my feet, feeling the connection and then just kind of pausing there. And sometimes there'll be like a, like a sigh or an exhale and whenever you sigh or yawn, that's an indication that your nervous system is down, regulating that, it's kind of downshifting. So that's, that's a super simple one.

You know, it's funny, a long time when I first started podcasting, I got in the habit of doing it barefoot. Like I don't wear shoes when I, when I, when I podcast and now even when I do meetings and stuff. And it wasn't, I don't, I didn't have like a strategy, like a grand like strategy for doing it. But I wonder if on some level that's part of it is that I fe. I literally feel more grounded. Right. It sounds a little woo woo.

But I'm not wearing socks or shoes right now either. Yeah, it's the same.

Okay, so the orient is so cool. So the orienting is. It's three things you tuning into three things you can see. What was the two, what was the two.

One, two things you can hear, two.

Things you can hear and then one that you can feel.

Yeah. And just briefly, the principle there is when you're, when we're in anxiety or when we're in dissociation or some kind of dysregulation, it's, we're kind of outside of our body and we're outside, outside of our senses. So the more that we can come back to and connect with our sensory experience, the harder it is to be in a state of anxiety.

So let me ask you. So I'm going to put out my, or a theory, kind of a top down theory for why that might be not a top down theory, but in my language of sort of cognition and the way I tend to think about panic and anxiety and then I want to hear your take on that. But mine would be one of the reasons is because when you shift your, your headspace, your mind into this mode that is awareness, like I'm just noticing feeling at the, at the most cognitive, I'm labeling like, oh, like it's the wall is yellow or I'm feeling, you know, whatever prickly on my toes. I would say if you're really doing that fully, you can't also be thinking about things and what they mean. You can't be telling yourself stories about all the terrible things that are going to happen and what people are going to think of you and how bad your anxiety or panic is going to get. And so you're, it's, it's almost this benefit through subtraction where by, by tuning into what just being aware of what you're experiencing, you're short circuiting. One of the mechanisms that accentuates anxiety and panic, this, this, like you talked about this, the story kind of feedback. What do you think?

I think that's absolutely spot on. And I think it also applies to many of the other bottom up practices too. Like humming is one that I love to share with my students where you kind of take a full breath in and then you just hum all the way to the end of the exhale. You can even kind of put your thumbs in your ears and your, your kind of fingers over your eyes to amplify the vibration effect. And again when you're humming, your, your entire kind of headspace is very focused on the humming. And then in addition, there's also the release of nitric oxide, which is a vasodilator which also creates this kind of calming effect. And then there's the exhale when you kind of breathe all the way to the end of your breath, which again also amplifies the effect. So you're kind of like stacking these different regulatory things. And I agree with you that the, the inability for your mind is the same. If you're kind of counting things or repeating a mantra, it's very hard for it to kind of then go off. Sometimes it will, but it like go off into a thing that you're actually worried about or afraid of.

So on the humming, would you do this? Like, let's say I was just talking to someone who has. They struggle with stage fright, kind of performance anxiety. The first time they get up, present or teach or talk to like a new audience, they get a lot of, a lot of anxiety. Is this something you're. I'm imagining, like if you're sort of backstage two minutes before you go up, when you're doing humming, is that when you're doing humming? Because you're obviously not doing it in the mo. You're not doing humming in the moment, probably when you're giving a presentation. So. But you would do it kind of like immediately before, or would you want to do it like half an hour before or like really tactically? How would I think about implementing sort of an exercise like this?

So. So I did this myself. I did a TedX talk three years ago and there were like 6, 700 people in the audience. I was absolutely terrified. Like, it was a very vulnerable topic. I'd never done anything like that before. And I did. It was like 15, so 20 minutes before I had a 15 minute breathing practice. There was 10 minutes of alternate nostril breathing to the count of 4, 4, 8. So 4 in holding for 4, 8 exhale through alternate nostrils and then humming for 5 minutes kind of with the, with the fingers over the eyes and the thumbs in the ears. And that made a world of difference. Like, I still felt the, the kind of aliveness and energy in my system, but it wasn't overwhelming. It wasn't, it wasn't too much. I just felt like ready to go.

Interesting. It reminds me of a couple months or a month or two ago watching the Olympics, this coverage of the Olympics. And I don't know, maybe they had been doing this for a while, but I noticed a surprising amount of. There would be cuts to athletes who were not like about to perform. They were like, was this the guy.

Who did the horse who was like literally asleep before he. Yes.

Okay, so there was that one. Yeah, definitely that one. But there were a bunch of them. There was like the, A pole vaulter. There was a what? Some running event anyway. But it was shock. It was really interesting to Me that they were showing these people, like, what, what does an Olympic level athlete do before the biggest moment of their life where they're trying to do something that literally like 10 people on the planet can do, you know, like, and they're, they're just, they either look like they're literally asleep or sometimes they're often doing like, very sort of mellow, like, deliberate sort of relaxation thing. So I don't know, what's your, what's your take on that? I, I was just shocked by it. Like, I was, I was so intrigued by that.

I mean, I love that so much. The clip that I saw was that guy who, I think he won the horse and literally before going on, he was passed out and asleep. I think that this idea of cultivating a good rest ethic, if you have a good work ethic, you also need a strong rest ethic. And I know that Olympic sprinters, they will prioritize and tweak and experiment to optimize every aspect of their rest that they can. Because unless they, unless they're really recovering and resting well, then their training's not, they're not going to actually have the improvements. So I think it's, I mean, I think it's fascinating and I would be curious personally to see, like, what were the practices that they used, especially in the moments before. Yeah, I hadn't thought to look into that, but that's such a great idea.

It's interesting. I want to ask you about. Your third kind of idea was emotional fluidity. I want to get there, but first I want to go back to something we skipped over kind of quickly. You talked about interoception, which is the capacity to sort of tune into and feel what's going on internally.

What.

Given that that's what that is, how would you recommend. If you're listening to this, someone's listening to this and they're thinking, like, I can see why that would be beneficial. And I don't think I'm especially good at that. How do you, what's the first step? Like, how do you get started being. Cause I assume it's something people can get relatively better at no matter what their starting point is. So how would you recommend someone starting to get a little bit better at interoception?

Yeah, great question. I think it's the most, one of the most underrated skills for, for so, so many reasons that I can go into. But in terms of how to improve it, having a, at least like a daily, a daily check in and ideally in the morning kind of Sometime between when you wake up and when you start work, where it's almost like a kind of internal weather report and you can kind of label what, what experiences are there for you. It could be, oh, I noticed that I'm a little bit sleepy or I'm really hungry for breakfast, or I notice that I'm. That there are thoughts of what I need to do today here, there's like a racing mind. And so going through, I have the acronym ape, which stands for awareness, Posture, emotion. So Awareness, like, is my awareness. So it feels spacious, expansive. Do I feel like, ah, like do I feel, do I feel that? Or do I feel kind of contracted and focused on something? Posture, very, very obviously just in that moment. Like, do I feel relaxed? Do I feel upright? Do I feel hunched over? Do I feel protected? And then emotion. I kind of categorize all sensations and moods. So maybe there's like a, a mood of like excitement or anticipation or maybe there's some like, lingering sadness or whatever it is. You can just like label it and notice it without needing to do anything about it or fix anything. And the more often that you do that, and I like doing it also in kind of like transition periods during the day. So maybe when you take a break for lunch, maybe as you're transitioning out of the workday potentially is another good time or just before you fall asleep. The more that you practice, the more that you. I think of it as like creating like high definition, going from kind of like 32 pixel to like a high definition 4K picture of like, what is going on internally. And eventually you can track even the most like, subtle tensions. And I now use it to, you know, really make decisions. Like, my wife and I are looking at houses right now. And beyond looking at the kind of pro and con lists in a spreadsheet, there's also a sense of like, oh, do I feel like expansive when I see this house? Or think of us living there? Or is there some kind of like contraction that's there in my system? And if there is, I'll be like, oh, I wonder what might be causing that? And then using that as more data. So, so kind of treating all of this interoceptive feedback that's coming up and this could be also around like a new relationship or a new situation or moving to a new place, you know, anything and treating that as really valuable data that your body's giving you that you can then pay attention to and, and try and explore. Not. It's not like a hard yes or no, but it's I mean some people use it that way, but I view it as just like it's more data in the way that looking at spreadsheets might also give you data.

I love it. Tying into that the six lane superhighway's worth of information that we normally just totally ignore.

Totally. Exactly. Exactly.

So I remember thinking about this when I moved a few years ago to working from home and developing it. I mean I don't use that exact system, but realizing that my commute home, one of the things that was a function, it was serving, that I didn't realize is a way for me to not just decompress and relax after work, but actually to. I would find myself kind of thinking about how am I feeling? Like what's going on, what are thoughts are going through my head, how's my body feeling? And I. And then I started working from home and I did because it's. It's literally four steps out of my office and like back into it right there. So I had to consciously start building in a little bit of time to just sort of like transition, but also like check in with myself. So that's. I think that's a really practical. Just. It seems like such a small thing, but so potentially helpful. Yeah.

And I think that's a, that's a super practical idea for people that work from home. Like I created. I mean now we have a dog, so I just walk my dog. But I would literally create like a commute for myself. Even though I worked home, I do like a 10 minute walk around the block. And that was my, like, I was like, yeah, like reflecting on the day, just like a couple of breaths. And then when I came in, I'm like, okay, I'm ready for dinner, I'm ready to socialize. I'm ready to just like unwind.

The other thing I love about this or. And actually I want to, I want to run this by you, but it strikes me that, you know, we talk about building interoception as a skill and I'm sure it is to some extent, but I wonder if one way to look at it too is that it's something that we already have a pretty great capacity to do, but the skill is really in the attention, in the memory, like making time and building this habit of just paying attention and tuning in and that when you do that regularly, like the information is there, you don't need to learn a new language. Like it's all right there. It's. Which I, I find kind of a comforting, empowering idea that it's I don't have to go like build this new complicated skill is I can do. It's something I have. It's like I was talking about to people about self compassion like this. I'm like, you know, how to be compassionate. It's not rocket science. It's just about remembering to apply it to yourself. Which is surprisingly hard to do a lot of the time. But I wonder if this getting better at interoception like is that that's almost kind of a weird metaphor of it being a skill and maybe the skill or the habit is just remembering to tune in and pay attention.

Yeah, I mean that is for sure true. And I do think that it is a, it's a skill. And there are also very valid reasons why some of us kind of spend a lot of time disassociated or have numbed certain areas of the body because we store, I call it emotional debt. But there are, you know, very good reasons that let's say in the first like often 10, 15 years of life, if things happened, it wasn't, didn't feel safe to be in our bodies. So we kind of shoot up into our, into our minds or like, or elsewhere. And so I think a lot of the practice is like almost like reminding your body that it's like safe to be there. And the more of that kind of internal and external safety or conditions for safety that can be created, the more that interoceptive awareness naturally comes back online. But for a lot of people there, they might not really like experience much or there might be numbness. And numbness too is still a sensation. Sure, it's still data. And then that can be kind of gently titrated and kind of like curiously explored without, without making it wrong or without seeing, oh, like I don't have any interception so I'm bad or whatever the story might be.

This is, this is so interesting and helpful, I think. And one of the reasons, Johnny, honestly why I, I love your work and I follow your work all the time and I wanted to have you on the podcast is because the longer I worked with folks on anxiety and the more practice I had applying these more top down cognitive and behavioral strategies, which I think many of which are actually really helpful if you know what you're doing. But I started to see that a lot of times people had this habit of they would sort of flip them, they would use these cognitive strategies and start intellectualizing and use it as a way of actually defending against or avoiding getting into the, either the raw emotion or what was actually going on with their body. And I realized that my, the approach I was trained in didn't have great vocabulary or language or concepts or practices for dealing with that little maneuver that people would pull. Not intentionally for you said, like you said, there's a lot of valid reasons why people do that. But I feel like I, I need new skills in order to help and one of them is to learn how to gently redirect away from that tendency to intellectualize which so often makes anxiety worse actually. Um, and that the tools you're talking about, the ideas you're talking about, I think are like, they're exactly what I think I need to be able to help those folks. So thank you. Super cool.

Yeah. Well, I mean just to be clear, people can also very easily use these bottom up tools to also avoid feeling stuff. So many people can use breathing practices or yoga or whatever it is to like it might be healthy but it's still a kind of very. It's still an avoidant strategy. It's still a way of avoiding what it is that we're feeling and that's fine. It might often isn't always appropriate to allow whatever the feeling is to come through. But having some kind of practice and again I think it really comes back to creating internal and external safety. And working one on one with someone, ideally in person is a great way of doing that. And in the safety of that kind of container then actively curiously exploring, I call it courageous curiosity. And so kind of getting curious about what might be the sensations here. Not out of any. And this is the key thing. If there's kind of like an agenda to change, like and I was guilty for this for such a long time where I would go in to feel something so that I could get rid of it because I knew that when I felt something through it would kind of go away. Like the emotional life cycle is like 10 to 20 seconds. But if I went in trying to feel something so that I didn't have to feel it anymore, that was like another way of increasing that resistance. And it just, it obviously didn't work. And so there really has to be this kind of open, curious not only I think the word acceptance is used in a lot of circles. I don't think that goes far enough. I think it needs to be genuine, welcoming and opening in the same way that you would open your arms to like a child that was crying because something bad happened at school and you like really embrace him or her. I think it has to be the same level of like care applied to it.

I so Agree. I think acceptance does not go far. I. The term I've started using a lot more is willingness. Like, it's not just that you're accepting the anxiety, the anger, the sadness, but you are willing for it to be there with you and for you to move along with it. Not trying to, to tamp it out or get rid of it. So tough. That really.

That was actually my. When I went through the intensity of grief, I had this mantra of like, I am willing. And whenever something. I felt something kind of surging up that was like, oh God, like, I don't think I can take this. I would just say like, like I'm willing. And just there was almost this like, falling back and surrendering into it. And that obviously took a lot of like, reps, so to speak. But sure, I fully agree. I think willingness is a, is a beautiful phrase.

Okay, let's. We've got a little bit of time left. I want to get to emotional fluidity. Yeah, tell me about emotional fluidity.

Yeah, I mean, we've just been talking about it. I think that's exactly, that's exactly it. It's like welcoming and maybe even loving the full spectrum of emotions that we experience. And you know, this journey has been multi year for me. In the beginning, it was learning to welcome and kind of alchemized grief. And then during the breath work kind of chapter of my life, a lot of it was around anger. So I, I didn't feel, I realized that I didn't feel safe to express anger. And I, I viewed myself as being like a very calm person. I was like, yeah, I just don't get frustrated easily. I'm just chill. And it turns out not entirely true. Like, there was a lot of like built up frustration and even rage in me, which needed a safe place to be expressed. And you know, that's not at someone. It might be at like a Mai Tai boxing or it might be like screaming into a forest. But allowing that to kind of move through me created so much more aliveness. And I, I've seen a really interesting correlation between clients that I do breath work with who repress anger are also often depressed. And as soon as they, they're able to kind of come into that healthy relationship with anger, the, the aliveness and comes back and the depression just, just falls away.

I think that's also very true with anxiety. So many of my anxiety clients, the, the kind of, the re. The more core issue is they have a lot of anger. They have an idea or about how things should be for a Variety of reasons feel like they can't work toward that, make that happen, ask for that, or say no to things that are getting in the way to that. And so that and. And anxiety often manifests as that. So I think that's. Yeah, it's. It's interesting how both anxiety and depression often kind of come from that. You used a phrase alchemizing grief. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

I love that. Yeah, sure. So there was this very specific moment that this, like, I realized that this was what was happening. I was approaching the memorial bench of my ex fiance who I lost. And as I did, I kind of as. With every step that I got closer, it was like the grief just got more and more and more intense. And as I reached the bench, it was just like this like, torrent of like. Of like a lament. Like I was just like liters of tears were just from my face. And at some point in that, like, I had the experience of like. Like, whoa. Like, it felt like I was almost on. On mdma or there was a sense of like, rapture or like joy or bliss. And there was almost this confused experience where like. But wait, I thought grief is meant to be really hard and challenging, but here I am having this experience of like, if. If I didn't have the story of, oh, I've just lost this person that's really close to me, it would feel like intense love. And my. My kind of working hypothesis. I don't have any studies to back this up, but I believe the five stages of grief are actually the five ways in which we resist grief. And that when grief kind of flows through us unresisted, like unkinked, it is the energy of love and connection. And so that's. I think that's like a really tangible example of emotional fluidity, of the resistance to the emotion being kind of alchemized and becoming aliveness and becoming joy and connection. And that really, in a nutshell, is why I'm so passionate about the nervous system work, about breath work. Because once people touch into that, once they realize that this. This emotion they've been afraid of, on the other side of that is this incredible feeling of elation and joy. It's like, oh, now I'm excited to go find out what other emotions am I avoiding and resisting? Because there's this like this like, pot of gold underneath it that I get to. I get to experience. Wow.

Thank you, Johnny, for sharing that. I mean, I know it's very personal memory and experience, but. Yeah, so. But you Know, it makes me think of about. It's probably about a year ago. I don't remember exactly. I saw it, you know, the, the band, The Pogues. Shane McGowan is this kind of Irish, so. Shane McGowan, Chris Christmas. Yeah. Fairy Tale New York. That Christmas.

I know that Christmas song. Yeah.

Yeah. So he passed away about a year ago. And I, or maybe he was. I don't know. I saw the video. There was a video of his funeral ceremony. And they. It was this very, you know, it's very solemn. It was in a church. It was. But then at the end of the ceremony, as everyone was about to start recessing out, the people like former bandmates, friends, all sorts of people got up from the audience and went up next to his coffin with, with him up there. And they all, they all had their, like their violins, their guitars, everything. And they started playing Fairy Tale of New York and you could, you could see in people's faces. I mean, I was, I started crying. I don't know him at all. I just, I love that song. I got chills and I, I really think part of it is because of what you were describing. That, that magical alchemy that we so rarely actually see in life, which is intense, different, intense emotions coexisting together in the same moment and people being willing to feel the, the most intense joy and the depths of sadness and grief at the exact same time. And it's. And I, I think we all on some really deep level know that like this is how it should be. We should be able to do this. And we, we get over it. Like it's, it's incredible when we see that we, when we tap into it.

Yeah.

Anyway, it just made me think about that.

But no, I love that I got goosebumps listening to that. And, and maybe coming full circle to anxiety. Like, I view anxiety as almost like it's like a beautiful signpost of like, hey, there is like some kind of emotion here which, which I am contracting against or I'm resisting. And how can I firstly just like welcome and allow that that's here. And then what, like, what might that be if I was to kind of get out of my own way? What, what would my body want to do? What might it want to express? How could I bring some breath, sound or movement to kind of like allow this process to unfold? And I think the phrase self unfoldment is really helpful as opposed to like doing the work or self development, which sounds like you're, you're doing the thing. Whereas actually it's more the experience I have is it's almost like you're kind of getting out of the way. Like you're not attached to the mental stories. You're not making yourself wrong. You're just like, okay, what is, what does it feel like my body wants to do right now? And then just doing it. And for some people that might be moving, it might be lying down and crying, it might be like asking a friend for like a hug and support. It might be like beating a pillow for five minutes. You know, there's a whole spectrum. But it's. And again that comes down to the interception plus the, the willingness that you mentioned of like, okay, this is what I'm noticing. Okay, I feel like weird I might want to go do this thing and then just like doing it. And then again once you, once you trust yourself in that way and you notice how good it feels on the other side, you'll want to do it more. So it has this kind of feedback loop.

Johnny, this has been fantastic. I mean really fun, helpful, insightful, interesting for folks. I think so. I really, really appreciate it. Where can people go to learn more about you and your all the awesome work that you're doing?

Yeah, dude, it's been so, so fun. So the course I teach is nervous system mastery. Nsmastery.com is the website I'm doing a cohort very shortly depending on when this is released. And then in addition there's also a self assessment on that website that people can take totally free. And there's a bunch of bottom up protocols that are mentioned in the follow up emails as well. And then I have a podcast, Curious Humans. I have conversations like this. That's a great, great free resource for people to check out. And then I'm on Twitter as well if people want to say hi there the handle is johnnymeller. J o n n y m1 l l e r.