Weekly Living Light Q & A The Power of Breath - Part 2

Hello friends, Sachin here. Just waiting for a few more people, uh, come in here through Zoom. Welcome. Make yourself at home and we'll get started in, in just a few seconds. Can you hear my music?

Okay, great.

Welcome, friends. Great to see you here today. I'm excited to get to host the session today. Today's the first day of spring, so happy spring to everybody. What a, what a wonderful time for new beginnings and new awareness to take place. And personally, I can't think of a better topic than and teaching people how to breathe, uh, breathe new life into our lives, to breathe new ideas, uh, to exhale the things that are no longer serving us. As the season changes, it's a great way to— for us to reflect. And our breath is a metaphor for so many things. So I have a question for you to ponder. But before I share that question, I want to share a little story with you, a parable perhaps. So imagine you're walking and you see a construction site and there's a building that's being built, and you may not know what the building is quite yet. But you can see that there's men working and maybe some women working as well. And you happen to ask 3 different people what they're doing and why they're doing it. And the first person says, well, I'm doing this because it puts food on my table, right? So that's their main purpose, is to make an income doing the job. The second person Says, well, I did a StrengthsFinder and I spoke to a guidance counselor and they told me that I would do great working with my hands, and so that's why I'm laying these bricks. And the third person they asked said, well, I'm here building this beautiful church because this is where people's lives are going to be transformed and where they're going to get get to connect with their creator and their community. So 3 people doing the exact same thing but giving a totally different response. And so my invitation to you is to ask, uh, to answer the question: why is it important that you are here today? Are you here to just learn something that you're going to forget and never use? Are you here for some cool factoids? Or perhaps you're here to change the way you breathe, uh, for the rest of your life because you understand the domino effect it has on your overall health and that your breath is an extension of who you are, because the way you breathe changes the toroidal field around you. You have a 6-foot field that your heart propagates. If you ever sit silently and quietly in a pool, you can see your heart beating, and you will see that with every heartbeat, the water ripples out. Okay. And so that physically shows you that we have that field. Well, what controls your heart and that field is the way you breathe. So if I started hyperventilating, it would change the way my heart is beating. If I slow down my breath, it's going to change the way my heart is beating. And what changes the frequency of my heart rate changes the field, the electromagnetic field, the magnetic field I create around me. All right, that's what breathing can do for you. If somebody sat down next to you and started hyperventilating on a, on a subway or on a bus, would it change your energetic field? Absolutely, right? Somebody's sitting next to you and they're breathing a certain way, right? Their nervous system is in a certain state. The opposite is true as well, right? And so when we learn how to breathe, we can be the calmness in the storm, right? The storms will come and go. That's life. But it's how we set our sail that determines what the storm does to us and where it takes us. So learning how to breathe is like setting your sail. So let's go ahead and type into the chat why it's important for you to be here today. Why is it important for you to be here today? Okay, I'm here to continue my path of breaking habits that have not served me. It's been a lifelong journey of learning things and practicing habits that are not healthy. I'm taking this time to learn to grow. I know everything I have learned from this team has put me on the right path. Thank you, Mandy. Hey, Irina says to take care of me, to learn to breathe so I can restore my equilibrium and be the calm in the storm. Awesome, Shanna. And I'm here to enhance my breathwork and I have a free hour. Okay, well, let's make it the best hour ever. Before I jump in, because this could turn into like an 8-hour presentation, I'd like to know if there's a specific question you have about breathing, or maybe a specific challenge that you have around breathing. What that'll help me do is, you know, really double down on serving those that are here, right? Those that show up live. And of course, it'll be valuable to those that watch the replay. But I want to make sure you walk away with the answer to your questions. And then of course, I want to make sure I share valuable insights as well. Okay, so Will says, I feel breathwork is critical to my health and longevity based on what I've learned from you so far. It's critical to my future. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, and Shelly says, my wellness benefits from being in the supportive, helpful community and to remain connected to myself.

Okay, great.

So many of you may know this, maybe you don't, but if you, if you do, wonderful. And if you don't, then it'll be new. The word yoga means union. It doesn't mean, you know, tight pants and yoga mats, right? It literally means union, union with self. And what most people may not know, you would know if you do yoga, is that yoga is more about the breath than it is about the posture. Okay, so the posture that we go into, these are called asanas, the positions that we put ourselves in, creates an antenna in our body. How many of you have ever, um, maybe some of you might be old enough where you had rabbit ears on your television? And you'd have to move them around and it would have to be just right in order for you to get the signal. Right. So that's what yoga postures are, right?

You—

your body becomes an antenna when you put it into certain positions. And in those positions, when you take a breath, it expands your lungs. When you breathe in, squeezes your heart, but also milks your myofascial system. The myofascial system is, is basically like a series of spider webs, cobwebs, mycelial networks that run throughout your entire body. Every cell in your body is connected to every other cell in your body through this hardwired system, okay? Which means that your entire body communicates with itself simultaneously. And that's different than releasing a chemical, and then that chemical has to be transported through the blood, right? So there's different ways that the body communicates with, with itself. One way is kind of like this electrical system, right? Or this myofascial system that is wired throughout your body. When you send a signal into that system, every cell instantly knows, just like electricity in your house. Okay, so I could flip a switch and things can turn on, or I can take a candle into the room, right? I can transport the light. And that's what hormones are like. Hormones are secreted in one part of the body, and then through the blood they travel to other parts of the body. Okay, estrogen travels to different parts of the body, right? Testosterone, so on and so forth. Certain signals, emotional signals and physical signals, are transferred through the myofascial system. Okay, that myofascial system is that entire network. It's a self-organizing network. Now, what's interesting about the myofascial system is that it connects our tongue all the way to our toes. So that what holds our fascia up— let me grab a picture for you guys so you can see this— what holds all the fascia up in our body is the bottom of our tongue. Very interesting concept that maybe is new to some of you. So let me pull up this slide so you can see exactly what I'm talking about. And thank you for your grace. My— I'm using Zoom account, so things are a little bit different than mine. So just give me one second, I'll get this all sorted out for you. Okay, so you should see my screen. Does everyone see my screen? Okay, so this is our fascia. This is the bottom of our tongue here. These are our lungs. Obviously, they're deflated in this cadaver. This is the diaphragm, which is the muscle that sits underneath your ribs. Or, I'm sorry, sits underneath your lungs. And then this is the quad muscles. This is the knee here. This is the calf, and these are the toes. So your tongue, through this fascia, is connected all the way to your toes, which means the position of your tongue can affect all of this fascia. Okay, the position of your tongue also creates the shape of your face. When our tongue is positioned correctly, we call this tongue posture. It's positioned in the roof of the mouth. Imagine saying the sound of the letter N, /n/. When you say the word, when you say the sound of the letter N, /n/, That's where your tongue should be placed throughout the day. When the tongue is positioned correctly, it soothes the nervous system. So you have 84 meridian points in the roof of your mouth. Think of a piano. So you have 84 keys of a piano in the roof of your mouth that when your tongue is placed correctly it's pressing on those meridian points. In Ayurvedic medicine, we call these mudras. Mudras are little electrical circuits, okay? And these meridian points have starting points and ending points. You have a lot of meridian points on the bottom of your feet. You have a lot of meridian points in your hands. You have meridian points in the roof of your mouth. So when we stimulate these parts of the body, it creates these, these, this circuitry. This is why mantras and chanting can be so powerful, because we're almost like playing the piano in the roof of our mouth. Some people because of their tongue posture, or because they have a— I don't want to call it a defect, but they might have something called a tongue tie. And a tongue tie is something that can affect how our tongue sits in our mouth. So if you have young children, paying attention to what's happening underneath their tongue can clue you in into whether they have normal range of motion in their tongue. When we have normal range of motion in our tongue, it means that our fascia in the rest of our body can move properly. This child has a moderate tongue tie. This tongue tie makes it difficult for the child to keep the tongue at the roof of the mouth. Tongue almost feels tied down. This child has a very severe tongue tie, right? They might have speech difficulties and things like that. When people have moderate to severe tongue ties, and it's possible that as an adult you could have this and it's never been checked or evaluated on you, then it affects the way we breathe. It affects the structure of our face. It affects the structure of our sinuses. When your tongue sits in the roof of your mouth, it acts as a spacer. It pushes the face outwards. The roof of your mouth is the bottom of your sinuses. So if you're a practitioner working with clients, or if you yourself have a tongue tie, then this is something that can make a huge difference when it's addressed. Some of the signs of poor tongue or a tongue tie could be difficulty latching on. So if you have a baby that had difficulty latching on to the breast, or if you recall this on, on for yourself, then there could be a tongue tie. Okay. So not to get too far off topic, but since I brought it up, I want everyone to understand the subtleties and the importance of this information. Okay. Let's see. So Mandy says, I'm struggling to reach deep sleep. So any information related to breathing can help.

Yeah.

Okay. Awesome. Shanna, how do I monitor my breaths in an hour? You mentioned once that you take— it took you a few years to learn how to do this. I don't recall what the goal is. Okay. Awesome. So let me, let me answer those. Anyone else here want to fall asleep faster? Okay. So there's actually a specific breathing technique for that. It's called the 4-7-8 breath or the triangle breath. Okay, this is where you would inhale for a count of 4, hold for a count of 7, and then exhale for a count of 8. Okay, so we can try that right now. It works better if you close your eyes. The visual I want you to have is that with every exhale, you're kind of melting into your chair like a candle would. Okay, so just a little piece of you melts every time. Uh, for some of you, another visual that you could use is a parachute. So if you remember that parachute game when you were a young child and they would yell your name and you'd have to run in the middle and the parachute would go up in the air and it would slowly come floating down. Okay, so you can visualize the parachute coming down with your exhale, or you can visualize you melting as a candle. Close your eyes. We're going to place our tongue in the roof of our mouth. We've got our mouth tape on to ensure we're breathing through our nose. And you're going to take a breath in through the nose for a count of 4. In, 2, 3, 4. Just a nice gentle breath in. Hold. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Melt. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Inhale. 2, 3, 4. Hold. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Exhale, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Okay, and you would repeat that pattern. Some of you probably feel like you could take a nap now, right? So it works very quickly, which is beautiful, and it's almost like counting sheep. But you're— you're not just focusing on the counting, right? You're really using the counting to focus in on your breath. Now, if you don't like the idea of counting, anything that lengthens your exhale— okay, so by lengthening the exhale, we're exhaling longer than we would compared to how much we're inhaling. So you could do 4 in and 8 out, 6 in, 10 out, right? When you do this breathing pattern, you're going to feel really relaxed. So 4-7-8 is a good breathing technique. Okay, now if you need more energy, how many of you could maybe use a cup of coffee in the afternoon? Okay, but maybe the coffee keeps you up, or maybe, you know, hey, it's after 12, But you need a pick-me-up.

Okay.

So there's a breathing technique for that too. So we can try that as well. So now that I've lulled you to sleep, we can use a breathing technique to energize you. And again, you can use this. This is a good energizing tool. If you've got a long drive and you want to, you know, you know, pull over to the side and do something and energize your body. Sometimes people like to take a walk and move their bodies a little bit. You can also use this breathing technique. Now, if you have uncontrolled high blood pressure, then we don't recommend doing this because it will raise your blood pressure in a good way, right? So if you go for a run, that's gonna raise your blood pressure, right? Everyone knows that if you start exercising, your blood pressure goes up. So raising our blood pressure is not a bad thing, but if it's uncontrolled, then you wanna be mindful of that. Now, what we're going to do is we're just going to sit in our chair. It's better if you do this seated. You certainly can do it standing if you feel inclined to, but start off seated and see how you feel. And what we're going to do is we're going to open up our palms just like this and just make a gentle fist now. Now, I'm going to have to move back a little bit so you can see me, but essentially what I'm going to do is I'm going to take a sharp breath in through my nose. And throw my hands up, and I'm going to open up my palm. So I'm going to go, and I'm going to blow out and bring my hands down forcefully. Okay, now you may just want to start with your mouth for this one because it's a little bit easier. We're going to do this 30 times. 30 times in through the mouth, out through the mouth. So breathe in. And then out. And when I come down, I make a little fist, gentle fist.

Okay.

So let's do this together on the count of 3, keep count yourself. I sometimes lose count. So, you know, I'll try to do my best. So we'll just do as many as we can for the next 30 or so seconds. And, and so you breathe in, throw your hands out, breathe out forcefully. Okay. On the count of 3, 1, 2, 3. Amazing. How's that feel? It wakes you up, right? So what's happening when you do this? Think of it like shaking a tree.

Okay.

So if I just lean up against a tree, no big deal. But if I start shaking it, right, then everything starts moving, right? Every branch, every leaf, every fruit, everything on that tree starts moving. So we're waking up our myofascial system. So your diaphragm sits in the middle of your body. Your lungs, uh, you know, basically create, create a sandwich around your heart. So you have your lungs Your heart, and then your diaphragm sits on the bottom. Okay, so it's like a little— your heart's squished in there. So when we take a deep breath in, it squeezes our heart. When we take a deep breath out, the diaphragm moves up and pumps our heart as well. So this forceful inhale and exhale is waking up the whole tree. Okay, it's waking up your whole myofascial system. It's increasing your blood pressure. But what it's also doing at a hormonal level is it's increasing your adrenaline. Okay, so we're increasing the fight or flight response, right? If you were running from a lion, how would you be breathing? Right? So we're— what we're adding is we're also now getting that whole myofascial system to wake up. So this wakes your whole body up, okay? Because everything's connected. So what we would do is we would do this 30 times like we just did, and we've taken a little pause. I've done some teaching. We're going to do it again, okay? So you do this 3 times total. We're going to go for another 30 seconds. Okay, you go at whatever pace feels good for you. You know, shoulders, like, be mindful of your shoulders. You know what's funny? I work out at the gym, and the thing that makes my shoulders the most sore is this. Like, I get a good burn in my shoulders with this rapid movement.

Okay.

So let's do another round. We'll start in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, in and out through the mouth. Woohoo! How does that feel? Feel awake yet? Amazing. All right, so our breath has the power to really change our state. One of the things that you want to pay attention to is the way people breathe. Your breath is a window into your nervous system's state. The state of your nervous system is written in your breath.

Okay, and I—

we, we can use 2 sides of that spectrum, right? So if somebody was breathing in for 4 seconds and out for 8 seconds, right? Let's just say you came across somebody, saw them in the park, and imagine you could just see a visual of the way they're breathing. It's pretty safe to assume that they're probably in a relaxed state, right? Pretty safe to assume that they're probably not pumping out a lot of cortisol. A lot of adrenaline, right? It's pretty safe to assume that there's blood flow going to their digestive system and their trunk organs instead of their arms and legs. It's pretty safe to assume that blood is flowing to their neocortex, which is the part of our brain that makes us smart and creative and good at problem solving. Right? You see, the way somebody's breathing is a window into all the processes that are happening in their body. And then we have the rapid, short, sharp breaths that we just took. So if you came across— if you saw me sitting in the park and I was breathing like this, right, we can predictably know what hormones my body's producing. We can predictably know where blood is flowing. We can predictably know what functions are turning on and off in my body. Because my breath tells me, or tells an observer, what the state of the nervous system is, and the state of the nervous system determines how all these things are happening. Now, breath is very interesting because it's a two-way street, which means that when your emotions change, your breathing changes. It's the first physical thing to change. So if you— let's say you had a long-standing issue. Maybe you had a bill that you needed to pay, but you didn't know where you're going to get the money from. I've been there before. I know what that feels like.

Okay.

And then imagine a check shows up in your mailbox. And you open the check. You weren't expecting it. You open it up and you feel this immense sense of relief. And if I was watching you from across the room, what would I think? All right, what state is your nervous system in? Right, relaxed. Right? You let out a sigh of relief, right? You see, sighing is a form of breathing. Now, if a lion walked into your house, uh, do you think you'd breathe a sigh of relief, or would you— what would you do? How would your breath change? Teresa, how would your breath change? It'd get rapid.

Yeah.

Or I'd hold it and I wouldn't breathe at all. So we would probably gasp, right? We would take a quick breath in because when we take that quick breath in, our lungs rapidly expand, squeeze our heart, increase blood pressure. We need more blood pressure to get blood now to our arms and legs so we can immediately run away from whatever is chasing us or We have blood going to our arms and legs so we can fight. And because we don't want to overthink, because overthinking is what kills most people, we want to be reactive. So we don't get into the part of our brain that does thinking, we get into the part of our brain that reacts. And when we're in those centers of the brain, we don't always— we make decisions for survival, not decisions for thriving. Right? We make good short-term, or what seem like good short-term decisions, but they may not be good long-term decisions. Right? Because when we're in survival, that's what we care about. How do I get through this next day, this next week, this next month? But when we're in our prefrontal cortex, that's what gives humans the ability to think into the future, right? Other animals can't think about about the future the way we can because this part of their brain isn't as developed. So they're always living in the moment, right? That's the, that's the gift and curse of being a human is that you can think into the future.

All right.

And based on what kind of seeds are planted into your soil, either that's a really good future or a really bad future. Right. And we, as human beings can bring the future and the past into the now, right? We could think about something and our brain doesn't know the difference. The chemistry in our body changes. So the way you breathe is a picture, gives somebody a picture into your nervous system or gives you a picture into somebody else's nervous system. So because the breath changes with our emotion, what are other examples? Another example of how the breath and emotion are correlated is Let's say I say something funny. You laugh, right? Laughing is breathwork. You can't laugh without your diaphragm moving up and down, without your rib, without your lungs expanding and contracting, right? It's just a very unique breathing signature. But it's a breathing signature, right? How about if you're really upset? What happens? Maybe you cry, right? Crying is probably the most potent breathwork. This is why when a child is crying, we never tell the baby to stop crying. We never shush a baby. Or if you're ever having an emotional release, we We don't apologize, right? Apologizing for crying is— apologize is the same as apologizing for laughing, right? It's a— it's the most powerful way to release, right? When a baby is crying, think about it. They take a short breath in and then they cry. Their cry is much longer, right? And we all know from the way the baby is crying what it's trying to tell us. Right, moms, you probably figured it out with your baby, like, you know, their exact cry. But what you're— what the cry is, is the language of the breath. Right, that's their nervous system communicating to you, and you've developed an understanding of what that means. Dads, you know, we can figure it out too, right? Now, crying is a powerful way to release stored emotions. See, many of us have probably been told to stop crying, or many of us hold our tears back. Where our body stores grief and emotions, it stores, um, our trauma is stored in our diaphragm. I'll explain why in a minute. Our emotions are stored in our myofascial systems. That's that whole web-like system. And our grief is stored in our lungs. And so the diaphragm is the only muscle in our body that we can control 24/7. So we actually have full control over our diaphragm, right? Right now, if I ask you to hold your breath, you can. If I ask you to inhale, exhale, you're doing that all through your diaphragm. So it's a muscle that you have conscious control over. It's the only muscle that works for you 24 hours a day, nonstop, your whole life, right up till now, that you can control. Your heart is another muscle that's pumping right? 24/7, but you can't control it. Now, the way you control the heart, right? So you think of the heart like a horse, and the breath is the reins of the horse, right? So the breath can steer the horse, or the reins, right? I can pull on the reins on the horse. I can tell it to move forward, move backwards, move left, move right. That's what the breath is. Okay, so the, the reins and the horse go together. So if we want to control the heart, then we, we have direct access to it through the breath. Is this making sense to everyone?

Okay.

And so that's why it's important that we learn how to breathe. So it starts with tongue posture, placement of the tongue. Make the sound of the letter N, N, and just hold it there at the roof of the mouth. It should feel effortless to keep your tongue there. If it doesn't, then it might just be getting used to it. Some of you may have a tongue tie. And that may need to be evaluated. Now, another breathing technique, and Teresa mentioned it here, is heart-focused breathing. So there's a great device that I love. It's called HeartMath. Okay, so it's a little device like this, and it basically clips to my ear. And what it does is it gives me real-time information on the state of my nervous system. So I can use this to actually be my breathing coach. Okay, I can use this, and today's training is not about HeartMath, but what we're essentially doing is learning how to breathe in a state that puts us into what's called coherence. I can show you what that looks like. And we can practice heart-centered breathing right now. It's, it's really simple. And you'll feel, you know, the balance and the shift in your nervous system when you do that as well. So here's a screenshot of what it looks like so you can see it. And so as I'm breathing in and out, you can see that my, my breathing is, is very structured and very regular. Right? This puts me in a coherent state. Right? And that's what you see up here at the top. And there's times where maybe the breathing isn't as coherent. Let's see if I took a screenshot of it. No, I don't have a screenshot of it. But if your breathing is out of sync, then you'll be able to see that as well. And what's really fascinating is when you're first starting out, you start to see how erratic your breathing is. And then once you learn how to smooth out the inhale and the exhale, you start dramatically changing the state of your nervous system. So let's practice some heart-centered breathing. All right, we can close our eyes. Now let's just take a nice deep breath in, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Just let it out with a sigh. Another breath in, holding at the top for a short pause, and then dropping your tongue and letting it out with a sigh. Okay, on your next breath in, tongue at the roof of the mouth, breathing in for a count of 4. In, 2, 3, 4. Out, 2, 3, 4. In, 2, 3, 4. Out, 2, 3, 4. Breathing in through the nose, 3, 4. Out through the nose, 3, 4. In, 2, 3, 4. Out, 2, 3, 4. Keep that pace. Now with your next inhale, I want you to visualize two nostrils in the middle of your chest, and you're just breathing right into your heart with each breath, breathing in through the heart and out through the heart. Just imagine two nostrils in the middle of your chest breathing into the heart and out through the heart. With your next inhale, I invite you to breathe in a beautiful, beautiful green light into the heart, and we're going to exhale any darkness any negativity that we're holding on to, any pain that we're holding on to. With your next breath in, imagine nostrils wherever you feel pain in your body. So if you have hip pain, imagine some nostrils on your hip. I know it sounds weird, but Makes it easier to visualize. Just breathe into your nostrils, wherever they are, and out, and in, out. With your next breath in, you're going to breathe into your chest, right into your heart, and out. More breath into the heart, breathing in this beautiful green light. And just letting out anything that doesn't serve us, whether it's pain or emotions. Forgiving ourselves. Next breath in through your nose and out through the nose. And whenever you feel ready, you could just flutter your eyes open. Okay, so you can see, in just a few minutes, you can transport yourself to a whole different world. How many of you could really see that and feel it and visualize it. Okay, so it's that simple, right? Taking some moments out of your day to draw awareness to your breath. So let me give you a few different strategies, okay? And these are things that can be useful and practical. And like I said, I'm here to make sure I answer your questions, right? So let me also do that. And if any questions are coming up for you now, go ahead and type those into the chat so I can really emphasize that. While I'm mentioning that, I wanted to let you know that I'm doing a 2-hour training on breathing tomorrow where, where you're welcome to attend. It starts tomorrow at 10 AM to 12, like we might go 11:30, 12-ish. I have a musician who's coming. We're going to do some voice alchemy. Where we're going to teach you how to use your voice to heal. Breathing, screaming, chanting, yelling, all of those are breathwork. Okay, so, you know, giving yourself that permission, even vocalizing any anger or frustration you have. They found— they did a study and they found that there was a 38% decrease in cortisol just by vocalizing your frustrations to an empty room. Okay, because a lot of things we just keep on our chest, right? When they say, I've— I have to get this off my chest, it's in your lungs, right? That's what people are saying. It's— they know where it is, right? It's in the lungs. So just getting it out of us releases it. Okay, I talked about crying earlier. When we stop crying, or when we're told to stop crying, the only way to stop crying is to stop breathing. And so the only way to stop breathing is to stop your diaphragm from moving. Okay, so crying, imagine, is like— imagine you're running and all of a sudden you have to come to an abrupt stop, right? Or your range of motion is cut short, or you have to hold on to all this pressure, that's what the diaphragm has to do, right? Becomes the lid of a pressure cooker because the body wants to cry and release, but we're— because we can force our diaphragm to stop moving, right? We push that emotion back down. Where does it go? It goes somewhere into that matrix. It goes somewhere into the myofascial system. And this is why people can go to the doctor. They can have pain in certain parts of their body, but everything looks fine. Anyone ever experienced that? Right? You feel pain somewhere and there's no explanation for it. That's because it's stuck in the myofascial system. So breathwork helps to open up, movement helps open up the myofascial system. Tapping helps wake up the myofascial system, but the way we release What boils to the surface is through the breath. So when we do facilitated breathwork, how many of you have done like a 75-minute breathwork facilitation with, with me? Okay, Teresa has, Shelley has. So I'm going to share a link to where you can, where you can do that. I encourage that all of you go through this experience. Shelley, is a firm believer. Maybe you can share your experience, Shelley, so it might inspire others.

For sure, I'll share. Thank you, Sachin. Yes, I, I released so much. And I never realized, and it's true, how much we store inside of us. And lots of crying, lots of purging. And it was a really, really beautiful experience. Encourage everyone to take advantage of that.

Yeah, thank you. What, what, um, you don't have to get into details, but how do you feel afterwards? Like, what's, what's the difference that you feel in your body?

Light. Light. It's, it's this heaviness that, that I've carried around for a long, long time. Um, and, and I, I, you know, and I continue to have to work and do my breath work, and, you know, sometimes I get away from it and, and I realize how much I need it. So And it is true, it's the lightness that, that you feel afterward.

Amazing. Did you experience— and I don't know if you're having any pain, but did you experience any pain relief? Or did you find yourself doing things in your— throughout your day differently?

I, you know what, sometimes I'm in like, I do get pain in my lower belly. So like, even right now, when we just did this, and I had the nostrils go to my lower belly, I could feel the like you feel the, the tightness and then it releases. So I think that's really cool when you actually feel the expansion and the contraction in your body. So it is, it's almost like those nostrils are a tunnel or a pathway to release.

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you for sharing it. I know it takes courage and I appreciate it. So what happens when we go through this facilitation and here's what I encourage people to do. There's a few ways to leverage this resource. So it's a fully guided recording, and the part that's not recorded is the integration that takes place afterwards, because that's usually a very intimate and private discussion that we have with people that show up to our live trainings.

What—

the way I encourage people to use this breathing is maybe you do it with a spouse or a loved one or a friend. Significant other. You could do it at a distance. So let's say Shanna and Mandy wanted to do it, right? And they're friends and they could say, hey, listen, I'm gonna start it at, you know, such and such o'clock. And then we'll get on a call. We'll just do it independently. 'Cause you're having your own independent process. You don't have to be in the room next to somebody. And then you can get on a call and discuss your experience. So you could do that with a group of friends and say, hey, we're starting this at 9 o'clock. And then we're going to do a Zoom call as a, as a community at such and such time, right? Put on your headphones, just listen to it, go through the process, just go all in, surrender to it, and it's completely life-changing. So I discovered this process many years ago through a friend, through a mentor of mine, and we've become amazing friends since then. And we just hosted a breathwork retreat in Costa Rica for 7 days a few weeks ago. And it was totally life-changing for people. So we store our emotions in our myofascial system. And when the myofascial system, I think of it like an emotional hard drive. So when the hard drive, what happens when our hard drive becomes full on our computer or on our phone? Things just start slowing down, right? And there's probably photos on there and videos on there that maybe were cool and fun at the moment, but now we don't need them anymore. Right? So eventually you have to, you know, erase your hard drive, right? You've got to like get rid of all those things that no longer serve you. Maybe there's duplicates, right? Sometimes people take 10 pictures of the same exact same thing, hoping they found the best one, and then 9 of those files need to be deleted, right? So this is a way to, even if you don't feel like you have anything wrong, this is a great way to kind of shake the tree up. And it's free. Okay, so I'm fortunate that I get paid to go places and offer this, and I'm also fortunate that I get to offer it to you for free. And you can experience it. You don't have to travel to an event that I'm doing it at, and you can use this free resource. Okay, and the first time you do it will be amazing, and it'll also be your first time. So the more you do it, the deeper you can go, because the first time you're kind of in your head, right? And the second time you kind of know what to expect, so you're able to go much deeper into the process. And Shelley, you know, that's something that, you know, when even if you just do 1 or 2 songs, 1 or 2 rounds of the breathing, then that's usually enough to get you there. And so, you know, you're making that time, keep making it for yourself. And it's like peeling an onion back, depending on what we're— what we've been through and what we're holding on to. It's, it's all still stuck in our body unless we're actively, like, releasing it. So this is an active process to release what we're holding on to. Awesome. So tomorrow's session will be recorded. So yeah, just make sure you register so then we know who to send it to. And then a question came up from Shanna. How do we monitor our breath? So most of you, if not all of you, should have an Oura Ring.

Okay.

And let me show you how you can monitor these things. So we just need to open this up here. So if you have your Oura Ring app, you can go ahead and open that. I'm gonna share my screen here. So we'll open up the Aurora. Hey, you get to see my scores. So here we have— okay, so we'll go here, and yours might look a little bit different depending on how you have it set up. But if you go to Readiness, wherever you find that on your thing, So here's my readiness. And if you just scroll down here, you'll see respiratory rate. And then your respiratory rate, you know, the way you breathe during the day will be a reflection of how you breathe at night. So we want to breathe as little as possible, not as much as possible. Um, were you all able to find that on your aura? Okay, go ahead and type in what your breaths per minute are. I'm curious. Okay, okay, so we want to bring this down. Okay, I like to see mine a little bit lower as well, 10 to 12. Is what's considered ideal. And the way we lower this is going to be a reflection of the way we breathe during the day. And so as we create tools to bring more awareness to the way we breathe, and slow down our breath, it'll give us a better sense. I just want to see, does anyone else have any questions about Oura while I'm here on how you can get more out of the ring or the interface?

Can you go back to tell me where—

can you go back and tell me where you found the respiratory rate?

Yep.

Okay, so this is my home page, and everyone's home page and order of tiles might be a little bit different. I have my readiness up here, so I'm just gonna click on readiness and then I'll just scroll down and you'll see key metrics and you see here it says respiratory rate.

Okay.

Thank you. Yeah. And then you can look for patterns too, so you can see like how much it fluctuates. So you can, let's see. So before I started, learning anything about breathing was around here. So you can see that over the years, my respiratory rate has, has gone down, right? So it started off at 13.8. Now it's at 12.7. So I'm taking one less breath per minute.

Okay, now my—

wasn't too bad to start with, right? You can see that even where my starting point was, um, you know, close to where I'd like to see it. And, uh, gender, you know, different things make a difference, right? Like the size of our lungs make a difference, the size of our frame, uh, makes a difference. And that's why the range is 10 to 12. But essentially, whatever that number is, now you have a a trend to pay attention to, right? Kind of gives us a window into the state of your nervous system, right? And you might pay attention to it under different circumstances. So if you're experiencing a lot of stress, look at your respiratory rate as well. Okay, now there's a way that we can change the way we breathe. So when I was first introduced to the idea of breathing, I'm like, okay, I take 23,000 breaths a day. Like, I've already have enough on my plate. How am I going to now think of my breathing? Right? I don't give me one more thing to do. So there's an easy way to change the way you breathe. Any habit you want to change falls into a behavior change model developed by a friend of mine, BJ Fogg. And I'll share that with you. I know we're coming up on time here. So I want to be Respectful of everyone's time as well. We need to make this like a 10-part series on breathing, right? Let me share this. So this is a habit change model. It's called Tiny Habits. And if you're a practitioner, this is a great tool for you to give to your clients. And if you're a client of ours, then this is a great tool for you to apply to any new habit you want to create. Okay, and habits are sometimes hard to change. So there's 3 components. The B stands for behavior, and you'll see up here B equals MAP. M stands for motivation. How motivated are you to change? So type in the chat how motivated you are after today to change the way you breathe. I'm curious. Oops. Okay, so see, our motivation is high, right? And then, how able do you feel to be able to change your breathing? Like, you know, was what we shared today pretty easy for you to apply? You can go ahead and rate that as well. Okay, so Shanna says 100%. So what happens is we end up here now, right? So if our motivation is high and it's easy to do, then you can see how, you know, we're, we're on this part of the chart here now. Off the charts. That's the beauty of breathing. If I said change your diet, maybe you're motivated But is it easy to do? Maybe it falls over here somewhere, right? Maybe something's easy to do, like going for a walk, but you're not motivated to do it, right? We got to get you over this green line. So where breathing falls in is like off the charts over here, easy to do. And, you know, once you're educated, it's highly motivated, or highly— you're highly motivated to change it, right? And as you learn more, you become even more motivated. The last thing that we need is a prompt. The prompt reminds us. So what I encourage you to do is identify something that you're already doing. Maybe something you're already doing is you're going up and— or checking email. Maybe something you're already doing is thinking about your kids. Maybe something you're already doing is coming to a red light. Maybe something that you're already doing is picking up your phone, right? Whatever it is, use that as your prompt. So, Mandy, the next time you think of any family members that you love, think of your breath next. Okay, Will, the next time you think of your lovely wife, think of your breath next, right? Shanna, the next time you think about opening up your email, whatever it is, right? And I don't know if that is for Shanna, then— and you can tag a few things to your breath. You can tag everything to your breath. So for me, anytime I open up a new tab on my computer, I check in with my breath. Every time I come to a red light, I check in with my breath. Okay, so that's how we create habit change, and you can apply this to anything. Okay, and even if your motivation is low, right, so even if you're at 50% motivation, because this is such a easy thing to do, right? It— you're still able to create that behavior change. And the beautiful thing about breath is that because it's experiential, the shifts happen very quickly. Like, all of you felt calmer when we did the 4-7-8 breath, right? All of you felt more energized when we did the fast bellows breath with our hands moving up and down, right? There's a predictable response that happens in inside every one of your bodies, right? Every one of you, your heart rate went up. Every one of your blood pressure went up. Every one of you, adrenaline was secreted, right? So our breathing is like a very predictable tool that we have. We know exactly what's happening. It happens 100% of the time. So it's a reliable tool that we have. When we did the nostril breathing, right? Just visualizing, you know, 4 seconds in, 4 seconds out. How many of you felt more balanced and felt like maybe you were really feeling and visualizing what you were experiencing, right? And maybe time slowed down for you. All right, what I tell people is, if you want to know how short a minute is, you know, doom scroll on Facebook. If you want to know how long a minute is, hold your breath. Right, so time— so breath can actually change how time passes as well. All right, it's a— your breath is everywhere you go, right? Planes, trains, automobiles, right? Wherever you go, your breath is a tool that you have with you. So it's important that we learn how to make it you know, our humble servant. I say that your breath is a terrible master but a very humble servant. You have to tell it what to do, right? And it'll do it for you reliably. I want to share— does everyone have just maybe 5 more minutes?

Okay.

And of course, you're all welcome. Whoever needs to leave can leave. We'll still be recording this. I want to share a few different insights that I can offer you. And some of it, we're going to go over this tomorrow. That's why, um, all, but I, I know not all of you can attend tomorrow. I just wanted to share this tool with you. So this is a great way to measure your blood oxygen level test. It measures CO2 tolerance and is a way to measure mitochondrial function. Your mitochondria are the little engines inside your cells that you know, turn electrons into energy. So if your BOLT score is low, then the efficiency in your mitochondria could use some improvement. And what you'll find is that this is a great non-invasive way for you to check in to see if you're going in the right direction. So if week 1 of doing this, your BOLT score is 20 seconds, and then by week 12, your BOLT score is, let's say even 30 seconds or 40 seconds or maybe 60 seconds, then that tells you that your mitochondria is working better.

Okay?

Even elite athletes sometimes have low BOLT scores. Many elite athletes have never been taught how to breathe. So it's like literally the next frontier in, in breakthroughs in, in physical athletics as well. So how we do this is we take a few cleansing breaths. But before you do that, I want you to bring out your stopwatch on your phone. Okay, so your phone has a stopwatch. Maybe you have a second hand somewhere on your watch or on your computer. We just want to keep time. I want you to know this is, this is not a breath hold exercise. So you're not trying to hold your breath as long as possible. You're going to end the test when you feel like the urge, the first strong urge to take a breath.

Okay.

And the way we do this is we'll take a few cleansing breaths. You can take them now, breathing in, breathing out, letting the air all the way out. And then we'll take one deep breath in. And do a relaxed exhale, which means we're not blowing the air out, we're just letting the air out of our lungs. We plug our nose and then we start the stopwatch. And your first urge to breathe, okay, is when the test is over. So let's do this together. Let's all take a few cleansing breaths in and out, all the way out. Another breath in And all the way out. Okay, deepest breath you've taken all day, and just a half exhale out. Start your stopwatch, plug your nose. Okay, there's no wrong or right answers, but just go ahead and type into the chat what your timing was. Okay, great. So to help you kind of understand what the interpretation means, I'll just share this little chart with you. Great job, everyone. And it's— this exercise is best done at rest. Usually it's best done first thing when you wake up in the morning. Okay, if you're— and we're all writing, we're all learning, we're in front of our computers. So don't just use this as a way of testing your ability to do the test. Okay, versus this being your score. But here's, here's what it means. So when the BOLT score is less than 10, which nobody had, it means severe dysfunction. 10 to 20 is poor breathing efficiency. 20 to 30 is moderate. 30 to 40 is good breathing efficiency. And then 40+ is excellent breathing efficiency. Now, ideally we wanna be around 60. So if you're above 40, then let's see if we can get you up to 60. And that just means breathing slower throughout the day. We call this a controlled pause or Bolt test.

Okay.

Ways to improve your BOLT score would be doing prolonged exhales. So next time you come to a traffic light, well, I don't want to get myself in trouble. Don't do this while you're driving. But when I, when I go to a traffic light, and you could do this at any time, you could do this while someone's talking to you, you're basically taking a deep breath in, placing your tongue at the roof of the mouth. And then exhaling with a continuous stream of air coming out of your nose for as long as possible. So just exhaling slowly, a continuous stream of air through your nose for as long as possible. Okay, so as you're doing that, your lungs are deflating, the concentration of carbon dioxide is increasing. And your tolerance to CO2 is then improving. Another thing you can do when you're walking— and be safe, use your judgment— you can take a few cleansing breaths like we did, exhale with a relaxed exhale, plug your nose, and this time you're trying to hold your breath with your nose plugged and take as many steps as possible. Okay, you're stopping when you can't hold your breath any longer, so you're pushing yourself a little bit longer. Now, you could do this without walking. You could do it just sitting, where you just hold your breath with a relaxed exhale for as long as possible. The urge to breathe doesn't come from needing more oxygen. The urge to breathe comes from not being able to tolerate CO2. So your brain and tissues are getting plenty of oxygen. In fact, they're getting more oxygen the less you breathe. Okay, so two ways: prolonged exhale, and then the other way is relaxed exhale, plugging your nose, taking as many steps as you can. Or if you want to start in a, you know, comfortable place, you could just do it seated as well.

Okay.

So all of you have some tools to breathe a little bit better. All of your kits should have included mouth tape. That's an important thing to do at night. Just a piece of tape placed vertically. It's the cheapest health hack, if you want to call it that. I don't like that term, but You know, it's a very inexpensive health strategy, and it just helps ensure that you're breathing through your nose. Before I wrap up, did every one of you find this valuable? Did you all learn something new? Okay, great. If you can attend tomorrow, I'd love to see you there. I've shared the link for that. And if you haven't left us a review, I'm going to ask for a small favor. If you're enjoying what we're teaching and sharing, We'd love to hear maybe 2 or 3 sentences of your experience. If there's anything that I can do better, I'm going to leave you with my email address so you can give me constructive input and feedback. We do this for you, and we want to make sure you're receiving value. So if you would leave a short review, that would be amazing. If you'd like to give us some feedback on how we can take anything that's less than a 5-star experience and make it 5 stars for you, we want to know as well. Okay, thank you all graciously for the extra time today. I, I enjoyed our session, and I think I answered everyone's questions. If you have any additional questions, you can email them to me. I'd love to see you all tomorrow. And if you haven't done the breathwork experience, I'm just going to drop that link in here one more time. Just go ahead and, and set aside some time for your, for yourself. This will be— it's worth its weight in gold. Hey, if I charged $1,000 for this recording, I wouldn't lose any sleep at night because I know how valuable it is. Okay.

All right.

Well, have a wonderful weekend, everyone. Happy spring.

Thank you, Sachin.

You're so welcome. You're so welcome. And next week, I'm actually, I think Deepa will be back. I'm going diving with humpback whales. So I'll be in the middle of the ocean off the Dominican and swimming with humpback whales. I'll be sure to bring back lots of pictures and share those with you because they're— the way they breathe, they're able to produce a sonic wave that can be heard across the entire world. Like, that's how powerful the noise they make is. So I'm pretty stoked, nervous and stoked about it. But, but yeah, so I'm actually, since we're speaking about breath, it's James Nestor that's hosting the retreat. And James wrote the book Breath. If you haven't read that book, I think it's a must-read for everybody. It's such a valuable tool. And because it's something you do, you know, you, you breathe more than you, you breathe more air in a day than you eat food in a week. So you consume 30 pounds of air a day. So probably makes sense for us to pay attention to that. And most people, as, as we all saw, even ourselves, right, we overbreathe. So if we can breathe less, it shifts us into a parasympathetic state, calms our nervous system down. That's when we're in fat-burning mode. It's also a great tool to help us de-stress. So I'm going to leave you with one breathing technique that is called a physiologic sigh, or it's called an archer's breath. Okay, so imagine you were, you were an archer, and if you've ever pulled a bow, you usually pull it back, you know, you know, you, you do a long pull first, right? And then you do a micro pull at the end, right? Just pulling it back a little bit further, and then you release. Okay, so that's the visual that you can use, and the way we breathe for that is it looks and sounds like this. Okay, so I take a deep breath in, a little sip at the top, aim my bow, drop my tongue, and release. Deflate my lungs, right? Just letting the air deflate out. Let's do this 3 times together. We can close our eyes. Deep breath in. Another sip at the top. Hold. Aim. Drop your tongue. Release with a sigh. Audible sigh. Let it all the way out. Deep breath in. One more sip. Hold. Aim. Drop your tongue. Release. One more time. Deepest breath you've taken all day. Sip. Hold. Aim. And release.

Okay, wonderful.

When is that breath good to use, Sachin? Oh, I was just about to say that, Mandy. Great question.

Okay, sorry.

Amazing, amazing question. You read my mind. So that breath is great to use whenever you're feeling stressed out and you want to immediately shift into a relaxed state. So let's say you have a stressful phone call or a stressful conversation. Are you already kind of doing that, right? Like, I'm so frustrated. So what we're doing is we're— because the breath is a two-way communication, right? Remember, I can observe somebody's emotional state by paying attention to the way they're breathing, which means I can create the emotional state by changing the way I'm breathing. So if we want to create the emotions of relief, right, then we would just exaggerate that breathing pattern, right? All right, so if you find yourself getting worked up, if you had a red light— this morning I was on my way to the gym and I was already kind of running a bit behind, and the person 2 cars ahead of me when it was a green light wasn't going. And we have a short, very short light right outside of our neighborhood and you're stuck there for like 4 minutes. So that was a perfect time for me to like, I could sense myself getting worked up because I was supposed to meet someone. And then I was just like, okay, I'm going to use this stoplight to recenter myself. Right. Because I don't know what's going on in that person's life. I don't, and I could make up a million different stories and they'll all be wrong. But I know what's going on in my life, right? And that's the only thing I can control. So then just using that as an opportunity to recenter myself and then having a technique that I can use that rapidly shifts my state. That's what it's all about. I have a guide. You know what? I was going to share this tomorrow, but let me share it with all of you now. It's called Breathe Like This, Not That. And it gives you a variety of different breathing techniques. For different situations. Would you like that guide? All right. Okay, so I've dropped it in the chat. Which means you should be able to download it. And I can't help myself going way over here, but I'll just share this with you real quick so you know how to use it. Okay, so this gives you, kind of identifies the different states that you could be in, right? So if you have a tight diaphragm, then you can work on releasing the diaphragm a little bit, right? That's where a lot of our emotions, you know, kind of package themselves up. So when you start doing a diaphragm release, getting rid of some of those trigger points, you might even have an emotional release. So this shows you how to do that. The CO2 tolerance test. This, this is kind of what we did just now, the Bolt test. Okay. There is also how to improve your CO2 tolerance, which we talked about. Relaxed breathing, we call that coherence breathing, in and out for a count of 6. If you're stressed, what we just did was the archer's breath or the physiologic sigh. It reviews that here. If you want to go to sleep, the 4-7-8 breath is here. Brisk walk, how to breathe if you're going for a brisk walk. Before meals, how to breathe. And then when you need energy, the bellows breath that we did. So it's all here for you. When you want more circulation, if you're feeling cold, if your hands and body's feeling cold, then there's a way to breathe for that too. If your hands are feeling cold, buzz breath or humming will help increase your core temperature and blood flow to your arms and legs. And then another thing that you can do, like a really fun experiment. So just hold your hand in front of your face like this and pretend you're fogging a mirror. Okay, what temperature is the air? Is it hot or cold? Warm, right? Now go like this, like you're blowing out of a straw, blowing out birthday candles. And what temperature is the air? It's cold, right? So the way we, the way we breathe can actually create So when we fog a mirror, we're doing something called victory breath. And the reason the air is heating up is because we're creating friction in our windpipe, and that friction is heating up the air before it comes out of our mouth. When we blow with a straw, we're not creating that friction. Okay, so we can actually— and if you're having a hot flash, there's actually a way to breathe as well. Who wants to know the hot flash breath? So basically, you breathe using a taco tongue. So you put your tongue into the shape of a taco, and as you breathe in, you'll even feel the air on your tongue feeling cool. You feel that, Shelley?

That's very cool.

If you're having a hot flash, you know, that's, that's a way to breathe to kind of cool your temperature. If you're feeling cold, fogging a mirror, so you can pretend you're fogging a mirror and just let it out through your nose. That's going to heat up your core temperature. And then buzz breath, or like, like buzz breath is humming. So you hum for as long and loud as you can, that's going to increase circulation to your arms and legs. And if you're having a panic attack, straw breath, so slow breaths in pretending like you're breathing through a straw, you purse your lips. Okay, so that creates resistance, slows down the air that's coming in, slows down the air that's going out. Those are some breathing techniques, a little bonus for you that stuck around today. And you can print that out and just put them somewhere where you can have access to them. Okay. Well, thank you, gang. I have to run. I was supposed to be gone somewhere 27 minutes ago. So please excuse me for the abruptness. It was great spending time with you today. I will I guess I'll probably see you in a couple weeks, but until then, have a wonderful weekend and happy spring again.

Bye.

Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Bye-bye.

Bye.