Breathe

Welcome to the Healthy Mindset App podcast where host Mike Hartman, a performance coach and former professional athlete, brings his passion to help athletes and workplace athletes achieve their dreams and goals while being mindful of everything else in life. Mike also uses this platform to share his targeted assessment application. Healthy Mindset course meditation and goal setting technique for the athlete and workplace athlete. We're glad you're here. Now let's dive headfirst into this episode of the Healthy Mindset App Podcast podcast. Here's your host, Mike Hartman.

Today. In this episode, I'm going to talk about breath work, also known as controlled or conscious breathing refers to various techniques that focus on controlling your breath to improve the physical or the mental emotional well being. I've done breath work for, for so many years. I love it. And these practices have been used for centuries. They've been around forever. It's, it's nothing new. It's so many different cultures. And it's good to enhance relaxation, reduce stress, increase mindfulness and provoke, promote overall good health. I mean I, I've used breath work in so many ways. You could watch, you're watching a baseball game and you'll hear the, you'll see the picture. I hope you don't hear it. Take a big deep breath and that' necessarily the breath work. I'm going to go over different types of breathing that I've learned and I'm definitely not an expert in this, but we use this within our community. HealthyMindsTapp.com is we have some great meditations and breath work and different things that we do. Imagery. You're going to get a lot of tools that are going to help you in your everyday life. Healthymindsetapp.com the first one is like deep breathing that I think is important. It's a technique that involves taking slow, deep breaths that expand your diaphragm. It's rather like, you know, rather like shallow chest breathing. It promotes relaxation, reduces stress and helps calm the nervous system. It's great. Someone also taught me box breathing. Box breathing involves inhaling and holding the breath, exhaling. And some of you probably know this a lot better than me, but we've used this in sports. We've been taught this. It's like our dietitian, she tells us what to eat, but that doesn't mean as an athlete we always know what to eat. So this should help you. And definitely a lot of these tools that like box breathing and different things will be in the community as well. Especially box breathing, like I said, reduces anxiety but regulates emotions. And it's so good for you. And then there's nostril breathing. There's different techniques. People call it alternate nostril breathing. I think I was told that once it's a technique that involves breathing through one nostril at a time. And yes, some of these things are uncomfortable, but it's good to practice. And I had a lady that showed me at a Starbucks once, I met her and she was actually on our show about breath counting. So breath counting involves focusing on your attention of your breath and counting each inhale and exhale. This is what I love because we practice mindfulness so much, but it really does. It helps the practice that can improve mindfulness and concentration. So there's many different types of breathing here. One that I read is the WIM HOF method. And I don't recommend any of these, but somebody told me about this Joe Storzinger, he's a friend of mine in New York, says I want you to look him up. So he would jump into ice tubs and I mean just the craziest thing. The WIM HOF method combines specific breathing techniques with cold exposure and meditation. It's known for promoting increased energy focus and resilience. And it's incredible what he does. I am not recommending any of those. Please consult your physician before you do anything. But there's a lot of reasons why, why we do this breath work. The benefits of is it helps reduce stress. Breath work is effective in activating the body's relaxation response and reducing stress is, is so important we manage our stress right. You just can't get rid of stress, you know, improve focus. Breath work helps you like I really say it's mindfulness. It helps you stay in the moment. It helps me with clarity of my thought. I love it. Emotional regulation Breathwork practice can help regulate emotions, reduce anxiety and promote emotional balance. And there's so many different things here. We talked about better sleep earlier, energy boost it detoxification and I. I've learned that it helps with self awareness. And there's so many different reasons why we use breath work. But it's important to approach, you know, the breathwork practices with a sense of curiosity and respect for your body's limits. We can't do all of these like the WIM HOF method. I can't do that. I mean, but it's, it's not possible for, for me right now to, to do something like that. But I could take some of these and learn from them and do some research and that's what our community is for. So you could bring some of these topics up, like breath work in our community. And I'm going to be putting several subject matter professionals in our community to help with a lot of this in our communities, growing every day with athletes and workplace athletes. And that's the healthy mindsetapp.com so if you're interested in exploring breath work, consider seeking guidance from experience practitioners, instructors, or even the resources that we have to meet your goals. So this was short. I just wanted to get this out, help you with this. And there's a reason why we do it. And we take all these tools and we apply them and we try to maximize our potential to be our best self. Any questions, please reach out. We'd love to help you.

We're so glad you joined us for this episode of the Healthy Mindset App Podcast with your host, Mike Hartman. If you're enjoying the show, please feel free to rate, subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. That helps others find the show and we greatly appreciate it. To dive deeper and learn more about the Healthy Mindset program or to get in touch with Mike, please Visit our website, healthymindsetapp.com thanks again for listening and we hope you'll join us again in the next episode of the Healthy Mindset App Podcast. Until then, be well.

Sam.