#44: Is Breathework Just A Buzzword? 🧘‍♂️ 😆

foreign this isn't a joke but it's just just something that our kids have been saying to us and I think it's kind of funny um they've been walking around in kind of a like like bullied uh mocking mocking fashion and they're like you have a little hoo-hoo how old are they three and four and they're they're just out here telling people they have little hoos and we we keep asking am I like what what is that what is a little hoo-hoo and they're they they never explain yeah they never explain it so it could be a million things but you know we take it personally like it's talking about our genitals the most the worst insults we could ever give to anybody yeah I don't even know that there is anything and they're nailing it yeah they're nailing it so we're walking around all insecure wondering if they've seen our hoo-hoos you know and just sitting in judgment but it's funny man yeah it's a it's a good life yeah I love having little kids like that yeah uh so the question I have for today is um is breath work just a buzzword I love that you're doing this it's like becoming like really really popular and we're drinking the Kool-Aid oh we're we're you know fire engine water hose yes you get to drink from the fire hose both you and I are actually really digging through the fire hose right now so I know that you're like setting this up so we can talk about how much we love breath work yes essentially good and is it crazy that we we like it that much yeah that's a good that's a good question so yeah let's talk breath work today um why don't you start talk about kind of I mean we've done we've we've always been really into like mindfulness right meditation and some of those the things that we've done mindfulness meditation include certain kinds of breath work um but you had a recent experience that sort of turned us on to like a whole new world yeah so um and this this was you know at the recommendation of of Brandon so B was went to this breath work uh Workshop it ended up being a really seriously good experience for him he said he was able to release some resentments and bitterness he had around a certain relationship and I was like well that sounds awesome like yeah I don't have any of those resentments to work on so uh tell me about it maybe I'll go check it out so he explained what it was is this guy called Vitality Mart now or something like that and regardless of his background or anything the process is called holotropic breath work and the goal being that you super oxygenate your brain you're almost unoxygenated by hyperventilating yeah yeah the other way so you saturate it with carbon dioxide essentially and it puts you in kind of this different state so much so that people will often have psychedelic experiences they'll have semi-spiritual or even full-blown spiritual experiences and you know at first I was like come on dude is this is this just like a cult devil worshiping like what are you doing exactly is this you know maybe they sprinkle something in the air while you're you know did you worship him as your leader you know like what else is going on here so it sounded like it's got all the marking things of Something Fishy but the more I looked into it broadly it's not just this guy there's there's plenty of History beyond beyond this and there's more research that's coming out around this that kind of points to it being a valid form of of therapy in some some way and that it might actually be healing yeah and um so for me when I went to this experience I was open-minded I participated fully committed to the process and it yielded really interesting and wonderful fruits I'm I'm still trying to understand what the heck happened you know because it was so wildly different from any other type of breathing that I'd done maybe with the Wim Hof breeding being the most similar and I yeah so I I'm excited to learn more explore it a little bit more this is what I've been doing you've been doing for the purpose of our Retreat and and even just beyond that with the therapy practice and whatever else and so it was it was Monumental in that singular experience two two different experiences that I've had with breath work now have been eye-opening and I think enriching and helping me live a more wholehearted life and so I'm curious what what it is that you've been learning and what what it is that's been impactful for you yeah great yeah um well you're the one that kind of came back so I'm I'm the slow one on the uptake on a lot of these things so Brandon's the one that's way out there and then you go I'm in the middle yeah yeah and then I'm like oh okay they didn't die and I still think they're pretty normal um that was probably another bird dude Grouse right there yeah yeah so I'm not complying that in a second but I'm the one that's still on the uptake so when you both come back and you're like hey there's something to this you know and you didn't tell me the depths of your experience but you said you know same kinds of things Brown and said I started I started looking into it too and and uh it's interesting because a lot of people when they even hear the term holotropic breath work it sounds like like the person who came up with the name actually was a hippie who used acid so like the reason the way a hellotropic breath work came about I mean it's been it's been around forever for thousands and thousands of years but the person who turned the coin holy Tropic breath work was actually using psychedelics and breathing together in therapy and found that that the breath work itself could sometimes almost produce a similar response to the psychedelic drug even without the drug and so um and so so what people are finding and what the theory is is that there's a few things that go on with the holotropic breath work for thousands of years they've used it for basically emotional coping and release trauma release they've used it for basically groundedness becoming more more grounded and to try to to try to lower the ego so to speak the mind that's always thinking that keeps kind of the gates locked around certain experiences that maybe we're afraid of or places that we're afraid to go the breath work actually seems to find a way through that first armor of the ego and allows for the other parts of ourselves some of the subconscious some of the spiritual parts of us to sort of be opened and unlocked and um and so that's the theory behind it right what's interesting is it's been around forever and there is some research on it but there's it's actually a fairly under researched field and I think one of the reasons why it's becoming more popular to talk about is because of the uptake on the psychedelics for for therapy right yeah because that's so closely tied to that I think that's also coming into more of the Forefront of this stuff actually really works yeah and you know in my in my own learning so far I have I didn't go to an event like you guys did but I've been doing some of this and I've had two different experiences I've done a lot of them yeah or had two different experiences now that have been very very like spiritually emotionally valuable to me and I've I've experienced the goodness of what I think it's intended to offer now and so that's why I've like hey there might be something to this and we're developing some of it now too right we're like actually trying to learn how to do it better and and help produce experiences that can be really valuable for people and um and what we're learning about the breath like we have a guy in one of our groups he's really into the Wim Hof breathing what did he say he can get high on your own Supply you teach yourself to get high on your own Supply isn't it isn't it amazing that that the base mechanism that keeps Us Alive is also like is also somehow capable of allowing us to have spiritual experiences to find groundedness in this world to find peace to find emotional regulation even we I did a breath work with one of my women's groups just yesterday and one of the ladies said I had this experience where I realized that I was breathing in the same way that I always breathed when as a kid when I was in my trauma with the abuse that I was experiencing and she said I'm so grateful that God gave me that gift as a child when I didn't even know I had it to just help me survive and I thought what a great way to look at that that the breath was actually part of her Saving Grace rather than that breath that she was breathing being a bad a distressor yeah it was actually a regulator and uh I'm talking a lot now but yeah so no I I think that is such a poignant fact though I think about the the times that I've learned about it and used it for calming down so I I had only understood as like yeah it keeps you alive and now I'm learning you can calm me down it's it can do something on the other side of the spectrum too yeah it's it's like it really is a a tool that is so powerful and built into us it's like everybody has to be able to do it to perpetuate existing and they could use it for these other as a tool um you know I'm thinking about times where uh I was trying not to fly off the handle with you know kids smearing poop on the wall or whatever the situation was and let it all out and even just one of those is already like all right I've made a switch um but then you know doing more of that that box breathing those types of techniques really have value in helping regulate and stabilize um with uh recently for whatever reason we've had a hard time falling asleep and Chels got this it's called a morphe and it's a little little device that all it does is have have guided breathing a little bit of music and you know people walking me through kind of body scans and different things it's a really simple thing and set it up turn it on for 8 or 20 minutes and I mean making a sales pitch at this point yeah um but what it's done is allowed us to sleep though and all it is sitting there breathing slowing down your breathing intentional way of using your voice yeah it's mind-blowing yeah you know it's funny what you're talking about too is one of the skills in DBT is to simply just observe your breathing and it's to help regulate your emotions same thing it's to not just take a deep breath but to observe your breath so observe the end observe the out and in your case it's interesting that what we know about the breath which is so amazing that it's it's accessing both parts of us in terms of our nervous system the in-breath is giving us that up breath and if you only took the in-breath and didn't let it out you're probably going to do something stupid with your kid but but in that situation the out breath especially an extended out breath is the part that's like put the body to rest soften it it's almost like the in-breath is life and the out breath is death over and over and over again and it's up and down up and down we're constantly in a cycle is in a lot of ways it's just like our lives are like the people who live the happiest lives know that there's going to be ups and downs in life and they just embrace it as normal the same way that we can do with our breath but if we understand what those parts of our breath do we can now use it to help navigate this world that we live in where when I'm trying to fall asleep I need to actually be breathing out a lot slower and a lot more than I'm breathing in and eventually that that'll put me to sleep when I'm you know needing to fight flight or freeze you know or get ready for a sports game I'm going to be reading a lot heavier a lot faster and the breathing in is the action partic it's going to fuel that adrenaline part and it just happens automatically and now we come to understand that that's what it's doing and it's weird because now that we understand it and choose to do it it produces even better outcomes than even just by doing it by itself yeah I was just thinking about um kind of two different things one is that I had a friend from the last men's Retreat he's he's been full focus on breath work and some of these healing properties and he sent me a guided breathing meditation that just a little 10-minute thing that he did and it was really cool I gave it a shot and and felt um more grounded that's I really like that word when it's not tarnished by the the Psychedelic kind of uh realm anyway after doing it or while doing it I had the thought of the sunrise the first time I've ever had this thought the sunrise is kind of like the breath in for the earth and the breath out yeah the sun says pretty cool same idea yeah just more more of that cycle and then the other thing that um I was thinking about is our experience doing that Wim Hof breathing last year and I I think I just wanted to share a little bit about that at least from my side you choose what to do with yours but um this was at the retreat right yeah at The Retreat and it's I mean it's pretty simple breathing very simple yeah with the breath holds they have breath holds at different intervals by the time I got to the third breath hold and and we want breath you know like yeah our bodies kind of demand it right uh so whenever we withhold from our bodies in that way it does something different to us and a lot of the time in the past I've viewed it as like what I'm the only time I've ever held my breath is underwater and I don't want to drown you know yeah I get in this kind of panic mode and he's taking you the opposite direction he's saying hey just like you're saying with DVT just notice just enjoy it yeah just enjoy it like sit there in that Stillness and let it do what it's going to do and I had one of the most powerful experiences where it felt like the message for me was not even the message it was just a pure feeling of I love my own existence yeah and but it was more of an experience than it was yes yes exactly a feeling that just full saturation and it felt like a gift like it was put in me in my heart that I love my own existence I wasn't searching for it I had I didn't even I didn't think I was that mindful um you know with with any kind of intention going into like just be committed to the breathing you know and see what happens but it it was like God was there ready to place that in into my heart and in a way not not even like I'm grateful for my existence it's I love my own existence which was an absolute answer to me and some of the things that I've been facing you know with the self-hate and self-loathing it's like it that's stuff I got to work on and here's a huge here's a gift to get you down that road yeah so she gave you Direction in your life too it wasn't just this like high on your own Supply right I had a crazy it was oh how pleasant well I I actually tapped into some things that are really valuable for me that I can now take and use in my own day-to-day life maybe it's a way of being maybe it's a new thought for yourself maybe it's a new direction to go um in your case it was grounding and but grounding in like into love yes yeah and that we realized teach that the greatest fuel source in the world is love right and when we're when we're operating from that place that's where it's the most sustainable and where we do the most good and um I had a similar experience you know mine was slightly different than yours but at the same experience that's what's so cool about this breathing too is you can have 30 people do it and every person is going to have a slightly different experience some will be like that was stupid other people can be like whoa what just happened you know right yeah and all across the Spectrum and you know and I did the same thing I remember on the very last round we did three rounds and the very last round lying there in that breath hold I didn't I didn't want to breathe in because everything had gone so still and that I felt mine was more of an outside thing rather than an inside thing of like I felt just this whole encompassing feeling of like fullness and love from the interconnectedness of everything and I'm sitting there and then I'm starting to think about the guys I'm laying next to and how much I love them I don't even know them other than like two days you know right yeah yeah and then I like I love this Lake and I love the Earth and I just started to expand itself like whoa like this is awesome thank you I love I love feeling love so um yeah it was really cool experience and it was so steel I just I didn't want it to end you know and uh it was good really good stuff so we're still learning I do think there's definitely something to it I think it's always so incredible that I happen to believe in God that God created us with built-in mechanisms to be able to navigate this world and just thinking about what you were saying that our existence stems off of an in an out breath and every day has an in and out sunrise and our lives have many in and out iterations of things that we learn or experiences that we go through of ups and downs and who knows how far that it's like Inception who who knows how many layers there are to that cycle that's kind of beautiful yeah it's beautiful for me to think about so thanks for bringing that upon that all day thank you foreign