B (3:57)

Let's do it.

A (3:58)

All right, then. Quick disclaimer. If, in case you're sitting in a car or you are riding a bicycle or a horse or you are doing backflips or whatever, please do not do the breath work right now. Only do it once you're home in a safe and comfortable environment. And for the rest of us, I'll invite you to take a tall seat, maybe close your eyes for the next couple of minutes, and initially just notice your breath the way it is, without a need to breathe in any special way. Just observe where you feel your breath the most, breathing in and out through the nose. Notice the temperature of the air, Which might feel a bit colder on the inhale and a bit warmer on the exhale. And finally, let's bring our attention to the pose between the inhalations and the exhalations, Because for a split of a second, our bodies are at rest between the breath. They have nowhere to go and nothing to do. And what we're going to practice for a minute or two now is what I call a physiological sigh, the body's natural way to reset the nervous system. We're gonna place one hand on our belly and one hand on our chest, and we're gonna take now deep inhale into the belly, expanding the lower parts of the lung and the small sip of air into the chest. And the long, extended exhale with. Deep inhale. With the belly expanding, pushing the hand away. Small sip of air in the chest and through the mouth. We let it go with control. Breathe into belly, chest and exhale. Side it out through the mouth like fogging up a mirror. Five more rounds. Breathe in. Belly, chest. Let it go, releasing any tension you might have built up earlier in the day, emptying your lungs. Breathe in. Belly, chest. Let it go with a side. Relax your arms, relax your hands and your fingers. Deep inhale, small sip of air. Let it go. Two more like that belly, chest out. And the last one. Take the deepest relaxed inhale, fill up the lungs, feel the expansion on your body. Take that sip and we let it go. Like fogging up a mirror, emptying the lungs. Beautiful. We can slowly open our eyes. How did that film?

B (8:25)

That was hard for me.

A (8:27)

What was hard about it?

B (8:27)

Very tight, Very tight.

A (8:30)

You felt tight as well?

B (8:31)

Very tight, yeah, really tight.

A (8:34)

Where did you feel the tightness?

B (8:36)

In my stomach, my chest. Like really? Yeah, I've been noticing that recently.

A (8:44)

What do you think?

B (8:44)

How did it feel for you?

A (8:46)

What do you think that might indicate?

B (8:51)

I think just, you know, my, my nervous system is very activated. It's very, very upregulated, shall we say? And just harder for me to relax at all and like pull breath into my belly. I've been noticing my belly feels really constricted.

A (9:10)

One thing I like to share is a little story is, you know, I used to watch a lot of National Geographic when I was a child and I often saw tiger chase like a zebra, right? And then the tiger catches the zebra and what you see is the zebra starts only taking shallow inhales in the top of the chest, almost like hyperventilating, because they are in a state of stress, the state of anxiety that potentially turns into trauma later. And what I believe in is that by deepening the breath and working on long extended exhale, you can actually get out of that state and you can regulate yourself. Thanks a lot, though.

B (10:01)

Well, I was going to ask that for any of our listeners who like me, were in a place today where they found that hard. What's the way to sort of move through just wanting to give up and not try it because it feels hard?

A (10:17)

I think it's about baby stuffs because by doing a one or two minute breathing exercise, you might not feel that immediate snap of finger change, but maybe by doing just three, four minutes in the morning and three, four minutes in your lunch break, and then three, four minutes when you decide to actually leave the office, and then just try that for two, three days, your body learns really quickly. Your diaphragm is a muscle like any other muscle. It has muscle memory. So by giving it small bits and pieces of breathwork spread out over time, you actually teach it that, that you can take it easy and take easy long inhales. You don't have to just hyperventilate in the top of the chest.

B (11:08)

I think that my audience probably knows the answer to this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway, which is why? Why breath work and why breath at work?

A (11:22)

I think the answer relates to the tiger that I mentioned a minute ago. A lot of us, including myself, I used to work in software sales and I almost went through burnout. I noticed a lot of my colleagues struggle with severe stress at the workplace. So I started looking into it. What could I do to prevent myself from ending up in the same space? And what I found is that people easily go into this unconscious stress spiral that has something to do with our autonomic nervous system. There are a lot of body functions that unconsciously function. For example, our heart rate, body temperature, blood sugar levels, your digestion. You don't have to tell your heart to beat, it's just going to do it by itself, at least in most cases. Yes. And breathing is also one of them. And I'm sure a lot of people know, listening, that there are two states of your autonomic nervous system. There is the sympathetic nervous system, which we also call the fight or flight state. That is happening when a tiger is chasing us. And that's actually a good thing. It's good to be stressed sometimes because it can save your life in 20, 30 seconds. And I call that the accelerator or the gas pedal of the nervous system. Now, on the other hand, we have the parasympathetic nervous system, I call that the brake pedal. That's the rest. And reset. And that's what we should be experiencing ideally most of the time in our lives. Because being in the fight or flight state, which is what I think leads to a lot of people experiencing burnout, results in long term chronic diseases. Because your cortisol level, your adrenaline, the stress hormones, continuously stay at a high level. It's not supposed to be that way. And we are supposed to be in the parasympathetic nervous state, which is calm and relaxed when we digest, when we sleep, but also when we do deep, focused work. Now here's the problem. The tiger is gone. At least for most of us, or at least in most part of the world. I don't very often encounter tigers in Amsterdam. But the stress is not gone and it's not anymore a 30 second quick let's save our lives. It's really sometimes an eight hour workday of stress because we still have deadlines, dance meetings with our managers, negotiation presentations for a lot of people.

B (14:14)

And I think one of the important things, just to interject here that's so important when you think about the power of stress, the goodness of stress, is that it is truly meant to be like an acceleration that Then eases off and returns back to a neutral state. Right. I mean, that's. To me, that is the difference between understanding stress with an approach, mindset of like, yeah, I feel stressed. I have a big presentation today, or it's my first day on the job, or, you know, I have a swim meet, whatever. Right. That's when it's good to feel stressed. It's good to feel anxious. Right. Anticipating the future. But there's always an end point.

A (15:00)

There should be.

B (15:00)

At which point. Right. At which point you decelerate, and then you can go sit on the couch and watch Netflix feeling like you did a good job. That's the ideal. Right. The parasympathetic kicks in and you're like, I'm chilling.

A (15:14)

You need the pause. Or at least you need a pause sometimes.

B (15:17)

Exactly. The pause, yeah.

A (15:19)

That's why I'm so obsessed with breathwork, because for quite a long time we believed we cannot influence all these autonomic functions. But. And when I read about James Nestor's book Breath, I'm sure you heard about it. It's a great one. He collected a lot of research that recently showed that by actually breathing in a certain way, you can hack into your autonomic nervous system because we cannot tell our heart how to beat, we cannot tell our cortisol level to go down, but we can't tell ourselves how to breathe. And with that, we stimulate the vagus nerve. Right. Your. Your longest nerve in your body. And if we take deep inhales with long extended exhales, we can actually regulate our autonomic nervous system and be more chill. And I think both of them have a space in a working environment. As. As you said, we don't have to be relaxed all the time. It's okay to feel stress sometimes. Yeah, you just, I think, have to identify some work situations where you want to be more in the rest and reset phase versus you want to be in the fight or flight state.

B (16:37)

Is there a mid stage between fight or flight and I mean, when you think about the window of tolerance, you know, and I think about the workday, you know, there is a mid level of stress, the sort of the EU stress. Right. Where you want to be. You want to be at a comfortable level of stress where you're alert. Is there a breath practice that helps us. You know, sometimes we need to rev up a little bit. Right. Sometimes we do need to get a little more. Certainly I do at my age, a little more energetic, ready to face the day.

A (17:08)

Well, I would say box breathing can be a really good practice for that when it's also incredibly simple. What I like about it is that it has a 4 second inhale, 4 second breath hold, 4 second exhale, and again, 4 second breath hold. Now what you find is if you draw it down, it gives this box shape, this square shape, and each side are equal, which means it's very systematic, which means it has a little trick to regulate your heart rate. So you're not gonna feel when you practice this exercise like you're running away from a tiger. You're also not going to feel that 4pm Slamming your energy. When you just want to take a nap, it's somewhere in between. So if you want, we could actually practice that for a couple of seconds, maybe a little bit longer than the previous one. So we give the audience a chance to integrate the experience. How does that sound?

B (18:05)

Let's do it. Let's do it.

A (18:07)

Yeah. Let's do an exercise that is designed to make you feel energetic and focused and productive at work, the box breathing. But at the same time, it's not going to give you that overly relaxing, almost like sleepy sensation that put you on the sofa and make you pass out.

B (18:27)

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A (22:49)

So let's practice box breathing which allows you to inhale for four seconds, hold your breath for four seconds, exhale for four seconds, and again hold your breath for four seconds. It's very paced, it's very systematic, and that regulates your heart rate to be just how you want to be at work. Focused, systematic, regulated. So if you want to take a comfortable seat, lower your shoulder, close your eyes, and again, just notice your breath for a moment. The way it is. You're gonna start off with a gentle exhale through the nose, breathing out the deep. Inhale, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four. Breathe out, two, three, four. And hold, two, three, four. Inhale, two, Three, four. Hold, two, Three, four. Exhale, two, three, Four. Hold, two, three, Four. Inhale, two, 3, Four. Hold, two, Three, Four. Let it go. Empty the lungs, hold your breath. Relax your shoulders. Deep. Inhale with the relaxation. Hold your breath with a full lung. And now exhale. Let it go with control. Now hold it on an empty lung while relaxing your shoulders. Breathe in. Hold, Exhale. Hold. In. Hold, Exhale. Let it go. Hold. Breathe in. Hold on the top. Breathe out. Hold on the bottom. Now do five cycles in your own time with the 4, 4, 4 pattern while ensuring that we breathe in with the relaxation. We don't need to force it or push it. And on the exhales, let's find the muscle group that is still a bit tense or holding on. Let's bring just 5% more relaxation there. One last round. On your last exhale, maybe put a gentle smile on your face, relax the muscles around the eyes, let your toe drop and let your breathing normalize. When you come, open your eyes slowly. How was that getting there?

B (27:37)

That was great. Yeah, that was much easier. It was fun when I could pick up the beat and time my exhale or my inhale with the beat. That was very cool.

A (27:49)

You know, the idea of syncing music with the breath came from actually a music festival that we recently attended with balance. We were hosting breathing workshops in a tent in a hidden area of the festival. With noise canceling headphones, lying down on cushions, and especially people who are neurodiverse really appreciated because they said you go to these music festivals all day, you are surrounded by extroverted people, blah, blah, noises, lights, crowd everywhere, usually bad quality food, alcohol. And they just really liked having this calm, safe space where we just did like 10 minutes of breathing. That's really cool.

B (28:31)

I resonate with that very deeply. I often just in the middle of the day will lie down on the floor with either some music or a really mellow podcast or audiobook and just breathe. Just lying on the floor is so healing. I don't know why. It just sort of lets you Let.

A (28:53)

It go and you can do it everywhere. Like, that's what I find beautiful about it is you can do it at the airport, on the train station, at the hospital, when you're about to maybe get some good news or bad news, or at the music festival or. Or at work. You go in a meeting room during lunch break, you close the door, put some music, find a YouTube video. It's so easy. You can do it everywhere.

B (29:16)

So, Jean Barre, you have a kind of an interesting story because as you mentioned before, you started out at a place in your career that is very different from what you do now. Can you tell the audience a little bit about that journey and, and what you do do now and how you've made a living out of it and a business out of it is really interesting to me.

A (29:41)

Yeah. So the story started with a corporate off site that I think every company has one once a year. And my team went to a remote location in the Netherlands with a lot of cows and cheese farms, as you would kind of imagine if you closed your eyes.

B (29:57)

And where were you working at the time?

A (29:59)

I was working at a software company in educational technologies. So I was selling software to universities to make education a bit more collaborative, gamified, interactive, enhancing critical thinking. But it was still a software sales, high paced, fast environment, hitting targets, negotiations. And then we were on this offset and some of my colleagues said, z, that weird thing that you do during lunch break in the corner by yourself, that breathing stuff, can we try that together? I was like, hell yeah, it's time to shine. Let's do it. So we just did like a simple box breathing for 10 minutes at the off site. And they said, well, I like it so much that I want to do it every Wednesday at the office with all the other colleagues. So then we started doing it every Wednesday. And then people told their friends and families and wives and husbands and partners, and then their company started approaching us, saying, hey. Roughly one in five employees in the Netherlands, but I think also globally struggle with burnout. It's extremely costly for companies to have people on mental health absence also. So I found that people enjoy it and I found that companies are willing to invest in it. And so we started Balance Breeding to host corporate breeding workshops on a regular basis. Just 20, 30 minutes, either online for remote workers or in the office, just in a meeting room, get people together, close their eyes, do some breathing. You don't need any tools, you don't need any experience. Everyone can join. It's super simple.

B (31:34)

It's very low cost, it's very low.

A (31:36)

Cost and people actually like it. But I found this often mobile apps are great for people to practice mindfulness and breath work who are already into it. Yoga studios are great for it because yeah, people going to yoga studio already want to do it. Psychologists, consultants, helping you with mental health challenges, they're great because you're already feeling bad, you know you need help. But what I found very astonishing with the corporate breathing workshops is that people come who wouldn't otherwise give it a try because their colleagues are doing it because their HR team is promoting it, because it's on the elevator and the toilet flyers. It's drawing people in.

B (32:25)

I think that's really. I mean, Brett, there's something about breathing that's accessible because of course we all, we all have to do it and we can feel it so viscerally. Right.

A (32:36)

What I like to ask from people is this morning when you woke up, do you remember if you took an inhale first or an exhale. And people don't know? I don't know.

B (32:50)

I checked my email.

A (32:52)

You check your email? Yeah. Let's see those Slack notifications first before I take a breath. Indeed, indeed. And one area where I especially found breathwork to be useful in a work context was related to listening. Because when I was at this software company, I was a sales team lead and very often the most constructive feedback I got in my performance review. And when I say constructive, I mean like tough, bad feedback. Is that Z. You're not listening. You're not really paying attention to what I'm saying. You don't know how I'm feeling. And then I really thought about it, like I could care about the people on my team, but why can't I listen? And that's when I figured that when your mind is racing all day, you're going from meeting to meeting. You have all the notifications, you have to wear 20 different hats and then you finally have your one on one with your team member. You're not in the state where you can listen to them truly.

B (34:10)

So what do you do? How do you use breathwork to get into listening mode?

A (34:15)

So what I do is pretty much before every meeting, or let's say any social interaction with colleagues, I just do a two minute, very simple breathing exercise like what we've done with the double inhale and the extended exhale or the box breathing. And what I found is I can be a lot more present, like small things. I know that I'm sitting here. I know that I'm looking in your eyes. I feel the Temperature of the air a little bit. And I'm more capable of listening, not just sitting there and hearing what you say. And also not just the hey, here are five tips to be a better listener. Kind of LinkedIn post where you're like, do some mirroring and labeling and repeat the last three words and ask some open ended calibrated question. No, I really feel like I can put myself in the other person's shoes and really feel what they talk about and how they talk about it. And I can ask smarter questions. We can find together better solutions. I think it's really impactful.

B (35:27)

One of the things that I've been playing with is trying to do a little co regulation with breathing, especially weirdly on zoom. And I learned this actually in therapy with one of my kids because, you know, when you're dealing with a very anxious kid, they are really physically, like, they show their dysregulation physically in a way that I think adults, like sometimes we get better at like masking and they show it in their breath. And like you said with the poor zebra, that poor zebra. And so what I, what I started to try to do was be more present and calm and use my breathing as a way to help them sort of pick up and breathe a little bit more slowly too. And it really worked.

A (36:29)

I think there is no age group or no audience that couldn't benefit from this. And like, of course this is a long term vision, but what I want to accomplish with balance is bringing breathwork to as many environments as possible. Let that be schools, primary schools, high schools, universities, hospitals, defense, making people more conscious and aware of the decisions they make. There's really, I think, no limitation to it in terms of who you can help, what age they are in, where they are located, what they are struggling with. I think breath work has really a lot of implications.

B (37:13)

I very much support that vision. I hope, I believe that companies are ready for it and you know, to the audience also, like, you know, I would love to hear any ways that you experiment with breath as a way to interact with colleagues. Right. To defray tough situations or just sort of bring the temperature down a little bit sometimes.

A (37:39)

And I also think what people should share with others is how do you turn this into habit?

B (37:46)

Okay.

A (37:47)

Because what I struggled with, I started practicing breath work about 10 years ago is that I did this, I don't know, 30 day mindfulness challenge. And a lot of people say that if you do something for 30, 45, 60 days, it becomes a habit. Well, it didn't for me. After 30 days I was like, oh, I'd done the challenge, I bought myself a nice hot chocolate, gave a tap on the shoulder as a recognition. And then I went back to the same racing mind saying, not being able to listen, not being regulated in the workplace, being reactive and not reflective. And so if anyone has tips on how to turn this into a long term habit, I would love to, I would love to hear that.

B (38:29)

Yeah, I, like much of my audience, I'm neurodivergent. Habits are kind of, I'm allergic to habits. Except that, except bad ones. But, but because I, because I feel like repetition is like my enemy. But the, the funny thing about breath is I think that to your earlier point, for me at least it's mess. It's become muscle memory so that I am so in tune now with my breath that I don't have to like cognitively think of it as a habit. It's at a deeper level, like me. You may have spent a lot of your work life wondering why some tasks that are simple for other people take you forever. Why you procrastinate on certain things but not on others, or why you feel really anxious about certain parts of your job. Here's the thing. This is not a character flawless. It's wiring. Patrick Lencioni, author of the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, created the working genius assessment to help you identify the type of work that you're built for and the type of work that you're not. And the thing is, there's no shame in this, right? If you listen to this show, you understand that we are all wired differently. Things that are hard for me might be super easy for you and vice versa. And that's why we're on teams. To be an amazing leader, you don't have to do it all. You have to know what you're amazing at. And that's where the working genius assessment comes in. It's great. It gives you the clarity to stop wasting time on the things that drain you and that you'll never be good at. And double down on what you're awesome about leveraging your strengths. You can take the working genius assessment today. It's quick, it's simple, it's powerful. I've taken it, as have millions of other people, and get 20% off with code Achiever at workinggenius. Com. Just go to workinggenius.com, enter the code ACHIEVER. You'll get 20% off and you'll be so glad that you did. There's a lot more to your business than what you Actually sell. Your business identity is everything that shows what your business is about from what customers see to to what they don't see like operating agreements and compliance paperwork. And yes, if you're going to be successful, you need these things. Get more for your business, more privacy, more guidance and more free resources to start and scale with Northwest Registered Agent. They've been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They are the largest registered agent and LLC service in the US with over 1500 corporate guides. And these are real people who know your local laws and can help you in your business every step of the way. And trust me, you're going to need that. So build your complete business identity fast with Northwest Registered Agent and get access to thousands of free resources, the forms you need and step by step guides even without creating an account. And with Northwest, privacy is automatic. So don't wait. Protect your privacy, build your brand and get your complete business Identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit northwestregisteredagent.comAchiever free and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest registered agent@northwestregisteredagent.com Achiever Free.

A (42:20)

And I also think that's because, say, as a mindfulness practice, breath work can be categorized, I think was it more as physiological because it really happens on a muscular level and you really feel the impact with the tingling in the fingers, maybe the blood running through your veins depending on what type of breath work you do. Whereas just mindfulness meditation is very psychological. And also my partner is, she has ADHD and she tried meditation and she found it actually a little bit frustrating. Like the classic, hey, let's do a body scan, let's imagine the clouds passing through the clear sky and let's appreciate different body parts that she got angry with herself for not being able to close out her thoughts. Whereas with breathwork you are really told what to do either by yourself or by a YouTube video or a breathwork coach. You just have to gut them, do what you're told to do. So it's relatively, I think, simple. It has a muscle memory element and it's more physiological than psychological. And that also helps with a lot of, let's say, skeptics. I often see people, I'm not going to do meditation. It feels very still spiritual and maybe related to religion. But when you do breath work it it's extremely hard to deny the body effect afterwards.

B (43:48)

It really is. And even if like at the beginning I felt it was so hard for me that I felt that in my whole body, how hard this was. It was like a signal to me, like, oh my God, you are tense today. Like, what is going on?

A (44:04)

I think it's breathing is a very good mirror. Just like in the morning when you look in the mirror and you say that, oh, I have these bags under my eyes, maybe I didn't sleep enough. If you close your eyes and all you do is observe your natural breathing patterns so you're not modifying it or manipulating it. You just see, okay, how easy it is to take an inhale and how smooth it is to take an exhale or does it feel actually heavy and scattered? And that gives you, I think, a very good self reflection of how you are doing. And if you are potentially on the track to go towards more, let's say severe chronic stress resulting in burnout, I think it can be a great detection tool about how you are a hundred percent.

B (44:57)

You have to start learning to tune into it first though, right? You have to just like, like you said baby steps, just slowly. So that is my. I know we're going to close out with one one more exercise, but before we do that, I just want to ask you a question to that point. So I read a study that, and I experienced this myself when we are emailing, when we're working with our computer, we tend to hold our breath and we tend to tighten our belly, which to me just that is my experience. I also do it when I'm driving. I don't breathe well when I'm driving. Right. Which obviously can be a little bit tense. How do you recommend people practice breathing better when they're actually engaged in emailing? Zoom work on a computer.

A (45:49)

So we have this little device, at least most of us do, and it has a very simple functionality which is a timer. And for people who want to practice conscious breathing, right, Move away from the shallow chest hyperventilation breath, move away from holding your breath, Move away from crunching your stomach towards relaxed, deep, long inhales and exhale. Set the timer to 15 minutes. It goes off every 15 minutes and all you have to do is have it next to your laptop. Click, stop, take a deep inhale and a deep exhale. One more in, one more out, one more in, one more out. You do three of that and as you said, it actually like diaphragm, the breathing muscle does have muscle memory. So it learns relatively quickly. It's like, I think it's called the Pavlov effect or something like that, right. When you're ringing the bell and then the dog is all of a sudden Running there with the saliva because they know they can get food. You can teach your nervous system with the 15 minute alarms that I took three deep, good quality inhales. Now all of the sudden I feel better. And then next time you do it again, you do it again, you do it again and then you will find yourself not having to turn on the 15 minute alarm, but actually your body naturally creating that good quality breath because it makes you feel better.

B (47:25)

That is so brilliant. And does it matter when you're doing the long exhales if you breathe out through your nose or your mouth?

A (47:33)

So by default we should be inhaling and exhaling through the nose all the time to an extent that some people actually tape their mouth to avoid mouth breathing. That's mainly for the inhale because by breathing in through the nose compared to the mouth, you absorb about 21% more oxygen. That's the first rule of good breathing. The second rule is to breathe in the belly. So engage the lower parts of the lung as opposed to the chest. The third one is your posture. You should be like sitting up straight but with a relaxed shoulder, hips above the knees, feet toward the ground. Like that's how we breathe. To answer your question, does it matter how you exhale? I think that matters less than the inhale. Now how you exhale actually has relevance on the other hand, because exhaling through the mouth and maybe giving it some sound, there are some breathing exercises where you do like an M sound is also something that gives an extra layer of relaxation.

B (48:37)

Right, right. Or in yoga I learned the Ujjayi breath. Right. The breath of fire also, which I, which I love and use all the time, which is a different sound. Right.

A (48:54)

It's like fogging up a mirror.

B (48:56)

Yeah. Clenching of your glottal muscles.

A (48:59)

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now I want to also share a paradox. As we were chatting, something came to mind. And this paradox will be actually reflected in the last breathing exercise that we are about to do. Because we've been discussing how it's good to take deep inhales, extended exhales. With that we get in the rest and reset the kind of con nervous response. But there are scenarios where doing the fight or flight breathing is actually beneficial for you when it's around 2pm and you're getting a bit sleepy. Or if you are a night owl and you still have to show up at the office because of morning people at 9am Instead of chugging your third coffee, you can and you should actually practice some faster fight or flight hyperventilation based breathing exercises. It can be Bhashtrika or breath like it can be something like. Or just focus on quick exhales. What this does is it makes you alert. It actually releases some adrenaline and cortisol, which are your stress hormones. But those can be beneficial if you want to have this quick uprise of energy in your body when you feel a bit foggy in the head. So that's one use case when you want to do the fight or flight breathing. The second use case, which brings me to this paradox, which is what we are about to do is about training your nervous system how to respond to unconscious external stimuli stress. So what do I mean by that? What I mean is if we do, let's say 30 very fast, very heavy inhales and exhales, we are purposefully, intentionally purposeful, placing our body under stress like when we are running away from the tiger. But here's the trick. If you do that on purpose, consciously, then the next time unconscious stress will hit you, the external stimuli or manager knocking on the door with some bad news and colleagues screaming at you, your nervous system will be much better at responding to that stress and adapting to it. And avoid you being reactive and maybe overly emotional in your reaction. And be a bit more reflective and be more present and actually decide about how you want to react as opposed to going to autopilot, if that makes sense.

B (51:36)

Really by, by sort of what, expanding the repertoire of how you can breathe and stimulate the upregulation.

A (51:46)

It's a bit like when you go in an ice bath or you do do a cold exposure, which a lot of people don't like a lot for understandable reasons. But why it's good from you like next to the blood circulation and muscle recovery benefits, like from a psychological perspective, why it's good for you is that it makes you decide to stress yourself. You get used to it for a short time period. Now the next time it happens to you from the outside, you not being in a decision power, you're just suffering from it, you're still gonna react better.

B (52:25)

That's awesome.

A (52:26)

Okay, so why don't we give that a try?

B (52:29)

Yeah, let's do it.

A (52:30)

Let's do that. So what we're gonna do is a so called circular breathing exercise. This will consist of 30 heavy inhales and exhales that sound something like this. And during the practice we will not take a pose between the breath. After the 30 cycles, we're gonna take a breath, hold on, empty lungs. We're gonna hold our breath because we created oxygen surplus in the bloodstream so it's actually going to be quite easy to hold our breath for 30 seconds, 45 seconds and maybe even a minute. A minute. Health. You will experience some strange sensations. You will feel the blood running through your veins, lightheadedness, tingling. That's because we are exercising. Breathing exercise is just like any other exercise. And we are intentionally putting ourselves under stress. So don't be surprised. However, if you are pregnant, you had cardiovascular diseases, stroke or epilepsy in the past. Please do not do the breath hold. Just keep breathing normally and also take it easy. Really listen to your body. We ready?

B (53:45)

Let's do it.

A (53:46)

Let's do it. Now. Let's close our eyes again. Just notice our breath the way it is. Let's become familiar with it without breathing in any space special way just yet. And to sync up our breath, we're gonna exhale together now through the mouth as we breathe in. Breathe out. In, out. In, out. In, out. In, out. Inhale. Exhale, Inhale. Exhale. Inhale, exhale. In with the relaxation, out with the stress. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Keep that rhythm going for another 15. Breath in. Circular breathing. We do not take a pose between the inhale and the exhale. We connect the breath creating oxygen surplus in the bloodstream. We got 10 more breath and if you started to feel, feel a bit light headed or dizzy, that's perfectly normal. Five out. Four out. Three out. Two out. One out. Take the deepest breaths you've taken all day. And on the exhale, we let it go. 30 seconds breath hold. From now on, on. Empty lung. Bringing the attention to the heartbeat and slowing it down. Just being in this moment, let that relaxation spread to your toes, into your fingertips. And now we take a deep breath in. Hold for 15 seconds with a full lung while relaxing your shoulders. And then we're gonna do two more cycles where I'm gonna invite you to adjust the speed to whatever feels right for you. If you want to challenge yourself, feel free to do so. If you want to take it easy, you're more than welcome. You can breathe out now get back in the same rhythm. Breathing in, out.

B (57:05)

In.

A (57:08)

Out. In, out. In, out. In, out. Inhale. Exhale, Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. In with the ease, out with the stress. Breathing in, breathing out. We are halfway there. And not try to find your own pace. The goal is to fill up your lungs to about 80% capacity and then breathe out forcefully, letting go of any stress. Almost there. You're doing fantastic. Five more breaths. Approaching the finish line. Last 1. Breathe into the belly, chest, head. Let it go. Try to focus on any physical sensation you might be experiencing. The breath hold allows you to become more calm and more present, Lowering the heart rate. 3, 2, 1. Deep breath in. Hold for 15 seconds with a full lung. In the last cycle, I'm not gonna guide anymore. I'm gonna let you breathe in a way that feels right for you for the next two, three minutes. Maybe slow or fast, you can breathe out. Now just take 30 inhales and exhales in your own time. We try to draw the inhale in the bottom of the belly, engaging the lower 1/3 of the lungs up until the top of the chest. Then we exhale with the relaxation. It. You're halfway there. Adjust the speed to what feels right for you today in this specific moment. 10 more breaths. Them. Three more. Last. Deep breath in. Feeling the expansion on the skin up until your forehead and the long exhale out. Now just hold your breath as long as it feels right while relaxing your facial muscles, relaxing your jaw, relaxing your tongue, your chest, shoulders, arms, hands, releasing your fingers. Whenever you feel strong urge to take a breath, go for it. Otherwise, you're welcome to extend this breath hold as long as it feels right. And being this calm presence that we experience after the heavy inhales and exhales. And if you haven't done so so far, please take a deep breath in and hold for 15 seconds with a full lung. And just like how we started off today, through the mouth, we're going to sigh it out, Letting our breathing normalize. And just observing for a moment how our mind, our mental state might have shifted. Just like how we started off today. Let's bring our attention to the temperature of the air, which might feel a bit colder on the inhale and a bit warmer on the exhale. Let's observe the pose between the inhalations and the exhalations, finding stillness for a moment. And with that calm awareness, let's bring some movement into the body. Maybe circling the shoulder, Looking left and right, Stretching the arms, Stretching the legs. And gently opening our eyes. How was it? Intense.

B (65:53)

That was too hard for me. Like I couldn't do it.

A (65:57)

It's a very tough, challenging breathing exercise.

B (66:06)

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A (67:29)

It shows your body, though in a very exaggerated format, what happens when we hyperventilate when we over breathe and what happens when we shift back to calm, conscious breathing. And unfortunately, most adult humans take about 1516 breath per minute just in a regular state of working on a laptop, whereas the healthy breathing rate is about 5, 6 breath per minute.

B (68:02)

Oh my God.

A (68:04)

So we over double breathe. And you know, there is this analogy where you look at various animals and how long they live in comparison to the number of breaths they take per minute. If you look at these big old tortoise, I think in English, tortoise, yeah, they take about two, three breaths per minute. Kind of what we did in the box breeding. Whereas if you look at mosquitoes that die after a few days, they are apparently taking 50, 60, 70 breaths per minute. So some people say that you can measure your life not in the number of years that you live, but in the number of breaths you take.

B (68:59)

Well, I have so many thoughts I'm almost at a loss for words. I want to thank you for this and I realize that I have so much work to do. My belly is so tight that I can't do that exercise and my mind feels much more alert from the hyperventilating, but my body feels like it's rebelling and I'm curious if any of the listeners feel that way too. Last question. If that exercise was so hard for us, what do you recommend we do to get to a place where maybe it's not.

A (69:35)

So? I have a colleague who came to me after one of these sessions, the heavy one. He also couldn't A lot of people can't do this. It's too much. And he said z I very often have panic attacks that come from social anxiety Especially in large, crowded areas with a lot of new people around me, I just start and I can't stop it. And he's like, what should I do? And this is where that contradiction, that paradox comes in, that actually by practicing this heavy, fast breathing, you can teach your body how to slow down even in a panic attack, because you are used to feeling the hyperventilation, stress. And when you get used to it, when you train your nervous system, then in the unconscious situations, you can react so much better. So what my advice is for people who still after this difficult exercise, feel the crunch in the stomach, feel the shallow inhales in the top of the chest, is don't be afraid from it. Try to do it every now and then. It's 10 minutes. You go on Google, you click circular breathing, you'll find a bunch of them and give it a try a few times. On the other hand, in your regular work environment, do the slow breathing, do the chill inhales, the box breathing, do the extended exhales. That's what you want to experience most of your day. Set an alarm on your phone every 15 minutes. Remind yourself to take easy, deep breath. The other stuff is more for training yourself.

B (71:17)

Jean Bru, thank you so much. This was really profound.

A (71:19)

Thank you so much, Maura.

B (71:25)

That's it for this week's show. If you like the show, follow us and tell your friends. And please leave us a review. It really helps the anxious achiever get found by people just waiting for our content. I'm your host, Mora Aaron's mealy. Lots more to come in the next episode. Sa.