Mastering Your Breath With Joanna Krysiak

Mastering Your Breath: A Guide to Conquering Anxiety Through Breathwork With Joanna Krysiak – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0csWTca5QvI

Transcript:
(00:00) when we’re in a lot of stress and anxiety and and depression we obviously we usually feel very disconnected from our bodies we don’t want to feel our bodies it’s difficult for us to feel our bodies so the breath can be an amazing a way to just to make that connection back to the body and by just creating that connection back to your body with your breath is already already going to create so much liberation and give you so much more freedom and so much more calmness in your body because that disconnection is usually the thing
(00:33) that’s actually causing a lot more of the fear a lot more of the anxiety and a lot more of the depression hello everyone and welcome to the flow over fear podcast where it is our mission to help you to rise above fear and realize your ultimate potential in leadership and life I’m your host Adam Hill and it is my goal to share with you the human side of high performance my guests share their experience with fear anxiety struggle Challenge and most importantly despite all of it how they Rose above it to achieve incredible
(01:09) results so if you’re ready to rise up let’s get started hello everyone and welcome to flow over fear so glad you’re here today because we have a great great show and I want to start with a question how’s your breathing how how are you breathing right now uh if you looked at the title of this episode you probably know where we’re going with this but if you haven’t you’re probably looking at it you might be breathing too shallow you might you might not be breathing at all and uh and
(01:39) it’s one thing that we neglect a lot in our lives and I know that includes myself even though I consciously try to stay attuned to it my guest today is going to help us through that process and get us familiar with one of the most important things we do on a daily basis by the minute by the second so uh Joanna chrysiak is a breathing expert for well-being and managing stress she has worked with dozens of women in businesses all over the world helping them lower stress manage anxiety regulate their nervous system and
(02:11) overall feel healthier and both physically and mentally ever since discovering the power of breath work in her own personal training business and health and wellness Journey she has done multiple certifications in various breath work techniques and today she is sought after by ambitious women who care about their health yet struggle with chronic stress constant anxiety sleeping issues stuck emotions and overwhelm and as a breath work facilitator and a functional breathing coach she helps people to improve their health feel
(02:42) inner peace and overall sense of calmness in their day and even even if they struggled with it in the past and who doesn’t need that am I right so welcome Joanna thank you for being here oh thank you so much Adam for having me yeah it’s a well it’s a real pleasure because this is something and I know you’re in in as I read through your bio uh you know you’d mentioned you help you know women and and I want to get into that into the differences between maybe men and women uh but uh but breathing is
(03:10) obviously something that is for everybody I mean you know so so it’s an important aspect so I want to kind of get into how you uh how you began on this journey where what what took you into the world of Health and Wellness um Okay so just to start I have always been super passionate about health and fitness ever since I was a kid I was very into sports I was always into soccer and playing different team sports when I was younger and then once I got into high school I kind of fell away but then I found the
(03:44) gym and I started going to the gym and started doing workouts and strength training and I was always into that very like healthy lifestyle like my family always seed me as the one who’s always making up stuff when it comes to like healthy recipes and you know different activities so there was always some kind of underlying passion for health and fitness so I feel like this was like always on my path somehow um and then somewhere along the line I became a health and fitness coach as well just because back in when I was in high
(04:14) school I was actually doing a degree in math and physics so I actually went on to do a certification and actually go on to University into civil engineering which is something completely different and then I had some stuff in my and my life happen that kind of put my life upside down and made me realize that I’m not really following my passion and I’m kind of just following this path of civil engineering just because it’s a quote-unquote right thing to do so I kind of took it all upside down and
(04:46) I found out about health coaching and I became a health coach so somewhere along my path I found this thing about breath work and I started listening about it I actually heard it through a podcast which is funny so it’s full circle moment right there and I heard about it on on this podcast and I thought wow this is something that I need to try because in that moment even though I was taking care of my health through healthy diet through movement I still wasn’t feeling 100 myself I still knew that I had a lot
(05:19) of pent-up emotions I had a lot of anxiety and a lot of stress and to just give you a little background on why that was for me um so when I was seven my mom passed away oh that yeah that is a really big toll on my family and and on myself emotionally and physically even though I didn’t really realize it throughout my life that much or I didn’t allow myself to realize it really I just kept living my life somehow and when I was 19 that moment that I said that pivotal moment when I quit my civil engineering this
(05:50) degree and went into Health coaching my it was because my father passed away and both of those both of those deaths that happened were from suicide so both of my parents struggled with depression and so both of the things happened from mental health and I had a lot of family members all around me that really struggled through with their mental health and through mental health illnesses and I had this moment where I was like this can’t this can’t be me like that I can’t be another person that is just
(06:21) perpetuating this cycle so when I heard about breathwork and I heard about like all the amazing benefits that it has for our bodies for emotional health for mental health I was like there has to be something to to this and on the anniversary of my father passing away I did my very first breath work session and I was completely blown away it was 20 minutes of breathing I was sitting right back here on this couch actually doing the session and in 20 minutes I felt emotions that I never allowed myself to feel Before I Let Go of so
(06:55) much stuck Stress and Anxiety in my body not only from a mental and emotional level but also physically I had this tension in my neck and shoulders that would just not go away and I’ve had it for months and I tried so many different things like acupuncture massages like you know name it I tried it and it would help for a little bit but then it would still come back right it was just chronic distention and pain from just having so much weight and stress in my life and after this breath work session I I still struggled to describe it to
(07:25) this day what it felt like but it was this warm electric feeling it kind of felt like electricity just coming from my shoulders flowing through my arms and it just kind of like came out and evaporated through the palms of my hands and I know it sounds super weird and mystical but that’s exactly what happened and after that session I got up and I was like how am I just finding out about this if people knew what they can do with their breath and feel this good from just breathing there would be so much less suffering in this world and
(07:59) you know life went on and I kind of forgot about the breath work experience and then rhetoric just somehow kept coming back to me kept coming back to me and the pandemic hit and that’s when I really dove into my breath work practice even more doing it every single day because you know we were on lockdown and everything yeah so I was really doing it every single day and when everyone was freaking out and in a lot of fear I was like living my best life at that time because I was breathing every day and I was like I’m just so happy I’m
(08:28) feeling so good like what are what are people freaking out about you know and I just I found out so so funny and and then I reflecting back on it I was like oh yeah it was because of the breath work it was because I was breathing every day and I was like tapping into my body and I was moving this stress and I was I was really training my body to adapt to stress better and then and then yeah and then life just went on and then I found out at this breathwork certification and my whole body just screamed like you have
(08:56) to do this and yeah that’s where we’re here now that’s incredible and they thank you for sharing all of that so vulnerably and and you know to share about the passing of your mom at an early age and your dad it was such a tragic occurrence um and and uh and I mean I know that that must have you know weighed very heavily on you as far as you know kind of moving moving through that I can I ask you know I could I I can I dig into that a little bit more and just find out how that how that affected you growing
(09:25) up between those ages of when you were going to college and and and uh and you know how how you dealt with it before breath work how how did it impact your your everyday life yeah yeah thank you a lot of people ask me that and to be honest I didn’t really deal with it I kind of my protection mechanism was really being the Rock and being the the one who lifts everybody up so with my I had a youngers I have a younger sister and my dad like I kind of felt like I was the one who had to carry it all obviously it wasn’t like that completely
(09:59) like I wasn’t like the breadwinner of the family or anything like that but I had this like underlying feeling that I had to be the one that’s holding it together for other people so that was kind of my defense mechanism and I really didn’t allow myself to tap into my my emotions so before breathwork I really did not describe myself as an emotional person quite the contrary I was like oh like what are emotions like they’re just like for weak people that’s kind of what I saw it like right and not
(10:26) only until I found breathwork and I allowed myself to feel those emotions I found how much strength there is in allowing yourself to feel emotions and emotions aren’t the bad thing and that’s what I really thought back in the past that you know any emotions that I feel I have to stuff them down and I have to shut them off because if I feel them then I’m somehow gonna break down or something like that so yeah yeah so I didn’t really deal with it in a very healthy way and that’s why I had so much
(10:53) pent-up emotion and so much pent up stress in my body it kind of felt like I would just like holding everything inside of myself yeah and that can definitely relate to a lot of that you know but a lot of what you’re saying there and and it’s very powerful it’s a powerful story because just a um you know just suppressing those emotions I I pushed down a lot of my anxiety for a very long time as well and it came out in in destructive ways for me before you know finding any kind of ways and in dealing within a healthy way
(11:21) so it’s it’s I think it’s powerful for people to to know that there’s that you know emotions may feel bad right they sometimes they may feel feeling feelings may feel uncomfortable but they’re there for a reason you know so it’s important to feel them is that is there any uh so for somebody that may be suffering or struggling through something like that and certainly if you’re if if you if you’re struggling with depression and you’re having some you know thoughts of of of harm or anything like that please
(11:53) get help there’s you know 988 in the United States or elsewhere I’m sure there’s other other ways to get help so please seek out that help but uh Joanna would you is there anything that you would recommend for anyone that’s going through some kind of trauma like that yeah so this is a very difficult and a very individual question so we can look at Trauma from obviously different lenses so the first question is are you the person who is experiencing this the depression and the anxiety or are you
(12:21) the person who is the caregiver of that person or the relative or the loved one and both situations are going to impact the person differently obviously and also have a slightly different approach and how you actually want to bring yourself up through that situation right so when it comes to having the mental illness having the depression like you said like reaching for help in any way shape or form obviously breath work facilitators are not therapists we have to have that very clear distinction is a tool to support us it’s not necessarily
(12:55) the end-all be-all to everything and I always like to say like breath work isn’t going to fix all your problems but any problem that you have breath work will help you with it so we really have to make that distinction and we’ll be really really clear about that so if you are going through a difficult time please like just like Adam said please do seek out help and you can really help yourself with your breath as well so what I would really look into is just really finding a breathwork modality a breathwork facilitator that really
(13:26) speaks to you and somebody that really feels like they could support you and that’s really really important and starting slow like you don’t have to go on this full hour two hour breath work sessions because I feel like that’s what we’re really seeing in social media right now is like those really hardcore breath work sessions where you’re you know crying and shaking and all that stuff and that part of breathwork is amazing but honestly that’s like one or two percent of your sessions like most
(13:53) of your sessions aren’t going to look like that that’s just the truth and they don’t have to look like that so starting nice and slow and easy is what I’m going to recommend for those people and really just listening to your body and when we’re in a lot of stress and anxiety and and depression we obviously we usually feel very disconnected from our bodies we don’t want to feel our bodies it’s difficult for us to feel our bodies so the breath can be an amazing a way to just to make that connection back to to
(14:21) the body and by just creating that connection back to your body with your breath is already already going to create so much liberation and give you so much more freedom and so much more calmness in your body because that disconnection is usually the thing that’s actually causing a lot more of the fear a lot more of the anxiety and a lot more of the depression right right that’s that’s part I’m so glad you said that and I’m so glad you went into the the idea of that that breath work is such a that the breath work is a tool
(14:52) and and that you clarified that point of of you know it’s a tool in the toolbox of of getting help and it’s a very powerful tool and the idea of starting slow and just you know you don’t have to jump in as we’re seeing everywhere I I know a lot of us fall into that trap of just you know jump whether whether it be a fitness program or breath work or you know anything else we tend to see the people that are that are you know that are up here that have been doing it for a long time or that are that are doing
(15:20) the extreme level of that and think that we need to be there but we don’t have to we just have to start it’s just and just a few minutes at a time and and so yeah and so I thank you for sharing that and um how uh you know so so I want to kind of get into the breath work and and talk a little bit about that because it because you um uh you started that you I mean you you come from a background of math and physics as you were going through in in college which is I mean you were on the path to to uh uh you know getting us
(15:51) like a a what society would call a stable career with civil engineering things like that it’s a it’s a bold uh it’s a bold jump to go to health and wellness so I want to unpack that a bit how what was the draw to get from that you know from that stable path which might have been unhappy and I know you know the Dynamics might have worked out there but to the to the uh to the breath work and the health and wellness Journey that you were on yeah so um I’m actually going to backtrack just a little bit and kind of
(16:23) circle back to the question that you asked me before because while we were talking it this kind of came about and I feel like this is also important an important part of of the story is also that like you said when I was dealing with a lot of these pent-up emotions and stress and the way that I would usually deal with it before was actually through uh workouts and through working out and I did have a point where I was really in this addiction to working out right so I really every every time I had some emotions coming up I would just go and
(16:58) go hardcore into the gym and you know do a lot of very intense workouts and that actually disregulated my nervous system quite a lot because not only are we stressed mentally and emotionally but we’re going to the gym which is obviously something amazing and good for our health and I’m a personal trainer so I love health and fitness right so I’m not saying it’s a bad thing but we often use that also as a coping mechanism because we’re just perpetuating the stress but in a different way so we’re adding this
(17:28) physical stressor to our bodies and it feels good in the moment right because we’re having those that strike of you know all the endorphins and the dopamine and all that stuff but we’re not realizing that we’re actually causing more stress and just we might be covering up what’s the underlying root cause of us wanting to go to the gym right not from that place of wanting to you know improve our health improve our Wellness but going there from like a unhealthy addiction as well right so that that can also happen and I I kind
(18:03) of went through that cycle and I was getting out of it slowly but surely before my my dad passed away and yeah and the moment I I vividly remember it was like it was yesterday I was sitting in my dorm because I was living at a dorm at the time and my sister was in a different city where where our home was and I was in orissan I was studying there and I remember sitting on my bed and I had this not a flashback but a flash feature into my future and seeing myself as the civil engineer with the house with the car with all the things that I
(18:42) thought would give me that feeling of safety all the things that I didn’t really have securely as a child before and I just saw myself so unhappy even though I had like all the things that I thought I wanted and in that moment I was like I don’t think I can do this and I kind of went back and forth with myself for like a week or two but I’ve noticed this cycle and this this pattern in my life that when I realized something that I’m supposed to do something or that I’m not supposed to do something I can’t ignore
(19:15) it like I even like no matter how hard I try it like keeps giving me those nudges just keeps giving me those impulses and yeah I was just I was actually at the gym and I was just like no I think I I think I have to do this and and I did it and I kind of it obviously it wasn’t just like a one second moment but it was just like a build up and I I had that decision and like I said like there was a lot of fear that was there but in the end all I didn’t really see a different option for myself really I was like I’m
(19:46) either gonna stay here and just be super unhappy and miserable but after what happened to to my parents I really one of the things that really set for me and one of the things that really came for me during the grieving period of that time was I do not want to live one more day unhappy and unfulfilled like I’m not going down that cycle and I’m going to do everything that I can to live my best life no matter how cheesy that sounds that’s like literally the thing that not only kept me going back then but
(20:18) literally the thing that keeps me going every single day is I want to feel good every single day because what’s that what’s the point of living otherwise right like you wanna I Wanna Live my best life and not just survive and that’s actually something that I love using with breathwork as well is breathe to thrive not to survive right because you can breathe unconsciously and not think about your breath and it’s gonna keep you alive but if you consciously use your breath you can actually use it
(20:42) to fully live your life so that’s also what brought me to breath work and really pushed me to push me to go head-on in full force I love that breathe to thrive not just to survive that’s that’s a powerful statement I love those little nuggets of wisdom so uh and thank you for for sharing all of that and then so so once you made the jump from you know civil engineering to health and fitness and all that everything was easy right it just everything went smoothly and easily right I wish even today I was like three
(21:13) hours sitting and fighting with technology I was like thank God I have breath work because I would go crazy yeah I don’t I don’t know I was fighting with technology is about at all no no that’s right yeah uh well fortunately you jumped into something that’s going to help you manage a lot of that stress so so can you can you help us with the uh with the timing so so with the breath work what was the timing of like when you discovered breath work related to when you jumped into Health and Fitness
(21:38) yeah so I jumped into providing health and fitness Services I guess as you could say in somewhere in between 2018 that would be the time um and then 2019 was the time where I did my very first breath work session and yeah so so that was the first time I I did my very first breath break session and then covet hit in the meantime and then I really Dove even deeper a few months after my first session and I became um actually this Saturday is going to be my breathaversary of the becoming anniversary facilitated yeah love it
(22:17) love it so yeah so that’s kind of the timeline that it all happened that’s great so what what uh and let’s kind of jump into the breath work that the the uh I guess the how it works because um you said you got certified and what type of uh so what type of breath work did you start with or what was the what was the uh I guess the Epiphany moment that that you had what was the type of breath work that you discovered yeah so I’m actually facilitated on the first breathwork modality that I tried
(22:47) which is pause breath work so pause is a breathwork modality and the founder of Paws is Samantha Skelly so kudos to her for creating this amazing breathwork modality and what I really love about this modality it’s really not forcing anything with your body it’s really letting your body do the work for you and it has a very trauma-informed lens a very trauma aware lens right so there are so many different breath work modalities and I’m very grateful that this was the very first one that I found because a lot of people start their
(23:21) breath work in a very intense way with example holotropic breathwork or rebirthing breath work where sometimes you’re breathing for like two or three hours and it’s a very intense experience and for a lot of people like that can be actually re-traumatizing and they feel like they got so overwhelmed that they don’t want to try breathwork again so I’m really grateful that this was The Medallion that I started with for the very first time and that was the one that I started with the most so all the
(23:48) Tropic breath work Wim Hof breathwork in a sense pause breath work these different breath work modalities these are all based on conscious hyperventilation so conscious hyperventilation is a breathwork modality where you’re working to Exhale a lot of CO2 and make your CO2 levels in your body drop and with that comes a lot of Sensations a lot of different mechanisms mechanisms that happen in the body and we can dive into that in a little bit and the second style of breath rig that I do and I’ve been facilitating as well is called
(24:25) reduced volume breathing and the most known reduced volume breathing techniques are through buteco so there is a beauticome method so it’s also a breathwork method and this method is pretty much the opposite of the other one so it’s breathing to raise your CO2 levels and make your CO2 levels more tolerable for your body so making your body more adaptable to the C to higher CO2 levels and making your body less CO2 sensitive so those are the two breathwork modalities and I love using using them both that’s why I got certified in both
(25:00) these modalities because I think that they both have very unique benefits to them and they’re amazing to supplement themselves with right right yeah so so and and I love that thank you for sharing those two and and so I do and you mentioned Wim Hof that’s that’s the breeding method that I started out with and I know that’s a bit extreme and and and so I’d love to kind of dig into that in a bit but I want to get into the physiology bit because you mentioned that that so so Wim Hof Falls more into
(25:31) the am I understanding correctly that that falls more into the holotropic breath work that you’re talking about which is similar to the pause breath work so pause breathwork is kind of a variation of holotropic breath work it has some core differences but it’s kind of like a variation of it Wim Hof is what’s called tumor breathing so it’s a even different modality right but okay so what what um what what Hoff’s method does is it uses hyperventilation but then it pairs with it with pauses right so in those
(26:05) pauses you’re letting your CO2 levels rise and kind of even out so it’s kind of a similar effect to the reduced volume breathing but in a more extreme a more intense way yeah yeah yeah yeah and and so now like kind of that you’re you’re yeah you’re bringing up the um the CO2 and and some of the physiology that occurs what so we have oxygen and CO2 kind of working you know working in that system what role are they playing and what is the purpose for say CO2 or oxygen in our system yeah okay so oxygen is the one that we
(26:45) usually most think of when we’re breathing and we usually think that we need to breathe because we need oxygen which is actually the other way around the chemical that causes you to want to take an inhale and the chemical that actually signals your brain to breathe is actually CO2 not oxygen so you can have a lot of oxygen stores in your body and your body’s still going to want you to breathe and that’s because of the rising of the CO2 levels so what oxygen does it obviously gives and provides oxygen to your blood to your muscles for
(27:23) energy right that’s the main thing that oxygen does in our body CO2 on the other hand like I said CO2 is actually very important in our body not just because it signals our bodies to breathe but actually because it allows the oxygen to get into our cell cells so we have this amazing little molecule called hemoglobin and this hemoglobin is actually what transfers the oxygen throughout our body and but for that oxygen to kind of detach from the hemoglobin and get into our cells that’s where we need the carbon dioxide so it’s
(28:00) actually this Paradox that when you’re having more CO2 in your body you are actually providing more oxygen to your cells instead of breathing more which you’re exhaling a lot of that CO2 and lowering the CO2 levels you might feel like you have more oxygen but you’re actually causing your cells to have a left of that less of that oxygen within them yeah oh wow okay so that that’s that’s helpful and then as far as uh as as why why so why do we need so we have the two types of breath work to pause breath
(28:36) work and the reduced volume breathing and they kind of have reverse purposes for reducing CO2 and increasing CO2 why what what is the purpose behind wanting to you know train our bodies to reduce CO2 and increase it yes yes I was reading for this question okay one of my favorite things to talk about awesome so when it comes to conscious hyperventilation so the one where we’re lowering our CO2 levels this is the modality that we’re using for a certain period of time so this is very very important we do not want to be
(29:13) unconsciously hyperventilating so that’s why it’s called the conscious hyperventilating because you are hyperventilating for a certain period of time for a certain purpose and with a certain technique right right so with this breathwork style it is amazing for releasing trauma releasing stuck emotions for getting into a very meditative State because it turns off the frontal cortex the prefrontal cortex of your brain and it lowers the activity there and your emotional and your limbic brain become more active so that parts
(29:51) of your brain responsive for the survival mechanisms in your body there is more blood flow to those parts of the brain so it’s we have just more access to to our subconscious mind we have more access to all the different things that are going on subconsciously in our bodies and to our emotions so I love using this breathwork style like I said for releasing emotion releasing pent-up anxiety releasing stress because during this conscious hyper hyperventilation breathwork technique we are actually simultaneously activating two parts of
(30:31) our nervous system the part of our nervous system that’s responsive for the fight or flight mode so the stress and motivation and action mode and at the same time you’re activating the part of our nervous system responsible for resting digesting and relaxing and this is a very unique point in time in our life where we’re actually having both of these nervous systems both of us excuse me both are the part of this nervous system very active so that’s kind of gives us a window of opportunity to
(31:02) expel a lot of this trust to expel a lot of the anxiety because our body is active enough to feel it our body’s active enough to actually feel into that and have that active within our system but at the same time we’re feeling relaxed and safe and we’re in a safe environment in a safe container if you’re doing it with a you know a breath work facilitator or in your own safe space at home where you feel safe enough to experience it and let your body and breath do the work for you and let yourself really like you said feel into
(31:33) those feelings and let them go because the only way to get out of an emotion get out of a feeling is to go through it the deeper we feel it the more we allow ourselves to feel something the more we’re able to release it right right so that’s what we want to use conscious hyperventilation for when it comes to reduced volume breathing this breath work method is really amazing for increasing your tolerance for CO2 now why the hell would you want to do that so you would want to increase your tolerance for CO2 to help yourself
(32:08) manage stress better because actually the amount of CO2 that you can tolerate is directly linked to the amount of Stress and Anxiety that you have in your body so if you can’t tolerate stress very well you’re going to have a lot more fear in your life you’re going to have a lot of more underlying anxiety but if your body isn’t so sensitive to that CO2 and you tolerate it better you’re going to be able to tolerate a lot more stress and this is just really from a nervous system perspective it’s
(32:38) something called nervous system atoning so you’re kind of like it’s kind of like in the gym right you’re literally training your body to handle more so if you’re breathing with less air you’re breathing very gently very lightly and this is the breathwork technique that you can’t really see so you know when a lot of people see breathwork on Instagram it’s usually you know very belly chest out you can really see the breath moving through the body and that’s the conscious hyperventilation style but this reduced
(33:08) volume breathing you can barely see it because you’re breathing just through your nose you’re doing it very gently very slowly so because this can actually also be very in a very interesting experience because we’re usually thinking that we have to breathe more or breathe very deep and I’ll take big breaths to relax but this is actually giving doing the complete opposite so not only is raising the CO2 levels going to relax your body but it’s actually also going to train your body to have that CO2 level in your body rise
(33:46) and have a better tolerance for it over time and once you do this for a longer period of time and you notice that your body is going to be able to tolerate more stress it’s going to have a huge impact both on your emotional health on your physical health and on your mental health so I love using conscious hyperventilation a few times a week for beginners once a week is totally enough but conscious hyperventilation like one two to three times a week but using reduced volume breathing techniques every single day to
(34:20) really help yourself bring that nervous system down so this breath brick technique is really amazing for people who have a lot and I mean a lot of anxiety and who are consciously hyperventilating because their nervous system is so driven by the fight or flight nervous system that their nervous system wouldn’t be able to handle conscious hyperventilation as much so it actually might be less beneficial for them to do that style of breathing and in this reduced volume breathing technique what we’re doing is we’re really working only
(34:56) with the rest and digest nervous system so we’re really bringing our bodies into that calm relaxed state with this breathing technique so I know that was a lot so you can go ahead and listen to this one more time because I know that there’s a lot that goes into this but just to make it really clear and just kind of sum this up really quickly conscious hyperventilation is more of for that emotional release more for getting into a different state of consciousness and really diving into your subconscious mind and reduce the
(35:29) volume breathing techniques are for eliminating unconscious hyperventilation and increasing your tolerance for CO2 I love that that no that that’s really helpful and yeah if you are listening and you yeah I I would suggest you listen to that a few times Mark the timestamp in the uh it in the in the video or in the audio because that explanation is is so helpful because we’re we’re you know we’re we are living in a world where we’re just told yeah we need to we need we need to breathe more
(35:59) and I understand that and and you know obviously breathing is important to life but the way we do it uh this was so important to know why we breathe the way we do or why we’re supposed to breathe in these ways and it sounds like to me uh you know if I could try to summarize that in in some way that the that the conscious hyperventilation is really kind of an in the moment like you know you have some trauma or emotions you want to release right and and that that helps to bring those up and out in a safe way and then the reduced volume
(36:32) breathing is more like an ongoing trying to more of like the the overall anxiety you wanna you wanna keep that reduced over the longer term that’s how you just kind of train yourself to breathe to to uh to raise the to raise your CO2 tolerance so am I understanding that correctly yes with the reduced volume breathing that can also be in a certain period of time so it’s not like you have to breathe this way throughout your whole entire day we can get into what the best way to breathe in the day-to-day is in
(37:03) just a second but with the reduced volume breathing technique what we can look at it is more of going into your CO2 gym so really training your body to tolerate your CO2 levels better so that’s what we can really look that’s the way that we can look at it yeah okay and and as far as energy is concerned like improving your energy I know that do do either of these uh these methods uh reduce or improve your energy I mean you mentioned it helps with sleep uh what like is it an immediate Improvement how does that look yeah that’s what I
(37:38) love about Bradford is that you can feel it instantaneously yeah so obviously the more you do it the longer the effect if that makes sense because if you do a breath recession once you will feel the effects during the session and afterwards but the more that you do it the more often you do it the more you feel it even out of your session and beyond your session so that’s what I love about breath work and when it comes to energy levels I love using both honestly when it comes to raising your energy because if you’re calmer your
(38:11) body’s going to use less energy for the stress response and more energy for everything else that you want to use energy for right and same thing with conscious hyperventilation you’re also really moving a lot of energy through your body when you’re breathing right breathing is not just inhaling oxygen and exhaling CO2 right that’s just one part of the picture while we’re breathing we’re using so many different mechanisms in our body because because our breath is the foundation of our
(38:40) whole entire body everything that works in our body is literally connected to our breath every single thing whether it is conscious or subconscious in your body and that’s what I love about breath work is it’s really the bridge between our conscious and our subconscious and it’s really the foundation of every single mechanism that goes on in our body even the fact that you know breathing is usually is mostly because of our diaphragm right our diaphragm is our main breathing muscle and our main breathing muscle is literally connected
(39:11) to every little part of our body so many different you know different centers of of of breath work really go through breathing through the diaphragm because it is the core of our body right it is the core of our being so that I love using both modalities when it comes to energy a really quick and easy way to boost your energy is to take just a few breaths in through your belly up into your chest letting it out and just taking like two or three breaths like that and then on your last breath taking a deep breath in and holding your breath
(39:46) at the top and top holes are really amazing for bringing that energy through your body and up and then bottom holes are more for calming your body down and bringing your energy down into the ground so when you’re feeling very overwhelmed all over the place that’s when you want to do a bottom hold but when you’re really looking for like creativity energy wanting to kind of get out of your head than using that top hold is going to really bring a lot of that energy up into your body gotcha so create creativity energy you want to
(40:23) hold at the top with a full breath yeah but for for like maybe emotions or or anxiety or or anything like that you want to hold more at the bottom so what yeah you could yeah oh go ahead yeah so you want to kind of think of it like a balloon right when you’re bringing like when there’s more the more the balloon comes up the more you know energy there is in there and when you’re exhaling you know all of that energy is coming out of your body just like a you know the balloon kind of becomes flat and there is less in there so that’s
(40:56) what that’s the way that we really want we can use our breath in a very just like simple easy way to give ourselves whatever we need in the moment okay and what what are the benefits so so physiologically speaking what’s happening within us when we have it when we have a top hold and a bottom hold oh I really like this question so when we’re holding our breath at the top so when we’re taking a big inhale our diaphragm goes down into our body and that’s what happens on like a mechanical level it really goes down
(41:28) into our body and it compresses our internal organs which also causes most of the blood flow to not be in our internal organs at that moment and there is much more blood flow coming up into our brain at that time wow and when we’re doing a bottom hold our diaphragm is moving up and it’s more towards our heart and it’s sitting right above our heart and a lot of more blood flow goes into our inter our internal organs and into the lower parts of our body and this actually also has a huge impact on the way that our heart beats so when
(42:03) we’re breathing in our heartbeat speeds up and when we’re breathing out our heartbeat slows down and you can even pause this for a second and just like really put your hand on your heart and just take a slow breath in through your nose in a slow breath out through your nose and you will all you will feel the difference in your heartbeat in just one breath so when you’re breathing in your heartbeat is speeding up more energy is being you know distributed in through your body and when you’re exhaling and
(42:38) you’re holding at the bottom your heartbeat slows down which also signals that part of your nervous system that is responsible for rest and digest to turn on wow so it even helps with digestion and and all of those systems as well just the breathing can impact that that’s incredible like I said literally everything that goes on in our body our breath has an impact on and that’s what I love about it it’s literally it Bridges the gap between oh anything that goes on in our bodies that’s why it is
(43:08) it’s been the main reason why I’ve actually transitioned from health and fitness into breath work just because I wanted to help my clients more I wanted to help myself more and go that one level deeper and once I found out that the uh like how huge our breath is when it comes to our day-to-day functioning the like I said emotional physical and mental health of our bodies that’s when I was like I am sold yeah I love it um and and so yeah so it really is just like this is such a great conversation because
(43:43) it’s digging so deeply into something that we we barely touched the surface on in our daily lives and a lot of us just don’t know a lot about it uh even though we have to do it literally every second and so I I wonder if you can expand on you know when when we’re not paying attention to it you know these are these are aspects of like what we can do when we’re paying attention to it these are some breathing exercises but when we’re not paying attention to it you mentioned that we kind of get into
(44:08) this habit of unconscious hyperventilation what does that look like and how is that affecting us yes yes absolutely so a lot of people actually aren’t aware of how they’re breathing in their day-to-day and reduced volume breathing is actually the method that is going to help you kind of have a better a better basis for how you breathe right so if you are having a lot of stress a lot of anxiety and your nervous system is completely dysregulated it’s going to be natural for you to breathe quicker breathe more shallow right because right
(44:45) with our breath it’s kind of a two-way street so our breath can impact how what’s going on in our body and the other way around what’s going on in our body is impacting our breathing so you know most of us are having a lot of stress in our day-to-day lives right there’s a lot going on even just like being on social media with like so many news being bombarded at us like our bodies were not designed for this right our bodies haven’t had the time to adapt to our fast-paced lifestyle like our
(45:13) bodies are still like millions of years old and like a lot of the subconscious mechanisms that are are going on in our body like haven’t had the time to adapt to our day-to-day lives so you might not even realize that your body is so freaking stressed right and the way that that we breathe when we’re stressed is we’re usually breathing through the upper parts of our chest we’re breathing mostly through our mouth and we’re breathing very quickly and very shallow and this causes unconscious
(45:41) hyperventilation so breathing with more air than your body actually needs and what this actually does is it perpetuates the cycle of stress right so when we’re stressed and we have a lot of anxiety we’re breathing this way and because we’re breathing this way we’re perpetuating even more stress and anxiety in our bodies and we’re kind of on this like hamster wheel of stress and anxiety because of the way that we’re breathing but all we would have to do is really start breathing through our nose
(46:11) more often as much as you can obviously not what like when you’re talking and you know being at work or whatever you have to do but in any situation where you’re active or sitting breathing through your nose even during your workouts you want to be breathing through your nose and I have this amazing acronym and it’s actually through the nose you want to be breathing and that’s our first n you want to be breathing low so through the diaphragm you want to be breathing nice and slow and you want to be breathing nice and a
(46:46) light so that’s n l s l nose low and light so this is really important because like I said this really is the what impacts your body when it comes to Bringing Down your stress levels and bringing down any fear anxiety you know all of those negative side effects but also at the same time this is going to make your breathing more effective for your body and your body is not going to be using so much energy to breathe incorrectly right because when you’re breathing in the uh in the first way that I described your body is
(47:28) in a state of survival and your body’s using all your energy because it’s just trying to keep it safe alive but when you’re breathing more efficiently your body doesn’t have to use so much of that energy and so much the attention to how your body’s breathing and it’s a much more natural way of how we breathe so that’s a lot of the real I I could like write a book for why we want to breathe that way but I’m just going to leave it at that for now yeah and you should write a book about
(47:57) all of this because it’s so I mean it’s there’s so much information here and so much so much value this is such a great episode because I mean even as we’re talking here and you’re describing how we should be breathing I’m noticing myself becoming more conscious of it and like you know whenever I’m talking to anybody just because of the nature of my anxiety it just it I start to get a little tense I start to get that but as we’re talking I’m breathing slowly through the nose I’m practicing that
(48:23) nlsl approach that you’re talking about and I’m just it and within a few breaths it doesn’t happen immediately but within a few breaths you just start to feel that like oh it’s this this calm that kind of overwhelms you it really is powerful exactly and just to be honest like I had before I dove into breath work and I was personal training most of the time and all day I was talking to my clients right every single day and I was just so exhausted at the end of the day like I couldn’t think and having this
(48:54) one shift of even like when I’m you know not talking to my clients noticing if I’m breathing through my nose or through my mouth when I’m driving my car when I’m you know scrolling through my phone anything that I’m doing just making that shift of breathing through my nose making sure my breath is slow but making sure that I’m breathing nice and light just that has made such a huge difference on how I feel at the end of the day and now I even notice that you know when I obviously I I’m not perfect
(49:26) I also catch myself that I forget sometimes you know it’s so easy to do that and I’m not perfect so it happens to me as well but the moment I catch myself I’m like oh my God okay time time to take a break take a few breaths in and out through the nose really consciously and that just that makes a huge difference that’s what I love about Broderick is that it’s so quick it’s so quick because like I said it’s the basis of our body when you like imagine a pyramid you can change one small thing
(49:55) in the basis of whatever building you’re building and it’s going to have an impact on everything else and it’s the same thing with your breath you have make a one little change for a short period of time and it’s going to impact everything else that goes on in your body yeah is it is there any way that you remind yourself to to to do that because I mean we get in these habits of just not thinking about it right and so we you know so we could listen to this episode say oh yeah that’s a great idea
(50:17) but then get distracted by life and just totally forget about it yeah how do we remind ourselves um I love this so when I first started um I just started with habit stacking and this is something I love teaching my clients as well is when you already have something that you’re doing in your day-to-day life just add a little bit of breath work to that right so for me I started with just making sure that I’m breathing through my nose when I’m driving my car to work and from work that’s where I started with it right so
(50:45) when I got into my car and I got out of my car I noticed like okay how am I breathing in this moment and that really gave me a big shift and honestly like the just the more you do breath work the more aware and the the more you’re going to remember and the least less you’re going to forget and honestly the more you do it the more aware and the easier it becomes so it’s kind of like this just natural thing that happens that it’s so much easier for you to just remember every single day every single
(51:12) moment of how you’re breathing but I would just start yeah with there just like with the small habit stacking so what’s one thing that you do where you could you know breathe through your nose is that when you’re reading a book is that when you’re doing your morning emails and there’s actually this thing that we do usually and we don’t even notice though is we open up our emails and we hold our breath and we start breathing because of all the overwhelm you know so just like you know when you
(51:36) sit to your laptop or right before you open up your laptop like take five minutes to do a little bit of nice slow breathing exercises right so that’s what I love doing I love habit stacking because a habit is something that we’re already doing every single day it’s nothing that we know we have to focus on so it’s a really easy way to automatically just give ourselves more of what we need and add a little bit more goodness of breath to our life that’s such a great great idea so everybody out there if you’re if you’re
(52:05) listening what are you going to what are you going to stack breathing onto while you’re doing is going to be driving is it going to be reading is it going to be what what is it going to be but pick something and just make that a daily habit so good yeah and let us know let us know on Instagram or definitely down here in the show and the comments definitely definitely yes and um um yeah man we can go on for ages on this topic because there’s so much to dig into um but uh uh but I I want to before we close out I at least want to get a a uh
(52:39) just maybe get a get a demonstration or or some kind of practice where we can all just like maybe practice one of these techniques uh could you guide us through um something as we as we start to close out yes I would absolutely love to give you a really quick example of what you can do in your day-to-day life and this breath work technique is really amazing because it’s really easy to use and it’s very effective even doing it just five minutes will give you a very immediate relaxation so you can do this breath
(53:12) work method in a couple of different ways so what I really love about breathwork is that you just by listening to your body your body will tell you how it wants to breathe in the moment so you can do this breath work style very quickly a little bit more energizing right or you can do it very nice and slow and that will give you more of a relaxation more of a slower slowing down grounding effect into your body right so what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to be breathing into our nose and it’s a two-part inhale
(53:47) so your first breath is into your diaphragm so into your lower ribs imagine your waist expanding so that’s where you want to take 80 percent of your inhale in so you can even put your hands like right above right below your ribs on your waist and just feel your hands move when you breathe and when you take a nice deep breath in about 80 percent take a quick pause and then the rest you want to pull up into your chest and then you want to take a nice long exhale out and when it comes to the exhale again for a more calming relaxing
(54:25) effect you want to Exhale through the nose but if you have some emotions or something you want to let go of then you can breathe out through your mouth and doing that a couple rounds even just like maybe five minutes and then ending that with a hold either at the top for more of that energy or at the bottom for more of that relaxing grounding effect just that is going to make a huge difference and you will feel the shift immediately and the more you do it like I said The more you do it the the easier it’s going for it’s going to be for you
(54:57) to actually uphold that effect for longer nice excellent so and and what and is that the pause breath work or what what what technique is that called so this is actually a a technique um I’m just gonna give me a second I just need to remember what it’s called um it’s called the physiological PSI there you go that’s what it’s called physiological bodies yes our bodies actually naturally do this when we’re feeling stressed and we want to Exhale more of that CO2 so it’s actually something that happens
(55:28) naturally you can actually even see it in your pets like when they’re going to sleep and they’re becoming more calm they you can actually see that they take two inhales and one exhale um and I actually learned this also through Dr Andrew huberman and he has a couple amazing episodes on breathworks so if you want to dive a little bit deeper you can go ahead and listen to those as well because they’re amazing um so this this is what the breathwork technique is called and like I said it really depends on what you’re using it
(55:55) for and how you use it so you can both use it for a reduced volume breathing technique if you take it much slower much more gently a very light approach and in through the nose or you can also use that as a conscious hyperventil ventilation technique if you speed up the tempo a little bit and then breathe out through your mouth yeah oh that’s incredible thank you for sharing that with us and and there’s so many other uh great techniques that you’re you’re teaching here including the pause breath
(56:24) work the you know the reduced volume breathing and all of all of the different uh uh you know different ways conscious hyperventilation that we could look into I’ve got so many notes here that I’m going to follow up on myself and um and but and and if people want to reach out to you if they want to get more familiar with some of the breath work that you do and uh and and reach out to you how can they get a hold of you yeah thanks so like I said like I combined so many different breathwork techniques and I really love
(56:53) making it a very individual experience so depending on what the person needs the most that’s how we like to shift and soar because like I said there’s so many different techniques all of them have amazing benefits the question is which one is the one that’s going to you know help you the most and have you have you really improve your mental emotional and physical health so I would love to offer all of your listeners a free breathing consultation so in this breath consultation what we can do is we’re
(57:21) going to go through a different breathing exercises to really see where your breath is at where your nervous system is at and which approach is going to be the best for you and how to use each approach so we’re going to leave a link in the show notes that you can go ahead and sign up for this free online breathing consultation it’s about 30 minutes so that’s going to give us a nice a nice chunk of time to not only talk about your breath and see where your breath is at but then also dive into a little many breath work session
(57:51) and if you just want to connect and find out more about breath work or ask me any questions after this episode we can connect on Instagram my Instagram is Joe joanna.k so that’s j o j o a n n a dot k and don’t be surprised if you see um a different language other than English there because I I’m actually based in Poland so I combined both languages on my Instagram so don’t be surprised if you see both of those languages there just go ahead and shoot me a DM and we can we can chat further there so thank
(58:23) you John I’ll I will include that uh that link in our show notes and so if you want to get a hold of Joanna reach out to her on Instagram check out her link get uh get all this information because this is breath work is going to change your life I mean I’ve only dabbled in it it’s it’s it’s been the best thing that I’ve ever done for myself and uh and I know that that is the same for everybody and if you’re dealing with uh um you know anxiety fear or or just daily stress overwhelm or
(58:51) anything like that it’s sleep issues all sorts of things this can be a tool in your toolbox to help uh to over to help to help you rise above it Joanna thank you so so much for joining us this was a this was a episode with so much value I really really appreciate it and hope we can get together again soon and and dive deeper into this stuff yes I would love it I would love to all right thanks again and everybody out there have a great day we’ll see you soon hey everyone Thanks for tuning in to the flow over fear podcast if you’d
(59:23) like to learn more about getting into flow and learn the foundations of flow I have a free video series on my website at www.adamcliffordill.com called the foundations of flow feel free to go there and download it and start your journey to Rising about fear achieve operator flow in your life if you like this episode and I’m guessing you did if you stuck around for this long then please do me a favor and hit the Subscribe button and you will receive notifications when I have new interviews new Recaps and new trainings that pop up
(59:56) on YouTube thanks again for joining us