August 18, 2025 • 47 mins
Breath work, as a therapeutic technique, is having it's day in the sun. You may be seeing videos about it cropping up everywhere, but the truth is that it's a very ancient and deeply powerful psychological practice... when done correctly.
In today's episode we are joined by our expert guest, Jessica Dibb, to break down the true power and science of breath work including:
- What breath work actually is (and what it isn't)
- The most common breath work techniques
- The major science + studies backing up it's legitimacy
- The breakthroughs people experience
- The downsides + so much more
Jessica's book here: Breathwork + Psychotherapy
*The opinions of guests are not necessarily shared by the host.
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The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode as we of
course break down the psychology of our twenties. Every few years,
I feel like a new form of therapy rises to
(00:47):
the surface, a new form of mental health treatment and
new wellness practice becomes the new it thing. A couple
of years ago, it was like in a child healing,
and that's still very relevant that everyone was very obsessed
with it. Reiki was another one. Somatic release was another
(01:07):
one that people got really really obsessed with. And when
that happens, there is this like real chance that we
can become really kind of misinformed, or that we can
think that one mode of dealing with emotional and mental
issues is the only mode that we should be pursuing,
(01:27):
that everything else was that came before it was false
and breath work might just be the new it thing.
I feel like I've been hearing about it everywhere. Everyone
is talking about it. I know it can be so
incredibly powerful, but I'm a little bit skeptical. I've done
(01:47):
a little bit of research on my own, but I thought,
you know what, let's talk to an expert. I feel
like other people in their twenties, other people in general,
will have questions about all the dialogue they see online
or the recommendations there be hearing from other people about
the power of breath work. So we're going to talk
about what it actually is, how it works, how it
(02:08):
operates according to science, how it can go hand in
hand with more modern day practices and therapeutic approaches, and
also it's traditional and ancient roots. And of course we're
bringing on an expert who is here with us right now. Hello, Jessica,
welcome to the show. Can you quickly introduce yourself for
(02:30):
the listeners.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
It's such an honor and a delight to be with you, Jemma.
This topic of your podcast about people in their twenties
and how they want to care for themselves and develop
themselves and grow and be healthy and all of that
is just so important for our whole planet, not just
the individual. So it's an honor to be with you.
(02:55):
So yes, my name is Jessica, and I am the
co director of the Global Professional Breathwork Alliance, and we
are the organization that sets the international standards, the gold
standard for breath work training and ethics. And I also
(03:17):
have the real privilege of being the director of Inspiration
Consciousness School in Maryland in the United States. And it's
really a school that is dedicated to people from age
sixteen to ninety six or one hundred and six who
want to develop their capacity to be present to themselves
(03:42):
and other people who want to develop their capacity to love,
to be honest with you, to be compassionate and kind,
but also to be creative and strong and powerful and
contributing to themselves and the life of the planet. And
so it's just my honor. Our school uses many different modalities,
(04:04):
but all of them are breast centered because we feel
that reads the universal medicine.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Oh. I love that. That's so beautiful and what a
beautiful introduction. You are most certainly an expert. And I
actually got my hands on your book while you sent
me a copy, and it is so wonderfully comprehensive, and
I feel like breath work is really having a moment
online on the internet and self help communities right now,
(04:32):
how would you explain what breath work is and more specifically,
what is the difference between breathwork and simply just deep
breathing or meditation?
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Good questions. So, breath work is a spectrum of breathing practices,
voluntary breathing, conscious breathing in different ways that address everything
from relaxation at one end and regulation to deep human
(05:07):
potential at the other end of the spectrum, like who
are we at the core? What are each of us
capable of? What could we bring to the world? And
in between you have these other factors such as how
it is that we can bring more awareness to everything
we're doing, or we can go a step further and say, okay,
if there's something that needs intervention like a physical challenge,
(05:31):
an illness and emotional dysregulation, are there particular breathing practices
that would target, so to speak, those specific things. And
there's also breathing practices that are totally meant to develop
human capabilities, human capacities such as strength, compassion, focus, joy,
(05:55):
and so then at the far end, of course, you
go all the way to who am I at my essence.
So the breathwork is really a spectrum of all of
those practices. And what I would say is it's definitely
differentiated from just straight meditation, because a lot of meditation
(06:19):
is centered on the breathing or uses the breathing. But
there is an aspect of meditation that is about realizing
sort of a more transcendent self, a more peaceful self,
all of which is fantastic. I meditate too, I'm a
great believer in it. Breathwork, though, is very focused on embodiment.
(06:43):
It's focused on how do I experience these things in
my body? And rather than trying to transcend certain human characteristics,
shall we say, really the deeper kind of breath work
is about embracing all of those characteristics and finding out
what's at the core of our behaviors, what's at the
(07:05):
core of our motivations, why we do the wonderful things
we do, why we do the things that aren't so
good for us and sabotage ourselves and others, and how
we can actually transform those in the moment in the body.
And so we do find that there are some studies
that show that about ten percent of people who meditate
(07:29):
it actually disregulates them rather than regulates them, because it's
not dealing with some of the things that they may
be carrying, like trauma, for instance, Whereas with breath work particulate,
if you're being guided by a really well trained breath
worker who really knows the territory, you're actually able to
(07:53):
deal with your trauma that is integrated into your experience
of what it is to become present.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
That is such a beautiful explanation. And it's so interesting
that you said meditation can cause some people to become dysregulated,
because I actually heard from a listener the other day,
and I've heard from a number of listeners who are like,
I don't get the deal with meditation. I always feel
worse afterwards. So I as soon as you said that,
I was like, oh, I know a lot of people
(08:21):
can relate to that. Can you give us an insight
into the traditional origins of breath work and of this practice,
because I feel like this is not a new.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Thing, definitely not a new thing, because of course we've
all been breathing since the very beginning exactly, and in fact,
the whole planet breathes. Really if you could think of
it as one breath, because everything's involved in the oxygen cycle.
Oxygen's the most abundant element on our planet, the third
(08:53):
most abundant element in the universe, and not only humans
and all non human creature and animals, but also the plants,
the fungi, mycilium, trees, the earth itself has oxygen in it,
the waters, the air, the sources of heat. Everything's participating
(09:15):
in photosynthesis or in the oxygen cycle. So it's really
a comprehensive and unifying, and really it has us have
the realization of our essential interconnection with everything. So we
actually find and you might have seen this in my book.
I think I have about sixteen to twenty different places
(09:39):
or origins or cultures where it shows that from the
very beginning of particular religions, spiritual past cultures, it was
just really known that breathing is it, you know, breathing
is the connection between wherever it is or whatever it
is that we are before we come into the body
and actually being here. And so many cultures spoke of
(10:03):
it as you know, the connection with God, the connection
with source, the connection with creation, or even more powerfully
that it is creation, it is the source, it is God,
sort of moving through reality in our bodies, and so
you find it coming from Japan and China and India
(10:23):
and Africa, the African nations. There's breath work way back there, Mesopotamia,
just every religion that I could find, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism,
they all have at the core of their mystical teachings
that it is actually the breath that is the doorway
(10:45):
to everything that we're looking for.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Which is amazing because I feel like as much as
it's just entering perhaps the brains and the minds of
the new generation, it's being introduced to a younger group.
The fact that it's been around for ages kind of
a lot of evidence in itself how magnificent it is.
But speaking of evidence, I'm sure a lot of people
perhaps are listening to some of these explanations and being like,
(11:09):
that sounds a bit a bit niche, that sounds a
bit perhaps wu wo, and whatever else they want to
label it. There is definitely science behind this, as I
saw in your book. Can you explain the science, any psychology,
any studies that kind of support the benefits of breath work?
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Yes, absolutely, I mean, it really is gemma that modern
science and ancient wisdom about breathing are finding each other.
Modern science in a sense is catching up, you know,
with ancient wisdom. And it used to be that it
might take you know, you might find a study about
(11:49):
breathing and its effects on the psyche maybe once a year,
once every few years, you know, And now it's like
the research is just coming out. I mean, breath as
you said, is really having its time, and I think
it will remain that case because breath work and breathing
is the fundamental medicine and nutrient and friend of every
(12:14):
human being. And it's also the unifying language of the
human species. And we can talk about that later how
it transcends language and gender and political orientation and all
of that. So the science, though, is really powerful at
this point. It's irrefutable, for instance, that breathing is psychophysiological,
(12:37):
and that means that literally every breath we take has
a psychological derivation, and it has a physiological derivation, and
every breath that we take also affects us physically and
affects us psychologically, so that science is irrefutable. Another piece
of the science that's irrefutable is that low deep breathing
(13:02):
stimulates the autonomic nervous system, which we want to have
in balance. Where sympathetic and parasympathetic are working, they are reflective,
and when they're optimized, we're able to use our parasympathetic
ability to rest and digest and be and be more
(13:23):
peaceful when it's needed, and we're able to flow easily
into the sympathetic mode when we need to be active,
when we need to respond to something, when there's something
either urgent or just needful, and the flow back and
forth between those two things ideally should be very easy,
and it shouldn't be like, oh, it's hard for me
to get going, or I'm scared to get going, or
(13:46):
it's hard for me to stop when I'm phrenetic and
I can't really calm down. Optimal heart rate variability is
the ability to move back and forth. So we've seen
in study after study that bathing slowly with awareness helps
to bring that parasympathetic sympathetic balance so that you really
(14:09):
have more flow in your life. Another thing that's irrefutable
is that some breathing, Although I can be very specific
about this, it's not just any breathing, and it's not
the same for every person. I think that's very important
in breath work. I think a lot of people want
there to be a formula like if I do this breathing,
(14:30):
my anxiety will go down. If I do this breathing,
I'll get more energy. But the reality is we all
have a different genetics. We all have you know, there's
a lot of similarity, but there's also differences. We all
have a different attachment history, meaning who were our caregivers
and how do we relate to them? And how does
that affect the way our body feels and the way
(14:52):
our breathing is. Our breathing does reflect our psychological state.
And so it's just the case thought there's going to
be an ind so two people that have anxiety may
respond differently to different breathing techniques or different breathing practices.
(15:13):
And this is why I think the ultimate breathwork evolution
is going to be a bio individualized coaching for each
person that each person can then feel from within themselves
what really regulates. But nevertheless, the majority of people will
with certain kinds of breathing, have their cortisol levels greatly reduce,
(15:36):
their anxiety levels go down. And there have been many
studies showing different kinds of breathing elevating mood. One study
that came out of Stanford about a year and a
half ago, almost two years ago, now that was Spiegel
Huberman at al. Showed that the most effective breathing again
(15:56):
this is on a bell curve, so for most people
but not everybody, for reducing anxiety and elevating mood is
breathing in and then before you breathe out, you take
another little sifmin so you kind of lengthen that inhale
in two segments and then you sigh it out, and
five minutes of that will create a state change. And
(16:20):
if you practice it every day for thirty eight thirty
twenty eight to thirty days for five minutes, then you
get state to trait. You know, you get that movement
from I can I know what this feels like now
to its actually sticking with me. So that was a
really interesting study because they were comparing that to I
think box breathing and also cyclical hyperventilation. So you know,
(16:45):
different breathing techniques can can address different aspects of our
psychological states and how we can come into greater regulation,
but also how we can deal with the unmet parts
of ourselves. You know, perhaps it's like the parts of
(17:06):
ourselves that didn't get nourished or nurtured enough when we
were children. So these are the kinds of things that
can happen when you're working with the psychological material that
we do in therapy, which is rarely powerful. I'm not
saying we shouldn't be doing therapy. I'm actually making a
proposal that the beauty of therapeutic understanding is going to
(17:29):
be activated and enhanced by bringing breath work into it
because we're able to go underneath the verbal defenses, the orientations,
the descriptions that we make about ourselves and others, and
we're able to get to feelings that we weren't able
to get to. We're able to get to capacities that
(17:50):
might be lying dormant in us, that never got the
nutrients and the attention that they need. There's all kinds
of possibilities, and that includes expanded states of consciousness.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Hm hmm. That's such a beautiful explanation. I feel like
you've mentioned some of the different techniques A couple of times.
You mentioned box breathing, then there was that in how
what are some of the most obviously you say, I
don't know the names. What are the some of the
different types of breath work techniques, how do they kind
(18:23):
of work, and what are they meant to be targeting? Like,
are there a couple that are that are the major
pillars of breath work? What are the most common ones?
Speaker 2 (18:33):
So that's a really good question, Gemma. As you may
know from the book, I've really looked at the breath
work spectrum and I've identified five sort of groupings of
breath work. So the first grouping is rest and relaxation
or restoration or regulation, and those are your simple reading techniques.
(18:55):
There's so many of them where it's it's just read
inhaling a little deeper than normal usually and then kind
of sighing it out or letting it out or groaning
it out, you know, and they it's wonderful to watch
children do this, you know, when they're kind of angry
and then they take three deep breasts and they let
(19:17):
it out and then they go, I was angry at Johnny,
and then I took three deep breasts and I'm not
angry anymore. Of the regulation. So it can be as
simple as anybody can do it. Just breathe a little
deeper than normal and then let go, just kind of
let go kind of a sigh, a release, or even
you can like I said, moan or groan or even
(19:40):
make a sound. And there's other ones too, things like
it might be like a wave where you feel like
there's see in hill coming in and there's the ex
hill going out. And these things will tend to give
put a kind of pause on whatever stressor has been happening,
whatever stress reaction you're having, and it will allow the
(20:04):
body to find an equilibrium. Again. Second group has to
do with awareness, and that's really the beginning of being
more present. So that's where you're going to find your
mindfulness techniques, your breath awareness techniques. And so actually there's
a scientist at UCLA named Jack Feldman. He's a very
(20:27):
awarded considered really the top breathing scientist in the world
today and has a prize that's like one step down
from the Nobel And he found the origin of breathing
in the brainstem, which he named the prebot center complex,
and he wanted he was very interested about what is it,
(20:49):
why is it that mindfulness works for most people? And
what he discovered was that when it works, the reason
it's working has to do with breathing, the mindfulness, it's
not so much about what you're paying attention to where
that helps. It's an enhancement. But he took mice and
he breathed them. He made them breathe at a certain
(21:10):
rate for a certain amount of time each day, and
the group that did that breathing thirty days later, when
they were introduced to a fear inducing stimulus, they were
markedly less fearful than the control group. So it's things
like that where he hasn't quite published that study yet,
(21:31):
but it's going to be coming out. So you have
these breath awareness mindfulness techniques that really give you the
capacity to be more aware of your internal environment, your interception,
and your extraception, like what is going on around you,
and to be in the present rather than in the
future or the past. Only your third grouping has to
(21:55):
do with interventions. So this is where you know you
have asthma, you have hyperactivity, neurodivergence, you have a kind
of a low energy like you constantly sort of feel fatigued,
you have a hyperactivity and you feel over adrenalized. Yeah,
(22:17):
they're just things like that, and there are very specific
techniques that can address those kinds of things. For instance,
one is something that I learned when I was much
younger and I was studying yoga breathing techniques. Yogic pronium
is sleeping, a sleeping breathing technique and really works. It
(22:37):
has to do with the ratio of the inhale to
the exhale. Or there's another one that I talk about
in the book that I was taught it as asthma
breathing or asthma proniama, but I've renamed it respiratory healing
because it just works on about any kind of respiratory ailment,
emphysema COPD. My own father had COPD and I had
(23:00):
him doing these exercises, and he lived to be ninety nine,
and the doctor said that there was no doubt that
the breathing techniques had really given him extra time, extra years.
So you'll have also techniques in there for deep emotional regulation,
like coherent breathing, which is sometimes called resonance breathing, which
(23:23):
is basically an equivalent ratio of the inhale and the
exhale are the same count and it's generally five to
six breasts per minute for most people. But again there's
a bioindividuation, and there are people that do better with
four breaths a minute, and there are people that do
better with eight. And what the science is showing is
(23:46):
actually just that it's the fact that the inhale and
the exhale are at the same equivalent amount of time
that is really the mitigating factor there. The fourth grouping
has to do with human development, and these are your
beautiful breathing techniques, like how do you breathe with the
sense of breathing into your heart and feeling compassion, for instance,
(24:08):
for yourself and others, and then letting your body feel
or what kind of breathing can you do to feel
more focused and stronger, or what kind of breathing can
you do to feel a sense of joy and gratitude
and ambulance. So these are the development of the deeper
(24:29):
kind of desirable human qualities. And then that fifth group
is what I call human potential breath work, and it's
really where you're breathing in a certain way continuously. Some
schools call it conscious connected breathing. There are so many
different ways that this variety of breathing is called holotropic
(24:53):
breath work, integrative breath work, rebirthing, conscious connected breathing, therapeutic breathwork,
transfer national breath and all of them are giving the
person permission to breathe really deeply and really continuously, because
when we hold our breath there's a kind of unconsciousness
that can happen. So you breathe continuously so that the
(25:15):
unconscious starts to become more conscious. It's really quite miraculous,
and that feelings, images, yearnings, hopes, you know, even the
so called visions that we can all have, can begin
(25:35):
to surface in an atmosphere of love, in an atmosphere
of unconditional positive regard and acceptance, and we can integrate
these more transcendental, more trans personal, more holotropic aspects of ourself.
Really it's the level of soul in some ways, it's
(25:56):
really that part of the psyche that wonders about the
deeper parts of life and the mystery of life, like
what is this soul really about? And who am I
really and what am I really capable of? And what
is the meaning of life? And so that kind of
breath work does that, and so there are many different
technique there's a variety of techniques, shall we say, a
(26:17):
whole panically.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
And I feel like there's something for everyone. Perhaps one
of the misconceptions with breath work is that, yes, like
we said before, it is just deep breathing and there
is one strategy. But like you said, breath is is
like life itself, and if life itself is as varied
that it is as it is, then our breath can
be as well. We are going to take a short
break right now, but when we return, I want to
(26:40):
also talk about some of the misconceptions about breath work,
whether it can be scary, what you would say to skeptics,
but also how we can kind of integrate it into
more modern medicinal practices and modern therapeutic techniques. So stay
with us. Okay, we are back with our breath work expert, Jessica.
(27:08):
So this is a personal question of mine that I
have about breath work, and basically using this interview as
an excuse just to ask you what I want to know,
which is, can breath work be scary? You know some
people report feeling strange afterwards, or even high or whatever
(27:30):
it is. Can it yeah, can it be scary? What
should we know about that element of it?
Speaker 2 (27:35):
So? I think most people enjoy feeling high and if
because it's a positive experience. So that part alone isn't
what scares them. What scares them is when there is
what I will call intrapsychic material feelings that may have
been buried, memories that may have not you know, you
(27:56):
didn't remember that you knew these things, capacities within the self,
even like trans personal kinds of experiences, like feeling connected
to everything, feeling that there's a power greater than yourself.
Whether you just think of that as physics like you know,
quantum quantum field, or whether you think of it as
(28:18):
a divine entity. I think that in and of itself,
that wouldn't scare anybody, because it actually feels like you're
coming more home to yourself than you've ever been. But
what scares people is that they don't they didn't live
in a culture that taught them that it was okay
to have those kind of experiences. So if they're not
(28:40):
working with a breath worker who's really skilled, when they're
going into those deeper kinds of experiences, they might have
a moment of feeling un mirrored. You know, psychotherapeutically, we
want people in process to feel mirrored, to feel attuned
to and so this is why I feel really lucky, privileged,
(29:03):
honored to be the co director of the Global Professional
Breathwork Alliance because we are setting standards for training and
for ethics, and we have a very deep ethics around
the expanded states of consciousness that people can access through breathing.
You know, there's been two studies now that have shown
(29:24):
that that kind of group five breathwork, that human potential
breath work can be equivalent or even greater than the
effects of psychedelics, but without the side effects. But what
you need for it to be of ultimate use is
you need a guide or a coach, or an understanding
(29:45):
of what's happening so that you can celebrate that this
incredible thing is opening up for you. So I know, like,
for instance, yes, occasionally, one example would be if you're
doing that deeper kind of breath work, you might feel
a kind of tingling, for instance, in your hands or
feet or just anywhere in your body, and you come
(30:07):
to understand that at the deepest level, it's where there's
life force waking up that hasn't been there before. But
if you don't have somebody explaining that to you, it
could be it could feel scary, for sure, but I remember,
for instance, one student I had that when it stopped
happening for him because he just got to the place
where he was living it in an integrated way all
(30:28):
the time, he was kind of sad because he liked that,
you know, that feeling of being stretched a little bit.
So I don't think that breathwork needs to be scary
at all, and I think that in our school, for instance,
at Inspiration Consciousness School, I think our practitioners are trained
to track people. We don't We don't actually like people
(30:52):
to do group breath work without also doing some individual
breath work where they're getting that one on one coaching
and we tell them that this is something you'll be
able to do on your own very shortly. But you
just want to become familiar with the kind of territory
that can open up because you are you know, you
are filled with potential and all of that it's just
(31:15):
going to come forward.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
It sounds like it's quite a smart approach, one that
keeps people safe and one that keeps people in the
space that they're prepared and ready to be in, which
I think makes me feel a lot better about this practice.
A kind of follow up question to that, as well,
is what are some of the breakthroughs that people experience.
(31:37):
I know you've spoken a bit about some from students
of yours and also some of your own. Yeah, what
can people kind of maybe expect or not expect?
Speaker 2 (31:49):
So, first of all, I mean, some of it depends
on what level of breath work you're engaging, Right, So
if you're just if you're doing group one practices, you're
mostly going to feel a sense of regulation, release, relaxation,
let go, you know, just more at ease, less a dreamalized,
(32:10):
less cortisol going, and that's wonderful, that's beautiful. Or if
you're doing your mindfulness stuff, you'll feel more present, more engaged,
more able to be with whatever it is, whether it's
cold or hot, or busy or not busy or whatever.
And then there's your individual techniques that are targeting those
particular conditions. There's the development of these qualities of sealth
(32:39):
and capacity that you might have. I think if we're
doing the deeper kind of breath work that you're talking
about with some of those effects. I could just tell
a few stories. One person was a concentration camp survivor
from Auschwitz and her son wanted her to come see
(33:01):
me because he had grown up. She had survived auschwitzen,
so she didn't want anything to happen to her children.
So they were never allowed to like blind trees or
you know, a mountain or anything that she thought could
cause them damn. And she was just like so fearful.
So she had high anxiety levels, massive amounts of control issues,
(33:24):
and she didn't want to come see me. She came
and she said to me, the only reason I'm coming
is to appease him. Nothing's going to happen. She had
never told her story about Auschwitz. She refused to talk
about it. All anybody, even her family knew, was that
she had survived it. So she said, I'm not going
to tell you or anything. So I sat there with
(33:46):
her and we would talk about her son. She said,
we'll just sit here for an hour and then I'll
tell him I did it and we'll go home. So
when she would say something beautiful about her son that
she really loved, and I loved her son too, I'd
say that's so BEAUTI full, wow, Can I just take
that in for a minute, And I would breathe deeply
and audibly, and the mirror neurons started going after a while,
(34:09):
and so without her realizing it, I never asked her
to breathe deeply. I didn't want to break down her control.
She had every right to be protective of herself with
what she had lived through. I wanted to honor her
internal wisdom. So I never asked her to breathe deeply,
but I would breathe deeply, And after about twenty minutes,
(34:29):
she didn't realize it, but she was starting to breathe
deeply whenever I would. And then she asked me to
share about some suffering in my life. And when I
would say certain things that he vote compassion in her,
she would breathe deeply without realizing it. And all I
can tell you is that enough of those deep breasts
happen that about an hour into it, she started sharing
(34:53):
with me, with no I didn't even ask her. She
shared with me the whole story of how she survived Auschwitz.
And we were there for two hours, and when her
son came in, he said the room was just luminous.
She became a more connected person, and she developed the
courage that when Steven Spielberg came to town with the
(35:18):
show A Project, which was when he was going to
make Schindler's list he was interviewing concentration camp survivors. She
had the courage to go and tell her story, and
that story is still up on their website. Her name
is Alice Krause. And so that's a remarkable story because
we didn't even do that of intensive breathing. It was
(35:40):
just the deeper breathing and the mirroring, you know, the
unconditional positive regard that Carl Rogers, great humanist psychologists, taught
us about, and how that can be enhanced by breathing together,
which transcends language, race, jen under orientation, you know, it
(36:01):
brings us down to a more unified place. And look
what happened. I think about a young man who had
bipolar disorder but it was undiagnosed, and he had a
kind of spiritual awakening and he was really just seen
like all of these greater truths about life. But his mother,
(36:23):
who did have bipolar, was noticing that he was getting
kind of manic, and so she brought him to see me.
And we would never do like fast breathing with somebody
that was in that kind of state. So we did
very slow, regulated breathing, and at some point I said,
I think that you need, we should go to the
(36:45):
hospital and you should get evaluated to see if you
could also be assisted with some you know, pharmaceuticals. And
so we went for like six days and he got
onto some medication as well, and then it took us
about two years of breathing. Following his breathing, he was
determined to get off the medication and to be able
(37:07):
to access those states that he had been in a
flow and awaken, mean is what he called it, without
going into the bipolar state. And indeed that happened. And
it's twenty years later and he's not been on medication
for that whole time, and he needs a wonderful life,
and he does breathing techniques, and I mean, I could
(37:28):
go on and on. It's really I think one of
the keys, Jemma, there are these I think that there
are these kind of breathwork practices that people can do
to just support themselves on a daily basis, to be healthier,
to be more regulated. I encourage everybody to do a
(37:51):
minimum of seven minutes of just deeper breathing a day.
But I think if you're really looking for psychological well
being and wholeness, that is includes that transformation that would
happen with the unconscious self, with parts of us that
might be traumatized and who isn't traumatized in today's world.
(38:13):
On one level, I think that developing a relationship with
a really skilled breath worker, even for a short period
of time, just really sets you on the right path.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
I love that advice, and that kind of brings me
to our second last question. We're almost at the end
of this interview. Now I could go on for ages,
but you've kind of already talked about it. How do
you think breath work fits in with broader therapeutic practices,
the broader need for modern day medicine for diagnoses? Yeah,
(38:52):
how can it be part of a more individualized approach
to mental health and broader conditions that kind of afflict
people with out without offering itself as the only option.
It's kind of what I'm trying to say as an additive.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
Right, it's not the only option. It is an option
that can be centered within every other option. So you know,
breathing's the universal medicine. Even a person on a respirator,
even a person who's paralyzed, is breathing, So there's something
they can do volitionally even if they're breathing. My dad
(39:28):
was on a respirator a couple of times and we
did breathing practices with him. You can direct the intentionality
of the breathing. So it's really a universal medicine, and
that's a very exciting prospect in terms of what it
could mean for people having greater tolerance and understanding for
(39:48):
each other and wanting to work together creatively to build
a world that we can all relish together. So I
think that you know one of them that I sometimes
say is a breathworker in every emergency room, a breath
worker in every school, a breath worker in every office building,
(40:10):
a breath worker in every theater. Because people having a
sense of energy, physical wellbeing, emotional regulation being responded to
if they're having intense emotion could really really improve the
(40:31):
health of our whole species. So if you think about
something like, for instance, I've talked to the founder of
Internal Family Systems, which I think probably a lot of
your listeners know about. It's a very powerful psychological orientation,
and we've talked about the fact that I've worked with
(40:52):
parts of people that's how you think about Okay, there's
this part that's angry. There's this part that's a firefighter,
there's this part, and each of them breathe a little differently.
But what they find is that they breathe a little differently,
but they're all breathing, so that becomes the unifying thing,
and then they can integrate into the self. So I
(41:12):
cannot think of a single psychological modality, including Freudian analysis.
We're breathing deeply and having that sense of embodiment helps
to dissolve dissociation, which is a really important thing in
psychological process and helps bring the sense of agency and
(41:33):
the sense of personal empowerment. I can't think of a
single holistic modality of acupuncture or reiki or the body
works that wouldn't benefit by a person also being able
to breathe to somatically meet whatever is happening. Same thing
in mainstream medicine. You know, if people are breathing more deeply,
(42:00):
they're healthier. My father had COPD, that's chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,
and like I said, the doctors were very clear that
the breathing that we did gave him several years of
extra life. And so I just can't think of a
single modality where it wouldn't enhance what's going on, because
(42:21):
it helps document, it helps with awareness and what happens
in the brain when you take when you consciously breathe
is rather than just activating. When we're breathing, we're just
getting activation from the brain stem. But when we're automatically breathing,
but when we breathe consciously, the neocortex comes online and
(42:41):
the limbic brain comes online, and we find that the
respiratory circuits are embedded throughout the whole brain. So you
develop a kind of global coherence neurologically, which gives you
access to many more resources, keeps you more present instead
of just reacting unconsciously to things. And so honestly, the
(43:05):
ability for conscious breathing to help even us have a
greater sense of inter reception and what's going on in
our own body, I think would be a very partnering
thing for medicine, for modern medicine, and just the ability to, yeah,
to be in a more regulated state. I think I
(43:27):
just have never been able to think of one modality
where it wouldn't help.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
Yeah, as you were saying that, I was trying to
rack my brain and I was like, oh, no, I
couldn't think of any couldn't think of any, So I'm
testing your hypothesis there. So I've got one final question
for you, and it actually has nothing to do with
breath work. In fact, I asked that it doesn't have
anything to do with breath work. At the end of
every episode I have with a guest, I always ask them,
(43:53):
what is the best piece of advice that you would
give to someone in their twenties that has nothing to
do with what we talked about today.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
You know, I feel a great deal of emotion, and
I'm going to call it luminosity rise up in me
as you ask that question, Gemma, because honestly, what I
feel like I would say is you are so beautiful
and you are so filled with potential. And whatever you
(44:22):
may think about yourself now, whatever you may think are
your limitations or that you weren't given certain things, I mean,
all of that may be true, but there is a
part of you that is, you know, inviolately, I mean, untouched,
just beauty within you. And I really hope that you
(44:44):
will allow yourself to be supported by people who care
about you and see you, and by learning that stimulates you,
and that you will allow this part of you to
come out, because you are you will be able to
contribute something to this planet that nobody else has ever
(45:04):
contributed before or will again. When you know, when you're
in your twenties, I think Oscar Wilde said this thing
of youth is wasted on the young. I don't know
if you've ever heard that. Oh yeah, I just when
you're in your twenties, there's still so much natural cheat
you know, natural kind of vitality. Even if you're dealing
(45:26):
with a chronic illness, it's a lot different dealing with
it in your twenties. And let's say when you're in
your seventies. And so if the people who are in
their twenties can really connect with the beauty that lies
within them, with the potential that lies and really believe
in it and form teams of people and friends that
(45:49):
believe in them to cheer lead them on throughout their life,
it's just twenty year olds have everything they could give
to the world. So that would be my deepest piece
of it.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
I think that's such a beautiful way to finish the episode,
and also just a nice reminder that for anyone in
their twenties, two is listening, which is probably most people
like we are truly so young. And I always really
appreciate when we have people who have a lot of
wisdom come on the show who basically say some version
(46:21):
of that, which is like, slow down, you have time,
you're can figure it out. I find that incredibly comforting.
And I found so much of what you had to
say incredibly informative and nourishing and made me see the
world in a different way. So I really appreciate your
wisdom and your knowledge. Thank you for coming on the show.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
It's an honor, Gemma, thank you for doing the work
you're doing for the world.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
Oh of course, I'm gonna leave all of Jessica's links
down below, including the link to her book, the link
to her school, and everywhere else you can find her.
If you want to continue learning about breath work, she
is the source for you. I think she knows more
than more than about ninety nine point nine ninety nine
percent of the people on this brilliant topic. Thank you
(47:06):
again for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure
you share it with a friend or someone you believe
would benefit from it. Make sure as well, that you
are following us on Instagram at that psychology podcast so
you can know when new episodes go live, ask us
questions and just give feedback or join the conversation. But
until next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself,
Breathe deeply, and we will talk very very soon,
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode as we of
course break down the psychology of our twenties. Every few years,
I feel like a new form of therapy rises to
(00:47):
the surface, a new form of mental health treatment and
new wellness practice becomes the new it thing. A couple
of years ago, it was like in a child healing,
and that's still very relevant that everyone was very obsessed
with it. Reiki was another one. Somatic release was another
(01:07):
one that people got really really obsessed with. And when
that happens, there is this like real chance that we
can become really kind of misinformed, or that we can
think that one mode of dealing with emotional and mental
issues is the only mode that we should be pursuing,
(01:27):
that everything else was that came before it was false
and breath work might just be the new it thing.
I feel like I've been hearing about it everywhere. Everyone
is talking about it. I know it can be so
incredibly powerful, but I'm a little bit skeptical. I've done
(01:47):
a little bit of research on my own, but I thought,
you know what, let's talk to an expert. I feel
like other people in their twenties, other people in general,
will have questions about all the dialogue they see online
or the recommendations there be hearing from other people about
the power of breath work. So we're going to talk
about what it actually is, how it works, how it
(02:08):
operates according to science, how it can go hand in
hand with more modern day practices and therapeutic approaches, and
also it's traditional and ancient roots. And of course we're
bringing on an expert who is here with us right now. Hello, Jessica,
welcome to the show. Can you quickly introduce yourself for
(02:30):
the listeners.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
It's such an honor and a delight to be with you, Jemma.
This topic of your podcast about people in their twenties
and how they want to care for themselves and develop
themselves and grow and be healthy and all of that
is just so important for our whole planet, not just
the individual. So it's an honor to be with you.
(02:55):
So yes, my name is Jessica, and I am the
co director of the Global Professional Breathwork Alliance, and we
are the organization that sets the international standards, the gold
standard for breath work training and ethics. And I also
(03:17):
have the real privilege of being the director of Inspiration
Consciousness School in Maryland in the United States. And it's
really a school that is dedicated to people from age
sixteen to ninety six or one hundred and six who
want to develop their capacity to be present to themselves
(03:42):
and other people who want to develop their capacity to love,
to be honest with you, to be compassionate and kind,
but also to be creative and strong and powerful and
contributing to themselves and the life of the planet. And
so it's just my honor. Our school uses many different modalities,
(04:04):
but all of them are breast centered because we feel
that reads the universal medicine.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Oh. I love that. That's so beautiful and what a
beautiful introduction. You are most certainly an expert. And I
actually got my hands on your book while you sent
me a copy, and it is so wonderfully comprehensive, and
I feel like breath work is really having a moment
online on the internet and self help communities right now,
(04:32):
how would you explain what breath work is and more specifically,
what is the difference between breathwork and simply just deep
breathing or meditation?
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Good questions. So, breath work is a spectrum of breathing practices,
voluntary breathing, conscious breathing in different ways that address everything
from relaxation at one end and regulation to deep human
(05:07):
potential at the other end of the spectrum, like who
are we at the core? What are each of us
capable of? What could we bring to the world? And
in between you have these other factors such as how
it is that we can bring more awareness to everything
we're doing, or we can go a step further and say, okay,
if there's something that needs intervention like a physical challenge,
(05:31):
an illness and emotional dysregulation, are there particular breathing practices
that would target, so to speak, those specific things. And
there's also breathing practices that are totally meant to develop
human capabilities, human capacities such as strength, compassion, focus, joy,
(05:55):
and so then at the far end, of course, you
go all the way to who am I at my essence.
So the breathwork is really a spectrum of all of
those practices. And what I would say is it's definitely
differentiated from just straight meditation, because a lot of meditation
(06:19):
is centered on the breathing or uses the breathing. But
there is an aspect of meditation that is about realizing
sort of a more transcendent self, a more peaceful self,
all of which is fantastic. I meditate too, I'm a
great believer in it. Breathwork, though, is very focused on embodiment.
(06:43):
It's focused on how do I experience these things in
my body? And rather than trying to transcend certain human characteristics,
shall we say, really the deeper kind of breath work
is about embracing all of those characteristics and finding out
what's at the core of our behaviors, what's at the
(07:05):
core of our motivations, why we do the wonderful things
we do, why we do the things that aren't so
good for us and sabotage ourselves and others, and how
we can actually transform those in the moment in the body.
And so we do find that there are some studies
that show that about ten percent of people who meditate
(07:29):
it actually disregulates them rather than regulates them, because it's
not dealing with some of the things that they may
be carrying, like trauma, for instance, Whereas with breath work particulate,
if you're being guided by a really well trained breath
worker who really knows the territory, you're actually able to
(07:53):
deal with your trauma that is integrated into your experience
of what it is to become present.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
That is such a beautiful explanation. And it's so interesting
that you said meditation can cause some people to become dysregulated,
because I actually heard from a listener the other day,
and I've heard from a number of listeners who are like,
I don't get the deal with meditation. I always feel
worse afterwards. So I as soon as you said that,
I was like, oh, I know a lot of people
(08:21):
can relate to that. Can you give us an insight
into the traditional origins of breath work and of this practice,
because I feel like this is not a new.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Thing, definitely not a new thing, because of course we've
all been breathing since the very beginning exactly, and in fact,
the whole planet breathes. Really if you could think of
it as one breath, because everything's involved in the oxygen cycle.
Oxygen's the most abundant element on our planet, the third
(08:53):
most abundant element in the universe, and not only humans
and all non human creature and animals, but also the plants,
the fungi, mycilium, trees, the earth itself has oxygen in it,
the waters, the air, the sources of heat. Everything's participating
(09:15):
in photosynthesis or in the oxygen cycle. So it's really
a comprehensive and unifying, and really it has us have
the realization of our essential interconnection with everything. So we
actually find and you might have seen this in my book.
I think I have about sixteen to twenty different places
(09:39):
or origins or cultures where it shows that from the
very beginning of particular religions, spiritual past cultures, it was
just really known that breathing is it, you know, breathing
is the connection between wherever it is or whatever it
is that we are before we come into the body
and actually being here. And so many cultures spoke of
(10:03):
it as you know, the connection with God, the connection
with source, the connection with creation, or even more powerfully
that it is creation, it is the source, it is God,
sort of moving through reality in our bodies, and so
you find it coming from Japan and China and India
(10:23):
and Africa, the African nations. There's breath work way back there, Mesopotamia,
just every religion that I could find, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism,
they all have at the core of their mystical teachings
that it is actually the breath that is the doorway
(10:45):
to everything that we're looking for.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Which is amazing because I feel like as much as
it's just entering perhaps the brains and the minds of
the new generation, it's being introduced to a younger group.
The fact that it's been around for ages kind of
a lot of evidence in itself how magnificent it is.
But speaking of evidence, I'm sure a lot of people
perhaps are listening to some of these explanations and being like,
(11:09):
that sounds a bit a bit niche, that sounds a
bit perhaps wu wo, and whatever else they want to
label it. There is definitely science behind this, as I
saw in your book. Can you explain the science, any psychology,
any studies that kind of support the benefits of breath work?
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Yes, absolutely, I mean, it really is gemma that modern
science and ancient wisdom about breathing are finding each other.
Modern science in a sense is catching up, you know,
with ancient wisdom. And it used to be that it
might take you know, you might find a study about
(11:49):
breathing and its effects on the psyche maybe once a year,
once every few years, you know, And now it's like
the research is just coming out. I mean, breath as
you said, is really having its time, and I think
it will remain that case because breath work and breathing
is the fundamental medicine and nutrient and friend of every
(12:14):
human being. And it's also the unifying language of the
human species. And we can talk about that later how
it transcends language and gender and political orientation and all
of that. So the science, though, is really powerful at
this point. It's irrefutable, for instance, that breathing is psychophysiological,
(12:37):
and that means that literally every breath we take has
a psychological derivation, and it has a physiological derivation, and
every breath that we take also affects us physically and
affects us psychologically, so that science is irrefutable. Another piece
of the science that's irrefutable is that low deep breathing
(13:02):
stimulates the autonomic nervous system, which we want to have
in balance. Where sympathetic and parasympathetic are working, they are reflective,
and when they're optimized, we're able to use our parasympathetic
ability to rest and digest and be and be more
(13:23):
peaceful when it's needed, and we're able to flow easily
into the sympathetic mode when we need to be active,
when we need to respond to something, when there's something
either urgent or just needful, and the flow back and
forth between those two things ideally should be very easy,
and it shouldn't be like, oh, it's hard for me
to get going, or I'm scared to get going, or
(13:46):
it's hard for me to stop when I'm phrenetic and
I can't really calm down. Optimal heart rate variability is
the ability to move back and forth. So we've seen
in study after study that bathing slowly with awareness helps
to bring that parasympathetic sympathetic balance so that you really
(14:09):
have more flow in your life. Another thing that's irrefutable
is that some breathing, Although I can be very specific
about this, it's not just any breathing, and it's not
the same for every person. I think that's very important
in breath work. I think a lot of people want
there to be a formula like if I do this breathing,
(14:30):
my anxiety will go down. If I do this breathing,
I'll get more energy. But the reality is we all
have a different genetics. We all have you know, there's
a lot of similarity, but there's also differences. We all
have a different attachment history, meaning who were our caregivers
and how do we relate to them? And how does
that affect the way our body feels and the way
(14:52):
our breathing is. Our breathing does reflect our psychological state.
And so it's just the case thought there's going to
be an ind so two people that have anxiety may
respond differently to different breathing techniques or different breathing practices.
(15:13):
And this is why I think the ultimate breathwork evolution
is going to be a bio individualized coaching for each
person that each person can then feel from within themselves
what really regulates. But nevertheless, the majority of people will
with certain kinds of breathing, have their cortisol levels greatly reduce,
(15:36):
their anxiety levels go down. And there have been many
studies showing different kinds of breathing elevating mood. One study
that came out of Stanford about a year and a
half ago, almost two years ago, now that was Spiegel
Huberman at al. Showed that the most effective breathing again
(15:56):
this is on a bell curve, so for most people
but not everybody, for reducing anxiety and elevating mood is
breathing in and then before you breathe out, you take
another little sifmin so you kind of lengthen that inhale
in two segments and then you sigh it out, and
five minutes of that will create a state change. And
(16:20):
if you practice it every day for thirty eight thirty
twenty eight to thirty days for five minutes, then you
get state to trait. You know, you get that movement
from I can I know what this feels like now
to its actually sticking with me. So that was a
really interesting study because they were comparing that to I
think box breathing and also cyclical hyperventilation. So you know,
(16:45):
different breathing techniques can can address different aspects of our
psychological states and how we can come into greater regulation,
but also how we can deal with the unmet parts
of ourselves. You know, perhaps it's like the parts of
(17:06):
ourselves that didn't get nourished or nurtured enough when we
were children. So these are the kinds of things that
can happen when you're working with the psychological material that
we do in therapy, which is rarely powerful. I'm not
saying we shouldn't be doing therapy. I'm actually making a
proposal that the beauty of therapeutic understanding is going to
(17:29):
be activated and enhanced by bringing breath work into it
because we're able to go underneath the verbal defenses, the orientations,
the descriptions that we make about ourselves and others, and
we're able to get to feelings that we weren't able
to get to. We're able to get to capacities that
(17:50):
might be lying dormant in us, that never got the
nutrients and the attention that they need. There's all kinds
of possibilities, and that includes expanded states of consciousness.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Hm hmm. That's such a beautiful explanation. I feel like
you've mentioned some of the different techniques A couple of times.
You mentioned box breathing, then there was that in how
what are some of the most obviously you say, I
don't know the names. What are the some of the
different types of breath work techniques, how do they kind
(18:23):
of work, and what are they meant to be targeting? Like,
are there a couple that are that are the major
pillars of breath work? What are the most common ones?
Speaker 2 (18:33):
So that's a really good question, Gemma. As you may
know from the book, I've really looked at the breath
work spectrum and I've identified five sort of groupings of
breath work. So the first grouping is rest and relaxation
or restoration or regulation, and those are your simple reading techniques.
(18:55):
There's so many of them where it's it's just read
inhaling a little deeper than normal usually and then kind
of sighing it out or letting it out or groaning
it out, you know, and they it's wonderful to watch
children do this, you know, when they're kind of angry
and then they take three deep breasts and they let
(19:17):
it out and then they go, I was angry at Johnny,
and then I took three deep breasts and I'm not
angry anymore. Of the regulation. So it can be as
simple as anybody can do it. Just breathe a little
deeper than normal and then let go, just kind of
let go kind of a sigh, a release, or even
you can like I said, moan or groan or even
(19:40):
make a sound. And there's other ones too, things like
it might be like a wave where you feel like
there's see in hill coming in and there's the ex
hill going out. And these things will tend to give
put a kind of pause on whatever stressor has been happening,
whatever stress reaction you're having, and it will allow the
(20:04):
body to find an equilibrium. Again. Second group has to
do with awareness, and that's really the beginning of being
more present. So that's where you're going to find your
mindfulness techniques, your breath awareness techniques. And so actually there's
a scientist at UCLA named Jack Feldman. He's a very
(20:27):
awarded considered really the top breathing scientist in the world
today and has a prize that's like one step down
from the Nobel And he found the origin of breathing
in the brainstem, which he named the prebot center complex,
and he wanted he was very interested about what is it,
(20:49):
why is it that mindfulness works for most people? And
what he discovered was that when it works, the reason
it's working has to do with breathing, the mindfulness, it's
not so much about what you're paying attention to where
that helps. It's an enhancement. But he took mice and
he breathed them. He made them breathe at a certain
(21:10):
rate for a certain amount of time each day, and
the group that did that breathing thirty days later, when
they were introduced to a fear inducing stimulus, they were
markedly less fearful than the control group. So it's things
like that where he hasn't quite published that study yet,
(21:31):
but it's going to be coming out. So you have
these breath awareness mindfulness techniques that really give you the
capacity to be more aware of your internal environment, your interception,
and your extraception, like what is going on around you,
and to be in the present rather than in the
future or the past. Only your third grouping has to
(21:55):
do with interventions. So this is where you know you
have asthma, you have hyperactivity, neurodivergence, you have a kind
of a low energy like you constantly sort of feel fatigued,
you have a hyperactivity and you feel over adrenalized. Yeah,
(22:17):
they're just things like that, and there are very specific
techniques that can address those kinds of things. For instance,
one is something that I learned when I was much
younger and I was studying yoga breathing techniques. Yogic pronium
is sleeping, a sleeping breathing technique and really works. It
(22:37):
has to do with the ratio of the inhale to
the exhale. Or there's another one that I talk about
in the book that I was taught it as asthma
breathing or asthma proniama, but I've renamed it respiratory healing
because it just works on about any kind of respiratory ailment,
emphysema COPD. My own father had COPD and I had
(23:00):
him doing these exercises, and he lived to be ninety nine,
and the doctor said that there was no doubt that
the breathing techniques had really given him extra time, extra years.
So you'll have also techniques in there for deep emotional regulation,
like coherent breathing, which is sometimes called resonance breathing, which
(23:23):
is basically an equivalent ratio of the inhale and the
exhale are the same count and it's generally five to
six breasts per minute for most people. But again there's
a bioindividuation, and there are people that do better with
four breaths a minute, and there are people that do
better with eight. And what the science is showing is
(23:46):
actually just that it's the fact that the inhale and
the exhale are at the same equivalent amount of time
that is really the mitigating factor there. The fourth grouping
has to do with human development, and these are your
beautiful breathing techniques, like how do you breathe with the
sense of breathing into your heart and feeling compassion, for instance,
(24:08):
for yourself and others, and then letting your body feel
or what kind of breathing can you do to feel
more focused and stronger, or what kind of breathing can
you do to feel a sense of joy and gratitude
and ambulance. So these are the development of the deeper
(24:29):
kind of desirable human qualities. And then that fifth group
is what I call human potential breath work, and it's
really where you're breathing in a certain way continuously. Some
schools call it conscious connected breathing. There are so many
different ways that this variety of breathing is called holotropic
(24:53):
breath work, integrative breath work, rebirthing, conscious connected breathing, therapeutic breathwork,
transfer national breath and all of them are giving the
person permission to breathe really deeply and really continuously, because
when we hold our breath there's a kind of unconsciousness
that can happen. So you breathe continuously so that the
(25:15):
unconscious starts to become more conscious. It's really quite miraculous,
and that feelings, images, yearnings, hopes, you know, even the
so called visions that we can all have, can begin
(25:35):
to surface in an atmosphere of love, in an atmosphere
of unconditional positive regard and acceptance, and we can integrate
these more transcendental, more trans personal, more holotropic aspects of ourself.
Really it's the level of soul in some ways, it's
(25:56):
really that part of the psyche that wonders about the
deeper parts of life and the mystery of life, like
what is this soul really about? And who am I
really and what am I really capable of? And what
is the meaning of life? And so that kind of
breath work does that, and so there are many different
technique there's a variety of techniques, shall we say, a
(26:17):
whole panically.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
And I feel like there's something for everyone. Perhaps one
of the misconceptions with breath work is that, yes, like
we said before, it is just deep breathing and there
is one strategy. But like you said, breath is is
like life itself, and if life itself is as varied
that it is as it is, then our breath can
be as well. We are going to take a short
break right now, but when we return, I want to
(26:40):
also talk about some of the misconceptions about breath work,
whether it can be scary, what you would say to skeptics,
but also how we can kind of integrate it into
more modern medicinal practices and modern therapeutic techniques. So stay
with us. Okay, we are back with our breath work expert, Jessica.
(27:08):
So this is a personal question of mine that I
have about breath work, and basically using this interview as
an excuse just to ask you what I want to know,
which is, can breath work be scary? You know some
people report feeling strange afterwards, or even high or whatever
(27:30):
it is. Can it yeah, can it be scary? What
should we know about that element of it?
Speaker 2 (27:35):
So? I think most people enjoy feeling high and if
because it's a positive experience. So that part alone isn't
what scares them. What scares them is when there is
what I will call intrapsychic material feelings that may have
been buried, memories that may have not you know, you
(27:56):
didn't remember that you knew these things, capacities within the self,
even like trans personal kinds of experiences, like feeling connected
to everything, feeling that there's a power greater than yourself.
Whether you just think of that as physics like you know,
quantum quantum field, or whether you think of it as
(28:18):
a divine entity. I think that in and of itself,
that wouldn't scare anybody, because it actually feels like you're
coming more home to yourself than you've ever been. But
what scares people is that they don't they didn't live
in a culture that taught them that it was okay
to have those kind of experiences. So if they're not
(28:40):
working with a breath worker who's really skilled, when they're
going into those deeper kinds of experiences, they might have
a moment of feeling un mirrored. You know, psychotherapeutically, we
want people in process to feel mirrored, to feel attuned
to and so this is why I feel really lucky, privileged,
(29:03):
honored to be the co director of the Global Professional
Breathwork Alliance because we are setting standards for training and
for ethics, and we have a very deep ethics around
the expanded states of consciousness that people can access through breathing.
You know, there's been two studies now that have shown
(29:24):
that that kind of group five breathwork, that human potential
breath work can be equivalent or even greater than the
effects of psychedelics, but without the side effects. But what
you need for it to be of ultimate use is
you need a guide or a coach, or an understanding
(29:45):
of what's happening so that you can celebrate that this
incredible thing is opening up for you. So I know, like,
for instance, yes, occasionally, one example would be if you're
doing that deeper kind of breath work, you might feel
a kind of tingling, for instance, in your hands or
feet or just anywhere in your body, and you come
(30:07):
to understand that at the deepest level, it's where there's
life force waking up that hasn't been there before. But
if you don't have somebody explaining that to you, it
could be it could feel scary, for sure, but I remember,
for instance, one student I had that when it stopped
happening for him because he just got to the place
where he was living it in an integrated way all
(30:28):
the time, he was kind of sad because he liked that,
you know, that feeling of being stretched a little bit.
So I don't think that breathwork needs to be scary
at all, and I think that in our school, for instance,
at Inspiration Consciousness School, I think our practitioners are trained
to track people. We don't We don't actually like people
(30:52):
to do group breath work without also doing some individual
breath work where they're getting that one on one coaching
and we tell them that this is something you'll be
able to do on your own very shortly. But you
just want to become familiar with the kind of territory
that can open up because you are you know, you
are filled with potential and all of that it's just
(31:15):
going to come forward.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
It sounds like it's quite a smart approach, one that
keeps people safe and one that keeps people in the
space that they're prepared and ready to be in, which
I think makes me feel a lot better about this practice.
A kind of follow up question to that, as well,
is what are some of the breakthroughs that people experience.
(31:37):
I know you've spoken a bit about some from students
of yours and also some of your own. Yeah, what
can people kind of maybe expect or not expect?
Speaker 2 (31:49):
So, first of all, I mean, some of it depends
on what level of breath work you're engaging, Right, So
if you're just if you're doing group one practices, you're
mostly going to feel a sense of regulation, release, relaxation,
let go, you know, just more at ease, less a dreamalized,
(32:10):
less cortisol going, and that's wonderful, that's beautiful. Or if
you're doing your mindfulness stuff, you'll feel more present, more engaged,
more able to be with whatever it is, whether it's
cold or hot, or busy or not busy or whatever.
And then there's your individual techniques that are targeting those
particular conditions. There's the development of these qualities of sealth
(32:39):
and capacity that you might have. I think if we're
doing the deeper kind of breath work that you're talking
about with some of those effects. I could just tell
a few stories. One person was a concentration camp survivor
from Auschwitz and her son wanted her to come see
(33:01):
me because he had grown up. She had survived auschwitzen,
so she didn't want anything to happen to her children.
So they were never allowed to like blind trees or
you know, a mountain or anything that she thought could
cause them damn. And she was just like so fearful.
So she had high anxiety levels, massive amounts of control issues,
(33:24):
and she didn't want to come see me. She came
and she said to me, the only reason I'm coming
is to appease him. Nothing's going to happen. She had
never told her story about Auschwitz. She refused to talk
about it. All anybody, even her family knew, was that
she had survived it. So she said, I'm not going
to tell you or anything. So I sat there with
(33:46):
her and we would talk about her son. She said,
we'll just sit here for an hour and then I'll
tell him I did it and we'll go home. So
when she would say something beautiful about her son that
she really loved, and I loved her son too, I'd
say that's so BEAUTI full, wow, Can I just take
that in for a minute, And I would breathe deeply
and audibly, and the mirror neurons started going after a while,
(34:09):
and so without her realizing it, I never asked her
to breathe deeply. I didn't want to break down her control.
She had every right to be protective of herself with
what she had lived through. I wanted to honor her
internal wisdom. So I never asked her to breathe deeply,
but I would breathe deeply, And after about twenty minutes,
(34:29):
she didn't realize it, but she was starting to breathe
deeply whenever I would. And then she asked me to
share about some suffering in my life. And when I
would say certain things that he vote compassion in her,
she would breathe deeply without realizing it. And all I
can tell you is that enough of those deep breasts
happen that about an hour into it, she started sharing
(34:53):
with me, with no I didn't even ask her. She
shared with me the whole story of how she survived Auschwitz.
And we were there for two hours, and when her
son came in, he said the room was just luminous.
She became a more connected person, and she developed the
courage that when Steven Spielberg came to town with the
(35:18):
show A Project, which was when he was going to
make Schindler's list he was interviewing concentration camp survivors. She
had the courage to go and tell her story, and
that story is still up on their website. Her name
is Alice Krause. And so that's a remarkable story because
we didn't even do that of intensive breathing. It was
(35:40):
just the deeper breathing and the mirroring, you know, the
unconditional positive regard that Carl Rogers, great humanist psychologists, taught
us about, and how that can be enhanced by breathing together,
which transcends language, race, jen under orientation, you know, it
(36:01):
brings us down to a more unified place. And look
what happened. I think about a young man who had
bipolar disorder but it was undiagnosed, and he had a
kind of spiritual awakening and he was really just seen
like all of these greater truths about life. But his mother,
(36:23):
who did have bipolar, was noticing that he was getting
kind of manic, and so she brought him to see me.
And we would never do like fast breathing with somebody
that was in that kind of state. So we did
very slow, regulated breathing, and at some point I said,
I think that you need, we should go to the
(36:45):
hospital and you should get evaluated to see if you
could also be assisted with some you know, pharmaceuticals. And
so we went for like six days and he got
onto some medication as well, and then it took us
about two years of breathing. Following his breathing, he was
determined to get off the medication and to be able
(37:07):
to access those states that he had been in a
flow and awaken, mean is what he called it, without
going into the bipolar state. And indeed that happened. And
it's twenty years later and he's not been on medication
for that whole time, and he needs a wonderful life,
and he does breathing techniques, and I mean, I could
(37:28):
go on and on. It's really I think one of
the keys, Jemma, there are these I think that there
are these kind of breathwork practices that people can do
to just support themselves on a daily basis, to be healthier,
to be more regulated. I encourage everybody to do a
(37:51):
minimum of seven minutes of just deeper breathing a day.
But I think if you're really looking for psychological well
being and wholeness, that is includes that transformation that would
happen with the unconscious self, with parts of us that
might be traumatized and who isn't traumatized in today's world.
(38:13):
On one level, I think that developing a relationship with
a really skilled breath worker, even for a short period
of time, just really sets you on the right path.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
I love that advice, and that kind of brings me
to our second last question. We're almost at the end
of this interview. Now I could go on for ages,
but you've kind of already talked about it. How do
you think breath work fits in with broader therapeutic practices,
the broader need for modern day medicine for diagnoses? Yeah,
(38:52):
how can it be part of a more individualized approach
to mental health and broader conditions that kind of afflict
people with out without offering itself as the only option.
It's kind of what I'm trying to say as an additive.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
Right, it's not the only option. It is an option
that can be centered within every other option. So you know,
breathing's the universal medicine. Even a person on a respirator,
even a person who's paralyzed, is breathing, So there's something
they can do volitionally even if they're breathing. My dad
(39:28):
was on a respirator a couple of times and we
did breathing practices with him. You can direct the intentionality
of the breathing. So it's really a universal medicine, and
that's a very exciting prospect in terms of what it
could mean for people having greater tolerance and understanding for
(39:48):
each other and wanting to work together creatively to build
a world that we can all relish together. So I
think that you know one of them that I sometimes
say is a breathworker in every emergency room, a breath
worker in every school, a breath worker in every office building,
(40:10):
a breath worker in every theater. Because people having a
sense of energy, physical wellbeing, emotional regulation being responded to
if they're having intense emotion could really really improve the
(40:31):
health of our whole species. So if you think about
something like, for instance, I've talked to the founder of
Internal Family Systems, which I think probably a lot of
your listeners know about. It's a very powerful psychological orientation,
and we've talked about the fact that I've worked with
(40:52):
parts of people that's how you think about Okay, there's
this part that's angry. There's this part that's a firefighter,
there's this part, and each of them breathe a little differently.
But what they find is that they breathe a little differently,
but they're all breathing, so that becomes the unifying thing,
and then they can integrate into the self. So I
(41:12):
cannot think of a single psychological modality, including Freudian analysis.
We're breathing deeply and having that sense of embodiment helps
to dissolve dissociation, which is a really important thing in
psychological process and helps bring the sense of agency and
(41:33):
the sense of personal empowerment. I can't think of a
single holistic modality of acupuncture or reiki or the body
works that wouldn't benefit by a person also being able
to breathe to somatically meet whatever is happening. Same thing
in mainstream medicine. You know, if people are breathing more deeply,
(42:00):
they're healthier. My father had COPD, that's chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,
and like I said, the doctors were very clear that
the breathing that we did gave him several years of
extra life. And so I just can't think of a
single modality where it wouldn't enhance what's going on, because
(42:21):
it helps document, it helps with awareness and what happens
in the brain when you take when you consciously breathe
is rather than just activating. When we're breathing, we're just
getting activation from the brain stem. But when we're automatically breathing,
but when we breathe consciously, the neocortex comes online and
(42:41):
the limbic brain comes online, and we find that the
respiratory circuits are embedded throughout the whole brain. So you
develop a kind of global coherence neurologically, which gives you
access to many more resources, keeps you more present instead
of just reacting unconsciously to things. And so honestly, the
(43:05):
ability for conscious breathing to help even us have a
greater sense of inter reception and what's going on in
our own body, I think would be a very partnering
thing for medicine, for modern medicine, and just the ability to, yeah,
to be in a more regulated state. I think I
(43:27):
just have never been able to think of one modality
where it wouldn't help.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
Yeah, as you were saying that, I was trying to
rack my brain and I was like, oh, no, I
couldn't think of any couldn't think of any, So I'm
testing your hypothesis there. So I've got one final question
for you, and it actually has nothing to do with
breath work. In fact, I asked that it doesn't have
anything to do with breath work. At the end of
every episode I have with a guest, I always ask them,
(43:53):
what is the best piece of advice that you would
give to someone in their twenties that has nothing to
do with what we talked about today.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
You know, I feel a great deal of emotion, and
I'm going to call it luminosity rise up in me
as you ask that question, Gemma, because honestly, what I
feel like I would say is you are so beautiful
and you are so filled with potential. And whatever you
(44:22):
may think about yourself now, whatever you may think are
your limitations or that you weren't given certain things, I mean,
all of that may be true, but there is a
part of you that is, you know, inviolately, I mean, untouched,
just beauty within you. And I really hope that you
(44:44):
will allow yourself to be supported by people who care
about you and see you, and by learning that stimulates you,
and that you will allow this part of you to
come out, because you are you will be able to
contribute something to this planet that nobody else has ever
(45:04):
contributed before or will again. When you know, when you're
in your twenties, I think Oscar Wilde said this thing
of youth is wasted on the young. I don't know
if you've ever heard that. Oh yeah, I just when
you're in your twenties, there's still so much natural cheat
you know, natural kind of vitality. Even if you're dealing
(45:26):
with a chronic illness, it's a lot different dealing with
it in your twenties. And let's say when you're in
your seventies. And so if the people who are in
their twenties can really connect with the beauty that lies
within them, with the potential that lies and really believe
in it and form teams of people and friends that
(45:49):
believe in them to cheer lead them on throughout their life,
it's just twenty year olds have everything they could give
to the world. So that would be my deepest piece
of it.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
I think that's such a beautiful way to finish the episode,
and also just a nice reminder that for anyone in
their twenties, two is listening, which is probably most people
like we are truly so young. And I always really
appreciate when we have people who have a lot of
wisdom come on the show who basically say some version
(46:21):
of that, which is like, slow down, you have time,
you're can figure it out. I find that incredibly comforting.
And I found so much of what you had to
say incredibly informative and nourishing and made me see the
world in a different way. So I really appreciate your
wisdom and your knowledge. Thank you for coming on the show.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
It's an honor, Gemma, thank you for doing the work
you're doing for the world.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
Oh of course, I'm gonna leave all of Jessica's links
down below, including the link to her book, the link
to her school, and everywhere else you can find her.
If you want to continue learning about breath work, she
is the source for you. I think she knows more
than more than about ninety nine point nine ninety nine
percent of the people on this brilliant topic. Thank you
(47:06):
again for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure
you share it with a friend or someone you believe
would benefit from it. Make sure as well, that you
are following us on Instagram at that psychology podcast so
you can know when new episodes go live, ask us
questions and just give feedback or join the conversation. But
until next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself,
Breathe deeply, and we will talk very very soon,
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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