Mastering Breathwork: A Journey into Somatic Healing and Emotional Liberation with Steven Jaggers

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Parker Condit (00:00):
Hi everyone, welcome to Exploring Health
Macro to Micro.
I'm your host, Parker Condit.
In the show, I interview healthand wellness experts around
topics like sleep, exercise,nutrition, stress management,
mental health and much more.
So by the end of each episodeyou'll have concrete, tangible
advice that you can startimplementing today to start
living a healthier life, eitherfor yourself or for your loved

(00:21):
ones.
And that's the microside of theshow.
The macro side of the show isdiscussing larger, systemic
issues that can be contributingto health outcomes.
So an example of that isunderstanding that much of the
traditional medical communitytreats the mind and body as
separate entities, which leadsto disconnected and disparate
care.
This is an idea that came up ontoday's show, and my guest

(00:41):
today is Steven Jaggers.
Steven is the founder ofsomatic breath work, which is
headquartered in Austin, texas.
He has an educationalbackground in addiction therapy
and physical therapy, so it'sfitting that he operates in the
breath workspace, since breathis the bodily function that
bridges the mind and body sowell.
As you can probably guess, thisepisode is primarily focused on

(01:02):
breath work, and I think there'ssomething in here for everyone.
If this is your firstintroduction to breath work,
there's plenty in here that willbe applicable and easy to
implement right away, and, ifyou're more familiar with breath
work, there are some deeperconcepts that'll be fun to
explore.
With Steven and I, we ended updiscussing a basic framework for
how to use your breath tocontrol your state, how emotions

(01:22):
and trauma are stored in thebody, the distinction about
stress that most peoplemisunderstand.
He talks about how our nervoussystem is tied to communication,
and we also go over an overviewof what a somatic breath work
session entails.
Steven is a leader and a greatcommunicator in the breath
workspace, and I've actuallybeen following his work for a
little over five years now, so Iwas truly excited to have him

(01:44):
on as a guest to introduce thistopic, which is probably not as
mainstream as some of the othertopics that I've had on the show
.
So, without further ado, I hopeyou enjoy my conversation with
Steven Jaggers.
Steven, thanks so much forbeing here.
We don't directly know eachother, but we have a mutual

(02:05):
friend in Paige Fleishman who Iused to work with when I was
personal training.
She was a client of yours andthen probably subsequently a
friend as well, but I'm reallyhappy to have gotten connected
and to have you on so we canchat today.

Steven Jaggers (02:19):
Yeah, it's an honor to be here, parker.
Yeah, she was a client of mine,I was a client of hers, and we
need a multitude of modalities,especially dealing with the
modern issues in our world.
So, yeah, excited to be here,brother.

Yeah, so we're gonna talk a lot about breath
work and a variety of things inand around that realm.
But I think I'd like to kind offrame the conversation around
connection.
And it feels like we're kind ofin a strange transitional
period right now where there'smaybe a lack of community and a
lack of connection and partiallythis is due to the increase in

(03:02):
technology and the technology isawesome in what we've been able
to achieve because of it.
But there's also, you guys, twosides to every coin, right.
So I feel like there's been astep away from sort of in-person
connection and community andhumanity.
But it feels sort of like we'reshifting back towards that,
back towards a collectiveconsciousness, awakening

(03:23):
whatever language you wanna usearound that.
But it does feel like we'resort of shifting towards that
and kind of moving in the rightdirection from a humanity
standpoint.
I'm curious.
I just wanna hear your thoughtson sort of where you think we
are to get your thoughts on thekind of the current state of
affairs.

Yeah, man, I'll tell you that I see a lot of
like our in-person trainings,in-person events.
People are so hungry for it.
I think that connection andcommunity and even I'm a big fan
of kind of etymology, in a waylike to commune is probably one

(04:00):
of the biggest purposes for usbeing here To communicate with
each other, to be in connectionwith each other, to be in
connection with ourselves.
I mean, the thing that I'm themost fascinated in is
reconnecting our mind back toour body, like that is the first
step in sort of healing.

(04:20):
Anything is to get your mind tocommunicate back to what's
going on inside of your body,and that's the basis of actually
being able to connect withother people too.
I mean, there's a lot there.
I think that we are hungry forin-person connection because

(04:42):
that's how we're designed.
I'm fascinated by the humannervous system, and not just its
capacity to control our bodyand but also its capacity to
communicate with other peopleand how.
That's an essential nutrient.
There's a term calledco-regulation that is maybe we

(05:05):
can dive into, and it's anessential skill and nutrient
that we actually need as humansand especially in our
developmental stages that webecome so disconnected that
we're lacking, like healthynervous system, co-regulation
between people, and that'sessentially the felt sense of

(05:28):
being deeply connected to atribe, to your friends, your
family, and, yeah, there's amultitude of different things
around that that we could diveinto.

Yeah, so I mean, we're already there, so let's
just talk about that a littlebit more.
But I'm curious if there's Ifeel like there's been so much
there's very much onlinetribalism, where people sort of
get in these camps of thinkingand that can lead to sort of
like online infighting, whichprobably isn't particularly
helpful.
But do those sort of onlinetribes and communities just give

(06:03):
you like glimpses of that, likevery short-term, very low level
doses of that co-regulationwhere the in-person is actually
more like the real deal?

And I, to be honest, I come from a bodywork
background, a practitionerbackground, where I'm working
with people in a very physicalway, and I was always against
like online communities, and notnecessarily against, but I just
I negated how powerful they canactually be and it's obviously

(06:38):
not gonna replace being togetherwith another human.
But I think the timing ofeverything for me was really
fascinating because I startedlike going into the breathwork
stuff more and the somatics andright around when COVID kind of

(06:59):
was popping off and I hired asocial media woman and she was.
She was like hey, you shouldshowcase kind of what goes on in
your sessions and you shouldshowcase someone like having an
emotional release.
And I actually was reallyagainst that.
I thought that people wouldn'tnecessarily understand and

(07:22):
there's not enough contextaround what's actually going on
and people might just think it'slike a cult or something.
They don't understand theactual like benefits of it.
And I ended up posting you knowthis woman, I'm working with
her, she's having an emotionalrelease and we started going

(07:42):
viral from that, but not just inthe United States, it was a
global thing.
And what blew my mind was we hadthousands of messages come in
overnight and I would sayprobably 60% of those messages
were not in English.
And all of those messages I'msitting there on Google

(08:03):
Translate and I'm like so manypeople are like I don't even
know what this is, but I need it.
Like right now I'm sodisconnected and I'm so
suppressed and I'm numb and Idon't know what's going on.
But I'm watching another personwho's feeling and I want to
feel because essentially,feeling is equated to being

(08:27):
alive.
The opposite of feeling isnumbness and to me I feel like
that's the bigger epidemicthat's going on is this numbness
, this parasitic tension that alot of people are faced with.

It's interesting you share that, because I
probably didn't know exactlywhat you did for a while and I'm
not sure if it was the videothat you're talking about that
went viral.
But kind of what you've sharedquite a few of these of people
having emotional releases.
My first thought when I sawthem was that looks nice.
That looks like something Iwould benefit from, not really
knowing what it was, how you gotthere, what the modality was.

(09:04):
So it's funny that that wassort of a ubiquitous response to
that first sort of viral postthat you had.

Yeah, you talked about community and like
communication and for me, justbeing so fascinated with the
nervous system, I'm trying tofigure out, okay, what is the
primary function of it?
Obviously, one of it is tomaintain safety, maintain
homeostasis, to send and receivemessages from your central

(09:37):
nervous system to your periphery, to function your autonomic
nervous system.
But how is it doing that?
It's doing that throughcommunication.
It is the communication systemand because it's communicating
internally but you're alsocommunicating externally.
And another thing that kind ofblew my mind was I posted a lot

(09:59):
of stuff about me teaching andconcepts and just speaking, a
lot of clips from my training,whereas this was no words, this
was only just watching someonerelease emotion and I'm like,
why are all these peoplemessaging us?
It's because not everybodyspeaks English, not everybody

(10:23):
speaks my language, but everyonespeaks emotions, like if you're
a human, you speak.
Like that is a level ofcommunication that we all speak.
It is a universal language andso it's, you know, emotions I
consider like the Connectivetissue of our, of our life.
It pulls people together or itpushes people apart.

(10:46):
So that was kind of anotherfascinating aspect of that as
well.

Yeah, I think that demonstrates the point
perfectly where I didn't reallyknow what was happening.
But it and yeah, I don't evenknow that there was audio on it.
You know, instagram just audiois off to default, but I saw it,
it just resonated with me.
It's just a very kind ofubiquitous human, human
experience that you were sharing.
Yeah, so I think before we moveon, maybe it's best to just

(11:16):
give people some context aroundwhat it, what exactly it is you
do, and we'll kind of get intosomatic breath work and then we
can kind of circle back to moreof your background and take the
conversation from there.

Yeah, so I don't know if it might be best to
start like a little bit with mybackground sure wherever you
want to take this.
Yeah, so you know I I originallywent to school for addiction,
psychology and also and and alsophysical therapy.
I couldn't decide which route Iwanted to go, whether it was

(11:51):
like I was fascinated byunderstanding how people's minds
work.
And you know, I grew up, I grewup in a family of addicts an
only child and I watched myparents struggle with addiction,
and you know, to hard drugs andalso prescription medications
and I really there was a driveto understand that, that, what
causes a person to do that.

(12:12):
And I also was very physicallyactive.
You know I played basketball.
I played, I was an amateurskateboarder, I did, I did so
many different things.
So I was, I was fascinated byboth and I couldn't decide which
route I wanted to go downBecause in our modern schooling
there is no kind of theconnection in between them.
So I ended up dropping out and Ifound a holistic based school

(12:36):
that taught Different forms ofbody work from, you know, kind
of the Western injuryrehabilitation style, body works
, postural therapies, neuroma.
I became a neuromusculartherapist, really working on
people's physical alignment, andthen you know that school also

(12:57):
taught some of the energeticmodalities and the somatic based
modalities of like, how thebody stores emotion and you know
, kind of equating the nervoussystem to the Chakra system, and
I was so fascinated by like,okay, if we strip it from its
dogma, what like, what's thewhat's the essential thing that

(13:18):
it's getting across, and so Ibecame fascinated by that.
I was a body worker for a longtime and I was an instructor and
teacher at a at a school inArizona, and At that time I, you
know, was fascinated byDifferent psychedelics.

(13:40):
I kind of went down that routefor a little while.
I volunteered for a nonprofitorganization called maps and
they are, you know, in gettinginto that realm, I was like,
okay, if I, if I want to explorethis, I want to know how this
is applied to our modern worldand who's doing it in the best
way possible.

(14:00):
So I went down that route for alittle bit and it took me to.
In 2017, I volunteered for theirconference and I had a friend
say you should go to thisholotropic breathwork session by
a man named Stan Groff, who isKind of the father of most of

(14:21):
these more powerful styles ofbreathwork, and I had a massive
emotional release in thissession.
I had, you know, I Wasdiagnosed with some thoracic
scoliosis when I was about 17and Now my parents were addicted
to some pretty heavy stimulants.

(14:41):
You know the your, yourthoracic spine, from a, from a,
like an Eastern standpoint, islike your fire center and it
controls, like the adrenals andlike you know people that are
addicted to stimulants.
You're burning out your fire ina way, or you're operating off
of whether it's stimulants, oryou're operating off, operating

(15:01):
off of a false sense of fire,and that was kind of the
developmental thing that I thinkthey passed down to me from
doing so many drugs.
And I felt, when I startedgetting into the breathwork I'd
started, I I felt this pop in mythoracic spine and you know I'm
kind of an anatomy nerd and I'mlike, okay, well, your
diaphragm is actually connectedto your lumbar spine or

(15:24):
originates or whatever.
But I felt this pop and andthen I was just flooded with
Anger, like I had so much angerrushed through me towards my
parents, towards just theupbringing that I had Towards,
just being pissed off at life,and that came through me out of
nowhere.
And then after that it was likewaves of sadness and tears and

(15:48):
and then it was like waves ofactual just forgiveness for them
, doing the best that they could, and like after I had this
massive emotional release andand by that time I had tried so
many different modalities, fromEMDR to acupuncture, to you know
, all the body work stuff, tosomatic psychotherapy, and I had

(16:12):
that release of emotions and Ijust became so clear mentally
that, okay, as a body worker ora trainer, I'm actually a breath
worker.
First, because if I'm notattuning to someone's breath,
then whatever they're doing,their nervous systems in a
contracted state, if someone'sholding their breath, then

(16:33):
whatever I'm doing is probablynot landing.
Whether I'm doing actualphysical Tissue manipulation or
if I'm guiding someone throughan exercise, if they're holding
their breath, it's probably nota beneficial thing.
So I'm like, okay, fuck, let'sstudy all the different types of
breath work.
And went down that journey ofstudying.
You know a lot of the upregulating styles of breath work

(16:56):
to down regulating styles andyou know there's dogma and those
like which ones you should onlybreathe through your nose or
only breathe through your mouth,or you know they all have
benefits for different things.
And I think I take that thatlens of let's strip it of the
dogma and see, okay, what's theintention of this.

(17:16):
And so I started utilizing likea few different styles of
breath work in my body worksessions, combined with some,
you know, guided verbal cues andprocessing.
And Now I had a.
I had a woman who was atherapist who asked me if I

(17:38):
could start to teach her kind ofwhat I was doing with her and
at that point I knew how to makea curriculum and Just kind of
slap something together and helda little training out of my
house and hit up my clients andlike, hey, do you want to learn
about this?
And and now you know, hasn'teven been that long.
Three years later we have overa thousand practitioners

(17:59):
worldwide and you know we'reaccredited, fully accredited,
and it's grown Tremendously.
So that's kind of thebackground story and we can get
into any of the specifics onthere if you want.

Yeah, there's so many interesting threads but
right before we startedrecording you were talking about
the recent accreditation fromASU and sort of building a
curriculum.
So I'd love to just hear moreabout what exactly the
Accreditation is through ASU,just for people who are curious,
and then just to hear a littlebit more about the specific
Practitioner training that youyou take people through.

Yeah, so as far as the accreditation, it is for
continuing education credits forpractitioners.
Now, practitioner is definitelya broad statement.
It's a vague statementdepending if you are, you know,
if you're you know massagetherapists or your Chiropractor
or you're an actual, likepsychotherapists.

(18:54):
Most most licensures requireyou to have continuing education
, ongoing continued educationEvery two years or something
like that which you have.
You know you have a certainamount that you can have,
general CE use which allows youto study a multitude of
different things, and a lot oftimes they require specific CE

(19:15):
use depending on your license.
So right now we're, we areaccredited for general CE use
from anybody who is a therapistto a Physical therapist.
I get a lot of people that comefrom the mind side of things,
like therapists and coaches andand counselors, and I get a lot

(19:38):
of people that come from thebody side of things Personal
trainers, chiropractors,physical therapists because you
know, breath work is essentiallyworking with the nervous system
and it is the bridge betweenthe mind and body.
So From a marketing standpointit's been hard to niche myself,
but, but it's really cool to bethat kind of centerpiece in

(20:01):
between.

Certainly, breath work is so interesting because
it's it's one of the onlyfunctions in the body where it
happens consciously andsubconsciously, where, luckily,
we don't have to be payingattention to our breath and
we'll just keep doing it.
It's a very it's a cleverevolutionary trait that we got,
but we can also control it too,and that's like the bridge that
you're talking about where itcan be this just such a powerful

(20:25):
tool for us to use our breathto tap into these different
states within the body, and Ithink people don't Understand
what a powerful tool it is andpossibly leverage it as much,
because it really can be almosta superpower If you can really
harness it in a particular way.

Yeah, we're not.
We're not taught that from ayoung age that you can control
your state based on how you'relike, how you're breathing.
We can't always control theexternal world and we can't
always control what's going onoutside of us, but you can
control your internal state andyou know when you look at Trauma

(21:04):
or if you look at stress wouldyou just take stress, for
example, like what's stressfulto you might not be stressful to
me, based on my level ofresilience, and so trauma and
stress are a subjective thingand Based on a based on an
organism's like ability toregulate itself when they're

(21:28):
going through something.
And so, yeah, utilizing yourbreath, which we can get into,
all like the basic rules withinthat.
It's not something that we'retaught, but it is.
It's something that we're doingall the time.
That seems, you know, it seemslike just so simple, but it can

(21:50):
have profound, profound effectsand, to be honest, my mind is
always blown when I'm workingwith people.
I'm like I don't know ifthey're getting anything from it
, but people have some prettylife transforming awarenesses
which, you know.
This wasn't really the thingthat I thought I'd be going into

(22:11):
, but it it has kind of chose mein a way and it's it
continuously blows my mind.

Yeah, it is interesting how it's something
so benign.
I think it is because it's so.
It feels like a very passivething and it can be overlooked,
like one of the things I harp onthe most with people is how
important walking is.
But it seems like such a lowthreshold activity where you see
all the high intensity stuff,especially in the fitness world,
you think how effective canwalking really be.

(22:40):
And Walking, I think, is also asuperpower if you really
harness it.
But breath work, in the samevein, where it seems so simple,
you're like I do it all day.
How much of a difference can itreally make?
And you've seen clearly thepower of it and how, how
positively influential it can be.

Yeah, I'll say one other piece within.
That is that, like I have a lotof people that ask me what's
the best breath work practicethat I can do on a daily basis,
like what Kundalini exercise orwhat you know, oxygen advantage
technique or whatever it is,what thing can I do on a
day-to-day basis?

(23:17):
That's the best, like dailypractice.
Well, you're not what you dosometimes, you are what you do
all the time and, like you said,your breath is something that
you're either aware of or you'renot.
It's conscious or unconsciousor subconscious, and so it's not
about what you do once a day.
It's about, like, can you beaware of your breath for a multi

(23:42):
for for most of your day?
Right when you're in anargument with your spouse?
When, when you are in the lineat the grocery Store, it's like
doing an hour of yoga or doingan hour personal training
session?
Well, if you're not aware ofyour body the rest of the day
and you're in a, you're sittingall day, it's not really going
to do a lot for you.

(24:02):
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's helpful to have that practice,
but the practice should thensort of expand into the rest of
your, your conscious day,hopefully.
So you were talking about avariety of different breath work
protocols, up regulating, downregulating.
Have you distilled sort of thefirst principles out of those

(24:26):
and, if you can, if you have,can you share kind of what those
are and what you Gravitatetowards now from a teaching
perspective?

Yeah, yeah, this is a fascinating topic that I
would love to hear yourperspective on it too.
I Think, as a body worker first, I kind of came up against this
limitation of being taught thatif someone has tension in their
body that, like my job is likelet's just go release it, let's

(24:56):
go work on it, let's physically,like manually, try to you know,
someone has a knot or a triggerpoint let's go try to like get
it out of them.
And then at the same time I'mlike, well, if the body is so
intelligent, why is it creatingthat?
That there to begin with.
And you know, then I startedstudying, like FRC and like some

(25:19):
other activation stuff, youknow.
And so I'm like, well, maybethey actually need strength
there, maybe they actually needto turn that part of their
system on, maybe they actuallyaren't even able to occupy that
part of their body.
And so for me, it's always thisbalance of you need to be able

(25:43):
to turn things on and you alsoneed to be able to turn things
off.
Not everything needs to bereleased.
Sometimes things need to beactivated.
Sometimes, when you activatesomething, then it can relax a
lot more.
And so I take this verydualistic approach to almost
everything because we live in aduality.
We need both sides.

(26:04):
When you look at the nervoussystem and specifically the
autonomic nervous system, likewe have the states of
parasympathetic rest and digest.
We have the states ofsympathetic.
You know, go, go, go, do, do,do all the time.
Both are necessary.
Now you might just be stuck inone of those states and having a

(26:24):
hard time going and liketransitioning to the other, and
that's where issues are.
So when it comes to the breathwork side of things, I kind of
took that similar principle asin most of the sessions that I
do, I work on like I takesomeone through this journey of

(26:44):
let's actually spike theirnervous system, let's take them
into a stressful state, and youknow there's a term called
hermetic stress.
It's a lot of the.
It's very similar to like whatWim Hof stuff is based off of,
like let's put the body into astate of stress and then show it
how to come back down into arelaxed state.

(27:06):
And so I usually spend half thetime up regulating, taking
someone's system into a state ofstress and we can talk about
how that actually can bring uplike unprocessed emotions for
people.
And then I spend the secondhalf of the time helping people

(27:29):
retrain their nervous system, towhen I get into a state of
stress, I know how to come backdown into a regulated state and
there's other parts of that.
But I had a mentor once tell methat health is the ability to
choose, and for me that hasalways resonated.
You need to be able to turnthings on and you need to be

(27:53):
able to have passion and fireand, like you know, activate
yourself and go, perform all thenecessary physical activities,
and then you also need to beable to shut it off and relax,
and you need both sides, and soI take a very balanced approach
of utilizing both, and for me, Ican always relax so much more

(28:17):
if I've pushed myself physically.
So you know what goes up mustcome down, and there's a
multitude of other aspectswithin that, but on a basic like
physiological level, that'skind of the process that I take
people through.

Yeah, so just to share sort of a concrete example
of that.
I also, like you, mentionedstress a few times and I always
feel the need to clarify forpeople that stress is not
necessarily a bad thing.
Stress is required foradaptation.
So I always use exercise as theexample.
You're stressing a particulartissue or your cardiovascular

(28:52):
system and the goal is to getyour body to freak out a little
bit because it was hard and thenyour body doesn't want to be
freaked out like that, so itadapts.
So the next time you providethat level of stimulus, that
level of stress, you've adapted,so your body doesn't freak out
as much.
And that's sort of the idea ofprogressive overload and
personal training.
So stress is not necessarily abad thing.

(29:14):
But constantly being stressed,kind of, as you were saying,
being up or down fine, it'sgreat that you have both.
But sort of being stuck in onearea is not ideal.
But the idea of kind of doingthat up to down would be like a
strength training session orlike some sort of exercise
session.
That's your up, that's thestress, that's sort of

(29:36):
mobilizing a lot of stuff withinyour body adrenaline, cortisol,
stress hormones but that'sgreat.
You want that sort of energy Ifyou're being chased by a bear,
you want to mobilize as muchenergy as possible, but then
afterwards what I taught people,the simplest way to do it is
just to sit and focus on yourbreath for like five minutes
afterwards.
Probably not in a gym, becauseit's harder to do, harder to

(29:58):
control the environment there,but if you can find like a calm
place, maybe somewhere dark, andyou just close your eyes and
there's not even a particularprotocol, give them be like,
just be with your breath forfive minutes, and that's trying
to teach them to then go downafterwards.
So that's just if people aresort of listening or like.
I don't have a clear example ofwhat this sort of up and down

(30:18):
is.
There's been a lot of talkabout breath work.
Hopefully that's a concreteexample of how you can integrate
that from something that a lotof people listening are probably
going to be familiar with.

Yeah, and there's one kind of basic rule
that is really simple that willhelp people with.
That is that if you areelongating your exhales, you're
naturally going to take yourselfinto a parasympathetic state or
a state of rest.
You're naturally going to startto calm yourself down.

(30:49):
If you start to elongate yourinhalations, well, you're going
to start to activate your systemand you're going to start to,
like, take yourself into anactivated state I don't want to
say stress state, but that's avery basic rule to change your
state depending on where you'retrying to go.

Yep, yeah, it's so easy to get lost in the weeds
of this protocol, this type ofbreathing, so, yeah, I love that
you gave that example and thatvery basic rule Longer exhales
if you want to relax ordown-regulate, longated inhales
if you want to up-regulate.
Yeah, so you mentioned howstress or trauma can sort of be

(31:33):
stored in the body and howcertain up-regulating breathing
can sort of release that.
Could you speak more to that,because I'm very unfamiliar with
sort of the nuance and themechanism of that.

Yeah, yeah, I'm fascinated by it, and that's so.
The thing that a lot of peopledon't realize, especially as
breath work is gainingpopularity, is that when you are
breathing heavily for anextended period of time, you're

(32:05):
mimicking a state of distress,or you're mimicking a trauma
state on a physiological level,like if I was being chased by a
tiger.
How would I be breathing?
It'd be like yeah.
So a lot of people say thatyou're hyper-oxygening the
system or there's somemetaphysical aspects behind it.

(32:27):
But what you're doing is you'rereally just mimicking a state
of trauma within that and you'resending yourself into this
activated state which.
There are benefits to that, andthe benefits of that is that in
a safe session, in a safecontainer, if you will, and you

(32:51):
have a practitioner that'strained and knows how to guide
you, you can take someone'sphysiology into that state.
And what happens is, a lot ofthe time, you're mimicking this
stress state.
You're mimicking a traumaresponse.
Nothing's necessarily happeningto you in your head, right, but

(33:13):
on a physiological state you'remimicking it.
And so, in the safe container,a lot of the times, people's
unprocessed emotions will comeback up, because when we go
through something stressful ortraumatic in our normal life,
our society has taught us tosuck it up and don't show it and

(33:37):
just get stuck in thisinhalation, sympathetic, fight
or flight response and then goand go to a therapist and work
through the story mentally.
Well, you can work through thestory mentally as much as you
want, but if your body is stillstuck in that state, there's not

(33:57):
a lot you're going to be ableto do.
And so what's going on in thoseup-regulating breathwork styles
is you're mimicking a state ofdistress which gives your
organism an opportunity todischarge.
Now this discharge, if you will, is and if people want to learn
more about this, you can goread Waking the Tiger by Peter

(34:20):
Levine or the Body Keeps theScore by Vessel Vander Kolk.
If you look at animals when theygo through something stressful
or traumatic, they have acertain process, response that
they go through afterwards andit's considered a discharge.
Usually there'll be some sortof shaking, maybe there's sound

(34:41):
involved, deep belly breathing,and I consider a discharge as
like it could be an emotionalrelease.
It could be crying, yelling,screaming, it could be laughing,
could be singing, could bemoving your body in ways you
haven't let yourself move.
What's going on is thisdischarge is completing the

(35:05):
necessary action that yourphysical body needed to do in
the moment of that stressor butnever had the opportunity to do
it.
And why that's powerful is thatwhen you have this discharge,
it's a signal to your nervoussystem that the threat has been
completed and we can go backinto a relaxed state.

(35:26):
And so that's why you getpeople that are stuck in these
chronic states of fight orflight because they never
actually had an opportunity todischarge, to feel their
emotions, to shake and cry andyell and scream and hit a pillow
as hard as they can.
And if you look at a child, oneof my favorite quotes in the

(35:50):
Bible is like unless you becomea child, you'll never enter the
kingdom of heaven.
And as you look at children,they're so much more connected
to the innate intelligence oftheir body that when something
stressful goes on, theyimmediately start having a
temper tantrum because they knowthat if they don't move it
through them in some sort of way, then it's going to be harbored

(36:12):
and held in the body and theneventually it's going to bottle
up and it's eventually going tocome out somewhere.
And there you get.
One of my favorite examples ispassive aggressiveness.
Well, emotions are designed tomove through us and usually in a
healthy person an emotion takesabout 90 seconds to move

(36:35):
through you.
If you have a hard cry and youlet yourself cry, you just let
it out.
Usually it's only going to takeabout 90 seconds and then
you're going to be like allright, I feel a lot better.
But for some people it takes 20years because they just don't
know how to do it right, or ifit's anger.
You never allowed yourself toactually feel anger, and anger

(36:57):
is like every human, it's abyproduct of being human.
We experience anger, but it's avery scary thing in our culture
.
If you bottle it up, that angerwants to go somewhere and it'll
find very sneaky ways to comeout, such as the people that
you're around, your closestrelationships, this passive
aggressiveness where it juststarts leaking out on all the

(37:19):
people around you.
And so I look at this modalityas almost like a preventative
health, where it's like you'reable to prevent, so that you're
not venting on other people.
There's one aspect of that andthere's a multitude of other
things, but does that make sense?
Did I put that in there?

Yeah, totally.
I just keep coming back to themore and more you speak, I keep
going back to what you end upstudying in school, how you had
the mental side and the physicalside, so the addiction therapy
and the physical therapy.
And it seems like so many of theconversations I have on this
show are around health care andthe medical community and the

(38:03):
disconnection or the siloing ofeven just within the medical
world, the siloing of a primarycare from an endocrinologist
from an OBGYN.
I feel like that is justdriving so many of the issues at
least from just the medicalcommunity, with how hard it is
to communicate and how we treatthe body as if it's not

(38:24):
connected.
So I think a lot of what youare talking about and what
you've been able to do sosuccessfully is bridging the
mental and the physical and itjust seems like in, at least in
America, in our society, thisconcept is being touted as
revolutionary and progressiveand a lot of the rest of the

(38:47):
world just figured this out likethousands of years ago, like
the thing that's on top of ourhead is connected to the rest of
the body as well, you figuredthere would be some sort of
overlap.
No, I think that was a reallygood explanation of kind of
understanding how that sort ofup regulation, that sort of
energetic stimulus is, can beused as a therapeutic avenue for

(39:12):
people to teach themselves howto work through something.
And I've never heard that anemotion can be kind of worked
through in 90 seconds before andyou gave the comparison of
compared to like 20 years.
I was gonna say, yeah, peoplehold onto these things like for
a lifetime, when it's somethingthat you could work through

(39:33):
rather quickly and like.
Let's be clear, I'm certainlyone of those people too where I
need to get closer to that 90second spectrum.

I mean, yeah, that's most of us.
I'm really fascinated by.
Gabramate is another guy that Ikind of study in his book, new
Book, the Myth of Normal, andmost of our issues are a very
normal response to an abnormalenvironment and, like most of

(40:01):
our trauma responses are most ofour inability to be connected
to our emotions and our body isbecause of the environment that
we grew up in.
And I almost equate that tolike sitting in a chair.
Well, most of the responses andthe issues inside of my body

(40:24):
from sitting in a chair, it's avery normal response to an
abnormal environment.
The tension in my hips is anormal response To an abnormal
environment because my bodydidn't adapt to sit in a chair.
So I'm like I'm gonna havethese normal pathological issues
.
So there's the environmentalaspect.
And now to your point.

(40:45):
The only reason why thismodality is growing is, in my
opinion, is because we've weededout a lot of the natural ways
that we discharge in our culture.
In our culture you look atindigenous cultures that like

(41:08):
they would sing and dance andshake and cry and yell and
scream and around a fire,altogether Like this full
expression of just getting itand moving it out of your body
together and like none of it'sbad or good, it's like let's
just all move it through us andwe've definitely weeded out a

(41:29):
lot of those ceremonialpractices that help us to move
that through.
And I'll just say one otherthing on that is that, like the
up-regulation part of thisbreathwork, it's powerful for
emotional release, it's powerfulfor this discharging, which has

(41:51):
benefits.
But it's also just as necessaryand I see a lot of breathwork
techniques that are in this samefield of kind of emotional
release, and because there'sother breathworks that are in,
like sports performance, andthat's a completely different
thing, but it's just asimportant to now.
Okay, we had this emotionalrelease, we had this discharge.

(42:14):
Let's bring it back down to arelaxed state.
Let's start to showcase thenervous system how to come back
down utilizing elongated exhalesand I'll say one other piece on
that and let's start to fireand wire elevated emotions

(42:35):
within that, because it's neverabout the release, it's about
the space that you created tothen bring in how you want to
feel, how you want to show upand starting to and this is
based off of a lot of JoeDispens's stuff, which he has
plenty of research on what thebenefits of, like creating

(42:55):
elevated emotions and firing andwiring elevated emotions back
into the body while taking thenervous system into a relaxed
state, is incredibly powerful.

Is that the idea that there's just gonna be, if
you've had sort of this verystrong negative emotion for a
while and you sort of clear thatthere's gonna be a void?
So you're just being verydeliberate about what you're
sort of replacing?
I don't know if replacing isthe right word, I don't always
have the right language for this, but yeah, no, through my.

I mean, you're spot on.
Most people's identities areassociated with their stressors
and their traumas, and so whenyou start to like move that
through and like deactivate that, because essentially nothing's
ever released I think that wordis probably misused in a way,

(43:48):
because it's really like we'redeactivating these natural
responses such as fight, flight,freeze, fawn, which are helpful
, but if they're left activatedchronically they become the
thing that causes issues.
So when that's deactivated,people's identities are often

(44:09):
like so intertwined with theirtrauma that they don't know who
they are.
But there's this space that islike okay, let's actually now
start to like tune into, well,how do I wanna feel and who do I
wanna become?
Because I've seen it a lot ofthe times with these powerful

(44:31):
breathwork modalities wherepeople have this powerful
release and then they're kind ofjust like in this void space of
not knowing who they are.
And you know there's probablystill in the dysregulation of it
too.
But it's just my point being isthat we need to make sure we're
doing the other side as well,and that's there's concepts in I

(44:54):
think it's positive psychologyas well that showcase, like once
you have someone go into theirnegative story, that we actually
need to have something toreplace it and to anchor this
person into the opposing side,and it just kind of follows that
, that duality model ofeverything that I base things
off of.

Yeah, so this is something I was gonna ask more
about, like the specifics ofsort of your teachings, but it
seems applicable here.
Where is there like, do youencourage people to do this in a
sort of coached setting?
Because you can just go onYouTube and look up a variety of
breathwork protocols and youjust do it in your room, right,

(45:36):
and it's probably like anythingwhere there should be certain
intentionality behind whateveryou're doing.
That's gonna make it much morepowerful.
But do you have suggestionsaround maybe the environment
that somebody should getintroduced to this in whether it
be in a group setting, in acoach setting, having some sort
of instructor, or just havingthe right intentionality doing

(45:59):
it on your own Is that?
Can that be appropriate in somesituations?

No, this is a great question.
There's benefits to both, Iwould say.
When it comes to the modalitythat I teach, somatic breathwork
, it is done with a practitionerand there's certain reasons why
Self-practices are powerful.

(46:23):
Like Wim Hof, some of theseshorter breathwork practices are
great for you know, you can goand do a YouTube video.
But the longer breathwork stylejourneys, I would kind of
categorize them as there'sbenefits to having someone guide
you, because most of ourstressors, our traumas, are

(46:49):
actually come from anotherperson.
Like most of our stuff happenedin relation to our parents, in
relation to, you know, otherpeople, most of our wounding
happens from other people andone of my favorite quotes in
Body Keeps the Score is healinghappens in the presence of an
empathetic witness, and so it'sactually having another person

(47:13):
there for you.

That's a great line.

What'd you say?

That's a great line.

Healing happens in the presence of an empathetic
witness man and I'll give justan example of this is like you
can, you know, spend a lot of along time and feel so
enlightened and feel like, so,you know, solid in yourself.
Go try to get into arelationship and that's gonna
bring up all your triggers, allyour wounds, because it's stored

(47:40):
in the body but it doesn't getactivated until you have someone
else there to like to triggerit, and so the repatterning of
it is incredibly powerful tohave another person there to
actually witness you in that.
And that speaks to the firstthing that you, you know,
brought up in this conversationis community, is communion.

(48:03):
We all wanna feel like we areseen and heard and beyond seen
and heard, we all wanna feellike we're felt by other people,
that we're understood, thatwe're like in this together,
that, hey, I'm bringingsomething to the table for my
tribe and it's helping you andyou're helping me.
It's an essential thing thatwe're wanting and I have seen

(48:28):
it's just so much more powerfulto have another person there for
you.
And there's a multitude ofreasons there.
I'll give one example BecauseI'm a body worker, I do add a
lot of hands on touch aspects ofthis, which is not always
necessary in a breath worksession, but it can be really
powerful and there's a lot ofamazing ways that you can work

(48:51):
with somebody physically in thatand I always, you know,
obviously ask for consent.
The this style of breath work isan inward journey, so I ask for
consent if someone's you know,okay, if with me physically
working on them during thesession and I was working with a
woman and I also say withinthat that at any time during the

(49:14):
session that you feel like I'mkind of taking you out of your
state or it's not benefiting youin any way, like feel free to
just kind of push me away, likeI don't, I don't fully know
where they're at.
I can attune to them, but Idon't fully know where they're
at.
And I went to work on thiswoman and she, you know, I'm
like getting down to like do aphysical technique with her and

(49:38):
she just throws me off of herand in my head I'm like, oh shit
, did I do something wrong?
Like, oh God, I this, uh-oh,you know I did something wrong.
And she shared at the end thatthat was one of the most
powerful things that I've evergone through, because that was
the first time I've ever said noto a man and he's actually

(50:01):
listened to me and so, like, ifwe're like, I basically played
the part of being able to helpher repattern, feeling safe to
say no and having a masculinefigure that's going to actually
honor that for her and hernervous system feeling safe in

(50:23):
that context, like that's anexample of repatterning within
that.
So that's an example of howhaving a practitioner there can
bring up different relationaldynamics that make this just
make it very interesting.

I'm sure interesting is a good word for
it.
I had down here a note aboutfear.
I'm not sure if that's theright question or the right word
, but maybe do people need toknow what exactly like I don't
wanna say issue, but like whatwould they're hurting from

(51:03):
before going through this.
Or can they just have some sortof ambiguous pain that they
know where?
Maybe they're not targetingsomething specifically, but they
just know right.
They have some sort ofunderlying depression or just
darkness within them that theywanna try to address.

Yeah, this is a great question as well.
I always tell people not to.
It's better not to, because wecan try to get caught up in the
mind and the story.
A lot of the times it's notabout the story of what happened
, and that's why this is somaticbreath work, because it's just

(51:43):
giving someone's organism anopportunity to complete whatever
necessary action it needed todo, and a lot of the times we
don't know in our head.
We don't always know what ourphysical body needed to do,
because we have evolved fromthis bottom up.

(52:03):
Our nervous system and ourbeing operates from a bottom up
perspective, meaning that whensomething stressful happens, we
immediately have an instinctualresponse.
If someone breaks into yourhouse right now, you're not
gonna be thinking about it.
You're either going to runtowards them, you're gonna run
away from them, or you're gonnafreeze where you're at.
And that's happening like thatbecause of your survival.

(52:26):
It's not happening in your mind.
Then you're gonna have anemotional response, you're gonna
feel a ton of fear, maybe youfeel a ton of courage, and
that's your body's gettingpumped full of a chemical
concoction of glandularsecretions.
You're feeling a lot ofemotions at that point and only

(52:48):
lastly does the mind come in andcreate a perception, and that
perception is usually based onwhat happened and what patterns
you chose on an instinctual andan emotional level.
So I'll give you an example.
Say, someone did break intoyour house, you had this
instinctual response to run awayand you felt a ton of fear.

(53:12):
You made it to safety and thenyou called the police and they
came and arrested this person.
Only after that whole scenariowent down, your mind will start
to create a story that, oh shit,I'm not safe in my house
anymore, or I'm not safe in theworld anymore.
And now that story is gonna bethe perception that you're

(53:32):
moving through into the worldwith.
But we have to address thingson both sides.
That's why this part ispowerful is because we actually
need to allow someone tocomplete the necessary action on
an instinctual level, on anemotional level, and a lot of
times that will provide spacefor a new perspective to happen.

(53:58):
Another example that I'll giveis speaking about the current
state of affairs in the world.
Know the governments, theinstitutions that have been in
power for a long time, religions?
They understand that if I cankeep you in a state of fear or

(54:19):
guilt or shame, you're going tobe operating like instinctually,
you're going to be operatingemotionally.
You're probably going to run tothe store and buy all the
toilet paper Like that hasanything to do with your social
survival or your survivalwhatsoever.
You're not going to be thinkingclearly.
A lot of times it's like let'sjust help people move through

(54:43):
the physical aspect and theemotional aspect.
When you clear that, a lot oftimes you become clear.
If your body is stuck in a stateof fear and contraction, you're
going to be picking up oncontracted ideas.
This might be a little woo-woofor your audience, but they
haven't necessarily figured out.
Okay, where does mind happeninside of your body?

(55:04):
Does it happen between yourears?
A technology such as yoga hasunderstood this for a long time
is let's actually put the bodyin different positions, because
your nervous system is anantenna.
Based on the state of thatantenna is going to be what
you're actually picking up onmentally.

(55:24):
If your body is stuck in astate of fear, you're going to
be picking up on fear-centeredideas.
If you're dysregulated andyou're stressed, well, your mind
is probably going to tendtowards stressed thoughts.
I'm focused on working with thebody first and then let's see
what type of space that actuallycreates and changes the mindset

(55:45):
that you're inhabiting Doesthat make sense Totally.

I appreciate you sharing that, because I've
wanted to be able to talk aboutthese things, but I don't think
I'm the most skilledcommunicator at this yet I
wanted to be very particularabout the first person I brought
on to communicate some of theseconcepts.
I know you're such a goodcommunicator about these, so I'm
glad we ended up getting thereto that point.

(56:11):
That's what I'm touching on theidea of law of attraction.
I expand upon that a little bithow you were saying the body is
an antenna.
The type of energy you'reholding inside is kind of what
you're going to attract and beattuned to.

Definitely, especially in the spiritual
community there's a lot of likelet's expand our consciousness,
let's connect spiritually, butall of that has to be done
through actually feelingexpansive and feeling safe in
your body.

(56:54):
For me, I had someone ask me doyou believe that there's some
sort of spiritual war going onor attack on our souls or
something like that?
I'm like I don't get too farinto that, but I do believe that
there is actually kind of a wargoing on against our body.

(57:15):
If you look at the verypredatory marketing that's done
towards women makeup and breastimplants your body's got to look
this way or you're not going tofind a mate same with men.
You got to be successful, yougot to take steroids, all these

(57:36):
different things that the poisonin our food.
There is a war against our bodybecause our body is where we
have any sort of experience ofevery experience of love, every
experience of every spiritualexperience I've ever had, every
experience of pain, everyexperience of joy has been
through my body, because thebody, essentially, is the temple

(57:59):
, and the temple is where youconnect to something that's
greater than yourself right, god, source, spirit.
If your body's in pain, it'sgoing to be really hard for you
to connect.
That's why I'm just focused onlike let's get the body in the
best operating place.
It can be from a physicalfitness side of things, an

(58:22):
emotional fitness side of things, a nutrition side of things.
Then, for me, I struggled.
I didn't necessarily strugglewith a lot of mental stuff, but
anytime I was strugglingmentally I would just go do
something to get myself in mybody.
I was growing up.

(58:43):
I was always the kid outsideplaying and running and playing
sports and skateboarding.
I played basketball throughhigh school and I played in
college for a little bit.
I wondered why I love that somuch.
When you're in your body andyou're doing something physical

(59:04):
like that, you're not thinkingabout what's going on in the
past, you're not thinking aboutwhat's going on in the future.
You're engulfed by the momentin time.
To me, that's the mostspiritual experience someone can
have.

Yeah, it's amazing how much physiology can
affect psychology and psychologycan affect physiology, Just
going back to the idea that bothspeak to each other so much.
Maybe we should have done thisearlier.
But can you explain whatsomatic is?

Yeah, somatic is .
There's a couple differentunderstandings of it the Western
understanding of somatics andPeter Levine is the father of
modern-day somatics.
The definition of somatic is ofthe body in relation to the

(59:57):
mind.
The field of somatics isbasically how the state of your
body is affecting the state ofyour mind.
It is this bottom-up process,it's looking at the body and how
it's affecting the mind, versusmodern psychotherapy has a

(01:00:17):
top-down approach to things.
It's like let's look at themind and see how it's affecting
your body, which there are prosand cons to both of those and
they're both necessary.
For me, the pendulum needed toswing to the other side because
we've been such a mentallydominant culture and we've
forgotten the intelligence inour body.

(01:00:38):
There's more intelligence in mybody than my mind can ever even
fathom.
Try to wrap your head arounddigesting your food and
absorbing and assimilating yournutrients and growing this hair
on my face To me.
To try to wrap my head aroundthat mentally, my mind can't
even do that.
I've always swung the pendulumto let's attune to the

(01:01:02):
intelligence of the body andthen connect to the mind.
The root word of somatic isfrom a Greek origin, soma, which
they looked at soma as yourliving wholeness.
They didn't separate mind, body, spirit.

(01:01:24):
It's your soma, it's consideredyour living wholeness and it's
all connected and they're allaffecting each other at the same
time.

Parker Condit (01:01:34):
I think that's a really nice way to think of it
You're living wholeness.
I think I need to jot that downon a sticky note and keep it on
my computer.
When you were talking earlierabout shorter duration
breathwork protocols that youcan probably just do on YouTube
by yourself, and then you weresaying longer breathwork
journeys, how long is a sessionthat you would take somebody

(01:01:57):
through?

Steven Jaggers (01:01:58):
Yeah, a typical somatic breathwork session is
usually done for about an hour.
It's an hour-long session.
There's ways to make it short.
You can condense it and do a30-minute session or you could
make it longer into a 90-minutesession.
Traditional holotropicbreathwork, which is probably

(01:02:20):
the most well-studied modalitywhen it comes to these longer
breathwork journey-stylemodalities, that's typically
done for three hours long andit's up-regulated in the whole
time.
It's really intense.
Essentially, what you're doingis you're creating an NDE, which

(01:02:43):
means a near-death experience.
You're pushing that state ofphysiological stress and
reenactment of trauma to thepoint of like I'm having an NDE
and I'm probably going to havesome sort of psychedelic or
spiritual experience from that,which is definitely unnecessary
and, in my opinion, too much forthe general population.

(01:03:03):
That's why I kind of condensedit and we have rounds of breath
holds where we're balancing CO2to O2 ratio and kind of making
sure people don't get too muchrespiratory alkalosis.
Typically a somatic breathworksession is an hour-long.
There's 30 minutes ofup-regulating, 30 minutes of

(01:03:25):
down-regulating, with somebreath holds in between.
As far as the daily practicegoes for me, I like to stay
pretty balanced.
I'll do like three minutes ofup-regulating, deep inhales and
exhales out of my mouth where Iam taking myself into a stress
state.
I'll do a breath hold, kind ofat the top, an inhale hold, and

(01:03:52):
then I will switch to breathingin through the nose and
elongating my exhales foranother three minutes and then
I'll do a breath hold at thebottom and just really try to….
A lot of times that'll take meinto quite a meditative state
and maybe I'll meditate for alittle bit.
It actually has helped mymeditation practice as well,

(01:04:12):
because I definitely had a….
Probably most people in theWest have a hard time meditating
, but it's a lot easier if youtake yourself up and then bring
yourself back down.

That actually makes sense.
Yeah, what are my complaints?
For many years while doingsilent meditations was my mind
is so busy.
Yeah, it would make sense thatif you take yourself up first,
you can probably get yourself toa quieter mind state on the
other side of it.
Going back to the somaticbreath work.
Do you do any sort of likepre-ceremony rituals?

(01:04:46):
Is there music in thebackground?
Are people lying down?
Are they seated?
I'm just kind of curious aboutthe logistics of one of these
sessions.

Yeah, absolutely .
For the longer session peopleare lying down.
Typically if you're doinganything over like five to seven
minutes, unless you have a lotof experience with breath work,
you usually want to be layingdown, because I've gotten
lightheaded from Wim Hof andkind of fell off balance.

(01:05:15):
Usually you want to be layingdown.
As far as pre it really dependsbecause there's a multitude of
different ways you can do it.
You can do a one-on-one sessionwith a practitioner or there's
group sessions, which there'spros and cons to each of those
there are a little bit different.
Typically there's guidedinstruction in the beginning and

(01:05:38):
there's instruction on not toeat a bunch of food right before
you do it and wear comfortableclothing.
There are people that take amuch more ceremonial approach to
things.
I think I have just throughoutthis process I've tried to strip
it of as much as possible justto make it appeal to the general

(01:06:02):
population, because that's forme.
I do have a very spiritual andceremonial background.
I love that.
I nerd out on all that stuff.
But if I'm trying to take thisto the masses, I want to
definitely make it as simple andjust neutral as possible.

While you're going through the breathwork, is
there music?

playing.
Oh yeah, yeah, music is a bigpart of it.
Music is huge.
I mean, sound is veryinteresting because sound
bypasses all of your defensesystem and goes straight to your
brainstem.
It's like if someone's playingshitty music whatever you think
shitty music is in the car,there's not a lot you can do

(01:06:47):
besides try to plug your ears.
It's going straight to yourbrainstem.
It has more of an effect onpeople than anything that I can
say or do as a practitioner.
Music is definitely a hugeportion of it.
It's really important,especially as you're going
through the journey.
The curation of the music isreally important to it as well.

Yeah, I can imagine that would really help
enhance or possibly detract ifthe music is not probably
aligned with what that part ofthe session is supposed to be.
Yeah, definitely, do you givepeople certain integration
protocols or techniques to workthrough after a session or
between sessions?

Yeah, this is an interesting topic.
It depends on what yourdefinition of integration is.
One of the things that I loveto do is just define words.
Socrates, wisdom begins at thedefinition of terms.
I look at somatic breath workas an integration modality.

(01:07:47):
It's an internal integrationmodality because what's going on
is you are connecting to partsof yourself that you have been
disconnected from, whetherthat's emotions that you've
pushed down, whether that'sparts of your body.
I would look at different typesof personal training as an
integration modality From thefield of somatics, integration

(01:08:10):
and healing actually mean thesame thing.
If trauma is a disconnect frommyself or parts of myself, then
all healing is an integration.
During the session, there'sthis internal integration that's
happening, where I'mreconnecting to parts of myself.

(01:08:31):
Then what I think you'retalking about is the external
integration is like okay, nowhow do I take that internally
integrated part of myself andnow integrate that externally?
Well, the biggest.
When it comes to externalintegration, I mean there are a
lot of different ways that youcan do that, and there's

(01:08:52):
journaling, there's repeatedexercises and small practices,
there's accountability.
But at the end of the day,nobody can externally integrate
for you.
You have to do that foryourself.
But what I will say is that thebiggest factor in external
integration is your community,is the people that you're

(01:09:16):
surrounded yourself with.
Do you have a group of peoplethat you can go and become this
new version of yourself, thatthey're going to hold you
accountable for that, and dothey actually allow you to
become a new version of yourself?
Because the biggest thing thatI get is people have these
life-changing, profoundexperiences and then they're

(01:09:38):
like oh shit, how do I go backhome and be with my wife and
kids and go back to my dailyroutines or my work and my job,
where most people and mostpeople are stuck in kind of a
fight or flight state or astress state.
The more we're stuck in achronic stress state, the more

(01:09:59):
that we crave stasis, meaningthat we want everyone around us
to be the same person now asthey're going to be tomorrow, as
they're going to be the nextday, and so the more capacity
and overwhelm that I am in, themore I'm going to be like okay,
I just need things to be thesame around me as much as
possible.
And we start to put that onpeople around us and what that

(01:10:21):
does is that eliminates thespace for them to become a new
person and to become this personthat went through this
internally integrated experience.
Which the thing about somatic isyeah, you might be connecting
to emotions and parts ofyourself that you've pushed down
for a long time.
That could be a little scaryand maybe parts of your shadow,

(01:10:43):
but at the same time, you'reprobably connecting to a lot of
your strengths, a lot of theways in which you could be
showing up better in the world,your potential.
I utilize it for aself-development modality as
well, to really connect to.
Okay, how do I want to show upin the world, what do I want to

(01:11:05):
become and how powerful am I?
And sometimes that'suncomfortable for people.
But then taking that connectedpart of myself and now having a
community, having people thatallow me to become this new,
connected version of myself, isthe most important part of it.

(01:11:25):
And it goes back to your firstquestion is community is the
most essential nutrient in allof it.

Yeah, you brought up a great point how important
environment is, how you can havea really profound experience,
but, like you said, theenvironment that you're going
back to is going to be veryinfluential as well.
I do want to be respectful ofyour time so I want to start
wrapping this up, but I justwant to ask you quickly, just
sort of from a very metaperspective where do you see the

(01:12:01):
world of mental health care andhealth care in general going in
the future?
Because you mentionedpsychedelics really early on in
the conversation and that's kindof getting a bit of a tailwind
for its use, its therapeutic usethere is.
It does seem like there's ashift towards people

(01:12:22):
acknowledging that the mind andbody are connected, which is
great within more traditionalhealth care settings.
I'm just curious where you seemaybe the mental health care
space over the next 10 or 20years evolving.

Yeah, well, where I see it going and where
I'd like it to go might like.
I hope it's the.
I hope it's the same route.
You know, I do think that we'vebeen in a place of mental
health being a specialized fieldand essentially my goal and my
wish is to showcase howconnected they are and instead

(01:13:00):
of it being mental health, it'smind, body health and how your
physical body is affecting yourmind and how your mind is
affecting your physical body.
I think this is another biggertopic, but what I'm really
fascinated in, as the worldcontinues to move faster and as

(01:13:22):
AI is just growing at anexponential rate, and how we're
still operating in thesebiological vessels that are
really actually ancient.
You're not your physical age,you are actually very ancient
because it's taken thousands andthousands of years for you to

(01:13:43):
develop a lot of the patternsthat are embedded in your
nervous system.

Yeah, to get this version of me.

Yeah, that didn't come from you, that came
from thousands of, you know, ofversions of evolution and
processing and learning newadaptive patterns.
And so we're like we have thisancient biology, we have this
godlike technology and we havemedieval institutions, like it's

(01:14:12):
.
There's some quote around that,but it lands.
For me.
I think that the ideal placeand hopefully and I do see us
going this way is figuring outhow biology and technology can
live symbiotically, becausethat's the only route.
Like technology is growing,we're still in a biological

(01:14:35):
vessel and we have to find someway for it to integrate in a
healthy way.
And so, you know, I thinkthere's two kind of ways to look
at it.
We've come from a specializedsort of healthcare where you got
the mental health person, yougot the gastroenterologist, you

(01:14:58):
got the, like the neurosurgeon,and then you have like the
holistic perspective of thingsand people that are looking at
the whole picture, and both ofthem are necessary and none of
them are bad or good, because weneed specialists and we also
need generalists and hopefullywe figure out a way to kind of,

(01:15:21):
you know, merge them togetherand because there's pros and
cons to both sides, but we needboth sides.

Yeah, very much so.
Do you have any closingthoughts before we wrap this up?

Yeah, I think we as a human, and you know, in
humanity, we are definitelyfaced with kind of a choice
right now and that, as you couldtell through most of my spills,
I operate dualistically and wehave a choice between sort of

(01:16:00):
fear or love, or openness orcontractedness, and we actually
have the tools to change ourstate at any point in time, and
that is your breath.
You can take yourself into moreof a contracted state and close
yourself off and, you know, lockyour doors and buy guns and all

(01:16:22):
of those things, or you can,you know you can choose to be in
more of an open, connectedstate, more of an integrated
state, and that is done throughyour breath.
And the last thing I'll say isthat, you know, I get a lot of
people that look at the videosand have a different response
than you did.
They're like this looks scary,I don't want to do this and I'm

(01:16:45):
like, well, you know, if you'reafraid of your breath, then you
are afraid of your life, andmaybe sitting down with yourself
breathing for an hour might bethe scariest thing that you
could do, and but if you'reafraid of that, you're afraid of
your life, because your life ismeasured by breath.
We all took our first breathand at some point in time we're

(01:17:09):
all going to take our last, andin between is our life and we
get to choose what state we'rein.

That seems like a very eloquent way to wrap this
up.
Stephen, thanks so much forcoming on.
It's been really fun chattingwith you.
I think this has been a verydifferent type of episode for
listeners and I think it's avery good introduction to
probably a lot of new conceptsfor people, but I really
appreciate how well you've beenable to communicate them and how

(01:17:38):
I think you're going to.
I think you're going to changea lot of minds with at least my
audience, which is probablypretty small right now, but
everything you're doing outthere, you're reaching a lot of
people, so I appreciate the workyou're doing.

Yeah, it's been an honor, Parker.
It was great.
It was great to chat with youand I went down quite a few
different rabbit holes andhopefully it makes sense, but
I'd be down to do it again.
You are a great interviewer andit was truly an honor.

Great, really really appreciate it and, yeah,
I think it's going to be a funepisode when it comes out.
Yeah, hey, everyone.
That's all for today's show.
I want to thank you so much forstopping by and watching,
especially if you've made it allthe way to this point.
If you'd like to be notifiedwhen new episodes are going to
be released, feel free tosubscribe, and make sure you hit
the bell button as well.
To learn more about today'sguests, feel free to look in the

(01:18:22):
description.
You can also visit the podcastwebsite, which is
exploringhealthpodcastcom.
That website will also belinked in the description.
As always, like share, commentsare a huge help to me and to
this channel and to the show, soany of that you can do I would
really appreciate.
And again, thank you so muchfor watching and I'll see you
next time.

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