November 20, 2025 • 21 mins
This is a Quick Fix by request!
I was sitting in the library doing some editing yesterday arvo, when a message came through via Facebook. It said:
Hey Rabs, have been listening from the beginning in order - just finished 150 the other day with Heather, and you mentioned that you would put up the BIMMS as a quick fix. I have a few people I would like to listen to it. I have looked but can't see it, and don't want to have to go back to the original ep to find it
Any chance you could put it up?
Well, ask and ye shall receive!
If you want to hear more from this chat with Heather (Heather Irvine-Rundle, clinical psychologist from the READ Clinic), just scroll on back to Episodes 72 and 73. (It was a 2 parter)
Thanks for your support! I really appreciate it!
Rabs
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
What are the key underlying structures that we need to give
ourselves the best chance of having good mental health?
So go to that. Yeah.
Yeah, that's where that stuff came from.
OK, firstly, when I talk about the thing you can hear from
Julie is what I worked hard withwhat mattered to her.
Yeah. Now one of the things if you've
spent your whole life being people pleaser, don't know if
(00:26):
you know anyone like that Ravs, but you can be very aware what
other people want and what otherpeople like and how what makes
someone else's you know, world tick.
But you haven't spent as much time working on your own.
And I loved hearing about you say, Heather, I really love
fixing things. I love the vans that you've done
(00:47):
because then I got you truly engaged with you.
At that moment. You weren't thinking about me.
You were thinking about yourselfin a really healthy way.
When I talked to Julie about herart, she goes to the same place.
When I talk to Julie about what she gets from swimming, she goes
to the same place. And so as we talk about tunement
and we talk about what are thosethings that we resonate with
(01:07):
that really help our mental health is, is spending some time
really figuring out what floats your boat?
What really gets you in that? What we call sometimes a flow
state where there's a there's this kind of like, I feel like
I'm connected to this thing and everything else is kind of
suddenly not mattering quite as much.
I'm not thinking about the future.
I'm not, you know, analysing my past.
(01:28):
I'm actually in the present and that's what we call mindfulness
to a degree, is like being in the moment on on purpose, non
judge, mentally connected with what we can see here, touch,
taste, smell and just being herebecause you if I said to you
most of the time, can you tell me Rebs, is anything wrong right
now? Like right now?
No, the answer's no. No, it's only when we analyse
(01:51):
our past or we're worried about our future that we actually
start to get into these situations.
Yeah, it's. Interesting, the whole thing of
mindfulness and being in the moment when you're doing this
thing. I just did an episode recently
when when long recorded from a Jazzercise class.
Of course they want it as a competition to have the pod van
come along. And they came out after the
(02:12):
class and we had about 15 of these women sitting around on
these chairs out the back and each came in.
But the way they spoke about it,yeah, one, there's a lot of
mental health stuff in there. People had moved to the area,
didn't know anybody. So they went along to that.
They have this scheduled in. They love, they look forward to
to going along to it. But then one of them actually
said as well, when I'm followingthe steps that the instructor's
(02:34):
doing up there, I can't be thinking about what happened at
work today. I can't be thinking about what
I'm going to be doing for dinnertonight and getting the kids
ready for this. I'm just in that moment.
In that moment, and that is mindfulness.
So when we think about what mindfulness is, we don't want to
think we have to be lying on ourbacks with our eyes closed in a
darkened. Room that's what I think of when
(02:55):
I think of mindfulness and Nope.But as you were saying all those
things before I was picturing when I'm on the tools and like
when I was renovating this van to turn it into the pod van.
Oh could've been happier. I'd spend all day long on the
tools creating and fixing and ofit, but I'd never would have
thought of that as mindfulness. Right now, because obviously I'm
(03:15):
a psychologist, I would want to add to that.
So I'm going. OK.
All right, Ravs, we've got you connected enough with the
present moment. Yeah.
Now, most people with anxiety have, as I said, have avoided
their Physiology. So I'm going to bring in
something else I would want you to do.
So this is my acronym. BIMS.
Yep. OK.
If you can think of a better acronym, we send it in.
Well, I mean, if it's BIMS, is that what it?
Is BIMMS. IMMS, what else are we going to?
(03:38):
Do yeah, yeah, yeah. Put it out there as a prize.
You get to, I don't know, you think that perhaps.
But look, I think what it startsto say is his birth rate.
Now, if your listeners would probably have no idea about
their birth rate, do you know what your birth rate is per
minute? Birth rate per minute.
I mean, I know what my heart rate is.
You know. You know you're breathing.
That's a good thing. It's the first thing you'll ever
(03:58):
do. The last thing you'll ever do.
Breathe. Good idea.
What we know from the interface between biology and psychology,
and this comes from an amazing professor that works at the Reed
Clinic, Professor Ashley Craig, who does a lot of this research.
Incredible man. So wise what they've done is
they've looked at the impact of birth rate and mental health,
OK? And they're how people recover
(04:19):
from serious injuries, who does a lot of work in post traumatic
stress disorder. And what we know is that there's
a certain birth rate that unlessyou've got asthma or some other
illness, there's a certain birthrate.
It's what we call our functionalbirth rate.
And that's the birth rate that we want to have most of the time
when we're functioning. Is this to do?
With heart rate as well or no? Well, you're so clever.
(04:40):
So if we look at the autonomic nervous system, as I said to you
in your first podcast, it's divided into two parts.
And I think we talked about this.
I've mentioned autonomic nervoussystem.
Yes, you did. You've got the sympathetic
nervous system, which feels sorry for you.
That's how you remember sympathetic sorry.
So it wants to feel sorry for you.
It wants you to go into this flight fight mode where it's
going to lift your heart rate, where it's going to make sure
(05:01):
the blood pumps to those areas that you need to be able to kind
of either fight the tiger away or run from the tiger, OK?
I love that whole thing. I was just pausing that for a
second because when I found out about what anxiety really is,
what the body is doing, is that take it way, way back to running
from the tiger. It's your body preparing you for
fight or flight. You're either going to fight
(05:22):
this thing or you're going to beable to run.
So I'm going to up the heart rate, pump blood around the body
just like if you were just getting ready to do a Sprint
race. Absolutely.
And and anxiety and living with anxiety is your body doing that
all the time, all the time and it and it's not meant to that's.
What I said, what's the threat? Yeah.
What's the threat? Yeah.
And you're anticipating threat. That's what anxiety is.
(05:43):
I'm anticipating a threat's about to come.
I'm anticipating this person's not gonna like what I've said
about them. Or whether I didn't do a good
enough job or I didn't make themfeel welcome enough.
Or I asked them a question they weren't really familiar with,
and then they felt bad about themselves.
And then. Or I didn't explain myself very
well. And that, that.
So the, the, the the show didn'tmake any sense.
And I'm sure my audience must have lost interest that point.
And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah. Yeah.
And then so you're anticipating this threat all the time.
(06:04):
So you're in that sympathetic nervous system, which is meant
to be temporary. Yeah.
And then we're meant to go back to the parasympathetic nervous
system or the ventral bagel system, where our heart rate is
lower, our muscle tensions lower, our movement is slower,
our speech is slower, our breathrate is slower.
And it's saying, yeah, calm here.
(06:24):
And then we get back to being inthe present.
We go back to, it's easy to be mindful in that moment.
We're connected to the people around me.
We're looking at that person who's with me, not from a
position of I wonder if she likes me.
I wonder if she doesn't. I wonder if she's going to call
me again. I wonder if, you know, if I say
the wrong thing, is she going tolike some put something on
social media about me, blah, blah, blah.
It's actually I'm just listeningto Heather.
(06:45):
Yeah. I'm just listening to Heather
right now in this moment, grounded, connected, curious
about what we might say next. Yeah, that's predicting.
I'm looking forward to what we might talk about, not what if I
say something wrong. What if you didn't like what I
said? What if I asked a dumb question?
So it's that what I want people to know is that ventral vagal
system, parasympathetic nervous system is already in you.
(07:09):
You don't have to go finding it.You don't have to create it.
It's already there, right? It's waiting for you to return
home. And if we look at what happens,
and that's why we talk about birth rate, is if we look at all
the organs that are impacted by whether we're in the
parasympathetic nervous system or the sympathetic nervous
(07:29):
system, the one organ that we can directly influence, the only
one is our lungs. And that means our breath rate.
And all of your listeners would probably be bored if they've got
some help from someone or read something on the Internet or
listen to a TikTok. They all go on about breathing
I. Know I'm going to take deep
(07:50):
breaths. OK, No, you don't.
But you have to understand what your breath rate is.
So if all your listeners want toget out their phones and put a
timer on. Yeah.
OK for a minute. Now, if I was analysing you, I'd
do it to you right now. I'm not going to.
You can do it when we finish. Oh, we can do it.
We can do it. Yeah.
OK. Do you?
Want to get my phone out and time it.
It's, it's a boring minute for everyone to listen to, Yeah,
(08:12):
but. I mean, what if?
We do it, you can cut it out andthen we can come back, OK?
And then people, so people don'tsit in silence for a minute.
That's really smart because I was just going to sit in silence
for a minute kind of thing. That in radio would be
terrifying. In fact, a emergency tape would
kick in after 30 seconds or something of silence.
Yeah. But OK, so this is something
(08:33):
that people can do. We don't have to do it right now
altogether. We can do it, but you can.
Do it later. We are about to do it, yeah.
And then we'll we'll come back. We're going to cut back.
Do I need to start a timer here or something?
Time. Why should you be doing it?
So I don't like look at the. Time and then what I'm going to
do is for all your listeners at home before you do this put it
on you've got to try and keep breathing at the rate you were
(08:54):
breathing before now everyone will say good I don't know how I
was breathing before and that's true I'm.
Paying attention to it now. I'm paying attention to it now,
so try and keep it the same as it was before, OK, All right.
Set it on a one minute timer. OK, we're going to start.
And then we'll come back. OK, Can we go?
Am I meant to be counting? He's so funny, Yes, sorry, I
(09:14):
don't know who he thinks he's going to count, but it's got to
be. Him What am I going one?
The in breath, Yeah. And the out breath, that's one
counts as one. OK.
All you do is count OK inside your head.
Oh, OK. Yeah, good.
Listen, look, just look outside the window, you know?
Be counting on my fingers. Be counting, got it All right.
Now this is the point where we were going to edit out the
(09:35):
minute of silence. But no, it's the great thing
about a podcast. If you don't want to do this
test right now, you can just jump on forward, pass this bit.
Or if you don't want to sit herein silence for a minute because
you don't want to do the test, you jump on past it.
But if you would like to do it at the same time as we are and
then find out about the results straight from this moment, we're
going to do the minute from now and.
(09:56):
Go. And stop.
(10:58):
We're back. We're back.
I got bored and distracted. So everyone who was doing that
exercise, I want you to write down what you got or put it in
your phone, whatever, because I don't want you to change it when
I give you this information. Should I say what mine is?
Yeah, 20. OK, that's really interesting.
(11:24):
So I talked about the autonomic nervous system.
I said which system are we in? Are we in the parasympathetic
nervous system, which is rest and digest and reproduce?
And then the other part is the flight by.
Now, I haven't talked about the collapse state yet.
We're going to come back to that.
But the flight by is when we start to anticipate threat and
the system mobilizes. Our birth rate is one of the key
(11:48):
predictors that we have of whichstate we're in now.
Unless you've got asthma. Rabs and I are sitting together
in his van. We have been sitting for quite
some time. I'm relatively boring.
There's not a lot going on in here, people.
So we would anticipate A reasonably low birth rate.
(12:10):
However, I have been talking about things that I know
resonate with you and have been causing you for a lot of
reflection. 12 breaths per minute is what we're looking
for. Oh wow, really?
I know His eyes just went big. Oh.
Geez, I was so proud of my 20 he.
Was proud of his 20 that's. Good.
Wow, that's really interesting. I'm gonna tell you Julie's.
(12:30):
I took his yesterday. I will actually.
I did want to say back when we were talking about Julie before
that Julie's OK with us talking about the stuff that we're
talking about. Yeah.
You see, there could be some people listening going.
She can't be talking about what Julie said in her sessions and
stuff. No, these are the best, Julie
said. Is are OK to talk about.
Yes, and she said that to me as well.
So, and because, you know, she'snamed me in her book, and you
know, we, we, we. It's a very conscious decision
(12:52):
to move into this space. Yeah, but I want to know where I
am against Julie's. No.
Well. That I can't.
I remember, I said. I see Julie.
I can't do anything about what. I'm just going to text her and
tell her my breath rate was 20. Yeah, OK.
So and then she can too much share you.
Because she knows I'm not reallytalking to you.
As he does that, I'll no, no, yes.
My breath rate was 20. That's all I'm sending and we'll
(13:14):
see what she she's going to knowwhat that is because you did it
with her yesterday. Oh, wow, that's funny.
OK, great. I really look forward to this.
We'll be back in just a SEC to break it all down with Robbie.
What we're looking for is birth rates for around 11:50, being a
functional birth rate, so we canstill get things done.
(13:35):
We can drive around. We can, you know, talk to
people. We want it around 11:50 births
per minute now as it gets towards 15, but certainly
towards 18 and 20. We're actually invoking the
sympathetic nervous system because that birth rate suggests
threat unless we've got asthma people.
I'm not saying if you've got some breathing difficulties.
So what we know from Rabs is he's a typical birth rate of
(13:58):
someone who's carries anxiety. He's a typical birth rate of
someone who has no idea that that's a high birth rate for
everyday function. I'm thinking I'm sitting a
little. So I was proud of my 20.
I'm sitting, I'm looking out thewindows and I'm like, I was
thinking I'm not being legit here because pretty sure I'm
(14:19):
slowing my breathing down for this.
I'm trying not to, but I reckon it's actually, it would be
higher than what it is now. But because we're just sitting
there and I'm in a very relaxed state, Yeah, you're going to get
a a low number out of me. It's not a low number.
So is there any correlation between the breath rate and the
heart rate? Because I've spoken on here
(14:40):
about, it was around the time wewere doing contract negotiations
last year that I was in the kitchen at one point.
And I guess this was a panic attack.
And I don't think I'd ever. Yeah.
Now we go way back to many, manyyears ago.
Maybe I have had a panic tank before, but I was coming out
now. Hang on a second.
I was standing in the kitchen and I could feel it's my heart
leaping out of my chest. I'm like, what is going on?
(15:01):
I mean, put my hand on the benchand I on my watch.
I brought up my heart rate and it was 142.
That's that's huge. And yes, you're quite right.
So when we're trying to think about which organs that we can
change through, whether in sympathetic, which is getting
towards your panic attack versusyour parasympathetic, which is
rest, I just reproduce. As I said, the breath rate is
(15:24):
the only organ that we can directly influence to influence
all of the others. So you speed up your breathing
right now and you will increase your heart rate, You will change
a lot of physiological symptoms,which is why people who have
chronic stress and anxiety have a lot of physiological symptoms
in those organs, right? I'm going to give you listeners
a link to some of the, there's areally simple 6 minute Ted talk
(15:47):
to talk about stress in the body, which you're going to.
It's really, really simple. That is in the description for
this episode. I'll pop it in there.
But yeah, so when people think about what can I most, when you
hear when people say we're having a panic attack, which is
that heart rate going up, sense of dizziness, all those other
things that come along with the with the panic attack, you'll
ever heard me say what? Breathe.
I want you to just notice your breathing.
(16:08):
I want you to bring your breathing right down because
that influences all the other organs because that's the only
point of entry that we have. So when people have been told,
you know, we were breathing, I'msick of telling about breathing.
Hopefully now you understand whyyour psychologist or whoever
you've been reading about has suggested to look at your breath
rate. Most people don't know, however,
what their recommended breath rate is, so they don't know that
(16:29):
for a functional breath rate, we're heading between 11:50.
Wow. So what happens is people try
and breathe too slowly, so they try and get down to that six
breaths a minute even that was. What I was just calculating in
my in in my mind, well not the six I was sort of working at how
many times per like 10 seconds or how many times per second I
should be out to be at 11:50. Around about 3 seconds in, three
(16:51):
seconds out. However, this is another
important stuff around this. If a Saber toothed tiger walks
in the room we both breathe in OK and you can see as I breathed
in what happened to my muscle structure.
Tense up. Right.
Your heart rate increases on thebreath in.
As you breathe out, your heart rate just slows down slightly.
(17:12):
Right. As the Sabre toothed tiger left
the situation, what do we both do?
Breathe out. Sigh.
Go see now you got you're linking.
So is this why you find yourselfsighing like I'll I'll find and
actually feels better when you do a big breath?
Out. Ah, there you go.
And now you understand why so. You.
(17:33):
Is there actually a chemical thing happening as well with the
breathing? There is so much happening in
your body as you breathe. So that is why looking at your
breath rate is really important if you want to understand mental
health, particularly anxiety, depression, trauma, OCD, all
those things that kind of relateto physiological symptoms, you
know, even some of your psychosis.
We, we will always work on biology in line with psychology.
(17:54):
If you have someone that understands this, which is good,
you know, seek someone who, who understands that their
connection. So that's why when, when you're
practicing this breath rate and you can look at, there's a
gazillion apps out there that, that get that you can put into
the, that the equation that you want to breathe in for
approximately 3 breathe out for three.
(18:15):
And that's called a functional breath rate.
You want to focus on breathing in through your nose.
Why? Because it's said when the Saber
toothed tiger walks in, we breathe in through our mouth.
When you're breathing in throughyour nose, why are you breathing
in through your nose? Because you're normally smelling
something that's actually soothing.
So you're breathing in a smell, you're breathing in the flowers,
you're breathing in the environment.
So you're breathing through yournose to actually bring in a
(18:36):
sense of being safe breathing inthrough my nose and I'm
breathing out through my mouth. That's.
Interesting, because if something stinky you're not
going to do a big long breath inthrough your nose.
It's only if it's pleasant. Remember I said your your goal
is to get to 11:50, but you may need to bring it down more
slowly because the last thing you want to do is breathe so
slowly. That's too much.
(18:57):
And then you'll invoke that. So what about the box breathing
then? Box breathing's fine, but you've
got to think about how many seconds for each and if you had
20 breaths per minute. OK, so that's a breath cycle of
three seconds. In and out is 3.
So 20 * 3 is 60. And I'm asking you to do a
breath of about 10. So that's that's three in, three
out. So you can do your box
(19:19):
breathing, which is following a box round.
You can do star breathing when you breathe in and out.
I don't care how what you do. You can watch your ball go in
and out. Look at those heaps of apps that
do that. But just be aware you're trying
to get it to about a three seconds in and three seconds
out. That's interesting through the
nose. So.
One of the box breathing things that I was trying at one point
was I think it was 8IN in for 8,hold for eight, out for 8, hold
(19:40):
for 8:00. This is killing you, isn't?
It and that is such bad advice because it's too slow for you.
And what happens is, is then it's trying to get you to what
we call a relaxing breath rate, which is non functional.
So you're trying to move from 20down to about two breaths a
minute. And your brain isn't can't
handle that. So it's going to say this
(20:00):
breathing isn't for me. I can't do this.
And you're going to give up on you think that the people
telling you about breathing is awaste of time.
No, it's not a waste of time, but you've got to incrementally
bring it down each week. You might bring it down one
breath per minute, and you've got to do it for about 5 minutes
a day. Because as I said in the first
podcast, understanding what you need to do for yourself is about
(20:21):
attunement. I talked about Julie loves art.
If I suggested you needed to do art to enjoy life, you would
throw something at me, right? If I said to her she needs to
fix up caravans, she'd throw something at me.
So attunement to you is important.
So when we practice for 5 minutes a day, it's because I
want you to know what 11:50 breaths a minute feels like.
(20:43):
So the next time you're interviewing me, you've got
enough experience of that so that if you notice your birth
rate getting up to 18 to 20, you're actually going to go, oh,
I'm breathing too quickly for this situation.
I'm sitting here with Heather. It's relatively boring.
Why is it high? Well, because my system's used
to sitting too high, I'm going to bring it down to 11:50 and
(21:04):
I'm going to keep myself out of that sympathetic nervous system.
I'm going to stay within the parasympathetic nervous system,
which makes it easy to be more connected with Heather.
I'm more grounded. I'm more present.
I'm not thinking about the past or the future.
I'm giving myself the best chance to be in this relaxed
state through my breath. All right.
That'll do it for this quick fix.
Remember, if you ever want to hear the full conversation it
(21:25):
comes from, just match the number in the title of this
quick fix to the full episode number.
And don't forget, if you turn onthe notifications and Spotify
and Apple Podcasts, you won't miss any episodes or extras that
drop Quick fix with Rabbit.
What are the key underlying structures that we need to give
ourselves the best chance of having good mental health?
So go to that. Yeah.
Yeah, that's where that stuff came from.
OK, firstly, when I talk about the thing you can hear from
Julie is what I worked hard withwhat mattered to her.
Yeah. Now one of the things if you've
spent your whole life being people pleaser, don't know if
(00:26):
you know anyone like that Ravs, but you can be very aware what
other people want and what otherpeople like and how what makes
someone else's you know, world tick.
But you haven't spent as much time working on your own.
And I loved hearing about you say, Heather, I really love
fixing things. I love the vans that you've done
(00:47):
because then I got you truly engaged with you.
At that moment. You weren't thinking about me.
You were thinking about yourselfin a really healthy way.
When I talked to Julie about herart, she goes to the same place.
When I talk to Julie about what she gets from swimming, she goes
to the same place. And so as we talk about tunement
and we talk about what are thosethings that we resonate with
(01:07):
that really help our mental health is, is spending some time
really figuring out what floats your boat?
What really gets you in that? What we call sometimes a flow
state where there's a there's this kind of like, I feel like
I'm connected to this thing and everything else is kind of
suddenly not mattering quite as much.
I'm not thinking about the future.
I'm not, you know, analysing my past.
(01:28):
I'm actually in the present and that's what we call mindfulness
to a degree, is like being in the moment on on purpose, non
judge, mentally connected with what we can see here, touch,
taste, smell and just being herebecause you if I said to you
most of the time, can you tell me Rebs, is anything wrong right
now? Like right now?
No, the answer's no. No, it's only when we analyse
(01:51):
our past or we're worried about our future that we actually
start to get into these situations.
Yeah, it's. Interesting, the whole thing of
mindfulness and being in the moment when you're doing this
thing. I just did an episode recently
when when long recorded from a Jazzercise class.
Of course they want it as a competition to have the pod van
come along. And they came out after the
(02:12):
class and we had about 15 of these women sitting around on
these chairs out the back and each came in.
But the way they spoke about it,yeah, one, there's a lot of
mental health stuff in there. People had moved to the area,
didn't know anybody. So they went along to that.
They have this scheduled in. They love, they look forward to
to going along to it. But then one of them actually
said as well, when I'm followingthe steps that the instructor's
(02:34):
doing up there, I can't be thinking about what happened at
work today. I can't be thinking about what
I'm going to be doing for dinnertonight and getting the kids
ready for this. I'm just in that moment.
In that moment, and that is mindfulness.
So when we think about what mindfulness is, we don't want to
think we have to be lying on ourbacks with our eyes closed in a
darkened. Room that's what I think of when
(02:55):
I think of mindfulness and Nope.But as you were saying all those
things before I was picturing when I'm on the tools and like
when I was renovating this van to turn it into the pod van.
Oh could've been happier. I'd spend all day long on the
tools creating and fixing and ofit, but I'd never would have
thought of that as mindfulness. Right now, because obviously I'm
(03:15):
a psychologist, I would want to add to that.
So I'm going. OK.
All right, Ravs, we've got you connected enough with the
present moment. Yeah.
Now, most people with anxiety have, as I said, have avoided
their Physiology. So I'm going to bring in
something else I would want you to do.
So this is my acronym. BIMS.
Yep. OK.
If you can think of a better acronym, we send it in.
Well, I mean, if it's BIMS, is that what it?
Is BIMMS. IMMS, what else are we going to?
(03:38):
Do yeah, yeah, yeah. Put it out there as a prize.
You get to, I don't know, you think that perhaps.
But look, I think what it startsto say is his birth rate.
Now, if your listeners would probably have no idea about
their birth rate, do you know what your birth rate is per
minute? Birth rate per minute.
I mean, I know what my heart rate is.
You know. You know you're breathing.
That's a good thing. It's the first thing you'll ever
(03:58):
do. The last thing you'll ever do.
Breathe. Good idea.
What we know from the interface between biology and psychology,
and this comes from an amazing professor that works at the Reed
Clinic, Professor Ashley Craig, who does a lot of this research.
Incredible man. So wise what they've done is
they've looked at the impact of birth rate and mental health,
OK? And they're how people recover
(04:19):
from serious injuries, who does a lot of work in post traumatic
stress disorder. And what we know is that there's
a certain birth rate that unlessyou've got asthma or some other
illness, there's a certain birthrate.
It's what we call our functionalbirth rate.
And that's the birth rate that we want to have most of the time
when we're functioning. Is this to do?
With heart rate as well or no? Well, you're so clever.
(04:40):
So if we look at the autonomic nervous system, as I said to you
in your first podcast, it's divided into two parts.
And I think we talked about this.
I've mentioned autonomic nervoussystem.
Yes, you did. You've got the sympathetic
nervous system, which feels sorry for you.
That's how you remember sympathetic sorry.
So it wants to feel sorry for you.
It wants you to go into this flight fight mode where it's
going to lift your heart rate, where it's going to make sure
(05:01):
the blood pumps to those areas that you need to be able to kind
of either fight the tiger away or run from the tiger, OK?
I love that whole thing. I was just pausing that for a
second because when I found out about what anxiety really is,
what the body is doing, is that take it way, way back to running
from the tiger. It's your body preparing you for
fight or flight. You're either going to fight
(05:22):
this thing or you're going to beable to run.
So I'm going to up the heart rate, pump blood around the body
just like if you were just getting ready to do a Sprint
race. Absolutely.
And and anxiety and living with anxiety is your body doing that
all the time, all the time and it and it's not meant to that's.
What I said, what's the threat? Yeah.
What's the threat? Yeah.
And you're anticipating threat. That's what anxiety is.
(05:43):
I'm anticipating a threat's about to come.
I'm anticipating this person's not gonna like what I've said
about them. Or whether I didn't do a good
enough job or I didn't make themfeel welcome enough.
Or I asked them a question they weren't really familiar with,
and then they felt bad about themselves.
And then. Or I didn't explain myself very
well. And that, that.
So the, the, the the show didn'tmake any sense.
And I'm sure my audience must have lost interest that point.
And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah. Yeah.
And then so you're anticipating this threat all the time.
(06:04):
So you're in that sympathetic nervous system, which is meant
to be temporary. Yeah.
And then we're meant to go back to the parasympathetic nervous
system or the ventral bagel system, where our heart rate is
lower, our muscle tensions lower, our movement is slower,
our speech is slower, our breathrate is slower.
And it's saying, yeah, calm here.
(06:24):
And then we get back to being inthe present.
We go back to, it's easy to be mindful in that moment.
We're connected to the people around me.
We're looking at that person who's with me, not from a
position of I wonder if she likes me.
I wonder if she doesn't. I wonder if she's going to call
me again. I wonder if, you know, if I say
the wrong thing, is she going tolike some put something on
social media about me, blah, blah, blah.
It's actually I'm just listeningto Heather.
(06:45):
Yeah. I'm just listening to Heather
right now in this moment, grounded, connected, curious
about what we might say next. Yeah, that's predicting.
I'm looking forward to what we might talk about, not what if I
say something wrong. What if you didn't like what I
said? What if I asked a dumb question?
So it's that what I want people to know is that ventral vagal
system, parasympathetic nervous system is already in you.
(07:09):
You don't have to go finding it.You don't have to create it.
It's already there, right? It's waiting for you to return
home. And if we look at what happens,
and that's why we talk about birth rate, is if we look at all
the organs that are impacted by whether we're in the
parasympathetic nervous system or the sympathetic nervous
(07:29):
system, the one organ that we can directly influence, the only
one is our lungs. And that means our breath rate.
And all of your listeners would probably be bored if they've got
some help from someone or read something on the Internet or
listen to a TikTok. They all go on about breathing
I. Know I'm going to take deep
(07:50):
breaths. OK, No, you don't.
But you have to understand what your breath rate is.
So if all your listeners want toget out their phones and put a
timer on. Yeah.
OK for a minute. Now, if I was analysing you, I'd
do it to you right now. I'm not going to.
You can do it when we finish. Oh, we can do it.
We can do it. Yeah.
OK. Do you?
Want to get my phone out and time it.
It's, it's a boring minute for everyone to listen to, Yeah,
(08:12):
but. I mean, what if?
We do it, you can cut it out andthen we can come back, OK?
And then people, so people don'tsit in silence for a minute.
That's really smart because I was just going to sit in silence
for a minute kind of thing. That in radio would be
terrifying. In fact, a emergency tape would
kick in after 30 seconds or something of silence.
Yeah. But OK, so this is something
(08:33):
that people can do. We don't have to do it right now
altogether. We can do it, but you can.
Do it later. We are about to do it, yeah.
And then we'll we'll come back. We're going to cut back.
Do I need to start a timer here or something?
Time. Why should you be doing it?
So I don't like look at the. Time and then what I'm going to
do is for all your listeners at home before you do this put it
on you've got to try and keep breathing at the rate you were
(08:54):
breathing before now everyone will say good I don't know how I
was breathing before and that's true I'm.
Paying attention to it now. I'm paying attention to it now,
so try and keep it the same as it was before, OK, All right.
Set it on a one minute timer. OK, we're going to start.
And then we'll come back. OK, Can we go?
Am I meant to be counting? He's so funny, Yes, sorry, I
(09:14):
don't know who he thinks he's going to count, but it's got to
be. Him What am I going one?
The in breath, Yeah. And the out breath, that's one
counts as one. OK.
All you do is count OK inside your head.
Oh, OK. Yeah, good.
Listen, look, just look outside the window, you know?
Be counting on my fingers. Be counting, got it All right.
Now this is the point where we were going to edit out the
(09:35):
minute of silence. But no, it's the great thing
about a podcast. If you don't want to do this
test right now, you can just jump on forward, pass this bit.
Or if you don't want to sit herein silence for a minute because
you don't want to do the test, you jump on past it.
But if you would like to do it at the same time as we are and
then find out about the results straight from this moment, we're
going to do the minute from now and.
(09:56):
Go. And stop.
(10:58):
We're back. We're back.
I got bored and distracted. So everyone who was doing that
exercise, I want you to write down what you got or put it in
your phone, whatever, because I don't want you to change it when
I give you this information. Should I say what mine is?
Yeah, 20. OK, that's really interesting.
(11:24):
So I talked about the autonomic nervous system.
I said which system are we in? Are we in the parasympathetic
nervous system, which is rest and digest and reproduce?
And then the other part is the flight by.
Now, I haven't talked about the collapse state yet.
We're going to come back to that.
But the flight by is when we start to anticipate threat and
the system mobilizes. Our birth rate is one of the key
(11:48):
predictors that we have of whichstate we're in now.
Unless you've got asthma. Rabs and I are sitting together
in his van. We have been sitting for quite
some time. I'm relatively boring.
There's not a lot going on in here, people.
So we would anticipate A reasonably low birth rate.
(12:10):
However, I have been talking about things that I know
resonate with you and have been causing you for a lot of
reflection. 12 breaths per minute is what we're looking
for. Oh wow, really?
I know His eyes just went big. Oh.
Geez, I was so proud of my 20 he.
Was proud of his 20 that's. Good.
Wow, that's really interesting. I'm gonna tell you Julie's.
(12:30):
I took his yesterday. I will actually.
I did want to say back when we were talking about Julie before
that Julie's OK with us talking about the stuff that we're
talking about. Yeah.
You see, there could be some people listening going.
She can't be talking about what Julie said in her sessions and
stuff. No, these are the best, Julie
said. Is are OK to talk about.
Yes, and she said that to me as well.
So, and because, you know, she'snamed me in her book, and you
know, we, we, we. It's a very conscious decision
(12:52):
to move into this space. Yeah, but I want to know where I
am against Julie's. No.
Well. That I can't.
I remember, I said. I see Julie.
I can't do anything about what. I'm just going to text her and
tell her my breath rate was 20. Yeah, OK.
So and then she can too much share you.
Because she knows I'm not reallytalking to you.
As he does that, I'll no, no, yes.
My breath rate was 20. That's all I'm sending and we'll
(13:14):
see what she she's going to knowwhat that is because you did it
with her yesterday. Oh, wow, that's funny.
OK, great. I really look forward to this.
We'll be back in just a SEC to break it all down with Robbie.
What we're looking for is birth rates for around 11:50, being a
functional birth rate, so we canstill get things done.
(13:35):
We can drive around. We can, you know, talk to
people. We want it around 11:50 births
per minute now as it gets towards 15, but certainly
towards 18 and 20. We're actually invoking the
sympathetic nervous system because that birth rate suggests
threat unless we've got asthma people.
I'm not saying if you've got some breathing difficulties.
So what we know from Rabs is he's a typical birth rate of
(13:58):
someone who's carries anxiety. He's a typical birth rate of
someone who has no idea that that's a high birth rate for
everyday function. I'm thinking I'm sitting a
little. So I was proud of my 20.
I'm sitting, I'm looking out thewindows and I'm like, I was
thinking I'm not being legit here because pretty sure I'm
(14:19):
slowing my breathing down for this.
I'm trying not to, but I reckon it's actually, it would be
higher than what it is now. But because we're just sitting
there and I'm in a very relaxed state, Yeah, you're going to get
a a low number out of me. It's not a low number.
So is there any correlation between the breath rate and the
heart rate? Because I've spoken on here
(14:40):
about, it was around the time wewere doing contract negotiations
last year that I was in the kitchen at one point.
And I guess this was a panic attack.
And I don't think I'd ever. Yeah.
Now we go way back to many, manyyears ago.
Maybe I have had a panic tank before, but I was coming out
now. Hang on a second.
I was standing in the kitchen and I could feel it's my heart
leaping out of my chest. I'm like, what is going on?
(15:01):
I mean, put my hand on the benchand I on my watch.
I brought up my heart rate and it was 142.
That's that's huge. And yes, you're quite right.
So when we're trying to think about which organs that we can
change through, whether in sympathetic, which is getting
towards your panic attack versusyour parasympathetic, which is
rest, I just reproduce. As I said, the breath rate is
(15:24):
the only organ that we can directly influence to influence
all of the others. So you speed up your breathing
right now and you will increase your heart rate, You will change
a lot of physiological symptoms,which is why people who have
chronic stress and anxiety have a lot of physiological symptoms
in those organs, right? I'm going to give you listeners
a link to some of the, there's areally simple 6 minute Ted talk
(15:47):
to talk about stress in the body, which you're going to.
It's really, really simple. That is in the description for
this episode. I'll pop it in there.
But yeah, so when people think about what can I most, when you
hear when people say we're having a panic attack, which is
that heart rate going up, sense of dizziness, all those other
things that come along with the with the panic attack, you'll
ever heard me say what? Breathe.
I want you to just notice your breathing.
(16:08):
I want you to bring your breathing right down because
that influences all the other organs because that's the only
point of entry that we have. So when people have been told,
you know, we were breathing, I'msick of telling about breathing.
Hopefully now you understand whyyour psychologist or whoever
you've been reading about has suggested to look at your breath
rate. Most people don't know, however,
what their recommended breath rate is, so they don't know that
(16:29):
for a functional breath rate, we're heading between 11:50.
Wow. So what happens is people try
and breathe too slowly, so they try and get down to that six
breaths a minute even that was. What I was just calculating in
my in in my mind, well not the six I was sort of working at how
many times per like 10 seconds or how many times per second I
should be out to be at 11:50. Around about 3 seconds in, three
(16:51):
seconds out. However, this is another
important stuff around this. If a Saber toothed tiger walks
in the room we both breathe in OK and you can see as I breathed
in what happened to my muscle structure.
Tense up. Right.
Your heart rate increases on thebreath in.
As you breathe out, your heart rate just slows down slightly.
(17:12):
Right. As the Sabre toothed tiger left
the situation, what do we both do?
Breathe out. Sigh.
Go see now you got you're linking.
So is this why you find yourselfsighing like I'll I'll find and
actually feels better when you do a big breath?
Out. Ah, there you go.
And now you understand why so. You.
(17:33):
Is there actually a chemical thing happening as well with the
breathing? There is so much happening in
your body as you breathe. So that is why looking at your
breath rate is really important if you want to understand mental
health, particularly anxiety, depression, trauma, OCD, all
those things that kind of relateto physiological symptoms, you
know, even some of your psychosis.
We, we will always work on biology in line with psychology.
(17:54):
If you have someone that understands this, which is good,
you know, seek someone who, who understands that their
connection. So that's why when, when you're
practicing this breath rate and you can look at, there's a
gazillion apps out there that, that get that you can put into
the, that the equation that you want to breathe in for
approximately 3 breathe out for three.
(18:15):
And that's called a functional breath rate.
You want to focus on breathing in through your nose.
Why? Because it's said when the Saber
toothed tiger walks in, we breathe in through our mouth.
When you're breathing in throughyour nose, why are you breathing
in through your nose? Because you're normally smelling
something that's actually soothing.
So you're breathing in a smell, you're breathing in the flowers,
you're breathing in the environment.
So you're breathing through yournose to actually bring in a
(18:36):
sense of being safe breathing inthrough my nose and I'm
breathing out through my mouth. That's.
Interesting, because if something stinky you're not
going to do a big long breath inthrough your nose.
It's only if it's pleasant. Remember I said your your goal
is to get to 11:50, but you may need to bring it down more
slowly because the last thing you want to do is breathe so
slowly. That's too much.
(18:57):
And then you'll invoke that. So what about the box breathing
then? Box breathing's fine, but you've
got to think about how many seconds for each and if you had
20 breaths per minute. OK, so that's a breath cycle of
three seconds. In and out is 3.
So 20 * 3 is 60. And I'm asking you to do a
breath of about 10. So that's that's three in, three
out. So you can do your box
(19:19):
breathing, which is following a box round.
You can do star breathing when you breathe in and out.
I don't care how what you do. You can watch your ball go in
and out. Look at those heaps of apps that
do that. But just be aware you're trying
to get it to about a three seconds in and three seconds
out. That's interesting through the
nose. So.
One of the box breathing things that I was trying at one point
was I think it was 8IN in for 8,hold for eight, out for 8, hold
(19:40):
for 8:00. This is killing you, isn't?
It and that is such bad advice because it's too slow for you.
And what happens is, is then it's trying to get you to what
we call a relaxing breath rate, which is non functional.
So you're trying to move from 20down to about two breaths a
minute. And your brain isn't can't
handle that. So it's going to say this
(20:00):
breathing isn't for me. I can't do this.
And you're going to give up on you think that the people
telling you about breathing is awaste of time.
No, it's not a waste of time, but you've got to incrementally
bring it down each week. You might bring it down one
breath per minute, and you've got to do it for about 5 minutes
a day. Because as I said in the first
podcast, understanding what you need to do for yourself is about
(20:21):
attunement. I talked about Julie loves art.
If I suggested you needed to do art to enjoy life, you would
throw something at me, right? If I said to her she needs to
fix up caravans, she'd throw something at me.
So attunement to you is important.
So when we practice for 5 minutes a day, it's because I
want you to know what 11:50 breaths a minute feels like.
(20:43):
So the next time you're interviewing me, you've got
enough experience of that so that if you notice your birth
rate getting up to 18 to 20, you're actually going to go, oh,
I'm breathing too quickly for this situation.
I'm sitting here with Heather. It's relatively boring.
Why is it high? Well, because my system's used
to sitting too high, I'm going to bring it down to 11:50 and
(21:04):
I'm going to keep myself out of that sympathetic nervous system.
I'm going to stay within the parasympathetic nervous system,
which makes it easy to be more connected with Heather.
I'm more grounded. I'm more present.
I'm not thinking about the past or the future.
I'm giving myself the best chance to be in this relaxed
state through my breath. All right.
That'll do it for this quick fix.
Remember, if you ever want to hear the full conversation it
(21:25):
comes from, just match the number in the title of this
quick fix to the full episode number.
And don't forget, if you turn onthe notifications and Spotify
and Apple Podcasts, you won't miss any episodes or extras that
drop Quick fix with Rabbit.
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