October 2, 2025 • 69 mins
Breath is something we do thousands of times each day without thinking—but what if it held the key to emotional healing, trauma resolution, and even graceful aging?
In this episode of The Aging Well Podcast, Dr. Jeff Armstrong speaks with Jessica Dibb, author of Breathwork and Psychotherapy: Clinical Applications for Healing and Transformation.
Drawing on both ancient traditions and contemporary neuroscience, Jessica has spent decades helping people unlock the healing potential of conscious breath. She shares why breathwork is emerging as a powerful tool not only in clinical settings but also for anyone seeking more resilience, presence, and vitality later in life.
Whether you're a healthcare provider, a wellness enthusiast, or someone navigating the challenges of aging, this conversation will open new possibilities for how we engage with the body, mind, and breath to live with greater awareness and health.
Learn more about Jessica Dibb: https://www.inspirationcommunity.org/about-us/spiritual-director/
Email: essence@inspirationcommunity.orgGlobal Professional Breathwork Alliance: https://breathworkalliance.com/
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Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
We breathe 10s of thousands of times a day, and yet few of us
realize that the breath, something so automatic, can also
be a powerful tool for healing trauma, regulating the nervous
system, and even supporting a longer, more vibrant life.
Welcome to the Aging Law Podcast, where we explore the
science stories and strategies behind living a longer,
(00:24):
healthier, and more purposeful life.
Hi, I'm your host Doctor Jeff Armstrong, an exercise
physiologist with a passion for making science simple and life
better as we age. In this episode, I'm joined by
Jessica Dibb, author of Breath Work and Psychotherapy, Clinical
Applications for Healing and Transformation.
This conversation will help you reconnect with the wisdom of
(00:46):
your breath and consider new pathways to mental clarity,
emotional balance, and physical vitality.
A path to aging well. The Aging Well podcast
encourages informed decision making and always consult your
physician in scientific literature when making decisions
about your health. Jessica, welcome to the Aging
(01:07):
Well podcast. First drew you to breath work
and how did your personal journey lead to the integration
of breath work and psychotherapy?
Well, first of all, thank you, Jeff.
It's actually an honour to be with you.
I really feel that the topic that you've taken on is pivotal
for our time because it's going to take all the wisdom in the
(01:28):
world to get through some of thegreat challenges that humanity
has in front of it as especiallyas, you know, stewards of the
rest of the world, this species and the earth and all of that.
And I feel like one of the things we've been not so good at
as things have been evolving culturally is getting the wisdom
(01:49):
of our elders and really valuingit.
So I'm all for aging well and longevity, but really honouring
aging or saging. So I really just wanna thank you
for what you're doing. Well, you're welcome, and it
wouldn't be possible without guests like yourself, so.
Well, honestly, from the time, from my very first memories in
(02:12):
life, I remember looking at my mother and my father and other
people that I care deeply about as a as a very young girl and,
and really feeling that within them was this spark of love.
Really, I and I felt like this eat the love that was within
each person wanted to express itself in unique ways and you
(02:36):
could see it coming out. My grandmother baking brownies
was a famous thing, her brownies, you know, And it was
just like the love would be there.
My dad working on behalf of World Peace, my mom having a
beautiful home for everybody. I mean, you know, people
singing, people writing. And so I could see that that
(02:57):
love wanted to be expressed in some way that would be a
contribution to everyone. But I could also really feel
like viscerally in my body how my parents and other people had
fear in them too, like real fear.
And it would lock up these giftsfrom really flowing completely
freely into the world from, I guess, finding their full
(03:19):
potential, you know, like where they would really all of them
would really be expressed and not just one or two little
points of expression. And I just remember feeling like
I ached and I so wanted for all of us to be freed up.
And so from the time I was a little girl, I was sort of
searching for these like a key, you know, like a magic key, Like
(03:41):
how do we unlock that fear? And I think when I was a very
young, one of the things that I thought was, well, if, if we're
all very kind to each other, youknow, that will that will help
everybody not be afraid. And then these gifts will flow
into our world. And so there I was, you know,
trying to be very kind. And I could see that even with
(04:03):
that people's fear, psychologically, they didn't
trust the kindness sometimes, orthey took advantage of the
kindness sometimes, or all the various things people do about
kindness. So then I remember when I turned
5, my mother took me to see the Royal Danish Ballet in New
(04:24):
Hampshire under this, under a starry night.
It was an outdoor performance, and I'd never seen ballet
before, and I thought it was themost beautiful thing in the
(04:49):
world. And I think by the time when I
was about 15, I was realizing that this wasn't going to be a
universal medicine. Not everybody was going to love
ballet, and it wasn't going to awaken the level of things that
(05:09):
I wanted. And at that point, I was also
really aware of the suffering that happens in our world due to
marginalization, oppression, othering, you know, just really
people seeing themselves as different and the other is being
an enemy in some way or not trustworthy.
(05:30):
And so I started digging deeper and it was very painful to leave
ballet. I just loved it so much.
But I started to study yoga. I started to study, you know,
consciousness and I started to study yogic practices.
And one of the things, of course, that we did was
pranayama, which is which are breathing practices.
(05:52):
And by the time I was probably 18, I already knew from these
breathing practices that I couldchange my body temperature, I
could get more energy, I could calm, I could feel more
connected to other people. I, I already knew that breathing
(06:14):
was very powerful for state changes, Right.
And of course, within psychology, we know that you can
have states, but you want them to turn into traits.
So there's a lot about practice,but also about psychological
development. And though I know from the
deeper parts of yoga, of course,the whole idea of a whole psyche
(06:36):
and a, you know, well, human being has, has been there since
ancient times. But with yoga being adopted in
the West and not yet having those deeper, deeper, ancient
roots, that part wasn't coming across so clearly.
And I think that there were still a lot of people and
probably still are some, but I think it's getting better that
the yoga, as healthy as it was in many aspects, was also for
(07:00):
some people serving as what we call a spiritual bypass.
You know what the psychologist John Wellwood coined that term
spiritual bypass, where you're not working with your
psychological material while you're developing your spiritual
or awakening self. And so you're actually using
that those states of expanded states of consciousness, if you
(07:24):
will, to ignore in a way some ofthe more difficult stuff.
So I, I was very, I really knew that yoga and yoga Praniam could
make a difference, but I still was feeling the lack of that
psychological integration that Ithought would be able to
stabilize expanded states of consciousness.
But also behavior traits, you know, all the desirable behavior
(07:48):
traits that we all wish we had all the time, like compassion
for others, steadfastness, equanimity, joy, you know,
'cause just feeling joyful for no reason at all, all of those
things. I, I was wondering, yeah, how do
we get there? And I think I had, at that point
decided I was going to go to medical school because I thought
(08:11):
if I had a medical license, I loved medicine anyway.
And I'd worked in a hospital in ICU and done some pretty
interesting experiments there with breathing, which the
hospital had really saw made a difference with the patients.
So I thought, I'll go to medicalschool, I'll get that degree and
that will give me the validationto do this, you know, these
(08:33):
deeper kinds of practices with people.
But I also, you know, this is very personal, but I'd had a, a
son at that point and I was feeling the whole thing of like,
if I go to medical school, won'tbe able to parent all the hours
a day that I really want to. And this is a one time thing.
So it's really kind of in a, in a.
(09:09):
And names that it is called by. And I did my first session and
it was as if everything I've been looking for came together
(09:31):
in one session. My psych, I was having
psychological transformation at a very rapid level in one or
rapid pace in one session. I could feel the health effects
of that I had known from Panayama.
I could feel the capacity to know expanded states of
consciousness. But what was really coming to me
(09:52):
in that moment was this is the universal medicine.
Because, you know, you don't have to believe in anything.
You don't have to enter a certain culture.
You don't have to have a certainsensibility.
We are all. Breathing is much more based on
(10:35):
breathing. And it transcends, you know,
(11:04):
culture, language, race. And in fact, one more thing I'll
say about that is that our primitive brain intelligently is
wired to notice in Group and outgroup.
So like, who's the safe people for me and who's the, you know,
potential enemy? And at one time in our species
(11:26):
development, that was really a good thing.
But now what's happening is whenwe're already so much more
connected by the Internet, and then I like to say the Internet
is what's coming next. But the Internet and, and, and
the way we can rapidly know eachother simultaneously though, as
(11:48):
I'm sure you know, I'm sure thishas been talked about on prior
podcasts that you've done, our cortisol levels are just being
triggered all the time. And so we're not in a state
anymore of like peace. And then cortisol is letting us
know if something's, you know, like this, this group might not
be safe. So we're just constantly in
cortisol activation. And so we're constantly standing
(12:12):
unconsciously for in Group and out groups.
So what I realized was that you can create an in Group and out
group about anything. You know, like I could say, you
know, I've got long brown hair. You've got a different kind of
hair. You're, you're right.
You're a male, I'm a female. You know, you were born and
wherever I was born and whereversomeone else speaks French, I
(12:36):
speak English. I went to, you know, college.
This person is a PhD, This person earns 60,000, this person
earns 5. You know, it's just then of
course there's the classic ones of color, skin color and gender
and sexual orientation and political orientation.
So you can create an in Group oran out group about anything.
(12:56):
I live in this town you live in that there's only one group that
you can't create an in Group andout group about and that's the
group of breathers. We are all breathers.
And so I think the implications of that are not yet fully
realized by a long shot or recognized even, but people
(13:16):
breathing begin to dissolve their tendency to put other out
of their own heart, to put even themselves out of their own
heart. But what I've seen is that when
people breathe together synchronously or just in tandem,
the the barriers that are between them start to dissolve
because breathing is primary. We breathed before we spoke.
(13:41):
The first memories have to do with breathing.
So at all at the core of all of our memories, except maybe some
of the prenatal ones. Although even then we can see
that there's breathing activity going on in utero, but every
other thing that we learn how todo.
(14:12):
Is a potential here for wholeness in each individual and
wholeness and relationship and wholeness with the collect?
(14:35):
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(14:57):
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Thank you. And now back to the podcast.
And I just think of, you know, breathing is just something that
interconnects us. I mean we are all interconnected
by the fact that whatever carbons, hydrogens and oxygens
are in my body right now, we're going to eventually make it to
(15:17):
my respiration and they're goingto be blown off.
Somebody else is going to be absorbing those into their body,
passing on. I mean, so we are, we are truly
connected. We are one just simply through
the breath that we inspire and inspire.
So well said, Jeff. And you know, just think about
it. It's not just human beings like
(15:38):
every animal except 1 little onethat they found that's kind of a
parasite but begins with an S But anyway, they everybody
breathes and then the mushrooms and the fungi and the trees and
the plants are all part of the photosynthesis cycle.
They're either taking in carbon dioxide and putting out oxygen.
(15:59):
So it's almost like we're breathing reciprocally.
But the air, the waters, the land, the heat sources, you
know, they all have oxygen. Oxygen is the most abundant
element on this planet. It's the third most abundant
element in the universe. And so really, when we're
(16:20):
breathing, we're participating in the oxygen cycle, which is
going through everything on thisplanet.
So the implications of that are really perfect.
And this LED you to writing a book, right?
The book Breath Work and Psychotherapy.
That book merges kind of ancientwisdom with modern science.
What are some of the most exciting scientific insights
(16:41):
that validate the transformativepower of breathing or breath?
Well, I mean, you know, just to say too, that that science is
proliferating daily. I mean, it used to be that you
would search around for to find any research about breathing and
maybe every couple of years you'd find something that was
(17:02):
relevant to the site psychology of a person.
But it's like, it seems like things are coming out like every
few days now, or at least, you know, every week or so.
You know, I would say that some of the most relevant science
shows, of course, this, this, this has been replicated so many
times. There's probably, you know, over
(17:23):
100 studies about the regulationof the autonomic nervous system.
And you know, I think that in our culture, we are so
adrenalized. You know, there's so much
cortisol and we're so adrenalized that what
everybody's mostly concerned about is that there's all this
sympathetic dominance from this over adrenalized organization.
(17:43):
And so we want to get the parasympathetic back.
But the truth is the healthiest state where our heart rate
variability is at its optimal place is when the sympathetic
and the parasympathetic are, youknow, they're reciprocal things.
And we're supposed to be able tohave both of them optimized all
the time so that right now I could be talking with you and
(18:05):
things are very relaxed. And I feel the warmth between
US. And I feel perhaps how we both
hope that what we're doing will be helpful to people and make a
difference. And at the same time, if
something happened in my environment or your environment
that was an emergency, how my body could just shift into
(18:26):
responding to that emergency in a state of flow rather than in a
state of like adrenaline. And then when it was over, how
my body could just shift again to like, OK, that's not
happening now. You know, there is that
possibility. It's actually, we talk about a
state of flow almost like it's only an expanded state of
(18:48):
consciousness that you move in. But I really have come to
understand from breathing, conscious breathing, that flow
could be a state that we live in.
And so this, this balance of sympathetic and parasympathetic,
that optimization of that is really potent.
And so all of these studies thathave shown how deep, slow
(19:09):
breathing induces parasympathetic activity, which
is what needs to happen for mostpeople, the polyvagal nerve
getting stimulated and the vagalresponse, all of that happening
so that people can begin to feelpresent and then they can sort
of make conscious choices that that's irrefutable.
That's science. And I think that some of the
(19:33):
science that shows about the brain wave states, you know,
that we will, we do access the more calming and right brain
kinds of brain waves. When we do conscious breathing,
we can get into more creative states.
There was an interesting study that came out of Stanford, I
(19:56):
believe, at the end of 2023, that was Spiegel, Huberman, ET
al. And what they were studying was
different types of breathing, bythe way, to show what would be
the most effective for anxiety reduction.
And they found that interestingly.
(20:17):
Not slow, deep breathing, which I I can explain why in just a
little bit, because I found the science behind this too, from a
really brilliant researcher named Stephen Elliott.
But the thing that helps with anxiety reduction the most is
actually this simple breathing where you kind of breathe in,
(20:37):
you inhale, and then you sort oftake a next little sip.
So it's like a second little inhale on top of that first and
then you sigh it out. And if you do that for 5
minutes, it shows state change. And if you do it for 30 days in
a row, it shows trait change. It shows that anxiety levels and
(20:59):
mood, mood elevates and anxiety goes down.
One other piece of science. That's really interesting.
Well, there's two others that I can think of that would be worth
mentioning. 1 is that now there's been, I believe, 2
studies that have shown that this kind of deeper human
potential kind of breathing thatI was talking about, which I
(21:22):
call integrative breathing or sometimes conscious responsive
breathing. It's, it's similar to what Stan
Groff is doing with Holotropic or Jim Mourning stars doing with
therapeutic. We got, we call it conscious
connected breathing too. So there's been two studies, one
came out of the Netherlands thathave shown that conscious
(21:46):
connected breathing or human potential breathing is
equivalent or greater to the effects of of psychedelics and
psilocybin. So that's been amazing.
And we're waiting for even a more robust and larger studies
to come out. And the other thing is that
there's something called the hypoxia hyperoxia paradox.
(22:10):
So hyperoxia was be an infusion of oxygen, like more oxygen than
normal in your blood. And hypoxia is dangerous of
(22:35):
those states seem to be able to stimulate stem cell production.
So what that probably tells me, though I haven't, I'm just
thinking about this right now, is that that kind of hermetic,
(22:59):
you know, hermetic stress response stimulates the immune
system and stimulates stem cell reproduction, which is something
that we've heard about through many different things.
So these are some of, you know, I'm just giving you a smattering
of some of the science that we we know about now.
There's so much fascinating stuff in there and there's so
many different connections with other individuals we've had on
(23:21):
the podcast with talking about hyperoxic and my my dissertation
was actually in hyperoxic exercise training.
Many, many. Many years ago and I missed the
boat on that one apparently, butso you.
Weren't you were an early you were a progenitor.
You, you. You could see that it was
coming. Yeah, I do that a lot, but I
don't make any money from it. I just got somebody else carry
(23:43):
the ball but. You know, there's one other
study that I think your, your reader, your listener, our
listeners would be interested toknow about.
It hasn't been published yet, but I can talk about it because
this comes out of the lab of Jack Feldman, the UCLA professor
of breathing. He's widely considered kind of
(24:05):
the the lead breathing researcher in the world.
Now. He's got some award, I don't
remember what it's called, but it's 11 level down from the
Nobel. So he gets invited to all kinds
of places. And I have the great honour of
working with him about this bookon he consulted with me on the
science chapter, which I was very, very devoted to, wanting
(24:28):
to get a very special science chapter into this book.
And he has done research with mice, having them meditate
because he was really interestedin what is it about mindfulness
and meditation that's really creating the ship.
And what he was able, what he found and was able to show
(24:49):
through the research is that thekey imponent to all mindfulness
that works, you know, that reduces anxiety level.
These mice, the control group was still very afraid when they
were 30 days later when they were exposed to a fear inducing
stimulus. The group that had been forced
(25:12):
to breathe slower for so many minutes, I think was 32 minutes
to an hour or some hours a day. They were noticeably less
fearful and able to sort of be more aware of whether they
should be fearful or not when this stimulus stimulus.
So he was able to show that it'sactually breathing that's
(25:36):
creating the mindfulness shift. You just put 2 crazy images in
my mind. First of all, you know the mice
sitting there meditating, And the second, the poor college
student that's trying to explainto their parents why they want
to major in breathing. Yes, but it will happen more and
more because, you know, like forinstance, Andrew Weil at the at
(25:57):
the University of Arizona, he has the integrative medical
program that's right in the medical school.
And it's, you know, they get waiting lists every year from
doctors and other kinds of health professionals all over
the world. They actually teach, I've talked
to them, they teach now that theprimary thing that all of their
(26:20):
doctors, nurses and everybody needs to learn is about
breathing, breath work. That's the thing.
And then I know there's some other colleges that are medical
colleges that are starting to make breathing a significant
part of the curriculum. So it's going to shift.
So what is it about conscious breathing that supports?
(26:57):
We consciously breathe, we activate the neocortex because
we were thinking about what we're doing.
We have intention and we also activate the limbic brain more
(27:21):
with more awareness. So we create a state of global
coherence because we know that the more in fact, the more we
learn about the brain, the more that we see this is that the
respiratory circuits are embedded through it globally
throughout the brain. And, and so when you breathe
consciously, you're activating all those pathways, which really
(27:44):
changes the brain state almost instantaneously.
You start to see shifts right away.
And so whereas you didn't have access to all of your resources,
like maybe you were your amygdala was activated anger
response or a trauma response, or maybe you we're in a very
left brain mode and the right brain was kind of shunted or
(28:08):
just a lot of different, you know, brain states that you
could have like anxiety or sleepiness, you know, hypo
arousal, hyper arousal. As soon as you start breathing
consciously, you're shifting to that global coherence and you
have more access to more resources.
And I mean that both literally and symbolically or
(28:29):
figuratively. I think it's a consciousness
thing as well as, you know, the science that goes behind it.
Then secondly, you're getting that Poly vagal stimulation.
You're getting the autonomic nervous system getting more
reciprocal, more balanced. And so literally what you have
(28:50):
at that point is you have more presence.
You have more ability to be withwhat is instead of the future or
the past and instead of just your memory of something.
In fact, when you get into the very advanced levels of breath
work, you can see where when you're working with trauma that
somebody can be using their breathing the present and I'm.
(29:41):
Breathing and I can change my breathing and so no matter what
else, I may be flooded with feelings of grief or anger or
sadness or I may be having trauma memories and I am
breathing in this present moment.
That's a really, that's a game changer.
That's really powerful. And, and it's a very embodied
(30:04):
process. You know, when you're breathing,
you're, you're feeling. In fact, the way I like to teach
breathing is to have people initially really connect with
the sensations of their breathing and the sensations
that their breathing produces and the sensations of their
bodies. So that they're really paying
attention to the embodied experience.
(30:26):
Which right there you're beginning to dissolve some of
the tendencies that people who have experienced trauma.
But even all of us, I think in this, you know, I think a lot of
people have said we're all experiencing to some degree
trauma or collective trauma and that kind of embodied breathing
(30:47):
begins to dissolve dissociation,right?
It's, it's much harder to dissociate if you're actually
here in the present moment. So those are some of the really
powerful ways that conscious breathing is, yeah, a game
changer. So you've worked with both
inclination as a clinician, but also working kind of with the
general public. How can someone without a real
(31:08):
therapeutic background begin to use breathwork safely and
effectively? That's a wonderful question.
Thank you for asking it. Well, there's so many things.
Let me touch on a few places because everybody, you know,
people might respond to a particular way just like some
people like country music and some people like classical
(31:30):
music, so or rock or whatever. So here's some different aspects
and see what connects with you people who are listening.
So one of the things that is more subtle, but in the long run
the most deeply transformative for psychological well-being and
also physical well-being and therefore spiritual awakening
(31:53):
for those that that is of interest to you, is to shift the
orientation from the idea of taking a deep breath to being
breathed. So again, there's this thing,
you go to a yoga class, you go or somebody says, oh, you're
upset, take a deep breath. It's a good idea.
By the way, taking a deep breathis wonderful.
(32:14):
And because a lot of times it interrupts whatever unconscious
pattern we're in and it gives usagency and it fills us with, you
know, we're breathing better. And so that's going to bring
more physiological regulation. By the way, one thing I didn't
mention when you ask that beautiful question about why
breathing is so effective, I really should have said this is
(32:36):
every breath is psychophysiological.
That's also the science is irrefutable.
So every breath we take is goingto have a psychological impact
and it's going to have a physical impact and it's going
to have a psychological or or kind of contribution or
component to it. Like it's going to be coming
(32:58):
from where our psychology is at the moment, where our psyche is,
and it's going to be coming fromwhere our Physiology is
that when we take deep breath, it will have an impact right
(33:36):
away. And we should definitely do
that. If we're stuck in a loop, if
we're anxious for feeling tired,if we're angry at somebody, if
we want to take a pause and a conversation that's activating
us or something, take a deep breath, no problem.
It's really great. And there's a deeper
transformation that has to that would happen over time,
(33:59):
practicing every day for a few minutes, going about your life
and think, thinking about it this way is can I receive my
breathing? Because it's kind of like that
when we're born, we receive breathing.
You know, we're being breathed, as you said so beautifully,
Jeff, a little while ago about the interconnection and that
(34:22):
we're, you know, you're breathing what somebody else
breathed out maybe 500 years agoor 1000 years ago.
You know, there's something larger going on than just me
taking a deep breath. I'm being breathed.
I'm part of this breathing cycle.
So some of the listeners may really connect with this to just
sit and allow yourself to becomereceptive to the fact that
(34:45):
you're being breathed. And then you can shift from
being with no effort. You don't have to give any of
your conscious effort. You can hoard all of that
conscious effort to do other things.
And what I'm suggesting is if you start to take some of the
energy that we put into, you know, watching videos or, you
(35:06):
know, whatever else we may do, and we really have reverence for
an appreciation for receiving the breathing, we won't notice
that this is all happening without us having to spend a
moment of our conscious energy. Then what we can do is use
conscious energy to receive it, not just to be brief, but to
(35:29):
actually, OK, I'm welcoming you in.
This is like a gift. I'm being breathed.
And then because of that, the breathing starts to deepen
naturally. And here's the part that's the,
you know, I said this is ultimately more transformative.
It's because when we take a deepbreath, the one who's taking the
deep breath is the one who already has all their
(35:52):
psychological patterns and the breathing.
As Deepak Chopra and spiritual teachers down through the ages
and yoga has talked about, your breathing is reflecting your
psychological pattern. You know, if you've learned to
be tense, if you've learned to be happy, there's all these
different, you know, ways of breathing.
You might hold at the top, you might hold at the bottom.
(36:14):
You might be resistant to letting the air out or letting
it in. So if you take a deep breath,
even though it will interrupt the pattern and it will be
beneficial, the one who's takingthat deep breath is still in the
pattern of the unconscious, you know ID or you know and and ego.
If you overtime learn the subtlety of being breathed and
(36:37):
then you receive that breathing and then you partner being
receiving that breathing, you will come to breathe deeper in a
way that isn't your patterns, your unconscious psychological
patterns. So the the potential of that is
outstanding. And that's as easy as people
just sitting for just two or three minutes once a day and
(36:59):
just becoming aware of how they're being breathed.
And then maybe like, OK, So whatif I allow that a little bit
more? What if I relax my belly so my
diaphragm has more room to contract so it can pull in more
air? What if I relax my rib cage so
that my rib cage can expand bothlaterally and, you know, kind of
(37:20):
forward and backward and laterally?
What if I then allow myself to sigh on the exhale as I'm being
breathed? And so then we're breathing
deeper without bringing in the unconscious psychological
patterns. So that's the first one.
Secondly, I would say yes, become aware of how your
(37:41):
diaphragm may not be having as optimal room to breathe as it
could. So you can put your hands on
your belly and just feel is yourbelly actually coming out during
the inhale? Because that's what should be
happening, not people are taughtlike to suck it in.
That's actually the opposite. The diaphragm needs to go down
(38:03):
during that inhale. It's kind of the spell thing
that needs to go down. So it needs more room.
So you practice letting the belly relax and open during the
in at the beginning of the inhale and then you again, the
rib cage can expand in the middle of the breath and then
the chest rises at the end of the breath.
And then when you're breathing out, it's kind of the same thing
(38:24):
in reverse. Relax the chest, then the rib
cage and then the then the belly.
And so if you find that your diaphragm and your belly feel
like tight and they won't release, you can take your
hands, kind of curl your fingersunder like this and go under the
rib, the bottom of your rib cage, gently.
(38:44):
And as you're breathing in and out slowly and deeply, you can
massage the ligaments and the, you know, what's in between that
rib cage and the viscera underneath it and kind of just
loosen it up. And if you find a place that's
very tight, you can just stay there and breathe for several
(39:07):
breaths or maybe even several minutes until you feel it's
starting to loosen. And that will be really, really
helpful. Another thing that people can do
to start doing breath work on their own is just set a timer
for 7 minutes. I find that 5 minutes gets you
that state change, as Spiegel and Huberman showed with the
(39:27):
anxiety piece. But for deep lasting
transformation, the reason I like to go for 7 minutes is 10
minutes sometimes seems like toomuch.
It's it's like people start to to lose their focus or they feel
in this day and age like I have to go and they have so much to
do. 7 minutes is like the sweet spot where you get the state
(39:48):
change and you start to get a trait change in that last two
minutes. So if you set a timer for 7
minutes and you ask yourself daily, just what is it to be
aware of my breathing, receive it, maybe begin to breathe
deeper, slow my breathing down for 7 minutes.
You will be shocked how even after a week you will start to
(40:11):
feel differently. And you'll find yourself
remembering in the middle of theday to pause and breathe a
little more deeply and that willcreate a state change.
And then by all those state changes, you'll start to get
trait changes. So.
Those are some of the simplest ways that just anybody can begin
to use breath work now. If you're having intense
(40:36):
emotions, if you're feeling, if you're having a trauma response,
if you're feeling like your energy is low.
And just feel the agency that you have to
(41:16):
breathe deeply. So is this kind of what
distinguishes breathwork from more somatic or meditative type
of practices? You know, I think I think that
meditation, I meditate and meditation is wonderful and
there have been two studies. I'm sorry that I can't quote
them right now. I apologize for the lack of
(41:39):
should have shown up with that academically prepared.
But there have been two studies.One was done through I believe
the armed forces, but I can't don't quote me exactly on that.
But what they did was they had people do breathing, breath
work, yoga bypass piece that it can put you actually meditation
(42:29):
is disruptive to them emotionally.
It can really disregulate them. It can be dissociative, it can
(42:59):
bring up body memories, but they're not being processed, you
know, because you're kind of trying to do this meditation
thing. Whereas breathing in a somatic
way keeps you connected with your body and you still might of
course need facilitation. I absolutely recommend that if
you have trauma in your background or if you have a lot
(43:21):
of emotional dysregulation in your background, it would be
really wonderful for you to finda certified breath worker.
And we can talk about how to find a really good breath
worker. That would be probably useful.
But somebody who's really got good experience, even with the
simpler breathing, just initially because they'll be
(43:41):
able to track you, watch you, give you feedback about what
you're feeling should you start to have things happen like
you're breathing and you feel more energy.
And that feels initially really great, but then that because
there's more energy, it's like alittle bit of excitement, which
can also trigger this. It's the same neurological
pathways that are about fear. So if you have some stuff, you
(44:05):
know, like we all do from the past that might need to get
processed, then you want to knowhow to work with that.
So I would definitely recommend that if you have emotional
dysregulation or trauma that youwould work with a breath worker
initially and then you can just daily do it on your own, so.
How does conscious breed supportus as we're aging, You know,
(44:26):
both physiologically, emotionally and spiritually?
Well, I mean, first of all, I think just probably
metaphorically, right? We can just say that it's got to
make sense that if you're breathing deeply and we know
that there's all these health benefits and there's the
emotional regulation and cortisol levels go down.
And, you know, all of that stuffhas an effect on, you know,
(44:49):
your, your hormones, your, you know, your neurotransmitters,
your cellular health, your, you know, the telomeres at the end
of your, you know, chromosomes. I mean, I think that's just
almost metaphorically, we would know that that's true.
And I think that this thing about agency about, you know, I
(45:13):
often say here's another reason that breathing is the universal
medicine. You know, God forbid there
should be any kind of global catastrophe or, you know, we
know how bad it is in a place like Haiti, which is the human
(45:35):
potential breathing, the emotional processing.
She had that certification, and she also knew coherent
(45:58):
breathing. And she went to Haiti within a
week after that earthquake hit, and she was taken into remote
regions where people had been without electricity.
There was not medicine. They weren't getting enough
food. There were women, there were
children. Some of them had not slept for a
week. They were so traumatized they
(46:21):
could not sleep. She began to do breathing with
them, conscious breathing, coherent breathing is what she
used then. And there are pictures.
Within 20 minutes, they're so touching.
Within 20 minutes, many of thesechildren and women who had not
slept were on their back, fast asleep.
And then this was something thatshe could teach.
(46:43):
She stayed for a week or two. There was another breath worker
with her name, Barbara Johnson, and they stayed for a week or
two and taught them how to use that.
And so that was really effective.
And this is what all of us have,you know, should we encounter A
trauma, should we be without water?
Should we be without medicine? What we have is our breathing,
(47:04):
and I think it's it's the primary medicine of the human
species. So do you see applications in
conditions like OCD, hyperactivity, hyper anxiety,
those types of things? Yeah, absolutely.
And I think even though breathing is the universal
medicine and any deep conscious breathing will be good for
(47:27):
anybody, I think that one of thethings that a really well
trained breath worker knows is how, you know, they're tracking
sort the spectrum in some way. And I mean, it was so touching.
(48:07):
This one young man, he was head of his class, of course,
brilliant, but socially very awkward on the spectrum.
And he really wanted to go to college and he really wanted to
have a girlfriend. And I knew that he was a
beautiful person that, you know,anybody would be lucky to be in
a relationship with him and he would probably do great things
(48:29):
in the world. And it was really amazing how
the breathing he was able to open up to me emotionally.
(49:06):
He was able to process emotions.He did go on to college and you
know, but there was a particularkind of breathing that was very
bio individualized that I workedwith him.
I could track with him and then he could know what really worked
best for him. I'm also thinking about, you're
asking, can it work with OCD? Can it work with trauma?
(49:28):
Can it work with these various things?
I'm thinking of this really touching story of Alice Krauss.
So Alice Krauss was a survivor of Auschwitz.
So she had extreme OCD, extreme fear.
She had extreme anxiety. She had two children.
(49:50):
She married another survivor. And her children, who loved her
nevertheless, had grown up in a lot of fear because she didn't
want them climbing a tree because they might fall.
She didn't want them, like, playing in puddles in the cold
because they might get a cold. You know, she was just very,
very protective. And her son had been doing
breath work with me. And he had been a drug addict
(50:14):
before he came to do breath work.
And he used the breathing to process a lot of the things, the
the rage, the fear, the anxiety that was underlying his his
addiction. Plus just to rewire that there
were other forms of pleasure other than drugs that the
(50:34):
breathing was able to bring to him.
So it was very effective. And he really wanted his mother
to come do this because she had never gone to therapy and she'd
never been willing to talk abouther experience at Auschwitz.
And so she finally agreed to come after, you know, about two
years of trying to get her to come.
And when she came into the room with me, she told me with no
(50:58):
equivocation, I'm not going to do this.
I'm just here to appease him. We're just going to sit here.
Nothing's going to happen, and then I'm going to leave.
But he'll be satisfied. So I said, OK, that's fine.
So we would talk and we talk about her son because she loved
him. And every time she said
something about him that I also really appreciate about him, I'd
(51:19):
say Alice. That's so beautiful.
I love that about Ron, too. Could we just pause here for a
moment so I could just breathe and just kind of take that in?
And so I breathe a deep breath or breathe deeply two or three
times. And after the mirror, the mirror
neurons started going, you know,it's that deeper language than
(51:39):
words. And so after about 30 minutes,
when I would breathe deeply, Alice would breathe deeply.
But I never said to her breathe deeply because high control, you
know, in for her. And then after a while, she
asked me to share a little bit about my own suffering.
And when I would share something, she would breathe
(52:01):
deeply. And then all of a sudden, there
just came this point about an hour into it, when Alice Krauss
told me the story of her survival in Auschwitz.
And we were together for anothertwo hours.
And it's one of the most sacred moments of my whole life.
And when Ron came up the stairs and into the room, he said the
(52:24):
room was just glowing. Now, she never shared it with
anybody else, except because shehad shared it there when Steven
Spielberg came through town doing the show.
A project that where he was having people from concentration
camp survivors share their experiences and he catalogued
(52:46):
them all and this was in preparation for Schindler's
List, the movie that he made. She she actually had the courage
to go and they filmed her and it's still on their website
Alice Krauss on the on the show a website.
So I just I'm trying to give youexamples of that yes, this
conscious breathing can be very powerful She had OCD, she had
(53:07):
anxiety this other young man hadyou know was on the spectrum he
was neurodivergent. I've worked with people that
have even had bipolar disorder. You have to work with them very
specifically. You don't let them do the fast
deep breathing initially becausethat will activate their
(53:27):
excitability, you know, kind of neurons and can trigger.
But if you do the slower deep breathing and you pause, if you
notice what we did with this oneyoung man was every time it felt
like his, it might get into excitability.
We would just pause and just have him be aware of his breath
without breathing deeper and then we breathe deeply again.
(53:49):
And this young man, I'm not saying all people should do it
and I have nothing against medicine, medication.
In fact, he had had a spiritual awakening, which is why he came
to me initially. His mother brought him and he
was having all kinds of profoundthings.
But I could see that his he was in a manic phase.
It was going into a manic phase.So I suggested that we go take
(54:10):
him to a good hospital and he was there for about 6 days
because I thought he needed to get regulated with medicine
initially. And then we took a two year
period. He slowly tapered off the
medicine and was able to access these states of consciousness
that he wanted to without going into a manic episode.
And he's been without medicationfor 20 years now.
(54:32):
So. So yeah, just the only caution I
would say is that for people that have any of those kind of
states, you want to work with a really well trained breath
worker while you're doing it. Yeah, it sounds like, you know,
a lot of us when we think of breath work, we just.
(54:58):
You. Know we think of and it is
really important for us to go toa trained professional that
allow it to meet with our specific needs.
Well, you know, since you do bring up the thing about the
psychotherapy part of it, you know, obviously I, I don't want
(55:19):
to make bombastic claims, but I cannot tell you the number of
times. I mean, it's countless just in
my life, let alone all the breath workers in the world that
that people do one of these deeper kind of breath work
sessions. I call it human potential breath
work. And they will say at the end of
it, that was like 6 weeks of therapy or that was like 6
(55:43):
months of therapy. I mean, there are people that
come in that have been doing therapy for years and they do
one session of breath work and it's just like the shift is
incredible. You know, I worked with one
woman who had what, what we usedto call multiple personality
disorder, right? We don't, we don't call it that
(56:04):
anymore, but just, you know, it's now thought of just as a
identity dissociative disorder. But I don't even like to call it
a disorder because I think it's a highly creative response to a
life threatening situation. But she had been working with a
therapist for about 10 years andhad never been able to integrate
(56:29):
any of the personalities into her core self.
And we just did 2 sessions and she integrated 3 of her parts
into her core self. And you know, and then she was
able to, to continue doing that as.
And so I mean, yeah, because what's so powerful there is that
(56:51):
you can teach each part to recognize its own breathing and
the breathing will be different with each part.
But then what the, what the commonality is, is that they all
see that each other is breathing.
So then they can join together in the breathing.
And that's how the integration happens.
So it's another really great example of how it's that
unifying language of the human species.
(57:12):
It's unifying in ourselves, too.This is all exciting stuff and I
feel like I could keep going andkeep going, but I know we need
to probably be wrapping up soon for just you to get back to your
life So kind of quickly. What does aging well mean to
you, and how has the breath shaped your own kind of
experience with that journey? Well, I don't remember who it is
(57:35):
that use the first use the word saging, you know, to become like
a sage, but I love using that term for aging.
And you did ask me earlier abouthow it can help us age.
Well, so I mean, I mean, I thinkit's pretty obvious all the
things that we said. I think it helps with even
balance. And yeah, just it, you know,
(57:55):
there's, we know that if must the muscle memory piece that if
you direct your breathing to particular muscles, like you're
intentionally, that's also goingto help build muscle.
Umm, one other aspect that I didn't say that I think is
really powerful for the physicalpart of aging and also for
(58:15):
people who are experiencing any kind of illness, any kind of
illness at all. I I did this breathing with my
sister when she had cancer. I did this kind of breathing
with my father when he had COPD.He lived to be 99 and he was
doing breath practices until hisvery last day and the doctor
said there was no doubt it had added years to his life.
(58:38):
But this very powerful orientation is to be breathing
deeply and to allow yourself to.Bodying that those cellular
(59:40):
memories by doing that. So that's one thing by the way,
with saging that I would really highly recommend people doing
every day. And I do that and I, I just feel
like it keeps me feeling, I feelvery youthful.
I I was surprised that the doctors in ICU, when my father
(01:00:19):
was there, they said there's no doubt that all these breathing
exercises you did kept him alivefor years.
Pass when he would have survived?
Did I answer question correctly?I mean, yeah, accurately.
Yeah. And so in addition to breathing
exercises, what else are you doing personally to, I guess I
(01:00:40):
should say, Sage? Well.
You know, let me come back againto, to just what I said in the
very beginning, Jeff, I think it's a crime how we marginalized
aging saging in this culture that we're in.
We're so youth oriented, as if somehow that's the pinnacle of
(01:01:01):
life. And I, I really think it should
be the other way around. You know, how amazing is it to
have all these life experiences?And I, I've been very heartened
by stories that I've heard recently of, you know, people in
their 20s and 30s actually actively forming relationships
with people in their 70s and 80sand 90s and asking them
(01:01:22):
questions, you know, So what didyou do when this happened or
what would you think about that?Because I think that there is
wisdom. I think there's patience.
And a lot of elders that wasn't there when they were younger,
they have a broader view of whatlife is really about.
And, you know, in many indigenous cultures, the elders
(01:01:45):
were like the libraries, you know, they were the keeper of
the knowledge. And I often wonder if some of
the proliferation of Alzheimer'sisn't partially that we don't
sit around and ask our elders, you know, like, and keep their
minds really. Like, hey, I want to go into the
library and find out what, you know.
You know, we kind of like, you're not moving fast enough,
(01:02:07):
you're not pretty enough. You're not this enough or that
enough. And I wonder if that's
contributing to the memory problems that seem to be
proliferating along with other things.
So for myself, I would say, you know, deep.
Yeah, conscious breathing. And then it has to stop because
(01:02:35):
you have to stop that activity. You have to stop playing tennis
or stop skiing or stop the meditation or get up from the
yoga mat with breathing. When you do conscious breathing,
it doesn't have to stop. You just take it into your life.
(01:02:57):
You're standing at the stove cooking and you're consciously
breathing. You're washing dishes and you're
conscious. So that state of flow that I'm
talking about can remain. It can become a way of life.
So that for me is primary. I absolutely do the gratitude
thing. I feel so much great every day.
You know, I express gratitude written and to people and
(01:03:22):
creatures and the earth and the places where I live.
I do think that after air hydration is really important.
So I definitely hydrate and I, that's one of my big practices
'cause it doesn't come naturallyto me.
So I've really had to work at it.
I do movement, you know, I, I walk at a minimum, but I do, I
(01:03:45):
hang from bars like for 30 seconds, 45 seconds at a time.
I do yoga, I do a little bit of Pilates.
I dance. I would say at a deeper level
though, 'cause I really wanna honour, yeah, all the saging
people out there. At a deeper level, I don't.
(01:04:08):
Of course I have preferences. Of course I would prefer that,
you know, some of some of that it was warmer today than cold
or, you know, of course I have these kinds of preferences.
And yet I also have just come tosee the value of meeting each
moment of reality from a place of press because that's the only
moment we have. And so rather than sort of
(01:04:30):
regale against like, oh, realityisn't doing what I want, I can
feel my feelings about that, notreject myself for feeling those
feelings, not try to suppress those feelings, which just leads
to other psychological problems.I can, I can honor those
feelings and I can also choose that I, I want to, I want to
(01:04:52):
live into this and see what is this moment.
So I don't envy anybody else's life.
You know, it's like, I think each life is its own garden and
nobility, and so is mine. And so I think for me, the
conscious breathing ultimately has been about creating somatic
presence, emotional presence, and cognitive presence, which
(01:05:15):
allows me to be spiritually present to what's happening as
the next experience of my life that I'm either gonna miss or
not miss. And I think I'd rather not miss
it so. Beautifully said.
Was there anything we missed talking about today?
I feel like we could probably goon and on and on and only
scratch the surface on what people can be doing to better
(01:05:38):
their breathing practices. But that kind of brings me to
the question, you know, where can people connect with you?
Where can they find the book? If they want to find a breath
work therapist, how do they go about doing that?
Yeah, thank you. So if if they'd like to connect
with me, my e-mail is Essence atinspirationcommunityjustlikethosewordsarespelledinspirationcommunityalloneword.orgsoessence@inspirationcommunity.org
(01:06:04):
is my office e-mail address. I can help connect you with
breath workers if you happen to be in my location.
I have a team of about 2025 breath workers that I've trained
and so I can connect you with them or I can connect you with
breath workers virtually if you're done, If you don't live
near here, the book is, well, let me just say or if you want
(01:06:30):
to connect with somebody in person that and you don't live
near us. The Global Professional
Breathwork Alliance, which is Breathwork alliance.com is the
organization that is setting thegold standard for training and
ethics in breath work. And I'm the Co director of it
(01:06:51):
along with my Co director, Jim Morningstar, who's a clinical
psychologist. And so we do have a directory
listing which is growing all thetime.
Right now we have about 200 and some practitioners around the
globe and about 39 schools that have passed.
You know our standards that we have so we can connect you with
them. If you want to do a longer
(01:07:14):
program, by the way with me, notjust breath work sessions, we
have 8 day immersion programs that you really go deeply into
it. We have weekly programs.
So there's all kinds of things you can find on our website,
which is inspiration, community.org,
inspirationcommunity.org. The book is called Breathwork
(01:07:36):
and Psychotherapy Clinical Interventions for Healing and
Transformation. It is out on August 26th,
available for pre-order before that.
And yeah, it's, it's been a, a labor of love, I would say, from
my family as well. My father very touching.
(01:07:58):
Jeff asked me about a month before he passed.
He said, umm, Jesse, when are you gonna be done with the book?
And I had that little, you know,feeling I didn't want him to go.
And so I just sort of said vaguely in the spring, Dad, in
the spring because I just wantedhim to be there.
Umm and I, I saw him kind of shudder a little bit, but
(01:08:20):
anyway, he stayed alive until the weekend that I turned the.
Book Oh, wow. Well, I think we just end on
that very touching moment. So I just thank you for, you
know, your time with us today and the sage words of advice
that you have given us. And I just encourage you to just
keep doing what you're doing andkeep aging well.
Thank you so much. And I really just want to,
(01:08:42):
again, thank you for the really important work that you're
doing, Jeff. And just say to everybody out
there that you know, whatever your age, your condition, you
matter. You know, you're, you're it you,
you are love. And there's something in you
that wants to be expressed. And I hope that somehow this
session has helped you tap into that and share it with our
(01:09:04):
world. Thank you for listening.
Hope you benefited from today's podcast and until next time,
keep aging well.
We breathe 10s of thousands of times a day, and yet few of us
realize that the breath, something so automatic, can also
be a powerful tool for healing trauma, regulating the nervous
system, and even supporting a longer, more vibrant life.
Welcome to the Aging Law Podcast, where we explore the
science stories and strategies behind living a longer,
(00:24):
healthier, and more purposeful life.
Hi, I'm your host Doctor Jeff Armstrong, an exercise
physiologist with a passion for making science simple and life
better as we age. In this episode, I'm joined by
Jessica Dibb, author of Breath Work and Psychotherapy, Clinical
Applications for Healing and Transformation.
This conversation will help you reconnect with the wisdom of
(00:46):
your breath and consider new pathways to mental clarity,
emotional balance, and physical vitality.
A path to aging well. The Aging Well podcast
encourages informed decision making and always consult your
physician in scientific literature when making decisions
about your health. Jessica, welcome to the Aging
(01:07):
Well podcast. First drew you to breath work
and how did your personal journey lead to the integration
of breath work and psychotherapy?
Well, first of all, thank you, Jeff.
It's actually an honour to be with you.
I really feel that the topic that you've taken on is pivotal
for our time because it's going to take all the wisdom in the
(01:28):
world to get through some of thegreat challenges that humanity
has in front of it as especiallyas, you know, stewards of the
rest of the world, this species and the earth and all of that.
And I feel like one of the things we've been not so good at
as things have been evolving culturally is getting the wisdom
(01:49):
of our elders and really valuingit.
So I'm all for aging well and longevity, but really honouring
aging or saging. So I really just wanna thank you
for what you're doing. Well, you're welcome, and it
wouldn't be possible without guests like yourself, so.
Well, honestly, from the time, from my very first memories in
(02:12):
life, I remember looking at my mother and my father and other
people that I care deeply about as a as a very young girl and,
and really feeling that within them was this spark of love.
Really, I and I felt like this eat the love that was within
each person wanted to express itself in unique ways and you
(02:36):
could see it coming out. My grandmother baking brownies
was a famous thing, her brownies, you know, And it was
just like the love would be there.
My dad working on behalf of World Peace, my mom having a
beautiful home for everybody. I mean, you know, people
singing, people writing. And so I could see that that
(02:57):
love wanted to be expressed in some way that would be a
contribution to everyone. But I could also really feel
like viscerally in my body how my parents and other people had
fear in them too, like real fear.
And it would lock up these giftsfrom really flowing completely
freely into the world from, I guess, finding their full
(03:19):
potential, you know, like where they would really all of them
would really be expressed and not just one or two little
points of expression. And I just remember feeling like
I ached and I so wanted for all of us to be freed up.
And so from the time I was a little girl, I was sort of
searching for these like a key, you know, like a magic key, Like
(03:41):
how do we unlock that fear? And I think when I was a very
young, one of the things that I thought was, well, if, if we're
all very kind to each other, youknow, that will that will help
everybody not be afraid. And then these gifts will flow
into our world. And so there I was, you know,
trying to be very kind. And I could see that even with
(04:03):
that people's fear, psychologically, they didn't
trust the kindness sometimes, orthey took advantage of the
kindness sometimes, or all the various things people do about
kindness. So then I remember when I turned
5, my mother took me to see the Royal Danish Ballet in New
(04:24):
Hampshire under this, under a starry night.
It was an outdoor performance, and I'd never seen ballet
before, and I thought it was themost beautiful thing in the
(04:49):
world. And I think by the time when I
was about 15, I was realizing that this wasn't going to be a
universal medicine. Not everybody was going to love
ballet, and it wasn't going to awaken the level of things that
(05:09):
I wanted. And at that point, I was also
really aware of the suffering that happens in our world due to
marginalization, oppression, othering, you know, just really
people seeing themselves as different and the other is being
an enemy in some way or not trustworthy.
(05:30):
And so I started digging deeper and it was very painful to leave
ballet. I just loved it so much.
But I started to study yoga. I started to study, you know,
consciousness and I started to study yogic practices.
And one of the things, of course, that we did was
pranayama, which is which are breathing practices.
(05:52):
And by the time I was probably 18, I already knew from these
breathing practices that I couldchange my body temperature, I
could get more energy, I could calm, I could feel more
connected to other people. I, I already knew that breathing
(06:14):
was very powerful for state changes, Right.
And of course, within psychology, we know that you can
have states, but you want them to turn into traits.
So there's a lot about practice,but also about psychological
development. And though I know from the
deeper parts of yoga, of course,the whole idea of a whole psyche
(06:36):
and a, you know, well, human being has, has been there since
ancient times. But with yoga being adopted in
the West and not yet having those deeper, deeper, ancient
roots, that part wasn't coming across so clearly.
And I think that there were still a lot of people and
probably still are some, but I think it's getting better that
the yoga, as healthy as it was in many aspects, was also for
(07:00):
some people serving as what we call a spiritual bypass.
You know what the psychologist John Wellwood coined that term
spiritual bypass, where you're not working with your
psychological material while you're developing your spiritual
or awakening self. And so you're actually using
that those states of expanded states of consciousness, if you
(07:24):
will, to ignore in a way some ofthe more difficult stuff.
So I, I was very, I really knew that yoga and yoga Praniam could
make a difference, but I still was feeling the lack of that
psychological integration that Ithought would be able to
stabilize expanded states of consciousness.
But also behavior traits, you know, all the desirable behavior
(07:48):
traits that we all wish we had all the time, like compassion
for others, steadfastness, equanimity, joy, you know,
'cause just feeling joyful for no reason at all, all of those
things. I, I was wondering, yeah, how do
we get there? And I think I had, at that point
decided I was going to go to medical school because I thought
(08:11):
if I had a medical license, I loved medicine anyway.
And I'd worked in a hospital in ICU and done some pretty
interesting experiments there with breathing, which the
hospital had really saw made a difference with the patients.
So I thought, I'll go to medicalschool, I'll get that degree and
that will give me the validationto do this, you know, these
(08:33):
deeper kinds of practices with people.
But I also, you know, this is very personal, but I'd had a, a
son at that point and I was feeling the whole thing of like,
if I go to medical school, won'tbe able to parent all the hours
a day that I really want to. And this is a one time thing.
So it's really kind of in a, in a.
(09:09):
And names that it is called by. And I did my first session and
it was as if everything I've been looking for came together
(09:31):
in one session. My psych, I was having
psychological transformation at a very rapid level in one or
rapid pace in one session. I could feel the health effects
of that I had known from Panayama.
I could feel the capacity to know expanded states of
consciousness. But what was really coming to me
(09:52):
in that moment was this is the universal medicine.
Because, you know, you don't have to believe in anything.
You don't have to enter a certain culture.
You don't have to have a certainsensibility.
We are all. Breathing is much more based on
(10:35):
breathing. And it transcends, you know,
(11:04):
culture, language, race. And in fact, one more thing I'll
say about that is that our primitive brain intelligently is
wired to notice in Group and outgroup.
So like, who's the safe people for me and who's the, you know,
potential enemy? And at one time in our species
(11:26):
development, that was really a good thing.
But now what's happening is whenwe're already so much more
connected by the Internet, and then I like to say the Internet
is what's coming next. But the Internet and, and, and
the way we can rapidly know eachother simultaneously though, as
(11:48):
I'm sure you know, I'm sure thishas been talked about on prior
podcasts that you've done, our cortisol levels are just being
triggered all the time. And so we're not in a state
anymore of like peace. And then cortisol is letting us
know if something's, you know, like this, this group might not
be safe. So we're just constantly in
cortisol activation. And so we're constantly standing
(12:12):
unconsciously for in Group and out groups.
So what I realized was that you can create an in Group and out
group about anything. You know, like I could say, you
know, I've got long brown hair. You've got a different kind of
hair. You're, you're right.
You're a male, I'm a female. You know, you were born and
wherever I was born and whereversomeone else speaks French, I
(12:36):
speak English. I went to, you know, college.
This person is a PhD, This person earns 60,000, this person
earns 5. You know, it's just then of
course there's the classic ones of color, skin color and gender
and sexual orientation and political orientation.
So you can create an in Group oran out group about anything.
(12:56):
I live in this town you live in that there's only one group that
you can't create an in Group andout group about and that's the
group of breathers. We are all breathers.
And so I think the implications of that are not yet fully
realized by a long shot or recognized even, but people
(13:16):
breathing begin to dissolve their tendency to put other out
of their own heart, to put even themselves out of their own
heart. But what I've seen is that when
people breathe together synchronously or just in tandem,
the the barriers that are between them start to dissolve
because breathing is primary. We breathed before we spoke.
(13:41):
The first memories have to do with breathing.
So at all at the core of all of our memories, except maybe some
of the prenatal ones. Although even then we can see
that there's breathing activity going on in utero, but every
other thing that we learn how todo.
(14:12):
Is a potential here for wholeness in each individual and
wholeness and relationship and wholeness with the collect?
(14:35):
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(14:57):
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Thank you. And now back to the podcast.
And I just think of, you know, breathing is just something that
interconnects us. I mean we are all interconnected
by the fact that whatever carbons, hydrogens and oxygens
are in my body right now, we're going to eventually make it to
(15:17):
my respiration and they're goingto be blown off.
Somebody else is going to be absorbing those into their body,
passing on. I mean, so we are, we are truly
connected. We are one just simply through
the breath that we inspire and inspire.
So well said, Jeff. And you know, just think about
it. It's not just human beings like
(15:38):
every animal except 1 little onethat they found that's kind of a
parasite but begins with an S But anyway, they everybody
breathes and then the mushrooms and the fungi and the trees and
the plants are all part of the photosynthesis cycle.
They're either taking in carbon dioxide and putting out oxygen.
(15:59):
So it's almost like we're breathing reciprocally.
But the air, the waters, the land, the heat sources, you
know, they all have oxygen. Oxygen is the most abundant
element on this planet. It's the third most abundant
element in the universe. And so really, when we're
(16:20):
breathing, we're participating in the oxygen cycle, which is
going through everything on thisplanet.
So the implications of that are really perfect.
And this LED you to writing a book, right?
The book Breath Work and Psychotherapy.
That book merges kind of ancientwisdom with modern science.
What are some of the most exciting scientific insights
(16:41):
that validate the transformativepower of breathing or breath?
Well, I mean, you know, just to say too, that that science is
proliferating daily. I mean, it used to be that you
would search around for to find any research about breathing and
maybe every couple of years you'd find something that was
(17:02):
relevant to the site psychology of a person.
But it's like, it seems like things are coming out like every
few days now, or at least, you know, every week or so.
You know, I would say that some of the most relevant science
shows, of course, this, this, this has been replicated so many
times. There's probably, you know, over
(17:23):
100 studies about the regulationof the autonomic nervous system.
And you know, I think that in our culture, we are so
adrenalized. You know, there's so much
cortisol and we're so adrenalized that what
everybody's mostly concerned about is that there's all this
sympathetic dominance from this over adrenalized organization.
(17:43):
And so we want to get the parasympathetic back.
But the truth is the healthiest state where our heart rate
variability is at its optimal place is when the sympathetic
and the parasympathetic are, youknow, they're reciprocal things.
And we're supposed to be able tohave both of them optimized all
the time so that right now I could be talking with you and
(18:05):
things are very relaxed. And I feel the warmth between
US. And I feel perhaps how we both
hope that what we're doing will be helpful to people and make a
difference. And at the same time, if
something happened in my environment or your environment
that was an emergency, how my body could just shift into
(18:26):
responding to that emergency in a state of flow rather than in a
state of like adrenaline. And then when it was over, how
my body could just shift again to like, OK, that's not
happening now. You know, there is that
possibility. It's actually, we talk about a
state of flow almost like it's only an expanded state of
(18:48):
consciousness that you move in. But I really have come to
understand from breathing, conscious breathing, that flow
could be a state that we live in.
And so this, this balance of sympathetic and parasympathetic,
that optimization of that is really potent.
And so all of these studies thathave shown how deep, slow
(19:09):
breathing induces parasympathetic activity, which
is what needs to happen for mostpeople, the polyvagal nerve
getting stimulated and the vagalresponse, all of that happening
so that people can begin to feelpresent and then they can sort
of make conscious choices that that's irrefutable.
That's science. And I think that some of the
(19:33):
science that shows about the brain wave states, you know,
that we will, we do access the more calming and right brain
kinds of brain waves. When we do conscious breathing,
we can get into more creative states.
There was an interesting study that came out of Stanford, I
(19:56):
believe, at the end of 2023, that was Spiegel, Huberman, ET
al. And what they were studying was
different types of breathing, bythe way, to show what would be
the most effective for anxiety reduction.
And they found that interestingly.
(20:17):
Not slow, deep breathing, which I I can explain why in just a
little bit, because I found the science behind this too, from a
really brilliant researcher named Stephen Elliott.
But the thing that helps with anxiety reduction the most is
actually this simple breathing where you kind of breathe in,
(20:37):
you inhale, and then you sort oftake a next little sip.
So it's like a second little inhale on top of that first and
then you sigh it out. And if you do that for 5
minutes, it shows state change. And if you do it for 30 days in
a row, it shows trait change. It shows that anxiety levels and
(20:59):
mood, mood elevates and anxiety goes down.
One other piece of science. That's really interesting.
Well, there's two others that I can think of that would be worth
mentioning. 1 is that now there's been, I believe, 2
studies that have shown that this kind of deeper human
potential kind of breathing thatI was talking about, which I
(21:22):
call integrative breathing or sometimes conscious responsive
breathing. It's, it's similar to what Stan
Groff is doing with Holotropic or Jim Mourning stars doing with
therapeutic. We got, we call it conscious
connected breathing too. So there's been two studies, one
came out of the Netherlands thathave shown that conscious
(21:46):
connected breathing or human potential breathing is
equivalent or greater to the effects of of psychedelics and
psilocybin. So that's been amazing.
And we're waiting for even a more robust and larger studies
to come out. And the other thing is that
there's something called the hypoxia hyperoxia paradox.
(22:10):
So hyperoxia was be an infusion of oxygen, like more oxygen than
normal in your blood. And hypoxia is dangerous of
(22:35):
those states seem to be able to stimulate stem cell production.
So what that probably tells me, though I haven't, I'm just
thinking about this right now, is that that kind of hermetic,
(22:59):
you know, hermetic stress response stimulates the immune
system and stimulates stem cell reproduction, which is something
that we've heard about through many different things.
So these are some of, you know, I'm just giving you a smattering
of some of the science that we we know about now.
There's so much fascinating stuff in there and there's so
many different connections with other individuals we've had on
(23:21):
the podcast with talking about hyperoxic and my my dissertation
was actually in hyperoxic exercise training.
Many, many. Many years ago and I missed the
boat on that one apparently, butso you.
Weren't you were an early you were a progenitor.
You, you. You could see that it was
coming. Yeah, I do that a lot, but I
don't make any money from it. I just got somebody else carry
(23:43):
the ball but. You know, there's one other
study that I think your, your reader, your listener, our
listeners would be interested toknow about.
It hasn't been published yet, but I can talk about it because
this comes out of the lab of Jack Feldman, the UCLA professor
of breathing. He's widely considered kind of
(24:05):
the the lead breathing researcher in the world.
Now. He's got some award, I don't
remember what it's called, but it's 11 level down from the
Nobel. So he gets invited to all kinds
of places. And I have the great honour of
working with him about this bookon he consulted with me on the
science chapter, which I was very, very devoted to, wanting
(24:28):
to get a very special science chapter into this book.
And he has done research with mice, having them meditate
because he was really interestedin what is it about mindfulness
and meditation that's really creating the ship.
And what he was able, what he found and was able to show
(24:49):
through the research is that thekey imponent to all mindfulness
that works, you know, that reduces anxiety level.
These mice, the control group was still very afraid when they
were 30 days later when they were exposed to a fear inducing
stimulus. The group that had been forced
(25:12):
to breathe slower for so many minutes, I think was 32 minutes
to an hour or some hours a day. They were noticeably less
fearful and able to sort of be more aware of whether they
should be fearful or not when this stimulus stimulus.
So he was able to show that it'sactually breathing that's
(25:36):
creating the mindfulness shift. You just put 2 crazy images in
my mind. First of all, you know the mice
sitting there meditating, And the second, the poor college
student that's trying to explainto their parents why they want
to major in breathing. Yes, but it will happen more and
more because, you know, like forinstance, Andrew Weil at the at
(25:57):
the University of Arizona, he has the integrative medical
program that's right in the medical school.
And it's, you know, they get waiting lists every year from
doctors and other kinds of health professionals all over
the world. They actually teach, I've talked
to them, they teach now that theprimary thing that all of their
(26:20):
doctors, nurses and everybody needs to learn is about
breathing, breath work. That's the thing.
And then I know there's some other colleges that are medical
colleges that are starting to make breathing a significant
part of the curriculum. So it's going to shift.
So what is it about conscious breathing that supports?
(26:57):
We consciously breathe, we activate the neocortex because
we were thinking about what we're doing.
We have intention and we also activate the limbic brain more
(27:21):
with more awareness. So we create a state of global
coherence because we know that the more in fact, the more we
learn about the brain, the more that we see this is that the
respiratory circuits are embedded through it globally
throughout the brain. And, and so when you breathe
consciously, you're activating all those pathways, which really
(27:44):
changes the brain state almost instantaneously.
You start to see shifts right away.
And so whereas you didn't have access to all of your resources,
like maybe you were your amygdala was activated anger
response or a trauma response, or maybe you we're in a very
left brain mode and the right brain was kind of shunted or
(28:08):
just a lot of different, you know, brain states that you
could have like anxiety or sleepiness, you know, hypo
arousal, hyper arousal. As soon as you start breathing
consciously, you're shifting to that global coherence and you
have more access to more resources.
And I mean that both literally and symbolically or
(28:29):
figuratively. I think it's a consciousness
thing as well as, you know, the science that goes behind it.
Then secondly, you're getting that Poly vagal stimulation.
You're getting the autonomic nervous system getting more
reciprocal, more balanced. And so literally what you have
(28:50):
at that point is you have more presence.
You have more ability to be withwhat is instead of the future or
the past and instead of just your memory of something.
In fact, when you get into the very advanced levels of breath
work, you can see where when you're working with trauma that
somebody can be using their breathing the present and I'm.
(29:41):
Breathing and I can change my breathing and so no matter what
else, I may be flooded with feelings of grief or anger or
sadness or I may be having trauma memories and I am
breathing in this present moment.
That's a really, that's a game changer.
That's really powerful. And, and it's a very embodied
(30:04):
process. You know, when you're breathing,
you're, you're feeling. In fact, the way I like to teach
breathing is to have people initially really connect with
the sensations of their breathing and the sensations
that their breathing produces and the sensations of their
bodies. So that they're really paying
attention to the embodied experience.
(30:26):
Which right there you're beginning to dissolve some of
the tendencies that people who have experienced trauma.
But even all of us, I think in this, you know, I think a lot of
people have said we're all experiencing to some degree
trauma or collective trauma and that kind of embodied breathing
(30:47):
begins to dissolve dissociation,right?
It's, it's much harder to dissociate if you're actually
here in the present moment. So those are some of the really
powerful ways that conscious breathing is, yeah, a game
changer. So you've worked with both
inclination as a clinician, but also working kind of with the
general public. How can someone without a real
(31:08):
therapeutic background begin to use breathwork safely and
effectively? That's a wonderful question.
Thank you for asking it. Well, there's so many things.
Let me touch on a few places because everybody, you know,
people might respond to a particular way just like some
people like country music and some people like classical
(31:30):
music, so or rock or whatever. So here's some different aspects
and see what connects with you people who are listening.
So one of the things that is more subtle, but in the long run
the most deeply transformative for psychological well-being and
also physical well-being and therefore spiritual awakening
(31:53):
for those that that is of interest to you, is to shift the
orientation from the idea of taking a deep breath to being
breathed. So again, there's this thing,
you go to a yoga class, you go or somebody says, oh, you're
upset, take a deep breath. It's a good idea.
By the way, taking a deep breathis wonderful.
(32:14):
And because a lot of times it interrupts whatever unconscious
pattern we're in and it gives usagency and it fills us with, you
know, we're breathing better. And so that's going to bring
more physiological regulation. By the way, one thing I didn't
mention when you ask that beautiful question about why
breathing is so effective, I really should have said this is
(32:36):
every breath is psychophysiological.
That's also the science is irrefutable.
So every breath we take is goingto have a psychological impact
and it's going to have a physical impact and it's going
to have a psychological or or kind of contribution or
component to it. Like it's going to be coming
(32:58):
from where our psychology is at the moment, where our psyche is,
and it's going to be coming fromwhere our Physiology is
that when we take deep breath, it will have an impact right
(33:36):
away. And we should definitely do
that. If we're stuck in a loop, if
we're anxious for feeling tired,if we're angry at somebody, if
we want to take a pause and a conversation that's activating
us or something, take a deep breath, no problem.
It's really great. And there's a deeper
transformation that has to that would happen over time,
(33:59):
practicing every day for a few minutes, going about your life
and think, thinking about it this way is can I receive my
breathing? Because it's kind of like that
when we're born, we receive breathing.
You know, we're being breathed, as you said so beautifully,
Jeff, a little while ago about the interconnection and that
(34:22):
we're, you know, you're breathing what somebody else
breathed out maybe 500 years agoor 1000 years ago.
You know, there's something larger going on than just me
taking a deep breath. I'm being breathed.
I'm part of this breathing cycle.
So some of the listeners may really connect with this to just
sit and allow yourself to becomereceptive to the fact that
(34:45):
you're being breathed. And then you can shift from
being with no effort. You don't have to give any of
your conscious effort. You can hoard all of that
conscious effort to do other things.
And what I'm suggesting is if you start to take some of the
energy that we put into, you know, watching videos or, you
(35:06):
know, whatever else we may do, and we really have reverence for
an appreciation for receiving the breathing, we won't notice
that this is all happening without us having to spend a
moment of our conscious energy. Then what we can do is use
conscious energy to receive it, not just to be brief, but to
(35:29):
actually, OK, I'm welcoming you in.
This is like a gift. I'm being breathed.
And then because of that, the breathing starts to deepen
naturally. And here's the part that's the,
you know, I said this is ultimately more transformative.
It's because when we take a deepbreath, the one who's taking the
deep breath is the one who already has all their
(35:52):
psychological patterns and the breathing.
As Deepak Chopra and spiritual teachers down through the ages
and yoga has talked about, your breathing is reflecting your
psychological pattern. You know, if you've learned to
be tense, if you've learned to be happy, there's all these
different, you know, ways of breathing.
You might hold at the top, you might hold at the bottom.
(36:14):
You might be resistant to letting the air out or letting
it in. So if you take a deep breath,
even though it will interrupt the pattern and it will be
beneficial, the one who's takingthat deep breath is still in the
pattern of the unconscious, you know ID or you know and and ego.
If you overtime learn the subtlety of being breathed and
(36:37):
then you receive that breathing and then you partner being
receiving that breathing, you will come to breathe deeper in a
way that isn't your patterns, your unconscious psychological
patterns. So the the potential of that is
outstanding. And that's as easy as people
just sitting for just two or three minutes once a day and
(36:59):
just becoming aware of how they're being breathed.
And then maybe like, OK, So whatif I allow that a little bit
more? What if I relax my belly so my
diaphragm has more room to contract so it can pull in more
air? What if I relax my rib cage so
that my rib cage can expand bothlaterally and, you know, kind of
(37:20):
forward and backward and laterally?
What if I then allow myself to sigh on the exhale as I'm being
breathed? And so then we're breathing
deeper without bringing in the unconscious psychological
patterns. So that's the first one.
Secondly, I would say yes, become aware of how your
(37:41):
diaphragm may not be having as optimal room to breathe as it
could. So you can put your hands on
your belly and just feel is yourbelly actually coming out during
the inhale? Because that's what should be
happening, not people are taughtlike to suck it in.
That's actually the opposite. The diaphragm needs to go down
(38:03):
during that inhale. It's kind of the spell thing
that needs to go down. So it needs more room.
So you practice letting the belly relax and open during the
in at the beginning of the inhale and then you again, the
rib cage can expand in the middle of the breath and then
the chest rises at the end of the breath.
And then when you're breathing out, it's kind of the same thing
(38:24):
in reverse. Relax the chest, then the rib
cage and then the then the belly.
And so if you find that your diaphragm and your belly feel
like tight and they won't release, you can take your
hands, kind of curl your fingersunder like this and go under the
rib, the bottom of your rib cage, gently.
(38:44):
And as you're breathing in and out slowly and deeply, you can
massage the ligaments and the, you know, what's in between that
rib cage and the viscera underneath it and kind of just
loosen it up. And if you find a place that's
very tight, you can just stay there and breathe for several
(39:07):
breaths or maybe even several minutes until you feel it's
starting to loosen. And that will be really, really
helpful. Another thing that people can do
to start doing breath work on their own is just set a timer
for 7 minutes. I find that 5 minutes gets you
that state change, as Spiegel and Huberman showed with the
(39:27):
anxiety piece. But for deep lasting
transformation, the reason I like to go for 7 minutes is 10
minutes sometimes seems like toomuch.
It's it's like people start to to lose their focus or they feel
in this day and age like I have to go and they have so much to
do. 7 minutes is like the sweet spot where you get the state
(39:48):
change and you start to get a trait change in that last two
minutes. So if you set a timer for 7
minutes and you ask yourself daily, just what is it to be
aware of my breathing, receive it, maybe begin to breathe
deeper, slow my breathing down for 7 minutes.
You will be shocked how even after a week you will start to
(40:11):
feel differently. And you'll find yourself
remembering in the middle of theday to pause and breathe a
little more deeply and that willcreate a state change.
And then by all those state changes, you'll start to get
trait changes. So.
Those are some of the simplest ways that just anybody can begin
to use breath work now. If you're having intense
(40:36):
emotions, if you're feeling, if you're having a trauma response,
if you're feeling like your energy is low.
And just feel the agency that you have to
(41:16):
breathe deeply. So is this kind of what
distinguishes breathwork from more somatic or meditative type
of practices? You know, I think I think that
meditation, I meditate and meditation is wonderful and
there have been two studies. I'm sorry that I can't quote
them right now. I apologize for the lack of
(41:39):
should have shown up with that academically prepared.
But there have been two studies.One was done through I believe
the armed forces, but I can't don't quote me exactly on that.
But what they did was they had people do breathing, breath
work, yoga bypass piece that it can put you actually meditation
(42:29):
is disruptive to them emotionally.
It can really disregulate them. It can be dissociative, it can
(42:59):
bring up body memories, but they're not being processed, you
know, because you're kind of trying to do this meditation
thing. Whereas breathing in a somatic
way keeps you connected with your body and you still might of
course need facilitation. I absolutely recommend that if
you have trauma in your background or if you have a lot
(43:21):
of emotional dysregulation in your background, it would be
really wonderful for you to finda certified breath worker.
And we can talk about how to find a really good breath
worker. That would be probably useful.
But somebody who's really got good experience, even with the
simpler breathing, just initially because they'll be
(43:41):
able to track you, watch you, give you feedback about what
you're feeling should you start to have things happen like
you're breathing and you feel more energy.
And that feels initially really great, but then that because
there's more energy, it's like alittle bit of excitement, which
can also trigger this. It's the same neurological
pathways that are about fear. So if you have some stuff, you
(44:05):
know, like we all do from the past that might need to get
processed, then you want to knowhow to work with that.
So I would definitely recommend that if you have emotional
dysregulation or trauma that youwould work with a breath worker
initially and then you can just daily do it on your own, so.
How does conscious breed supportus as we're aging, You know,
(44:26):
both physiologically, emotionally and spiritually?
Well, I mean, first of all, I think just probably
metaphorically, right? We can just say that it's got to
make sense that if you're breathing deeply and we know
that there's all these health benefits and there's the
emotional regulation and cortisol levels go down.
And, you know, all of that stuffhas an effect on, you know,
(44:49):
your, your hormones, your, you know, your neurotransmitters,
your cellular health, your, you know, the telomeres at the end
of your, you know, chromosomes. I mean, I think that's just
almost metaphorically, we would know that that's true.
And I think that this thing about agency about, you know, I
(45:13):
often say here's another reason that breathing is the universal
medicine. You know, God forbid there
should be any kind of global catastrophe or, you know, we
know how bad it is in a place like Haiti, which is the human
(45:35):
potential breathing, the emotional processing.
She had that certification, and she also knew coherent
(45:58):
breathing. And she went to Haiti within a
week after that earthquake hit, and she was taken into remote
regions where people had been without electricity.
There was not medicine. They weren't getting enough
food. There were women, there were
children. Some of them had not slept for a
week. They were so traumatized they
(46:21):
could not sleep. She began to do breathing with
them, conscious breathing, coherent breathing is what she
used then. And there are pictures.
Within 20 minutes, they're so touching.
Within 20 minutes, many of thesechildren and women who had not
slept were on their back, fast asleep.
And then this was something thatshe could teach.
(46:43):
She stayed for a week or two. There was another breath worker
with her name, Barbara Johnson, and they stayed for a week or
two and taught them how to use that.
And so that was really effective.
And this is what all of us have,you know, should we encounter A
trauma, should we be without water?
Should we be without medicine? What we have is our breathing,
(47:04):
and I think it's it's the primary medicine of the human
species. So do you see applications in
conditions like OCD, hyperactivity, hyper anxiety,
those types of things? Yeah, absolutely.
And I think even though breathing is the universal
medicine and any deep conscious breathing will be good for
(47:27):
anybody, I think that one of thethings that a really well
trained breath worker knows is how, you know, they're tracking
sort the spectrum in some way. And I mean, it was so touching.
(48:07):
This one young man, he was head of his class, of course,
brilliant, but socially very awkward on the spectrum.
And he really wanted to go to college and he really wanted to
have a girlfriend. And I knew that he was a
beautiful person that, you know,anybody would be lucky to be in
a relationship with him and he would probably do great things
(48:29):
in the world. And it was really amazing how
the breathing he was able to open up to me emotionally.
(49:06):
He was able to process emotions.He did go on to college and you
know, but there was a particularkind of breathing that was very
bio individualized that I workedwith him.
I could track with him and then he could know what really worked
best for him. I'm also thinking about, you're
asking, can it work with OCD? Can it work with trauma?
(49:28):
Can it work with these various things?
I'm thinking of this really touching story of Alice Krauss.
So Alice Krauss was a survivor of Auschwitz.
So she had extreme OCD, extreme fear.
She had extreme anxiety. She had two children.
(49:50):
She married another survivor. And her children, who loved her
nevertheless, had grown up in a lot of fear because she didn't
want them climbing a tree because they might fall.
She didn't want them, like, playing in puddles in the cold
because they might get a cold. You know, she was just very,
very protective. And her son had been doing
breath work with me. And he had been a drug addict
(50:14):
before he came to do breath work.
And he used the breathing to process a lot of the things, the
the rage, the fear, the anxiety that was underlying his his
addiction. Plus just to rewire that there
were other forms of pleasure other than drugs that the
(50:34):
breathing was able to bring to him.
So it was very effective. And he really wanted his mother
to come do this because she had never gone to therapy and she'd
never been willing to talk abouther experience at Auschwitz.
And so she finally agreed to come after, you know, about two
years of trying to get her to come.
And when she came into the room with me, she told me with no
(50:58):
equivocation, I'm not going to do this.
I'm just here to appease him. We're just going to sit here.
Nothing's going to happen, and then I'm going to leave.
But he'll be satisfied. So I said, OK, that's fine.
So we would talk and we talk about her son because she loved
him. And every time she said
something about him that I also really appreciate about him, I'd
(51:19):
say Alice. That's so beautiful.
I love that about Ron, too. Could we just pause here for a
moment so I could just breathe and just kind of take that in?
And so I breathe a deep breath or breathe deeply two or three
times. And after the mirror, the mirror
neurons started going, you know,it's that deeper language than
(51:39):
words. And so after about 30 minutes,
when I would breathe deeply, Alice would breathe deeply.
But I never said to her breathe deeply because high control, you
know, in for her. And then after a while, she
asked me to share a little bit about my own suffering.
And when I would share something, she would breathe
(52:01):
deeply. And then all of a sudden, there
just came this point about an hour into it, when Alice Krauss
told me the story of her survival in Auschwitz.
And we were together for anothertwo hours.
And it's one of the most sacred moments of my whole life.
And when Ron came up the stairs and into the room, he said the
(52:24):
room was just glowing. Now, she never shared it with
anybody else, except because shehad shared it there when Steven
Spielberg came through town doing the show.
A project that where he was having people from concentration
camp survivors share their experiences and he catalogued
(52:46):
them all and this was in preparation for Schindler's
List, the movie that he made. She she actually had the courage
to go and they filmed her and it's still on their website
Alice Krauss on the on the show a website.
So I just I'm trying to give youexamples of that yes, this
conscious breathing can be very powerful She had OCD, she had
(53:07):
anxiety this other young man hadyou know was on the spectrum he
was neurodivergent. I've worked with people that
have even had bipolar disorder. You have to work with them very
specifically. You don't let them do the fast
deep breathing initially becausethat will activate their
(53:27):
excitability, you know, kind of neurons and can trigger.
But if you do the slower deep breathing and you pause, if you
notice what we did with this oneyoung man was every time it felt
like his, it might get into excitability.
We would just pause and just have him be aware of his breath
without breathing deeper and then we breathe deeply again.
(53:49):
And this young man, I'm not saying all people should do it
and I have nothing against medicine, medication.
In fact, he had had a spiritual awakening, which is why he came
to me initially. His mother brought him and he
was having all kinds of profoundthings.
But I could see that his he was in a manic phase.
It was going into a manic phase.So I suggested that we go take
(54:10):
him to a good hospital and he was there for about 6 days
because I thought he needed to get regulated with medicine
initially. And then we took a two year
period. He slowly tapered off the
medicine and was able to access these states of consciousness
that he wanted to without going into a manic episode.
And he's been without medicationfor 20 years now.
(54:32):
So. So yeah, just the only caution I
would say is that for people that have any of those kind of
states, you want to work with a really well trained breath
worker while you're doing it. Yeah, it sounds like, you know,
a lot of us when we think of breath work, we just.
(54:58):
You. Know we think of and it is
really important for us to go toa trained professional that
allow it to meet with our specific needs.
Well, you know, since you do bring up the thing about the
psychotherapy part of it, you know, obviously I, I don't want
(55:19):
to make bombastic claims, but I cannot tell you the number of
times. I mean, it's countless just in
my life, let alone all the breath workers in the world that
that people do one of these deeper kind of breath work
sessions. I call it human potential breath
work. And they will say at the end of
it, that was like 6 weeks of therapy or that was like 6
(55:43):
months of therapy. I mean, there are people that
come in that have been doing therapy for years and they do
one session of breath work and it's just like the shift is
incredible. You know, I worked with one
woman who had what, what we usedto call multiple personality
disorder, right? We don't, we don't call it that
(56:04):
anymore, but just, you know, it's now thought of just as a
identity dissociative disorder. But I don't even like to call it
a disorder because I think it's a highly creative response to a
life threatening situation. But she had been working with a
therapist for about 10 years andhad never been able to integrate
(56:29):
any of the personalities into her core self.
And we just did 2 sessions and she integrated 3 of her parts
into her core self. And you know, and then she was
able to, to continue doing that as.
And so I mean, yeah, because what's so powerful there is that
(56:51):
you can teach each part to recognize its own breathing and
the breathing will be different with each part.
But then what the, what the commonality is, is that they all
see that each other is breathing.
So then they can join together in the breathing.
And that's how the integration happens.
So it's another really great example of how it's that
unifying language of the human species.
(57:12):
It's unifying in ourselves, too.This is all exciting stuff and I
feel like I could keep going andkeep going, but I know we need
to probably be wrapping up soon for just you to get back to your
life So kind of quickly. What does aging well mean to
you, and how has the breath shaped your own kind of
experience with that journey? Well, I don't remember who it is
(57:35):
that use the first use the word saging, you know, to become like
a sage, but I love using that term for aging.
And you did ask me earlier abouthow it can help us age.
Well, so I mean, I mean, I thinkit's pretty obvious all the
things that we said. I think it helps with even
balance. And yeah, just it, you know,
(57:55):
there's, we know that if must the muscle memory piece that if
you direct your breathing to particular muscles, like you're
intentionally, that's also goingto help build muscle.
Umm, one other aspect that I didn't say that I think is
really powerful for the physicalpart of aging and also for
(58:15):
people who are experiencing any kind of illness, any kind of
illness at all. I I did this breathing with my
sister when she had cancer. I did this kind of breathing
with my father when he had COPD.He lived to be 99 and he was
doing breath practices until hisvery last day and the doctor
said there was no doubt it had added years to his life.
(58:38):
But this very powerful orientation is to be breathing
deeply and to allow yourself to.Bodying that those cellular
(59:40):
memories by doing that. So that's one thing by the way,
with saging that I would really highly recommend people doing
every day. And I do that and I, I just feel
like it keeps me feeling, I feelvery youthful.
I I was surprised that the doctors in ICU, when my father
(01:00:19):
was there, they said there's no doubt that all these breathing
exercises you did kept him alivefor years.
Pass when he would have survived?
Did I answer question correctly?I mean, yeah, accurately.
Yeah. And so in addition to breathing
exercises, what else are you doing personally to, I guess I
(01:00:40):
should say, Sage? Well.
You know, let me come back againto, to just what I said in the
very beginning, Jeff, I think it's a crime how we marginalized
aging saging in this culture that we're in.
We're so youth oriented, as if somehow that's the pinnacle of
(01:01:01):
life. And I, I really think it should
be the other way around. You know, how amazing is it to
have all these life experiences?And I, I've been very heartened
by stories that I've heard recently of, you know, people in
their 20s and 30s actually actively forming relationships
with people in their 70s and 80sand 90s and asking them
(01:01:22):
questions, you know, So what didyou do when this happened or
what would you think about that?Because I think that there is
wisdom. I think there's patience.
And a lot of elders that wasn't there when they were younger,
they have a broader view of whatlife is really about.
And, you know, in many indigenous cultures, the elders
(01:01:45):
were like the libraries, you know, they were the keeper of
the knowledge. And I often wonder if some of
the proliferation of Alzheimer'sisn't partially that we don't
sit around and ask our elders, you know, like, and keep their
minds really. Like, hey, I want to go into the
library and find out what, you know.
You know, we kind of like, you're not moving fast enough,
(01:02:07):
you're not pretty enough. You're not this enough or that
enough. And I wonder if that's
contributing to the memory problems that seem to be
proliferating along with other things.
So for myself, I would say, you know, deep.
Yeah, conscious breathing. And then it has to stop because
(01:02:35):
you have to stop that activity. You have to stop playing tennis
or stop skiing or stop the meditation or get up from the
yoga mat with breathing. When you do conscious breathing,
it doesn't have to stop. You just take it into your life.
(01:02:57):
You're standing at the stove cooking and you're consciously
breathing. You're washing dishes and you're
conscious. So that state of flow that I'm
talking about can remain. It can become a way of life.
So that for me is primary. I absolutely do the gratitude
thing. I feel so much great every day.
You know, I express gratitude written and to people and
(01:03:22):
creatures and the earth and the places where I live.
I do think that after air hydration is really important.
So I definitely hydrate and I, that's one of my big practices
'cause it doesn't come naturallyto me.
So I've really had to work at it.
I do movement, you know, I, I walk at a minimum, but I do, I
(01:03:45):
hang from bars like for 30 seconds, 45 seconds at a time.
I do yoga, I do a little bit of Pilates.
I dance. I would say at a deeper level
though, 'cause I really wanna honour, yeah, all the saging
people out there. At a deeper level, I don't.
(01:04:08):
Of course I have preferences. Of course I would prefer that,
you know, some of some of that it was warmer today than cold
or, you know, of course I have these kinds of preferences.
And yet I also have just come tosee the value of meeting each
moment of reality from a place of press because that's the only
moment we have. And so rather than sort of
(01:04:30):
regale against like, oh, realityisn't doing what I want, I can
feel my feelings about that, notreject myself for feeling those
feelings, not try to suppress those feelings, which just leads
to other psychological problems.I can, I can honor those
feelings and I can also choose that I, I want to, I want to
(01:04:52):
live into this and see what is this moment.
So I don't envy anybody else's life.
You know, it's like, I think each life is its own garden and
nobility, and so is mine. And so I think for me, the
conscious breathing ultimately has been about creating somatic
presence, emotional presence, and cognitive presence, which
(01:05:15):
allows me to be spiritually present to what's happening as
the next experience of my life that I'm either gonna miss or
not miss. And I think I'd rather not miss
it so. Beautifully said.
Was there anything we missed talking about today?
I feel like we could probably goon and on and on and only
scratch the surface on what people can be doing to better
(01:05:38):
their breathing practices. But that kind of brings me to
the question, you know, where can people connect with you?
Where can they find the book? If they want to find a breath
work therapist, how do they go about doing that?
Yeah, thank you. So if if they'd like to connect
with me, my e-mail is Essence atinspirationcommunityjustlikethosewordsarespelledinspirationcommunityalloneword.orgsoessence@inspirationcommunity.org
(01:06:04):
is my office e-mail address. I can help connect you with
breath workers if you happen to be in my location.
I have a team of about 2025 breath workers that I've trained
and so I can connect you with them or I can connect you with
breath workers virtually if you're done, If you don't live
near here, the book is, well, let me just say or if you want
(01:06:30):
to connect with somebody in person that and you don't live
near us. The Global Professional
Breathwork Alliance, which is Breathwork alliance.com is the
organization that is setting thegold standard for training and
ethics in breath work. And I'm the Co director of it
(01:06:51):
along with my Co director, Jim Morningstar, who's a clinical
psychologist. And so we do have a directory
listing which is growing all thetime.
Right now we have about 200 and some practitioners around the
globe and about 39 schools that have passed.
You know our standards that we have so we can connect you with
them. If you want to do a longer
(01:07:14):
program, by the way with me, notjust breath work sessions, we
have 8 day immersion programs that you really go deeply into
it. We have weekly programs.
So there's all kinds of things you can find on our website,
which is inspiration, community.org,
inspirationcommunity.org. The book is called Breathwork
(01:07:36):
and Psychotherapy Clinical Interventions for Healing and
Transformation. It is out on August 26th,
available for pre-order before that.
And yeah, it's, it's been a, a labor of love, I would say, from
my family as well. My father very touching.
(01:07:58):
Jeff asked me about a month before he passed.
He said, umm, Jesse, when are you gonna be done with the book?
And I had that little, you know,feeling I didn't want him to go.
And so I just sort of said vaguely in the spring, Dad, in
the spring because I just wantedhim to be there.
Umm and I, I saw him kind of shudder a little bit, but
(01:08:20):
anyway, he stayed alive until the weekend that I turned the.
Book Oh, wow. Well, I think we just end on
that very touching moment. So I just thank you for, you
know, your time with us today and the sage words of advice
that you have given us. And I just encourage you to just
keep doing what you're doing andkeep aging well.
Thank you so much. And I really just want to,
(01:08:42):
again, thank you for the really important work that you're
doing, Jeff. And just say to everybody out
there that you know, whatever your age, your condition, you
matter. You know, you're, you're it you,
you are love. And there's something in you
that wants to be expressed. And I hope that somehow this
session has helped you tap into that and share it with our
(01:09:04):
world. Thank you for listening.
Hope you benefited from today's podcast and until next time,
keep aging well.
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