Pod Insights The Psychology of your 20s 323. The power of breathwork About this episode Breath work, as a therapeutic technique, is having it's day in the sun. You may be seeing videos about it cropping up everywhere, but the truth is that it's a very ancient and deeply powerful psychological practice... when done correctly.
In today's episode we are joined by our expert guest, Jessica Dibb, to break down the true power and science of breath work including:
What breath work actually is (and what it isn't) The most common breath work techniques The major science + studies backing up it's legitimacy The breakthroughs people experience The downsides + so much more Jessica's book here:Breathwork + Psychotherapy https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393712001
*The opinions of guests are not necessarily shared by the host.
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2:46 Jemma Sbeg? Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
3:05 Jemma Sbeg? Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast, new listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we, of course, break down the psychology of our 20s. Every few years, I feel like a new form of therapy rises to the surface, a new form of mental health treatment, a new wellness practice becomes the new it thing. A couple of years ago, it was like inner child healing, and that's still very relevant, but everyone was very obsessed with it. Reiki was another one.
3:48 Jemma Sbeg? Somatic release was another one that people got really, really obsessed with. And when that happens, there is this like real chance that we can become really kind of misinformed or that we can think that one mode of dealing with emotional and mental issues is the only mode that we should be pursuing, that everything else is, was, that came before it was false. And breath work.
4:17 Jemma Sbeg? Might just be the new it thing. I feel like I've been hearing about it everywhere. Everyone is talking about it. I know it can be so incredibly powerful, but I'm a little bit skeptical. I've done a little bit of research on my own, but I thought, you know what? Let's talk to an expert. I feel like other people in their twenties, other people in general, will have questions about all the dialogue they see online, or the recommendations they may be hearing from other people about the power of breathwork. So we're going to talk about what it actually is, how it works, how it operates according to science, how it can go hand in hand with more modern day practices and therapeutic approaches, and
4:59 Jemma Sbeg? also its traditional and ancient roots. And of course, we're bringing on an expert who is here with us right now. Hello, Jessica. Welcome to the show. Can you quickly introduce yourself for the listeners?
5:14 Speaker 00 It's such an honor and a delight to be with you, Gemma. This topic of your podcast about people in their twenties and how they want to care for themselves and develop themselves and grow and be healthy and all of that is just so important for our whole planet, not just the individual. So it's an honor to be with you. So, yes, my name is Jessica and I am the co-director of the Global Professional Breathwork Alliance. And we are the organization that sets the international standards, the gold standard for breathwork training and
5:56 Speaker 00 ethics. And I also have the real privilege of being the director of Inspiration Consciousness School in Maryland, in the United States. And it's really a, a school that is dedicated to people from age sixteen to ninety-six or a hundred and six, who want to develop their capacity to be present to themselves and other people, who want to develop their capacity to love, to be honest with you, to be compassionate and kind, but also to be creative and strong and powerful and contributing to themselves and the life of the planet. And so.
6:42 Speaker 00 It's just my honor. Our school uses many different modalities, but all of them are breath-centered because we feel that breath is the universal medicine.
6:53 Jemma Sbeg? Oh, I love that. That's so, that's so beautiful. And what a beautiful introduction. You are most certainly an expert, and I actually got my hands on your book while you sent me a copy. And it is so wonderfully comprehensive. And I feel like breathwork is really having a moment online, on the internet, in self-help communities right now. How would you explain what breathwork is? And more specifically, what is the difference between breathwork and simply just deep breathing or meditation?
7:26 Speaker 00 Mm-hmm. Good questions. So breathwork is a spectrum of breathing practices, voluntary breathing, conscious breathing in different ways, that address everything from relaxation at one end and regulation to deep human potential at the other end of the spectrum, like who are we at the core? What are each of us capable of? What could we bring to the world? And in between, you have these other factors such as how it is that we can bring more awareness to everything that we're doing. Or we can go a step further and say, okay, if there's something that needs intervention,
8:11 Speaker 00 like a physical challenge, an illness, an emotional dysregulation, are there particular breathing practices that would target, so to speak, those specific things? And there's also breathing practices that are totally meant to develop human capabilities, human capacities, such as strength, compassion, focus, joy. And so then at the far end, of course, you go all the way to who am I at my essence? So the breathwork is really a spectrum of all of those practices.
8:49 Speaker 00 What I would say is it's definitely
8:54 Speaker 00 differentiated from just straight meditation because a lot of meditation is centered on the breathing or uses the breathing, but there is an aspect of meditation that is about realizing sort of a more transcendent self, a more peaceful self, all of which is fantastic. I meditate too. I'm a great believer in it.
9:21 Speaker 00 Breathwork, though, is very focused on embodiment. It's focused on how do I experience these things in my body? And rather than trying to transcend certain human characteristics, shall we say, really, the deeper kind of breathwork is about embracing all of those characteristics and finding out what's at the core of our behaviors, what's at the core of our motivations, why we do the wonderful things we do, why we do the things that aren't so good for us and sabotage ourselves and others, and how we can actually transform those in the moment in the body.
10:03 Speaker 00 And so we do find that there are some studies that show that about 10% of people who meditate, it actually dysregulates them rather than regulates them because it's not dealing with some of the things that they may be carrying, like trauma, for instance. Whereas with breathwork, particularly if you're being guided by a really well-trained breathworker who's really knows the territory, you're actually able to deal with your trauma. That is integrated into your experience of what it is to become present.
10:43 Jemma Sbeg? That is such a beautiful explanation. And it's so interesting that you said meditation can cause some people to become dysregulated, because I actually heard from a listener the other day. And I've heard from a number of listeners who are like, I don't get the deal with meditation. I always feel worse afterwards. So I, as soon as you said that, I was like, oh, I know a lot, a lot of people can relate to that. Can you give us an insight into the traditional origins of breathwork and of this practice? Because I, I feel like this is not a new thing.
11:16 Speaker 00 Definitely not a new thing, because of course, we've all been breathing since the very beginning.
11:21 Jemma Sbeg? Exactly.
11:22 Speaker 00 And in fact, the whole planet breathes. Really, if you could, you could think of it as one breath, because everything's involved in the oxygen cycle. Oxygen's the most abundant element on our planet, the third most abundant element in the universe. And not only humans and all non-human creatures and animals, but also the plants, the fungi, the mycelium, trees, the earth itself has oxygen in it, the waters, the air, the sources of heat, everything's participating in photosynthesis or in the oxygen cycle. So it's really a
12:03 Speaker 00 comprehensive and unifying and really it, it has us have the realization of our essential interconnection with everything. So we actually find, and you might have seen this in my book, I think I have about 16 to 20 different places or origins or cultures where it shows that from the very beginning of particular religions, spiritual paths, cultures, it was just really known that breathing is it, you know, breathing is the connection between wherever it is or whatever it is that we are before we come into the body and actually being here. And
12:43 Speaker 00 so many cultures spoke of it as, you know, the connection with God, the connection with Source, the connection with creation, or even more powerfully that it is creation, it is the Source, it is God, sort of moving through reality in, in our bodies. And so You you find it coming from Japan and China and India and Africa, the African nations, there's breathwork way back there, Mesopotamia, just every religion that I could find, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, they all have at the core of their mystical teachings that it is actually the breath that is the doorway to everything that we're looking for.
13:29 Jemma Sbeg? Which is amazing because I feel like as much as it's just entering, perhaps the brains and the minds of a new generation, it's being introduced to a younger group. The fact that it's been around for ages is kind of a lot of evidence in itself how magnificent it is. But speaking of evidence, I'm sure a lot of people perhaps are listening to some of these explanations and being like, that sounds a bit a bit niche, that sounds a bit perhaps woo woo and whatever else they want to label it. There is definitely science behind this, as I saw in your book. Can you explain the science, any psychology, any studies that kind of support the benefits of breathwork?
14:11 Speaker 00 Yes, absolutely. I mean, it really is, Gemma, that modern science and ancient wisdom about breathing are finding each other. Modern science, in a sense, is catching up, you know, with ancient wisdom. And it used to be that it might take, you know, you might find a study about breathing and its effects on the psyche, maybe once a year, once every few years, you know, and now it's like the research is just coming out. I mean, breathwork, as you said, is really having its time. And I think it will remain that case because breathwork and breathing
14:50 Speaker 00 is the fundamental medicine and nutrient and friend of every human being. And it's also the unifying language of the human species. And we can talk about that later, how it transcends language and gender and political orientation and all of that. So the science, though, is really powerful at this point. It's irrefutable, for instance, that breathing is psychophysiological. And that means that literally every breath we take. Has a psychological derivation and it has a physiological derivation. And every breath that we take also affects us physically and affects us psychologically.
15:34 Speaker 00 So that science is irrefutable. Another piece of the science that's irrefutable is that slow, deep breathing stimulates the autonomic nervous system, which we want to have in balance. We're sympathetic and parasympathetic are working. They are reflective. And when they're optimized, we're able to use our parasympathetic ability to rest and digest and be and be more peaceful when it's needed. And we're able to flow easily into the sympathetic mode when we need to be active, when we need to respond to something, when there's something either urgent or just needful.
16:17 Speaker 00 And the flow back and forth between those two things ideally should be very easy. And it shouldn't be like, oh, it's hard for me to get going or I'm scared to get going or it's hard for me to stop when I'm frantic and I can't really calm down. Optimal heart rate variability is the ability to move back and forth. So we've seen in study after study that that breathing slowly with awareness helps to bring that parasympathetic sympathetic balance so that you really have more flow in your life. Another thing that's irrefutable is that some breathing, although I can be very specific about this, it's not just any breathing.
17:02 Speaker 00 And it's not the same for every person. I think that's very important in breath work. I think a lot of people want there to be a formula, like if I do this breathing, my anxiety will go down. If I do this breathing, I'll get more energy. But the reality is we all have a different genetics. We all have, you know, there's a lot of similarity, but there's also differences. We all have a different attachment history, meaning who were our caregivers and how do we relate to them? And how does that affect the way our body feels and the way our breathing is? Our breathing does reflect our psychological state.
17:40 Speaker 00 And so it's just the case that um you there's gonna be an so two people that have anxiety may respond differently to different breathing techniques or different breathing practices. And this is why I think the ultimate breath work evolution is going to be a bio individualized coaching for each person that each person can then feel from within themselves what really regulates. But nevertheless, the majority of people will with certain kinds of breathing have their their cortisol levels greatly reduced, their anxiety levels go down. And there have been many studies showing different kinds of breathing elevating mood.
18:25 Speaker 00 One study that came out of Stanford about a year and a half ago, almost two years ago now. That was Spiegel Huberman at Al showed that the most effective breathing, again, this is on a bell curve. So for most people, but not everybody for reducing anxiety and elevating mood is breathing in. And then before you breathe out, you take another little sip in. So you kind of lengthen that inhale in two segments and then you sigh it out. And five minutes of that will create a state change. And if you practice it every day for thirty eight, thirty twenty eight to thirty days for five minutes,
19:09 Speaker 00 then you get state to trait, you know, you get that movement from I can, I know what this feels like now to it's actually sticking with me. Um. So that was a really interesting study because they were comparing that to, I think, box breathing and also cyclical hyperventilation. So, you know, different breathing techniques can can address different aspects of our psychological states and how we can come into greater regulation, but also how we can deal with the unmet parts of ourselves, you know, perhaps it's like the parts of ourselves that didn't get nourished or nurtured enough when we were children.
19:53 Speaker 00 So these are the kinds of things that can happen when you're working with the psychological material that we do in therapy, which is really powerful. I'm not saying we shouldn't be doing therapy. I'm actually making a proposal that the beauty of therapeutic understanding is going to be activated and enhanced by bringing breath work into it because we're able to go underneath the verbal defenses, the orientations, the descriptions that we make about ourselves and others, and we're able to get to feelings that we weren't able to get to. We're able to get to capacities that might be lying dormant in us that never got the nutrients and the attention that
20:37 Speaker 00 they need. There's all kinds of possibilities, and that includes expanded states of consciousness.
20:42 Jemma Sbeg? Hmm. That's such a beautiful explanation. I feel like you've you've mentioned some of the different techniques a couple of times. You mentioned box breathing, then there was that inhale. What are some of the most, obviously, see, I don't know the names. What are the some of the different types of breath work techniques? How do they kind of work? And what are they meant to be targeting? Like, are there a couple that are that are the major pillars of breath work? What are the most like common ones?
21:15 Speaker 00 So that's a really good question, Gemma. As you may know from the book, I've really looked at the breath work spectrum, and I've identified five sort of groupings of breath work. So the first grouping is rest and relaxation, or restoration, or regulation. And those are your simple breathing techniques. There's so many of them where it's it's just breathing in, inhaling a little deeper than normal usually, and then kind of sighing it out, or letting it out, or groaning it out. You know, they had, it's wonderful to watch children do this, you know, when they're kind of angry, and then they take three deep breaths, and they let it out. And then
22:00 Speaker 00 they go, I was angry at Johnny, and then I took three deep breaths, and I'm not angry anymore. Of the regulation. So it can be as simple as anybody can do it. Just breathe a little deeper than normal and then let go. Just kind of let go, kind of a sigh, a release, or even you can, like I said, moan or groan or even make a sound. And there's other ones too. Things like it might be like a wave where you feel like there's the inhale coming in and there's the exhale going out. And these things will tend to give, put a kind of pause on whatever stressor has been
22:41 Speaker 00 happening, whatever stress reaction you're having, and it will allow the body to find an equilibrium again. A second group has to do with awareness. And that's the really the beginning of being more present. So that's where you're going to find your mindfulness techniques, your breath awareness techniques. And so actually, there's a scientist at UCLA named Jack Feldman. He's a very awarded, considered really the top breathing scientist in the world today and has a prize that's like one step down from the Nobel. And he found the origin
23:22 Speaker 00 of breathing in the brainstem, which he named the pre-Botzenjer complex. And he wanted, he was very interested about what is it, why is it that mindfulness works for most people? And what he discovered was that when it works, the reason it's working is has to do with breathing. The mindfulness, it's not so much about what you're paying attention to. That helps. It's an enhancement. But he took mice and he breathed to them. He made them breathe at a certain rate for a certain amount of time each day. And the group that did that breathing 30 days later,
24:01 Speaker 00 when they were introduced to a fear inducing stimulus, they were markedly less fearful than the control group. So it's things like that where he hasn't quite published that study yet, but it's going to be coming out. So you have these breath awareness, mindfulness techniques that really give you the capacity to be more aware of your internal environment, your inter reception, and your extracception, like what is going on around you, and to be in the present rather than in the future or the past only. Your third grouping has to do with interventions. So this is where, you know, you have asthma, you have um
24:44 Speaker 00 hyperactivity, neurodivergence, you have a kind of a low energy, like you constantly sort of feel fatigued. Um, you have a hyperactivity and you feel overadrenalized. Um, yeah, there are just things like that. And there are very specific techniques that can address those kinds of things. For instance, one is uh, something that I learned when I was much younger and I was studying yogic breathing techniques. Yogic pranayama is sleeping, a sleeping breathing technique. And really works. It has to do with the ratio of the inhale to the exhale. Or there's another one that I talk about in the book
25:25 Speaker 00 that I was taught it as asthma breathing or asthma pranayama, but I've renamed it respiratory healing because it just works on about any kind of respiratory ailment, emphysema, COPD. My own father had COPD and I had him doing these exercises. And he lived to be 99. And the doctor said that there was no doubt that the breathing techniques had really given him extra time, extra years. Um, you know, so you'll have uh, also techniques in there for deep emotional regulation, like coherent breathing, which is sometimes called resonance breathing, which is basically an equivalent
26:08 Speaker 00 ratio of the inhale and the exhale are the same count. And it's generally five to six breaths per minute for most people. But again, there's a bio-individuation and there are people that do better with four breaths a minute. And there are people that do better with eight. And what the science is showing is actually just that it's the fact that the inhale and the exhale are at the same equivalent amount of time that is really the the mitigating factor there.
26:38 Speaker 00 The fourth grouping has to do with human development. And these are your beautiful breathing techniques, like, how do you breathe with the sense of breathing into your heart? And feeling compassion, for instance, for yourself and others? And then letting your body feel, or what do you, what kind of breathing can you do? To feel more focused and stronger, or what kind of breathing can you do? To feel a sense of joy and gratitude and ebullience? These are the development of the deeper, kind of desirable, human qualities. And then that fifth group is what I call human potential breathwork. And it's really where you're breathing in a certain way continuously.
27:23 Speaker 00 Some schools call it conscious connected breathing. There are so many different ways that this variety of breathing is called holotropic breathwork, integrative breathwork, rebirthing, conscious connected breathing, therapeutic breathwork, transformational breath. And all of them are giving the person permission to breathe really deeply and really continuously, because when we hold our breath, there's a kind of unconsciousness that can happen. So you breathe continuously, so that the unconscious starts to become more conscious. It's really quite miraculous.
28:02 Speaker 00 And that feelings, images, yearnings, hopes,
28:11 Speaker 00 you know, even the so-called visions that we can all have, can begin to surface in an atmosphere of love, in an atmosphere of unconditional positive regard and acceptance. And we can integrate these more transcendental, more transpersonal, more holotropic aspects of ourself. Really, it's the level of soul in some ways.
28:39 Speaker 00 It's really that part of the psyche that wonders about the deeper parts of life and the mystery of life, like what is this all really about? And who am I really? And what am I really capable of? And what is the meaning of life? And so that kind of breath work does that. And so there are many different, there's a variety of techniques, shall we say, a whole panoply.
29:01 Jemma Sbeg? And I feel like there's something for everyone. Perhaps one of the misconceptions with breath work is that, yes, like we said before, it is just deep breathing and there is one strategy. But like you said, breath is, is like life itself. And if life itself is as varied as it is, then our breath can be as well. We are going to take a short break right now, but when we return, I want to also talk about some of the misconceptions about breath work, whether it can be scary, what you would say to skeptics, but also how we can kind of integrate it into more modern medicinal practices and modern therapeutic techniques. So stay with us.
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34:04 Jemma Sbeg? Okay, we are back with our breathwork expert, Jessica. So, this is a personal question of mine that I have about breathwork. I'm basically using this interview as an excuse just to ask you what I want to know. Which is, can breathwork be scary? You know, some people report feeling strange afterwards or even high or whatever it is. Can it, yeah, can it be scary? What should we know about that element of it?
34:36 Speaker 00 So, um, I think most people enjoy feeling high and if, because it's a positive experience. So that part alone isn't what scares them. What scares them is when there is...
34:50 Speaker 00 What I will call intrapsychic material, feelings that may have been buried, memories that may have not, you know, you didn't remember that you knew these things. Capacities within the self, even like trans, transpersonal kinds of experiences, like feeling connected to everything, feeling that there's a power greater than yourself, whether you just think of that as physics, like, you know, quantum, quantum field, or whether you think of it as a divine entity. I think that in and of itself, that wouldn't scare anybody because it actually feels like you're coming more home to yourself than you've ever been.
35:31 Speaker 00 But what scares people is that they don't, they didn't live in a culture that taught them that it was okay to have those kind of experiences. So if they're not working with a breath worker who's really skilled when they're going into those deeper kinds of experiences, they might have a moment of feeling unmirrored. You know, psychotherapeutically, we want people in process to feel mirrored, to feel attuned to. And so this is why I feel really lucky, privileged, honored to be the co-director of the Global Professional Breathwork Alliance, because we are setting standards for training and
36:12 Speaker 00 for ethics, and we have a very deep ethics around the expanded states of consciousness that people can access through breathing. You know, there's been two studies now that have shown that that kind of group five breathwork, that human potential breathwork, can be equivalent or even greater than the effects of psychedelics, but without the side effects. But what you need for it to be of ultimate use is you need a guide or a coach or an understanding of what's happening, so that you can celebrate that this incredible thing is opening up for you. So I know, like, for instance, yes, occasionally.
36:57 Speaker 00 One example would be if you're doing that deeper kind of breath work, you might feel a kind of tingling, for instance, in your hands or feet, or just anywhere in your body. And you come to understand that at the deepest level, it's where there's life force waking up that hasn't been there before. But if you don't have somebody explaining that to you, it could be, it could feel scary for sure. Uh, but I remember, for instance, one student I had that when it stopped happening for him, because he just got to the place where he was living it in an integrated way all the time. He was kind of sad because he liked that, you know, um, that feeling of being stretched a little bit. So I don't think that breath work needs to be scary at all.
37:41 Speaker 00 And I think that in our school, for instance, at Inspiration Consciousness School, I think our practitioners are trained to track people. We don't, we don't actually like people to do group breath work without also doing some individual breath work where they're getting that one-on-one coaching. And we tell them that this is something you'll be able to do on your own very shortly, but you just want to become familiar with the kind of territory that can open up. Because you are, you know, you are filled with potential. And all of that is just going to come forward.
38:18 Jemma Sbeg? It sounds like it's quite a smart approach, one that keeps people safe and one that keeps people in the space that they're prepared and ready to be in, which I think makes me feel a lot better about this practice. A kind of follow-up question to that as well is, what are some of the breakthroughs that people experience? I know you've spoken a bit about some from students of yours and also some of your own. Yeah, what, what can people kind of maybe expect or not expect?
38:50 Speaker 00 So first of all, I mean, some of it depends on what level of breath work you're engaging, right? So if you're just, if you're doing group one practices, you're mostly going to feel a sense of regulation, release, relaxation, let go, you know, just more at ease, less adrenalized, less cortisol going. And that's wonderful. That's beautiful. Or if you're doing your mindfulness stuff, you'll feel more present, more engaged, more able to be with whatever it is, whether it's cold or hot or busy or not busy or whatever. And then there's your individual techniques that
39:29 Speaker 00 are targeting those particular conditions. And there's the development of these qualities of self and capacity that you might have. I think if we're doing the deeper kind of breath work
39:47 Speaker 00 that we, that you're talking about with some of those effects,
39:52 Speaker 00 I could just tell a few stories. One person was a concentration camp survivor from Auschwitz. And her son wanted her to come see me because he had grown up, she had survived Auschwitz. And so she didn't want anything to happen to her children. So they were never allowed to like climb trees or, you know, a mountain or anything that she thought could cause them damage. She was just like so fearful. So she had high anxiety levels, massive amounts of control, issues. And she didn't want to come see me. She came and she said to me, the only reason I'm coming is
40:31 Speaker 00 to appease him. Nothing's going to happen. She had never told her story about Auschwitz. She refused to talk about it. All anybody, even her family knew was that she had survived it. So she said, I'm not going to tell you or anything. So I sat there with her and we would talk about her son. She said, we'll just sit here for an hour and then I'll tell him I did it and we'll go home. So when she would say something beautiful about her son that she really loved and I loved her son too, I'd say, that's so beautiful. Wow. Can I just take that in for a minute? And I would breathe deeply and audibly. And the mirror neurons started going after a while. And so without her realizing it, I never asked her to breathe deeply. I
41:15 Speaker 00 didn't want to break down her control. She had every right to be protective of herself with what she had lived through. I wanted to honor her internal wisdom. So I never asked her to breathe deeply, but I would breathe deeply. And after about 20 minutes, she didn't realize it, but she was starting to breathe deeply whenever I would. And then she asked me to share about some suffering in my life. And when I would say certain things that evoke compassion in her, she would breathe deeply without realizing it. And all I can tell you is that enough of those deep breaths happen, that about an hour into it, she started sharing with me with no, I didn't even ask her. She shared with me the whole story of how she
42:00 Speaker 00 survived Auschwitz. And we were there for two hours. And when her son came in, he said the room was just luminous. She became a, you know, a more connected person. And she developed the courage that when Steven Spielberg came to town with the Shoah Project, which was when he was going to make Schindler's List, he was interviewing concentration camp survivors. She had the courage to go and tell her story. And that story is still up on their website. Her name is Alice Kraus. And so that's, that's a remarkable story because we didn't even do that of intensive breathing. It was just the deeper breathing
42:43 Speaker 00 and the mirroring, you know, the unconditional positive regard that Carl Rogers, great humanist psychologist, taught us about and how that can be enhanced by breathing together, which transcends language, race, gender orientation, you know, it brings us down to a more unified place. And look what happened. I think about a young man who had bipolar disorder, but it was undiagnosed. And he had a kind of spiritual awakening and he was really just seeing like all of these greater truths about life and but his mother, who did have bipolar, was noticing that he
43:27 Speaker 00 was getting kind of manic and so she brought him to see me. And we would never do like fast breathing with somebody that was in that kind of state. So we did very slow, regulated breathing. And at some point, I said, I think that you need, we should go to the hospital and you should get evaluated to see if you could also be assisted with some, you know, pharmaceuticals. And so we went for like six days and he got onto some medication as well. And then it took us about two years of breathing. Following his breathing, he was determined to get off the medication and to be able to
44:08 Speaker 00 access those states that he had been in a flow and, you know, awakening is what he called it, without going into the bipolar state. And indeed, that happened and it's 20 years later and he's not been on medication for that whole time and he leads a wonderful life and he does breathing techniques and, I mean, I could go on and on. It's really, I think one of the keys, Gemma, there are these, I think that there are these kind of breathwork practices that people can do to just support themselves on a daily basis, to be healthier, to be more regulated.
44:50 Speaker 00 I encourage everybody to do a minimum of seven minutes of just deeper breathing a day. But I think if you're really looking for psychological well-being and wholeness that is, includes that transformation that would happen with the unconscious self, with, with parts of us that might be traumatized and who isn't traumatized in today's world on one level. I think that developing a relationship with a really skilled breath worker, even for a short period of time, just really sets you on the right path.
45:27 Jemma Sbeg? Hmm. I love that advice and that kind of brings me to our second last question. We're almost at the end of this interview now. I could go on for ages, but. You've kind of already talked about it. How do you think breathwork fits in with broader therapeutic practices? The broader need for modern day medicine, for diagnoses. Yeah, how can it be part of a more individualized approach to mental health and broader conditions that kind of afflict people without, without offering itself as the only option? This is kind of what I'm trying to say as, as an additive.
46:08 Speaker 00 Right, it's not the only option. It is an option that can be centered within every other option. So, you know, breathing is the universal medicine. Even a person on a respirator, even a person who's paralyzed is breathing. So there can, there's something they can do volitionally, even if they're, if they're breathing. My dad was on a respirator a couple of times and we did breathing practices with him. You can direct the intentionality of the breathing. So it's really a universal medicine and that's a very exciting prospect in terms of what it could mean for people having greater tolerance and understanding for each other.
46:51 Speaker 00 And, and wanting to work together creatively to build a world that we can all relish together. So I think that, you know, one of the mottos that I sometimes say is a breath worker in every emergency room, a breath worker in every school, a breath worker in every office building, a breath worker in every theater. Because people having a sense of energy, physical wellbeing, emotional regulation, being responded to if they're having intense emotion could really, really improve the health of our whole species.
47:34 Speaker 00 So if you think about something like, for instance, I've, I've talked to the founder of Internal Family Systems, which I think probably a lot of your listeners know about. It's a very powerful psychological orientation. And we've talked about the fact that I've worked with. Parts of people, that's how you think about, okay, there's this part that's angry, there's this part that's a firefighter, there's this part. And each of them breathes a little differently. But what they find is that they breathe a little differently, but they're all breathing. So that becomes the unifying thing and then they can integrate into the self. So I cannot think of a single psychological modality, including Freudian analysis,
48:19 Speaker 00 where breathing deeply and having that sense of embodiment helps to dissolve dissociation, which is a really important thing in psychological process, and helps bring the sense of agency and the sense of personal empowerment. I can't think of a single holistic modality of acupuncture or Reiki or, you know, the body works that wouldn't benefit by a person also being able to breathe, to somatically meet whatever is happening. Same thing in mainstream medicine. You know, if people are breathing more deeply, they're healthier.
49:02 Speaker 00 My father had COPD, that's chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. And like I said, the doctors were very clear that the breathing that we did gave him several years of extra life. And so I just can't think of a single modality where it wouldn't enhance what's going on because it helps document, it helps with awareness. And what happens in the brain when you consciously breathe is rather than just activating, when we're breathing, we're just getting activation from the brain stem. But when we're automatically breathing, but when we breathe consciously, the neocortex comes online and the limbic brain comes online.
49:45 Speaker 00 And we find that the respiratory circuits are embedded throughout the whole brain. So you develop a kind of global coherence neurologically, which gives you access to many more resources, uh, keeps you more present instead of just reacting unconsciously to things. And so honestly, the ability for conscious breathing to help even us have a greater sense of interreception and what's going on in our own body, I think would be a very partnering thing for medicine, for modern medicine. Um, and just the ability to, uh, yeah, to be in a more regulated state.
50:28 Speaker 00 I think I just have never been able to think of one modality where it wouldn't help. Yeah.
50:33 Jemma Sbeg? As you were saying that, I was trying to rack my brain and I was like, huh, no, I couldn't think of any, couldn't think of any. So I'm testing your hypothesis there. So I've got one final question for you, and it actually has nothing to do with breath work. Um, in fact, I asked it, it doesn't have anything to do with breath work. At the end of every episode I have with a guest, I always ask them, what is the best piece of advice that you would give to someone in their twenties that has nothing to do with what we talked about today?
51:03 Speaker 00 You know, I feel a great deal of, of emotion and, um, I'm going to call it luminosity rise up in me as you ask that question, Gemma. Um, because honestly, what I feel like I would say is, you are so beautiful and you are so filled with potential. And whatever you may think about yourself now, whatever you may think are your limitations or that you weren't given certain things. I mean, all of that may be true, but there is a part of you that is, you know, inviolately, I mean, untouched, just beauty within you. And I really hope that you will allow yourself to be supported
51:48 Speaker 00 uh, by people who care about you and see you and by learning that stimulates you and that you will allow this part of you to come out because you are, you will be able to contribute something to this planet that nobody else has ever contributed before or will again. And you know, when you're in your twenties, I think, um, Oscar Wilde said this thing of youth is wasted on the young. I don't know if you've ever heard that.
52:17 Jemma Sbeg? Oh, yeah.
52:19 Speaker 00 I just, when you're in your twenties, there's still so much natural chi, you know, natural kind of vitality, even if you're dealing with a chronic illness, it's a lot different dealing with it in your twenties than, let's say, when you're in your seventies. And so if, if, if the people who are in their twenties can really connect with the beauty that lies within them, with the potential that lies and, and really believe in it and form teams of people and friends that believe in them to cheerlead them on throughout their life, it's just twenty year olds have everything they could give to the world. So that would be my deepest piece of advice.
53:02 Jemma Sbeg? I think that's such a beautiful way to finish the episode. And also just a nice reminder that for anyone in their twenties who's listening, which is probably most people, like, we are truly so young. And I always really appreciate when we have people who have a lot of wisdom come on the show who basically say some version of that, which is like, slow down, you have time, you're gonna figure it out. I find that incredibly comforting. And I found, I found so much of what you had to say incredibly informative and nourishing and made me see the world in a different way. So I really appreciate your wisdom and your knowledge. Thank you for coming on the show.
53:42 Speaker 00 It's an honor, Gemma. Thank you for doing the work you're doing for the world.
53:46 Jemma Sbeg? Oh, of course. I'm gonna leave all of Jessica's links down below, including the link to her book, the link to her school, and everywhere else you can find her. If you want to continue learning about breathwork, she is the source for you. I think she knows more than, more than about ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of the people on this brilliant topic. Thank you again for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you share it with a friend or someone you believe would benefit from it. Make sure as well that you are following us on Instagram at That Psychology Podcast so you can know when new episodes go live, ask us questions, and just give feedback or join the conversation. But until next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself, breathe deeply, and we will talk very, very soon.
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