Speaker #0How much time are you buying back every day by becoming calm and becoming present? So instead of like having this, uh, waiting for the other shoe to drop and have this knee-jerk reaction to the world all the time and just like, you know, reacting without thinking, being driven, you know, by those hormones I talked about when you're locked into the fight or flight mode, what if you just slowed down? What if you got to know your breath? How much time are you going to buy back? How many better decisions are you going to make because you're calm and relaxed? more reason to find your breath right there. The best relationship that you can ever create in your life is with your breath, because your breath is always with you. And if you create a deep and meaningful relationship and become more skillful with your breathing and learn how to manipulate your breath and you keep getting to know your breath, you watch how your life will change and transform. Raw, uncut, unapologetic. Welcome to men talking mindfulness. If you're not leveraging breath work, then you're leaving some serious power on the table. Your breath can be more than just what's keeping you alive. Look, by getting to know your breath and manipulating it, you can change the way that you see the world. And the science is undeniable and plentiful. Breath work can crank up your brain power, flip your hormones, and unlock levels of focus and calm that you didn't even know were possible. So if you're ready to stop coasting and want to actually take charge of your mind, your body, and your experience, then you're in the right place. Today I'm going to take a deep dive into breathwork and reveal the top five pro tips about breathwork that every man should know. And we'll also break down the top reasons why men struggle to bring themselves to these powerful tools. And at the end of this episode, we'll actually work with three different breathing techniques that will have you wondering, why have I been ignoring this powerful tool for so long? And that literally is right underneath your nose. and to avoid any confusion. Okay, breathwork is not meditation. They are two different neurotechnologies, and we'll cover meditation another time. I promise. We promise. I'm solo today. John just had literally about like 10 minutes before we were supposed to go and record this episode. He has a major glitch with his Wi-Fi, so I'm just me. It's just Will Schneider today. I'm in talking mindfulness, and we're just going to run with breathwork and really understand breathwork on a deep and meaningful level. So, John, I miss you on this one. But you know what? We're here to serve you. And this is the best way we can serve you right now with the conditions we have. And we're just I'm finding my breath. I'm relaxing. Right. And just going to flow with what we have here today about breath work. So just a quick, quick announcement for everybody. We have our Spartan race coming up on October 19th outside of Dallas. It's like 70 miles in Grand Grandberry, Texas. So if you want to join us, head to mentalkingmindfulness.com, click the Spartan Race and sign up for our team. We're going to be down there. We already have a few people signed up. So if you just want to challenge yourself a little bit and come meet John and I and this wonderful community that we're forming around Mentalking Mindfulness, then please join us. Head to mentalkingmindfulness.com. All right. Well, just like every single show, we are going to do our one breath grounding practice. Then we're going to talk about why breath is so incredibly powerful and important. So just slowly and easily exhale the breath all the way out your body. If you get heavy, drop down, let it go, let it go, let it go. And let's take one big deep inhale into your belly and let that belly breath slowly rise into your torso, all the way up to your chest, all the way up into the sinus cavity in your head. Hold here for five, four, three. Two, one, and exhale. Let it go out nice and slow. All right, everybody. Let's do this, huh? So I mentioned the word earlier, neurotechnology, and that's what really breathwork is. And what I mean by neurotechnology, it's a neurotechnology is anything that directly impacts your nervous system and allows you to consciously upgrade, repair, or optimize how our brain, our nervous system is operating. And this is a... this is what breath work really helps us to do. It's not just breathing breath work. It's not just like kind of breathing at our normal pace, but it's actually taking control of our breath, getting to know our breath, manipulate our breath in certain recipes or techniques that really help to change, right? By impacting our nervous system. The breath has the ability to like calm us and level us out, has the ability to really slow us down, maybe even give us deeper restful states of of sleep or just deeper states of rest, but also has the ability to wake us up. So let's dive into these top five, like pro tips, if you will. And pro, because it's like, it's what the professionals use, it's what I've been using, it's what elite athletes use, it's what, you know, major, like really successful people have been using because of this neurotechnology, because of the incredible impact it has on our nervous system. So Top number, first one, pro tip is breathwork is neurotechnology, okay? It's not just relaxation, you know? And, you know, modern science shows that breathwork can literally rewire our brain, optimize our hormones, you know, unlock peak mental states, right? Such as like flow state. And it's, you know, it's not, flow state is a little beyond just the breathwork, but the breath is, helps the ground, the center to make us more present and to which we have the ability, right? To get into flow, you know? And just think of... all this breath work is just a performance upgrade, not just for stress relief, although it will and help you release stress. And this is something that I use all the time. And I, you know, it's just become so much a part of my life that I don't even realize when I'm using it. Because what the paradigm that I've set up in my, in my body, in my biology, in my experience is like, when I feel like an emotion start to rise, that makes me uncomfortable, or I'm starting to get stressed or anxious or... you know, before I get into like a phone call or a meeting or, you know, before I start a podcast or recording something out there or like doing a talk for a corporation, I make sure I find my breath. And, uh, and that can go on for a long time, even as like. I'm getting ready for that particular talk or getting ready for the podcast. I'm always taking those deep breaths. And those deep breaths are keeping me grounded because of the incredible impact it has on our nervous system. And it's keeping me connected to the present moment instead of getting lost in the mania of our mind. This is a lot, a lot of power here by just getting to know your breath. And that's where it really starts is getting to know your breath and getting to know that you have the ability to manipulate your breath. Another pro tip here is nasal breathing is a game changer. Okay. I mean, this is like all the work that we've done. We've had James Nestor, his fantastic book, Breath. And if you want to really take a deeper dive after listening to this episode, definitely check out James Nestor's book. I don't have it really accessed really quick on my shelf. Maybe I do. Hold on. It's called Breath. There it is. Breath by James Nestor. Really, really fantastic read. I love his writing style. I love all the different stories that he brings into this. And he's just like the journalist in this. He's not, and like the observer, if you will, of why breath is so incredibly powerful. And it's a great way to really tap in a little bit deeper. So if you don't believe what John and I are doing over here at Man Talk of Mindfulness, or what other people are saying in your room, want to go into New York Times bestselling direction, then check out James Nestor's book, Breath. And what he also says, what's interesting in James Nestor's book that we learned a lot about is if you're a chronic mouth breather, it's really messing up so much of your body, your mind, your experience. And just by getting hold of your breath, and maybe even just right now for the rest of this podcast as best you can, keep your lips sealed and just do the best you can to breathe through your nose. And what's going to happen when you breathe through your nose, it's just a powerful way to enhance memory. It sharpens your focus. It regulates your emotions, right? Because you're going to calm down and slow down. And it really, nasal breathing really is a foundational tool for mental performance and emotional resilience. So just by getting in control of your breath and closing your mouth and just learning to breathe through your nose can really optimize your experience. How about number three? It can hack, right? Your breath can hack your stress response. Uh, you know, and there's specific patterns of breathing that can really help hack this stress response. We're going to work with one a little bit later called the four, seven, eight breath. And it can instantly shift you out of that fight, flight, or freeze where you're getting that big dump of cortisol and adrenaline in your bloodstream. That's creating that monkey mind, the mania mind that just has us traveling into the past or the future, or just absolute some like fabrication of reality or trying to fabricate some sort of reality that's not even there. So... Just by getting control of your breath, it's, I mean, over and over and over again, you're going to hear me say how incredibly powerful this is. And that's why we're doing this episode. So how about number four, right? And this is really, it's exciting to see more people doing breath work. And one of the reasons that people are doing this breath work, because it actually does and can, and if you work with the particular technique, will create a psychedelic state of mind. Wow. Right. Well, how does it do that? Well, there's a lot of ways. One of the big ways that it does that, depending on the recipe that you're working within, is you actually, by bringing a lot of CO2 into your body, right, carbon dioxide, there's a beautiful relationship that James talks great about within his book about the relationship and the ratio between O2 and CO2. And breathing practice is just like the holotropic breathing or the Wim Hof breath. circular breath, right? It really helps to create this, a different ratio between O2 and CO2, and it has a really big impact on the brain. And that's when we can really begin to kind of get into these. you know, psychedelic states. And when you're in these psychedelic states, just with breathwork, you know, getting as Wim Hof, who I had a chance to work with in 2017 in Spain, he had a shirt that said, get high on your own supply. And when you get high on your own supply and you have this psychedelic experience induced by breathwork, right, you get this wonderful ego, ego dissolution, you know, the sense of merging with the environment. you know, you kind of lose boundaries, if you will, you lose, lose this sense of self and tap into that, like, you know, that one experience, like the, the experience of divine, the being connected and being one with everything. A lot of these, and I've had these experiences, John had this experience. I saw, you know, John, he's talked about on the show. So I'm not just, you know, picking on John here, but I have to like, you could just get a real deep emotional release with these breathing practices where you're just sitting and just puddles of your own tears and it doesn't matter where these tears are coming from this could be stuff that's locked inside you for a long time with these particular you know psychedelic uh induction states of uh breathing practices uh that can really just leave you and get you a little unburdened maybe create more mental clarity and maybe actually again like i said earlier shift the course of your life it also enhances insight and you know just like Regular psychedelics, whether you're doing LSD or ayahuasca or psilocybin, you really get into this deep wisdom that is inside of us. And it's always there, whether you're taking a psychedelic or whether you're doing breathing practices. There is this deep wisdom inside of all of us. And what really it takes to get to those places is psychedelic experiences like this with the breathing practices. What these breathing practices are going to help to do is like get you really calm and relaxed and then deeper into that wisdom. And, you know, another part of the, you know, this psychedelic, if you will, experience that breathing can bring to you. It's like you have a greater sense of, I think I like to call it like you have a greater sense of texture around you, like you're able to experience the world, like colors and shapes. you know, sensorial experiences in your body in a very interesting way. Um, so it just gains, gives you more insight and, and, uh, really connects you more meaningfully to the world and to yourself and to other people. So, um, it is, uh, just been really, really incredible for me. Um, whether I do, you know, I had some really great experiences with, uh, Wim Hof. Uh, I, I did, I do Wim Hof breathing every day. I only do like, And that's a particular technique. It has its own recipe. And I keep using the words technique and recipe because not all, there's not like one breathwork modality. There's several different breathing practices, breathwork practices that have their own cake, if you will, that they bake, right? Depending on the recipe, depending on what you put into it. Number five. So this is like the last pro tip here is consistency beats intensity. I'll say it again. Consistency. beats intensity so you know if you're just listening to this the first time or you've been like listening to us for a while and you know and you've been a little reluctant or just whatever's getting in the way of you you know doing some breath work you know just short daily breath work sessions it could just be like you know four to five minutes are are more effective than the occasional long ones right so instead of just waiting for the weekend to do your holotropic And maybe you do do that. What can you do for five minutes a day to get to know your breath, right? And allow just that, getting control of your breath, calming your breath down, getting out of the reactive, you know, state with cortisol and adrenaline, but really shifting into more of a relaxed, unified, more present experience. That will have an effect and it's an accumulating effect with breath work as well. You just gain more presence, more calm. You'll be able to take... better control of your life and be more responsible for how you're showing up in the world like just so incredibly powerful all right so let's get into um normal i was like hey john what do you think well john's not here right now but what john would say is like you keep going really you keep rocking and i know john would tell some great stories so uh i'm missing john on this one already but uh so we're going to go into you know what are the obstacles so what are the five most common things that get in the way of men and all people you know men are a little bit different in some ways in in the way that they resist this work. But one of the big ones is it's just soft. You know, it's soft or snowflakey and kind of like woo-woo, if you will. I mean, that couldn't be further from the truth. I mean, you know, many men, you know, they just kind of... dismiss breathwork as unmanly or too spiritual. You know, one thing that's interesting about the whole word spirituality, right, it's in the word respiration, right, which is just recycling spirit. What is spirit, right? If you go and look into the entomology of spirit and breath, they're all tightly connected. Like the word for spirit in Hebrew is the same word for breath. which is pretty remarkable. So just imagine going back and reading a Bible and every time they say the word, um, spirit or God, um, they're talking about the breath too. So it's like, really it's there, it's there. Um, you know, so if you're not, if you feel this is like too woo woo or too this or too that, like you're really missing out on these science-backed benefits that, you know, elite athletes, elite performers, uh, and, you know, even military professionals, which John I'll tell you, have been using. for decades because of the impact it has on our mind, body, and our experience. So, you know, so maybe it's time to stop living in denial and, you know, pursue these human optimization options. And I think I like to say like, you know, human optimization is the new badass. It's the new tough, if you will. That's what I'm going to claim here on Men Talking Mindfulness. So here's another one. How about impatience? is another one that gets in the way and the need for immediate results you know this is not a quick fix you know like uh that's just not the way things work and if you think it is then i'm here to tell you it's absolutely not breathwork compounds over time right so you might have like do one workshop like a holotropic or a wim hof and you just feel absolutely amazing and that'll dissipate very quickly over like a couple days but if you stay with that technique keep practicing technique right? You'll just receive these compounding benefits over time. And those benefits just keep compounding, compounding. You're like, oh my God, like I'm a different person. Maybe in like, you know, you know, three, four or six months, you will definitely see a shift. So don't let impatience get in the way. Also don't let like, you know, this whole idea of I'm not good at it, so I can't do it. Like I've never done it before. So therefore I'm not going to do it at all. Well, were you... good at the first time you shot a basketball or you're great at the first time that you like cut into a steak you know i mean like super clumsy right the first time you use a new tool or you try a new technique or take on a new challenge well this is just like that except it's like it we just might perceive it as a little bit different because it's something that's always there it's something on the inside but one thing i gotta say that i've been helping students understand um since I've been teaching yoga for like the last 15 years, is it could take some time, I promise you, to get to know your breath. Because if you've been living in chronic states of stress and anxiety, then typically that breath, and let's do this right now, let's everybody bring a hand on your belly, a hand onto your chest, and we're just going to take a few breaths and just check the depth or lack of depth of your breath. And no judgment, just step back. We're just going to take three breaths, and I just want you to really check in how deep your breath is going. So make that contact. Close your eyes for a moment if you can, or if you don't need to close your eyes, if you're driving, you can do this too. Maybe just leave one hand on the wheel and one hand on your belly or kind of in the middle of the space between your belly and your chest. Let's exhale the breath out. Let's take a big inhale through the nose, biggest inhale you can. Let it go out. Let's do one more breath. Inhale big. Exhale, let it go out. One more big inhale. Fill up as much as you can in all areas of your torso as best you can and let it go out. All right. Well, with this little self-check we just did in that like, you know, in that 20 seconds, if you will. If your breath is only going as deep as like maybe, you know, the middle of your sternum, well, I mean, it's going to, or maybe the breath is really flowing deep down into your belly. Fine. You know, wherever it is, is where you start is what I'll say, right? This isn't something, again, it could take time. Your first few months of getting to know your breath could be just trying to get that breath deep down into your belly, right? And break the cycle, right? of chronic stress and anxiety by really breathing short and choppy and shallow into your upper chest So that could be your practice for, I mean, for, for weeks, just getting that breath nice and deep, you know, not putting too much effort in the, in your breathing, but just doing the best you can and creating the invitation in your mind. If you watch a child, you watch a young child breathe, their whole body seems to breathe. Their whole body is just expanding like a balloon and contracting and expanding and contraction. You have that ability too. You might've lost a little touch of that ability because Um, you know, you've just been jacked up on so much stress and anxiety and have that a cortisol and adrenaline running through your body most of the time. So it just is going to take patience, practice, practice, practice, practice, and just keep showing up, keep showing up, keep showing up. Uh, another thing that definitely bothers men, one of the obstacles is, you know, this comfort with stillness or your emotions, you know, like if you you know, if you're always just doing things and doing and doing and doing and like kind of running from yourself sometimes that you're doing so many things, the breath and getting on your breath and doing some breathing practices is going to force you to get a little bit still. It's going to force you to slow down. It's going to force you, like I mentioned earlier, if you really want to work on that, force you to, but if you really want to be more accomplished at it and really receive the benefits, then you must slow down. You must be more patient with yourself and your breathing and just to get to know and really... Think of creating a really strong relationship to your breath here. It's super important. And emotions are going to come up. You know, you might get a little uncomfortable because we're going to be digging on the inside. So, I mean, and that's part of the gift here as well. It's not, you know, if you keep running from your emotions and your emotional experience and masking it with whatever, pornography, alcohol, drugs, like, you know, relationships or something like that. It's going to, you just got to slow down, slow down, slow down, slow down, get to know your breath and watch what happens is the invitation I'm going to create right there. And the last one is, I'm sorry, I got a couple more here, overcomplicating the practice. I kind of alluded to it earlier, right? Breathing is obviously a very natural part of our biology and it's always there. It's right under our nose all the time. So, but just like I mentioned earlier, it takes time to get skillful at anything new. So give yourself the patience, put on the beginner's mind, and just almost treat yourself like, you know, if you have a young child or you've worked with children, it's like bring that kind of patience to your breath and to this practice and to this opportunity. Be kind, be forgiving, just keep showing up, just keep doing the best you can without beating yourself up or getting frustrated. you know, or angry at yourself. It's like, that's also going to be part of this practice as well. And this is also part of the education you're going to receive because you're going to be able to see yourself and be like, oh my God, I'm such an asshole to myself just for trying to fucking breathe, you know, and slow down my breath. So that's more education you're going to receive as well as you, if you really want to, you know, become more of an elite performer, become a better man, become a better husband, become a better leader just by finding your breath. I'm telling you is all in. the breathing. It really, really, really is. And let everything grow from there. And the last one here is modern lifestyle traps. You know, like it's like, you got to make the time to do this. And if we're always like, you know, think of how much time you're wasting on social media when you can just be taking five minutes to get to know your breath. And how much actually, what I like to say too, is like, how much time are you buying back every day? by becoming calm and becoming present. So instead of like having this, you know, this waiting for the other shoe to drop and have this knee-jerk reaction to the world all the time and just like, you know, reacting without thinking, being driven, you know, by those hormones I talked about in that when you're locked into the fight or flight mode, what if you just slowed down? What if you got to know your breath? How much time are you going to buy back? How many better decisions are you going to make? because you're calm and relaxed more reason to find your breath right there so uh you know so watch like you know the um get away from the phone you know as much you can you know that's only going to keep jacking up your cortisol and stress anyway um you know maybe you build reminders for yourself you know to kind of uh to kind of bring yourself to this work a little bit every day so leave a little note you know index card or a post-it at your desk or you know somewhere you can be like Hey. you know, breathe mother effer. Let me say that, you know, or come back and listen to this episode because it's packed with information. All right. Cool. We're going to keep rolling here. And we're just going to start with these breathing techniques. We're going to do three breathing techniques. I'm going to break them down individually and also their benefits and the recipes. And we're going to practice them in their entirety. so any point along any of these practices if you need to maybe just pause or go back a little bit and what we'll also do i'll make this promise to you is i will have each one of these Three practices we're going to work today. I'll have them each individually in the podcast themselves. You can just drop right in, you know, for these like this five minute or seven minute, whatever it's going to be, breathing practice and just jump in and go for it. So awesome. Get ready. And, you know, maybe if you like, you can lie down and do these breathing practice. That's one thing I should probably talk about. It's like, yeah, there's breathing practices in real time that like, you know, I work with. with Seth Hickerson and his company, My Steady Mind, I've had an opportunity to work with many different police organizations across the country. And, you know, they're sitting in their cruisers sometimes and they're exercising these breathing practices, which, you know, to keep them calm, to keep them out of the reactive mindset, to keep them more rational. So when they're showing up to potentially a very intense situation, they're a grounding force. instead of uh you know adding kerosene to the fire that's already in front of them you're ready we're gonna do this nice little reset breath and uh this is this is just gonna literally ground us calm us center us center us get our head on straight get us into our body get us into the moment and that's why it's called this like the reset breath or you know maybe think of it's like you know this is really also helped to eradicate stress and anxiety um and all the stuff that's keeping you from being more of your badass self that i know you want to be because we're calm and relaxed and our mind is online like in the way it should be holy are we unstoppable so this is what the reset breath is going to do simple recipe four seven eight we're gonna inhale for four trying to take a deep a deep a deeper breath as we possibly can trying to fill the whole torso with that breath. of starting at the bottom, filling the middle, filling the top. We're going to hold that breath in our torso for seven seconds, but also staying really relaxed when we hold that breath. So we want to just stay calm on your face and your shoulders. And then we're going to exhale out the mouth like you're blowing out a candle. It's going to sound like this. All the way out for the entire duration of that count of eight. And that's it. Here's the reset breath. Get yourself ready. If you want to lie down, lie down. If you want to sit up, like sit up. If you want to ease back, I mean, just be careful to keep, make sure you keep your lungs open. So we're not like doom scrolling or couch potatoing with our body and collapsing our lungs. We want to bring the lungs forward, right? We want to have our chin level to the floor, which helps to bring the upper chest and the upper lungs online. Or just lie down if you like. Here we go. Exhale the breath out. we're gonna do this for five rounds let it go let it go let it go empty empty empty so take that first inhale deep into the belly for four seconds three two one hold that breath easy seven six five exhale slowly out the mouth blow out that candle eight seven two one fill again in for four holding gently seven three two one exhale out eight five two one repeat in for four holding seven gently holding melt into this moment relax the face the shot jaw the shoulders two one exhale we go again let it go out eight six three two one two more rounds in for four big belly breath expanding in all directions in your torso all the way up to the chest holding 7 three two One. Good work. Exhale. Let it go out. Eight, four, three, two, one. Last one. In four. Hold gently. Seven. Maybe on these holds, just listen to your heart for a moment. See what's going on in your heart and let that breath go out. Eight, seven, six. Five, three, good. Now just take a moment here. Come back to normal quality of breath. Maybe keep the eyes closed if that's available. And just notice if anything's changed just from doing that five rounds of breath. And this breathing practice, the reset breath, the four, seven, eight, can start with five. You know, that could be a good like in the moment, like reset before you go into a meeting, reset before, you know, you're going to work on something creatively, reset before like, you know. You go do something that you need to reset for. Or maybe you just want to reset before you like, you know, go from work into your house and with your family. And just notice, like sometimes I like to, every time after I breathe a little bit, I like to take a little bit of moment of self-reflection. I'll conjure up John here. He goes, take that internal selfie. So you just kind of turn the camera on yourself and just notice what your experience is at a high level. What's my mind doing? What's my... body? How's my body feeling? Or what are, how my emotions, like, uh, the tumultuousness of my emotions relax a little bit. All right, great. Let's do the box of breathing. We're going to do the box to breathe. And, and this is a great focusing breath. This is really going to slow down. Uh, you're really going to kind of slow you down and focus you up. So you might get a little sleepy as you go through this one. Um, this is not something if you really need to maintain peak high energy performance, you know, this could, you know, definitely make you a little bit tired. But this is also, they call it in the military, and I know, well, I don't know about the military, but I know, you know, in the police force, they call this tactical breathing, a.k.a. box breathing. Why is it a box? Because there's four aspects to this breathing. Just like there's four corners of a box, four sides of a box, right? That's our recipe. right so we're going to in for inhale for a count of five uh we're gonna hold that um that inhalation for five seconds we're gonna exhale out for five uh we're gonna stay empty of any breath for five and we're gonna repeat this suboxone five times i don't know why i'm going into my italian roots but you know what we're just having fun here men talking about this everybody so glad you're here All right. Let's do this. This is a great, again, great way to focus. Great way. Another resetting mechanism. Great way to ground you into the moment. Great way to chill you the fuck out. Maybe after you had an intense experience. Here we go. Exhale. You notice how we start with an exhale out first, right? So really get the legs empty first with all these breathing practices, unless you're specified otherwise. And then you begin. So let's exhale out. we're gonna do this for five rounds let it go empty even like pull the navel in and push the breath out and here we go first inhale five four three two one hold that breath five four exhale easy out five And stay empty, no breath in your body, soft and easy for four more. Three, two, one. Let's repeat in five. Hold that breath five. Go easy, four. Exhale, five. Stay empty, no breath, five. And just kind of bathe in the emptiness for a moment. And then we get active. We fill again. Inhale five. Hold, hold five. Exhale five. Stay empty five. Two more rounds. In for five. big breath drop that breath down deep right maybe bring a hand onto your belly right to really get that breath down deep let's hold that for five next so we let it go five stay empty no breath five here we go inhale to the nose Hold easy five. Exhale to the nose on this one. Let it go five. Stay empty five. Great. Let's do one more. In through the nose five. hold it the top five go easy exhale five to the nose empty empty five beautiful good easy breath in Easy breath out. Do a little self-reflection. How are you feeling now? You're probably feeling really relaxed from the reset to this tactical box breathing. You're like, oh my God, dude. I feel like I'm at the day at the beach. Feeling good. Feeling relaxed. That's, again, the power of the fucking breath, man. It's incredible. All right, last one. This one is an intense practice. It could take, I'll warn you, it could take a little bit time to work to manipulate your breath in this way. This is called in the yoga world, the Kapalabhati breathing, also known as like rapid breathing. Another name for it, which I really like, is called the skull shining breath of fire. That's right. I said it. The skull shining breath of fire. Because it literally is going to activate, again, it's a gamma. wave activation and gamma waves you know they help your brain operate at its highest level integrating information creativity and supporting advanced thinking so this is great this is a great way uh um to start the day okay there's then there's different techniques around there's different ways to hold your arms and stuff like this and moving your arms in different ways um but this one is awesome like this is um all we're gonna do is just do short and choppy exhalations through the nose, okay? The inhale, I promise you, when you do this breathing practice, will take care of itself. All you need to do is just try to create a sound through your nose. It's only through the nose the whole time. Focusing on the exhale again. One thing I think you should know about your breathing is it's in a vacuum system. So every time you exhale, right, the other side of the vacuum, the inhale is gonna wanna come in, right? suit. You exhale, inhale will come in naturally. You exhale, but it's going to sound like this. We'll start slow. We'll do this for, just, we'll do this for like, you know, we'll just do this. Do the best you can for this. We'll do it for two minutes, okay? This Kapalabhati breathing. Or you can think about like gamma wave activator, right? Or skull shining breath of fire. It sounds like this, just through the nose. You can hear the inhale coming in naturally. And then all I'm going to do is focus on an exhale. And then we can go a little bit faster as we go through this. So it could sound like this. The pump's working. The inhale's coming in. But all we're going to do is focus on the exhale. Just work for that sharp exhalation through the nose and that sound that I was just making. It sounds a little different on the microphone. But that's all we're doing with this one. And that's it. Just short little exhalations. We'll do it for two minutes, okay, with this particular breathing practice. And I'm going to set a timer for this. And we'll start slow. We'll pick up the pace a little bit. Keep that spine long. Keep those lungs open. Keep the head on straight. I really suggest you sit up for this one. Sit up straight. A dignified spine. And let's start with an exhale all the way out. For this one, we're just going to take a half an inhale. And here we go. Out, out, out, out. Keep it this pace. Out, out, out, out. And what's really happening here is snapping the belly. So maybe bring a hand to your belly. And if you just keep working and exercise this breath like a pump. keeping this this sound of the breath the breath the belly's gonna naturally slap in keep going let's go a bit faster out out out out stay with me as best you can You want to make a little bit different. Right at the last minute, bring the arms up, hook your thumbs, reach all the way to the sky and keep your breath going a little bit faster. Do the best you can. If you need to go slower, go slower. It's all good. Keep the pace up. Keep going. Part of the recipe is the length of time. Keep going. out out out out good let's slow it down out out seven six three two one good empty all the way out let go If we're not done, we're going to take a big, giant inhale. Fill all the way up. Up, up, up. Fill, fill, fill. I'm just getting my timer. Top it off. Let's hold the breath nice and easy. Bring the tongue to the roof of your mouth and hold for 30 seconds. We're on the clock. With that full breath, hold, hold, hold. Relax your face. Relax your jaw. You keep the arms up if you like. It's okay if the arms are down for this one. Hang in there. tongue to the roof of your mouth staying with as best you can five four three two one exhale out your arms can come down a few breaths in ease your breath out and just come back to normal quality of breath and do that little self-reflection what's going on how you feeling now what's changed maybe you're wondering Who the fuck am I? It's a great place to be. Self-discovery starts with changing your mind, changing your body. And what's the greatest change agent, change agent of the mind and body? Your breath. That's right. Awesome, everybody. So I'm going to leave you with that. You know, so what I'll challenge you though is... And how this stuff really begins to make a difference is if you commit yourself to five minutes a day. Maybe just get to know your breath for five minutes. Just bring a hand on your belly, hand on your chest and really get a nice smooth deep quality of breath flowing in your body. Or maybe you exercise one of these breathing practices that we've done. And repeat this. Commit. Commit. Like, and make a commitment. Maybe you want to make it to commitment to your spouse or a friend or whatever, your roommate. And be like, you know what? I want you to hold me accountable because for the next two weeks, or maybe it's a little less, but I would say at least two weeks, maybe a month. Like, I'm going to do this breathing practice every day for five minutes. Oh, I don't have the time, Will. Life's so busy. Make the time. Make the time. If you can doom scroll and waste time in other aspects of your life, then you can buy that time back. and actually create more time by getting centered getting grounded and put all of your incredible biological assets online instead of your mind taking away and manipulating you all day long so um that's what we got and it doesn't take much and you know if you're in an area like i'm in an urban area i'm in new york city there's no shortage of breathing workshops around the city maybe and there's no shortage of stuff online but jump in guys jump in jump in we're gonna have our meditation course coming up in October our next meditation team we do breathing practices in there so look be on the lookout for that and this has really been a joy today to bring breath work and hopefully helping you to understand breath work in a deep and meaningful way please reach out to me to John about breath work. You can find me at will at mentalkingmindfulness.com or john at mentalkingmindfulness.com. And I really appreciate you being here. And we just, you know, we don't need to close with a breathing practice. We just did three of them. I miss you, John. And we really appreciate you and thank you for being part of this podcast. mentalkingmindfulness.com. For more, please. you know, share this episode, like this episode, leave us a review. You know, we're still losing money on Men Talking Mindfulness here, producing this show every week. So if you want to become a sponsor, that'd be very helpful too. Head to mentalkingmindfulness.com slash sponsorship, I think is the one it is, is the URL it is. But thanks everybody. I don't think I have anything else. I feel like it's lost. I'm a little lost without John, but have a great day and keep breathing, keep showing up. You're worth it. You're worth it. And I'm telling you what, I'll leave you with this. I tell my students, the best relationship that you can ever create in your life is with your breath because your breath is always with you. And if you create a deep and meaningful relationship and become more skillful with your breathing and learn how to manipulate your breath and practice these, you know, there's so many breathing practices out there. And you keep getting to know your breath. You watch how your life will change and transform. As you create a deeper and more intimate relationship to your breath and therefore in the process creating a deep and more meaningful relationship to yourself. Thank you, everybody.
