Transcription

• Speaker #0

  And if we're being honest, most of us in the morning wake up and there's initial thud back into this dense form. And so for me, starting the day with breath work allows me to fully get in that remembrance, that noetic remembrance, that visceral somatic remembrance that I am an energy being. And from there, I can... build that love out.

• Speaker #1

  Otherwise, I'm efforting it on my own will. Everything's harder. Welcome back to the Power and Purpose podcast. I'm your host, Vanessa Soule. Thank you so much for joining me here and investing your time and energy into listening to today's episode. I greatly appreciate it. And I'm super excited for today's guest. We have Dr. Colleen Quinn. She's a psychologist, breathwork practitioner, and author of Essence Merging. Her work bridges psychology, somatics, and the energy realm, guiding people to integrate trauma and reconnect wholeness through conscious breath. Dr. Colleen, thank you so much for being on the show today. It's such an honor to have you here.

• Speaker #0

  Vanessa, I feel so excited and jazzed to share this time with you and inspire ourselves and everyone listening with this higher consciousness. So thank you for having me.

• Speaker #1

  Absolutely. And I love asking my signature question, who are you and who are you not?

• Speaker #0

  Who I am truly is who we all are truly, which is an energy being having a human experience. And understanding myself as an energy being, that means that I am and we all are fully All of the energy that floats through every organism, animate or inanimate, we are God. We are limitless. We are almighty in our supreme powers of love and compassion. That's who I am truly. But I am an energy being having a human experience. So I am also, we call this a non-dual truth seeming up. seemingly opposites that are both true at the same time. I am a conglomeration of every experience that this bodily form has had. And so it is on me to really know my inner landscape, know all of those inner children who are all alive and well in there, who sometimes get freaked out. And it's my job to have that relationship with them, to be able to comfort them, bring them love and healing so that my higher energy being can lead the way.

• Speaker #1

  So beautiful. And you what I love about your story is that you've had two near death experiences or at least two that I know of. So can you tell us a little bit about that? Like what was your life before those experiences? in a short summary. And kind of like, what was it like integrating those experiences?

• Speaker #0

  The first one, I was driving to see my niece in a play. She lived a few hours away. It was pouring rain. I was trudging uphill on a curve. I'm going very slowly because it was one of those rainstorms that you could barely see out the windshield. And I was hit head on in my lane. My heart stopped. I was in the tunnel with the light. And that's an amazing experience because when you are with that profound love and light, you'll do whatever the love and light suggests. So I got that experience of talking without words. And the light said to me, I would like you to go back, but it's your choice. That was really powerful for me because I wanted to be with the light, but the light asked me to come back and I would do anything for the light. That peace and love, it's just incredibly powerful. And so in coming back, I realized for the first time that I was choosing. to be here, to have this experience. That changes everything. We're not just floating along, victims, things happening. I'm choosing this. So it allowed me to create a different relationship with life. Now, I thought that I would never forget. I had a scar on the back of my leg, and I was like, every time I see that scar in the mirror, I will remember that I am choosing this, that I am powerful. But I still was young in my faith. I was in my 40s then, and I still had this patriarchal view of God. And it wasn't until the second near-death experience where I had pneumonia. My lungs were bleeding. I was struggling to catch a breath, which is the poetic irony in that to me is it's not lost on me that the struggle to... find a breath led me to this devotion to breath. But I, and I was sick for over 10 months with pneumonia. They couldn't figure out why I wasn't getting over it. And when they said, you do not have any autoimmune diseases. And I was still very, very sick, but I knew I would be well. It caused me to take stock in my life. you Sure, I helped a lot of people as a psychologist, but who would I really connected with? Who would I bonded with? Who would I merged with? Who would be at my funeral? That was powerful. And I threw myself on the floor, prostate, arms open, and from a very vulnerable place, asked the universe to let me be love in every moment. I could see that love is really the only thing that's... There is, and the only thing that's going to last, it's the only thing worth pursuing. And so I asked to change the way I show up to the moments of my life. Well, that surrendered plea, like all surrendered pleas, set change in motion quickly. And before I knew it, I was at a retreat in Costa Rica learning about conscious breath work, which... Opened the door to this whole spiritual journey. So, so, and then just, and maybe the one other thing I will add, it's kind of controversial, but since you asked it, years after my car accident, when I was being trained to be a breath worker, so I'd already had the second near death experience. The woman training me, who was the right hand person for Leonard Orr, who brought breath work to the West. She said, when I told her about the car accident, she said, well, you really surrounded yourself with a death energy. And that resonated with me. I had never acknowledged that. But I had. My brother died at 15 in a car accident. And there was a part of me that I let die with him. So there was a further choosing. when I, when I, that veil dropped and that's what spirit does. Love drops these veils for us to have a greater awareness of what all these experiences, what the energy realm is trying to teach us because everything is a lesson in love.

• Speaker #1

  Before just kind of giving us an idea of like what your quote unquote awakening has been or your transformation, those two near, near death experiences and how it has, um, brought change into your life and more consciousness, things like that. I love it. I love hearing about those stories. One question I'm thinking about is sometimes we have heard from other people in the spiritual community, in the conscious community, and I'm not sure how factual it is. So I'm just super curious. I don't agree or disagree. I'm just curious about this question. You know, people say that when they have had near-death experiences, they... whatever white light somewhat similar to what you described is some type of false program, false guidance, or it's not the highest vibration. Or in some cases, some people even say it could be a trap to get you to come back to earth or back to the 3D or reincarnate again or whatever it might be. What are your thoughts on that since you have had, and you could speak from experience probably because you have had these personal near-death experiences and you've seen the light. So what did it feel like in your heart? What are your thoughts on that?

• Speaker #0

  So Vanessa, I want to say that in addition to the light is this feeling of being totally inculcated by love, which is not the kind of love on this earthly realm. So it's more than just the light in that near-death experience. And I haven't heard that, but I will say that I follow Joe Dispenza meditations a lot. and he talks about the quantum field being darkness. And he'll say sometimes that it's empty, but then when he's pressed, because I said it doesn't feel empty at all, it feels just filled with energy waves. And he said, that's exactly right. And here's the thing. God is that essence that runs through everything. We were all together. before the big bang. All the darkness and all the light. It's the yin yang symbol really sums it up. The light needs the darkness to reflect off of, to be light, and the darkness needs the light to show its darkness. Both are necessary and needed. They're all in there and it's part of being fully whole. That's the truth. There's nothing outside of the wholeness. And our hearts are all yearning for that union with the wholeness that we remember back to the beginning. That's what we're looking for. And when we are in those experiences of union and harmony, we feel the bliss and we call it love. But what it really is, is that union. which is the premise of my book. Essence merging is when we can merge our essence with whatever it is we behold. And that way, every interaction, whether it's folding a laundry or cutting a lemon or talking with another soul, becomes a sacred conversation with the divine. It elevates everything.

• Speaker #1

  Beautiful. Thank you for that. And what was, I'm sure you had many inspirations for that book, along with your near-death experiences and everything else that's been a part of your journey. Is there anything specific that you want to mention as an inspiration for Essence Merging, the book?

• Speaker #0

  For five years, I meditated like five times a day. Every time I felt like I was in my head and in my ego, I would run back to my breath. I would breath work, a lot of breath work and meditation. five times a day until I could find that opening. You know, when our ego gets loud, we think we're in a dark cave or that's how it felt for me. And I'd be like, there's a door in here somewhere for my higher self to get up. And I would go into my breath until I found my way back to my higher self. And these miraculous things were happening, these bendings of reality, lots of experiences with butterflies landing on my finger or flying around me in revolutions. And I said to love, you know, it's pretty cool. I love these love gifts, but I'm sure it's for a bigger purpose. So what is the purpose? And I got a loud and clear message to share this with others, to write a book, to inspire others. I will say, Vanessa, that two ancient cultures and astrology have all predicted this time in our human history. It started right at the solstice of 2019, which is right before COVID, that first initial love squeeze, and it's predicted to last 50 or 55 years. And at the end of it, feminine energy, so not necessarily women, but that energy of compassion and benevolence will rule. And it will be common knowledge that we are all connected, if not that we are actually all one. Which is great because I didn't think I would be here for this love revolution. And I'm so excited to be here. And growth only ever happens from an uncomfortable place. So it's like labor pains. I personally think we're in one right now. All of my spiritual friends are feeling a squeeze right now. I'm feeling a squeeze right now. And that's how growth happens. That's how we all started this life. We came through the birth canal. There was lots of labor pains. Pain is the beginning of growth if we let it. The other option is that it'll harden us. But love never gives up. Love waits patiently. And love has this plan. It's holy evolution. We know about material evolution. We're in a period of holy evolution.

• Speaker #1

  Very interesting. What happens neurologically and energetically when we breathe consciously? A lot. It's, I...

• Speaker #0

  I highly recommend it for everyone. First of all, this came to me as a download in Breathwork. So with the premise that we are energy beings having a material experience and quantum physics vastly supports that, this energy realm is far more real. When we breathe unconsciously on autopilot, that... We're taking in air and it is sustaining our physical bodies. That's a lovely gift. We don't even have to think about it. When we breathe consciously, we are not only taking in air, we're taking in that energy to feed our subtle energy bodies. Now what we know physiologically is conscious breath activates our parasympathetic nervous system. bringing us into calm. It can increase the interstitial fluid in our cells so that our cells actually amplify with a higher frequency. It does lots of things. When you do it regularly, it does lots of permanent positive changes in the brain. So it increases your frontal cortex for focus. increases the size of your left prefrontal cortex, which is the seat of positive emotions. It decreases the size of the amygdala, which is where all fear and reactivity is coming from. We know on fMRIs that most of us have like about 9 to 11 well-grooved pathways. That is our default mode network. That's how we sleepwalk through life. We get into these algorithms. What it does is it opens up all the cellular communication in the brain for more flexible mindset. It's huge for well-being. It's huge for problem solving. And lastly, we know that it decreases the mental chatter. I mean, the very first time that my brain was completely quiet, I remember it. It was like a decade ago. I was emptying my dishwasher. And for the first 40 minutes, even my inner children were like, oh, this is luscious. And then after 40 minutes, they're like, something's wrong. Because they weren't used to giving up their role as the chatterboxes up there. It gets quieter and quieter. And with that still, we learn to linger. And then we... Life becomes more alive. We feel it because our hearts open up. It takes seven seconds for us to encode a feeling from our brain to our heart. Seven slow, deep breaths. That's a long time, but it allows us to start to lead with our hearts instead of our brain. So it's a lot. It's well worth it.

• Speaker #1

  Yes, absolutely. And does it help us move? emotion? Does it help us go deeper into emotion? Some people think we're bypassing emotion when we try to do breath work. And I don't think that's the case. I think we're actually navigating it, diving into it, integrating. What are your thoughts?

• Speaker #0

  So conscious breathing and breath work are slightly different. Conscious breathing, you're almost standing in your breath while you're going about your day. Takes us out of our heads and into our breath. But breathwork, you're usually lying down. Sometimes you can sit up across from a partner, which I did a lot in my book. I talk about a lot. But what happens with breathwork, and I want to just say that it's so common in the culture of India that they don't have a word for death. Their word for what happens at the end of your life. translates to dropping your body because in breath work your energy comes out of your body. That is such a common experience. You've quieted down your ego and your energy naturally magnetizes back to the source. So sometimes you can have these beautiful ascent trips. At your soul's own pace of readiness, you will have descent trips where you're out of your body, hovering over the... experience that was overwhelming to you at the time, looking at it through the eyes of love, relaxed and peaceful, but fully feeling it. Now that is a great experience because you learn to hold to emotions. You learn that you're safe and you can fully feel it. And what is very common to come out of it is that the stories we wrap around these traumas in the first place, I was alone. I was abandoned. I was overwhelmed. It wasn't fair. I was a victim. The coin gets flipped almost universally. And another story emerges. Love was with me. I needed that to become who I am. That was powerful in shaping me in my limitlessness. What another story emerges. And the truth is, perception is reality. It's all what story you want to align with. I'd rather fully, the Jewish tradition has a saying, what's truer than truth? It's experience. Hmm. When you've experienced it and it's that real, it doesn't matter what anybody else says. It becomes unrefutable in my being because it was so real, so vivid, so felt in every sense. And it changes us. It frees us.

• Speaker #1

  Why is that? My guess, I would love to get your thoughts on it. My guess is because... whether it's conscious breathing or deep breath work, either one, it takes us into, I'm guessing, it takes us into our soul, our soul's essence. And it just, it kind of works around the ego, right? The one that's the ego. And I don't think the ego is bad. I think the ego is part of an expression of the soul, but we all know the ego's job. It's to help protect us and keep us safe and kind of like think logically at times. So my guess. At a cost, sometimes, unless you're updating. My theory is if you could update your ego, so that way it's operating closer to your soul's essence. But do we do that? No, because they don't teach us that, right? But that's my guess. That's why I feel like that's why either conscious breathing or breath work is helpful, because it has a way of going beyond the ego. What do you think? Why is it so helpful in those ways?

• Speaker #0

  Well, I'm going to start. physiologically and then move to the broader picture. So we know that, I already talked about it, we have this default mode network. It shows up on a functional MRI and it maps exactly onto Freud's construct of the ego. Breathwork, meditation, and psychedelics, all three, quiet that down to allow us to go into our midbrain. which is where the pineal gland is, which is actively called the seat of the soul. It is fascinating that the pineal gland holds dormant DMT. Now, do you know what DMT is?

• Speaker #1

  Yes.

• Speaker #0

  Do you think all your listeners know or should?

• Speaker #1

  Probably not. Let's go over it really quick. Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  Okay. So DMT is the chemical that makes... certain mushrooms magic. We have it dormant in our pineal gland. When we're in that state of bliss, which comes from the union, that DMT is being released out into all of our cells, and that is how the cellular fluid gets upgraded. So that's what's happening physiologically. Now there's that saying, as above. so below, as within, so without. What is disintegrated in here is going to be fragmented out here. What we haven't loved in here, we're going to reject out here. What we harmonize in here becomes harmony and balance out here. So it's all about coming to know this inner landscape. And the only way to do it is through these inward journeys. Our soul knows every experience we've had and will lovingly take us. Now there's, I do want to say, I might be going off on a tangent, Vanessa. I don't know if you want to go here, but there's a difference. And meditation, breathwork, and psychedelics. They all take you to your soul, but they have different pros and cons.

• Speaker #2

  Yeah. Yeah. How are they different?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. So meditation is radical presence. Now, if you have not conquered these voices in your head, you will be sitting there listening to an internal diatribe going. This is not helpful. And it's probably not. So I feel like it is the most radical step. It's the easiest to integrate because you're dropping into presence, but probably better left till you've further down the journey and a better relationship with your ego. Psychedelics are wonderful, but they will drop you into your inner landscape whether you're ready or not so if you have not fully surrendered if you don't have the right set and setting if you're afraid that's how people can get what they call a bad trip it's it's your own soul talking to you but it can feel traumatizing and the a lot of people want to chase the highs of the ascent trips you know so they'll i know i have friends that will do psychedelics weekly but then they're not really integrating what they've been shown the the middle path is breath work in breath work the the journeys can be just as vivid you your soul really leads the way so you it's very uncommon to get a descent trip early on they come at your soul's readiness and you're starting this conversation with love turning your life over. And so it's, it's amazing. I talk about it a lot in my book, how when my soul knew I was ready to deal with something, it would come up in breath work, but then it would, then I meet a healer who specialized in that, or, you know, someone, a book would drop in my lap on that topic, whatever way spirit thought I needed. Because these lessons are not one and done. And so, yeah. And so it's, it, breathwork gives you that ability to really come to know and love all of the parts that live inside of us.

• Speaker #1

  I love your perspective on this. And I'm going to hone in on it for a moment because I love your perspective that breathwork is the middle path. Like when you just said that, I was like, oh, if I would have had. those few words to say, because so many people, you know, I have clients of my own, I, I, you know, I'm in so many different conscious communities. And oftentimes, people are asking just very basic, general questions, and having, you know, a way to kind of like, not a it's not a headline, right? It's not like a news headline. But it is kind of like a general way of describing the difference between the three because you're right, people often go into meditation. you know kind of fresh into the consciousness space or fresh into the practice of being present and we you know we've all been there we've had I've used to I couldn't you know meditating when I first started meditating meditating for five minutes was so stressful before my other events that allowed me to kind of go deeper into an awakening it was I came out very stressed now I meditate for an hour and I might even go two hours if I don't have an alarm clock. So I got to kind of like, make a lot of effort to bring myself out so I can kind of go on throughout my day, because I'll stay there if I want, right? And because there's no concept of time when I'm when I'm in there. And I yeah, and then I love that it's it's the middle part. So that's meditation. And then with psychedelics, you're right, people, there could be an over reliance on it, there could be lack of integration. There could be all these things and not to discourage anyone from psychedelics because it's a tool just like breathwork is. But I love that Colleen is saying this is the middle path because it allows you to stay empowered and it allows you to.

• Speaker #0

  create your own experience. You, you said all of this in your own words. So I'm just kind of echoing what you said. So this is, so if you're, if you're listening to this and you feel like you're being called to meditation and to psychedelics, beautiful, but also, you know, really incorporate the breath work in between or around those experiences. Cause I, I think you might find something new or like Colleen was saying, she was guided to find a healer that specialized in that. or like all these other synchronicities, a book dropped in that was like perfect for the timing. Any other thoughts on that?

• Speaker #1

  Dan Siegel says all three bring us into now. And so whatever we need to come into now, let's meet here. And I love that.

• Speaker #0

  Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I love that too. And I want to get your opinion on something. You know, when I was doing now I do more astrology for my clients, but there was a period of time, the first five years of my business, I was predominantly doing like a lot of integration work and healing work with clients. And I had a few people that were coming to me with, you know, some type of substance challenges, whether it was alcohol addiction or something similar. And I remember spirit just guiding me to use breath work. And I'm more You know, I know the Wim Hof breathwork, but I'm not like a trained breathwork facilitator and all the other ones. And then sometimes we would just do conscious breathing. Sometimes it wasn't breathwork for those particular clients, but it was always the most powerful. And if you have any comments on why, or if you've had similar experiences, or if you've witnessed others have similar breakthroughs, I would love to hear that as well.

• Speaker #1

  What I've seen is that breathwork really slows us down and gets us to be, brings the unconscious conscious. And so with any substance, whether it's gambling or overspending or sugar or, or some kind of illicit drugs, they, they're all doing the same dopamine hit in your brain. But when you slow it down and you So just take eating, for example. When I become more mindful of eating, I'm in tune with what that food is doing inside my body. And when I eat slower, I get those signals that I'm full. And so my whole relationship to eating changed because I was more conscious and present with it. And you can apply that to anything. You start to see that these things outside of you are never going to fill you up. They're not what you're looking for. The truth is, the Hopis had it right. We are the ones we're looking for. Your inner children want your love. They've been with you from the beginning. They don't want your parents' love. They don't want your siblings' love. They want your love. And my inner children want my love. And it all starts in here. And so when we can develop the relationships in here, this becomes sacred. This whole body, there's 70 trillion cells in our bodies. It's a universe. And this body is my primary marriage. It's been with me from the day I got here. It'll be with me till the day I go. So my ability to be a benevolent caretaker of every single cell, every single energy, every single subtle body, that's the most precious relationship that there is. And when I can love everything in here, I can love everything out here.

• Speaker #0

  So beautiful. And what does it mean to love stuck energy into healing?

• Speaker #1

  Well, you know, it's an amazing thing. Like, I'm sure you've seen the movie Inside Out, right? Yes. And that movie was developed based on internal family systems. We have these young, wounded children that live their energies. They live in us. Everything that our caregivers, parents, teachers rejected, we reject. because at that point we needed them to take care of us. So if it was bad, that had to go. That had to be banished to the basement so I can remain in relationship with you even though you haven't loved all of me. And it's very common for people with trauma backgrounds. I think trauma is more universal than we give it credit for. We've all had experiences that exceeded our ability to cope where we've been overwhelmed. That's trauma. That's the definition. And it's only through going back in, getting to know. And so there's, it's. You know, that's what internal family systems is based on. Like, I want to get to know shame today. They're like little scared bunnies in the forest. It takes a while for them to come out. And I mean, I do this, Vanessa, because I care about people. I want to shine a light. So this has nothing to do with my book. I get no proceeds from it. But there's a phenomenal book called Self Therapy by Jay Early. It uses internal family systems, but you do the practices with a trusted partner. And so it'll guide you in how to get to know. Breath work is always a part of it. You want to get into that conscious breath where your soul can guide the journey, but with a conscious partner. And there's phenomenal exercises to get to know these stuck energies. And then when you can... First befriend them, start the dialogue, and then over time, love That all healing, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual comes from love. Nothing heals besides love.

• Speaker #0

  I love that. And thank you for that book recommendation. You know, if someone has tried conscious breathing or breath work, and they had some challenges one way or another. What are some suggestions? Is it get some support, whether they have support or not? Maybe you might get different support or what, you know, in any any suggestion that comes first to mind?

• Speaker #1

  Well, for breath work, for sure. If your challenge is that you can't surrender, that's a big one. There's it's that control. I can't let my ego can't relax. It's too scared. Support would really help in that situation. or you the challenge might be that you went into a trauma that still seemed, you were still too tied to ego. So you weren't looking from the place of love. You weren't in that place, but a trauma came up and you weren't feeling ready. That's very uncommon with breath work. It's more likely with psychedelics, but again, a support would be really helpful. Now with conscious breath, that's different because you're doing that while you're going about your day. So my biggest advice is notice when you're in your head and come back to like literally standing in your breath while you're doing whatever it is you're doing. It will slow down your breath. You'll have slower inhales and even longer exhales. And you want to just constantly come back. And and you like I talked about this in my book initially with my work, with my own. wounded children, I would say, if you're going to be mean to me, this conversation is over. Because I'm like, I need some peace up here. And it was like parenting. It was firm. It was warm and firm. I wasn't being mean. But it's like sending the child to his room. And I might get two minutes, three minutes, eight minutes of peace. And I would say it a lot, because it worked. And the peace did get longer and longer. Now, as I went on, I realized I needed to develop a relationship with these children, come up with wisdom. They're afraid with good wisdom for me, but I can listen to their fears now and hold them and say, I understand and thank you. And we got this. My higher self can walk forward. But it's a process. So the other thing I would recommend for someone having trouble staying in their conscious breath is a mantra. Mantras do a great job of setting that thought and word energy to keep us in a high frequency. It's hard for those voices to take over when we're reciting a mantra over and over. And it is the bridge to conscious breath, to the stillness. so any mantra would work as long as it's a high frequency. One of my favorite is Sat Nam. Sat Nam is often said in yoga classes. Yoga comes down the lineage of Tantra and Sat Nam literally means I am that. I am that that I look upon. And that helps me to remember that Everything is a conversation with the divine. Everything is a love teachable moment. And I am literally in a conversation with God in every moment. You are God. You are God, Vanessa.

• Speaker #0

  Yes. Thank you. It's very rare that I'm speaking with someone that agrees with that. Because some people see it as like an egotistical thing, the fact that you are God and I am God and we are God. Right. And we're experiencing these individual lives through the eyes of God. It's just I for for a long time, I felt like, oh, my gosh, that's a belief I can't really speak about, even in the conscious community. Any thoughts on that?

• Speaker #1

  Yes. Well, how could it be egotistical if we're. all on the same playing field, right? So I'm not elevating myself above anyone. You are as precious, as worthy, as sacred as I am. We are equals. There's no ego in it.

• Speaker #0

  Right, right.

• Speaker #1

  And you know what? The other interesting thing is we have three instincts. They are there for our well-being. They are self-preservation, sexual, which is our creative abilities, one-on-one connection, and belonging. Belonging is going back to what I talked about, that knowingness of when we were all together as unique manifestations of the one. It's in our DNA. We want to connect. That's how we feel the bliss. That's what we call love. It's that action of... harmony and connection. When we're all God, we drop all those errors that are the walls that separate us. And the only thing that's left is connection.

• Speaker #0

  Yes. And breathwork has allowed me to access that in a more potent way. I believe we always have that connection, but those walls of separation really came down. through some breathwork sessions, some cold plunging sessions, which I did breathwork to warm up for. So it's so beautiful. What are some, what is one way, I'm sure there's several, what is one way, if you can give us the logistical instructions on how to tap into just conscious breathing throughout our day? And then in a break, when we get home from work, what is a conscious breathing practice? What does that look like?

• Speaker #1

  Well, I love that you brought up the breaks because I actually offer a free guide of nine hacks to essence merging on my website. And one of them is we have natural breaks all day long, right? You finish a meal, you move from one room to the other, you stop a task, you go to the bathroom, any dimension shift. When you take a pause in those shifts. And you say to love, what's next? It's not my agenda anymore. It's very calibrating and liberating. And you'd be surprised what comes of it. But always, you're slowing it down. And so, again, noticing when you're in your head, those thoughts in your head, and coming back to stand in your breath. That is step one to presence. You cannot... be present when you're rushed, when you're in default mode network. Coming into our breath opens our heart to lead. All of life gets brighter. So it's all upside. Just reminding yourself to come back, come back. And it's like puppy training. No judgment. I went back up to my head. Oh, well, I get the opportunity to choose again. Every exhale is a new chance to choose.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, beautiful. And for someone who hasn't, because conscious breathing might come a little bit more automatic to you and I, like I already know how I would, or what I did for conscious breathing yesterday. I did one of the, you know, I did the shh, I was breathing through my teeth. That's a trick that I use when I'm in cold plunging. But like, for someone who wants to kind of like really understand how they could implement this after this podcast, is there, should they just take a breath through the nose?

• Speaker #1

  and out through the mouth or like what's a good way to do this okay so in through the nose out through the nose yes when we when we get the mouth involved we actually the quality of the uh Oxygen coming into our bodies is much less. I agree. In through the nose, out through the nose. Your exhale should just fall out. Don't push anything. And it will naturally become longer than your inhale. That all sets your parasympathetic in motion for relaxation. But that same technique, when you lie down. You mentioned a holotropic breath works very fast. I'm not a fan. I actually, I get late headed. I can't do it. I can't even do it. But the way Leonard Orr taught breath work, as I said, he brought breath work to the West from India, commonly known as the father of breath work to the West. It's slow. So it's slow, integrative breathing, no gap between the inhale and the exhale. So you're going to breathe in through your nose, starting from your belly. I like to think of it as energy. And I often do it as chakra calibration. So I'll start with imagining a red vapor, blood, or blood is a great one because it's our life force. So I'm breathing in that red vapor from my first chakra all the way up. at least to my pineal gland. So that's a very long, slow in-breath, and I'm imagining it going through each chakra center up to the pineal gland. And so physiologically, I'm breathing in from my belly, expanding my rib cage out, pulling it up through my throat into my head, and then I'm letting it fall out. There's no push, and that exhale will... naturally be slower no gaps between the inhale and the exhale and you lose yourself in the act you don't get counting or you stay out of your head and you just lose yourself in the act and that's when your energy starts to loosen from your body but i will often do it chakra by chakra because every day we spend some time in our heads

• Speaker #0

  Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  And it's like cooking in your kitchen. You cooked in your kitchen all day long. You made a mess. You have to clean the kitchen for the next day. I want to say this, Vanessa. Each night when we go to sleep, I believe it's a mercy. In that our spirits get that chance to loosen from our body and go back into liminal space. That's the mercy of it. Whether we remember it or not, it happened.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  And if we're being honest, most of us in the morning wake up and there's initial thud back into this dense form. And so for me, starting the day with breath work allows me to fully get in that remembrance, that noetic remembrance, that visceral somatic remembrance that I. am an energy being. And from there, I can spill that love out. Otherwise, I'm efforting it on my own will. Everything's harder. So I love that we have this available to us in any moment.

• Speaker #0

  Yes, absolutely. Last question before we wrap up. If someone feels disconnected from love right now, what can we remember when we're in those disconnected spaces?

• Speaker #1

  That's such a beautiful question. Here's my answer. Do you remember the movie Forrest Gump?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  Do you remember Lieutenant Dan in the big rainstorm, the big storm? He's up in the catwalk and he's like, bring it on. I need these shrimp. You know, that is a common universal experience. and I believe that love wants us to get to the end of our will. We have no strength left. When I was down on the floor sobbing, just let me be love in every moment. With those times of my life when I was like, I don't have anything left. The human side of me is like, you know, God invented B.F. Skinner. temper tantrums were supposed to work, then, you know, that doesn't follow behaviorism. But my soul knows that I have to get to that point where I'm stripped of all strength. I'm banging my head against the wall and I say, please, I'm ready. I'm just, I'll do it your way. Just lift this off of me. Those surrendered prayers are always answered. Always. I've never seen an example where they're not. But you have to really be stripped down. So if you feel separated from love, cry it out, yell it out, scream it out, beg it out. Love will be like... thank God there's a crack in your heart and I can come back. I've been waiting for this. I promise you. I promise you.

• Speaker #0

  Yes. 100% agree. I always, my way of articulating what you just said is let yourself collapse. I always say that when it's appropriate for that, for, for the reasons that Colleen just laid out, it's, it's that moment of surrender when we, and we merge with. The will of the universe, God's will, love's will. And we, you know, all the walls, all of the illusions really just come down and we're merged. And then, you know, things carry on. Beautiful. It was such a pleasure and a treat to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for your time and energy. I really do appreciate it.

• Speaker #1

  Thank you. So much fun. I love your questions, too. And you have such a beautiful, gentle... Listening spirit, you hold a beautiful space, Vanessa. So thank you.

• Speaker #0

  Thank you. That means so much to me. How can people find you?

• Speaker #1

  Well, I have a web address. It's EssenceMerging.com. As I mentioned, you could get a free nine hacks to Essence Merging or presence there. I'm on Instagram, Essence slash Merging. Yeah, that's. Probably. And my book is coming out April 30th.

• Speaker #0

  Wow. Amazing. And we can get that anywhere on Amazon. Where can we get that?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Walmart. Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  Everywhere. Amazing. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. So if you enjoyed today's episode or and if someone was on your mind, like if this really resonates with you and you feel like someone else might be able to get. something from this episode, some wisdom, some inspiration, whatever it might be, please share this episode with at least one person, just copy and paste the link, text them, let them know you were thinking about them and that they might enjoy this episode. Thanks again, everyone for tuning in. Namaste and have a great day.