Christa 0:00
All right, so today we have Megan Warren to talk with us about breath work, the power of breath work. What is it? Who's it for? Who's not for? I'm so excited to have you here. Megan,
Speaker 1 0:12
I'm excited to be here with you lovely ladies. Yeah,
Sheree 0:15
maybe the day a friend of ours as well. So it's so it'd be good to have her join us. And we know she was extremely, extremely talented and all that she does. So I'm so excited to hear expertise in this area. Yeah,
Christa 0:26
I have to say, I think, you know, in this space that we all met together, we experienced breathwork altogether. And for me, it was the first experience I had ever had with breathwork. And I didn't know what to expect. I thought, Oh, this feels weird. Am I going to feel anxious, like, but it's really been life changing. And I find that breathwork can really help you shift through a multitude of things. And and there's such a variety, like you can do it for 10 minutes, you can do it for 30 minutes, it just kind of depends on what you're looking to do and what what your goal is. So Megan, can you introduce us a little bit to a little bit about what you do and then interest into breathwork? And yeah, let's get this party started. Yeah, so
Speaker 1 1:11
Oh, my goodness, what do I do? That's a loaded question. Really, my heart and my passion is helping people melt away stress. Like if I really just talk about what my experience has been in life, and what I really enjoy helping people with, it's melting away stress. And using breathwork as one of those tools, when those resources to really help them do that. Because everyone is faced with stress, every single one of us and it can vary, it can vary, you know, how we manage our stress, what's happening that causes us to have different life curveballs thrown our way, like, you know, how do we react to different stressors. And on a functional medicine perspective, as all of us know, all three of us know, stress can happen, you know, just by gut infection, you know, when things are going on with our gut, or if our hormones are imbalanced, and things like that. And so, yeah, I practice functional medicine. And I'm kind of transitioning more into just helping people with melting away their stress, and feeling just really fucking good in their body to be honest, build, good, like, that's what we want to fill. We want to feel good, and we want to feel relaxed. And my story kind of starts with I, for a long time, haven't felt that way. And I was unaware that I was so dysregulated. And yeah, do you want to share a little bit about how I was introduced to breathwork? With love? Yes, yeah. So I went on a retreat with some self development people in 19 2019. And it really introduced me to what I like to call sexy breathwork peak experience breathwork Holotropic. breathwork is another name for this. And I was blown away. I had a very spiritual experience with that breathwork session, and I was like, Holy crap, like, what is going on? I want to figure out how to do this. I want to do this, like, I am going to teach breathwork one day, I don't know who I'm gonna learn from, I don't know when it's gonna happen, but it's gonna happen. So that was a little, you know, experience there. And then as you as y'all know, like in ICM, we had a breath during experience, we learned more about breath work. I was doing Wim Hof breathing before 2021. I just found him on YouTube. And I was like, Oh, this feels good. So I started doing that, which I feel like a lot of people just kind of YouTube and they, they find things and they, they jump on board, and they feel a difference in their body. And so they're like, oh, this, you know, I want to do this. And then last year, in 2022, I came across this guy. And I was really intrigued with his approach to everyday breathing, not just the sexy breath work, but like, how are we breathing every single day? And I was like, oh, because really are chemistry changes based on how we're breathing. And I knew from a functional medicine perspective that Oh, like, we can't just pull up and do an hour breathwork session when we're stressed out all the time. Like, what did we start to correct our everyday breathing? And so that's where I was like, Okay, this is my guy. Loved his energy that certified by him. James Campbell, shout out to Campbell. And yeah, and so here we are now and I'm utilizing this in my practice with working with people assessing how they're breathing. So I usually do two different tests to see the mechanics of their body and then also their stress response, their carbon dioxide capacity. And if they're not able to hold their breath that long, that means that the body is not tolerant to stress. Well, it's like There's some things that you can do to start to improve that. And so yeah, that's a little, that's one way. And then I just give different exercises depending on what's going on in their life and just helping them. Like I said, Use breathwork as a tool. I
Christa 5:13
love that you've kind of broken it down into two separate because there is really that every day, how are you breathing. And I know for me, just, you know, being introduced to breath work, it has changed the day to day stress, obviously, our breathing is autonomic. And we just breathe, we don't think about breathing. But I definitely noticed my breathing more throughout the day, because I reminded myself like anytime I felt tension in my body, just to take these deep breaths, maybe hold my breath for five seconds, maybe do box breathing, I share that a lot with all of my clients really helpful to fall asleep, get out of your head and into your body. So that's been super helpful on the day to day basis. And it's really interesting that you said just even the hold the breath tests like panicky feeling that your body's just in fight or flight, it's amazing physiologically to how we can train our body, our nervous system to calm down just by regulating our breath, because our breath does regulate our heartbeat. And so as we slow the breath down and become very cognizant of it, we can bring everything down and be more calm, I want you to talk a little bit about the what you call the sexy breathing. You know, for me, there was a lot of unknowns, because you're breathing very differently for let's say, maybe even 30 minutes. So this is definitely a session where maybe the first time you try this, you want to have somebody that's either watching you via zoom, or they're in the room with you just to kind of walk you through this because there are some, it's difficult, I think at the very beginning to do rapid breathing over and over. And I want you to tell talk about to our audience, the some of the side effects that can start up in your body that might be a little bit uncomfortable, and how you, you know, guide your clients through working through those.
Speaker 1 6:54
Yeah, so the first thing I want to say is, I believe in the way that I was taught, I want to make this really clear that not everyone should be doing this peak experience breathwork. And I think that, you know, I like to go against the grain a lot. I think this is where like breathwork is such a fad right now I feel like it's an I even pump the brakes myself with like, I was doing monthly sessions, which I might still do at one point. But right now just kind of pump the brakes. And really looking at this through the lens of like, let's be smart about this. And like really use breathwork as a tool. And it's not like a one size fits all. But you know, if you're in a state where your nervous system is very dysregulated all the time and you go into this peak experience, like you said, you're breathing at a really fast rate, you can freak out, you know, like you can and so you know, it's really good, like you just asked like, what are some of the things that are expected or that can happen in these things might not happen to everybody. But what's really common and what happened to me and the first experiences, I had something called techni where your hands clenched up. And this was when I was in Hawaii. And I was like, I could not move. I mean, I know that the people listening to this podcast can't see me right now. But I look like I'm I mean, it's very uncomfortable. And it just feels like you're cramping so your body can cramp. And the reason why is because you're changing the different gas levels in your body, the carbon dioxide, the oxygen and the nitrogen. There's a whole lot of different gas exchange going on. So that's one thing that can feel uncomfortable in might freak some people out different emotions can come up. So there have been experiences where either myself or like doing a session with clients, you start to cry. And it's that can happen pretty fast. Or just emotion like sadness, tears can come even tears of bliss and happiness can happen. Anger. I mean, there have been times especially when my gosh, when I've done this with my husband, he's like, I'm like, get it out, get it out. Come on, because I know that with the somatic work because that's what breathwork is it's releasing its you know, so my means body. And so we're releasing stored emotion or body stores emotion with breath. And so if you're doing this rapid breathing, emotion can start to release because we're not in our analytical mind. We're letting our body lead the way. And so sometimes it's like, Whoa, where did that come from? And you're like, like, if you know what, like I said, Come on, baby, let it out. Like it's just like, we're excited and like, I get excited. When I see people have an experience like that or like I'm having an experience like that. It's like, yes, like let's just let this out without judging it. Because I know I'm gonna feel so much better once all of that's released and so long winded press or answer Krista but Tete me so the tightness, emotions can come up just coldness like you can have a change in temperature in your body cold or hot. that you can start sweating, noises yawning is really common. A lot of people are like yawning a lot and you're just moving energy, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're tired. You're just this is how we, our nervous systems that get the response, get the idea that we're safe. And so you're just yawning. So it's just like an energy exchange. What else moaning like, you know, noises, quarantine come out things like that. So yeah, those are the main ones that that I see and experience. Yeah,
Christa 10:30
in my experience, the beginning, the first five or so minutes is, is uncomfortable because you're breathing really rapidly, and it just feels like, Oh, this is so uncomfortable. And then I find towards the end, like, maybe towards the end of a 30 minute session, I'm just fully in this breathing pattern. And I have experienced the same thing, kind of the cramping of the hands or around my mouth. It's really a practice in letting go and trusting the experience. And you mentioned it briefly about the biochemical changes that happen in our blood, which affects our brain. And, you know, I personally have not done micro dosing, I haven't done any of that at the time of this recording. And, but what can be really cool, I think about breath work is that you can really move through and I want you to start to touch on this too, you can move through, maybe blocks that you're having in your business or blocks that you're having in a relationship, or you can have maybe just new ideas that come to you, in this state in this brain wave in this biochemical shift in your brain really allows you to kind of tap into maybe more intuition or yeah, what are your thoughts on that? And where do you see the benefit in helping people move through something that maybe they couldn't do? Outside of breathwork?
Speaker 1 11:47
Yeah, so I love like, an intention at the beginning. So like, when you set an intention of like, this is really like, I'm ready to let go of this. This has been bugging me, I want answers to this, or I feel Creek creatively blocked. You know, if you set an intention, then a lot of times, you know, when we set an intention, that's how we direct our focus, right? And so first starting there, like what is your intention before you go on to do the breathwork session? And then when you're actually doing the breathwork session, you're right, like at the beginning, there's a lot of resistance, and you can be in your mind a lot like, this is weird. Am I doing it? Right? Like all of the little things that also probably come up with our businesses? Am I doing this right? Am I good enough? Oh, my God, I suck at this. I'm not going to feel an effect. Oh, I'm starting to feel something. I don't know if it's right, right. All that happens at the beginning. And then you have someone who's directing you also, it's like, you know, come back to your body come back to your breath. What happens is you're accessing the amygdala in the mind. And so this can be very similar to having like a trip, like an LSD trip. And so going back to my Hawaii experience of having a very spiritual experience, like that's possible, because you're accessing different parts of the mind that you're not used to doing when you're in a beta wave state in a conscious state like we are right now. So yeah, you're able to surrender and let go. And that's when, you know, a lot of times after the breathing, when you're just in that meditative state, and you're able to really soak in everything that you just did, the thoughts will come, the creativity will come you're like, oh, I need to do this or that. And because No, how often are we really that relaxed? You know? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of us, we go get a massage, and we still can't even relax when we're getting a massage. We're like, I don't want this to end.
Sheree 13:46
I love Yeah, I know, when I first did breathwork, I had a real laughing reaction, like I had protect me hands, and I was just an uncontrollable laughter. So think, like, I love that you touched on there could be some much different array of emotions. And there's something you mentioned earlier. And I think sometimes we don't actually, you know, for our listeners that might not understand it. You mentioned nervous system dysregulation, and the body feeling dysregulated. Like, what does that even look like? So for someone going, Oh, I don't know if breathwork is for me? Or if this kind of breath work is for me? How do you actually know? Or how would you tell for someone like okay, you are dysregulated or you might be in a state of dysregulation this could really support you. Yeah,
Speaker 1 14:26
so there's different parts of that nervous system, you can be in ventral vagal, which is like you feel safe, right? Like this is when we feel like things are we have enough time and things feel good and we feel peaceful in our bodies, we're connected to other people. And then there's fight or flight, which is just your sympathetic state. You can do this breath work in a sympathetic state, your body's going to be in a more of a sympathetic state. Whenever you're doing this type of breath work. Anytime you're speeding up the rhythm of your breath, you're tapping into a sympathetic state. Also, if you hold your breath like this breathwork technique that I do where you you're breathing in, and then you hold your breath at the top of the inhale, you're tapping into a sympathetic state. And then when you exhale and you hold your breath at the bottom, you're actually tapping into a parasympathetic state. And so with the peak experience, breath reflect we're talking about, you are primarily in a, in a sympathetic state, right? So if you're in freeze, or if you're in dorsal, which are other to other states that you can be in your nervous system. Dorsal is when you're just like, apathetic or disconnected, you're shut down, this would be the time, I would say, it's not best for you to do a breathwork experience like this. Because you can find yourself going back to that state after the breath work is over. So you might feel like good temporarily, but then you might fall deeper back into that state, because you've just dysregulated yourself even more. So for someone like that, like even just doing like, an I hope that people can hear right now. But taking like two breaths in through your nose, and then just a sigh. Doing that three times can be enough for someone just to move from this dorsal stately, where you're feeling completely shut down to feeling just a little bit better, like, oh, I can go and I can wash my dishes now. Or, oh, I can run the target and like Phil accomplished. But again, that's for that person who's like, depressed, shut down. Those are going to be the people who might have like the extreme crying spells and just like, yeah, they might be releasing a lot. But I would say, the way that I've been trained is like, first teach them how to breathe properly, teach them how to do other tools of emotional release first, and then introduce them to a proper experience like that.
Christa 16:54
Because that means, what are some of the examples that you just, you know, offer your clients as far as day to day breathing? Is it checking in with tension in your body? Or how can? How can we start just day to day shifting how
Speaker 1 17:07
we breathe? Yeah. So right now, like, if you're listening, just check in right now, how are you breathing in through the nose or the mouth. So just a quick assessment of you know, if you're breathing in through the nose, this is called functional breathing, if it's slow, so if it's like fast and choppy, if it's from the chest, that's dysfunctional breathing, so mouth, chest choppy, it's fast, it's more than 12 breaths per minute. So just first, just being aware of how you're breathing. And if you're breathing in through the nose, if you're breathing in more slow controlled from the ribcage, the belly, a lot of times when people see belly breeds, that's you're just not doing it properly. So what I like to say is like take a breath and put your hands in your ribcage. And when you take a breath in, imagine your ribcage expanding and your belly will naturally expand. So just taking a deep breath in and then first breathing from the ribcage, the belly, and then the chest second, and slow. So like enter the nose out through the mouth. And if you can do that for at least 12 breaths per minute, then that's a good functional way of breathing versus dysfunctional. So that's interesting. Yeah.
Christa 18:16
Have you heard about diving? What is its deep dive breathing people, I'm just curious if you've heard about any of that, when people go fishing without the rods, when they go with a spear. It's fascinating. There, they found that in the training for spear fishing, you have to breathe differently in order to hold your breath long enough to go into water. What they found were these people were having residual effects of euphoria, or you know, less anxiety, just able to really regulate that anxiety of being underwater for a longer than normal period of time. And I've heard that there's also trainings that, that kind of teach along those lines, but I'm sure it has, you know, the training encompasses something along the lines of hyperventilating and then holding your breath for a longer period of time to kind of play with maybe the parasympathetic and the sympathetic, so you're kind of revving the body up and you're teaching it to calm down to be very flexible when it comes to being able to be in control, right. I mean, that's, that's the power, I think, of any of these practices is being able to understand that you have so much power in just your breath, and it's free. So really calm down, anxiety or stress. So what have you found and what do you recommend for people who, let's say you found in talking with them that they most likely have adrenal issues or they've been under chronic stress, whether that's from physical stress or psychological stress? What do you recommend? Do you typically recommend doing the longer breathwork sessions or do you recommend them do just the awareness in the day to day?
Speaker 1 19:54
Yeah, so I wouldn't recommend them doing the longer breathwork sessions first. Like I said, it's always about breath awareness. Another thing just to, because I didn't mention this earlier is like noticing, when you like say you get triggered by something. How are you breathing? Right? So like, that's part of breath awareness is the point, you know, the reason why I'm bringing that up, but also like your posture. So like, are you hunched over a lot like, I do that a lot, I have to really be mindful of like, how am I sitting, because that's going to affect the mechanics of our body. And so I feel like someone who is has high cortisol levels, they're dealing with a lot of anxiety, creating just a what I call like a reset breathwork session is creating that flexible nervous system where you're holding up the top holding up the bottom is a better exercise for someone like that. So they feel used to not always been in that sympathetic state. Because when when you're in that chronic anxious state, and you're not breathing, because you are you have trouble holding your breath, your carbon dioxide levels are lower. And so practicing and holding the breath is helping you increase those levels, which is then helping your stress response, which is then ultimately helping your anxiety. So does that.
Sheree 21:10
Sorry, is that the same thing for like the Wim Hof style breathing, we still tapping into that sympathetic state, but there's a lot of breath holds, is that still going to have that same positive effect? Or is that going to send someone with adrenal and cortisol issues kind of over the edge?
Speaker 1 21:25
Yeah, that's a good question. There's so for example, if you're breathing in through the mouth, which is what he recommends that's tapping into more of a sympathetic state. So you could do it at a slower rate. So like, you know, breathing in through the nose versus the mouth, doing it slower holding it for a lot less time than what he recommends. You know, it's, it's titrating, right? Like how we recommend supplementation titrating with breath work, I just kind of made that up right now. But it's true. Like, you don't need to go full on like, pedal to the metal, your first time with Wim Hof. Because a lot of times, you're gonna feel like you're freaking the eff out. Especially if you are overstimulated, like a lot of us are. And so it's really just looking at, you know, how can you start to breathe longer, slower, hold your breath, how long? Can you hold your breath? You know, if it's 10 seconds, awesome. Can you hold it for 20 seconds, next week, you know, like slowly starting to find improvements with that is I think that's the best recipe for someone who's done anything xiety. And being mindful, like when you're, like I said, What triggers you. So like, if you're working, and you feel dysregulated, because you are scared to do a presentation, or go on social media, or you have a deadline with some, you know, program that you're creating something like that, how are you breathing when you're working, a lot of times now, like I'll, your shoulders will be up towards your ears, you'll be short and shallow breathing. So like even right there, you can feel more safety in your body coming back to the nervous system, if you start to control that breath, or to relax faster, and then just be more mindful of how my breathing. And the reason why, you know, the longer breathwork sessions wouldn't be as beneficial, it's more beneficial. If you're doing it more frequently versus just one time a month. I mean, you're gonna get an effect, right? Kind of what Chris was talking about earlier, you might tap into an idea or creativity might flow through, you might release stored emotion that is necessary. But if you're really wanting to find a remedy for anxiety, that isn't going to be the best thing that's going to help the anxiety long term. Does that make sense? Yeah.
Sheree 23:33
And I know with like cold water therapy, or ice baths, like that really builds up your stress resilience and kind of his training that nervous system response, right, but you have to master your breath, or at least I find anyway, if you just go and jump straight into an ice bath, or even I found when I started doing cold showers, if I just turn it straight to cold and I haven't regulated my breathing, the body almost goes into that panic state and like shifts a lot of what what the breath is doing. And so can you touch on that a little bit and like how, I guess all of this integrates, because it's all really a form of biohacking, in a sense to to help us control. You know, our stress response is resilience, our chemistry and our body like you said,
Speaker 1 24:16
yeah, so I did an ice bath for the first time maybe like in 2018, I would say. And we practice breathing before and it still knocked the breath out of me soon as I got it. I was like, when we did we did breathing like is this supposed to happen? So coming back to like, that's the trigger, right? The ice cold bath is the trigger the body we have something called neuroception. Where our body it's our it's our ability to detect danger, a threat in our environment. And so when we get into the ice bath, this neuroception kicks on where it's like, oh, we're in danger. So the first thing that changes is our breath. Our breath changes, right because when we're in danger The blood rushes to our muscles away from our digestive tract. Because we get the signal like we are in danger we need to run. So we have fast legs, fast arms. So we can run our breaths changes, our thought patterns, change our chemistry and our bodies change, our feelings change. And so coming back to the breath, and just really slow breaths. And like this wouldn't be a good time to do box breathing, it would be really good time to do conscious breathing, which is just a circular breathing, breathing in as long as you can, for five seconds exhaling out for longer than your inhale. So when you're exhaling out longer than the inhale, you're tapping more into that parasympathetic state. Versus if you're just doing like three and three, I would say like, you know, breathe in five seconds, breathe in seven, or breathe out seven seconds, so that your body is getting the signal like, Hey, we're safe. We're good. Like, this is just cold water, we're actually not going to die.
Sheree 25:54
Yeah, thank you for sharing that. Because I think a lot of the times we go and jump into these things because it's trending like just like you said, Breathworks almost a fad saying that the ice bots or, you know, you can jump into saunas, because like, what's what everyone's doing, it's what you see on social media. But it's actually really important to prime your nervous system. And then even when you're in that experience, like you said, you still jumped in, even after doing breath work, and was still the shocks of having the tools to regulate through. And it's amazing how when you do Rick and personally like when you do regulate your breath, during those experiences, you're able to drop in a lot deeper, you get so much more out of the iceberg or so much out of the cold shower, just because you're in such a calm state, which you're controlling through your
Speaker 1 26:35
breath. Right. And another thing just to touch on that really tuning in and seeing how do you feel after you do the ice bath? How do you feel after you do a peak experience breathwork session if you feel more drained and tired after that means it probably is not a good time for you to do it. Because your adrenals are shot? Yeah,
Christa 26:51
that's a good indicator just for people who were kind of doing it without guidance just to check in after and how do I feel with it? I think most people are either doing this for health optimization, or to other main reasons, if I had to guess, would be anxiety and would be falling asleep. So can you share maybe two different practices or one if it applies to both something very simple that the listeners could just move forward with and just experiment because it's safe, it's easy, it's quick, you could do it anywhere? What are kind of Yeah, some breathing techniques that you would recommend for anxiety and for
Speaker 1 27:28
sleep. Yeah, so the two that I love for anxiety. And this is the fastest way to change the chemistry in your body, by the way is to breathe in for two breaths. So we can kind of do this together where you breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, pause, breathe in, and then exhale out of the sigh. And if you do that for about, you know, six to 10 rounds that can really help anxiety. I do want to say also, if you're doing this breathing, make sure you're not driving or you're by water and make sure you're not standing up just because you can get lightheaded anytime you do breath work. So just a safety caution, safety precaution. So that would be the first one. The second one. I love doing this. And I noticed that I do this anyway, like a lot. Like it's just I call it the just the Friday sigh. So whenever like it's Friday, and you're like, hey, like you get to be obnoxious, you get to be dramatic. I love being dramatic in my astrology chart, but you just do that for 10 times in a row. And like literally like pause this podcast right now and try it out, take a deep breath in. And then just go and do that 10 times in a row, you will feel a difference in your chemistry. So those two for anxiety are fabulous. And then I would say for sleep just doing you know, breathing in for four breaths or four breaths, four seconds, and then holding for three seconds and then exhaling out for seven. See if you can do that there are two little breath works called sunset and sunrise and so sunset, you're actually breathing in. So you're going to breathe in for three seconds, four seconds, anything like that. Breathe in, and then you breathe out for three or four seconds and then you hold for three or four seconds. So it kind of makes a triangle. So breathe in, breathe out, hold and then if you want to wake up like in the morning, you could do sunrise which is breathe in, hold, breathe out. So kind of makes an upside down triangle. Breathe in, hold at the top, breathe out that'll kind of energize you a little bit, kind of similar to box breathing. That'll get you a little more focused, primed, and then the just Breathing in breathing out. Holding at the bottom will help the body calm down. So those are two breaths, which you can do for that again, the other one was breathing in for like four seconds. Hold for three, exhale for seven.
Christa 29:58
Okay, so long tails with sleeping?
Speaker 1 30:01
Yes, yes. Unless you're doing the sunset, that one's just breathing in, breathing out, holding at the bottom, all for equal amounts. So like, if your numbers five, do it for 555. So yeah, those are the two that I really like. What about
Christa 30:15
alternating nostril breathing? I've seen that. What do you use it for? Do you like it?
Speaker 1 30:24
So to be honest, I don't really use it. But I have used it in the past and it is great for No, no, what I've heard this is great for if you're about to go online shop and you don't want to, it'll help. Interesting. Yeah. So what it helps you do is it helps you be more focused in your mind and be more logical. So like, it also gives you a real calm response. So if you feel like you're about to go online shop, and you're like, should I really be buying this right now? And then
Christa 30:56
any urge that you don't really want to do, but you're Yeah, you have an affinity for. So describe this alternating nostril breathing. Oh,
Speaker 1 31:05
my gosh. So I'm not good at it to be honest, because this isn't something that I really practice or recommend. But from what I remember, you hold one nostril, breathe out first. And then you switch and you breathe in with the other nostril holding the other side of your finger everything. And then holding free.
Christa 31:22
Yeah, yes. And you alternate between your thumb and your forefinger. Is that right? Cherie? Have you done this? Yeah,
Sheree 31:26
so you've taught and it's a yogic practice. So you pop the two fingers next to your thumbs, your index finger, your middle finger on the forehead, you pop your thumb on your left nostril and your forefinger, sorry, your ring finger on your right, and you breathe in through one block, and then breathe out through the other nostril, as you breathe. Then you breathe in through the same nostril, block it off, and breathe out. So you're actually going up, down, and then you're going up and down. But like you're, you're alternating through each nostril, as you're breathing, the yogic term, Nadi Shodhana.
Unknown Speaker 32:02
Okay, there you go. I like that one, too.
Sheree 32:04
Yeah, I know that I'm not sure which one, but one of them activates like your creative side, and one of them activates your logic side. So like what you were saying before with the sunset, and the sunrise, one of them can make you like, way more alert, I just can't remember which one is which. And one of them can make you like far more calm. So if you just want to like activate the calming side you breathe through, for example, you're right, and you just breathe in and out through and you block the lift. Same goes for if you want to hype yourself up, you block the left and you breathe in through. So I'm not sure which way it is around. So I can pop in, or we can pop that in the show notes when we figure that out. But yeah, I do know that that's really, really powerful from that perspective to love. So
Christa 32:44
Megan, whew, I love that we've talked about kind of a variety, the longer the before ice baths for anxiety for sleep. Who was breathwork? Not for who would you recommend? You know? And And are these you know, some of these like box breathing or the sunrise sunset? Are those safer? Everybody? Yeah, what are your recommended Dacians around precautions, I guess around playing around with these ideas.
Speaker 1 33:07
breathwork is for everybody, except, you know, the breath works. practices that I mentioned today are not for if you are pregnant, like if you're pregnant, you can still do breathing, you can still practice functional breathwork, right. And that's why I said it's for everybody, and you can do more of a heart coherence. breathwork is what we call it. And that's just where you're elongating your inhales and exhales and finding a rhythm that feels just really soothing for your body. Also, if you have epilepsy, seizures, things like that, you should not be doing any of the breath work, like the peak experience breathwork functional breathing is for everybody. And I highly recommend everyone tuning in and just noticing how they're breathing in their everyday breathing and you know, if your mouth breather at night, you can check out getting some tape because that can cause you know, think about it how, how often do we sleep third of our lives? You know, is that right? I don't know, I don't think it's half because no one sleeps. Maybe some people sleep for 12 hours a day, I don't know. But that's a big deal. And so, you know, making sure I know I kind of went off track here but one a dimension that that mounts tape can be really effective for people who are mouth breathing. Also there is I can recommend Of course, if you have a deviated septum that's, you know, a mechanical blockage in your nose. If you just have trouble breathing, there's a course of that somebody it's a very cheap course to I want to say it's like $30 or something by this guy that I can give you all you know, people are interested in just you know, how do you agree that the mat, but yeah, those would be the main people who should not be doing the peak experience breath work.
Sheree 34:47
What about Big T trauma? Because I think like you said, a lot of emotions can be shifted with this. And so if someone's got, like they haven't integrated some trauma that they may have gone through when they're younger, like is that something you To kind of warn people off as well, because you don't want them to drop into something they can't handle. Yeah.
Speaker 1 35:06
Therapy and things. Yeah. So making sure that the person who's facilitating they're trained to help you through that. And I've also heard of like, therapists being present too. So like, if we do a session on Zoom, and they're seeking, they're seeing the therapist for their trauma, they can join. Yeah, but for the most part, I've never had an experience where I mean, ya know, I kind of work with people where that can come up to, but it's nothing that they can't handle in, really, you're always in control of your breath, you can, you know, turn it up or turn it down based on how you the rhythm of the rate and the depth of your breathing. And so that does start to feel like it's triggering some things that might be scary, you're always in control, and you can stop the breathing and come back to the present moment. But yeah, definitely doing this with a trained facilitator is important,
Christa 35:54
which is why I like when you said, the control, you know, being, I guess, a control freak, but I, you know, for me, like I said, I had, I haven't done any micro dosing or anything, you know, to this point. But what I like about it is that I still feel like I can get a really cool experience, and really kind of get under the hood, so to speak with my emotions, or with blocks that maybe I'm having, or whatever's coming up for me. But knowing in the back of my mind, I'm in control, like, at any moment, you can stop the breath pattern, you can hold your breath, you can, you can reverse that, like chemistry, so that you're kind of back without any residual feelings. So you're in control. So for those of you listening, who also feel like you're a little intimidated by maybe some of the deeper work that requires some, you know, micro dosing, psilocybin, whatever the breath work can be really, really powerful for moving through some things, especially if you have a facilitator, like Megan, or, like some of the other people we've mentioned, to really walk you through some of these experiences. And I was fascinated by how much it it did in the way of thinking and the way of revealing things to me,
Speaker 1 37:02
I highly recommend people trying that out. And like we said earlier, you know, after you do the breath work, if you feel more tired, more dysregulated, then you know, like, maybe this practice isn't the best for me at this time. And I can maybe revisit it later. Even if you do a peak experience. Like it's okay. I mean, the body is so resilient. And, you know, I love to think about like a lot of the most joyous, blissful things in life are free breath being one of them. Yeah, no other teacher being another one being present, like when you're looking into your children, or your husband's eyes, or someone you love dearly, it's just like that is so beautiful to be able to do that and really see someone, same thing with breath work, when you can really learn how to use your breath to fill a difference in your body and in your mind. Like, why not learn how to do that? Yeah, super cool.
Sheree 37:54
It's really, really starting, like, life begins and ends with breath. And I think we go down this rabbit hole of, let's do all of these advanced things. And these, you know, I'm gonna try this and that, and this and that. And the other thing, and it's like looking at different supplements, and I saw this on Instagram or tick tock and so I'm gonna follow what this person is doing. And it's like, a lot of the times, we actually just need to come back, really, and breathe into our bodies and start to regulate our bodies with something that you say that's so simple, that can give us so much joy and so much bliss. And then there's all these beautiful tools that we're now learning with breath that can help enhance that and actually help you move through a lot. So I really appreciate everything you share today, Megan? Oh, good. Yes, it's
Christa 38:34
so helpful. And I think if you take nothing away, it's the beginning of the awareness of your breath, and how, like we didn't get to a state of burnout or dysfunction in our emotions and and our nervous system overnight. So it takes time. But I think it's just the awareness and realizing where when and where you're holding tension and breathing into those spaces throughout the day. Every day I read somewhere, there was a study done, where people literally hold their breath more when they're scrolling on either their computer or their phone. So maybe start they're like, Stop, wait, this is what I'm doing. Let me check in with my body. How am I breathing? Right? And it said over time, over time, that the breath we tell our body, we tell our nervous system, we're safe, we're okay. And over time, our body physiologically begins a new habit of state of being and like you said, it's free and it's powerful. And it's, it's more powerful than any other herb or drug. Right. We just we can do it through awareness, repetition and changing
Sheree 39:35
patterns. So where can people find you Megan?
Speaker 1 39:38
Yeah, so my instagram handle is I am Megan Warren, and my website is Meg Warren coaching. Those are the two places email I can give it to y'all. Y'all can drop it in the shownotes. places as of now. Awesome.
Christa 39:52
Thank you so much for being here. Yeah, that was amazing. Thank you so much, Megan. Thank you
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
