Speaker 1: Weird things happened in the.
Speaker 2: Weird, Weird Weird.
Speaker 1: Welcome to a very very very special episode of Bledsoe said, So,
Speaker 1: we are joined by my friend Dan breulea yeh, a
Speaker 1: very luminous being. And I'll get into here in a
Speaker 1: minute about how we met in that amazing experience. But Dan,
Speaker 1: before I forget, could you let the listeners know your books,
Speaker 1: your social media because I don't want to forget. I'd
Speaker 1: like to kind of plant that seed in the beginning.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, Well, just Breathe Mastering breath Work for Success
Speaker 3: and Lifelove, Business and Beyond by Simon and Schuster. It's
Speaker 3: available on every good bookstores. We have an audible version
Speaker 3: of it, and my website is Breathmastery dot com. So
Speaker 3: it's hard to google Breathwork and not have my name
Speaker 3: pop up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's true. I'm so happy that you joined
Speaker 1: our show. This is like really cool for me, and
Speaker 1: I told you this in person, but just for the
Speaker 1: sake of the listener, I'll run through this briefly. So
Speaker 1: we met in Wisconsin at the Contact Modalities XPO, and
Speaker 1: in full disclosure, my sister told me in advance that
Speaker 1: you were going to be there and that you were
Speaker 1: a really big deal in this space, and in my mind,
Speaker 1: I was thinking, Okay, this guy Dan Brula is going
Speaker 1: to be there. I have to meet this fella.
Speaker 4: And it was the weirdest thing.
Speaker 1: My dad did this pad and I didn't know what
Speaker 1: you look like because I'm such a busy person. I
Speaker 1: didn't look you up in advance. I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to meet you there, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: My dad finished his panel, I walk out the door
Speaker 1: and You're like right there speaking to us, and I
Speaker 1: heard your name and you could probably attest to this.
Speaker 1: I freaked out, Oh my god, it's you. I wanted
Speaker 1: to meet you. Come with me right now. And I
Speaker 1: grabbed you and I yanked you over and brought you
Speaker 1: to my sister and I was like, this is Dan,
Speaker 1: and I just feel like from there on out it
Speaker 1: was chemistry, and you know, it was It was really
Speaker 1: cool to meet you and to have the experience of
Speaker 1: becoming your friend at this conference and having and I
Speaker 1: will say, you know, for the listener's sake, that I
Speaker 1: was very blessed to experience a private session with you,
Speaker 1: which was very profound. So anyway, enough about me, and
Speaker 1: enough of I just wanted them to know how we met,
Speaker 1: and you know how it was organic and it was
Speaker 1: this really cool thing.
Speaker 4: But I want to talk.
Speaker 1: More about your background in the breath work space, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'm happy to do that. I actually i'd
Speaker 3: like to say how I actually met you. I I
Speaker 3: know your father was signing books and I had seen
Speaker 3: him just sort of coming and going. But I recognize
Speaker 3: an open heart from a football field away. So that
Speaker 3: was the first thing that drew me to your father
Speaker 3: and then to your family because I felt that heart
Speaker 3: and that love from all of you. So I was
Speaker 3: very pleased to me too. It was a nice surprise.
Speaker 3: And I just actually finished your father's book. And one
Speaker 3: of the news is actually, since I'm traveling and I'm
Speaker 3: passing through, she's going to read it before I leave.
Speaker 3: So she's actually in the other room reading it right now.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: And yeah. So, and I study breathing and I've been
Speaker 3: a missionary for the breath and and I'm always looking
Speaker 3: for you know, how can we apply breathwork to make
Speaker 3: the world a better place, make ourselves healthier, wake people up,
Speaker 3: you know, vent stress, deal with anxiety, manage emotions, you know,
Speaker 3: use it to develop mindfulness and so I'm, uh yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm a missionary for the breath. I have been my
Speaker 3: whole life and it ain't about to stop anytime soon.
Speaker 1: You're You're an amazing energy. Like being with you that
Speaker 1: whole weekend was the highlight for me, and on the
Speaker 1: episode of our show that just came out today at
Speaker 1: the time of recording this, so this episode that we're
Speaker 1: recording now will come out in a few weeks most likely.
Speaker 1: But our episode that released today was about the contact modalities,
Speaker 1: and you know, I know you're a busy guy, but
Speaker 1: if you ever happen to hear it, you'll hear how
Speaker 1: I was just gushing about, you know, getting to meet
Speaker 1: you and have that experience with you. It was very
Speaker 1: profound and just like you said about my dad and
Speaker 1: my family, that you feel that heart from a football
Speaker 1: field away, I've I did feel the very same thing,
Speaker 1: just you know, becoming your friend. I just was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I've never met anybody like this, and
Speaker 1: I knew that I had to learn from you. And
Speaker 1: the weird thing, Dan is, for a good year now,
Speaker 1: I've been thinking to myself, I want to learn more
Speaker 1: about the breath because I've been going through the journey
Speaker 1: of sort of becoming a meditation instructor. I told you
Speaker 1: a little bit about this, but it's through sound and
Speaker 1: that's very cool. But in my mind, I was thinking,
Speaker 1: but there's something a little more ancient. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: there was a time when they didn't have instruments or
Speaker 1: didn't have you know, records and vinyls and CDs.
Speaker 4: What did they have? The breath? Right?
Speaker 1: So I've this has been on my mind. I want
Speaker 1: to get into this. And then you know, of course
Speaker 1: with my crazy journey, I bump into you, probably the
Speaker 1: very best person on planet Earth to learn from about
Speaker 1: the breath. So it's just like, you know, no surprise there.
Speaker 3: But yeah, well, you know, all the ancient Yogis and
Speaker 3: the ancient Daoists and the Buddha and the early you know,
Speaker 3: people were just stumbling along. It took years, decades, generations,
Speaker 3: It took lifetimes to master some of this stuff. And
Speaker 3: now these days, with wearable technology and you know, monitors
Speaker 3: and stuff, you combine technology with spirituality and and you
Speaker 3: can speed things up quite a bit. So that's been
Speaker 3: happening in the breath work world. You know, I've been
Speaker 3: i spent a lot of time in India, a lot
Speaker 3: of time in China, tried to westernize a lot of
Speaker 3: the Eastern approaches and you know, make it more palatable
Speaker 3: for the Western mind. We don't really have in the
Speaker 3: West any sort of spiritual tradition around the breathing, but
Speaker 3: every ancient religion, every genuine spiritual tradition, makes use of
Speaker 3: the breath, honors the breath, talks about the breath, recognizes
Speaker 3: the power of the breath. And if you just look
Speaker 3: at the word inspiration, expiration, respiration, the root of that
Speaker 3: word is spirit. So it's not an accident. When you
Speaker 3: begin to breathe, you unlock spiritual potential, You connect to
Speaker 3: your source. Uh And in the process of practicing breath work,
Speaker 3: you become more meditative, You develop meditative awareness, your intuition
Speaker 3: gets better, you can connect more deeply, you know, just
Speaker 3: on a very practical level. More of the world comes
Speaker 3: in contact with you through the breath, and you can
Speaker 3: possibly wrap your ounds around. I mean, if you were
Speaker 3: to take the surface area of the lungs, including all
Speaker 3: the alveoli, those little microscopic air sacks, it's half of
Speaker 3: a tennis court, and wow, right, and and When you
Speaker 3: breathe in you are filling yourself with the world. Literally,
Speaker 3: I mean all of the universe is pouring into you.
Speaker 3: And molecules of air that the Buddha breed, that Jesus breed,
Speaker 3: that all the saints and great warriors and mystics and
Speaker 3: Caesar and Moses and some of the literal molecules of
Speaker 3: air that circulated in their bodies is circulating in our body.
Speaker 3: And that's information. Energy is information, and so breathing kind
Speaker 3: of it clears our antenna. So we can actually start
Speaker 3: to pick up more subtle energies. We were more fine tuned,
Speaker 3: we're less reactive, we're more sensitive because most people there's
Speaker 3: a lot of trauma trapped in the cells of their body,
Speaker 3: in their nervous system and accumulus like boiling a frog.
Speaker 3: You know, we get less and less resilient, we get
Speaker 3: less and less alive. But maybe if we can open
Speaker 3: up the power of our breath, it affects longevity. And
Speaker 3: it's unarguable. Now, you know the Framingham heart study, very
Speaker 3: famous study back Framingham, Massachusetts. They followed several thousand guys
Speaker 3: through life that's fifty years old now longer sixty seven
Speaker 3: years old, and out of that study came a lot
Speaker 3: of the lifestyle factors that affect heart disease. A lot
Speaker 3: of the medications and protocols were developed using data from
Speaker 3: that study. But there was so much conflicting information. You know,
Speaker 3: you had guys who lived to be one hundred who
Speaker 3: they smoke and they drank and they were meat eaters,
Speaker 3: and at one hundred and two they're still alive. And
Speaker 3: then you got people who did everything right, you know,
Speaker 3: there were vegan, vegetarians, they whatever, you know, and they
Speaker 3: dropped when they were forty eight. But the only data
Speaker 3: point that had no exceptions across the board respiratory capacity
Speaker 3: and linking respiratory capacity to longevity and overall health. And
Speaker 3: if you look at the graph of respiratory capacity, the
Speaker 3: average person reaches their peak respiratory capacity between twenty seven,
Speaker 3: twenty five, twenty six years old, and then for every
Speaker 3: decade of life they lose ten to fifteen percent of
Speaker 3: their respiratory capacity. And so if you put that graph
Speaker 3: of respiratory function and you put it on the same
Speaker 3: graph of life expectancy, they follow each other, they're mirror
Speaker 3: each other. And so very early on I realized, wow,
Speaker 3: if I can keep up my respiratory capacity, I'm going
Speaker 3: to bump up my longevity curve. And it's the only
Speaker 3: data point out of that study that was true across
Speaker 3: all people, across all all religions, ages, everything. If you
Speaker 3: maintain your respiratory capacity, you know, let it, let it
Speaker 3: grow to peak, and then maintain it, it's guaranteed your
Speaker 3: odds for living longer and being healthier are increased. There's
Speaker 3: just no argument about it. So it's just a matter
Speaker 3: of practice and being motivated to actually do breathing practices
Speaker 3: which aren't complicated, and a lot of them you get
Speaker 3: really high off them, So eat a lot of discipline.
Speaker 3: I've had a lot of people sit up from sessions
Speaker 3: and go, wow, I've taken a lot of drugs to
Speaker 3: feel like this. We got a pharmacy in our head
Speaker 3: and it'll produce whatever chemicals and DMT and brain waves
Speaker 3: are affected, chemistry is affected, cognitive abilities, intuition, emotions. So
Speaker 3: you get your handle on your breath, and wow, you
Speaker 3: can deal with just about everything else.
Speaker 4: Yeah, can I give you a report? Yes?
Speaker 1: So when we were together last weekend, right, and then
Speaker 1: I obviously spent quite a bit of time with you,
Speaker 1: and you had what three workshops that weekend. Yeah, first
Speaker 1: the first day I wasn't in town for it, the
Speaker 1: second one I made, and then the third one I
Speaker 1: wasn't able to make. And I regretted it because you
Speaker 1: did a session. But then you were, you know, gracious
Speaker 1: enough to come and do a private session with us.
Speaker 1: So I want to report on my life since that.
Speaker 1: You said some things that stuck with me that were
Speaker 1: very profound that I had never heard before, and things
Speaker 1: that some things I had heard before, but hearing them
Speaker 1: from you, it was so much more simple and it
Speaker 1: made more sense. So I'll just give you the report.
Speaker 1: So last week after Wisconsin, when we all left and
Speaker 1: went our separate ways, I went home for one day
Speaker 1: and then I turned around and I had a six
Speaker 1: hour drive back to them in Rome Institute. I was
Speaker 1: there for like two days doing some things with them,
Speaker 1: and I stayed up really late both nights in a row,
Speaker 1: like two am, hanging out with people, getting up at
Speaker 1: like seven the next day.
Speaker 4: Both days. I was exhausted.
Speaker 1: After being in Wisconsin all this travel for two weeks,
Speaker 1: I was exhausted. So on the last day of being
Speaker 1: at Monroe, I had a six hour drive home. Right
Speaker 1: halfway through the drive, I was so tired. I literally
Speaker 1: was fighting falling asleep. And I was like blasting heavy
Speaker 1: metal music because I just like heavy metal music. That's
Speaker 1: just naturally what I like, and it stimulates me when
Speaker 1: I'm driving, and I was blasting. I'm just like fighting
Speaker 1: to stay awake. I'm desperate to stay awake. I was
Speaker 1: so tired and I had like three hours left.
Speaker 4: I was miserable. And it came to me. Dan said, if.
Speaker 1: You want energy, Yeah, I'm telling on you what you said.
Speaker 1: Dan said, if you want energy, take a big inhale,
Speaker 1: short exhale, big inhale, short exhal and vice versa. And
Speaker 1: I started doing this, and I started doing this, and
Speaker 1: I started doing the big inhale and forcing it out,
Speaker 1: big inhal forcing it out.
Speaker 4: And I'm not kidding you.
Speaker 1: I was just like wide awake. For the rest of
Speaker 1: the three hour drive. I felt alert. I felt like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this worked, This really worked, you know,
Speaker 1: and it like it kind of shifted my thinking because
Speaker 1: I'm a person who loves caffeine, who loves energy drinks,
Speaker 1: who loves coffee, and I was at that point where
Speaker 1: I was drinking so much and it wasn't working, and
Speaker 1: I was at that point of no return to where
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, I could have all the caffeine
Speaker 1: in the world, it wouldn't work. Breathe for a minute,
Speaker 1: and I was just energized, and that was profound for me.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it's it's why it's taught and practice
Speaker 3: in the first responder world and special forces and military
Speaker 3: and Navy seals. I mean, and there's a great principle
Speaker 3: in the in the Navy Seal community, special forces community
Speaker 3: that says, when you'd think you have no more juice
Speaker 3: left in your battery, you still have forty percent. You
Speaker 3: just haven't learned how to tap that. And most people,
Speaker 3: unless they're forced to push to, they never discover that
Speaker 3: what they think is empty isn't empty at all. There's
Speaker 3: still a lot of bad a lot of juice in
Speaker 3: your battery. You just got to learn how to access it.
Speaker 3: And then it comes down to generating energy, which is
Speaker 3: what breathing is all about. That's we're getting energy from
Speaker 3: the breath all the time. The problem is, most people's
Speaker 3: breathing is like the pilot light in an oven. It'll
Speaker 3: keep you alive, but you can't cook anything with it,
Speaker 3: and so got to you gotta sort of take over
Speaker 3: from the autopilot and then do some breathing to ramp
Speaker 3: up or calm down or whatever's required. And each time
Speaker 3: you do that, you're training your breathing system and pretty
Speaker 3: soon it starts will really work better on its own.
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Speaker 3: I mean, I don't even I I every time I
Speaker 3: used to become tents get you know, a little tight
Speaker 3: tense coming I would deliberately take a couple of breaths
Speaker 3: shake it off. And I train that so often now
Speaker 3: that if I start the if tension builds up in
Speaker 3: my body, I don't even notice it, but my breath
Speaker 3: gets triggered automatically, and I notice this breath and it
Speaker 3: just vented that tension that was building up. I wasn't
Speaker 3: even aware of it yet. But the breathing is like
Speaker 3: the canary in the coal mine. Your breath is the
Speaker 3: first thing to go out of balance when anything else
Speaker 3: in your system goes out of balance. So the more
Speaker 3: intimate connection you have with your breath, you can stay
Speaker 3: ahead of a lot of things.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Dan, you're obviously so knowledgeable, and it's really fascinating to
Speaker 5: hear everything that you've picked up. I'm curious, when did
Speaker 5: you realize that breathing was such a profound and powerful thing,
Speaker 5: Because a lot of people may not think about it.
Speaker 4: But I'm curious.
Speaker 3: You know, I've had so many moments through my life
Speaker 3: that just were meant to reinforce that, to make it
Speaker 3: clear what my mission is. I mean, I started in
Speaker 3: Catholic school in kindergarten and on Fridays, the priest, the
Speaker 3: monsignor would visit all the classrooms, and the first day
Speaker 3: he came, he talked about the Book of Genesis and
Speaker 3: how God formed the body of man, took the dust
Speaker 3: of the earth, and then breathed into man the nostrils,
Speaker 3: the breath of life. I mean, that just lit something
Speaker 3: up in me. I have vague memories of it, but
Speaker 3: I knew it was like, why isn't everybody excited? Think
Speaker 3: about that when we breathed, God is breathing into us.
Speaker 3: Why isn't everybody jumping up and down right now? And
Speaker 3: I think I got a little too animated. I have
Speaker 3: vague memories, but I remember the priest pushing my shoulders down,
Speaker 3: trying to sit me in my chair, and the nun
Speaker 3: was tapping me on my head trying to calm me down.
Speaker 3: I guess I got too animated, but it lit. It
Speaker 3: was a spark. And then I became the kid who was,
Speaker 3: you know, organizing breath holding competitions in the schoolyard and
Speaker 3: you know, hyperventilating and squeezing each other until we passed us.
Speaker 3: I was just obsessed with the breathing and I had
Speaker 3: I can't tell you how many times I got the
Speaker 3: wind knocked out of me, and sports and fights and
Speaker 3: falling off a bicycle, climbing a fence, whatever I mean,
Speaker 3: and near drowning experiences. I've had a number of near
Speaker 3: drowning experiences and the last one I had to be resuscitated.
Speaker 3: And my first job was as an X ray technician,
Speaker 3: and a very easy One of the easiest X rays
Speaker 3: is the chest X ray. So I was getting all
Speaker 3: the chest X rays as the newbie. And when you
Speaker 3: take a chest X ray, you tell the person taking
Speaker 3: a deep breath hold it, and then you click their picture.
Speaker 3: And so I had to watch people carefully because if
Speaker 3: they were breathing, the X ray would come out blurry.
Speaker 3: So as I gave everyone those same instructions, and a
Speaker 3: couple of thousand people over two years, I watched them
Speaker 3: take a breath and hold it, and everybody did something different,
Speaker 3: the muscles, they used, the expression on their face, how
Speaker 3: they coordinated their breathing. And I started to see that
Speaker 3: everyone's personality is reflected in their breathing pattern, and their
Speaker 3: relationship to life and their relationship to their body is
Speaker 3: being expressed in their relationship to the breath. And then
Speaker 3: I learned CPR as an X ray technician. I took
Speaker 3: a weekend CPR course cardiopulmonary Resuscitation. I was so surprised
Speaker 3: to show up and there was no one else from
Speaker 3: the X ray department taking this course, and I thought,
Speaker 3: doesn't everybody want to learn this? And two weeks later
Speaker 3: I was with a portable X ray machine up in
Speaker 3: the intensive care ward and the guy I came to
Speaker 3: do a chest X ray on he died while I
Speaker 3: was in the room. His heart snupped, he flatlined, that
Speaker 3: beat beat went deep, and so there I was the
Speaker 3: only one in the room, so my training kicked in.
Speaker 3: I remember from the class a couple of weeks earlier.
Speaker 3: I pumped his chest. At the time it was five compressions,
Speaker 3: one breath, five compressions, and then I blew into him
Speaker 3: and he blinked and woke up. I mean, a freaking miracle.
Speaker 3: The guy was clinically dead, fixed, dilated pupils, no pulse,
Speaker 3: no breathing, look dead ashen gray. And I blow into
Speaker 3: him and he wakes up and blinks. I mean, I
Speaker 3: was vibrating for days. It was I mean, being part
Speaker 3: of a miracle, the miracle of breath, the miracle of life,
Speaker 3: and then when I went into the military, I got
Speaker 3: into deep sea diving and underwater rescue and special operations.
Speaker 3: So I was practicing breath control. I was practicing breath holding,
Speaker 3: and I learned that in order to manage your arousal,
Speaker 3: manage your mental state, your emotional state, you need to
Speaker 3: manage your breathing. When you get pushed and when the
Speaker 3: poop hits the fan, what can you do? You know,
Speaker 3: you don't grab your weapon, you don't grab the radio,
Speaker 3: you can't call your mother. You get a handle on
Speaker 3: your breath. And as soon as that happens, everything else
Speaker 3: comes into focus. Everything else lines up. And so I
Speaker 3: realized that, wow, you know, it's easier to keep up
Speaker 3: than it is to catch up. And so I just
Speaker 3: became a lot more conscious of my breathing. And because
Speaker 3: I was then training emergency rescue people, I was training
Speaker 3: special operations and submarine escape people and underwater salvage and
Speaker 3: everything that, and I was very often I would be
Speaker 3: attached to a team and I didn't know these guys.
Speaker 3: I was like the pro from Dover that they just
Speaker 3: flew in to take part in the mission. I had
Speaker 3: demolition skills and I had surgery skills so I could
Speaker 3: blow people up and then I could sew them together again.
Speaker 3: And I had a lot of other training, and so
Speaker 3: I ended up on these special projects, and I was
Speaker 3: really concerned that, you know, if things really go squarely,
Speaker 3: how are these guys going to perform? Who do I
Speaker 3: have to worry about? Because I noticed being in enough
Speaker 3: emergencies that people fall into two categories. One of them,
Speaker 3: they're like a chicken with their head cut off, running
Speaker 3: around doing a whole bunch of useless stuff yelling a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of crazy things that isn't helping anybody, and
Speaker 3: that kind of person. I need to be a human
Speaker 3: straight jacket. I need to sit them down and shut
Speaker 3: them up. And then you have the other ones who
Speaker 3: just freeze, so they're like zombies and you know, hey,
Speaker 3: a trainer's coming, a trainer's come, and you wash the
Speaker 3: whole thing happen and go. They just had to move
Speaker 3: three inches well, and so I needed to know which
Speaker 3: of these who was gonna go off in which direction.
Speaker 3: I want to know ahead of time because one of
Speaker 3: them I need to kick them in the butt, give
Speaker 3: them something to do, slap them, shake them into moving,
Speaker 3: and the other one I need to wrestle and makes
Speaker 3: it still. So I discovered that when I pushed them
Speaker 3: to their limit with stress, and they would fall into
Speaker 3: one or two categories. They were either overbreathed, they hyperventilated,
Speaker 3: or they underbreathed, they held their breath. And sure enough,
Speaker 3: those overbreathers guess which ones they were. They were the
Speaker 3: ones running around crazy, and the people who hold their
Speaker 3: breath they were the ones who froze and didn't move.
Speaker 3: So I was applying what I learned by observing people's
Speaker 3: breathing patterns, especially under stress, how they're going to perform
Speaker 3: and which way they're going to go out of balance,
Speaker 3: and I could keep them from going into dysfunction. I
Speaker 3: was training guys underwater. We had a radio on the surface.
Speaker 3: We're watching them, and I could tell them, hey, slow
Speaker 3: your breathing down, or hey, take a few breaths. You know,
Speaker 3: you could follow breath to breath and know which way
Speaker 3: they get out of balance. And that saved my life,
Speaker 3: saved a lot of other people's lives. And it goes
Speaker 3: deeper than that, because every emotional state, every psychological state,
Speaker 3: every physiological chemical state has a car corresponding breathing pattern.
Speaker 3: A very specific breathing quality. And we know that when
Speaker 3: you're angry and upset and afraid, you breathe differently when
Speaker 3: you're peaceful and calm and relax Anybody can see the difference.
Speaker 3: And when your state changes, your breathing pattern changes. And
Speaker 3: so the magic, the power of breath work is it's
Speaker 3: a two way street. By changing my breathing pattern, I
Speaker 3: can change my state. And so that's and there were
Speaker 3: breathing patterns associated with very high ecstatic spiritual states, and
Speaker 3: there are breathing patterns and breathing qualities that are associated
Speaker 3: with sublime and profoundly peaceful states. And so by getting
Speaker 3: a handle on your breathing, you get a handle on
Speaker 3: everything else.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 5: So it's always been a part of your life ever
Speaker 5: since you were little, and then in every step along
Speaker 5: the way, it's like the breath was always intimately involved
Speaker 5: in whatever you were doing.
Speaker 3: Spirit of breath grabbed me by the scruff of my
Speaker 3: neck and just kept sticking my nose in the breathing
Speaker 3: no matter whenever I tried to get into something else,
Speaker 3: my life just turned me back to the breath.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wow, Yeah, that's amazing. There were really a pretty high
Speaker 1: number of things that you said when we were together
Speaker 1: last weekend that stuck with me, and several things that
Speaker 1: raised alarms to me that showed me, okay, this is
Speaker 1: this is like you you swim in these waters and
Speaker 1: you're very comfortable here. And when we were having these
Speaker 1: you know, this this private session and you were guiding us.
Speaker 1: First of all, Oh my god, that was an hour
Speaker 1: and a half. You know, I've been sitting here going
Speaker 1: through this training of how to like prepare people to
Speaker 1: do guided meditations, you know, on a headset, and here
Speaker 1: you are, Yeah, sure, let's do a private session.
Speaker 4: Where do you want to go.
Speaker 1: Let's sit here, great, let's just get comfortable. And then
Speaker 1: you know, you just guided us through this amazing experience
Speaker 1: off the cuff, and it was it was just like
Speaker 1: it was so profound. And there were some things you
Speaker 1: said during that, like, you know, there was one moment
Speaker 1: when I think you noticed that my dad's eyes were
Speaker 1: being really active.
Speaker 4: Do you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 1: And you said, for those of us that see things
Speaker 1: that others cannot see, we must relax our forehead muscles,
Speaker 1: and you rubbed your hand on his forehead and you
Speaker 1: made him relax his head. But the thing is in
Speaker 1: that moment, but none of us in the room knew,
Speaker 1: was that my dad was out of body seeing you
Speaker 1: from the other side of the room, watching you walk
Speaker 1: over to him and touch his forehead.
Speaker 4: And that whole.
Speaker 1: Experience, to me was so profoundly spiritual that it in
Speaker 1: the time that that night happened. And since knowing that
Speaker 1: we were going to do this interview, my head has
Speaker 1: been spinning with questions, what other kinds of things have
Speaker 1: you seen? You know, having taught three hundred thousand plus people,
Speaker 1: this is probably Oh, yeah, that happened last Tuesday.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, It's very rare that things come up in
Speaker 3: a session that haven't come up in other people. Right,
Speaker 3: but you know you have you have extreme versions of them,
Speaker 3: examples of them, I can if I you know, I
Speaker 3: have so many miracle stories connected to the breath and
Speaker 3: just to be there present to witness them and maybe
Speaker 3: even was part of having the miracle happen. You know,
Speaker 3: I didn't cause it, but I was part of the
Speaker 3: mix that the perfect storm that was required, Right, I
Speaker 3: did my little part. But most of the time, it's
Speaker 3: just watching the power of the breath do its work.
Speaker 3: When people open and relax and allow it to take over.
Speaker 3: We're so accustomed to being in control, you know. Being
Speaker 3: traumatized and hurt, we close off, we tighten up, we withdraw,
Speaker 3: and all of that separates us from life. It separates
Speaker 3: us from the source. And so breathing is a way
Speaker 3: to open our heart if it's been hurt, and open
Speaker 3: our mind if you're stuck in a box, and open
Speaker 3: and relax the body if it's caught in illness, diseases programs.
Speaker 3: So breathing affects every level mechanical, structural, heart rate. You
Speaker 3: control your heart by controlling your breathing, control your blood pressure,
Speaker 3: you control your focus. That's why in the East Pranayama,
Speaker 3: which is the Hindu science of breath, it was developed
Speaker 3: as a way to regulate the mind. So the ancient
Speaker 3: Yogis realized that a chaotic wild mind is connected to
Speaker 3: chaotic wild breathing. And as soon as you control your breathing,
Speaker 3: something starts to shift in your mind and your brain activity.
Speaker 3: And so the original purpose of controlling breathing was to
Speaker 3: regulate the mind. So it has a direct effect. And
Speaker 3: now the science is unarguable because when you are breathing
Speaker 3: you're playing with carbon dioxide, for example, and carbon dioxide
Speaker 3: is a volatile acid, so it plays a key role
Speaker 3: in the pH balance of your body acid base balance.
Speaker 3: So if you hyperventilate, for example, and you blow off
Speaker 3: carbon dioxide and you reduce the amount of carbon dioxide
Speaker 3: in your cellular tissues in your blood, all of the
Speaker 3: microvessels constrict. And that includes little microvessels that feed the
Speaker 3: brain and get oxygen and nutrients to the brain. It
Speaker 3: includes bronchio vessels like people who have asthma and their
Speaker 3: bronchio vessels spasm and they have to take a steroid
Speaker 3: to dilate those bronchio vessels. Well, carbon dioxide will do that.
Speaker 3: If you can tolerate the CO two level rising in
Speaker 3: your body, this carbon dioxide is going to dilate do
Speaker 3: all the work of those steroids, those dangerous steroids that
Speaker 3: people use with asthmin inhalis. The carbon dioxide will do that.
Speaker 3: But the problem is people can't cope with they can't
Speaker 3: tolerate the symptoms of air hunger. And that's a basic
Speaker 3: practice to get comfortable with the symptoms of air hunger.
Speaker 3: So you can gradually get used to higher levels of
Speaker 3: CO two peak levels of CO two in exhaled air
Speaker 3: should be around you know, five percent thirty forty millimeters
Speaker 3: of mercury. For most people it's below four percent. There's
Speaker 3: four percent, and it's way down twenty millimeters of mercury.
Speaker 3: And that's responsible for all kinds of cognitive deficits. It
Speaker 3: sets us up to be susceptible to all kinds of
Speaker 3: illnesses that are based on needing that pure balance of
Speaker 3: acid and base. And so if you're unconncious breathing patterns
Speaker 3: are upsetting your chemistry, then you can expect a whole
Speaker 3: lot of reactions chain reaction from that, and as soon
Speaker 3: as you get your breathing back in order, you kind
Speaker 3: of reset everything. But no one is trained to breathe,
Speaker 3: and most people don't give their breathing any attention until
Speaker 3: and unless they have a problem with it. But if
Speaker 3: you work in high stakes life and death situations, you're
Speaker 3: trained to breathe first respond to special for USUS you know,
Speaker 3: seal teams, you name it, corporate executives. You need to
Speaker 3: command a room, you get important presentations. You know, artists,
Speaker 3: musical performers, psychotherapists who need to stay grounded and not
Speaker 3: take on the energy of other people. Everybody you know
Speaker 3: needs breathing. We all have our high stakes experiences, we
Speaker 3: all have our day to day stresses. It might not
Speaker 3: be at the level of some of these extreme jobs
Speaker 3: and populations, but don't tell me what's big in my life.
Speaker 3: You know. The next important conversation I have with my
Speaker 3: teenage child is everything. And I want to be in
Speaker 3: a place where I'm open and receptive and calm so
Speaker 3: I can communicate and not be reacting emotionally. And that's
Speaker 3: where breathing comes in handy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would love to know any sort of tips
Speaker 1: for like breathing, for grounding, for not taking on other
Speaker 1: people's energy, that would be helpful for me.
Speaker 3: You know, don't think in terms of trying to protect
Speaker 3: yourself from other people's energy. Get really good at having
Speaker 3: it passed through without making any noise or triggering any
Speaker 3: reactions in your system. Okay, So get good at just
Speaker 3: And that's what happens with every breath you take it in,
Speaker 3: It goes right back out. Hah, No problem. Now if
Speaker 3: you take it in and it starts bumping into things
Speaker 3: and poking on things and things are attached to it
Speaker 3: or resist that, then now you're creating a complex, and
Speaker 3: now you're going to do something about it. I'm a
Speaker 3: big believer in belief systems. Right if I believe I'm
Speaker 3: surrounded by evil monsters who are going to eat me
Speaker 3: as soon as I'm my guard is down, that's the
Speaker 3: kind of world I'm going to live in. I create
Speaker 3: my reality, and if I have a trust in the
Speaker 3: safety of the universe and the influences around me are loving,
Speaker 3: I'm going to be more relaxed, and I'm going to
Speaker 3: create a different reality for myself based on my beliefs.
Speaker 3: You know, thoughts become things, and we have to pay attention.
Speaker 3: You know, I have a moral obligation because I know
Speaker 3: that the mind gets its creative power from the breath.
Speaker 3: And if I help somebody increase the power of their breath,
Speaker 3: they become more creative. If they're negative, they're going to
Speaker 3: become more negative. If they're violent, they're going to become
Speaker 3: more violent. And so I don't want to sport that.
Speaker 3: So along with breath work, we're doing hard work. We're
Speaker 3: doing consciousness work where we're working on our beliefs, We're
Speaker 3: working on our attitudes, our emotions, and it has to
Speaker 3: go hand in hand with breath work. The universe wouldn't
Speaker 3: give us power unless we earned it, unless it's safe
Speaker 3: with us. And so you know, I breathing is a
Speaker 3: lot more than breathing, but it's the source and the
Speaker 3: center in my life for everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now I'm resonating with everything you're saying. I completely agree.
Speaker 5: I'm curious for those people that you mentioned, some people
Speaker 5: are just kind of unconsciously or subconsciously like breath starved
Speaker 5: or they're they're unconsciously just not breathing, They're they're holding
Speaker 5: their breath naturally. Well, what is the first step to
Speaker 5: like retraining that sort of thing?
Speaker 4: I can relate to that.
Speaker 5: I just oh, yeah, yeah, I'm curious.
Speaker 3: It's a universal thing. I mean, everybody's breathing all the time,
Speaker 3: but most people are only aware of it percent two
Speaker 3: percent five percent of the time, and they're only aware
Speaker 3: of it if and when it causes a problem. Otherwise
Speaker 3: they're oblivious to it. And so we're you know, we're
Speaker 3: not taught breathing in school. We're not unless you had
Speaker 3: some training meditation, martial arts, something musical performing where you
Speaker 3: actually started to do some kind of breathing training. But
Speaker 3: even then a lot of people it stays locked in
Speaker 3: that particular arena. They don't take it into their everyday life.
Speaker 3: They only apply it in those areas where they were
Speaker 3: trained to apply it. So everybody's a thousand times a
Speaker 3: day people hold their breath. Putting a key in the door,
Speaker 3: and you hold your breath for a moment, trying to
Speaker 3: remember something, and you hold your breath. You're getting up
Speaker 3: from a chair and you hold your breath, and so
Speaker 3: that sends an emergency signal to the brain, because breath
Speaker 3: holding is an emergency signal. You know, imagine an antelope
Speaker 3: chomping on the grass and the Serengetti planes and there's
Speaker 3: a noise in the bushes. You think it's crump rump.
Speaker 3: That holding the breath is an emergency reaction. And so
Speaker 3: people watch the news and TV, and they read the
Speaker 3: newspaper and they don't realize that they're holding their breath
Speaker 3: every time they get a little piece of bad news,
Speaker 3: or unconsciously, they've learned to hold their breath in order
Speaker 3: to stop themselves from laughing or crying a little child.
Speaker 3: If you tell them sit still, be quiet, they got
Speaker 3: so much energy. The only way to manage that energy
Speaker 3: is to manage their breath. And if you want to
Speaker 3: hide and be invisible, you hold your breath. You don't
Speaker 3: have to teach that antelo open the wild. If you
Speaker 3: want to be invisible, stop breathing, because you're giving away
Speaker 3: your presence. And a little two three year old girl
Speaker 3: hiding behind a couch playing hide and seek, she's holding
Speaker 3: her breath. Nobody had to teach her of that. And
Speaker 3: if you're a kid in the back row of the
Speaker 3: school and the teacher's looking for somebody to ask a
Speaker 3: question about the homework and you didn't do it, you're
Speaker 3: back there hoping you can be invisible, and you're going
Speaker 3: to automatically be holding your breath. And if some toxic
Speaker 3: force it's going to come down onto you, it's an
Speaker 3: instinct too. You take a breath and you hold your breath,
Speaker 3: and you fight to resist that toxic force, right, and
Speaker 3: if something wants to come out of you, that's you know,
Speaker 3: try not to laugh. How do you stop yourself from laughing?
Speaker 3: You have to hold your breath. How do you stop
Speaker 3: yourself from crying? You've got to control your breath. So
Speaker 3: we don't realize that we've been engaging in breathing behaviors
Speaker 3: our whole life, and those breathing behaviors, some of them
Speaker 3: are functional and useful, and some of them disturb our chemistry,
Speaker 3: disturb our performance, disturb everything else about us. So, if
Speaker 3: you haven't consciously practiced breathing, the odds are pretty damn
Speaker 3: good that your unconscious breathing habits could use some upgrading,
Speaker 3: some up leveling, some improving, because when you don't have
Speaker 3: time to think, it's your habits that kick in, it's
Speaker 3: your training that kicks in, and that goes along with breathing.
Speaker 3: So unless you've actually practiced breathing and distress so that
Speaker 3: when stress comes you automatically breathe in a better way,
Speaker 3: the odds are pretty good that you're going to launch
Speaker 3: into dysfunctional breathing and you're going to make If it's anxiety,
Speaker 3: for example, if you start to feel anxious, the way
Speaker 3: that you breathe when you're anxious can actually make the
Speaker 3: anxiety worse, and then you work yourself into an all
Speaker 3: out panic attack. Yeah, and so become that's where everybody
Speaker 3: needs to start. You need to just become conscious, aware
Speaker 3: of your breathing when you're stuck in traffic How are
Speaker 3: you breathing when you're listening to music and enjoying it?
Speaker 3: How are you breathing when you're stuck on a math
Speaker 3: problem trying to solve. How are you breathing when someone
Speaker 3: is insulting you? How are you breathing when someone is
Speaker 3: praising you? How are you breathing when you're making love?
Speaker 3: How are you breathing? Like you know, and I work
Speaker 3: with people who specialize in the sports world, how are
Speaker 3: you breathing during that stroke, during that punch, during that grab?
Speaker 3: You know, for certain moments, breathing is everything. And unless
Speaker 3: you're really have been starting to notice your own breathing happens,
Speaker 3: that's where it starts. You have to become aware. You
Speaker 3: get up in the morning. You don't have to breathe
Speaker 3: in any special way. Just tune into your breathing like
Speaker 3: you're meeting a friend who's with you all the time.
Speaker 3: How is my breath this morning? Is it easy? Is
Speaker 3: it opens? It flowing? You know, I don't feel like breathing?
Speaker 3: Am I full of energy? And just start to develop
Speaker 3: this habit to just notice how you're breathing, And that
Speaker 3: starts the whole journey because breath awareness leads to the
Speaker 3: awareness of habits and patterns, the words that you choose,
Speaker 3: the reactions, your emotions, your posture, your behavior. The more
Speaker 3: conscious you become of your breathing, the more conscious you
Speaker 3: become of everything. The more aware you are of your breath,
Speaker 3: the more aware you are period. And so breath awareness
Speaker 3: starts the door, opens the door, and then from there
Speaker 3: we can start practicing conscious breathing. So breath awareness, you
Speaker 3: don't even do the breathing. It's your body's breathing itself.
Speaker 3: In fact, don't do it. Just tune into it, observe it,
Speaker 3: feel it, watch it, notice it, sense it. And it's
Speaker 3: just you're forming a relationship. You're becoming more aware of
Speaker 3: what's happening inside of you, and that's going to lead
Speaker 3: to awareness of a lot of other things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's very profound.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed my experience with that second workshop that
Speaker 1: you did that I was able to attend, and and
Speaker 1: that very short span which was about two hours. It
Speaker 1: was a great workshop, a lot of information, but in
Speaker 1: the grand scheme of life, in that little two hour time,
Speaker 1: I learned so much that I'm you know, taken with me.
Speaker 4: And and the.
Speaker 1: Thing about like the wheel of breathing, you know, the
Speaker 1: attention on the nose and then the bridge of the nose,
Speaker 1: and then you know through the throat.
Speaker 4: All of that exercise.
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about that, like expanding my lungs and
Speaker 1: then my diaphragm and becoming so aware of this. And
Speaker 1: then in our private session you expanded on that even
Speaker 1: deeper in our in our actual guided session, and you
Speaker 1: were telling us, you know, breathe them through your pores,
Speaker 1: breathe them through your breathe in with your aura.
Speaker 4: And I was like, what you can.
Speaker 3: We're not just breathing air, We're breathing energy. We're breathing light.
Speaker 3: That's the real art in breath work. One of my
Speaker 3: teachers said, the real art is the merging of the
Speaker 3: outer breath, which is air, and merging that with the
Speaker 3: inner breath, which is spirit. And in the ancient traditions
Speaker 3: and the Jewish tradition have this rua the breath within
Speaker 3: the breath, and in the East they talk about prana
Speaker 3: and chi and chi that's the energy in the breath.
Speaker 3: Anybody can huff and puff and move a lot of air.
Speaker 3: Can you begin to breathe energy and direct energy and
Speaker 3: channel energy and train your system to tolerate more energy,
Speaker 3: receive more energy, contain more energy, and that's where the
Speaker 3: good stuff really starts to show up.
Speaker 4: That's a great way to put it. So what's the
Speaker 4: key then, right?
Speaker 1: So you said anybody can huff and puff, So it's
Speaker 1: the key properly huffing and puffing, but while also increasing
Speaker 1: that awareness of the chie or the prana or the
Speaker 1: spiritual energy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the awareness of the cheek kind of emerges by itself.
Speaker 3: It just you start just noticing it more. So if
Speaker 3: you want to look for the hack, what's the what's
Speaker 3: the real you know, what's the main thing that we
Speaker 3: want to master. It's combining powerful breathing with relaxation. And
Speaker 3: when most people breathe in a powerful way, they don't relax,
Speaker 3: and when they relax, they don't breathe. And so there
Speaker 3: it is. How do you combine powerful breathing with complete relaxation.
Speaker 3: That's a skull that's nobody can teach it. Anyone can
Speaker 3: learn it. You can't teach it, but you can learn it.
Speaker 3: And so that's you want a shortcut. You could start
Speaker 3: by breathing in a real powerful way and then as
Speaker 3: a practice, as a discipline, as a as a process,
Speaker 3: start relaxing more and more and more, relax whatever you
Speaker 3: don't need to to allow that breath to remain powerful.
Speaker 3: So you get the powerful breath going and you relax
Speaker 3: more and more and more without losing the power of
Speaker 3: the breath. And the other way is you relax completely
Speaker 3: and then you start turning up the power of the
Speaker 3: breath without losing your relaxation. And until then maybe you
Speaker 3: can go back and forth. You know, active inhale, passive
Speaker 3: exhale or active exhale s sh and reflexive inhale. So
Speaker 3: you know, you start you get a play. It's about
Speaker 3: playing with your breath. But there's a shortcut for you.
Speaker 3: And when those two things, when peace and power mix,
Speaker 3: when energy and relaxation blend, that's the flow, that's the zone,
Speaker 3: that's the flow state. That's when potential is unlocked. It's
Speaker 3: like I get that lesson from a good Navy seal friend,
Speaker 3: commander of mine, Navy seal commander who said, you know
Speaker 3: the control the power is about control, and the piece
Speaker 3: is about relaxation. And that combination of peace and power
Speaker 3: makes you the most dangerous guy on the battlefield. That
Speaker 3: combination of energy and relaxation. That's what opens the doors
Speaker 3: of our perception. That's what that's when our heart opens.
Speaker 3: It's the combination. So I live in Mexico, down in
Speaker 3: the Baja, and actually every in January we have my
Speaker 3: twentieth annual breathing gathering, a Cabo breakfast. We call it
Speaker 3: January twenty third to the twenty ninth, and I invite
Speaker 3: some of my favorite breath workers from around the world,
Speaker 3: so I don't have to do all the work. I
Speaker 3: choose and I let other people and I'm catching up
Speaker 3: with what they've been doing anyway. So I live in
Speaker 3: Mexico in the Baja, and it's just below the Tropic
Speaker 3: of Cancer. Our property is about one hundred yards below
Speaker 3: the Tropic of Cancer. So we're in the tropics, but
Speaker 3: it's arid tropics, dry tropics, and the soil there is
Speaker 3: very hard packed, mineral rich, but hard packed soil, and
Speaker 3: so when it rains, the water just washes along the
Speaker 3: surface and it tries to find the ocean. It doesn't penetrate.
Speaker 3: But if you loosen the soil, if you soften the soil,
Speaker 3: if you turn the soil, then when it rains, the
Speaker 3: soil drinks up the water. So this is exactly the
Speaker 3: phenomenon with breathing. You breathe in a powerful way. Now
Speaker 3: you're pulling a lot of energy. But if you don't relax,
Speaker 3: that energy cannot penetrate you, it can't do its work.
Speaker 3: It can't do the healing, the transformation of work, or
Speaker 3: the balancing or purging or whatever's required. So it's that
Speaker 3: combination of breathing and relaxing, and so we build that
Speaker 3: into I build it into our first core technique getting
Speaker 3: people in the game and getting moving. You want to
Speaker 3: be sure that what they're practicing, they're going to get
Speaker 3: the most bang out of their buck, right, and so
Speaker 3: to get the most bang out of their buck, you
Speaker 3: need to have three qualities. You need to unlock what
Speaker 3: I call my formula for transformation. Every time I've ever
Speaker 3: seen an experience someone go through a deep, powerful healing,
Speaker 3: a huge transformation, a quantum leap in awakening, some powerful
Speaker 3: growth experience or healing experience, I noticed there were three
Speaker 3: things at play. There was consciousness awareness. Now you could
Speaker 3: go for surgery, somebody could you're totally unconscious and they
Speaker 3: sew you up and fix it. You didn't have any
Speaker 3: part in your own healing. So being awake is like
Speaker 3: the first rule in life, you know, like wake up, Okay,
Speaker 3: let's be conscious. Let's be aware. That's like primary. The
Speaker 3: second thing is you're going to be able to let go.
Speaker 3: You got you know, most problems that we're fighting with,
Speaker 3: we don't need to fight with them. You can just
Speaker 3: let them go. And the third is you've got to
Speaker 3: be able to generate energy with your breath. So I
Speaker 3: get people very early on practicing breathing that makes them
Speaker 3: more conscious, helps them to relax more, and gives them
Speaker 3: the ability to generate energy. And then after that they
Speaker 3: don't need me. You know, you're connecting to the energy
Speaker 3: that built your body in the womb. You're connecting to
Speaker 3: the energy that comes direct from source, from the creator.
Speaker 3: You don't need a middleman. And so when you use
Speaker 3: the breath to awaken to your own spirit, Hey, priests
Speaker 3: and politicians and doctors, they don't play such a dominant
Speaker 3: role in your life because you're connected to something bigger,
Speaker 3: something deeper, and you're guided by something deeper.
Speaker 1: I love that I have to comment on something that
Speaker 1: was so funny. My wife and my sister and I
Speaker 1: were sitting there cackling in the crowd at that Sunday
Speaker 1: panel that you participated in with the rest of the
Speaker 1: group at the conference, and let's just paint a picture, okay.
Speaker 1: So because because Nick and Alex weren't there, they don't
Speaker 1: they don't know this, the listeners don't know this. But
Speaker 1: we were pretty much at a UFO thing, right, And
Speaker 1: I'm so curious to know, Like, there's so many questions
Speaker 1: running through my mind. There was there's so many conditions
Speaker 1: present where I may not have been able to meet you.
Speaker 1: You could have looked at that and been like, uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm not into UFOs, but for some
Speaker 1: grand reason.
Speaker 4: You said, hey, I'll do it. And what happened was.
Speaker 1: So funny, guys, because on the last day there's a
Speaker 1: panel of people and they're all being asked these questions
Speaker 1: about UFOs, right, and then then comes around and he
Speaker 1: gets the question and every time he's like just talks
Speaker 1: about breathing, and the host, God bless him, was like, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm asking you about UFOs. He's just like, would crack
Speaker 1: a joke at him. Everybody in the crowd erupts in
Speaker 1: the laughter. You didn't you know you're just doing your thing.
Speaker 1: You're just talking about your breathing. You didn't care about
Speaker 1: the program. And I thought that was amazing. I thought
Speaker 1: that was so funny. You're just like, hey, don't tell
Speaker 1: me how to breathe. Everyone in the room just erupted
Speaker 1: into laughter.
Speaker 4: It was so funny, dude.
Speaker 3: But you know, Tony Robbins one of my favorite I'm
Speaker 3: here in West Palm Beach. We've been having four am
Speaker 3: meetings because that's the only time on his calendar that
Speaker 3: he's even open, and so we've been chatting at four
Speaker 3: am about breathing. Yeah, because he's working twenty hours a
Speaker 3: day or whatever, sixteen eighteen. And you know, one of
Speaker 3: the things I realized that people who've done a lot
Speaker 3: of work on themselves, they can make a little adjustment
Speaker 3: in something and they parlay that into a huge advantage.
Speaker 3: You know. So people have done a lot of work themselves,
Speaker 3: and I mean people who've like you know, been honest
Speaker 3: with themselves about their limitations about their programming, their negative thoughts,
Speaker 3: their illusions there. And you know, I have to admit
Speaker 3: that that uf go UFO conference that my my bullshit meeter,
Speaker 3: it was going off pretty regularly but mixed in with
Speaker 3: it was like very real, very genuine, unarguable, sincere experiences
Speaker 3: and so you know, you gotta I have to kind
Speaker 3: of I try to sort through, you know, stuff, and
Speaker 3: but I did leave with something really beautiful. It really
Speaker 3: helped me. And you know, I know, I look at
Speaker 3: you know, why why did I accept this inmitation? And
Speaker 3: why am I showing up when I'm showing up? I
Speaker 3: know that one of the main reasons was to meet
Speaker 3: your father and to meet your family. I had no
Speaker 3: doubt about that. And the other was that I was
Speaker 3: watching my internal reactions around these people, and and I
Speaker 3: realized the import and I've been practicing it everywhere since,
Speaker 3: is to be able to just listen without pushing back,
Speaker 3: To be able to even quietly in my own mind
Speaker 3: not pushing back. Not that I would come out and
Speaker 3: argue and stuff, that's another level of that, but just
Speaker 3: in my own watching my own space, my own fields,
Speaker 3: the ability just grew to be able to just really
Speaker 3: listen without automatically pushing back. That's that's man. One of
Speaker 3: the reasons I'm grateful that I was there because I
Speaker 3: had a lot of practice over that weekend.
Speaker 1: I just thought it was masterclass performance, like I just
Speaker 1: want to talk about what I want to talk about.
Speaker 4: Please.
Speaker 1: It was very funny, it was it was very graceful too,
Speaker 1: though you were very like it was.
Speaker 4: It was very tactful.
Speaker 1: But it was memorable because exactly the reason I even
Speaker 1: brought this up is because you said, when you become
Speaker 1: connected to that source through your breathing, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: things like politicians and you know whatever else you said,
Speaker 1: the news and all these the priests and all these
Speaker 1: things don't matter. Maybe a room full of three hundred
Speaker 1: people and a panel of interviewers, that's say, I'm just
Speaker 1: talking about breathing. I'm just doing my thing and enjoying
Speaker 1: my experience here.
Speaker 3: And you know, we these days, you don't know who
Speaker 3: to believe. You don't know who's telling the truth and
Speaker 3: who's not. You don't know who's right who's wrong. You
Speaker 3: watch the news, you don't know who's reporting it accurately
Speaker 3: or not. You can't tell who the good guys are
Speaker 3: who the bad guys are. And so more than ever,
Speaker 3: we need to connect to an inner knowing. We need
Speaker 3: to find our own compass and learn to trust our gut,
Speaker 3: our intuition. These little things that prompt us, and that's
Speaker 3: otherwise we're just getting blown around in the wind out there,
Speaker 3: pushed and pulled, and we could be all like lemmings,
Speaker 3: just heading off the edge of a cliff, you know,
Speaker 3: and everybody's that's what everybody's up to. So I've never
Speaker 3: fit in to the mainstream. But breathwork has become mainstream.
Speaker 3: My dream fifty years ago was they're going to be
Speaker 3: teaching breathing in schools and doctors are going to be
Speaker 3: approving it, and science will beautiful and that's all happening now.
Speaker 3: But now it's creating a new problem, at least for
Speaker 3: my being a kind of an elder in this movement.
Speaker 3: You know, there was a time when the problem was
Speaker 3: there just wasn't enough any information, good information about breathing,
Speaker 3: and I had to go to China, I had to
Speaker 3: go to India, I had to go to the source
Speaker 3: because there was you know, there's no there was lack
Speaker 3: of information. Now the problem is too much information or misinformation, right.
Speaker 3: You know, you got somebody who learns the whim Hoff
Speaker 3: technique in an hour and then a week later they're
Speaker 3: a TikTok influencer with a million followers and they don't
Speaker 3: know what the hell they're talking about, you know, And
Speaker 3: so a lot of the people in breath work, I
Speaker 3: don't want to it's my own fields. I can put
Speaker 3: them down. There was a time when I could say
Speaker 3: I've never met a breath worker that I didn't like. Ooh,
Speaker 3: that's starting to make me have to like work a
Speaker 3: little bit, because I'm finding some people are not, as
Speaker 3: the saying goes, compassionate for the cash in it. You know,
Speaker 3: they're not suited for this work, but they see the
Speaker 3: opportunity and they you know, they're put up on a
Speaker 3: guru pedestal, and so that's very tempting and very seductive,
Speaker 3: you know. And the higher you get and the more
Speaker 3: serious and sacred things get, the more you need to
Speaker 3: be curbing and taming those darker elements of ourselves. Otherwise
Speaker 3: we become dangerous to the world. And so we have
Speaker 3: to be growing our heart. We have to be getting
Speaker 3: more and more into love and compassion and tolerance and
Speaker 3: not wanting to dominate and control and overpower people or
Speaker 3: force them into things. And you know, when you know
Speaker 3: you're right, it's very tempting to do that.
Speaker 1: You brought me to a very natural point that I've
Speaker 1: been wanting to ask you because this is something I'm
Speaker 1: fascinated in and I think the listener would would thoroughly
Speaker 1: enjoy this as well. How did you find yourself studying
Speaker 1: with zen monks in China and yogis in India? Like,
Speaker 1: at what point in your life did that? How did
Speaker 1: you go from being like special operations in the navy
Speaker 1: to Okay, now I'm being whipped by a stick or
Speaker 1: with a stick by zen monks. You know, hone in
Speaker 1: my breathing.
Speaker 3: Because the biggest lessons and breakthroughs I had came in
Speaker 3: those life and death catastrophic situations. I drowned and I
Speaker 3: had to be resuscitated, and in that process, when I
Speaker 3: started breathing on my own again, the experience of breathing
Speaker 3: was completely in another level. Every breath was ecstatic. I
Speaker 3: was experiencing the breath from every cell in my body,
Speaker 3: and I recognize what a miracle it is. You know,
Speaker 3: you don't know what you got till they take it away,
Speaker 3: and then you realize how important it was. And so
Speaker 3: I just learned that the hard way. I discovered the
Speaker 3: ecstatic nature and the breath. But it was what brought
Speaker 3: me to it was very dangerous moments, life and death
Speaker 3: kind of situations. And so when I got out of
Speaker 3: the military, I wanted people to discover what I discovered,
Speaker 3: experience what I experienced. But by the way that I
Speaker 3: learned it, you're not going to get a lot of
Speaker 3: people who volunteer for that kind of stuff. So I
Speaker 3: was looking for another way, a school, a style approach,
Speaker 3: a tradition that I could see was connected to my
Speaker 3: experience and confirmed it or validated it. So that's what
Speaker 3: took me to India and China. It's what took me
Speaker 3: into the touchy feely movement the late sixties and the
Speaker 3: hippie movement. You know, if you can't be with the
Speaker 3: one you love, love the one you're with, and you know,
Speaker 3: and and the nonviolence vow of I was a practicing Buddhist.
Speaker 3: With the vow of nonviolence, I wouldn't step on an
Speaker 3: ant and so it was a lot of purification that
Speaker 3: was required. And some of that purification was forced on me,
Speaker 3: but I realized I couldn't force it on other people.
Speaker 3: So I had to find paths or traditions that resulted
Speaker 3: in that. And that's why I ended up in India.
Speaker 3: In China, they've been studying the breath for thousands of years.
Speaker 3: They've worked out some really good hacks and some really
Speaker 3: good processes and techniques, and we can sort of tweak them,
Speaker 3: shape them for our current modern times. And it's like prescription, here,
Speaker 3: play with this, try this. And so I it was
Speaker 3: my search for how do I communicate what you can't
Speaker 3: put any words to. You know, It's like there's a
Speaker 3: course called the Course of Miracles. I don't know if
Speaker 3: you've heard of course called the Course of Miracles. There's
Speaker 3: a beautiful quote in there that says, a universal theology
Speaker 3: is impossible, and that makes sense. You're never going to
Speaker 3: get Jews and Muslims and Christians and Catholics and Buddhists
Speaker 3: to all agree on a single theology.
Speaker 4: So we were talking about that last night.
Speaker 3: Actually, yeah, so a universal theology is impossible, but a
Speaker 3: universal experience is not only possible, it's necessary. And I'm
Speaker 3: convinced that breathing is that universal experience. And so I've
Speaker 3: been to seventy three countries, every religion, every race, every age,
Speaker 3: every job, every career, every you name it, and it's
Speaker 3: true that here's one of these universal principles applies to everybody.
Speaker 3: If you got a belly button, then if it worked
Speaker 3: for somebody else, it's a good chance it's going to
Speaker 3: work for you. And so I went to the East,
Speaker 3: to India. I practiced those things because in the first place,
Speaker 3: there was no other way to go. I mean, they
Speaker 3: don't teach it in schools, not a university course. You
Speaker 3: don't find breathing corners like on it where there's more
Speaker 3: CVS pharmacies. We should have breathing clinics where there was
Speaker 3: every pharmacy, but there wasn't. So I had no choice.
Speaker 3: I had to travel to the East and start hunting
Speaker 3: down people who really embodied a tradition. And they didn't
Speaker 3: just read it in a book. Somebody just didn't tell
Speaker 3: it to them. They embodied it. They own that knowledge
Speaker 3: and from that you can catch it from people. You know,
Speaker 3: it's not what you say, it's not what you do,
Speaker 3: it's who you are. That's what gets communicated. That's what
Speaker 3: does the healing work. My presence, you know, presence is
Speaker 3: much more important than words are techniques, and so breathing
Speaker 3: that's that's we're working on the level of pure presence,
Speaker 3: pure being.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's profound.
Speaker 1: And also to put it into context, I mean, I
Speaker 1: seem to recall you saying, you know, you've been doing
Speaker 1: this for fifty years. I can't imagine, you know, fifty
Speaker 1: years ago just just like stomping the grounds of India
Speaker 1: and China and all these you know, seventy different countries
Speaker 1: trying to track down this knowledge. It's not like like
Speaker 1: you said, now, oh, I you know, I learned the
Speaker 1: whim Hoff breathing method an hour and now I'm an influencer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it wasn't like that. I mean, fifty years ago,
Speaker 1: it was a whole different world, and I'm I'm willing
Speaker 1: to bet a lot of this was probably really taboo
Speaker 1: and not very easy to track. So it's very admirable
Speaker 1: this this path that you've you've gone down, and it
Speaker 1: does remind me a little bit of my father in
Speaker 1: the sense that both of you had these kind of
Speaker 1: very profound experiences in your youth. I guess you know
Speaker 1: this now, but my dad was shot by a shotgun
Speaker 1: when he was.
Speaker 3: A Yeah, still got pellets in his body, right.
Speaker 4: He does, Yeah, he actually does.
Speaker 1: And hearing your story and your near death experiences, it
Speaker 1: reminds me of my father and I. And also, I mean,
Speaker 1: you guys are pretty close in age. You've got a
Speaker 1: couple of years on him, but you guys are close
Speaker 1: in age. So what I mean to say is you
Speaker 1: both have that that aura of lived wisdom that I
Speaker 1: find so valuable having a father who has, you know,
Speaker 1: been teaching me, because I'm pretty aware of things and
Speaker 1: I know that like as a child, just for example,
Speaker 1: you know, we've been doing this almost twenty years, this
Speaker 1: whole UFO thing. And as a teenager, my dad would
Speaker 1: tell me these things, you had to have positive thinking, son,
Speaker 1: You gotta you know, you you got to think about this,
Speaker 1: You got to think about that. And as a teenager,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't believe that, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: this is stupid.
Speaker 4: He doesn't know what he's talking about.
Speaker 1: And now I'm in my thirties and and I look
Speaker 1: back and I think there was so much wisdom that
Speaker 1: he knew what he was saying, And just like now
Speaker 1: in my age, I see the being behind his eyes
Speaker 1: as he tells me these things, and I know, now, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to dare to challenge his wisdom. How
Speaker 1: arrogant of me. You know, when I was a child,
Speaker 1: I believed that I knew. But now as I'm growing
Speaker 1: into adulthood, I'm like, okay, wow, I really really should listen.
Speaker 3: And I'll tell you if your father doesn't come off
Speaker 3: like he knows everything either, he's so open and he
Speaker 3: readily admitsed it, he doesn't really understand what's going on.
Speaker 3: And hey, a mystery in life is fine. But you know,
Speaker 3: even when we think we understand something, it's only it's
Speaker 3: only to the point of our current level of development.
Speaker 3: As soon as you grow, as soon as you mature,
Speaker 3: as soon as you evolve, you have a new understanding,
Speaker 3: a higher understanding. And then you thought, wow, I thought
Speaker 3: I understood it, but now I really do. And sure enough,
Speaker 3: growth happens and you go, wow, okay, there's no end
Speaker 3: to this. I'm not gonna I'm not going to crystallize
Speaker 3: anything as carved in stone because it seems like I'm
Speaker 3: getting deeper insights, I'm getting better understanding the more I grow.
Speaker 3: And if I lock onto a position and I dig
Speaker 3: my heels in, I just stop the whole process of
Speaker 3: true understanding and growth, because it evolves as we do.
Speaker 3: I mean, we used to think. Well, look in the Bible,
Speaker 3: they're talking about chariots a fire. Well now with some
Speaker 3: of the UFO site and they're going, hmmm, I wonder
Speaker 3: you know, So call it what you want. There is
Speaker 3: something happening out there. There's more to life than we realize,
Speaker 3: and that should be our focus to uncover and awaken
Speaker 3: to things that are surrounding us, all around us, feeling us,
Speaker 3: and we're oblivious to them. Wake up, you know. We
Speaker 3: know that when I look out at the world, I'm
Speaker 3: looking at a very narrow range of the whole electromagnetic spectrum.
Speaker 3: I'm missing more than i'm getting. My senses are actually
Speaker 3: limiting more of the reality then they are opening me too.
Speaker 3: And so that's why I'm a believer in the heart,
Speaker 3: and that's why I'm a believer in connecting with the energy.
Speaker 3: The energy that's in the stars, it's in the rocks,
Speaker 3: it's in the trees, it's in me, it's in you.
Speaker 3: It surrounds us, it infuses us. And if we can
Speaker 3: if we can connect with that energy, then we're going
Speaker 3: to have the support of the universe, and we're going
Speaker 3: to stop to see ourselves reflected in each other. I
Speaker 3: see myself and you, I see you and myself, and
Speaker 3: that's that's heart intelligence. And you know, it used to
Speaker 3: be if you wanted to survive in this world, you
Speaker 3: have to be fast and you have to be strong,
Speaker 3: and that's who survived. And then along came smart, and
Speaker 3: then if you were smart enough, you could over you know,
Speaker 3: you could beat out the fast and the strong. Smart
Speaker 3: trumps fast and strong. And but now some of the
Speaker 3: worst things that are being perpetrated on the planet are
Speaker 3: being done by some very smart people, intelligent iiqs. And
Speaker 3: so now and into the future, it's not who's strong,
Speaker 3: who's fast, who's smart, it's who's most conscious, right, who's
Speaker 3: as a wake that's where we should be focusing on
Speaker 3: raising our consciousness, expanding our consciousness, refining our consciousness. And
Speaker 3: that's what that's the direct result or benefit of breathing practices.
Speaker 3: That's where most of the benefit occurs in breath work
Speaker 3: is on the level of consciousness.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, that's that's so profound.
Speaker 1: You know, just being there that night when we did
Speaker 1: that private session my mother, you didn't you didn't know
Speaker 1: my mother before, right, but maybe you have a little
Speaker 1: more context after finishing the book tonight which you know,
Speaker 1: towards the end, when we're closing out, I'd love to
Speaker 1: like quickly get your thoughts on that, because we've kind
Speaker 1: of glanced past it. But if you really know my mother,
Speaker 1: you know that she's really not open to this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff and she was very closed off against this,
Speaker 1: and she's never done a meditation, she's never done anything
Speaker 1: extra normal.
Speaker 4: Let's just say that.
Speaker 1: But Dan, for whatever it's worth, I wanted you to
Speaker 1: hear this that night, because after you left, she told
Speaker 1: me this.
Speaker 4: She said, I.
Speaker 1: Knew that whatever he was going to guide us through,
Speaker 1: I just should not question it and I should just
Speaker 1: go with it. You were the first that she ever
Speaker 1: met and all, and we've met a lot of people,
Speaker 1: just like as I'm sure you have, you know, being
Speaker 1: out there doing your thing. We've met quite a lot
Speaker 1: of people. Not three hundred thousand, but maybe in thirty
Speaker 1: years maybe, but it's a lot. And she has never
Speaker 1: met anybody that she felt safe doing some sort of
Speaker 1: meditation or practice with or whatever. And when you saw her,
Speaker 1: she was streaming tears, she was kind of babbling, she
Speaker 1: didn't even know how to describe what was happening. And
Speaker 1: we were laughing and she's like, you guys are laughing
Speaker 1: at me. We're like, no, Mom, we're not laughing at you.
Speaker 1: We're laughing for you.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And what happened was she he had a genuine expansion
Speaker 1: of consciousness after his meditation, and she was describing her
Speaker 1: her mind expanded and she could feel the suffering of
Speaker 1: all these other people in her life that at some
Speaker 1: point she was very, very closed off from. It was
Speaker 1: a real expansion. And Dan just giggled, just like you.
Speaker 1: You just laughed, and you didn't really have anything other
Speaker 1: than to say, or anything to say other than you know,
Speaker 1: that's great, you know.
Speaker 4: And that's what I was saying.
Speaker 1: That's great, Mom, We're not laughing at you, that's great.
Speaker 1: She was stunned.
Speaker 4: She didn't.
Speaker 3: I guess I've grown. I guess I've grown kind of
Speaker 3: cavalier and sort of things that are really unusual and
Speaker 3: beautiful they become so ordinary for me. I'm not acknowledging
Speaker 3: it enough when other people have the experience, because I'm going, well,
Speaker 3: what else is new? You know?
Speaker 1: Right. That's why we were laughing too. That's why my
Speaker 1: sister and I, my dad and my wife, we were
Speaker 1: laughing because it's like hello, finally you know it. It
Speaker 1: was a beautiful thing and you know that that was
Speaker 1: a powerful experience. So I wanted to thank you for
Speaker 1: facilitating that for my mother because she's never experienced anything
Speaker 1: like that, and I think it was very you know,
Speaker 1: you were talking about transformational you know, uh, like leaps
Speaker 1: and balanced consciousness experiences. I believe that night my family
Speaker 1: experienced one going through this with you. And we may
Speaker 1: have experienced some of these kinds of things on some
Speaker 1: level with other people, but that night was different and
Speaker 1: it was profound and it was really a gift to us,
Speaker 1: but great to hear. Yeah, thank you, And I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask, like, what were your thoughts on the book
Speaker 1: because we kind of breezed past that, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, to do this work in the purest way,
Speaker 3: you need to give one person all of your attention
Speaker 3: and watch every breath they take and keep up to
Speaker 3: each thing and keep helping them make subtle adjustments. So
Speaker 3: when you're trying to teach two, three, four, or five
Speaker 3: groups of people, you can't focus on anyone and follow
Speaker 3: them through their whole process. You can just touch on
Speaker 3: different people at different points and try to like, you know,
Speaker 3: what's what's the one piece of advice that everybody can
Speaker 3: benefit from, Because everybody's at a different place in their
Speaker 3: process and at a different point in their development, and
Speaker 3: each each of our inner worlds is so very different.
Speaker 3: So I try to just focus on on fundamentals in
Speaker 3: the beginning and and and trying to guide in a
Speaker 3: way that no matter where you're at, no matter what
Speaker 3: you're going through, it's it can help. Now if I
Speaker 3: if I would have worked just with your mother, just
Speaker 3: with your father, just with you, then I could watch
Speaker 3: every single breath I can, I get into your I
Speaker 3: can sense, I can feel, and my intuition guides me,
Speaker 3: and I can observe little things. And so that's that's
Speaker 3: the best way to make use of this process to get,
Speaker 3: you know, the most out of it. But it's not scalable.
Speaker 3: I can't literally work with every single person in the world.
Speaker 3: So I have to develop methods and styles and processes
Speaker 3: that can affect more people without giving them something that
Speaker 3: wasn't meant for them, you know, Like I work with
Speaker 3: Tony Robbins, so you know he'll do an event ten
Speaker 3: thousand people whatever. I don't know what the odds, what
Speaker 3: the percent is of but something like three percent, five
Speaker 3: percent or whatever of the population is suicidal. So do
Speaker 3: the math. And in a room with ten thousand people,
Speaker 3: you got forty to fifty least suicidal people who can
Speaker 3: take whatever you say and do and use it to
Speaker 3: deepen their suicidal tendencies. So and you got to account
Speaker 3: for that. Some people have heart problems and you don't
Speaker 3: want them doing these powerful Cathard breathing. Some people are schizophrenic,
Speaker 3: and you know, you don't want them playing with weird
Speaker 3: kind of multi dimensional experience and stuff. So so we've
Speaker 3: got to, you know, try to not water it down,
Speaker 3: but keep the process gentle so everyone's included. And first,
Speaker 3: do no harm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the medical world, that makes sense.
Speaker 3: So and but you guys were similar in a lot
Speaker 3: of ways. Your your vibes are very similar, uh, and
Speaker 3: and and the general level of care and compassion and
Speaker 3: support for each other was so beautiful to see and
Speaker 3: easy to feel. And so I don't even remember what
Speaker 3: I said. I don't remember how I guide you. I
Speaker 3: was just riffing the whole time. But I'm I'm feeding
Speaker 3: off of whatever I'm picking up and twisting it, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's coming from source I felt that from you.
Speaker 1: I really did feel that. I felt that. I felt
Speaker 1: that there was no script and you just truly just
Speaker 1: like riding a wave of spirit because you would say things,
Speaker 1: you would just you would like. Something you said that
Speaker 1: really impacted my mother was you said, imagine someone raises
Speaker 1: his hand to harm a child, and you send a
Speaker 1: loving wave of energy a thought towards this man. Now
Speaker 1: he something like and he won't strike that child because
Speaker 1: of your loving energy. And you just set all these
Speaker 1: different sayings and phrases, and it was just really deep,
Speaker 1: and I was this guy going really deep into it.
Speaker 3: And yet a heart felt intention, powered by the heart
Speaker 3: can change the world, no doubt about it. I mean,
Speaker 3: every day, thousands and tens of thousands, millions and Buddhists
Speaker 3: face the four directions of the compass and they just
Speaker 3: put out peaceful vibrations. Yeah, and as screwed up as
Speaker 3: the world is, it'd be a lot worse if people
Speaker 3: weren't doing stuff like that. And every thought we have
Speaker 3: contributes to this collective consciousness. And what do you want
Speaker 3: to be contray? You know? And so it behooves us
Speaker 3: to very consciously and very deliberately, and I use that
Speaker 3: a lot at my seminars because it happened to me
Speaker 3: and it was something really real. And I use this model.
Speaker 3: You throw a stone out in the water calm lake
Speaker 3: and you see the circle wave go out. So every
Speaker 3: time we breathe and we put a heartfelt intension behind it,
Speaker 3: it's like throwing a stone in that lake and that
Speaker 3: wave goes out. And that wave of peace or love
Speaker 3: or compassion, it's passing through everything and everyone, and at
Speaker 3: some point it could be just passing through somebody just
Speaker 3: at that moment they want to hurt and that wave
Speaker 3: happened to pass through them and it caused them to pause.
Speaker 3: I'm sure that things like that happen because of our
Speaker 3: loving intention. The vibrations that we put out in the
Speaker 3: world affect other people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I completely agree.
Speaker 1: So anyway, thank you again for that experience, and you know,
Speaker 1: providing that space for consciousness expansion was it was very profound.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean I feel like this is a
Speaker 1: very natural closing point. Is there anything anything that you'd
Speaker 1: be willing.
Speaker 4: To like if there was?
Speaker 1: And I don't mean to put you on the spot,
Speaker 1: but I have been thinking about this today that this
Speaker 1: if you were comfortable.
Speaker 4: Could be really cool.
Speaker 1: Could we do like a very brief moment of like
Speaker 1: some sort of relaxed breathing for the listener, It could
Speaker 1: be very brief.
Speaker 3: No, yeah, let's let's do it. Because everybody carries pain
Speaker 3: and stress and tension their body and it's there all
Speaker 3: the time and they don't even notice it, and so
Speaker 3: it's a good idea to just do some very conscious
Speaker 3: practice to vent stress and to bring in positive energy.
Speaker 3: So every breath is an opportunity to do that. So
Speaker 3: I have two core techniques that I teach everybody because
Speaker 3: they're not even techniques, they're natural responses in the body
Speaker 3: that when you do them consciously you can really up
Speaker 3: the benefit. One is a sigh of relief. So I
Speaker 3: say sigh of relief, and everybody knows exactly what I mean.
Speaker 3: That means you know how to do a sigh of relief,
Speaker 3: You recognize it when it happens, you can observe it
Speaker 3: in somebody else, and you know what it feels like
Speaker 3: in you. So all you need to do is give
Speaker 3: yourself a sigh of relief. However, do it very consciously,
Speaker 3: much more consciously than usual. Exaggerated, dramatize it, make it theatrical,
Speaker 3: exaggerate the sigh of relief and what are all the qualities?
Speaker 3: So a sigh of relief begins with an inhale that
Speaker 3: is twice as big as your average breath. That's the
Speaker 3: medical definition or description of a sigh. We think of
Speaker 3: it in terms of the exhale ah. But in order
Speaker 3: for that side to occur, you needed a big inhale
Speaker 3: in front of it, and that inhal needs to have
Speaker 3: an extra stretch, extra expansion. So you literally take an
Speaker 3: in breath and inhale that's twice as big as normal.
Speaker 3: Now you've created that extra expansion, that extra stretch, and
Speaker 3: when you release it power behind it. You don't have
Speaker 3: to do anything. It happens to you. It's a wave
Speaker 3: of peace and relaxation. Because relaxation isn't a doing. People
Speaker 3: talking hey, relax relax as if it's a verb, as
Speaker 3: if it's something you need to do. But relaxation is
Speaker 3: non doing, it's undoing, right, And so you do the
Speaker 3: inhale and take your time. When you're breathing in you
Speaker 3: get your skill down that you can extend your innail
Speaker 3: for five, six, seven, eight seconds, ten seconds would be great.
Speaker 3: Then you have real time to track the sensations of
Speaker 3: expansion side to side, front to back, top to bottom.
Speaker 3: So you take your time on the inhale and make
Speaker 3: it a meditation. You're tuning into the details, feeling the expansion,
Speaker 3: the stretching, the opening, the expanding. And then you reach
Speaker 3: that full point and you snap the exhale loose, you
Speaker 3: dump the exhale out, you let it go, you set
Speaker 3: it free. And when you do, let go of your jaw. See,
Speaker 3: most people their jaw, they have a place where the
Speaker 3: jaw sets all the time. Some people can grind their
Speaker 3: teeth and their sleep and you know they have TMJ
Speaker 3: problems because there's constant chronic tightness in their jaw. So
Speaker 3: every time you exhale, for that moment that you release
Speaker 3: the exhale, release your jaw, for that moment that you
Speaker 3: release the exhale, release your shoulders, and you can go
Speaker 3: through your body like that, and you can go from
Speaker 3: head to toe. Every time you exhale, relax a muscle,
Speaker 3: relax joint at the same time that you're exhaling. If
Speaker 3: you relax a muscle, when you relax, something open, something softens,
Speaker 3: and then the breath can take away whatever now is exposed,
Speaker 3: has been open. If you just breathe without relaxing, you
Speaker 3: can't release anything. If you relax without breathing, you can't
Speaker 3: release anything. So every time you exhale, let go, let
Speaker 3: go of a negative thought, let go of anger, let
Speaker 3: go of confusion. Start by letting go of muscles and joints,
Speaker 3: and then you let go of the past, and then
Speaker 3: you let go of anger, You let go of whatever, prejudice, bias, whatever.
Speaker 3: The letting go gets deeper and deeper and deeper. So
Speaker 3: just a sigh of relief. Exaggerate it, turn it into
Speaker 3: a meditation. So when you breathe in, what's your favorite fragrance?
Speaker 3: What can you think about that will make you feel beautiful?
Speaker 3: I can think of many, many things. I focus on
Speaker 3: my friends, my family, my child, a day in Hawaii
Speaker 3: on the beach, you know whatever. I can just look
Speaker 3: the smell of lilacs, you know, moments from childhood. Whatever
Speaker 3: gives you joy, pleasure while you're breathing in, just bring
Speaker 3: it to mind. And then when you exhale, really let go.
Speaker 3: Don't be afraid to let go, and layer by layer,
Speaker 3: you're gonna start washing tension out of your system. Alka
Speaker 3: a simple sigh of relief done creatively exaggerated, add visualization
Speaker 3: to it, add affirmations to it. So, for example, the
Speaker 3: first time I learned that principle was from Ramdas, and
Speaker 3: he said, Hey, when you breathe in, think to yourself,
Speaker 3: the power of God is within me. And when you
Speaker 3: breathe out, think to yourself, the grace of God surrounds me.
Speaker 3: And I was in a and an event with him,
Speaker 3: and we all just started doing that, breathing in, the
Speaker 3: power of God is within me, breathing out the grace
Speaker 3: of God surrounds me, and in and out, repeating that phrase.
Speaker 3: And you are programming yourself in a very beautiful way.
Speaker 3: And I've never from that day, I've never been able
Speaker 3: to breathe without thinking about God. And I've never been
Speaker 3: able to think about God without taking a breath. In NLP,
Speaker 3: I think they call that anchoring. So what you do
Speaker 3: is you practice a sigh of relief and you use
Speaker 3: it as an anchoring technique to shift your state, to
Speaker 3: return to a comfortable state, wake yourself up if that's
Speaker 3: what you need, Calm yourself down if that's what you need,
Speaker 3: and just by playing with the sigh of relief. You
Speaker 3: don't need any complicated techniques, just a sigh of relief.
Speaker 3: And then so that's one core technique along inhale. Think
Speaker 3: about something beautiful, enjoy the sensations, get in your body,
Speaker 3: imagine breathing light, repeat some powerful affirmation to yourself, and
Speaker 3: then let go and relax physically. And while you're exhaling,
Speaker 3: something can pour into you, so we can actively pull
Speaker 3: something in. What kind of energy do you want to
Speaker 3: fill yourself with? Strength, courage, freedom, intelligence, wisdom, love, compassion?
Speaker 3: If you know yourself, and how can I improve myself?
Speaker 3: You know, I need to be more patient. Okay, when
Speaker 3: I breathe in, I'm going to be patient with my inhale.
Speaker 3: I'm going to tell myself that I'm becoming more patient.
Speaker 3: I'm going to remind myself that it's important. I'm going
Speaker 3: to remember moments when I was patient and I'm glad
Speaker 3: I was. And then I'm just gonna let go. And
Speaker 3: as I empty myself, Nature abhors a vacuum, so as
Speaker 3: I'm exhaling, some energy can be coming in, so I
Speaker 3: can give to myself with the inhale and I can
Speaker 3: receive on the exhale okay, and you just need to
Speaker 3: play with the sigh of relief. Do it fast, do
Speaker 3: it slow, Do it through your nose, do it through
Speaker 3: your mouth. Pretend you're angry when you do it. Pretend
Speaker 3: you're sad when you do it. Pretend you're hilariously. You know,
Speaker 3: laughing is something. When you do it, just sigh of relief.
Speaker 3: And the second technique, and these both come from my
Speaker 3: work way back in military special forces, survival training and everything.
Speaker 3: The second is now it's called tactical breathing, but we
Speaker 3: I originally called it circular breathing. Connected breathing that is
Speaker 3: inhale exhale, inhale, exhale in so no pauses, no gaps,
Speaker 3: no breath holding, and you combine that with a sigh
Speaker 3: of relief. So as a takeaway exercise, let's do it
Speaker 3: right now, we can do a couple versions twenty connected breaths,
Speaker 3: and that means you're gonna count them. You're going to
Speaker 3: do twenty breaths, four short breaths, one long for short,
Speaker 3: one long foreshort, one long show that long breath that
Speaker 3: every fifth breath is a big sigh of relief. And
Speaker 3: the other four breaths is like spinning a wheel. So
Speaker 3: it's like this, and then notice your energy, what just moved?
Speaker 3: What changed in your body?
Speaker 4: Okay? Four cycles of this.
Speaker 3: Four yeah, four cycles of five breath every fifth breath.
Speaker 3: And you can do different versions for example, or they
Speaker 3: could be so the same pattern can be done in
Speaker 3: a subtle way, in an intense way, fast, slow, through
Speaker 3: your nose, through your mouth, standing on your head, laying
Speaker 3: on your back, laying on your stomach. You take that
Speaker 3: one simple practice, twenty connected breaths, and in a very
Speaker 3: short time you'll be able to use that to interrupt
Speaker 3: the pattern. You start getting tired or irritated.
Speaker 6: Okay, do twenty connected press You're going to be in
Speaker 6: a completely different state.
Speaker 3: Guarantee.
Speaker 2: Okay, yep.
Speaker 1: Did you want us to do this live or are
Speaker 1: you just saying, yeah, let's do it, let's do it.
Speaker 3: Let's do it, and your own pace, your own speed,
Speaker 3: your own volume. I suggest doing it through the mouth
Speaker 3: because it brings up a lot of feelings and sensations
Speaker 3: quicker than through the nose, but either way is good.
Speaker 3: Whichever way you do it, do it again, but do
Speaker 3: a different version of it. So if you did it
Speaker 3: through your nose the first time, do it through your
Speaker 3: mouth the second time. If you did it gentle and
Speaker 3: slow the first time, do it fast and powerful the
Speaker 3: second time. Mix it up and get different versions of it,
Speaker 3: but keep to the same general pattern. A few short
Speaker 3: breaths and a big sigh of relief, and in the
Speaker 3: beginning for to one four one, just to get you
Speaker 3: in the game.
Speaker 4: Okay, are you ready?
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's do it?
Speaker 2: All right? That was for me.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna be honest. I lost count.
Speaker 3: That's a good time.
Speaker 4: Whoaut Oh my god, I'm fuzzy. Yeah, whoa, I'm so lightheaded.
Speaker 1: I was pulling on my right hand and I was
Speaker 1: pretty sure I did four cycles, so I just I
Speaker 1: stopped early. But someone will probably count and be like
Speaker 1: you kept one.
Speaker 5: Whoa? What a head rush?
Speaker 7: Hey, listen, keep practicing until that doesn't happen, because it'll past.
Speaker 7: Those are surface reactions of the system to getting energy moving.
Speaker 7: So at first we get dizzy or we get a
Speaker 7: dry throat, you get tingling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all that that's energy activating stuff, and so you're
Speaker 3: just gonna repeat it, and once it's clears away a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of stuff. There's something under that. Under every
Speaker 3: feeling is another feeling. So in the first few practices,
Speaker 3: certain feelings and sensations come up, but if you keep practicing,
Speaker 3: they go away and new things start happening. And that's
Speaker 3: why I'm still doing this work after fifty years, because
Speaker 3: there seems to be no end. There seems to be
Speaker 3: no limit. No matter how much we clear away, we
Speaker 3: find another layer. No matter how high we get, we
Speaker 3: find out that there's a much higher mountain behind this beacon.
Speaker 3: There's no end to it. So that's a very simple
Speaker 3: practice and if you remember the fundamentals, So if you
Speaker 3: practice any breathing technique, do it consciously. Be total focus,
Speaker 3: one hundred percent. That in itself is powerful, the ability
Speaker 3: to gather all your energy and focus it totally and
Speaker 3: not be ten percent here, ten percent there. Sort of
Speaker 3: interested in this, but also you know you're scattering all
Speaker 3: your energy. You can't create anything, So this is a
Speaker 3: good exercise to be total, really focused, and don't use
Speaker 3: any muscles that are unnecessary. Like you know, I have
Speaker 3: a principle call the effort to energy ratio. So if
Speaker 3: people are breathing deep, if you get a certain amount
Speaker 3: of energy from every breath you take, and it costs
Speaker 3: you a certain amount of energy to breathe every breath,
Speaker 3: and some people it's costing them so much energy to
Speaker 3: breathe that they don't have energy left. It's like bad business.
Speaker 3: So you've got to get very practice getting economical and
Speaker 3: efficient and elegant with your breathing and graceful so it's
Speaker 3: not costing you a lot of energy. And then all
Speaker 3: the energy you're getting is available to do healing and
Speaker 3: growth work, and it's not just being used up by
Speaker 3: the process itself. So just remember the basic principles and
Speaker 3: play and you'll get somewhere.
Speaker 4: I definitely feel shifted after that. But yeah, yeah, like
Speaker 4: a different person. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like I look at the clock and I'm like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, it's been an hour and thirty. But it
Speaker 1: feels like I forgot the whole conversation for a moment.
Speaker 4: I forgot what we were doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, forgive me, I got no off button. Man. Once
Speaker 3: you get me talking about breathing, I love it. I
Speaker 3: love appreciate it, man, I appreciate it. I hope some
Speaker 3: of what we do is going to help your listeners,
Speaker 3: your watchers and if they want more support Breathmastery dot
Speaker 3: com I bomb you with so many extra free courses
Speaker 3: and transcripts, and I send a breathing technique out every week,
Speaker 3: one specific exercise so you can practice something different. I
Speaker 3: have a monthly newsletter where I write an article about breathing.
Speaker 3: You know, I've written an article about breathing every month
Speaker 3: since June of nineteen seventy six. Wow a month. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was at the University of Hawaii University of Massachusetts
Speaker 3: when i started my monthly breathing reports, and I've never
Speaker 3: missed a month since then.
Speaker 4: That's amazing.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I'm a fanatic, no doubt about it.
Speaker 3: I'm obsessed.
Speaker 4: That's truly amazing.
Speaker 1: I have to that after doing that little breathing exercise,
Speaker 1: it kind of like jolted me. I'm like off from
Speaker 1: podcast remode right now, just kind of experiencing that new state.
Speaker 1: I feel this like buzzing in my head and like
Speaker 1: kind of like pulsing on my third eye area. Which ever,
Speaker 1: since last week when we had that session and you
Speaker 1: had the whole thing about like relax your forehead muscles,
Speaker 1: and every moment of every day I've been focused on
Speaker 1: trying to relax my forehead muscles, and right now I
Speaker 1: feel it. After that breathing thing. So I'm definitely gonna
Speaker 1: practice this. So thank you for that. That was a gift,
Speaker 1: and you know, this has been amazing. Maybe maybe maybe
Speaker 1: a note to ourselves is when we're, you know, doing
Speaker 1: an interview, don't alter our consciousness.
Speaker 3: You know, where a breath once in a while, that's
Speaker 3: all just stop whatever you're doing and then you're just
Speaker 3: just remember to take a breath once in a while.
Speaker 3: That changes everything.
Speaker 1: I meant to ask, what's the benefit of that little
Speaker 1: butterfly breathing method that we were doing.
Speaker 8: I've been doing that, Yeah, I got that from I
Speaker 8: was working with people who were on chemo, or with
Speaker 8: people with migraines or nause It gets triggered very easy
Speaker 8: or they're in real horrible pain and the breathing seems
Speaker 8: to intensify the pain.
Speaker 3: So we developed what's called subtle energy breathing. Little butterfly
Speaker 3: breasts like you know, as delicate as the wings of
Speaker 3: a butterfly. And so you start with a very soft,
Speaker 3: delicate breathing pattern that doesn't disturb anything, doesn't trigger anything,
Speaker 3: and then you grow it and grow it and grow it,
Speaker 3: and layer by layer you're cleaning stuff out. You're clearing stuff,
Speaker 3: you're recharging, you're healing, you're balancing. So yeah, we call that.
Speaker 3: I call it butterfly breathing, but subtle energy breathing.
Speaker 1: Also, yeah, I really enjoyed that technique. Well, thank you
Speaker 1: if you, if you stay here, I'm gonna keep you
Speaker 1: locked in all night and ask you all kinds of questions.
Speaker 1: So I think I think this is a beautiful natural
Speaker 1: stopping point. And also by your app, let's mention your app.
Speaker 3: Oh uh yeah, breath Tech. Good luck. I was, I
Speaker 3: was on my phone today. The developers are tweaking and
Speaker 3: doing things I don't I don't know if it's even
Speaker 3: working at the moment, but I've been watching the thread
Speaker 3: with the developers going back and forth and doing little fixes.
Speaker 3: So yeah, breath Tech. You can find it in the
Speaker 3: app store. It's an ugly colored green olive weird color
Speaker 3: green screen, breath Tech. And yeah, it's on it's you'll
Speaker 3: find it in the app store. And uh yeah, it's
Speaker 3: very useful. I'm really proud of it. We Uh, you
Speaker 3: get the three cornerstones which I mentioned. You can practicing
Speaker 3: breathing for becoming more mindful, practicing breathing for relaxation, and
Speaker 3: practicing breathing for energizing, and with those three skills you
Speaker 3: can start to really build. And so yeah, the app
Speaker 3: has what we have like eight paths why people come
Speaker 3: to breath work, physical healing, psycho emotional healing, personal growth,
Speaker 3: business performance, sports performance healing the healer, helping the helper, creativity, artists,
Speaker 3: performing artists, so on, and spirituality. So there's eight paths
Speaker 3: and you can pick your path and you complete one
Speaker 3: and you can go down another. And if you complete
Speaker 3: all the paths, you graduate, you grow, You assend from
Speaker 3: student to apprentice to teacher to master up. And we
Speaker 3: have every day breathing exercises in there, hangover breath, stuck
Speaker 3: in traffic, two o'clock, sugar crash, you know, very practical
Speaker 3: breathing for very everyday practical stuff. And in there I
Speaker 3: also have my Basic series because for a long time
Speaker 3: I was teaching only my Basic Series and it was like, okay,
Speaker 3: if I can only teach five or six breathing exercises,
Speaker 3: if people get these under their belt, then anything else
Speaker 3: they practice they're going to get a lot more benefit
Speaker 3: out of than if they haven't learned these. This what
Speaker 3: I call the Basic Series. So that's in there too,
Speaker 3: and there's video lessons, there's audio guided lessons, there's an
Speaker 3: article about each lesson, so it's pretty comprehensive. I'm really
Speaker 3: pleased with it. It turned out to be a much
Speaker 3: bigger job than we all expected, and there's a lot
Speaker 3: of tweaking going on right now. But yeah, thank you
Speaker 3: for mentioning that download breath tech app.
Speaker 4: You're very welcome, Dan, Thank you so much. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this has been a wonderful episode. I do believe
Speaker 1: the listeners will have a lot to glean from this.
Speaker 1: So we do have a very simple little exit ritual
Speaker 1: for our show, and it is literally at the same time,
Speaker 1: we all just say bye guys, and it's not that serious.
Speaker 1: But whenever you're ready, you ready, yep, bye Gods.
Speaker 4: What out bonies.
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