A FAST WAY TO SHIFT YOUR PHYSICAL, MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL STATES

Hey you guys, welcome to the Karen Kenney

show. I'm so excited to be here with you today, and one of my

goals in this new year was I wanted to share some helpful

tools with you guys, like some stuff that I use to help myself

when, like, my panties are in a bunch or your nick is are in a

twist, or you're stressed out or freaking out, or low energy or

whatever, right? So along with being, oh my god, I always hate

doing, like, the list of things, but along with being a yoga

teacher, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, there's lots of different

like certifications and things that I've learned and that I

teach and I use with my clients, but I don't always talk about

them, you know what I mean? So I am a certified breath coach, and

even before that, I mean, well, when you when you're a yoga

teacher, for as long as I have been a yoga teacher, like since

1999 you know, you learn about pranayama in yoga. And if you're

listening to this and you're like, What is this? How is this

helpful to me? Just like, buckle up for safety, stay, stay in the

car with me, right? Come for the drive. Because learning about

breathing is such a powerful thing. I'm not going to get

wicked in depth. My whole point is to be helpful, but also

practical. I want any tool I share with you to be immediately

applicable, like you can use it right away to help yourself out.

And so today I'm just going to share a little bit about several

different kinds of breathing practices that you can do that

will help your ass. Okay, so I'm going to

break it down into a few different sections. I'm going to

talk about it just a small just a smidge, and then I'm going to,

like, tell you the different ones. And then I will, like,

kind of show you very quickly. And I will, hopefully, if you're

not somebody who watches the show on YouTube, even if you're

just listening, my hope is to break it down simply enough that

you can do it, you know, as without having to see my face.

Okay? So the first thing I want to tell you is that so in yoga,

so often we just think of like yoga as being like the asanas or

the postures or the ways that we're moving our body. But

there's eight limbs to yoga, right? Again, I'm not going to

get into all the limbs, but I will tell you this, that

pranayama like breath control. Breath practices, right? It's

one of the eight limbs of yoga, and think of it as a

concentration that is a concentration practice that is

focused on the breath. That's an easy, simple way. There's

different ways to kind of break it down. Some people will say

pranayama means like, breath control, whatever. I just want

to keep it as simple as possible. But prana means life

or life force, right? It's that energy. So in other traditions,

they might call it the key, or the Chi, right? So the way that

we breathe really makes a difference on our energy level.

And a lot of times, we'll say the quality of your breath

affects the quality of your life. And I made some notes to

myself here to just again, to keep it as simple as possible.

So pranayama, or breathing right, not only prepares you for

meditation, it also decreases your heart rate. It can lower

your blood pressure. It can lower your cortisol, your stress

hormones right, their levels. It can drop those down. And there's

also research that says that it can affect your vagal tone. And

if you know anything about nervous system regulation, I

mean, these days, it's just like all over the place, right? You

have undoubtedly, probably have heard about the vagus nerve. The

vagus nerve is called the wandering nerve because it

basically think of it as like, being at the base of your brain,

and it runs down along, and I'm dragging my fingers down. It

runs down both sides of your neck, and then it goes into,

down into, like, all your major organs. So think about, like,

your heart, your lungs, your intestines, this nerve. If I

showed you a picture of it, it would blow your mind. And it

plays a really big role in in our resilience, in our stress

reduction and all these things. So when we have breathing

techniques that allow us to help with vagal tone or to stimulate

the vagus nerve, it helps us to, kind of like regulate the

nervous system, to tap into the parasympathetic nervous system,

which is relaxation response, rest and digest. It's like

turning, I always think of it like a dial, right? There's a

way to turn down the dial a little bit, right, to regulate,

to down regulate. There's a way to send that sucker up, send us

into sympathetic that's what gets us into fight and flight

and very reactive, right, anxiety, all that stuff, stress.

And then there's ways where we can kind of just set that dial

for the middle, and that's kind of what we're getting at. And so

I wanted to just give you a couple of different breathing

techniques that will help you when your energy, when your

mood, when your state of mind, is maybe not in the most ideal

place, and we want to shift it. And knowing that. You can shift

your state of mind is in your physiological like through your

physiological body, and that's the thing. The body and the mind

are not separate, right? Those suckers are deeply intertwined,

body, mind and spirit. We cannot separate these things. So when

we feel nervous or excited, our breath tends to be a little bit

more shallow. But when we deepen the breath, the mind will start

to follow. It'll start to slow down, right? The brain wave will

just look as I think of it. It's like riding a wave, right? We

want to ride a slower and gentler wave. There are times

when we want to turn things up. So I'm going to, I'm going to

break it down like this, okay, so there are breaths that we can

think of as being like down regulating. You might call those

in different traditions, right? Different teachers use different

language. So some people would call the down regulating ones

like cold, right? They would say that we're turning it down,

right? We're turning the temperature down. It's more

cool, it's more cold. And some people might call that whiskey,

right? If we're gonna, I'm just giving you different ways to

think about this. So if you drink alcohol, which I'm not a

fan of alcohol, I don't drink alcohol, but if you do, I'm just

saying, right, it can have a relaxing effect, right? So this

is what some people will think of, it like, a down regulating,

cooler whiskey relaxing that's tapping into the

parasympathetic, the rest and digest the relaxation response

part of the nervous system. Then we have things that are

stimulating, right? They bring us up. And those might be like,

when we get hot, it's like, We're hot, we're on fire, right?

It's like, let's go, let's go, let's go. That's think of it.

Some people might call that instead of whiskey, they'd call

that coffee, right? That caffeinated state, okay? These

are the stimulating breath practices. Okay? So we have the

relaxing ones, we have the stimulating ones, and then we

have kind of the middle of the road ones. These are more of the

balancing ones. And these help us kind of stay in like an

optimal state, or return us to our optimal state. It will

either help us, if we've been really low, it might, you know,

balance us out. If we've been really high again, it's going to

bring us down and balance us out. So you can think of this

instead of, like, hot or cold, think of this as, like, room

temp, you know what I mean. And instead of whiskey or coffee,

think of it like water, just nice water is good anytime you

know what I'm saying. There are certain times when you don't

want to be pounding coffee. You don't want to get

overstimulated, like, right before bed, you know what I

mean, but that might be great first thing in the morning when

you're trying to get your ass in gear. Okay? There are times when

you don't want to be more relaxed. It's like, okay, I need

to, like, move things up, or I need to come back to balance. So

it's unbelievable to think that, you know, breathing exercises

can do all of this for us. And why it matters is, is there are

a ton of nervous system regulation tools out there,

okay? And we're going to talk about some of these over this

next year. But things like tapping, right, literally,

Emotional Freedom Technique, right, sometimes called tapping.

You're like, tapping on different points on your body,

and I'm mimicking it right now. I'm tapping on my head. I'm

tapping on my forehead. I'm tapping under my eye with my

fingers, right? And that's great, but there are times when

it's like, I don't you. You may not want to. I mean, I don't

mind being weird. I tap all the time in public, but you might

not want to be doing certain tools out in public, because

you're like, people are going to look at me funny, or they're

going to think I'm weird, or, like, whatever, right? There are

things like havening techniques where you, like, stroke your own

arms and you can touch your face, and, like, you can do all

these things. And again, you might be like, I don't want to

be doing those things. But here's the thing about the

breath. The breath is free, right? We don't have to pay any

money for it. It's available most of us, right, unless you

have a respiratory illness or whatever. For most of us, or,

you know, cancer of the lungs or something, reason why you can't

breathe on your own, but most of us can, right, and it's always

available to us. What we're usually lacking, though, is

information, education, knowledge. And so I'm just like,

hey, we're in times, and we have been in times for a long time

where the world is just a little extra fucking crazy and

stressful and whatever. And I'm always like, what are the things

that I can do, and whether it's like, before you have to, like,

if you if you have a business and you have to have a difficult

conversation, or you have to do a speaking gig or be on a

podcast, or that you have to be front facing and be out there,

and that makes you anxious. It's like, oh, what breathing could I

do to, like, calm me down? Maybe you're going through a lot right

now and you're feeling overwhelmed and stressed out and

just like, right tweaking, like at your wits end, like, what can

I do to like? Help me like? So the 1000 reasons why a breath

work practice or just some knowing, knowing a couple of

breaths could come in Wicked handy. You can share them with

your children, right? The only ones we want to be careful about

is with the very stimulus. Dating breath. And I'm only

going to teach you one, I'm only going to tell you about one, and

you want to be careful with those, because sometimes that

kind of breath work can be like, it can increase your blood

pressure. So you want to be careful if you have high blood

pressure, pregnancy, glaucoma, if you have any kind of

respiratory disease and stuff like that. You just want to be

smart. You know, all throughout history, people have said that,

like, you know, Weston is should not be doing long, extended

periods of pranayama on their own, because they'll go crazy.

Because breath work, right? Think about it. It shifts your

energy, right? So if we're not careful, and we're not doing it

smart, right, so I don't want, don't go overboard on these,

right? These are just to be used. I think of it like,

instead of chugging, think like Sip, sip, as my friend Linda Ty

says, just sip, sip on these suckers. Okay, alright, so I'm

going to teach you just a nice and easy balancing breath. Okay,

I'm going to teach you a couple I made. These are some of my

these are some of my favorites. And I will, I will. Some of them

can actually be in like both categories, but just as just a

simple number one, a simple letting go breath, or the

sighing breath, or what I sometimes call like the dramatic

breath, because it makes me laugh, okay? And all you're

going to do is you're going to, if you can right, you're going

to inhale through your nose, and as you inhale, you let your

shoulders go right up towards your ear lobes. Just let your

shoulders lift right up as you breathe in, right lift the

shoulders up towards your ears, and then, after you inhale

through the nose, you exhale through the mouth,

and you drop your shoulders, and you use sound like a big sighing

breath. So if you've ever been in a relationship where you have

a partner who wants you to know that they're unhappy with you,

but they're not or unhappy with you, or they're upset, or they

want attention, or whatever. Your kids do this too. I call

this kind of sometimes the teenager, the teenager breath so

they're not quite slamming the cabinet doors and things like

that, but they're just kind of sitting there and they're like,

like, they're just sighing and whatever, you know, I kind of

laugh, but really, part of that also is their nervous system

trying to, like, help get some regulation. So that's a nice way

to, like, calm down, just a simple letting go sighing breath

you inhale through the nose, let your shoulders go up towards

your ears, and then drop those suckers down right away. Breathe

out through your mouth and use sound. Relax the jaw and use the

sighing sound. That's a nice, simple, easy breath. Okay.

Number two, the physiological sigh, okay, the physiological

sigh. And what's so interesting is different teachers now, like

so Huberman. Andrew Huberman has kind of made the physiological

sigh, kind of famous, but these are breath works that have been

in yoga for 1000s of years. I just have to give credit to the

originators, right? But so in the physiological sigh, right?

I'm going to describe it first, then I'll do it with you once,

in case you're watching this, and then you can practice it if

you want, and if you're listening to this, right? Just

pause after each one of these. Give it a practice, because I

want you to figure out for yourself and to feel for

yourself, which ones feel best in your body. I'm just going to

throw, this is like throwing pasta at the ones, throwing

spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks for you. Okay, so

the physiological side, this is when you take two, I would say

kind of quick and stacked inhales through your nose, and

then you do one long exhale out through the mouth. Okay, and

this is a variation on another, another fantastic breath, which

I'll tell you, it's just even more simple than this one. Okay,

so here's the deal. You're going to inhale twice through the

nose. The first one is like a quick it's like this. You inhale

through the nose, and while retaining that breath, holding

that breath in, you just fill it up a little bit more. Imagine

you were just trying to expand your lungs just a teeny bit

more, and you'll take another quick sip. So it sounds like

this. The first one is this, so nice, inhale through the nose

and then top it off like you were topping off a little cup of

water or whatever. Top it off with one more nice, quick inhale

and then exhale out through your mouth twice as long. That twice

as long is the important piece. So two inhales in through the

nose, stacking on top of each other, and then twice as long

exhale out through the mouth. This is the physiological side,

that twice as long exhale is what activates the

parasympathetic nervous system rest and digest, the down

regulation, the relaxation response, that's what we want.

Okay, so that's number two, physiological sigh. Notice on

that one, right? You're breathing in through the nose

and you're exhaling out through the mouth. Okay? Same thing with

the first one, the letting go breath. You're inhaling through

the nose, you're exhaling out through the mouth. And even.

Simpler version of that is just what you can call it, the two

one breath, right, which is, or the one two breath, or whatever

you want to do, is just basically you're inhaling

through the nose as deeply as you can, as long as you hand

can, and then you exhale out through the mouth twice as long.

That's it. It's an even more simple version. I will tell you

this when I'm about to have to speak in somebody's group or go

on stage, or even lead a yoga class or whatever, right? I

really like to bring myself into a deeply kind of relaxed and,

you know, I'm, like aware I'm awake, but I like to just bring

my nervous system down, because my nervous system,

unfortunately, still from a very traumatic childhood, I often say

that my nervous system doesn't know the difference still

between when I'm excited and when I'm scared. So even when

I'm going to do something that I'm just wicked psyched about,

my hat will be hammering like all kinds of physiological

responses will just start in my body. My body starts to go into

fight and flight when I'm really in, like, excited delight, but

it doesn't know the difference. So I use the physiological sigh

and that just long inhale through the nose, twice as long

exhale out through the mouth all the time, like every day, when

I've had panic attacks when I've gotten anxious, like I use I use

breath so much, and again, it's free. It's available to us. Why

not learn these things and put them into practice? The very

least, if you don't need them, you can teach them and pass them

on to somebody you love, who does. And a little addition to

that is when I do that big inhale in through the nose,

twice as long, exhale out through the mouth. I often use

sound, and now sometimes, while I'm making sound, also tap my

chest, like, Ha, like that vibratory thing, right? These

are my little quirky, weird things that work for me, and how

I've discovered what works for me is I actually give it a shot

and I practice it. I don't worry about looking weird or sounding

weird or whatever. I'm like, This is what helps me. And if

I'm in a more balanced and regulated state, I show up

better for myself and everybody else. So like, why not do them?

Okay? So that's like, three different breasts that can be

super duper helpful. Now I'm going to give you just what we

might call, like a balancing breath, right? So those there

were very much like bringing you into and I'm going to, actually,

you know what? I'll teach you one more of these. I'll teach

you one more of the of down regulating, what we might call a

relaxing breath. Okay? So Andrew wheel loves this breath. He

talks about it all the time, and he calls it the 478, breath. And

this technique is specifically right, helpful for stress and

anxiety. And this is what he says. If you know who Dr Andrew

wheel is, he says this of all the techniques and remedies I've

found over the years, the 478 breath is the most effective,

I'm quoting him, is the most effective anti anxiety, anti

stress thing you can do. The 478 breath is the most powerful

method I found to access the relaxation response, and it's

the most powerful anti anxiety measure I've ever come across.

Okay, those, those are important words like, that's a big deal.

So the 478, breathing, it slows down your heart rate. It lowers

your blood pressure. He says it improves digestion, and it can,

for some people, it can warm up your hands. And this is how you

do it. Okay, you're gonna breathe in number one. This is

like four. Just think of this, 478, okay, you're gonna breathe

in quietly through your nose to the count of four. So I don't

just go 1234, with me. I always go one, 1002 like when we were

kids, right? One, Mississippi, two, Mississippi, whatever. So

one, 1002 1003 1004 1000 so that's your breathe in through

the nose to the count of four, and then you hold the breath in.

You hold your breath to the count of seven, and then you

breathe the breath out. And we say forcibly. It's like, right,

with some force. Like, I don't know if my mic is picking it up,

but if you see my face, I'm kind of making the thing with my

lips, then you forcibly breathe out through the mouth. That's

that twice as long exhale again, right? For the count of eight.

Now, what's happening, though, is you're doing that breath hold

in between. So that's what makes it a little bit different than

just breathing in and then exhaling twice as long, right?

This is you breathe in quietly, again through the nose, count of

four, hold the breath in to the count of seven, and then

forcefully. Think of like you're aggressively blowing through a

straw or something, right, forcefully blowing out through

the mouth. For the count of. Eight. And he says you can do

this twice a day. He says, do it four times, like four cycles of

this. He says, after one month, right? You can go up to eight

breath cycles Max, though that's the maximum, but don't start

there. Build up gradually, please. And he says it takes

about four to six weeks to really notice real effects. But

I will tell you this when I have done this sitting in my car

right before I'm about to go into a place or whatever, when

I've been feeling stressed or anxious or whatever, I do this

like four times, along with some other tools, like tapping

whatever and other things I'll share with you as the year goes

on, and I have found it is incredibly, incredibly helpful.

Okay, so that's the 478,

breath, and it's a rapid state. You're trying to change your

mental state and your physiological state, and the

breath is one of the fastest ways that we can do this, okay?

And again, like I said, it's available to us. It's right

there. It's just like whoever really taught us how to breathe?

Nobody, nobody really sat us down and said, Oh, you're

feeling stressed. What do they say? Take a breath. Relax Right?

Like they say it sarcastically, calm down. Like when you're

wicked up. They say, calm down. But they don't teach you how to

calm yourself down. So from my heart to yours, I'm sharing

these pranayama practices, and hopefully they will be helpful

to you. Okay, let's talk about a nice balancing breath. Think

what we might call a water breath. Okay, so think of this

like when you want to bring yourself back to that optimal

state where maybe if you've been too high or too low, this is

going to bring you back to the middle a lot of times I'll use

like a balancing breath like this, like, if my yoga students

are coming out of shavasana, right, that final relaxation at

the end of class, okay, well, they're going from this state

where they were just fully surrendered on their back, some

people falling asleep, right? Whatever. And then I'm asking

them to come out of that state and to bring themselves back up

to a seated position. Well, yeah, and then right after that,

they got to go drive a car, like, operate heavy machinery.

So I always like to offer like a nice little balancing breath or

something to bring them back to, like an optimal state of

awareness so that they can function, so they're shifting

out of that really down regulated state. So that's a

good example of of when you might want to use it. But

there's lots of times, right when maybe you just want to do a

breath, but you don't want to get overstimulated, and you

don't want to, like, go down, you just want to kind of bring

yourself to the middle, okay, room temperature, as we would

say. Okay. So think I want you to imagine, for those of you who

are visual, visual people, because this is really helpful

with what you can call this box breathing, or four by four

breath, four by four breathing. Some people call it square

breathing. I mean, it's known by a lot of different names, excuse

me. So visualize in your mind, or imagine in your mind a box,

like, literally just a four sided square box, okay? And if

it helps you to focus, because some people will sometimes lose

where they are in a practice, this is just very simple. So

imagine just if you're tracing, and I'm doing this with my hand

online, if you're watching the show, you can see, just imagine

you're going across the top of a box. That's your inhale, and

you're going to inhale to the count of four across the top.

Then you're going to hold the breath. So imagine you're going

down the side of the box, you're going to hold the breath in for

the count of four. Then imagine you're coming across the bottom

of the box, you're going to exhale out to the count of four,

and then you're going to hold the breath out. Imagine you're

coming back up to the top. The other side, you're going to hold

the breath out to the count of four. Okay, so again, how you do

box, breathing, square. Breathing, four by four.

Breathing, you inhale, right? And I like to do this through

the the nose. You inhale through your nose, count of four, hold

in the breath for the count of four. Exhale out through the

nose to the count of four, and then hold the breath out,

meaning don't take another breath in, right for the count

of four. And then you do it again. So again, inhale through

the nose, count of four. Hold the breath in, count of four.

Exhale out through the nose, count of four, and then in, and

then hold sorry, hold the breath out for the count of four.

That's box breathing. And you can just, again, use the image

of a box that has four sides. And it's been described that

like, like I said, Remember how I said at the beginning, these

breath practices can be used or can be labeled both things. So

this could be seen as a nice balancing breath, but for some

people, it will be a breath that is bringing you down from being

anxious or being stressed. So. Also, because it's, if you're

using the image of a box, you're concentrating your mind into the

present moment. You're focusing on your breath, so your mind is

not wanting running wild with all of its worries and what ifs

and worst case scenarios. Right? You're you're right in the

present moment. So when you get anxious or stressed, your body

is basically preparing to confront danger, right? So your

muscles might get test tense and your breathing becomes shallow.

So doing this when we're actually, you know, physically

and mentally, putting our focus on doing a little bit longer

breath and being very intentional and specific, that

also can help us. And there was a 2023 I just wrote this down, a

2023 study of breathing exercises that included box

breathing, and it suggested, in its outcomes that daily, five

minute breath work can reduce anxiety and improve mood, and

that there was not only an improvement in mood, but there

was a change in physiological responses, and some people say

for them, it is more effective even than just doing mindfulness

meditation. To me, breath work is a meditation if we're having

taking that temporary moment to really focus on our breathing,

breathing in through the nose, or breathing out through the

mouth or whatever, it forces us to be present, right? We're just

not because we take the breath for granted, because it's an

automated system in our body. We just assume like we don't have

to. We go to bed, we go to sleep. We're not thinking about

breathing. I mean, the only time you're thinking about breathing

when you're in bed is when your nose is stuffed up and you can't

friggin breathe, and right? We know too the nose is designed

for breathing. Right? We have the two nasal passages. They're

lined with little bits of hair. It those hairs filtrate out the

pollutes the pollutants in the environment, and it warms the

air, and it makes the air a little more moist, so that the

lungs and the body can receive the oxygen better, right? So

that nose is the breathing device. So many people are mouth

breathers, and it shows and it affects them. So if we can learn

to be intentional with our breathing, and you know, and a

lot of people are doing like their mouth taping at night in

bed, they're really trying to train themselves to breathe

through the nose. So they use the strips to open up their

nasal passages. Some of them have the little plugs that go in

the note, I'm widening out my nostrils with my fingertips a

little bit, right? They widen their nostrils. They tape their

mouths because there's so if you haven't read the book, I think

it's James nestor's book, breath. I should have brought it

upstairs while I was I think it's up here somewhere, James

nesters. I think it's James nesters book, breath or breathe.

But in that book, he talks all about this stuff, right? But

these are just simple things that you can do. Okay? So you've

learned a bunch of relaxing breaths. You've learned just now

a balancing breath. And then the last one I'm going to teach you

is a stimulating breath. But remember, I have to remind you,

we don't want to go crazy with the stimulating breath, right?

Especially again, if you're pregnant, you have high blood

pressure, you have glaucoma, you have respiratory illnesses. You

want to be smart about this stuff. Okay, so in Kripalu Yoga,

we have a breath that we call breath of joy. I have seen it in

other yoga traditions, where they do different things, where

they're putting their arms in the air and they're making

sounds, and they're doing all kinds of things, right? This, to

me, is the the simple one. It's the one that I've been doing for

forever, and it's the one that I love. So again, I'm going to

describe it first, and then, if you're watching this, I will

show it to you. I'll just kind of stand up away from my mic.

I'll just have to talk a little louder and I'll describe it to

you. Okay, so this breath is stimulating, because what you're

doing is kind of like the physiological sigh. You are

stacking breath inhale breaths on top of each other, through

your nose, and then you have a big Ha, like forceful, like,

forceful exhale out through your mouth with sound. Okay, so

imagine that you're standing up and your arms are just down by

your side, okay, when you take that first little sip of air

through your nose, it's just a little, like a quick little shop

and like, sharp little intake of air. And while you're doing

that, though, your arms are moving from being down by your

sides up to shoulder height. So as you inhale, you swing your

arms up to shoulder height in front of you. So you know how,

like a zombie would walk, or we wouldn't be like when somebody

is hypnotized and they walk with their arms out in front of them,

right, like in Scooby, doo right? That's the first

position. You inhale your arms both up in front of you at about

shoulder height. That's that quick. And that is paired with

that quick inhale. You hold that breath in, and then you let your

arms swing down and come up out to the sides at your body, like

the letter T, shoulder height as well. That's the second sip of

air. And then you inhale them all the way up over. They swing

down, right, so it's like, and then they inhale all the way up

by your ears, like, touch down. That's that first sip of that's

a third, sorry, that third sip of inhale that's stacked on top.

And then you so you basically just went like this, right?

You just stack three breaths in, and now you have that big

letting go, and you bend your knees. So you bend your knees a

little bit, you sweep your arms down, and you forcefully blow

the air out with a sound like a forceful like Ha, right? So

again, I'm going to bring it to you one time. So you inhale.

I'll stand up and do this one. And I don't mean to yell at you

guys. I'm going to talk kind of loud. Okay, so you inhale like

this, to the front, to the side, all the way up, like touchdown,

and then you bend the knees and go, ha, and you fold forward a

little bit and you blow out the breath. This is a highly

stimulating practice. So again, you want to be smart about it.

You want to be moderate with it. When I teach breath of joy in my

yoga classes, people afterwards will say they feel like they're

buzzing. They feel like they're tingling. Heat has come up in

their body. Their energy has risen. They feel more awake,

more alive. And we jokingly, I'll jokingly, say to them, who

needs coffee in the morning when you have breath of joy, right?

Who needs drugs to get high when you have breath of joy? Because

you can really stimulate your nervous system. So this is not

something that we want to do late at night, right, like,

right before bed. This is something you would do like, in

the morning, or maybe, let's say, you know, like around three

o'clock in the afternoon, when you start to get a little sleepy

and you want to reach for something sugary or chocolatey,

or some caffeine, or you know, some, excuse me, some beverage

that's going to stimulate your nervous system. Instead, you can

just do a little, this would be considered like a coffee breath,

right? It stimulates the sympathetic nervous system. And

it's kind of like that excitement effect, right? It

kind of brings you up. So remember, let's go back over

these again, the water breathing, we'll do the the

whiskey breathing, or the like the middle, as I would call it.

I put all these names down so I wouldn't forget myself, because

I get a little all over the place. I get excited, I get a

little over the place. So things that are down, regulating and

relaxing, right? What some people, I think it's Lucas

Rockwood from yoga body, who calls it the whiskey breath,

right? And this is when we want to bring ourselves to the

parasympathetic. We want to down regulate, we want to relax, or

we want to induce sleep, right? This is, this is when we would

use that breath. And it can be really, really helpful, okay,

when you want to just do that balancing breath, right? That's

when you might do the 4444, a very simple balancing breath.

Also that I do in yoga sometimes, is you breathe in

through the nose, count of four and simply exhale out through

the nose, count of four, in and out through the nose, count of

four each way, right? That's a nice balancing breath. Think of

that like room temperature. Think about it that like water,

right? It brings you back to center. So whether you've been a

little low, little high, it just brings you right back to your

optimal state. And then you have the really rejuvenating ones,

right? The ones that are stimulating, the up regulating

ones, the coffee. We call it coffee. We can call it

stimulating, but that's the one that activates the sympathetic

nervous system, gives you that kind of like excitement effect,

and we don't want to go crazy with that one. And that's the

one, right? So we think of it like this. When we do a

balancing breath that's always healthy, that's always good,

that's fine. You can do it anytime. It helps us to, like,

be in a state of well being and adapt to life situations, right?

It keeps us resilient. It keeps us, like, balanced. It's really

good, right? There are times when we really want to bring our

anxiety or our stress levels or whatever down, and so the

calming breaths, think of it like that. They're really good.

The relaxing breaths, those are really good, right, before you

go into bed, when you're trying to just like kind of drop in and

relax and bring yourself from an overstimulated place, and then

the coffee breath. You do not want to do it too often. Okay?

You can do it again to the side of your day, the Saturday, and

then maybe in the afternoon, around 3pm when you start to get

a little int and you reach for some sugar. You know what I'm

saying? You can do that instead. And I'll just tell you this,

like, breath work has made a really big difference in my

life. I teach it with all of my clients, right? Who, especially

clients who are stress prone or anxiety prone or whatever. I

just say, here are some things, like the very basics, like,

let's just start here. These things can be very helpful.

Fall. But here's the thing, with any tool, it only works if you

work it. And you you won't think to reach for the tool if you're

not accustomed to using it, and you forget that you even have

it. And that's, that's that's true about, like, pretty much

any kind of tool that you have is that you know. So often

people will say, you know, like, what can I do for this? And I'm

like, remember when I taught you that thing? Like, you know,

like, five, eight months ago, right? So we have to, how do I

say put these tools in rotation, I guess is what I'm saying. So

that when you get knocked off balance, when you're stressed

out of your mind, when you're overstimulated, you can

remember, oh yeah, because when we get in a fight or flight

state the front of our brain where we make our good decisions

and our conscious thinking, it goes offline. It's not really

available to us. But if something is already deeply

ingrained as a habit, and what I mean by that is, don't wait to

use it until you need it like need it practice it. Put a

breath, work, little practice somewhere into your life, into

your routine, so that your nervous system is already

benefiting from it. And then if you do happen to get thrown off

kilter, you know exactly what to reach for to help you bring

yourself back to a more balanced state, a more like cozy,

resilient, making good choices. You know what I'm saying, so

you're not flying off the handle and doing shit you're gonna

regret or saying stuff you're gonna regret later. Okay, I hope

that you stuck around for this, and I hope it was helpful in

some way. That's always my goal, right? Is to spread a little

more love in the world, to share stuff that's helpful for you and

stuff that I actually use myself, right? I'm not just

regurgitating this shit. This is stuff that I know has been

incredibly beneficial for me, and now I'm just passing it off

to you because I love you. Okay, so wherever you go in your day,

right? Take, take these tools right in your back pocket. Maybe

share it with somebody, okay, but I always say, make sure

you're sharing the correct information. Don't just wing it

right. Make sure, especially with these kind of practices,

just just not enough information can be dangerous. You know what

I'm saying, So be smart about it. But wherever you go, may you

leave. And I don't know, should I get a new sign off for 2026 I

don't know. I've been saying this forever, but wherever you

go, may you leave the animals and yourself and the other

people and the planet right the environment better than how you

found it. Wherever you go, may you be a blessing. Bye, bye.