Salon Rising: The Podcast

Transcript 

The breath is a powerful part of our body. It is the language of our nervous system. We gotta stash those issues somewhere. One of my favorite sayings is we stashed those issues in our tissues. We have to kind of work on the things that shaped us and understand these things in order for us to show up in the world and just be better humans in our workplaces, in our relationships.

It, it's quite profound when you have those moments and you're like, oh gosh. I didn't realize that that one thing, 'cause you, you have those like light bulb moments when it's like, oh, this is from that kind of like going to the gym. When you go to the gym, you start to work a new muscle. The breath has a similar kind of way.

We are treating our body to breathe better and get that stress response at a good level. I don't think people really understand impact that. Their circumstances have on the person that they become. I promise you, when you start giving that anxiety, the love, the kindness, the gentleness, not fixing it, just accepting it, your whole world changes.

I think that's the takeaway that we're really focusing on today, right? Is that you need to take the time to learn about yourself.

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  📍 Welcome back to my first little solo sore in, in a sanctum Samara is not able to join us this morning because she is busy and booked 'cause that lady is busy. Which is a great segue, I think, into the guests that we've got joining us today. When I say us, I mean me. I keep forgetting that I'm by myself. A face that many of you may be familiar with, but in a different context. This time, I am joined by the beautiful Sherri from Connected being co. I think that this conversation is super timely. I know for myself, because I have been. Really aware that my nervous system telling me that I need to make some changes. And being a person who has a tendency to burn the candle, not even at both ends, I just drop the candle in a fire and just melt it all and then think, oh no, how are we gonna pull it back together? who can we talk? knows? We can sort after the body and you.

Thank you so much. I'm super excited to. Chat with you about a really important topic and yes, it's uh, me in a different light. Uh, and it's definitely something I've, I'm passionate about and have spent sort of the last eight years, uh, working within the breathwork space and really understanding and learning the nervous system.

So I'm super excited to unpack all of that and share a little bit about what the nervous system is as well. I think we hear a lot of buzzwords

Yeah.

the wellness space and what it is and how it works. So let's unpack it all.

So what, so you've been like going down this path for eight years. What initially led you into that space?

Yeah, I had a really, really traumatic childhood and I've spent most of my twenties and my late twenties stuck in freeze, which is a body response from growing up, quite disconnected from your main caregivers. So both my parents, I had also found out that I had, uh, a father that wasn't my biological father.

And so there was a lot to really unpack around my childhood and how I was raised. And I spent the age of seven, uh, up until 14. Not having a home. So I spent most of my younger adolescent years moving around. My parents weren't around. And if you think about that, they're those years where you are held, you are loved,

absolutely.

seen, and you know, you then go into your twenties, uh, navigating life, uh, with lots of failed relationships, uh, consistently in this like erratic behavior.

You then go down the route of partying and, and hiding things and not really understanding like what's actually stored in your body. And it wasn't until I kind of hit 30, had a really failed relationship, and I had so many questions as to how and why I am the way that I am. And I had met friends, had recommended me different healers and therapy and.

And all sorts of things as, as you sort of do, as you are kind of navigating your thirties. And I went to a breath work workshop and I had never in my whole entire life ever had a body response like that. And the breath work experience literally brought up so much of my childhood memories that I had suppressed.

Oh yeah. And

we gotta stash those issues somewhere. And

I, my, one of my favorite sayings is we stash those issues in our tissues,

as in

We do,

body tissues.

we definitely do. And I, no one warned me, right? So I rocked up to this breathwork class and was like, whoa. And I think that that's also a good thing too because we, we, you just gotta kind of show up to these things sometimes and let the body do what it needed to do. And the flow on effect after that breath work class and unpacking so much trauma that I had literally stored in my body was the gateway to me go, me working out what I needed to do and what I, what I needed to work on.

And after kind of spending a few years doing, you know, a lot of these workshops and realizing how powerful the breath is, I was like, oh my God, I have to teach the rest of the world how important it is to really understand our breath, uh, work on our nervous system. And lo and behold, we're now in this kind of space.

Right now where breath work is a topic and the nervous system is a topic, and I'm super fortunate that I work out of a breath work studio based here in Melbourne called No Name Studios, and we run daily classes. So to now have a space where people can come daily to reset their nervous system, work through things that are holding them back, that says so much to how important this space is and what the future of mental health and wellness really is. And it's a, it's important. We have to kind of work on the things that shaped us and understand these things in order for us to show up in the world and just be better humans in our workplaces, in our relationships across the spectrum.

I don't think people really understand

I.

impact that their circumstances have on the person that they become.

Yeah.

As you say, like it's quite profound when you have those moments and you're like, oh gosh, I didn't realize that, that one thing. 'cause you, you have those like light bulb moments when it's like, oh, this is from that, and. Even the knowing that that's where something has come from makes the process of moving forward. I don't ever like to say moving on, but moving forward from that in a different way or just understanding the responses that you have to certain situations. It's super important. I, it's funny, I had a really similar experience with breathwork and again, didn't really know what I was being led into, was just like, yeah, I'll come to that.

Sure. I have a tendency to do that as well. You wanna, let's jump off that. Sure. Let's do it. What could go wrong? But yeah, it's quite profound in a way that. It's a whole body experience and I certainly wasn't expecting the challenges and the outcomes and the responses that came from that particular experience.

So can only imagine what ongoing breathwork facilitation can do for the nervous system and for the body. And it's amazing to think, as you say, that we are now at a time where this isn't just something that you'll go to as a one-off work. Like this is something that you can actually be practicing even if you don't wanna practice alone.

Like you can practice at a center like you are lucky enough to work out of like, what a huge shift. Everybody needs to do this all the time.

Absolutely, and I think breath work is, is a very simple tool and I think like we don't need to over complicate it.

Yeah.

It's simple. I think it's really important for everyone to understand that our nervous system has two sides and the, and the breath can tap into both sides,

When we're talking both sides,

hmm.

we talking parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system?

correct.

Okay. So in simple terms, we have our sympathetic, which is our fight or flight into our stress responses, and then we have our parasympathetic, which is our rest and digest. Okay.

Yeah.

our breath can tap into both sides. So when I talk about the trauma and tapping into that, that's when we tap into our sympathetic nervous system and we put our body into a state of safe stress.

Right. It's safely tapping into that subconscious, because all of our trauma is tapped into our subconscious mind, and that's when it's stored into our body.

Okay, let's touch quickly on safe stress

Yeah. Yeah.

because stress is like got a reputation for being a dirty word,

Yep. Totally.

I don't necessarily agree with it being thought of as a dirty word. So

Mm-hmm.

stress. Let's talk about safe stress.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So safe stress when we tap into our sympathetic nervous system on a conscious level. So where our intention is like, this is how I'm feeling and I feel like I've got a lot of, uh, subconscious parts of my body that I need to tap into. So we can go into a type of breath pattern that will go into those deeper layers of that subconscious and those parts of our body.

It's also in a safe space with a facilitator that can see the body responses as well, right? That's what we are trained to do. If we wanna take you nice and deep where there to guide you, right? Those safe stresses are also preparing our body for heightened states of stress. So when we start to train our body into sometimes these safer stresses, these safer space, safer parts of the fight or flight.

When we get into stress, so say we go to a breath work class and we've tapped in and we've gone in deep, we've got our body. At a certain point, we've prepared it so that if we start to go into another fight or flight response, A, we've understood it better, and B, our bodies responded because it's been used to it. Kind of like going to the gym. When you go to the gym, you start to work a new muscle. The breath has a similar kind of way. When we start to get deep, we start to really go into the diaphragmic breathing, which is that deep, deep, deep, deep belly breaths, which is where we're supposed to kind of spend a bit of time in.

We are training our body to breathe better and get that stress response at a like a good level. So there's a good space of stress that we can go into.

Yeah. Okay. That's, so that would be similar to the idea that had a coach tell me once a couple of years ago that I needed to have a three minute cold shower every morning just to train my brain that sometimes things were gonna be uncomfortable, but if you just stuck it out, it was gonna be okay. And I feel like it's just those little things, right?

That mean that when you get into the really stressful situation, it's, and I think more than ever, I mean, not necessarily speaking from a business owner, kind of, but as a parent or

Mm,

that has a lot to do with teenagers. I worry that we have all these young people coming into the world that have no stress response. Like everything is so over micromanaged that they can't deal with. I mean, anyone that knows me, if I mentioned the squash sandwich incident, they'll be like, yeah. Like, come on. What are we doing for our young people to help them to be able to deal with the hiccups of

Hmm.

are normal?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's, it's our challenge in, in, in, in, in our current state of the world, right? But I still think that there's the other side of how children are being raised too. Right? There, there, there's, if I think about, when I look at parenting now, I feel like parents love their children so much more.

There's this like presence, there's this, because we're a heal, like we're a different generation. We're starting to be that healed generation and understand things our parents didn't.

Yeah. So we're the conscious ones. We're the ones trying to do the work. We're the ones trying to work on that generational trauma and flip the switch.

So in the collective, what we are doing for the children. Really, really beautiful. So yes, they may not have the stress responses, but I, I believe that there's gonna be a different container of stress for them. They might not be.

Interesting.

Yeah. Because we are a different generation. We're, we are flipping that switch and so then when our, your children start to work through the world, they're gonna be even more healed.

We're, we're going through this like interesting dip of change because we're the education's there. And yes, social media is quite saturated with the way that we're looking at things and there's so much information out there, but we're learning, we are wanting to do the work, you know, and that as a collective makes a big difference.

I think that's an interesting perspective to have as well, because I think so often we get. People talking negatively about social media and the impacts of social media.

Yeah.

media is actually a great platform for learning and information and education and change as well. Like it's not all

Totally.

bad, and sometimes it's just our perspective of how we're looking at things and what we're looking for, right?

Absolutely. And you know, there's a lot of studies out there currently right now that, you know, unresolved trauma in the body is linked to so many diseases, right? So if we think about it from that for a moment, we're working on ourselves so that we can show up better in the world. And that's also, we're working on that.

So we don't get those diseases. And the autoimmune diseases are the like highest thing linked to our trauma and not, and, and stress, right? So there's like a whole conversation around that specific part. But if we think about that right now, your children are not gonna have the childhood trauma. So we are wiping out, right?

We are wiping out some of these diseases.

I have an interesting perspective on that because

Cool.

of autoimmune diseases,

Mm-hmm.

like a plethora of them.

Yeah.

and I do have quite a lot of childhood trauma, but my kids don't have childhood trauma.

Mm-hmm.

there's some, there's some, but they do have autoimmune conditions.

Mm. Yeah. Interesting. I mean, it's a lot of, there's a lot of work around it. Like it's quite the topic right now, and I'm not sure if you're familiar with Dr. Gabe or Matte, he's driving a lot of that, that study right now. So it's the links to the stress in the body, the nervous system and the, the number one cause of disease in autoimmune.

And yeah. So the number one cause of disease right now in autoimmune diseases, uh, comes from stress and childhood trauma.

Oh my goodness. I'm gonna have to start doing lots and lots of breath work.

I think too, yes. Do your breath work like you should commit to some daily breath work to set the day and, and, and the tone. Do I think that everyone should be doing breakthrough breath work to work through trauma all the time? No.

Yeah.

Okay. Uh, that's definitely not my message, but understanding and, and, and unpacking it does the world of good.

Right. And it's also like it's, we are talking about one part of our nervous system and having these safe stress responses. We also need to understand the rest and digest part

Yeah. Okay.

because we have to know when to down regulate. Okay.

Yeah.

learning to rest down regulate. Slow down just as much as we need to go into our, you know, fight or flight responses in a safe container.

The other side of our nervous system is just as important and if not more on the daily.

Okay.

preparing to be in that state of rest and digest is going to help us be in that slow periods, respond better kind of state.

what does a rest and digest state look like?

Mm. So that's being slow with our breath. So slowing things down. So usually a breath work technique that I love and that's like the easiest because I think too, we just wanna tap into our breath, you know?

And we don't wanna complicate the counts, the holes. The, you know, that sometimes can stress us out.

Uh,

oh God, I've gotta count to five.

right? Am I breathing right? Oh.

Correct, correct. So I always just say to people like, be just really gentle with yourself and just take a really deep breath in pause and just slowly exhale and do it at a point that feels right for your body, right? Obviously, you know, we wanna maybe go for a count of five, ideally, but if that stresses you out, just start to be conscious of the breath and slow it down.

That makes a world of difference as well. Uh, and especially if you're on your own or you don't have an app that's gonna necessarily count for you and you just wanna sit there and really tap into that mind and feel really soothed and slowing it down, that's all you need to do is just really take like as long deep inhales hold.

And then just slowly exhale.

Okay, so I'm conscious of the fact that a lot of people listen and don't watch. So

Yes.

I'm inhaling

Yep.

parts of my body should be moving what parts don't need to be moving to

Yeah,

deep inhalation.

yeah. So we need to be doing a diaphragmic breath, so that's in through our belly. So a lot of people don't realize that. Most people, I think there was a statistic that was shared around 70% of people actually breathe in through their chest. 'cause they're taught incorrectly. And when we're stressed, we automatically breathe in through our chest.

Oh, you

Our body's like, oh

and

yeah,

just like, yeah.

yeah, yeah. So our body actually responds first to the stress.

Oh,

Because our breath change changes and then we realize, oh yeah, we're stressed. We're stressed, and we start to like, we get the tight shoulders and we're just like holding everything up really, really high. When we shift that breath down to our belly, we start to automatically start to slow that stress response down.

Okay, so when we just go, oh God, I feel really tight in the chest and I'm just not feeling 100%, like, I feel really, really heightened in my state of stress. Moving that down to the belly and just, and pushing that belly right out to get that maximum amount of air in. And then when we exhale, our belly goes down.

Yeah. Yeah,

If we do three or four of those, our state, our nervous system starts to change.

so, so simple. It's just reminding you to do those simple things, right?

Exactly right. I always say that, you know,

how you feel is how you breathe and how you breathe is how you feel.

Yeah. Wow. That's

it's simple. The training and the trick is to daily do daily breath work, to start to train your body and train your mind that when you are stressed, ah, gotta breathe.

Okay. So what ways, I mean, obviously three deep breaths. What would be a good simple practice to implement to start incorporating, using these techniques into your daily life? Like being conscious of the fact that it's really easy if you're in a that overwhelmed state already

Hmm.

I don't have time to, it's like I don't have time to breathe.

Just take three breaths. You are already breathing. You do have time to breathe. Right? We are already breathing. That's what keeps us alive. Right? So what we are doing is we are just changing it to a more conscious breath, right? And that means that if we have had a reaction and we are in this state of stress, just slow it.

Just pause, pause and just take, take three deep, really deep breaths. And that's gonna actually

In through the nose or the mouth?

just do in through the nose and exhale out through the mouth. Okay? Yeah. So inhale through the nose and then exhale out through the mouth. Either way. Right? In a state of stress, just taking those three deep breaths without overcomplicating anything is going to make you feel really good too.

It's gonna help you connect because the breath also helps us connect back to our body, right? So we spend so much of our day and our lives outside our body. Our decisions are everything, right? It, it's crazy. So

just tapping into the breath and checking in and just connecting back,

there's,

there's a hundreds of benefits of just being in that state, right, in that conscious state.

So if you are having a realization that perhaps you need to be looking at deeper breath work, practices to perhaps like people that are listening, okay, maybe there's some stuff I need to address here. So let's go through, because again, like positives and negatives, you hear and see a lot of things.

So let's talk about some of the different types of breath that there are. What.

Hmm.

Sort of things you, recommend

Yeah.

what that kind of looks like. Again, without going into too much, because I do agree that there's an element of, and you just need to get in there do it to understand,

Yeah,

you hear a lot of words, right?

You hear a lot of words flying around in terms of breath work, so let's unpack some of that.

yeah. Absolutely. So I think the first thing to just really note if we wanna activate our body a little bit more, so if we're wanting to move the energy, uh. Necessarily. If we wanna go into a deeper breath, for example, what we would do is just a mouth breath. So we, we, we breathe in and out of our mouth.

Okay? That's where we really activate, get those really active breaths and that can lead into more of those breakthrough breath work sessions that you would necessarily do in more of a workshop type of environment. However, you can still do those active breaths if you're feeling a bit flat in your day.

So actually breathing in and out quite quickly can also help the breath and get a bit of energy into the body. It's kind of like, if you think about when you go for a run

yeah. Okay.

and you're breathing in and out through your mouth, that's actually 'cause you're exerting that energy. It's kind of the same thing with the breath.

So usually if you wanna activate, you wanna get a bit of energy into you, you would breathe in and out through the mouth. Okay. And you can do that again. It's like a bit like a,

and you can kind of continue on with that for a few rounds. Just a 1, 2, 1, 2 in and out. Okay.

Okay.

I like to do that sometimes if I feel a bit flat in the morning, if I've woken up and I'm, if we're already slow, sometimes we wake up and we're slow. We're just like we're actually in a good state. So sometimes I just sit at my desk.

Or if you are in the salon and you're feeling a little bit flat, just do a couple of rounds of breathing in and out. One and two will help you feel a little bit more up. Okay.

yeah,

If we're woken up, stressed and we got into the salon and the clients have canceled and you've just had this day just kind of flip, its on its head.

That's when we go through and we breathe in through our nose and out through our mouth, and we just go nice and gentle and nice and slow.

yeah. Okay. it's really like responding to the feeling,

Absolutely. Absolutely. But not everyone even registers how they're feeling in the morning. It's not even something that we start to think of, but

we have to check in. That is how you're gonna start your day on a really good foot. Check in with how you feel,

and pop a reminder in your phone. Have an alarm that goes off.

How am I feeling and what's my breath today?

Oh, I like that.

You know, because we have to create a habit and it takes around 30 days for us to create a new habit. And if you are committed into really learning to sort of reset that nervous system a little bit more, then that would be my best advice around that.

Okay,

And yeah, and then, you know, it's the same with sleeping.

You know, if we need to wind down our day and we need to tap into that brain to slow down again, slow the breath down. Hmm.

interesting. So for people struggling to sleep, is breath work a positive thing for them to do?

Absolutely.

Okay.

a technique that you could called 4 7, 8. It can be a little bit tricky to obviously, again, count the, the breaths. Some people like to, and some people don't. Right. Some people like to focus on numbers. You know, when you count sheep, I don't know, I, my parents always used tell me count sheep and it would put me to sleep.

Think about the counting like that instead.

not put me to sleep. It just gave me so many questions like, why am I counting the sheep? What does sheep look like? Is it winter or summer? Do the sheep still have wool? Have the sheep been shown? are the sheep out in the paddock? What are they jumping? Like, what are the sheep jumping? Or are they walking?

Should I see them through it yet? It was just, it led to a lot of questions.

So in that case, you knowing that means I wouldn't be counting then.

Okay.

Yeah. And this is the thing, and that's okay. You don't have to like, there's no, like we, you gotta make these things work for you.

Yeah,

that's my big believer as a facilitator, right? We have all these tools, and breathwork is a bucket full of hundreds of tools.

Breathwork as a banner, there's a bucket, and there's so many tools, and this is why it's also important and something I pride myself on. I'm like, I work one-on-one with clients. I see how they breathe. I retrain their breath, and that then leads them to go to sometimes these bigger workshops, right? So the one-on-one environment is beautiful because I can see how you breathe.

I can see everyone breathes differently, right? And so I can see it in your body. I guide you, I help you. We work out these little things that work for you that don't. It's the same thing as going to a pt, but I'm coaching you on how to breathe properly and help you understand what's gonna work for you.

So Jen, you don't mind counting.

for a neuro for your nervous system, right?

Yeah. Essentially. Yeah, absolutely. It's the, you know, I'll share something with you. The last eight months I've been working with ex prisoners

Oh, we've touched on this. I'm so interested to hear about this.

and they, they all came to me not being able to breathe properly at all.

Wow.

were like, they were short, sharp, in their chest all day because they are in a state of fear every day. Once they get out and they get out, they've gotta adjust to the normal world. They're out there trying to get accepted, be seen, be heard.

Face judgment. There are so many layers and when they come to my class every week, watching their breath improve is like the biggest, I was just, I felt like I'd achieved everything in this life.

Wow.

And that's that importance of that kind of like watching someone breathe and understanding their, their stories, understanding, you know, their trauma and guiding them through those best practices.

Were they, willing participants, like, is this something that's been recommended to them or is it something that they've sort of, you, like, you are only gonna get out what you put in, right? So how do you cope with like,

Absolutely.

resistance and,

Mm.

you know, how, how did that situation pan out?

Yeah. Yeah, there was quite a bit of resistance at the start. Uh, they were like. Breathing. Like they kind of made a bit of a joke out of it at the start, and I would just roll with it. I'd be like, yeah, we could have a bit of a laugh at it. And it was a big learning curve for me too, because, you know, sometimes we'd run a class and they'd just fall asleep and it was like sync.

It was synchronized, snoring at one point, you know. But I, I persisted and I was like, this is too long for them. Their attention span is not gonna sit through an hour class, so let's shake it up. Let's figure out what's gonna work for them. And I would try different things. We would sometimes do somatic movement guided meditations leading into breath work.

There was a lack of bit of a trial and error on my side to see what was gonna actually help them. And the biggest learning that I've learned from these men is number one. They wanted to actually hold the, they wanted to chat a lot more.

Oh

So,

wow.

and so we would hold space for 30 minutes at the start and we would have really uncomfortable conversational topics.

So,

gosh. I love that.

and this helped them start to lean in to what they wanted to work on and like set the tone for like leaning into the breath work. So they would come, we would chat. Some of the conversations were like very eye-opening, uh, and they started to trust me. And an element of that is trust. Like they're in the space of a female, which could, was a little uncomfortable potentially for some of them based on certain scenarios of how they may have ended up in prison.

So building that trust took quite a little while. And once we've built this trust, what's kind of happened now is they've almost, so the pro, they, they, they part of their program, they'll come, they do the breath work and then the boys are recommending the new guys to now come to breath work. And I was like, it's,

cool.

so beautiful.

So I now have a new lot of men that have started coming and you know, now I understand how that word breath work is kind of filtering through. Because one of the guys says to me the other day, oh, these UFC fighters are now doing breath work and they have a breath work coach. And I said, yeah, that's, that's, this is important stuff.

So now he's like, oh, I've gotta come like this is amazing. You know? And just as much as the breath work is important, it's them learning to trust their body. And the biggest. The, the most eye-opening session I actually did with, with them was I did a really deep meditation and breath work class on their future self,

Yeah,

and they had never thought about that yet because when they get out of prison, it's like, oh my God.

Like they're, they're in survival. They've gone from a pretty chilled life in prison. Like, I'm not gonna lie like that. They got, it's, it's not a bad place. Right. It's, it's pretty cruisy. Right.

people, it's probably better than the circumstances that they were in before they were in there.

Absolutely. Now they have responsibilities. They have to get a job, which is so challenging for a lot of these men because a lot of people judge them for what it is. But let me tell you, and I'm like these men, after what they have gone through, and once they start doing that work on themselves, they're better than half of the society out there that haven't been to prison.

Yeah, that it just aren't

acknowledging

they've got going on and pushing it to the corner.

Correct. Like they're dedicated. They're dedicated to connect back with their family. They're dedicated to get back into the workforce. They're dedicated so much to never go back to the life that they had. Go back to the drugs, like all of the things that kind of come with that. And yes, some of them have dropped off, right?

Like, and it's been a little sad to sort of, and, but they kind of come back, you know? And. The community of these men and how they support each other is so, so, so beautiful. And you know, I always say that working with these men has helped me so much. Like it's just as healing for them as it has been healing for me because I've had such a deep father wound.

And as crazy as it sounds, I'm in the right place right now working with these men because I have the capacity to hold that space for them, learn about them, understand them, committed to them. I'm consistent for them. And that's also helping them feel safe in female's presence. And it's powerful. It's a powerful room when they come in there.

It's, yeah, it's beautiful.

Oh, that's amazing.

Yeah.

I just

Special.

like that's really special because there's a lot of talk about men in general at the moment, and I think a lot of it can be really negative, but that's really a focus on, okay, well what are we, what are we doing? can we

Yeah,

change? How men to be met?

Or men, you know?

100%. And you know, 75% of all suicides in Australia are men.

Wow.

Yep. That was the latest, that's the statistic from 2023. And that's because again, men weren't taught to express themselves. They're taught to suppress.

Yeah.

Us as women. You know, I, it's a bit of a controversial sort of, I think topic a little bit sometimes when I speak up about this.

But we have to do the work to help these men also through their journey. It's a collective side, both female and, and women and us women. We, we, we are like the, we are the emotional ones and we're the ones that like wanna push and speak up, share it, come on. You know that real drive. I wanna hear you. I wanna see you.

We wanna, we've got our right intentions, but we have to understand that it's a gentle process for men. It really is. It's, it's gentle and we have to learn to just have that, that bit more patience and. Lean in more with the curiosity and the compassion to how they are. You know, if a man's got his walls up, they're just wounds that he needs to work on.

So have compassion to potentially being curious to those wounds, because once you can just, just learn to be that bit of a bit space holder underneath all of that, they flourish. And so if we can learn to encourage more men, hold the space, help them heal, it becomes this beautiful cycle, you know? Yeah.

Oh, absolutely. Like, yeah. That's really, really, it's everybody. We're a collective.

We've really, really, really are, and it's if we can just take responsibility, I think all of us

just take a bit of responsibility for where we are and how we are,

you know, and,

and own it. And if we just solely focus on those things, it helps everyone,

helps your workplace, it helps your personal life, you know, and encouraging that curiosity to learn about yourself is a, is a big thing, you know?

I think that's the takeaway, like that we're really focusing on today, right? Is that you need to take the time to learn about yourself.

Mm-hmm.

even take that moment, to check in the morning and go, oh, how do I feel? Like, how do I actually feel? And how am I gonna respond to that

Absolutely.

So let's talk about things like Wim Hof, love that man. You know, holotropic, like, there's, there's

Yeah,

there's like terms floating around. So what do these kinds of things mean and how are they, because I, I guarantee that there's people that are gonna hop off this day and go like, oh, I wanna do breath work.

And that it's so different like. Are there different types for different situations? Are there like gateway breath work where we just gonna ease ourselves in? Like, what are we doing? What does everything mean? What should we be looking for?

it's a, a great question and I think in the space of breath work right now, I think it's really important that if you've not done breath work before I. Absolutely. If you feel called to rock up to your first workshop that says breakthrough breath work or you know, uh, usually breakthrough breath work is kind of like usually the most common language used,

Yep.

and that's gonna be more of that holotropic breath work, right?

The term holotropic, I mean, again, it's a term that's been used for centuries, uh, and it dates back to, uh, Stan Groff, he was the original founder of kind of this holotropic breathing. And so kind of what's happened is there's like been stems off from that holotropic breathing. Not a lot of people use that term necessarily, but if you do see it, that's quite an activating breath, right?

That's why we're gonna really tap into that subconscious. We're gonna shift a lot of things in our body. We're gonna move through things and. Breakthrough holotropic. Usually like a three hour workshop that's gonna really help you feel like you've, you've got something at the end of that. In saying that, though, your body's gonna show you what you need at that time.

So my advice to everyone that if you go to a breakthrough breathwork session and you might not get some sort of breakthrough, you weren't ready for that yet. Your body wasn't ready to show you that. Okay, every breathwork session is so different. No breathwork class or no breathwork session is the same.

So never go in with an expectation of like, oh, well I didn't get this body response, so it didn't work.

Yeah.

Just really going curious, open-minded, and whatever needs to come up in your body is going to come up and what needs to be there at that time. So trust that process. So look for something that, you know, someone has a story that also resonates as a facilitator.

I think that's also really important because currently, you know, there there's quite a lot of facilitators like coming through, where did they do their training? Are they, are they practicing? How many hours maybe have they done, you know, ask those questions as well.

the kind of information that's readily available or is that

Yeah,

to dig deeper for?

totally. 'cause it's not regulated right now.

Okay. And I, and,

Okay.

and it, it will be eventually because. You know, a lot of it, it's kind of like, I think about hairdressing for example. It's like not necessarily regulated. Like you can still rock up with a pair of scissors and say, oh, yep, I'm qualified, but are you, or how many hours or how many years?

Do you know what I mean? I think the, the thing to look out for is you know, are they working out of a studio? Is there somewhere that they're working that has a reputation as well? I think that's something really important to look for. You know, are they regularly practicing? I think that's really important.

You know, and, and, and what's their story and what's their journey? Because what makes a good breathwork facilitator, right? And this is a topic that I kind of think about quite often, is someone who's done the work and who is driving that, right? Because that's what helps you hold space. And I run classes every week and every week.

My classes are different because do you know what? I'm deep in some work right now. I've been in a really deep mentorship these past couple of months and like I've been going like on layers of my journey, like I've never delved before. And that's been showing up in my classes. Right. And I've been able to take people even deeper, you know, so is that facilitator committed to doing that work?

Because that's what shows up in your classes and that's what helps you get the best out of people and dive in and get that curiosity and those questions. You know, I'm working one-on-one with some men at the moment that just don't feel comfortable to come to a class, but they, they wanna go to these one-on-ones.

And that is, that has tested my, my facilitation. Absolutely. Because these men, we know they're guarded, right? Guarded.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And they walk in with their ego, like, yeah, it's breath work. So it's like this process of me recognizing, oh, what do I gotta work on to get these guys deep? To get in there, you know, so it's been a beautiful process and I it's been amazing.

But it's like, again, those, the facilitator has to have done that work to get you to go deep and understand those layers and, you know, understand the science of the breath and the chondra indications. And, you know, there, there's a bit of that layer. So what I would recommend to all listeners out there is there are quite a lot of breath work facilitators out there, you know, but what have they done?

Do you connect with them? Have they, you know, are they practicing? You know, all those questions is something that I would definitely be looking for. And holotropic breathing, conscious connected breathing, breakthrough breath work, kind of fall under some of those parts that are really gonna take you deep and you're gonna get those like real powerful drives.

And then you've got the gentle breath work. I mean, yoga has been, we've got yoga studios everywhere. We've got yin yoga, we've got all these other forms of breath work that are gentle and require movement and all those sorts of things too. So, you know, explore all those avenues and find what works for you.

'cause there is no one size fits all. We are all different and that's what makes it also all, all beautiful. But I would say if it is something you are curious about, is definitely find a coach that does offer some one-on-ones, because that's gonna help you when you go to some classes to really like. I'm understanding this, I'm learning about my body.

It's tailored to you and then that's gonna help you probably explore your breath a little bit deeper.

I think you touched on something really important there as well. It's like the science of the breath and contraindications, because I think there is a little bit of a perception that it's, there's not a science behind it and there really is. So, let, like, it's not just sitting around having a. You know, like breathing in and breathing, like that's not what it's actually all about.

So let's touch on that. Contraindications. What are we talking about there?

there's quite a list. And when we say these conjure indications too, they can also, we. The contraindication is definitely quite a long list, right? But it's just letting a facilitator know that maybe you are on some medications, on some, you know, anti-anxiety medications, maybe you're pregnant, maybe all those kinds of things.

It doesn't mean that you can't do breath work, it just means that you're facilitator, correct? Absolutely. Everyone can do breath work, right? But it's just let your facilitator know. Don't no need to hide these things so that the breath work facilitator can understand where you are also at what needs to be worked on, and maybe look at the way that you're breathing in a different manner.

Okay? So there's nothing that's really.

these things because it's just the same as one of our clients saying, no, I've never bleached my hair knowing full well that under their dark hair, they bleached it like a year ago and it's gonna melt off. And it's just knowing that information so that person knows how to approach you in a safe way.

Right.

Exactly. And if you do go to a workshop, you should see a list. Like there should be a form that you fill out always that will have quite disclosed questions, all those sorts of things. So always make sure that there's a waiver or a form attached before you go to these breath work sessions, because that also shows that the facilitator is also genuinely caring about the per people that are showing up, right?

Yeah.

so that's also just something really, really, really important to look out for. And, you know, a lot of you know, breath work really helps a lot with anxiety and, I mean, anxiety is this big, also big topic. And my personal experience, you know, I I had terrible anxiety, terrible, it was crippling, but I knew how to hide it and I hid it so well.

That I suppressed it. And that comes from, you know, just like I always say, I always like had this personality when I was in a salon, for example, I'd be behind the chair. Whew. Yeah. But deep down I'm like anxious as shit. Like this is like woo. You know? And I was hiding all of the things that were like leading to the anxiety until one day you just either crash, you burn out, and you've gotta then uncover all these layers.

So anxiety.

Of autoimmune diseases.

That too. That too. And you know, I just want people to know that anxiety, the, the meaning of anxiety is fear. The other side of anxiety is just fear. So when your anxiety kicks in, what are you scared of? Where's the fear? And if you get a body response like I do, this is totally overshare, but I get stuck on the toilet for like two hours.

Right. Call them. Anxiety poops.

Yep.

I'm stuck. I cannot get off. And it's like my full body response. For years, I just was, Ugh, this was stuck on the toilet. Great. I'm like, what? I'm actually really anxious. Like it's not bad. And like our body's responding to the anxiety. And then I would be like, what am I scared of?

Where's this fear coming from? Right? But a lot of that had been stored from my childhood and my abandonment wounds sitting in my gut.

Oh

once I unpacked that, if that kicks in, I'm like, oh, I'm either abandoning myself, I feel like someone's abandoning me. It's just an abandonment wound kicking in. Send that love, give it kindness.

It's all gonna be okay. I'm just out of my body. I'm not safe. And we keep moving forward. So, you know, there's this whole thing around anxiety that, you know, people taking anxiety, medications and all those kinds of things, learn about it, learn where the anxiety comes from, how it got there, what it's doing.

And

I promise you, when you start giving that anxiety, the love, the kindness, the gentleness, not fixing it, just accepting it,

Yeah.

your whole world changes.

Yes. Oh, the anxiety. There's a reason, there's a trending like on it at the moment. It's such a massive topic, right?

It is, it is. And it's, the anxiety is fear. And then when it shows up in your body, it's your old wounds showing up in your body. It's keeping you safe. It's reminding you that, that there's a fear there. Right. And usually when it sits in the gut, it's usually in abandonment, right? 'cause that's like literally that central gut, gut system and you know, tapping into the breath, bringing that back down, or doing some sort of somatic movement.

And I, that's probably a whole other podcast, somatic movement. But somatics is also really, I putting

moment, right?

Yeah. And it's, you can, that energy has to get out. So if we think of anxiety, if we think of, uh, anything stored in our body has to get out, right? It's energy. Think about like moving cells in the body of energy.

And I say I'm 39 years of my life. I've got 39 years of stored, maybe 30. I stopped at 30. So I've removed, maybe I'm being good the last nine years, right? But it's like, think about 30 years before I started my journey of stuff like of cells of energy just stuck and stored. The breath helps get that out.

So does somatic, right? So does moving, shaking our hands, like, getting that energy out. If we cry and we feel it in our body, it means that's, that's a memory in the body that we've gotta get out. So getting yes, like there's, yeah, there's a lot to unpack, but movement is just as good as well as

Yeah,

the breath included in that.

but lots of people move and don't breathe when they move.

Correct. And you might see, and I think like some of the content online can be a little full on when it comes to breath work as well. They're sacred spaces and you know, don't freak out too much if you see any of that online as well to anybody. You might see people move while they're breathing, like their, their body's like having quite a response.

That's just energy flowing and getting out. It's the same with, uh, technique. We call it technique when you go into, yeah.

I got

yep. You might start to do that. That's a body response and you've gotta get it out. That's like, again, you've gotta shake, shake, shake it out if you can. Or you can just stay in it Right.

And get to the other side. But it also means you've gotta breathe a little deeper.

Oh

Yeah. Yeah. So getting that breath and really moving into that deepness can also be a really, really great cue. Again, probably doing one-on-one coaching a little bit and training and understanding these things can be just so, so helpful and so, so valuable to help you on your breath work journey. Yeah.

do you think that's the best way to start? Is one-on-one before you go into a group setting, or does it just depend on the person and how comfortable they are with that kind of thing?

Totally depends on the person, right? I don't wanna say that there's a wrong and right. I just think you know what you need and what you're ready for. But I do believe that people do get the best, best out of the classes. Generally, if they have done a bit of a one-on-one, they've had that time to understand how their breath works, you know?

But if you wanna go to a workshop, go do your thing. You know what I mean? But if you ever get curious and you do wanna learn a little bit more, a one-on-one is definitely super helpful. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. We need a checklist of things that people need to be considering with their breath.

Mm-hmm.

So let's say first one is when you wake up in the morning,

Mm-hmm.

check in with yourself

Yeah,

and then breathe accordingly. Right?

absolutely. Check in. Am I feeling anxious, stressed, tired? How am I feeling? Perfect? If I'm anxious, I need to slow things down. I need to maybe not have a coffee in the morning. Maybe it's you know, I'm a big fan of cacao. I love cacao. And, you know, that helps me, the taste, it helps me be present.

It just, it's like this activeness that I just love, right? It's a sacred, beautiful drink to be drinking in the morning. So I'll be gentle and I'll slow it down and I'll have my cacao. But if I'm tired and I'm like, get shit done, and I, I'm like, tired, then I would just do a little bit of a faster breath work.

And then have, you can have your coffee too. Even though.

I was just gonna say that. Would you have a coffee too? Like would you have a coffee? Do you recommend coffee?

Not necessarily you know, technically not a good idea when you are doing breath work. 'Cause it's can just heighten the feeling a little bit.

Yeah.

everyone, everyone's different as well. If you are ever going to a breakthrough breath work class, definitely go on an empty stomach. Don't eat food.

Always highly recommended. Yeah, always highly recommended. Yeah. Eat way hours before. Yeah,

Oh, okay.

because you can feel enough, you don't feel as well and you can't, if you've got a full belly and you're trying to get a full belly with air, it's not necessarily the most ideal.

Yeah. And then should people be taking breath work breaks during their day? I.

If you can, like, you know, uh, ideally it'd be amazing, you know, to tap into, there's a method that we call coherence breathing. Okay. And it's just a breathe in through the nose for five and an exhale for five. And it is one of the most backed breath work techniques scientifically because it's getting our body back into that coherent state.

Okay? So if you can, in the middle of your day, and especially for my fellow hair people, it's so important to just check in with yourself whilst you're holding space, because you know, like you take on so much energetically, you know, so definitely between clients, while you are mixing color, just pause a little bit.

Take some deep breaths, get prepared and have those resets. Maybe it's a thing that every time you're in the back room, back room,

Yeah.

breaths, you know and, and maybe you're standing there mixing a bowl with someone next to you and you both do it together. Like it could be something that you start in the salon like, but it does start to change and just commit to those habits.

So check in with yourself, take those breaks if you can. But like all things just start small and then add on, because we all have a habit of like, yeah, I'm gonna do all the things and then we don't stick to it.

I'm gonna

Okay.

a one hour breath work meditation every morning before I get up. Yeah,

Yeah, totally. Totally. And I think if you do have a studio near you that you can show up and do the hour and like be in a, an immersive experience, definitely commit to that, right? Like if that's gonna be part of your routine every week, 100% make that part of it. But if you don't have access to that, right?

Just start those smalls, check in with yourself, do the little things, and they all add up. At the end of the day, it's like that 1% commitment to like just being that little bit better.

And it's also something that you're doing for yourself and you are already breathing. All you are doing is just shifting your breath a little bit.

I've never been so conscious of how I am breathing for an hour. Just every time. Oh yeah.

That's beautiful. And that's, that's what we wanna do. We wanna start to train our brains to start just checking in, you know, like, and our natural breath, right? Like that our heart's always beating or we're naturally breathing, right? So it's just when we start to consciously tap into that breath, we wanna kind of move that air to that belly and just get those really nice deep belly breaths.

Do we, I'm conscious 'cause I'm conscious of unconscious breathing. I'm conscious that we have to wrap up soon,

Yes.

do, are we born, breathe? Like is, do we forget how to breathe like properly? Is that what happens? Like,

Yeah,

change how we're breathing?

100%.

So we're all born, these little people that know how to breathe properly for our nervous system, and then the things that happen to us change it.

Correct, correct. So trauma like things happen and our body goes into a trauma state and then we don't do anything with that trauma. So, you know, going back to my own personal childhood, my trauma started basically when I was two, when my mom left my biological dad and I got a new dad, for example. Right.

And I wasn't held, I never got held by my dad as a child. I was never held. And like, I didn't get the hugs right as a baby. And you don't get that from your primary caregivers. You are already, your nervous system is not getting the love, the touch, and the things that it needs. Right. So that for me, from that age, all the way through has been in my body and I've never done anything with it.

Whereas if you are raised as a child, you are held, you are attended to, you know, crying, for example, for a baby. There's soothing involved in that. So you are helping that child with their nervous system and start to like be that gentle loving, you know, the love, the touching, all those things help the nervous system also as a collective, right?

yeah.

part of the nervous system, but the touch, the hugs, the words, the, all those things that make us feel loved, seen, heard, all help. Also, the collective of the nervous system. The breath though, can help us obviously tap in and go into that subconscious part of our bodies and our minds. In the simplest terms.

I love it. It's so good. much to unpack.

It's, and it's

that that's been an hour already. It's to.

and I, I think, you know, just don't over complicate it for all my, the listeners because it can be over complicated. Like it is, you know, it just commit to just being a little more conscious and just know that your breath is powerful, right? The breath is a powerful part of our body. It is the language of our nervous system, right?

So listen to what your body needs. Learn to just tap in and delve into the body. See how it feels. You know, nothing good comes from being outside of our bodies. Making decisions, angry, making decisions when we are not tapped in. But if we can just tap in and go back into the body and make a decision, like our intuition, right?

We talk. And that's another loose word that everyone talks about. Intuition. Listen to it. Learn how to listen to that intuition. And the breath is gonna help you slow down and tap in and see how that truly feels for you. So don't make decisions when you're chaotic, stressed, all those kinds of things. Just pause, slow it down, and start to make those decisions. And just commit to 10 minutes every day. Set a reminder on your phone to check in with your body. Do 10 minutes of breath work, play some music. Uh, there's many apps out there that can help you also guide you. And if you can try and go to a workshop, learn a little bit more and start to just really work on that nervous system.

Such good advice. 1% friends, we can all do this. I think we'll include in our show notes all the details for your particular practice, where you operate out of,

Yeah,

and just just any helpful notes for people looking for certain things that wanna take them down this journey. But yeah, our nervous system. Is such an important part of looking after ourselves, and I'm so grateful that you were able to come on and share all your expertise in this area. I think it's just so beneficial, especially for the industry and the interactions that we have with other people to be really focusing on how to look after ourselves as well

absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. And yeah, we're gonna keep this conversation rolling about our nervous system and showing up and just being better humans for everyone out there,

to being better humans. I love it. Thanks so much, babe.

thank.