Breathe Better, Live Stronger: The Power of Breathwork | Aaron Alexander
en
January 30, 2025
TLDR: On The Dr. Tyna Show, Aaron Alexander discusses the power of breathwork in managing stress and emotions, its impact on health and movement, various breathing techniques to achieve calm, overcoming panic through conscious breathing, relaxation and grounding practices to release tension, the connection between movement and breath, increasing fear tolerance, grounding and lymph draining practices, talk therapy and more.

In this episode of The Dr. Tyna Show, we dive into the profound impact of breathwork on our physical and emotional health. Aaron Alexander, a movement specialist and host of the Align Podcast, shares insights on how mastering breath can help manage stress, enhance well-being, and promote emotional resilience.
Key Concepts Discussed
The episode covers various aspects of breathwork, focusing on how breathing techniques can transform your health and emotional state. Here are the essential points of discussion:
1. The Role of Breathwork in Managing Stress and Emotions
- Breath as a Tool: Breathwork is not only a practice but a functional tool to harness calmness and emotional balance.
- Resilience Building: By mastering breath control, one can manage panic and anxiety effectively.
2. Breathing Techniques for Reactive States
- Long Exhalations: Emphasis on the importance of extending exhalations to trigger relaxation responses in the body.
- Conscious Breathing: Strategies are shared for practicing breath control during stressful situations, enhancing one's ability to remain calm.
3. Overcoming Panic Through Conscious Breathing
- Panic Attacks: Aaron explains how breathing can help mitigate symptoms of panic attacks. Techniques to tackle overbreathing and panic episodes are detailed, promoting a structured approach to breath regulation.
- The Role of CO2: A discussion on CO2 tolerance and its significant impact on emotional and physical state.
4. Connection Between Movement and Breath
- Integrated Approach: The episode emphasizes how movement can enhance breathing techniques, fostering a more holistic approach to health.
- Physical Activity: Regular movement helps in mechanical functioning of breath, improving lung efficiency and promoting lymphatic drainage for detoxification.
5. Increasing Fear Tolerance
- Desensitization: Practical applications for gradually increasing one's ability to tolerate fears and stressful stimuli through conscious breathing.
- Fear as a Catalyst for Growth: Engaging with fears, rather than avoiding them, is portrayed as a transformative process that can deepen personal resilience.
Practical Applications
Listeners are encouraged to:
- Incorporate Breathwork: Start practicing specific breathing exercises like long exhalations or box breathing in daily routines.
- Mindful Movement: Use physical activity to notice and regulate breath, creating a stronger mind-body connection.
- Explore Feelings: Engage with uncomfortable feelings through breathwork to release stored emotional tension and foster healing.
Conclusion
The episode wraps up with a strong reminder of the power of breath. Whether you are a novice or experienced in breathwork, Aaron Alexander illustrates the invaluable benefits that mastering your breath can bring to your life. By making breathwork a daily practice, individuals can unlock their potential for calmness, resilience, and emotional growth.
Takeaway: Next time you feel stressed, remember that your breath can be your greatest ally. Focus on longer, conscious exhalations, and give yourself permission to embrace the emotions that come up, transforming them into a source of strength and growth.
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You are tuned into the Dr. Tina show with Dr. Tina Moore. For more, visit DrTina.com. On this episode of the Dr. Tina show, I'm doing my first interview of the year with Aaron Alexander. I got to be on Aaron's podcast recently and we had such a great time. He really asked me such incredible questions and I thought this guy would be very fun to interview.
Aaron is a movement specialist. He is the founder of the Align Method. He is the podcast host of the Align Podcast. He's a manual therapist, and this man has such an interesting take on things. We get to dive deep into breath work and the mechanics of breathing and how breathing can bring you all kinds of freedom that you didn't realize in your health, in your movement, in your mood, in your affect, in the ability to remain calm, and really how to
harness that Jedi power that I feel like I'm always trying to achieve. As I age, every year I try to get better and better at achieving this Jedi level of calm. And what Aaron taught me was that really comes through breath. So you guys are going to learn a ton. We went a bit off topic here and there and just dove into all kinds of interesting topics, but we kept bringing it back to the breath. So with that, let's jump in.
I'm really happy to talk to you today, actually, because it's going to make me cry. I was just persecuted and hammered over the past several years for pushing back on COVID. And I shared that with you a little bit when I met you and when I was on your podcast, which was so much fun.
The other day when I saw Trump sign that executive order to, you know, like, who cares what you think of Trump? He signed an executive order to make censorship illegal. And I started bawling because I have held my tongue and locked my throat chakra up so intensely over the past several years. And this, it was, I was trying to explain it to my husband last night.
I come from a background of pretty heavy abuse by a family member my whole life and my, I've told, I shared that with my audience before and it brought all that up of like, yeah, you don't know until it stops. And then I saw Carrie Katie Hopkins, she's a British comedian. I don't know if you know, she is, but she was really taken down and pushed, they did some terrible things to her in the UK and
with censorship and stuff. And I mean, I think she had had legal battles. And she was crying the other night and she said, you don't know how much freedom you lost until you get it back. One of the main reasons my patients were not compliant with their fish oil is because of fishy burps.
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I hope you love it as much as I do. And it really hit me like I'm having this definite PTSD feeling of like.
God, we were really silenced so unjustly. And what a complete fuckery the past five years have been. And you know, really hit me like, when you're in it, you know, it's happening, but you're just trying to get through it, right? You're like weaving and dodging and trying not to get hit. But when it is seemingly over, which I don't know if it is, like, I'm still like, do I, do I put my foot out? Do I, am I going to get like, it's like a dog that's been beaten so much that
It just wants to bite and grab every time you get near it. And I am trying so hard to let that go because it's in there. And there's resentment. There's so much anger and resentment. And it's going to poison me if I don't let it go. So I've come to a place where I realized this is, I mean, years ago, actually, I came to a place where I just decided to stop being angry at these people. But it definitely, these last few days, have sort of invoked that memory.
Man, it's a hard thing to shake. And I don't even know what the feeling is. I have to sit with it and meditate on it because I can't even put my finger on how to describe it well. But there's something there for all of us who were, especially those of us who are living in this crazy places like the Pacific Northwest and just the whole West Coast, really, it was like a different world over here.
I don't know how to process it. And I don't, I think there's a heavy grief with it too. It's just like, we just got fucking hammered. And it really happened. And now people are
you know, there's the real consequences of what happened, the intervention, the lockdowns, all of it, like lives were lost, people are maimed, and there's, I think that's what we're seeing this split in the Maha movement right now, because there's those of us who are like, we need to see some serious action taken against certain things that we shall not speak of, and they're over here talking about like red dye number five, right? So, which is fine, like that's all well and good too, but
That's where I'm at. And I was like, I'm going to talk to Erin Alexander, who you, you helped me with such a, you gave me such great perspective when I met you, kind of on this topic. And I was like, well, we'll talk about breathing and releasing. So yeah. Yeah. Where do you feel that in your body, if you were to isolate it into the, the physical?
It's in my solar plexus, like it's right here. And it's like crushing and heavy when it hits me. And then I feel my cortisol go up and I'm like, fuck these people. I do not get, I'm not gonna outsource my anxiety and let the actions and words of others raise my cortisol anymore. Cause that just makes you ugly and dissolves your collagen. So.
What do you feel like that does for you? What do you feel like? Is there is there something that that feeling or the feeling of like anger, the feeling of resentment or any of that? Do you feel like it serves you in some way? No, I've gotten past that. I don't want it. It doesn't serve me. It's not helpful. It used to. It used to fuel me and help me stay in the game, but it doesn't know. It feels like somebody is grabbing my heart and my chest and squeezing really hard when that feeling comes up for me and I do not want it.
How old is that feeling? Is it something that's, and I promise I'm not trying to therapist you. It would be out of my scope to therapist. Anyway, I just think it's interesting line of questions. Like, is that a familiar feeling from what you said? It seems like it is, but how familiar is that feeling?
It's a newer, it's definitely a newer version of a really old feeling that I've had since childhood when I was being abused. But it is definitely a newer version because this one was a scyap. Like this was a real mental fuck. They really fucked with us mentally. And that part was very hard to endure.
Do you ever sit with, because you're able to localize where you feel it in yourself, if you sit quietly with it and feel into that part, have you ever done that? I have. What comes up? I can usually visualize overriding it with light. I can usually bring in. It always is a different color, but I'll drop from my head. What if you don't override it?
Well, it feels black and mucky, you know? It's like the light isn't there. And I know the light's there. And so I just pulse it until it gets big enough to sort of dissolve. And I do it in the sauna too. It's best in the sauna because you get hot and then you get that moment where it's really uncomfortable because you're really hot and you want to flee, but you don't. And then you kind of like give into it and then I can alchemize it into sweat, get it out of me.
What do you feel? Is it okay that I'm asking these questions? Yeah, yeah, this is good. What do you, so if you volunteered to explore not attempting to override, but actually just became really curious with the black and the muck, what do you feel? What feelings or sensations or anything would arise if you stepped into the muck? I don't know. I've tried that actually in the past and I
It feels like the darkness. Have you ever seen the never ending story? Oh, so it won't make as much sense. You would like that movie. Actually, you should go watch that movie when we get off here. You would like it. You'll get it. You'll get what I'm trying to lay down here. It's the nothing. There's this, the nothing is trying to take over this planet and turn the planet into nothing. And it's winning because people have fear and they've lost hope.
And in that process, the nothing is winning. And so when I feel that, it feels like the nothing. And I just, I don't want to let it win. So I pulse it out with light. I wonder, as you're saying that, if that it feels like there's, it feels like there's almost like this, like,
dual kind of good, bad, you know? Like I need to save the world, I need to step up, I need to do a thing. And then there's like the bad side. I wonder, do you feel like that could happen just internally? Like you could come into communion and relationship with that and it not be like a doing, but something of just a, like could you introduce the dark and the light within yourself?
Does that make sense? Yeah, no, I'll consider it. Just sit with it. Just chill with it. Yeah, like sometimes I wonder if maybe like this, like the outward, you know, manifestation of things like ultimately you could, you know, you could argue like what is life and is it a dream or is it a, you know, is there an objective reality? Is this a simulation? Is this God? Is this evolution? Like who the heck actually knows what's going on here? But the way that we're interpreting the world certainly is like an inside out.
job, you know, like all the things that we see and the way that we see like life isn't happening. Life is, it's what we're focusing on within life is happening. There's so many lives that are happening. There's so many channels that are happening all of the time. You specifically, you know, this thing called Dr. Tina is focusing on a specific channel. It doesn't make it right or wrong. It's just the channel that you focus on. And that channel could either create torment
You know, or it could create resentment, it could create anger, it could create happiness, it could create orgasms, it can create joy, it can create abundance, it can create, you know, anything.
And it's like we always have control over, and I can work on this stuff myself, but we always have control over the spotlight of what channel we're focusing on. And when we get so impassioned about certain things, we're like, but the justice, it's like, as long as that serves you, and you're not being used by the channel, but you're able to choose to engage in the channel, then it's like, cool, good time, play with the justice, enjoy it. Like this is great, I love that.
But is it something that creates contraction within the self? Is it something that creates darkness within the self? Is it something that closes down access to deeper relationships with others or with the self? Because it comes back to like the Stephen Porges Polyvagal stuff. There's a binary in your analysis, but there's a binary nature to the nervous system. And there's, there's safety and there's threat.
and when the body is safe, suddenly all of the healing mechanisms can come online and everything just starts to perfuse and circulate. The factories come online, the lights come online and when we're under threat, then suddenly it's like, oh my God, we don't have time for
digestion or menstruation or muscular repair or any of this other stuff immune function like we need to shut the blood the heck out of the organs get into the muscles we get the heck out of the room or we need to defend ourselves or if it's really bad we're going to need to just collapse play possum shut down and freeze.
And all of those physical manifestations that come out into blood moving around our body and different organs being circulated or not circulated or structures forming or not forming, all that does come back to the stories that we weave about ourselves and about the world, to some degree. Does that make sense?
Yeah. No, I get what you're laying down. It's interesting. One of the, one of my classic moves is just to be like, Oh, it doesn't matter. Ignore it until the feeling goes away. And then I, you know, move on, but I don't think you can do that forever. I think it catches up to you. No, I'm saying, I'm not saying, I'm not saying ignore it. I'm saying get super, super interested. Yeah. Yeah. And go all the way through it and alchemize the poison into the, into the medicine. Yeah.
So instead of instead of saying, ah, this is the dark muck, I need to get some, I gotta get some light in here now. What if we just really got to know the dark muck and something that I enjoy doing. Sometimes I work with a therapist, he helps me with certain things. Sometimes I can be a little soft on myself, a little light on myself, I'm like a little too mother nurturing with myself.
And I'll, you know, I'll say things that aren't quite definitive enough, or I'll say things that where I'm kind of like, you know, I'll say something like, oh, I'm, I feel like I'm sabotaging myself in this way, or I feel like I'm only working up to, you know, a tenth of my potential or something of that sort. Like I have that sensation. And then I'll follow that with
But I'm doing pretty good. Or in comparison to whatever, like my problems or whatever. And he's like, no, no, no, stop that. In order to create enough alchemical energy to create this change and shift within yourself. You actually need to build that energy up enough. And every time we send a little injection of like, ah, it's not so bad.
or some kind of way that we kind of squirm out of it, it's like we're losing pressure to create the change. And I wonder with something like that, with something that we've been experiencing within ourselves for a short time or a long time, if there could be value in just going into it to really feel all the feelings and not bypass it with the light and not bypass it with any of that stuff, but actually just go all the way into it until
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Yeah, you know, it's funny. I am afraid of the dark and I live. I don't know why and I live out in the country and two nights ago, it's frozen here. It's just absolutely it's sunny and beautiful, which is not like Oregon. Oregon's usually temperate and rainy. It's like usually like 45 degrees right about now and right now it's like low 30s. And my dog decided at 10 o'clock at night, she was going to go wander the farm and we'd live on 40 acres and she went across the field.
And I'm out there in the pitch black dark walking in my pajamas and a coat hat and I'm calling for her and I heard my voice get more and more frantic because I was getting scared because it was so dark and I was so far away from the house and I was so far away from any light and I was starting to and then I heard the coyotes
chattering off in the distance. And I was like, then I started frantically yelling her name. And she plays this game of hide and seek. And by the time I got to my mother-in-law's house, there was light over there. She bolts out from behind something that she likes to play, hide and go seek. So she'll like, bolt out. And then she starts running around, skittering around like, you found me. You found me. And then she was all excited. And I started cracking up. And we ran back to the house together. And we were having so much fun. And I was trying not to fall in a hole.
But I did recognize my voice. I could feel my fear building from the darkness and I was getting really high pitched as I was calling her. And she's over there just waiting to, she's just hiding. She knows she knows I'm there and she's there. She's just like, I'm going to wait till she gets close enough, then I'm going to bolt out. And it was, I, I share this because I had this whole revelation right in that moment of like,
She turned, I was at like fever pitch, fear mode of the dark, and she turned, all of a sudden, turned it into this funny game, and I just fell apart laughing, because I was like, oh my gosh, I was so silly. What's going to get me out here, you know? So there's something, as I'm talking about all the things, like go look under the bed, you can expose yourself to the dark, exposure therapy.
go into the muck and dark all that stuff. I think that that's still a little bit of the mind approach. There's also objective tools, a person that you already mentioned, like regulating your breath, your breathing.
So that's if a person is in a super reactionary state, they'll start to lose control of their capacity to really think in a quote-unquote rational way. And they'll literally become like a reptilian or more like mammalian version of themselves. The blood will go back into the hindbrain, will come out of the prefrontal cortex. And you're just acting on reflexes at that point. And a way that a person that you
probably accidentally did with your dog because he started laughing, which would be putting you more into like an exploratory pattern of breathing, which is great. But you can come into and just start to notice your breath, something that people are commonly told, you know, is like, take a deep breath if you're feeling stressed out. Taking a deep breath is maybe better than not breathing at all, but better suggestion would be take a long exhalation. Yeah. So it's that, it's that
Like you can even do it in a conversation. Like literally me just doing that right now. I feel more calm just from that. And then, you know, physiologically, I am more calm. You could measure it. You know, blood pressure will change. HRV will change. And what's happening in that is you're slowing down your heart rate.
And so when you're in that place with the dog and you're getting panicked, you're getting really kind of stressed out and you're, you're going more into that sympathetic response. You're probably going more into an inhalatory pattern with your breathing. And once you felt calm, you probably had a little bit of an extended exhale. Oh, I had a huge one. And there might have even been a sigh. Yeah. You know, and so all of that, that's something that's like, Oh, interesting. That's a top down approach where
the environment caused you to come into having this physiological responses, but you can also go bottom up and start to regulate your autonomic nervous system through one of the, probably the most powerful tool will be the way it should breathe because of the bridge between the autonomic and the somatic nervous system. And it's also interesting that literally and figuratively, like every yoga book or spiritual book or whatever, it's like the breath is the bridge between the mind, breath is king of the nervous system, all that. It's a yanger.
But it literally is the base of the brainstem the medulla oblongata. It's why why? Alligators are honoring you know that reference No, oh man. What is that? Is it is it Billy Madison? What is that one? I was just like a football I know you're talking about Billy Madison's the golf one. It's not Billy Madison. It's happy. No happy Gilmore. No happy Gilmore's a golf one
Anyways, whatever. I vaguely. Water boy. It's water. It's water. You don't know that scene. He's talking about the medulla oblongata. No, I vaguely remember. Yes. I can't like those. Those all of that like is in a void of the 2000s in my book. The professor's the professor's time about the medulla oblongata and then Adam Sandler, the water boy raises his hand. He like tells him what the medulla oblongata does. And he says, Mama says it's what?
What causes alligators to get on re and then the whole class laughs at him and he has a trauma moment then he has to work that out with the therapist in some breath work 20 years later that's like the second second.
So you can regulate your experience and use that. It's one of the best tools you could have if you are doing any type of like somatic experiencing or something where you are, you know, if you're in a space to start unraveling some of those deep parts, which a podcast wouldn't be the place for it could be, but.
Using the breath as a tool or a guide or a vehicle to take you into those places is one of the best things a person could possibly do. If you can learn the breath, the art and science of the breath, which is the thing that I've been the most enamored with for the last while, it really acts as a vehicle to be able to do almost anything you want to do with your physiology and your nervous system, which is cool.
It's that long exhale that has such benefit. And I don't know all the science around it. And I know that incorporating tone with it is really, really helpful. And then also shaking. So I'll like shake and then do this big, like,
Oh, like big exhale. And it is so relieving of stress and anxiety for me. And I've taught that to my patients as well. I actually would have them do an exhale, a long exhale, because I did a lot of injection therapies. And that's predominantly what I did in practice. And it can be painful, right? And we're going into areas that are have a lot of memories in them because the tissues keep the score really, right? And we would hit into areas that were three, four inches deep and they would like come undone.
And we would use this long exhale, because when you're in pain, you're just inhaling and holding and sucking air in. And so we would use that too. But can you explain some of the science behind that and mechanism? So when you're exhaling, what does your diaphragm do? When you're breathing, the diaphragm comes down to pull the lungs. Something that's interesting about the lungs, I had this just kind of
thought the other week where I was like, wow, this is, it actually like actually created some pause within me. The lungs, I think we think of the lungs as being like active structures as they're like, yeah, your lungs are breathing. It's like your, your lungs are just these bags filled with, you know, billions of alveoli. If you, if you were to spread out all the alveoli from what I have read and heard,
it would cover the distance of a tennis court. So if you were to like open all of that precious tissue up, it would actually unravel into a tennis carb, which is pretty amazing. But what's causing the lungs to be filled with air is all through the contraction of the muscles surrounding. So the diaphragm being like this big, beautiful plunging type device that's slightly asymmetrical because it delivers a little bit bigger on one side.
and it pulls that system down and then you have the intercostals and then if you're breathing more in a stressed way, you're gonna go up into the neck muscles and All that's happening in that is it's creating a vacuum through these muscular contractions and you're being filled with air Like it's you like the muscles contract it creates it creates this inverse pressure system and you just get
filled with air. Like, air is just filling you. It's kind of an interesting, interesting thing when I was like, I was like, oh, interesting. I'm just like, it's almost like air is happening. But so as you are exhaling, the diaphragm is ascending. So it's coming up. It's closing up the space around the, the, the, the chest cavity. And so that's causing the blood vessels to contract and constrict and get smaller. And then then you get a signal through some neurons in the heart. It's like a pacemaker in the heart.
Saying, oh, we need to slow things down a little bit because things are getting really tight. So we're going to slow things down. And then when you are going into an inhale, then suddenly the diaphragm is descending. It's coming down. So now all of a sudden the heart, the chambers of the heart and the whole chest cavity expands outward. It's called a sinus, what is it called nasal sinus rest?
Isyl sinus arrhythmia? It's based on the name on it right now. But so that process going through that, oh, respiratory sinus arrhythmia, sorry. So respiratory sinus arrhythmia is the process of when you inhale, things speed up, when you exhale, things slow down. And then when you hold your breath, that's another, well, we'll come back, holding your breath is interesting as well. When you're humming or making some type of sound,
That's nice for a lot of reasons. One, you're starting to activate some of the muscles around the throat. So you're engaging some of the nerves around so you have these 12 cranial nerves. There's cranial nerves that are innovating the muscles around the throat.
If those, if you're in a place of say like a shutdown or freeze response, those, the nerves, innovating those muscles that would allow you to do something like humming or sighing any of that, they can start to lose tone.
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And you'll go into kind of this like flaccid freeze response shutdown response. And so you can start to retune the nerve fibers that would be activating the muscles that allow for speech and communication.
And what that does to your nervous system is it sends a signal that you're safe to communicate. And so when you speak slow and deep and you have pauses and you exhale, all of those would be would be trademark signs that you're calm, you feel safe, you feel like things are in control.
The moment that you feel like you are out of control, you feel like you're under threat, you feel like, oh my God, I gotta get out of here. Suddenly everything goes, it clamps up and your vocal cords and everything gets tight and you end up speaking, you'll probably talk faster, but you also talk in a higher pitch tone. And so you can start to retune or recalibrate those muscles and the nerve fibers that would be responsible for creating tone or voice. And so just going through that, oh,
You're slowing the heart rate down, which is great. You're also giving yourself almost like a little nerve massage or nervous system massage. And so if you were a little bit out of whack before, it's almost like bringing you back into equilibrium, just through creating that acoustic vibration of the side. It also builds up humming in particular, ends up, you release a significant, I think it's like 13 times, remember correctly, 13 times more nitric oxide.
production through the process of humming. So that becomes, that's a vasodilator, causes things to open. So it's like, just, it literally and figuratively, physiologically, all the ways is opening you up. It's opening up to the world.
And when you inhale something that's interesting as well, you actually have a higher perception of threat. So there has been research done, you might have heard about this before, where people were shown various different pictures of neutral faces to kind of a little bit less neutral.
And what they found is people will perceive, if they're in an inhalatory pattern, they'll perceive the faces as more threatening. If you're in an exliptory pattern, you'll perceive the face as like, okay, cool, things are chill, it's all good. And so we're always oscillating in and out of sympathetic parasympathetic, sympathetic parasympathetic. It's like everything goes in a tide. Your heartbeat goes in a tide, the sun, the moon, it's all tidal, it's all rhythmic. And so sympathetic, not bad or good,
parasympathetic, not bad or good, then working together in union, super good. And so it's that oscillation between the two that's really valuable. So for you to be able to have a healthy sympathetic response where everything tightens up, you shunt blood out of the viscera into the appendicular, like into into the to the limbs to be able to get the heck out of the room.
Your pupils dilate, you become myopic. It's like, you're flexing and stretching your nervous system into this empathetic. It's so beautiful. And then you hide underneath a tree, you shake it out, you, you know, whatever you do, like a zebra would do, which is why they don't get, which is why they don't get all ulcers or whatever it's supposed to give up.
uh, then you are retuning and recalibrating your system back into the parasympathetic where now, okay, it's safe. We can now go back into healing. We can now go back into restoration because probably when we were in that sympathetic tone, we probably jacked ourselves up a little bit to survive that threat.
Now we need to restore, now we need to heal. The problem with the world that we live in is a gorgeous, soon-portage reference. Well, something we talked about in the conversation was that the world that we live in is, he says inherently abusive. And it depends on how you cut it. It would be a lot of nuance to it. But you think like the lights that it seems like you have artificial lights on you right now. Yes, I have the window open.
Oh, it's just, it's just the window. The lighting's so good. I have a little bit of artificial ice, but I'm sitting near a window and it's sunny. So I opened it. Oh, good. My podcast producer will complain because I'm bleaching myself out, but I'm not going to waste the sun. So don't waste the sun. Yeah. So I am in my, um, whatever you'd call this office podcast space, whatever.
It's surrounded by windows, which is great, but I also have the artificial lights going as well You know and so within that that is it's actually sent in your I know a stuff But it's sending kind of a little bit of like an irritating stimulus to my nervous system It's causing me to close up a little bit
right and if you look at you think of like the Wi-Fi and the radiation all that stuff they have a very consistent um pattern with the way that those frequent frequencies are being released and alternating current electricity passing through your house as opposed to the direct current that you're beginning from the sun it kind of just it's like it's almost like we're under like a subtle low scale attack
You know, and that's also you could change your perception that probably augment things as well. But just the homes that we're living in, or if you look at like a person, like the jobs that we have for the most part, or if you're in college, he was referring when he was talking about this, he was talking about in college, a person just sitting inside of an artificially lit room, sitting in a desk where they're crunching, hunching over their hips at 90 degrees, their knees are 90 degrees,
Their shoulders are hunched forward, their eyes are chronically contracted because they're looking at something up close, which contracts the muscles around the eyes. You're kind of holding yourself in this pattern that's not really advantageous for the body to be able to heal or express or feel like it can actually access its full range of motions, which is the way that we circulate fluids and heal ourselves.
And so the mold that we, if we just allow ourselves to be dust in the wind in modern culture, we're fighting an uphill battle towards health.
And so, you know, within that, it's like we need to kind of bring back, we need to go out of our way to bring back the parasympathetic or else we'll probably get stuck in the chronic sympathetic and then any form of even the concept of like battling a disease. I think, you know, that's even that idea might put us more into sympathetic as well.
So in the world that we live in, we need to go out of our way to access the parasympathetic. One of the easiest ways that we can do that, regardless of what you're doing or where you're at, is to access the breath. It's like a superpower. So no matter what the situation is, no matter what the lights are, no matter what radiation you have going on, or if you're in the 2000th floor of a building,
You can always access the breath and it can always bring you back, at least within yourself, back to a place of a little bit more parasympathetic ease. Which is so critical and such an easy thing to, if you don't even know about this, I learned about this.
decades ago from my mentor when I was his receptionist and I was answering the phone and he could tell I was stressed out and he told me to not and he's like, put the phone down, don't answer it. And he took me through some breathing exercises. I think I was like 24. He was a naturopathic doctor. He was a Jedi. I think I was genius. And he took me through this breathing exercise and
He basically had me do box breathing, but the hold and the exhale were longer than the inhale, right? So that's something I still do to this day and I do it when I go walking. And this is another thing that I hum quite a bit. This is something else I brought to my patients when they were when I was treating them. So I would have them breathe in, hold their breath, and then I'd have them do
Just an aggressive breath out and you welcome them to invite them to have a noise with it if they wanted to so a side and that's when i would stick him is right on the exhale and they would not feel it like they it was whole different game than if they were getting you know the needle stick on the inhale and then the second thing i would do is have a hum their favorite song and if they couldn't think of anything i would just say hum mary had a little lamb.
So they would hum Mary had a little lamb throughout the entire procedure, which I'm pretty fast. So I could get through it very quickly. But it was just remarkably different than the people who refused to hum or thought it was silly. I'm like, we're all friends here. We don't care. Just hum. And then my assistant would start humming and they would start humming with them. But the folks who didn't want to give into that, who just wanted to hold that breath or sip the air in and keep sipping the whole different experience for them. So just even on the pain, like acute pain, it has such a profound impact.
Yeah, another thing that comes up as we're talking about that comes to mind is a lot of people, especially if you're stressed, and you've already heard this as well, they will over breathe too much. And so there's the, you've probably heard like the perfect breath or coherence breathing. It's like in and around between like five to six seconds on the inhalation and five and six seconds on the exhalation. And if you were to sing
most or many of the mantras that you might do if you're like the kirtan or something of the sort. There are a lot of spiritual stuff where a part of the practice would be singing or speaking some type of mantra, something of a sort.
What you'll find very consistently is it will actually bring people naturally into that coherence breathing pattern. And so then they end up accessing these, you know, whatever higher realms or greater peace within self or whatever the thing is.
and they're bringing themselves back into what would be a really ideal breathing pattern. If a person goes into overeating too much, which is no overeating, it's just a maladaptive pattern because you're feeling like you're panicked. And so if you're panicking, you start making everything worse. A panicked person in an emergency situation is the worst thing you possibly have in an emergency situation. They'll start knocking things over.
If you've ever done scuba scuba diving, one of the things that I've told I've never witnessed this, I've almost actually had a panic attack while scuba diving. We went, it was like 110 feet or something like that. I never done that before. Wow. And all of a sudden, they went through a moment where I was like, oh.
Everything started collapsing and getting dark. One of the things that can happen with that is people will completely lose control and freak out and they'll take their mask off in this panic. Thankfully, I didn't do that. I just breathed. Literally, in that instance, I literally came back to my breath. I came back to my exhale. I did the things that I know how to do.
And I was able to sort it out, which is great. But the reason I'm saying is that if you're over breathing, you are placing yourself physiologically from a bottom up perspective into a more panic state. It's going to reduce your clarity of thought. It's going to reduce your ability to problem solve. It's going to put you into a more reactive state. It'll probably make you more quick to anger, more quick to resentment, more quick to all of the things that don't really feel good in the body.
and you're also perpetuating and practicing that pattern because you're structurally changing the shape of the hemoglobin cells within the red blood cells that are responsible for releasing oxygen. There's a fancy thing called the bore effect. When you are exhaling, it's not so much as exhaling. When you're building up CO2, which would come when you're exhaling or come when you are
while holding your breath rather is when you be building CO2 up, that will change the acidity of the blood and that will cause the reaction of increased CO2 and increased acidity causes the hemoglobin cells to change their shape to be able to more efficiently liberate oxygen. And when you do the opposite and you fill yourself up or you are over breathing, you're shunting or getting rid of, you're off gassing more CO2,
then you are increasing alkalinity in the blood, you're reducing CO2 and that causes the shape to change and your hemoglobin become more bound or stingy with releasing oxygen which causes you to have this air hunger manifest because you are hypersensitized to CO2.
So if you can develop your CO2 tolerance, they call it, by just exploring longer exhalations, exploring breath holds, exploring slowing down the way that you communicate, exploring taking pauses, exploring, taking a walk and maybe, you know, do an exhale.
Hold your breath and say, cool, I'm going to do another breath in through my nose when I reach that tree or that phone pole. And I just play little games with yourself. You literally are in real time changing the structure and function of the cells that liberate oxygen to your muscles and to your brain.
and that causes you to become a literally a safer person. You're safer person because if you're not in this ravenous space of, oh my God, I need air. I need air. I need air. I need air. You're a place of like air, like no problem. We're good. We're so liberated. Like oxygen just perfuses our muscles so smoothly, baby. Like this is so chill. We're so good.
And so, and what I would propose within that, I would see like research or this or whatever, but a person that's kind of more like greedy or more kind of like pulling, you know, kind of like grasping tightly on life, you know, trying to control things. My guess, if there was some way to conduct some research around that is they would probably have a breathing pattern where they have a tendency of over breathing.
And what would that, the manifestation metabolically, and from like a chemical level in their blood, would be they probably feel like they're starving for air. And that translates into the sensation of like, I gotta, I gotta get mine, I gotta get mine, I gotta get mine.
And if a person comes into a space where they're like, you know what, like, I love you. It's all good. I feel like we're good. It's fine. This is fine. Probably that person has a tendency towards exhalation. Probably that person has a tendency away from air hunger and they have decent CO2 tolerance. And they probably internally are functioning in a way where they feel safe. I love that. That makes a lot of sense. And I think that
the just focusing on the long exhale. And like I said, the breath hold, I like the concept of that CO2 tolerance. Another way that I was taught to do that was through just breathing in a bag. I used to get asthmatic attacks when I was a kid and
I mean, it would spiral sometimes where I couldn't breathe and I would get really panicked and it was so simple. Finally, one of my chiropractors. This is one of the reasons I became a chiropractor because I had some really cool chiropractors. One of my chiropractors was like, well, just breathe into a brown paper bag when you feel like that. And I did. And it worked. And it was years. It was like a lifetime of these
air hunger attacks and all I needed to do is breathe into a brown paper bag, which helps you improve your CO2 tolerance, right? And you're recirculating CO2.
There's a panic button in your brain stem. We're such incredibly amazingly built creatures. And yet that's one of, I would say, if there's like any mechanisms in the human or in just the mammalian body that are that confuse me, that would be the one which is when the CO2 gets too high, there is literally a panic button in your brain stem and you freak out.
And that learning to not freak out. There is a breath is how you. There is you've you've probably part of if not read the book, Breathe by James James Nestor. He references a I guess you call it study or just happening with it with a gal. I don't remember her name. She has you might not know the name of condition, but a condition where she's not physically able to to feel fear.
So it's a very dangerous condition, whatever aspect of the brain somewhere in the amygdala or some complex that that is just down regulated in such a way that she just doesn't feel like it could be a mountain lion sitting on her lap and she just isn't able to feel the sensation of fear with that.
And they've done everything to try to induce this and like, you know, I don't know, stimuli because you need to feel fear naturally in order to survive. You need to be able to feel pain, be an incredibly dangerous situation to not be able to feel sensation, feel pain.
And what they found, I think maybe by accident, maybe not, but what they found was the only thing that would actually induce the sensation of fear was doing breathing CO2. So they like concentrated CO2 when you breathe the CO2 in. And it just sends you into a panic response. And so through exposure therapy, you can start to modulate your response to CO2. So if you're a person that has a tendency of living a life,
in fear, which we all do to certain levels. One of the ways to reduce your perceived sensation of fear is to increase your tolerance to fear gas being CO2. That's interesting. That is, well, yeah, because there is literally a panic button in your brain. It's so weird because usually we get feedback groups in our body itself.
corrects, but not that one. That one is how you end up drowning or, you know, free. But you can you can you can push it. That's why I like the I think the world records free dive or not free dive. Sorry, breath hold times like it's like over 20 minutes, like 22 minutes or something. So you can certainly push it. So that person's overriding overriding overriding overriding for 20 minutes.
Yeah. And so what is their experience of the threat of, oh my God, I need to breathe or I'm going to die after three minutes. It's probably pretty chill because they've exposed themselves enough. And so what that will do is it'll spill into other aspects of life and it'll make you be probably a more diplomatic person and a more passionate person. I love that.
That's wonderful. So we all just need to learn to breathe better and hold our breath. So we can calm the F down and relax our eyes because your eyes, they are neurological tissue, their continuations of your brain. Huberman is a good person with this stuff.
And so the way that they are regulating light and also the lenses of the eyes, whether they're taking in the panorama or focusing in myopically, that also is going to be regulating the automobile nervous system to tell you either are under stress or you're in a relaxed.
chill response. You're able to chill, you're able to be calm, because you're just taking it all in. You're spacing out. You're not an earth rat. There's no tiger in the room, or else you'd be locked into the tiger. And so you can massage and regulate or modulate your autonomic nervous system just through modulating the way that you're using your eyes. You can modulate and regulate your autonomic nervous system just through modulating the way that you use your breath.
and the rest of the senses. I mean, we keep talking about the rest of the senses, but if you want to feel better and you want to feel more attuned, more aligned, more homeostatic, massage your way into your senses, have sensual experiences. They're the windows in the autonomic nervous system.
I love that. These are really nice tools that people can utilize to just up level their nervous system and calm it down because some of us are just built. Some of us come out to shoot just cortisol addicts, you know, and that it's not entirely our fault. A lot of it has to do with the state of the nervous system of our mother when we were in utero and we come out. I'm one of them. We come out just, you know, like this and
learning to utilize breath and movement too. You know, that's when I found you was years ago was through your work and movement. And I had no Instagram following. I just, I was like, so enamored with what you were doing. I think I thought one of your courses, you had like a, did you have a course with bands? I feel like there was a course that you did. And yeah, I, I, I used it. I loved it. Anyway, um,
I think movement is allows you to bring your breath in and to become aware of your breath. That's one of the best tools I've had to get my breath under control was, especially when things start getting metabolic, like if I'm doing a lot of snatches, like kettlebell snatches in a row, you really, if you don't regulate your breath during that, you're done. You can't get through it. And so I think movement is a wonderful way for people, I think we talked about this on your podcast too, to like ground into their body and be able to bring some of these tools with them.
Yeah, a movement. So especially if you're starting to synchronize movement to rhythm, you know, or like song dance, like that's there's research from the Albert Einstein Medical College or School of Medicine, where they were studying different ways to offset cognitive decline. And they found that of all the different things, they do it all like the point extra smart stuff, crossword puzzles, different things like with the brain, they found that partner dance to music, obviously.
was the highest leveraged thing a person could do to stay off cognitive decline. Because you're incorporating emotionality into it, you're incorporating rhythm, you're having to synchronize the electrical storm that is your nervous system, conducting your appendages to a song with another person. And then you have, oh my God, I feel shy, I feel maybe a little stressed out. Like, what are they going to think about me? You're like, you're coming alive in that instance compared to being
alone, you know, done a couple bicep curls. You got your earbuds on, you're radiating yourself. Who knows how... Who knows how... I'm not like, you know, I don't have a super big dog in the situation in the race of like...
Radiation good bad, but I don't know enough about it. But intuitively, it seems sensible. Like we're bioelectric beings probably try to keep it as analog as possible. And then if you are going to go digital, just kind of like shake off, think of all the digital stuff and all the radiation stuff. I'm just making this up right now. So you know, we'll see how this comes out. But I think it was like, like a dog shakes off water. You know, when the dog gets wet, they shake it off.
The water was fine. It's just if the dog keeps the water on them. That's when it's like, oh, this is probably the dog. Naturally, we'll just shake it off. I think with all the radiation, like, sure, like, where are your earbuds? If it's like better, you can do handstands and workout and do Zumba with the earbuds. And like, no problem. Just maybe take your shoes off and like go walk outside. Touch a tree.
You know, like, yeah, walk by a river afterwards. You're just like, and maybe literally shake, you know, I think that that's the, the more important thing. And so I think the problem with that intuitively, and I'm sure there's lots of research you probably know more about that I do would be if that becomes the nature of your whole life as you are living up in a high rise and you're bombarded by all the frequencies. And I think it's just confusing for the nervous system, but I'm not the expert on that. So I'm going to stay away from the topic. Well, people get themselves locked in cubicles and that's,
That's to me. That's the vision is when I graduated from college, I took a job working for my mentor and I was getting paid $11 an hour and my parents were very dismayed and they said, because I lived in the area where Intel was and they were like, why don't you go get a job at Intel? They'll start you at $33,000 a year with benefits. And that's what all the young people were doing out of college at the time. And this was like the mid 90s. And I was like, hell no, I will never work in a cubicle.
I will never sit under fluorescent lights all day, stuck in a box. And then I found myself years later living in a high-rise apartment in the city, knowing I was getting blasted with Wi-Fi all around me with like a big electrical, it wasn't the transformer or anything, but it was like a big electrical pole with like a lot of currency running or whatever running through it.
I realized I was living that and I was like, this can't be good for me. So move into the farm was very helpful because I can. I literally go outside every single day. It's very sunny on the backside of her house when the wind isn't blasting us. I go outside, I shake, I do my long audible exhale while I shake it all off because I sit here under these lights now. I'm like, no, I won't work in a cubicle, but I'm under, you know, like you are, like I'm under lights for podcasting.
I go outside. I shake it off. I make my audible size. My daughter thinks I'm so funny because I try to get her to do it. And she's like, why are you being so noisy? But just getting that like, you know, like deep guttural, long size, shaking it all off. And then I'm, I'm good, you know, get a little grounding in there pet my dogs. Dogs are another thing just to mention if people haven't heard me say this, your dogs go out.
and they ground all day outside and they collect the negative electrons. And so when you pet them, that's one of the reasons we love petting dogs and cats, if you're cats and outside cat, is because they are literally bringing the grounding to you. They're like a grounding mat, if you will. So pet the dogs.
Something that, as you're saying, that comes up that's relevant, I think, as well as is the body can become toxic when your waste management systems are backed up in your waste management systems, or it's called your lymphatic system. And the lymphatic glands, I feel like we might even talk about this. Maybe we didn't on my podcast, but with you, maybe not. But they are located in places of a high volume of movement.
So the highest concentration lymphatic glands will be back behind the knees, the publicial area in the groin, in the abdomen, in the collarbone, the neck, armpits, all these places to just naturally through evolution, if you believe in such a thing, we evolved in such a way so that when you walk, when you locomote, when you move forward in space, you end up naturally rinsing out all of those
waste management centers. It's like you're turning the gear of the waste management centers and you rinse yourself out just by taking a walk. And so you recirculate yourself by taking a walk and you can become a toxic stew of yourself by closing off. You're crimping off all of those garbage receptacles.
in your knees, in your hips, in your shoulders, in your neck, when you are sitting and you are just hunching over a desk all day long. You start to get backed up on yourself. It's like your toilet gets clogged.
And so the easiest thing a person can do is just go take a walk. But if you have an issue with lymphatic stuff, then it could be supportive. And this is supportive in general, something I'll do. I got this from my buddy, Perry Nicholson, who've done three episodes or something with him. Yeah, I think he's a sweetie.
Um, but he calls it the big six of lymphatic drainage. I posted a YouTube video where he just talks through that, but I can briefly share it now, but the YouTube video is like an eight minute version of it where it breaks it down better. Um, but starting off going through, I won't get through all the parts, but starting off working around places of low pressure. So up higher. So starting off working around the collarbone and working around the armpits and working around the neck.
and then going in and working around the abdomen and then working around the groin and then working in the back of the knee and then get yourself a remounder. I think is a great tool to have around. I've got one sitting out here in the yard. What that's going to do is that's going to start engaging the
Inferior pumps of your body. I'm just making that up. But your calves are pumps that circulate all of the stuff from low to high. So you got your inferior pumps, your southern pumps that pump the stuff from your lower body, your feet, your lower compartments up to the heart and up to the rest of the lymphatic system to be able to be recirculated and repurfuse the rest of the body. If you don't pump,
those pump factories down there, then you become stagnant. And so one of the, like something, if you literally just, like I like, I have a gym membership across the street here and there's an infrared sauna that's mixed with infrared and traditional, which is, I think is the best. And I'll sit there, I'll cross my legs, you know, raise my legs up off the ground. I'll go through the big six. And I literally, I'm like, I'm a believer. Like the big six, it's like you go through that.
Rub both your collarbones, neck, armpits, abdomen, groin, back of the knees. You feel more light. You feel more clear. You feel more flexible. Your body's like, oh, wow. It's like, oh, I was a little toxic. Like 85 seconds ago. Now I'm a little less toxic.
Like, wow, you can just do that. I had no idea. It's really, his work is so good. And his like, he's got the lymphatic mojo course and he's just, he's so good. And his big six are solid. I agree with you. And I, I think that's why I feel like I can process all the, all the dark energy, the nothing that I call it, right? I can do that in the song. Yeah, the mock, because I can do it in the sauna. The sauna gives me that chance to like,
move it better and it's probably in large part to do to the fact that I move in my limp around just by getting caught. I think something that I've found nice and I'm not a talk therapist. I'm not a person to be advising anybody. But I've found I pay a talk therapist and they focus more like semantically, which I think is nice. It's a lot of like investigating into the body how the sensations arise in the body.
allowing the facilitation or facilitating the space to allow the body to communicate, which sounds out there for some people, unless you've had experiences like that, then it totally makes sense. That totally makes sense. Yeah. And so one of the things that I've done with therapists in the past that I've actually found to be very helpful, which feel free to disagree with this, is allowing a voice to those like the dark, mucky stuff and like saying the terrible thing.
saying the thing that I don't allow myself to say, it's like, no, no, I don't want to manifest. It's like, no, to say the worst thing. Like, whatever the thing is, it's like, that's like, you hold is like, oh, it's the mud. I don't want it shall not be spoken. The quiet secrets you hold inside. Yeah. Just just say it, you know, and just like, oh, it's not that bad. You know, and coming to the other side of like, and what if that happens?
Like what actually happens, like, oh, right. It's like stuck philosophy and such. Like, okay, what if the worst thing happens? Like, how will you be? You know, it's like, well, the worst thing is, you know, whatever the thing is, typically on the other side of that, you're like, oh, yeah, right, like, I'll be okay. And then ultimately, you know, worst, worst case scenario, you know, maybe die. And then it's like, oh, like, if you die, like, will we be okay? It's like, oh yeah, I'll be okay. We're like, okay. So like, you're okay. It's like, yeah, I guess I'm okay.
Okay. Cool. I like this therapy strategy. Now it's true. It's absolutely true. And I think a lot of people, I've heard so many great quotes. I can't think of them precisely right now about what worry does to us and worrying just literally like you're poisoning yourself for no reason in real time. Yeah. And you're praying for what you don't want to happen. Yeah. And then also realizing a big thing for me is just over the years has been
picking my battles and then realizing things I don't have control over is not worth spending any energy or worrying on. You know, if I can't, if I don't have any control, I, some will say that's defeating and oh, you should try harder. It's like, no, I know there's, there's things out there I can't have any say in. So why am I letting it bother me? You know, like, there's like, you know, big players on the political platforms, like there's,
You know, there's only so much we can do like the fuckery that was the past five years and the shit that was happening. There was little that could be done from one individual. And so why was I letting myself get so physically consumed with the stress of it, right? And then when you're feeling something and you're, especially, that's the one problem I have with talk therapy is when you're talking about something or you're feeling it,
that chemical reaction is happening in real time. So you're literally poisoning yourself with cortisol if you're one of those people who likes to get riled up and allowing yourself to get riled up regularly. And people seem to like it. Like I see that on social media, right? Like people love the drama and I so don't like drama and I so don't like getting riled up and I don't like people who riled me up and I don't like situations that riled me up and I avoid it like the plague because I spent my life as a lifetime of being riled up.
And so just picking your battle and being like, oh, can't do I have any control over this? No. Is there anything I can do right now? No. Well, is it my, are these my monkeys? No, this is not my circus. Yeah. And that, and then there'd be like an even another, well, as you're talking the, the serenity care, prayer came to mind. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. I'm reading it. Courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference. I think if a person can nail that,
Stranded except the things you can't change cool. I can't change it great The only thing I can do is is is come into two grace and ease with it and then the courage be able to actually lean into the things that you can
That's it. You have so much saved bandwidth. If you can just be in that place of like, what can I actually do? Imagine if you put 100% of your energy into what you actually can do and what you actually can make progress with. Every person, at least me, would probably be such a more efficient version of this. We'd be so much more successful, so much happier, have such better relationships. If we could just let go of the ruminating and go into like, what can I actually do in this moment? Yes.
Action overrides anxiety. And yes, it's my favorite thing about having a podcast or having a social media platform is I can just go into service. Like I just go into service. How can I be of service right now? And for me, that's teaching. I love to teach. So that's how I get myself through those moments. It's like, I'm going to go teach something really helpful to people right now. And what can I create and put out in the world that would be beneficial and helpful and be of service? And when you do that, you can't lose, right? Like your
That's my mode. That's my de-stress mode. And you're physiologically telling yourself that you're moving into progress or you're moving into safety or you're actually making change. So if the nervous system is stuck in, say, a freeze response, the way to unstick it from the freeze response, the biggest lever would be social engagement, polyvagal theory.
But to be able to get yourself to social engagement, you're probably going to have to move your butt off of the couch and out of your phone or your computer or whatever, and move yourself into the world. And you're going to be scanning the horizon, which again, you're massaging your nervous system with your visual muscles.
And so you're scanning the horizon as you're going, you're sending all these feedback loops that like, ah, that the Tina is moving forward into progress. She's taking, she's, she's finding solutions. I don't know if it's the right solutions, but I know she's making more progress than she did before. Yes.
Yes, it mixes everything. Yeah, like nervous system feels good about this. Yes. And that makes you feel better. Yes. Yes. And if we can add some harmesis to it, you know, harm medically if we can put ourselves into a little bit of a challenge and survive it. So this is where Sana comes in or where if you want to go have a heavy lifting session, do some deadlifts or, you know, things that give you a little bit of a challenge. So you get that dopamine hit.
in the process of trying to do something hard. So whatever it is, you know, it might be a walk and then followed up, maybe it's a dunk in some cold water or even splashing cold water on your face, but just giving your body and your nervous system that chance to have a little hormetic challenge experience. And, and then you get a little dopamine hit because you need a little wind. Something, something, something you said as well that I think is, I don't know, I find interesting is like, I avoid these things because I know that they,
get me like riled up. I think that's super smart and super strategic. And then there's even like another level
where it's like, these things don't rile me up. There's no charge. That's Jedi level. I'm not there yet. That's what I feel like. There's a Jedi level where it's like, expose away, baby. So that is the muck. That's the dark. That's like, instead of the, okay, we got to get some light in this room. It's like, because I'm feeling a charge around that. I don't want to feel the dark. Yeah.
I'm just better at it now. Yeah, well, just using is like a metaphor doesn't need that but like you per se or just in general like a person that has something where it's like I avoid that because I know it's going to get me all crazy. It's like probably do that for a while because you need to like bandage that space. You need a splint.
And eventually if you want to experience probably presumably even greater sensation of like ease and grace and fulfillment within the self, like deep in the nervous system, there's probably availability to.
maybe start to come into the root of like, why do those things create so much trigger and charge within me? And then a person starts to feel resource enough within themselves where they actually could seek out the trigger because it's like, oh, it actually, I like Hormesis. Hormesis feels good. Suddenly the hermetic response of a cold plunge or a sauna, it's hermatic, but it's not nearly as hermatic as the thing that triggers me.
And so could I do like the weightlifting of exposing myself to the thing that really precious me off? And am I able to expose myself to that and say like, OK, cool, like hit me with your best shot. Like I can be I can be with this. That's when I go listen to CNN. I do try to give myself little.
I try to listen to all sides of things always, you know, and it's, it's a desensitization process of sitting with the extremely opposing views or they are. Can you find compassion for the person you hate? Yeah. So find the person you hate. I don't need anyone.
I know, I know, I know. But whatever, hypothetically, find compassion. You find the person you find most distasteful. The person that triggers you the most is probably one of the people that can teach you the most on the planet. It's absolutely true. It's just the other pole. It's the pole that you don't want to look at. There's the other pole, like the rum dust, you know, the ones and like the people that are like, oh, like, it made me feel so good. Perfect. Love them. Keep that pole. Now there's also the lessons of the people that really freak you out. Yeah.
This is where I think platforms like X are really helpful because you can dig into all sides of situations and really learn a lot and realize like, wow, these people who feel completely polar opposite in their belief system of what I believe about this, whatever topic, their arguments actually really sound in some cases. And they're really coming from a place of high intelligence and compassion themselves. And they really believe this.
instead of it being them, right? Like us versus them. It's like we, you know, it's all, it's the, it's the good old days when you could sit down with people that had extremely opposing views and you guys could like sit there at a party and have an interesting conversation and then both leave having learned something new and having a new level of compassion for the other one. It's like we're, we're missing that, I think societally. So it's all part of this though. And this is where breath work and
Being able to harness your breath is helpful because you can breathe through those tough moments, but people don't want to sit in the discomfort of things anymore. And I really try to just like hunker in there. Often I, you know, I really want to like, Oh, I don't want to read this or I don't want to hear this, but I'm going to do it anyway, because I need to keep myself abreast and educated. And also I do. I want to be curious and have compassion for other humans, whether I agree with them or not, you know, like we're all on this planet together. So they obviously care strongly about this. Like, how can we
How can I understand that better? I don't have to agree with it, but yeah. And then also, I feel like it's like, like, I experienced this during the.
It's interesting. Now I feel like you're able to say the C word, the C-O-V, whatever word. I've been conditioned that it's illegal to say that word. It's like Voldemort. He who shall not be named. Yeah, exactly. But now with the adjustment in administration, I'm like, wait, are you allowed to talk about this? I don't know. I don't know how to say that now. Oh, crap. I don't remember I was going to say, never mind. Oh, well, whatever. I had a thing I was going to say that I got wrapped up in the
Oh wait, no, that was it. If you can place yourself into, no one is wrong.
Every person from their experience is actually acting and expressing absolutely perfect with their genetics and their environmental conditions and their parents. They literally are you. You would do nothing different than them if you were in the exact same substrate as them in the way that they grew up and the way they experienced the world. The way that they're acting is actually completely perfect.
And if you can start to just play with that idea of like, okay, I see, like, you're not wrong for you. Right, you're not wrong for you. I don't need to accept that. I don't need to allow. And once you start to come in and, you know, you start to change the way that you're educating my kids, which I don't have any kids, but if I did, I'd be very defensive with things like that. Or you're changing the way that I live or you're changing my home or changing like, you know, things that I consider like rights for myself.
That's where we'll have a problem. But you just having an opinion, like that I think is one of the most beautiful things about, I don't want to just like sound patriotic, but like being American is like, that actually is what makes it work, I think. That's what makes it so beautiful. And better ideas survive and worse ideas, you know, die off naturally. It's like, like, like free market. And if you can come into that place, it's like, cool, like, like, I genuinely, like, you're not wrong.
You know, it's like, it's like, okay, like for me, you're wrong as shit. But for you, like, I like, I love this for you. This is great. Yeah. Yeah. And like, let them, I think Mel Robbins just released that book, let them, you know, it's just like, just let them. It's okay. It's not my, I don't have to live in that body in that world. If they want to impose their nonsense onto me, then I will have a problem. But like, if it's nonsensical to me, I will like don't impose it upon me, but you can have
I think if you draw back the layers deeper of someone that sits online or just yells at their TV at whatever station is opposite of their bias, if you peel the layers back more, you probably get into a place of maybe it's like, oh, maybe you actually feel like a lack of direction or purpose in your life and you being emboldened or excited or going into an emotional state about this, it makes you feel alive.
Actually what you want, which is so precious and beautiful, you just want to feel alive.
Like, oh my God, this is so sweet. Like you're sitting there on your couch, you know, eating whatever the heck you're eating, you know, and getting all huffing and puffing and you're stuck, you're stuck on your inhale and you're spilling crumbs all over the place. And it's like, and you could look at that person and be like, oh, what a waste, you know, or like, oh, they're so stupid, you know, or like they're the problem. It's like, actually, they're just like you, they want to feel
deeply, and probably the kind of styrofoam life that they're living, like Alan Watts has a bit that you can, well, something along the lines, it's like you can't get nutrients from the menu.
It's like you can't eat like a picture of the food and actually get nutrients. And I think a lot of people in the world that we're living in, we're actually like a deep soul level nutrient deprived and we're seeking sensation, we're seeking connection, we're seeking all this and we want to be touched and we want to love and we want to connect and we want to dance and we want to sing, we want to be challenged, we want to feel like we're on purpose and we want to fight.
And when you strip all that from this kind of like denatured, neutered, modern technological life, I think what people really want is this we don't want to feel. And so for them, if they put themselves into some thing where they're a troll on the internet, you can even look at the troll on the internet of like, oh, this is so sweet. Like you want to feel important. That's so sweet. That's so precious. Yeah. See you always reframe the things.
That's when I met you when I was on your bottom like, oh, he really reframed that for me. That's helpful. I'll take it. I'll take it. I love it. Well, this has been so enlightening as always. So fun. And I just, I really adore you. Thank you for coming on my show. And I'm so glad that I get to call you my friend now. Tell everyone where to find you. You have an outstanding podcast yourself. And like, where are all the places to send them?
I appreciate it. Well, I mean, they could listen to episode with you on the online podcast. And then if people want to go deeper into the world of breathing, we're launching, I don't know when this will go out, but we're launching the Align Breathing program, program be out like a week, but you can get on what I would recommend if people are open to exploring their own breath.
I create a thing called the breathing archetype quiz where you go through and you're asked a few subjective questions around the way you respond to stress and things of the like. And then also a couple tests. One is called a bolt score. The other call is another way of measuring your CO2 tolerance. It's very quick. And then from there you get deemed a certain category of breathing archetype. There's three of them.
And I find that to be a really cool thing just to get to know your breath and know where you're at and establish a baseline for that. That's it. Alignpodcast.com slash quiz. So, ALIG and podcast.com slash quiz. And then the first week of the program is free. And in the first week, what you'll get is mechanics and exercises on how to breathe. That's the biggest thing that people are not taught.
It's insane to me. Anytime I go to a yoga class or go to a gym or go to a breath work thing or anything, there's almost no one ever talking about the mechanics or structure of how to breathe. It's just do this breath. So it's like, we're going to, we're going to box breathe. Like I'm sure your box breathe person told you nothing about rib orientation or pelvic orientation or shoulder girdle or any of that stuff. Like we just don't talk about which I think is crazy.
And so the first week is all around mechanics and provides UX one, like how do you actually what's the ideal way to breathe and then what are exercises I can do to start to put myself into that. So that's the line podcast.com slash breathe. If you want to just start the first week trial, you can check that part out. I think that would probably be the most probably most interesting place to go is go deeper into the end of the breath stuff, but the podcast is the line podcast.
I will send them. We will get the links from you and we will make sure they're in the show notes and we'll send everybody there. I'm going to do it. That sounds awesome. I'm excited. I think it's cool. It was fun making an archetype quiz. I mean, I had help on it. I can't do that alone, but it was actually a really cool thing. Like I genuinely enjoy going through it. Awesome. I'm going to check it out. Well, it was so great to have you on. Thank you for taking the time today. And this was very enlightening and enjoyable. So thanks for being on the Dr. Tina show. Thank you. I appreciate you.
produced by Drake Peterson and mixed by Mike Fry. Theme Song is by John the Guilt. You can watch the full video version of this podcast inside the Spotify app or on YouTube. As always, you can email the podcast at podcastatdoctortina.com. That's D-R-T-Y-N-A. And if you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe on your favorite podcast app. You can also find all of my offerings on my website at doctortina.com.
For more shows by my team, go to wellnessloud.com. See you next time, and thanks for listening. This podcast is for general informational purposes only. It does not constitute the practices of medicine, nursing, or other professional healthcare services, including the giving of medical advice. I am a doctor, but I am not your doctor.
No doctor-patient relationship is formed. The use of this information and the materials linked to this podcast is at the user's own risk. The content on this podcast is intended not to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice from any medical condition they have, and they should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions.
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