Les Teaches Breath Work: Softening Within The Mind Using Breath

We show how bringing breath from the unconscious into conscious control steadies the nervous system and clears runaway thoughts. Simple techniques like longer exhales, belly breathing, box breathing, stacked breaths, and 4-7-8 are paired with supportive I am statements to build focus and calm.

• mapping conscious, subconscious and unconscious roles
• how stress reshapes breath, pulse and digestion
• posture cues that open the diaphragm
• awareness practices to notice the urge to breathe
• longer exhale to regulate CO2 and calm
• belly breathing without self-consciousness
• pairing breath with I am worthy and I am safe
• box breathing for focus and composure
• stacked breaths to release tension and emotion
• 4-7-8 for rapid downshift during panic
• building habits so regulation becomes automatic

Chapters

• 0:00 Safety Notes And Setup
• 0:31 Morning Banter And Intention
• 2:25 Conscious, Subconscious, Unconscious Explained
• 5:12 How Stress Alters Physiology
• 7:15 Making Breath Conscious
• 9:15 Posture And Breath Awareness Practice
• 12:16 Longer Exhale Technique
• 14:30 Belly Breathing And Letting Go Of Image
• 17:00 Panic, Regulation, And Everyday Use
• 19:15 Pairing Breath With Intentional Thoughts
• 21:02 Box Breathing Walkthrough
• 23:02 Stacked Breaths And Emotional Release
• 26:05 4-7-8 For Rapid Downshift
• 28:15 Building Lifelong Habits
• 40:00 Closing And Thanks

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

This podcast today includes guided breath work for relaxation and awareness. Only participate while seated or lying down in a safe, comfortable place. Do not practice while driving, walking, or operating equipment. Keep your eyes open unless you are fully settled and safe to relax. Of course, stop immediately if you feel dizzy, lightheaded, or uncomfortable and return to normal breathing. By continuing, you take responsibility for your own well-being and participation. It is lovely to have you with us. Yep. Yep, it was one of those mornings. I walked outside, nose hairs froze together.

SPEAKER_03: 1:04

Morning. But the sun's coming up and the sky is blue. And today is not a day to complain about the weather.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14

Not at all. Not at all.

SPEAKER_03: 1:19

So I guess we should talk about something else.

SPEAKER_00: 1:25

So we went through over the last week those four questions. And give those a listen if you're interested in sort of looking at how to go through changing your life little by little and just contemplative type questions.

SPEAKER_03: 1:45

Mindful intention.

SPEAKER_00: 1:47

Yeah. But uh I think we talked enough about those. We went through them pretty well.

SPEAKER_03: 1:57

In some ways, we're moving on to the same thing. Yeah, of course. Because we're trying to be mindful now. Intention is mindful action. It's action with a purpose. And those four questions were a wonderful gift that led us through a great way to build an intention if you don't know how to have an intention. And then you you're going to use intention as often as you can with as many things as you can. And today we'll talk about using it with breathe.

SPEAKER_00: 2:33

It's a big topic nowadays. I I haven't really delved into it much yet, but I think like your guides told you, it's time to learn that. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 2:45

I've used it a bit lately, but just stresses and you know, finding that I suppose more than anything. Breathing is something that is totally under our control. It's totally available to us to use. Nobody has to know, right? And more importantly, using simple techniques really regulates your your your physical body, when your mind is running amuck, when your mind is just on a path of its own. And it doesn't seem to be controllable. Even when your mind is out of control, your breath can be in control. And it doesn't have to be so much in control as much as just simply brought into the conscious mind. I was talking this talking about this a bit last night in our self-hypnosis class, and I think that you know, this morning it seems to have more value to me in my mind. We have a conscious mind, a subconscious mind, and an unconscious mind. And the unconscious mind is wonderful because it takes care of most of our fundamental needs without us even putting our attention to it. Right? It keeps our heart beating, it keeps our breath going, it keeps the digestion and our immune system going, it regulates our blood pressure, regulates our blood sugar, like it does all those things. And it is affected by the conscious and uh subconscious minds, right? When we find ourselves in a situation where our subconscious mind says, you know, danger, Will Robinson, danger, right? When our subconscious mind is saying, be alert, our pupils dilate, and our blood pressure goes up, and our muscles tense, our breathing becomes shallow, we we fall in, we fall into that sympathetic nervous system, and it takes care of itself. So the unconscious mind is not only just a huge part of our day-to-day life, but it's also responsive to the other parts of our mind, the subconscious and the conscious. And we talk about a lot about how the conscious mind is what you use when you're doing something new. Whereas the unconscious mind is the thing that just does things without us being aware. But what happens when we're doing something new, when we're learning something, when we're, you know, learning how to hit a pickleball for the first time, when we're learning, you know, how to uh do calligraphy for the first time. We practice and we practice and we practice, and the more we practice, the more those actions go from being conscious and deliberate and a little bit awkward and uncomfortable to becoming subconscious to the point of some things being unconscious. And that it's a beautiful thing because we use our mind to learn, and then our mind practices and becomes good, so we don't have to be conscious with it anymore, and we can do these things multiple things, multiple times, all at the same time, because we're not using our conscious mind to focus, we're using our subconscious and unconscious minds. And this integration, I think, is really important. It's good, you know, these separations are somewhat arbitrary, but they're a really great model for us to understand what's going on, to understand ourselves, to understand what is our mind. And more importantly, you know, this thing that has been programmed and reprogrammed and in many ways held hostage by our upbringing and our and our training can be retrained and it can be refocused. You feel free to jump in any time. But with with the uh what I'm driving at here, Jung was quoted as saying, when the unconscious becomes conscious, you heal. When you know the unconscious rules our life, and the goal is to make it conscious. This is the value, I think, of breath work. There are many things about us that we can bring from our unconscious mind into our conscious mind. And whatever we don't bring into our conscious mind will continue on the path that it was on. And breathing is one of those things, right? I can use my mind and change how I'm breathing. I can use my conscious mind and change my heartbeat. I can use my conscious mind and change my muscle tenor. I can use my conscious mind to impact that which is unconscious. And it's what we do. We don't realize the degree to which our conscious mind, being focused on problems and issues and fears and angers, affects our body functions, affects us in our health, affects us. You know, we talk about psychosomatic, how the mind can create it. We talk about placebo, how the mind can create physical things in the bottom. It's an interactive thing. So sometimes there's a lot of value in going after that which is unconscious and bringing it into the conscious. So there's value in becoming aware of your breath. And that might be the very first thing you you might experiment with. I think it's worth experimenting, you know. Here I am babbling away. So when am I breathing? Let's put my mind to when does the breath come in? How does the breath come in so that it can go out in my mouth with all my yap? How can how can I be aware of when I breathe in and how much I breathe in? And how much of my outbreath is controlled by my speaking. Holding your breath activates that anterior cingulate cortex because it's not something you want to do. But holding your breath makes you aware of your breath and it makes you aware of how you feel about your breath. So here I am talking with absolutely no awareness of when I'm breathing in and knowing that air's coming out of me so I can speak, but I'm not concerned about it. But if I hold my breath for just a few seconds, it changes the pattern in my breath. If I hold my breath for as long as I can, you become aware of your urge to breathe. Now, the thing of it is, is there are people who are trained that can hold their breath for minutes, for 10, 12 minutes. There are deep divers who can go down, you know, 20 meters and hold their breath for extended periods of time. This is this is possible. And yet, when I try to hold my breath and I get to 30 seconds, I'm dying. I'm like, no, no, no, no, I gotta breathe. Yeah, we become aware of this urge within ourselves to breathe.

SPEAKER_00: 11:48

Yeah, I think the the other day I was sitting on the couch or somewhere, I don't know, and I was taking in deeper breaths, and Les was like, What's going on? Are you okay? And I I just, you know, said I'm I'm normally a shallow breather, right? And when something's maybe causing me anxiety, I don't know what's going on, but suddenly my body just wants to take in more deeper breaths to try to regulate something, maybe. And so sometimes I can find myself doing that. I think, you know, to give people a little bit of uh an image of what's sort of a funny image, maybe a cartoon image of what's sort of going on within the brain or the you know, the mind with your subconscious and unconscious. So, like Les said, the unconscious is taking care of your breath and all the parts of you that work without you having to think about it, right? And it's almost like there's two little cartoon people, one's unconscious, one's subconscious, and the subconscious is talking to the unconscious, right? And the unconscious, sort of a loop feedback loop. And so the subconscious is telling the unconscious, oh, there's something to be maybe worried about here, or maybe there's a limiting belief that we have about ourselves. And that's when you find the unconscious going, oh my god, turn on the alarms, right? Let's feel anxiety, let's sweat, let's breathe, maybe deeper breath or shallower breath. And so that's sort of what's going on there. They basically talk to one another. I don't know if it's the most well-known thing, but it comes to mind for me as digestion, right? When you're in fight or flight, when you've got stress going on in your life, which is the subconscious, you know, saying to the unconscious, there's something to be stressed about here. It starts to impact digestion, right? Maybe a pain in your stomach or or your bowels aren't maybe they're working too well, or maybe they're not working well enough. Yeah, that's my TED talk. Welcome.

SPEAKER_03: 14:25

Let's let's consider being just aware of our breath for a little bit. I think there's value sometimes in posture. Gravity is a wonderful friend. So just try to sit in a way where your head is balanced on top of your neck and your neck is balanced on top of your shoulders, and your shoulders are balanced over top of your hips. And just try to find the balance so it doesn't require a lot of work. You're not trying to hold yourself up, but you find a place where the body is able to sit tall and open up your chest and your belly. And then just pay attention to where your breath comes from.

SPEAKER_01: 15:20

Allow yourself to feel the urge to breathe. Notice how there is an urge to breathe.

SPEAKER_03: 15:36

Notice how you resist when you hold your breath.

SPEAKER_01: 15:39

Just hold your breath for the count of ten. Notice how the urge to breathe is arising. That's the power of life right there. Allow yourself to breathe.

SPEAKER_03: 16:02

And now just being aware of your breath, shifting your focus from all the things that go on in your mind to just your body sitting in a posture, paying attention to your breath. Notice how you've taken some taken something that is unconscious, you've made it conscious, not even deliberate yet. You're not really controlling it so much yet. You're just conscious of it. And notice how that shifts your mind. Now, if you're sitting on a bus or you're sitting in a room or you're sitting at work and you're listening to this and you're doing this, probably nobody notices. This is completely for you, by you, in you, for you. And it's having a massive effect on your mind. Just as if we were to take you on a regression, and we've taken you to something that is now so deep in your subconscious, you don't need you're not even aware of it, and we bring it into the consciousness, and it starts to heal, it starts to unravel, it starts to have less of an effect on you. Taking this completely unconscious thing called breath and making it conscious, you're already regulating your mind and your body. Now we all know this, right? We all know this. We've all heard somebody say, take a deep breath. We've all heard somebody say, you know, calm down. But the point is that we know that our breath has this effect. So taking that unconscious and making it conscious regulates us. It regulates us in a huge way. It is completely private and it's completely ours. So let's just use the simplest of techniques. The first of the simplest of techniques is now take in on your next breath the biggest breath you can. Fill yourself right up. There's more go in there. Amazing how much more can go in there. Keep taking it in. Notice how much air you can take in. And when you get to the top of that, hold it just for the count of two and then let it go. And so notice how simply by taking in as much air as you can and then letting it go. Notice the relaxation you feel. Physical relaxation. Now remember, this is yours. This is for you. We're taking that which is unconscious, we're making it conscious, we're doing it deliberately, and in doing it deliberately, we're making it more effective. By doing it deliberately, we're regulating what else is going on in our mind. And that's a nice, easy one. There's another technique. It's been taught by a bunch of hypnotists, I think that's a really valuable technique, and it's just simply trying to make your outbreath last longer than your in-breath. That's all there is to it. It doesn't matter. You can count. I like to count when I do these things because I'm just a musician at heart. I think of a pace, I think of a beat. So I breathe in for a beat of four, and I'll breathe out for a beat of six. But just try that. Whatever you breathe in, breathe in. Don't think too much about it. But now when it's time to breathe out, deliberately breathe out and breathe out for longer than it took you to breathe in. And you'll find that there's lots of air in there. Like you're you're full of air. There's tons of air in there. So much more than you think. And just try to do that for two or three breaths. Breathe in normally, but breathe out deliberately and longer. The physiology of this is simple, right? It's regulating your CO2, which regulates where your body's reacting. When we start to pant, when we start to get over excited, we get dizzy, right? We get woozy in our head. And that's just a buildup of carbon dioxide. So this is releasing extra carbon dioxide. The physiology of it is pretty straightforward. But what it does is it takes the unconscious and makes it conscious. And while being conscious, we are regulating. And it really changes the mind. Now, if you ever find yourself in a stressful situation, for so many people, it's just a stressful situation at work, right? Maybe there's one particular person or a particular boss or a particular task and all of these things. Use this one today. Use this one today when you're facing something you don't want to do. Just become aware of your breath. You don't have to take a deep breath. Just be aware of your breath and just try to exhale for longer than you inhale and notice the shift. Because the shift will be dramatic. It'll be, it'll take 15 seconds, and there will be a shift. Now, keeping it simple, right? Another great thing to do while you're sitting there balancing your head on your shoulders and your and your body being essentially held in place by gravity. And you become aware about how you breathe in, and you really breathe from the belly, right? The diaphragm sits there at The bottom of the ribs, and it basically creates a vacuum inside your chest. It pulls down, and now there's more space in that part of your chest. And so the air naturally flows in through your mouth and nose. Your best to keep your mouth closed. But be aware of that breathing. And now just take three breaths where you're completely focused on making your belly go out. People want to hold that belly in. People want to hold their image. Notice how you notice how you're disinclined to do that. Notice how you have that self-consciousness about your belly. Notice that you have that fear that somebody will see your belly poke out. But understand that a baby never feels that way. And when you watch a baby breathe, their belly moves out easy. So now what you're really doing is saying, no, the proper way to breathe is to allow my belly to expand. I don't need to hold a particular kind of posture so I look a particular way. I can just allow myself to breathe into my belly. And allow yourself to take three deep breaths down into your belly and not put your mind to what you look like.

SPEAKER_01: 23:21

And this is about being normal.

SPEAKER_03: 23:25

This is about being natural. You might want to say to yourself as you do it, I'm allowed to breathe naturally.

SPEAKER_01: 23:36

I am meant to breathe naturally. Notice how good it feels.

SPEAKER_03: 23:50

Notice how clear your mind is right now. We've just tried some of the simplest breathing techniques, and you have really changed what's going on in your mind. You've really changed the way your body feels. If there's somebody sitting beside you taking your pulse, your pulse has gone down. Your blood pressure has gone down. Your face is relaxed. It probably has no expression on it now. And best of all, your mind has stopped racing for a few moments.

SPEAKER_00: 24:30

Yeah, I remember a few years ago I was waking up in the night with panic attacks. Like I could hear my my um I could I could I could feel my heartbeat like in the back of my neck. And I'd wake up with that and I would try this, and it really helped. Just moving through that breath work.

SPEAKER_03: 24:57

By taking the unconscious and making it conscious, we're in a position to regulate it. And in regulating it, we're taking control of it. At any time, you can stop thinking about this and start thinking about whatever you want, and then your unconscious mind is going to take over again. But your unconscious mind is going to be affected by your subconscious mind's interpretation of what's going on. And that's when your breath might speed up again, or your breath might become shallow again, or your breath might become a complete non-consideration, and you notice that you're holding it. A lot of people, I'm one of those, hold their breath without knowing it. And then they wonder why they're taking in big gasps, right? Now, if we were to take this and we were starting to use deliberate techniques of breathing, we've talked about these before, but let's practice them today since we're sitting here and you're riding the bus anyway, or you're sitting in the car anyway. And this is not a hypnotic technique where you're gonna crash or anything. This is just simply thinking about your breath. Let's try some of these, but let's add to them. So, in the same way that I can take my unconscious breathing and make it conscious, I can take my subconscious, unconscious thinking and make it conscious. So, in other words, I am not what I think. I am the thinker, I can choose what I think, and I can. Just like I can choose to pay attention to my breathing and breathe in a different way, I can choose what's going on in my mind. And that's important. There's probably nothing more important. Being aware that your thoughts are not who you are, that your thoughts can be out of control, don't worry about it. That's normal. There's nothing wrong with you, but you have the capacity to control those thoughts. You have the ability to choose what you think. And all I want you to think now, as we practice this breathing, is just think right now. I'm going to give you, I am worthy. So now just use that what they call diaphragm breathing. Just pay attention to how your diaphragm goes out. And every time you breathe in, you your mind thinks I am worthy. And every time you breathe out, your mind thinks I am worthy. You don't have to close your eyes. You can be aware of the moment around you. But now you are deliberately breathing, and you are deliberately thinking. And I think you'll agree. The world looks and feels like a different place right now. You look and feel like a different person than you were just a few minutes ago. And now we can change that breathing. So now let's do some box breathing, and it's really simple. We use the count of four, but that count of four fits whatever your breathing style is. And the count of four is simply that you breathe in for a count of four, you hold it for a count of four, you breathe out for a count of four, and you hold it for a count of four. And maybe what you want to try here is breathing in as you say to yourself, I am worthy. Hold it while you say to yourself, I am worthy. Breathe out while you say to yourself, I am worthy. And hold it while you say to yourself, I am worthy. And just try to deliberately put your mind there. Now, box breathing is famous for the fact that it's taught to Navy SEALs. It's a way that they regulate themselves through their missions. They focus on their breath. They've practiced and practiced and practiced, so their actions are going to be automatic. They understand the situation they're in, and what's most important is they regulate their emotions and regulate their body. This form of breathing feeds the body the oxygen that it needs, removes the carbon dioxide that needs to be removed. So physically they're predisposed to be at their best, but most importantly, they're regulating the activity of their mind, taking what would normally be unconscious and making it conscious.

SPEAKER_01: 30:20

That's that's box breathing.

SPEAKER_03: 30:37

Yeah, so let's try that one.

SPEAKER_00: 30:42

Maybe yeah, so just finding finding your in-breath and you breathe in for about eighty percent of that breath, and then the last twenty percent you just sort of sip up after that breath. Does that make sense? So breathe in like that. I don't know if you guys can hear that.

SPEAKER_03: 31:12

They can't see it. But I'll describe it.

SPEAKER_00: 31:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 31:15

Hillary took in a normal breath, and then before she exhaled, she took in a sort of more effortful, deeper breath to add on top of that. So you're basically stacking your breath. If one breath is stacked on top of the other.

SPEAKER_00: 31:29

Yeah. And this breath mimics the breath that we take towards the end of crying. If you can maybe remember maybe the last time you cried, that's the breath. That's you know, in different ways, of course. It's not exact, but that's the breath that mimics crying.

SPEAKER_03: 31:52

And the exhale.

SPEAKER_00: 31:54

And the exhale is long and letting go. There's no stack in that. You just let it all go.

SPEAKER_03: 32:01

So try it. Let's try it. Let's just sit. We'll put our posture back. We're up. We got our shoulders balanced over top of our hips. We've got our head balanced over top of our shoulders. We've now opened our airway completely. We're relaxing our arms. We're completely present, focused on our breathing. And you take in a breath. And before you exhale, take in another breath. As much as you can. And now completely relax it and let it go out.

SPEAKER_01: 32:38

When you're ready, do it again.

SPEAKER_03: 32:45

When I have a client come in, as you do this, let me say this. When I have a client come in and I can tell that they're stressed, oftentimes they're just stressed because they're with a hypnotist and they don't know what the heck's going to happen. But I can tell that they're they're coming to the table stressed in some way or another. This is what we'll do. We'll start our session with some stacked breaths. They're like, well, don't I close my eyes? Don't I recline? And I'm like, no, not yet. And we'll do some stacking of breath. And we'll just sort of release that physical tension that they're holding on to because it's unconscious. The unconscious mind hears from the subconscious mind that we're doing something that's a bit scary. And it is hanging on to physiologically, it's hanging on to fear. And that's not always helpful, even when we're in fearful things. Now try a stacked breath, and this might affect some people. Try a stacked breath, and as you breathe in, say to yourself, I am lovable. And when you take in that top of breath breath, say it again, I am lovable. And as you release the breath, say it again, I am lovable. Now once again, you're deliberately thinking while you are deliberately breathing. And now you're taking control of your physiology, and you're taking control of your mind.

SPEAKER_01: 34:39

And how does that feel?

SPEAKER_00: 34:44

Good. It feels focused. Yes. It helps to focus. There's less runaway thoughts. Or feeling out of control.

SPEAKER_03: 34:57

Now these are all these are all methods of breathing you can use, and really nobody else has to know. Nobody else really will know. This is stuff you can do for yourself in the car. You can do it at work, you can do it on the bus, you can do it at home at night. You can do it really, and it's very, very private. But the only thing that other people will notice is that you've changed your posture. Or if you decide while you're doing it to close your eyes, there's nothing wrong with that. You're going to find that staffed breathing, diaphragm breathing coupled with some really nice, gentle I am statements. I am lovable, I am worthy, I am enough, I am safe. These are good phrases. You might find that there's some release. You might find some tears. And so, yeah, maybe sometimes you're going to want to do this in privacy. There's one more method that is commonly spoken of, where it's very similar to what we've already said, only it's much more deliberate and it's much more structured. And that's that what they call 478. 478. You inhale for four, forcefully, you hold for seven, and then you exhale forcefully for eight. So the way that looks is you're taking in a short, shorter breath, and you're not breathing for a count of seven. And then you're exhaling forcefully at eight. Now, this one won't take too many repetitions, four, seven, eight, four, seven, eight, three or four repetitions is going to have a dramatic impact on your physiology. It's going to very quickly and very deliberately regulate the sympathetic nervous system. Now, if you were doing this one, you're doing it quite deliberately because you're feeling dysregulated. And I recommend while you're doing this one, you're using the I am safe, I am safe statement to yourself.

SPEAKER_00: 37:23

There's a question. Is this one done with pursed lips on the exhale?

SPEAKER_03: 37:28

You can. And so your lips come out. Thanks for that. You can do it that way. But again, this is a form of breathing that you probably do in a private space. You'll probably do it because you need it. You'll probably leave other people and go to a place where you can breathe in for four, hold for seven, and that's an effort. That takes an effort, right? Because the body wants to breathe. So what you're doing is you're forcing regulation on the body because the body is in a state of panic. The body is really controlled. And most people who suffer from panic attacks find that this form of breathing is one of the best. But it is something that you do that people will notice.

SPEAKER_02: 38:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 38:26

Right. And so, you know, do it when you need it and don't worry too much about what other people are thinking. But you, you know, I think that there's real value in the ones that you can sort of hide.

SPEAKER_00: 38:39

Yeah, because you can do them at work or yeah, there are things that you can just add to your routine easily.

SPEAKER_03: 38:47

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, and the whole mind work here, the mind work is being aware that you're taking something, this integrated mind of conscious, subconscious, and unconscious, you're taking that which is normally in the unconscious and you're bringing it to the conscious. Now, what's going to happen, and this is the beauty of it, right? If you decide that from now on, as soon as you feel those internal senses of anxiety or panic or anger or any kind of negative emotion, you're going to sit tall and regulate your breath and regulate what you're thinking. When you do that, it's going to become a habit. And that's the beauty of it. The beauty of it is once again, we're taking our conscious mind, we're doing something repetitively, deliberately, correctly. We're doing it every time there's a particular stimulus, an emotion or a feeling inside you, and we're doing these efforts, and they will become your go-to. They will become the way you respond to these emotions and these thoughts. And then they become habits. And you'll find yourself, you know, this will take weeks, but the point is, if you practice it for weeks, if you every time you're in that same situation at work, every time you have that same problem with your kids, every time you have that same interaction with your spouse, every time you have the thing that triggers you to get emotionally and have your breath become, you know, sort of dysregulated into that sympathetic nervous system. If you just practice this, it will become the go-to. And you will find that you can take control over that which is unconscious. And when the body feels better, the mind works better. It just does. So I hope that helps.

SPEAKER_00: 41:05

Yeah, I think that was great. Thank you for that. Less teaches breath work.

SPEAKER_03: 41:11

Well, not in a sophisticated way.

SPEAKER_00: 41:14

That's okay. We're learning every day, just like everybody else. Okay, we're gonna get out of here. And thanks for joining us. And have a lovely day.