Silencing the Inner Critic: A Journey Through Breathwork w/Mary Clare O'Brien

Summary
In this episode of Growth from Grief, host Susan Andersen speaks with Mary Clare O'Brien about elemental breathwork, a transformative practice that integrates breathwork with mental health counseling. They discuss the importance of breath in regulating the nervous system, the experience of breathwork sessions, and how it can lead to emotional healing and personal breakthroughs. The conversation also covers the science behind breathwork, different types of breathwork, and the integration of breathwork with talk therapy. Listeners are encouraged to explore breathwork as a tool for self-discovery and healing. 

This is Part 5 of the Exploring Healing Modalities Series.

Takeaways

• Breathwork can help dissolve the ego and enhance intuition.
• The practice of breathwork allows for personal breakthroughs.
• Deep breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system.
• Breathwork can synchronize the brain's hemispheres for emotional healing.
• The body retains emotions in connective tissue, which can be released through movement.
• Breathwork can balance pH levels and improve overall well-being.
• Mindfulness and breathwork can calm racing thoughts.
• The experience of breathwork can lead to insights and clarity.
• Trusting your body during breathwork is essential for healing.
• Breathwork is a valuable tool for those dealing with grief and trauma.

Thank you for listening! Visit www.sueandersenyoga.com for Yoga for Grief classes and additional resources.

Transcript

Susan Andersen (00:03.458)

Hi everyone, welcome to this episode of Growth from Grief. I'm your host Sue Andersen and my guest today is Mary Claire O'Brien. Hi Claire, nice to see you again.

Clare O’Brien

Thanks for having me.

Susan Andersen

So everyone, you heard a little bit of an introduction about Claire, but I'd like to really focus on this podcast session about the Elemental Rhythm practice, the one that I did with you, and maybe start by talking a little bit about how you got into this.

Clare O’Brien

Yeah, absolutely. So I went on a life-changing retreat down in Costa Rica, and it was introduced to me at this retreat. Within the mental health field, what I work on primarily is the internal dialogue that we have with ourselves, because that really does command a lot of our behaviors and what we believe in and how we respond to life. And so we have these two voices in our head at all times. We have our intuition and we have our ego.

And I don't use the word ego in the common sense of like pride and things like that. I mean, ego in the way of the inner critic that is in our minds kind of, you know, ruining our day for the most part. And so when we have those two voices in our head, what I try to direct people towards is a more intense and focused conversation with the intuition. When I experienced my first Elemental Breathwork experience.

Clare O’Brien (01:41.602)

There's two different types. There's a Breakthrough and there's a Flow and we can get into that in a bit. But I did the Breakthrough experience. What I found, which is a really important tool in mental health counseling, is that when you're in this breathwork, when you are delivering to your body everything that it needs and more, what typically happens in breathwork is the ego is dissolved. So ego dissolution is what a lot of practices focus on so that you can quiet that inner critic and you can just have access to your intuition, which is that internal best friend. 

It's almost like the writer of a really good story and you're the main character and your intuition just wants you to do so well. And if you follow that voice, if you have an internal dialogue with that, then a lot of truth comes from that. A lot of good experience comes from that. And then you end up following and intending for yourself in a much more healthy, positive way. So when I experienced the Elemental Breath work and my ego was dissolved, I was able to connect with myself. We have the mind body spirit connection and spirit is, you know, translatable until lots of different language. So it could be consciousness, spirit, soul, whatever your belief system guides you to calling it. 

There's an important element there that we need to focus on at times. So breath work allows you access to your consciousness, your spirit, your soul, in a way that walking around normally or even, you know, like different types of things don't really achieve that level. So I found in this, basically, it's about 45 minutes to an hour session, that my ego was dissolved, I was able to get in communication and contact with that intuitive observer, the intuition. And it led me to a lot of really powerful insights that now help guide my process.

Susan Andersen (03:43.022)

Yeah, thank you. That's a very succinct and clear explanation. Thank you very much. You know, one of the things that you said about breath work and helping you to focus on your intuition and dissolve that inner critic, I remember, and I've talked about this before in my writing and in my podcast that when my son died, so this is 2012, when my son died, I felt like I couldn't breathe. I felt like there was a cloud on my chest. And somebody had recommended a simple breath work, know, the inhale to a count of four, exhale to a count of three. I mean, vice versa. Inhale to a count of three, exhale a count of four. And I couldn't believe it. I mean, it just helped me so much get out of my head for that few seconds or a few moments.

And that was very transformative to me. And from that, just building on that with other types of breathing exercises, I felt really helped me, especially when you had that hamster wheel going of, I should have done this, I should have done that. You can't get out of it. I mean, you can't get out of it.

Clare O’Brien

yes right yeah.

Susan Andersen (05:11.382)

It's just, it's like really, really stuck in your head. And it is, yeah. It's, you're just constantly going back to that, those thoughts. And for me personally, writing didn't really help. I mean, all of these things help, help a little bit, but writing didn't really help me. exercise did, I think because you're breathing, you know, you're focusing on breath too. but it was really the the mindfulness and the breath work that I felt really helped me kind of calm those thoughts.

Clare O’Brien

Yeah, yeah. And when we even think about our common language, right? Like when you take a deep breath, it's a deep breath of relief, right? So where does that comment even come from? And when you breathe in deeply into your diaphragm, what happens is if we're looking at the lungs as its total being top third, middle third, and bottom third, the top third of your lungs, which is where most people walk around and they're breathing from because they're not taking those deep breaths, they haven't trained their body in that way, that actually ignites your sympathetic nervous system, your fight or flight response. 

And so this makes a lot of sense as people are walking around, people are tight, people are tense, they're breathing from up there to their lungs, and they're actually sending into the vagus nerve, which is really important because it's the only nerve that goes into the brain. It delivers all of the information from our organs into the brain. The brain is the hub that figures everything out and then sends out the signals. But that vagus nerve is sending up signals to our brain on how our body should be responding to things.

If we're only breathing in that top third of our lungs, we're going to ignite our fight or flight response on a constant basis. When we take that deep breath down into the diaphragm, the diaphragm opens up almost like a little parachute at the bottom of our core. And it allows the bottom third of the lungs to be ignited. And then the bottom third of the lungs is where we have our parasympathetic nervous system, our relaxation response.

Clare O’Brien (07:14.666)

And so when we're breathing deeply, we are then sending into the vagus nerve and then into our brain, the message to relax, to breathe deeply and it benefits the whole body. So it's something to just note that if you can, I like to do something called habit stacking, where if you already have a habit that you do all the time, I work a lot with doctors, psychiatrists, teachers, all, well, people from all sorts of different walks of life, post office workers, and when you can habit stack. So every time that I put a piece of mail into a mailbox, I'm going to take a deep breath. Now I'm going to be delivering to my body on a constant basis, the message to relax, relax, relax. Every day I do a clinical note, take a deep breath. Honestly, a lot of people who are sitting at desks for their job, they're collapsing that bottom third of their lungs by their posture.

So even your posture is really important. So really like laying back, opening up that system, training your diaphragm. It's a muscle. You can actually train it to be stronger. The vagus nerve goes right in the middle of that diaphragm. And you can either at that point influence whether you are sending the signal to fight or flight or freeze or fawn or all the other fun things, or whether you're sending in that message to relax.

Susan Andersen

Yeah, that is a really great explanation. I don't recall ever hearing that explanation, but it makes a lot of sense to me. And one of the things that I've been training myself and when I'm teaching a yoga class or a meditation, I have people put their hands on their rib cage, the bottom of their rib cage, and breathe deeply enough that they can feel the rib cage, the bottom of the rib cage move. I think that's really helpful, physical kind of thing. You can connect to that and really understand and get that deep breath because sometimes it's hard to figure out where the diaphragm is.

Clare O’Brien (09:28.46)

Yep, yep. And sometimes two nice little practices to put one hand on your chest and one hand on your lower abdomen. And as you're breathing in, you want your bottom hand to rise first and then the top hand. And so that way, you know that you are delivering to the diaphragm first. In yoga, in certain practices, they call it a three-part breath. And so the first part is that the diaphragm goes up and then the middle lung and then the top lung. And now we're in a nice flow and rhythm and you're able to achieve that.

Susan Andersen

Right, right. So I went to a session that you had not knowing at all what I was getting into, which was actually really good, not really understanding what it was all about. So I just want to describe to the listeners. So when I walked into the space, 

Susan Andersen (10:23.436)

And I did talk about this in my previous podcast about my experience, but when I walked into the space, there was like nice, comfortable, like low mattress kind of things it could rest on with a pillow and a bolster and a blanket and all this kind of nice stuff and an eye mask. And again, not knowing what I was going to experience, I thought, this is great. Very restful. 

Clare O’Brien

At least, get good nap in.

Susan Andersen

Oh, and I participated in the Breakthrough Breath. So I wanted to ask you specifically about the flow of this class, Breakthrough Breath.

Susan Andersen (11:26.668)

That it starts with movement kind of like shaking movement and there's a lot of music that's reminds me of like tribal dancing that's what it reminds me of can you kind of talk about that that beginning that starting point and then we can get more into the absolutely

Clare O’Brien

So the first song is always what we call the shaking song. And that's when you stand up, it's a very like high energy song. And the point of it is to get your body moving because if you've read things like The Body Keeps The Score and things along those lines, we know, and it's scientifically proven that we hold and we retain emotions that we've suppressed in our system. And so there's many layers to that system though. So we have our bones, our muscles, our ligaments, our connective tissue and, and..

So when we're getting up and we're shaking, what we're focused on primarily is the fascia, which is, or fascia, know, tomato, tomato. That's that web of connective tissue that's over our entire bodies, kind of close to the skin level. And if that's not opened up, what happens is even if you try to release, you're not releasing fully because you have this web of connective tissue that's kind of holding things in.

So we want to communicate with the body that this is a safe place to release, that we want to release fully and completely. And when you get up and you're moving your fascia like that, you are welcoming that openness so that when you do release during session, it is fully out of your body and it's no longer going to bounce back and be retained in any sort of way.

Susan Andersen

So that's really interesting because in yin yoga, which is a type of yoga that I teach, it also is focused on the fascia. And not necessarily opening it, but in the way that you're talking about in terms of the movement, but in stillness. But it's really interesting, as I've learned over the last probably three or four years,

Susan Andersen (13:31.498)

about that connective tissue, that fascia that covers our whole body, like some people could think about it like the Spider-Man suit, you know, of your body. But the important thing about that is where, because it's all connected, you can feel discomfort or pain in an area that isn't where the actual injury or pain is, for example, or discomfort, because it's all connected.

And, but I didn't really think about it in terms of what you're talking about in terms of the shaking and releasing and opening to, to allow. So that's really interesting. Okay, so that's good to understand that for the shake.

Clare O’Brien

Yeah, and it's a fun song too. kind of like, it's up to you and it, tries to kind of remove the anxieties, right? Like oftentimes people have anxieties about new locations, about new things, about new people. And it's kind of a space of all of that, right? Like you said, you're surprised by the entire situation, right? So like just a new experience. And in our brains, unfortunately, new isn't predictable. And so sometimes new becomes a little scary.

So we want to break that association. But this type of thing just gets you up and gets you a little bit out of your comfort zone, which is your growth space. And then you're just more likely to just kind of fall into a place of hopefully non-judgment, which is the point of dissolving that ego too. And so hopefully you can get into that space too. And so that opening song kind of like lets you just know, like, everybody can look a little silly here and we're all just going to like, you know just accept every part of each other and get into it together.

Susan Andersen (15:18.476)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was fun. It was fun. Although it's a little bit disconcerting with the eye mask on because you don't know if you're going to hit a wall or something. Of course, you were there and stuff,

Clare O’Brien

We make sure that nobody hurts each other or hurts themselves in any sort of way.

Susan Andersen

Exactly. Okay, so that was the opening and then then the music is very focused on like drums like it's that thump thump thump. So talk about that.

Clare O’Brien

Yes. So anytime in that rhythm, what we're looking for is to connect to the heartbeat, right? So our, in traditional Chinese medicine, the heart is considered king of the other organs, right? So we're connecting to that master organ inside of our body. And we are also connecting to the, I'm going to call it the heartbeat of mother earth, which sounds a little bit hippie, but I'm going to explain it scientifically as well.

So the Schumann resonance, which is actually monitored and recorded by NASA, so scientific body, what it is, is it's a collection of all of the lightning that has struck the earth, and then it collects inside the earth and it pulses out at a certain rate. And that pulse is what we call the Schumann resonance, which is monitored, and it's 7.83 Hertz, which doesn't mean much, you know, as I say it out loud, but what it actually connects to is the same rhythm of a human heartbeat.

Clare O’Brien (16:42.624)

So we are in sync with mother nature, whether we realize it or not, you can go with a scientific route and call it Schumann resonance, or you can call it the heartbeat of mother earth. But really what it does is it grounds you into nature and nature, obviously with my background, I believe that nature is its own medicine. So you are connected to that medicine at that point. And then the music just carries you through keeping you in a flow state so that you can.

Again, dissolve that ego and increase and amplify the positive voice inside of your head.

Susan Andersen

Yeah, it actually made me want to get up and move. kind of dance. I liked it. liked it. Now, how about how loud it is? I, yeah, tell me about the how, you know, because it's pretty loud. I mean, it was loud to me.

Clare O’Brien

Right, right. So it's really the speaker that we have two different styles. So you experience the speaker style where the vibration actually is coming from the speaker and that in itself helps too. So in physics, we have the law of entrainment, which means that a master vibration, things are going to, I'm using the wrong language for it, but I'm just going to speak some common stuff just to get the point across.

it entrains to it. connects, lower vibration will connect to a master vibration and it will start to resonate at that frequency as well. And so if that pulse is going on, you are much more likely to be able to entrain to it and then get into the pulse and the heartbeat and grounding in a much more accessible way. So the vibration helps there. We also have another style with headphones and that has less vibration, but you are able to control the volume of the sound.

Clare O’Brien (18:27.458)

So if you do have some auditory limitations or you're just conscious about the auditory input that you're putting in, then a headphone program might be better than doing the speaker program.

Susan Andersen

Got it. I liked the vibration. Yeah.

Clare O’Brien

Yeah, it's really, I do, I get a little sad when we do the headphones because you lose that vibration from the speaker. But it's still kind of, it's an intimate process. And people do like the headphones because you're not interrupted by anybody else's process going around, which can sometimes happen, right? I tend to like use that as a mindful technique though too. 

So if somebody is toning, which is like, verbally, you know, using their voice to get some of the extra energy out. That can be distracting for somebody or you can say, okay, life throws all of this noise at me. How can I still be okay if something distracting is happening? So it's actually an opportunity in mindfulness to be like, I can still be okay, even though this irritating or frustrating thing is happening.

Susan Andersen

Right, right. Like teaching a yoga class with the lawnmower

Clare O’Brien (19:39.768)

There's something where somebody is snoring. I usually throw things at people like soft things, not nothing hard. But like a scarf or something, I'll be like, wake up a little bit, you know anybody could sleep.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes it's the first time that their body has been able to relax. They do tend to fall asleep sometimes because it's like they don't, they're so busy, go, go, go. For some reason in our society, we've made busy a status symbol. And so they don't stop. And so if they've stopped for the first time in ever, then they usually just fall asleep 

Susan Andersen

Right. Well, that's a good place to do it. I mean, safe place to do it. Okay. So then we get into the actual four different types of breathwork. And can you briefly talk a little bit about that and why it's important? Because it's a cycle. It's like three times or four times that we did that as I recall.

Clare O’Brien

Yep, each round is its own cycle of breath. And so we, in the Breakthrough Breath work, what we focused on is earth breath, which is four in, four out, all through the nose. And I'll explain why that's important in a second, but four seconds in and four seconds out. And then we transitioned to water breath, which is two seconds in, two seconds out. And then air breath, which is one in one. And then we do fire, which is a very rapid diaphragmatic.

Clare O’Brien (21:11.874)

breath for about 30 seconds. It's not very long. It feels kind of long when you're doing it, but it's not so, so long. And then we do some breath holds. And what we're doing is we're up regulating the system so that we can get to a point of complete clarity. Again, the ego is being dissolved in this way. So as the ego is dissolving, we're giving energy into that intuition. 

So when we reach the peak, our ego is quiet our intuitions ignited and on board. And we're doing that through that breath and introducing different rhythms to ourselves until we get to the pinnacle. And then at the pinnacle is when a lot of breakthrough experience happens. You could have your breakthrough during your work rounds or afterwards. And we'll get to that part too of the guided meditation. 

So there's a couple of opportunities where your system will say, like, finally, I get to express this. Finally, I get to give and deliver this truth to my body. So all really important stuff there. It also begins to synchronize the hemispheres, which is incredibly important when we're doing anything with the emotional brain. So a lot of all of our grief can live in or not all, but a large portion of our grief lives in our emotional brain. And when that bad thing happened, we have a fragment of ourselves that is frozen in time. It's insulated by that trauma. It's in our emotional brain. We walk around in our logic brain for the most part. We have to ignite the bridge in between the two hemispheres in order to get into our emotional brain and deliver the logic that we have done either in talk therapy or in our faith or in our friend groups. 

We usually come to perspective, right? People say that time heals. The reason that time heals is because it allows you to gain different perspectives. And so as you're gaining perspective in your logic brain, that frozen piece of yourself that went through the very hard thing, the hard loss, doesn't have access to that because there's no synchronization between the hemispheres. So breath work, and especially this type of breath work, will ignite the bridge in between those two hemispheres. And then you are allowed to and welcomed to put all of that logic into that emotional fragment of yourself.

Clare O’Brien (23:28.17)

When we experience trauma as well, that fragment happens, but that version of ourselves doesn't have any information from that moment on. It is frozen in time. It doesn't have access. It thinks all of the worst things that it thought in that moment might still happen if that, if not have happened. So it's really important to go back with our present self, with our present information and wisdom and go to that version of ourselves and tell them, it was all, it turns out okay. It turns out that we moved past this and here's all the information that I have for you. Here's all the perspective that I can give to you. 

And if you're in agreement now, can we reunify and come back into the present moment? And if we do that through breath work and breath work is an opportunity to do that, then that fragment is no longer a fragment. It's part of who we are now. It's not considered a trigger anymore. FYI, this is where all your triggers come from, where you feel like you're back in moment, is that the other thing? So you remove the trigger because that fragment is no longer there anymore. It's reunified with you, which is incredibly important.

Susan Andersen

Yeah, yeah, that's really, that's really, it's really interesting. I felt when I was, well, first of all, for me, when I was doing the breath work, I was trying to figure out why are we doing this breath? Why are we doing this? Why are we doing four and four? So I was still in my head at the beginning, like when we first did that first round of the four different kinds of breath, gradually getting out of my head and stop thinking about why we're doing it a certain way.

and just allowing it to occur. I don't know if it's like a breakdown, a breakthrough. I'm not sure exactly what the right wording is, but I could feel things melting away. It felt very good to me. It felt really good.

Susan Andersen (25:36.384)

What I was kind of, I guess, surprised about was the intensity of it. Because it is quick. It's pretty fast that we're doing all this. I had sort of these different feelings, like am I going to, like,

Clare O’Brien

Mm-hmm.

Susan Andersen (26:06.214)

not stop breathing, you know, am going to like choke because I'm breathing so much, you know, so you kind of have, I had a little bit of that at the beginning, but then I, definitely just kind of fell into the rhythm of it. and almost was surprised when it ended because then to go to another phase from there. So yeah.

Clare O’Brien

Right. A couple more things too, during those breathwork rounds that is happening in your body. And when we are delivering this excess of oxygen, what you're doing is you're actually balancing your pH levels. And so usually in psycho neuroimmunology, this means that everything is connected. When we're going through a difficult emotional time, that can actually end up compromising and pulling down our immune system, right? And then our biology and all the things that kind of go alongside that.

So when we over-deliver, when we pump ourselves full of oxygen, we are balancing our pH and we are less likely, we're able to pull up that vibration into a healthier vibration. And when we do that, then we have access to more clear thoughts, more truthful thoughts that don't involve that ego down here. The ego has a lot of access to us when we are lower vibrating, when we're...

not in a good mood or when we're physically ill, sometimes people can see it the other way too. If I get sick, then I'm usually in a bad mood too, or I'm more sad or there's depression that can sink in and whatever else. So in psycho neuro immunology, what we're trying to do is that whole being, pull that whole being up into a space where you have the opportunity to again, dissolve that ego, unfortunately in energy.

A negative thought has more energy than a positive thought, which is why we go to it, which is why it's so easy to be attracted because it has more pull. So when moving into that, attempting to get those positive thoughts online, we have to work hard. We have to work hard to give ourselves the opportunity to, again, dissolve that ego and take the microphone over with our intuitive voice and amplify that.

Susan Andersen (28:10.808)

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I know, you know, in my own experience, you know, just, I mean, on a day to day basis, you're having a range of emotions, right? Everybody is, you're sad, you're disappointed, you're happy or whatever. And I noticed myself, I'll start to gravitate towards that negative thing. And I found for me, the way to get out of that is more like a mindfulness visualization kind of thing. 

I really like Thich Nhat Hanh's approach. And so I remember a lot of those things and I just bring myself right back there. But that takes a lot. It takes a lot to like, you have to tell yourself. It's almost like you have to say, no, I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm going to do this.

Clare O’Brien (29:03.298)

It does.

Yes, yes. So you're talking about the first thought versus the second thought. So our first thought, whenever we're thinking anything, comes through a lens of programming. And whether our programming, our autopilot, is set through a healthy lens or set through a trauma lens will dictate where that first thought goes. So if you haven't done the work yet, a lot of your first thought is going to be faulty programming or really old programming, rules that you have created when you were zero to 12 years old sometimes and you haven't abandoned those. Do they serve you anymore? Probably not, but they're a rule and it's in your system and it's in your programming. 

So that first thought comes through the lens of trauma if you haven't done the work. Where we have influence and which is where I help people master their internal dialogue is moving into that second thought. And when you move into the second thought, you have influence over that. This is my integrity. This is who I want to be. This is what I want to believe for myself. This is where I have some influence here.

It's going to feel fake. It's going to feel false because what you're actually doing is you're creating a new neuro pathway and that neuro pathway has not been traveled. So it's going to feel awkward. It's going to feel uncomfortable, which is a good sign. That means you're growing, but you know, still people have to like, you know, tolerate the discomfort of that new thought. Even if it's a positive thought, a lot of people will tell me, well, I'm not going to do that because that's BS. Like I'm just making stuff up. And I'm like, absolutely. 

But so is that catastrophe that you just made up as well. That's BS too. So if you're going to BS yourself, let's BS ourselves in a fair way where if we're thinking a negative thought, I'm going to compliment that with a positive thought to balance myself. And eventually if you travel that second pathway, that positive pathway enough times, you can create a neural pathway that overtakes the first thought of your trauma and programming. And then you are done with that work and you move on to the next thing.

Susan Andersen

Right, right, right. That makes sense. So, so we went through that breath work and and then can you talk about the next couple of steps?

Clare O’Brien (31:09.838)

So after we've fully fortified your body with all of the truth and FYI, I know I've talked a lot of science, but, I'm going to say for science stuff, I'll say something along the lines of like it's proven and for energy stuff, I'll say it's believed, right? Because a lot of energy work is very direct experience, meaning it differs from person to person. And so it's hard to kind of like quantify that and put that on a science graph where you can say like, okay, this makes sense. Right? 

So in energy, we believe that the air is divine intelligence. We believe that all of the elements have divine intelligence. This is why nature is medicine. That air is the truth. And so as you're breathing in, you are delivering all of this truth to yourself and fortifying your being with that. Now, as we move from the breath rounds into the guided meditation, which is the next section of this breath work, what we do is we then open ourselves up to a true experience, truth, right?

So we pull in some gratitude. We'll ask you to pull in some gratitude. We have that resonate in every cell of your being and every cell of your energy field. And then we move into a space where you are able to move across that bridge and find the version of yourself that wants to be healed. I would say, don't go into it with an agenda. Believe your body, believe your intuition.

You naturally gravitate to the version of yourself that needs your attention that day. I know a lot of people want to be intentional and they want to go back to one exact moment. But if something else needs to be put in place before you handle that moment, trust that your body is going to know what to do. Our body doesn't have any language. All it has is signals for us. And so in this moment, we're really invested in listening to our body and we don't do that very often. So really lean into the fact that your body is going to know where to lead you.

And a version of yourself comes up and at that moment you get to reunify with that version. You have, we do ho'oponopono or a version of ho'oponopono, which is a Hawaiian meditation about forgiveness, self-forgiveness, forgiveness of everything, community and the collective and all of that stuff. So we go into a space where we speak to ourselves in that way and we decide whether we can move on from the situation.

Clare O’Brien (33:33.216)

And in that moment, you have the chance to reunify and come back into the present moment with that version of yourself. And then the next round, like if you do another breathwork breakthrough session down the road, maybe the one that we intended or we really have an agenda to go back and get comes up, right? She or he will come up when they are ready. There's a lot of divine timing going on too. So just trust that the process will happen in the way that is best and most optimal for your own being.

Susan Andersen

Yeah, I found in that experience that what came up for me was something that I actually have had in the back of my mind for a long time and could not figure out how to like connect to it or let it go or have that conversation, you know, whatever. So it was really, really helpful for me. And then that led me to a next step, which is having some conversation, a talk therapy kind of conversation, which in my own path, my own grief path since my son died, I really hadn't done since two years after he died. 

I did a lot of movement and energy work and a lot of alternative kinds of healing modalities. And I never went back to the talking, but now I felt like, okay, I need to do that. You know, that's my next step. So it was really, it definitely was a breakthrough for me.

Clare O’Brien (35:13.474)

Wonderful. Yeah, yeah. And now that you're in talk therapy, again, you're working on that logic, right? You are forming the perspective that past versions of yourself need. And then when you're ready to go in and reunify with those things, I practice a style of mental health counseling that we can do that in session. And I'm trying to teach more therapists that more people have this opportunity, but it's new. 

I don't know if anybody else doing it yet, but the other accessible points are that you can come into this breathwork session. So say that you have this like amazing aha moment in therapy, but yet the trigger is still there. A lot of people have that happen to them. They have this great insight and awareness and yet they're still having a trigger. And they're like, that doesn't make any sense. I have perspective on this. I know that this thing isn't what I thought it was. But if they haven't done the hemispheric synchronization where they can deliver that logic to that part of themselves, then that trigger will remain.

And so if you're in that category, have some hemispheric synchronization will be your best friend. Get over there and get the logic back into that emotional version of yourself. Reunify.

Susan Andersen

Yeah, yeah. So I wanted to ask about if people are interested in this, do you have a conversation with them before and just see if it's the right step for them at this time or people just sign up? Like, how does that work?

Clare O’Brien

No, we can do discovery calls at anybody's request. We have a phone number on our website. You would just call that and ask for a call back because you're interested in breath work. There's also online forms that you can fill out and then we'll contact you if you prefer that. I know some people have anxieties even about calling, right? Like the telephone, you know, it's hard nowadays because people have just gone to email and text and whatever else. If you want to text too, we're open for it all.

Clare O’Brien (37:06.358)

As long as people are telling us there is a need. So in an emotionally intelligent relationship, if there is a need, the person speaks it out loud and then it is the partnerships responsibility to meet that need. So in this partnership, if I know a client has a need, I will meet that need through communicating with them and then reviewing what the possible options are. So we have the Breakthrough Breathing, which isn't ideal for people with panic attacks still.

Right? Because of that diaphragmatic, that real fast fire breath that happens that mimics sometimes anxiety and people can struggle through that. In our environment, we're pretty safe though, because of the training and the expertise in the room. So we can help people. So if you get into that space, like you're still gonna be safe, you're still gonna be okay, we work through it. 

But ideally, if you are still experiencing or in the middle of panic attacks, the Flow Breath is a little bit safer and better because there's no diaphragmatic mimicking of that anxiety or panic feelings. And so I would direct people to go into a Flow Class rather than a Breakthrough Class. But a discovery call is always an option. Email is always an option. Like any kind of communication, I will make sure that the need is met. So they just need to reach out and we'll make sure that they get whatever information that they would need.

Susan Andersen

That's great. So if people are interested, this is all in person, correct?

Clare O’Brien

Currently it's in person, we actually will have online options soon because you can do all this through Zoom. I would like discovery calls with people who decide to do it via telecommuting because we want to make sure that you're safe. We want to make sure that you have somebody to process with afterwards. If you have a therapist on board or something like that, we just want to make sure that you're safe. 

Clare O’Brien (38:53.4)

So we'll go through the things and then if it feels kind of like if there's a major thing that you're going to be tackling, we don't want you on like your living room couches. I'm like a state away and you know, right. You're right.

Susan Andersen

Right, right. That makes sense. makes sense. Is there anything else that you'd like to share with our listeners today?

Clare O’Brien

I just wish that, you if you're curious about it at all, try, right? The universe, God, whatever you call it, usually puts things on the opposite side of fear, right? So you have to move through that hesitation, that fear of whatever in order to get to the good things. And so if you're hesitant at all, do a discovery call, reach out to us, but just really consider the modality.

If not with us, like just find it out there. I'm not a person who like needs, there's no competition here. I want everybody to do well. So like if you find breath work somewhere else and it works for you, awesome. But at least give it one try, right? It's just, it's a kindness to yourself to give it a try.

Susan Andersen

Right. So if people want to connect with you, what's the best way to do that?

Clare O’Brien (40:09.262)

Probably the email. So that's just Claire at the transfer, sorry, Claire at transformationcollectivestudio.com, which is very long and obnoxious, but unfortunately the short name. Yep. So we gotta work with what we gotta work with. So I don't know if we have like capability of like putting a website up or something like that too, but our website is transformationcollectivestudio.com.

Everything is on there. We have a lot of different offerings, including the breath work. lots of different things. then the whole point is just to bring communities together, to bring like-minded people together, to heal, and then just ripple it out into the community.

Susan Andersen

Great. All right, well, thank you so much for your time.

Clare O’Brien

My pleasure. Great to speak with you.

Susan Andersen

Thank you. All right, everyone. So we will see you in the next episode. Thanks for listening. Bye for now.