Sassy & Strong with Dr. Micol
Stay Sassy & Strong with Dr. Neely
Sassy & Strong with Dr. Micol
From Burnout to Breakthrough The Power of Breathwork
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What if one of the most powerful tools for healing was something you already do every single day?
In this episode, Dr. Micol Neely sits down with Dr. Cory Ostroot, a Naturopathic Physician, to explore the transformative power of breathwork and how it can reset the mind and body without medication.
After experiencing severe health challenges during medical school, including weight loss, autoimmune issues, and chronic stress, Dr. Cory discovered that true healing goes far beyond traditional medicine. His journey led him to breathwork practices that ultimately changed his life.
Together, they break down how breathwork works, why it is so effective for stress, trauma, and mental clarity, and how it can create profound shifts similar to plant medicine experiences without the use of substances.
This conversation also dives into the science behind breathwork, including how it helps regulate the nervous system, quiet the analytical mind, and access deeper parts of the subconscious for emotional and physical healing.
Whether you are feeling overwhelmed, stuck, or simply curious about natural healing methods, this episode offers a powerful introduction to breathwork as a tool for transformation.
Because sometimes the most profound healing does not come from adding something new.
It comes from learning how to use what has been within you all along.
About our guest:
Dr. Cory Ostroot and Jessica Waala are the founders of The Healing Couple and creators of RESET Breathwork. Together, they blend science, somatics, nervous system regulation, and transformational Breathwork to help entrepreneurs, leaders, and high performers heal, expand, and create success that feels deeply aligned and sustainable.
Dr. Cory is a Naturopathic Physician with a background in integrative and holistic medicine, while Jess brings expertise in psychology, meditation, somatic healing, and transformational facilitation. Together, they have led over 1,000 live Breathwork experiences, trained facilitators across the globe, and impacted thousands of lives through their work.
They are known for their powerful, music-driven Breathwork experiences, their heart-centered yet science-backed approach, and their mission to help people regulate their nervous systems, unlock deeper healing, and become more fully alive.
Best ways listeners can connect:
The Healing Couple
Instagram: @thehealingcouple_
Special offer from Dr. Cory: RESET Collective Community
First month free with code: BREATHE100
To join click here: https://resetcollective.thehealingcouple.com/?coupon_code=BREATHE100
Follow, subscribe, and stay connected for more powerful conversations on strength, healing, and becoming the strongest version of yourself.
Stay Sassy and Strong with Dr. Micol
Follow, subscribe, and stay connected for more powerful conversations on strength, healing, and becoming the strongest version of yourself.
Stay Sassy and Strong with Dr. Micol
Hi, this is Dr. McCole Neely, and thanks for listening to our show. We are here to talk a little bit about mindset, movement, and muscle, and maybe a few other little fun things along the way. Bassie and Strong with Dr. McColl here. And I have some exciting guests today. Um, we're gonna talk to Dr. Corey about something that honestly I need and I cannot wait to hear about. Let's talk breath work.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Dr. Corey. Tell us a little bit about you and how you got into this space of like the meditation and breath work. What does that really look like?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, yeah, Dr. Corey, I'm a naturopathic physician, board certified family practice. And how breath work came into my life was really serendipitous, kind of on the back end of medical school where I was learning all these amazing things, all these therapies, and I was getting more stressed out and sicker. I'm sure you probably have been there before.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01Where you're self-diagnosing yourself every five seconds. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. And I especially through psychology class, I was like, oh, I have all this.
SPEAKER_01All of it. Do I need to check myself in? Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So I was, you know, pretty avid athlete, exercised a lot, ate a lot. As you can tell, I'm a I'm a big human being and like 225, right? 6'5. Yeah. And I got to about 158 pounds, was dealing with all sorts of digestive issues, autoimmunity, joint pain, um, getting diagnosed with weird conditions like inosinophilic myalgia, like just like what's going on with my body. And I was trying to figure it out. And so, fast forward to like third, fourth year of medical school, I was at, like, yeah, 158 pounds and really sick, and not a lot of people could help me, even my mentors. And so I decided I'm gonna do something completely different. I'm gonna step outside of my comfort zone, go to a completely different environment to just see if I could reset. So I had a friend who I had a retreat center called Niwe Rao in uh Kitos, Peru.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01I think literally middle of the Amazon kind of vibes. And here's Dr. Corey, or about to be Dr. Corey. Never done drugs in my entire life. And I decided to go on a trip for a month in the middle of the Amazon and drink ayahuasca like every other night. Okay. And so, yeah, that really catapulted, I'll get to breath work in about two seconds here, but that really catapulted my journey on healing and realizing it's so much more than just medicine. It's so much more than just taking a pill. And it's really an introspective process. That's usually how it starts. And so for me, it was those ayahuasca journeys and realizing like there's so much more to healing. And a lot of it was actually connected to the relationship that I was in at the time that was really toxic and just completely draining my batteries. And yeah. And so, fast forward about like another five or six years, I was in a long distance relationship with somebody, and she was taking a yoga class or a yoga teacher training. Um and her name's Jessica, she's my fiance now. I'm about to marry her in like a week. Congratulations. Thank you. Yeah, and so she I was in Arizona, she was in California, and we had these really late night conversations, you know, the ones where you like fall asleep on the phone. Uh-huh. And during her yoga teacher training, she was taking a breathwork class. Okay. And I had done yoga classes. I was a yogi. I'd go to yoga classes, do pranayama, and she was telling these these fantastical stories about like, I closed my eyes and I was doing this breathwork technique, and then I turned into an eagle, and I was soaring above my life, and I was getting all this clarity. And I was thinking to myself, did they slip something into your water? Right before, you know, like my doctor mind was running. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Did she get the ayahuasca hair?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Because that's where my brain was. It was in science and biochemistry and like taking something to alter your state. But that wasn't happening. So she was really inspired. I was really inspired. And then she said, I I want to take a breath work certification training. And I go, sign me up. She's like, but you've never done this technique before. I was like, I don't care. I have to find out.
SPEAKER_00I want to try it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So do you think that's so during the yoga training, she was getting the breath work that was getting her to that place. Yes.
SPEAKER_01That's what led to, okay, let's more about breath work. And so I did my first journey in a certified teacher training in this hut. And here I'm again in a hut, right? A doctor in a hut. And I did this very powerful technique that took about an hour, and I popped up, I swear, like deer, deer in headlights. You know, like, what just happened? I feel so amazing. I feel like I'm high on my own supply. This feels like without anything other than breathing. Yeah. It feels like a plant medicine journey without the plant medicine. And so that's really where my breath work journey began.
SPEAKER_00Okay. How long ago was that?
SPEAKER_01That was about 10 years ago.
SPEAKER_00Okay. And then you've just built this practice on your experience.
SPEAKER_01Right. Yeah. I mean, we can get into some of the nuances of breath work, but there's a lot of different breathwork techniques out there. The form that I really specialize in is long-form transformational journeys. So this isn't just like a quick practice. This is something where you come in and you work with me and we can breathe sometimes for 30, 35 minutes to really help unlock what maybe is holding you back, whether it's a health condition, whether it's a relationship like I was dealing with, um, to really see what's inside. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Now you started out with the ayahuasca. How did you do that? Like, obviously, that's not something we do here in the US.
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_00How did you find a good provider? Like, was it word of mouth or research?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So through the medical school, I had a friend that knew Dr. Joe Tefour. You should definitely have him on the podcast. He's local here in Arizona. And so he owned, co-owned a retreat center, Niue Raoul in Iquitos, Peru, with a traditional shaman in the Amazon. Yeah. And so I was connected with him that way.
SPEAKER_00How would you relate your two experiences? That ayahuasca within your breath journey.
SPEAKER_01Great question. And that's what really opened my eyes to the power of breath work is I think some of my breath work journeys personally have been just as powerful, if not more powerful, than the ayahuasca because I did it myself. And there's something really innate when, like, you know, when you've had like a really good workout, when you like hit your PR or your peak goals, and like you're so like that internal pride is it's like nobody can take this away from me. Like I did this. There's something really inherent about breathwork journeys and being able to do that for people versus ayahuasca journeys, where I've noticed, because I've been in those communities too, right? And people will just say every like five years, like things start to decline, or whether it's their self-confidence or the clarity that they have in their life. And then what do they say? Oh, I need to go back to the Amazon. I need to do ayahuasca again to get back to how I feel versus breath work, which is a real internal process. We could, I mean, if you wanted to, like I know there's all this equipment and stuff, we could lie down and do a journey with you and have you experience something just with the power of your breath.
SPEAKER_00That would be incredible.
SPEAKER_01I don't think it's a good idea to do right now. No, yeah.
SPEAKER_00But we need to plan that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Huh. I think that's really interesting. Um, we're bringing ketamine into our clinic. I love that. Um, and very similar, like helping with the neuroplasticity of the brain. But one thing from um Conscious Ketamine Institute, uh, Brawen that I'm learning is that it's not always about the medicine.
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_00Like that journey helps you reset your brain. Yes. But then she's very detailed. And what I love to teach our patients is how to get back there without using anything. So how amazing to put breath work in that your breathing to get back to that place where you can reset your brain. Yes. I love the idea because I'm super into exercise. And it is my brain reset. So I love the way that you put that. That it's like that accomplishment in your workout.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So what do you tell someone who's very like type A? And they go to do the breath work and they're like, nope, I'm just not feeling it. Like, let me tell you my first experience. I I did breath work uh for like the first time at a longevity conference. Right. Um, and they had it. So I'm like, okay, let's go. Okay. And I remember laying there and feeling a little bit awkward.
SPEAKER_01Like self-conscious. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like a little cold. I'm on the floor with all these people who are breathing, which I think this is important. I believe in breathing. I believe in meditation. Um, but so we close our eyes and like, picture you're on a mountain. I'm like, okay, I love the mountains. I can do this. Yeah. So I'm trying to breathe and picture a mountain. They're like, now picture the whole valley. That's your past. Instantly, I burned it down. Like in my mind, seriously, there's this big flame and everything just burned. And then the guide is like, his next words were, no, show it some grace. And I'm like, oops, too late. I already burned it. So how do you deal with someone like me that's like, well, this breathing is I want to ask, like, get a little more into the nuance to understand what was the technique?
SPEAKER_01What was it like?
SPEAKER_00Um, so it was guided. We were in a room. There was probably like 30 people there. And just different breathing techniques. I'm not educated in breath work.
SPEAKER_01So um was like more gentle techniques? It was very digital techniques. Okay.
SPEAKER_00Both, yeah. So different like rhythms and how you breathe in and out.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Uh tell me a little bit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So yeah, yeah, I'll tell you a little bit. So, like there's many different techniques, right? We're what was called long-form transformational. So it's conscious connected, me that meaning that you're either breathing in or you're breathing out. So it's a consistent meditative, almost hypnotic practice. So I love working with people like you that are type A because this practice, it's hard in the beginning. Like the first five to 10 minutes are the most difficult because it's a pretty intense breathing practice. And after those first five to 10 minutes, what happens is you go into what's called transient hypofrontality. I know it's a big word, guys, but all that means is your frontal neocortex will dampen, will actually not shut down, but downregulate. And so you'll go into deeper parts of the subconscious. And this makes sense.
SPEAKER_00Like the front part of your brain is controlling a lot of emotion. Yeah. And sometimes why we're scattered and so much feeling and very ADD. So, like without all the big words, we're kind of like letting that get shut down so that we can get deeper into the brain, correct?
SPEAKER_01Yes. Yeah. Because what I find with type type A or like really smart people that have medical degrees and like you doing, all that kind of stuff is you're trying to think ahead, just like you talked about with that visualization. You're like, well, I already wrote it down, done. Next. Yeah. Right. So we really try to, during our journeys, not give too much of that inserted like assertions where you can receive feedback because it's all about the internal sensations. So after you get through that first five to 10 minutes, we'll have you say specific affirmations. We have specific music sequencing to take you to what I like to call as a peak emotional state, we're actually stretching your nervous system. So people that like workouts like coming to our experiences because we will challenge you and you'll probably do between two to three hundred deep rotating breath practices during this experience.
SPEAKER_00It's a brain workout. Totally. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. So what you experienced, nothing like what you experienced with me.
SPEAKER_00It's it was still like by the end, I felt like I was calming down.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome.
SPEAKER_00But it definitely took me a while.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It was it was hard to let go.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Very hard.
SPEAKER_01Right. Well, you have a lot that you hold on to.
SPEAKER_00We I think we all do. Don't you think in like our culture, our society with all technology, that this is even more important?
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely. I mean, I'll never forget during COVID, I was working in a medical practice, um, running their IV lab, running a mentorship program, seeing patients sometimes six, seven days a week, and completely burning out. And at the same time reaching out to my mentors for advice and then seeing them honestly get sicker, develop autoimmune conditions. And some of them even passed away during that time in my life. And so I was like, wait, so no matter how hard I work, how much I push myself, this is my future. Uh-uh. So around July, right around COVID, July of 2020, I stepped away from private practice and stepped into this breath work and meditation space because I knew that wasn't the way for me at the time.
SPEAKER_00For someone who's like, yeah, that's that's what I need, but how do I get there? Or how long does it take? What do you think the first steps are and how quickly do you feel the difference?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, so with us, sometimes it's within the first session. People have come up to us and said, this is like doing a thousand meditations crammed into one class. Other people, it takes sometimes a little some time to build up trust, right? I mean, even for me, you talked about maybe having like an okay breath work experience, but it really takes some time to get to know not only the facilitator, but you know, for me, the breather and building up that trust for them for them to be able to go there. Because a lot of people are really closed off right now. They want the answers, but they're not willing to take themselves there. And so this practice, um, it's it's a really amazing healing practice, but sometimes it can be really confronting because there's not a lot of other stuff. Yeah. It's just you and your breath and me guiding you along the way.
SPEAKER_00How do you how important do you think this is to longevity?
SPEAKER_01To longevity? Well, I mean, I'm just thinking about like the stress epidemic that people are going through, the dopamine epidemic, um, people really struggling with social media and keeping up with the Joneses and and dopamine. So as far as longevity, I think it's it's honestly critical. The the biggest piece that we really get from people is yes, the breath work's amazing. Like we do breath work events around Arizona, sometimes have 50, 100 people, and it's really awesome. But why people keep coming back is for the community. And I don't know enough about the research, but I do know as far as longevity, having a strong community in your life, a reason to live, a reason to be uh contributed to and contributed for is critical for longevity. I mean, it's in a nutshell, it's like, well, well then why do I my bot your body's probably saying, well, why don't I keep going? It's like because I have a community that loves and cares for me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That calming effect, lowering the coder cortisol, inflammation. Yeah. I I see a lot of patients that come in and be like, oh, I just want the right peptide. I want my hormones fixed, show me in my labs. And I can do that, and they're still struggling. And I think that missing piece is calming the brain.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00Um, which is hard for some of us. Right. I mean, I've been there.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00Um, but I don't think that we can get optimal health, optimal longevity without the aspect of calming our brain.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it it's it's a little bit of a neurosis because it's like, well, what's because there's gonna be something that's after peptides, right? It's coming. Yeah. And then it's like insert that wear into your life. And if you're full of all of these health things, because I I, you know, I'm seeing I've started to see patients the last uh two years or so, just small practice, just pick taking on people that I want. And the biggest thing that I see is like, you're right, they just want to know like what's what's the square that I can fit in the square hole that's gonna like heal me. Yeah, and that's not always the solution. Sometimes it's like, when's the last time that you hung out with some friends and had a good belly laugh? I mean, truly. Yeah, like, or really experienced yourself in a new way by going on a trip, you know? Yeah. I mean, sometimes I tell my patients that are doing everything right, they got their macros dialed in and their micronutrients, and they have their hormone panel and everything's dialed in, but they're like, I'm still 70, 80% there. I always tell them, Well, when's the last time that you went on vacation?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And there's a lot of silence after that question.
SPEAKER_00Crickets.
SPEAKER_01Right, right.
SPEAKER_00Oh, wow. What give me an example of what you tell someone? Um, what is something quick you could do? You're going about your day. We all hit that. Like you're stuck at a light, someone cut you off, your anxiety. Is there breathing you teach people that you can just do quick to regulate your nervous system?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. So, this is something that got a lot more popular with Andrew Huberman, but there's the uh double inhale. Have you heard him ever do that before? So it's essentially you can be in a seat. You can, of course, be driving your car. There's the deck technique that I was describing to you is called reset breath work. Don't recommend doing that while you're driving your car. Please never do that. Yeah. We always have disclaimers on our officer. I was breathing. I was trying to relax before I hit the car in front of me. Um, but yeah, so it's a it's essentially it's a double inhale. So and it's all in and out through the nose. So you inhale once. And most people actually don't fill all the air within their lungs, so you can infill and inhale twice and then a passive exhale out the nose.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01So it's inhale. Inhale, passive exhale. Inhale.
SPEAKER_00Through the mouth or the nose?
SPEAKER_01In in through the nose, out through the nose. In, in, out. In, in, out. So it's just like that. It's just simple techniques like that. But it's also about knowing when to incorporate them throughout the day.
SPEAKER_00Just that quick. Do you say, okay, do that five times, ten times?
SPEAKER_01Well, what I usually recommend is people come in to my practice and they'll do these long form journeys with me. And then based upon how I see them breathing, a lot of people really struggle with their belly breath. They just struggle contracting their diaphragm. And so I'll give them exercises just based upon activating their diaphragm, activating their belly breath, because most people are breathing up in their chest. And if you're breathing up in your chest using just your chest muscles, it's going to cause a lot of actual anxiety because you're not actually fully filling your entire lung field. So it really just depends on what I see.
SPEAKER_00I think that would stimulate your vagus nerve too. So that's gonna get you from this fight and flight, right? Like uh mentality into your parasympathetic, which is your rest. So I think that deep breathing is important. I mean, I feel better just even a couple of breaths.
SPEAKER_02Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Like I feel like I'm talking even a little slower.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, and that's the big thing with breath work is the most important thing is breath awareness. So forget about the techniques, forget about what we just talked about. Just start becoming more aware of your breath. And when you do that, it's it's a it's a medical term, but it's called interoception. It's your sixth or seventh sense. And so the more that you can actually become aware of your breathing, how it's impacting your emotions, you actually studies show you'll actually have a much greater impact on your stress resilience, your ability to adapt to stress, and actually lower your inflammation. So just become aware of your breath, the quality, the depth of it, and it'll naturally deepen. And then from there, you can use techniques that we talk about all the time.
SPEAKER_00Now, what are give me like three things that you struggle with.
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_00That for inhibiting your breathing. What do you find? Like you're having a day and you're like, oh wow, I'm not focused. I'm not feeling my body and I'm not breathing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I think the biggest thing for me, just being a healthcare provider, is you know, today I'm I'm gonna get married in a week. I don't know when this episode comes out. So I'll probably be married by then. That's so but I'm cramming everything in this podcast. I think I have like four or five patients back to back, and then I got to teach a workshop after that. So it's like a full day of activities. So I think the biggest thing that I really struggle with is like this underlying need or desire for wanting things to be just right for the patient or just perfect. And so I really struggle a lot with that. Um, I find for me, how I try to incorporate breathwork techniques to help around that is I love doing the double inhale with the exhale. I also really love, which I don't think I have time for right now, but I love doing breathwork exercises with movements. So there's a technique called Bastrika. It's called bellow's breath. It's um uh think of like a bellow around a fire, you know? Like so you have the stick, the poker, you got the shovel, and then you got that accordion-looking thing. Yeah. It's called the bellow, right? And the bellow's job is to increase the fire by adding air, yeah, stoking the fire. And so sometimes I notice with that apprehension I have or perfection, it's actually just a lot of excess nervous energy. So before, and I'll probably do it today, I'll do a little bastrika to like get that extra like anxiousness out of me so that I feel a lot more centered and calm. Rather than me coming from this place of like wanting, needing, desiring to like help that person and like overextend myself, I'm gonna come from a much more centered place.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. And I think a lot of us can relate. In a world where there's always something going on.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I think for the most part, we want to help others. And we have this huge pressure to be everything to everyone, especially because everyone's watching on social media.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00Um, so how centering and healing to be able to take even a few seconds to yourself and realize this isn't selfish, this is healing, and I can help others better when I'm more centered and calm.
SPEAKER_01Right. And the biggest thing I've dealt with, and it's family-wide for me, is depression, like clinical depression. Uh, have family with bipolar, um, borderline personality disorder. And so for me, too, like just thinking about the whole umbrella of emotions, you have like anxiety on one end, which is like apprehension about the future, future, like forward thinking. And then depression is like usually towards the past. And so for me, it was like a lot of depression that would come up. I had a lot of dopamine issues because of my autoimmunity. But these long-form breath work journeys, uh, reset breathwork is what we do. It really helped me um rebalance my neurotransmitters because when you take somebody through a hard breath work session, stretch their nervous system, you're gonna have a lot of endorphins dump, a lot of neurotransmitters. And it does really help reset the neurochemistry within the brain and was so helpful for my really chronic underlying depression.
SPEAKER_00I think we all need to hear that a lot.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00What is the number one piece of advice you give to someone who's just getting into breath work and and and needs this? We all need it, but what would you tell a brand new patient?
SPEAKER_01A brand brand new patient? Well, I would tell them, hey, your breath is literally a mirror for your life. How you breathe is how you live. And what the science really shows is literally there's breathwork techniques that you can do, like we just did. And there's studies that show there's direct relations to those emotions. But how most people are living, they're living based upon their emotions impacting their breath pattern.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I'm sure you're a doctor. You you walk around a mall and you're like, hmm, that person has metabolic dysfunction that looks like they have some, you know, uh congestive heart failure here. I do the same thing with the breath in noticing how people breathe because that will impact their emotions and vice versa.
SPEAKER_00They're not breathing. They're oh she's she needs some deep breaths. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So what I tell people is no matter how you feel, there's a breathwork technique that can change the state in which you feel, and you'll gain master. If you can gain mastery and control over that, you'll gain back your life.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. So, how does someone find you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So um, I'm actually one half of what's called the healing couple. Me and my partner Jessica have a breathwork business. We've been full-time for seven years, teaching meditation, mindfulness, and breathwork techniques. We're known as the Healing Couple.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01And so anything the Healing Couple, the Healing Couple.com, the Healing Couple underscore on Instagram. And uh, we also have a community called the Reset Collective, which has a bunch of pre-recorded trainings as well as monthly online live trainings that me and Jessica do where we do these long form journeys. So if you're open to it, we'd love to offer your community the first month free. They just have to use a code um breathe100 at checkout.
SPEAKER_00Breathe 100.
SPEAKER_01Breathe 100.
SPEAKER_00And I think we should have you over at our retreat and do something together.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00This is amazing and really, really needed. Yeah. So thank you for talking to us. Thank you for sharing with me. And just remember to breathe. I mean, let's start with two breaths in and breathe it out. Like, don't forget to breathe. Thank you. Yeah, of course.