Bend Into Balance: Andy Sabatier, Doctor of physical therapy, speaker, and educator

In this episode host Adriana Marino sits down with Andy Sabatier, Doctor of Physical Therapy, speaker, and educator. Andy is the founder of Academy West Breathing Performance in Bend, Oregon, and brings a unique perspective shaped by his experience working in intensive care, athletics, and movement science. He shares how a pivotal realization about dysfunctional breathing transformed both his clinical work and his personal mission to help others understand the mechanics and impact of breathing.

The conversation explores how breathing influences physical health, emotional regulation, and overall well being. Andy explains how functional breathing can improve performance, reduce stress, and support healing across a wide range of conditions. Through powerful patient stories and practical insights, this episode highlights why breathing is a foundational tool for anyone seeking balance, resilience, and healthier living in Central Oregon.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:16

Hello, my name is Adriana Marino, and I'm host and producer of Bend into Balance, Powered by the Source. Today I'm really thrilled to be accompanied by Dr. Andy Sabatier, Doctor of Physical Therapy and founder and director of Academy West Performance Academy. I had the pleasure of seeing Andy give the final talk in the recent Ben Talk, TED Talks that we had in town, where he gave an incredible finish to this full day of inspiring talks about breathing. Andy, thank you so much for being here. Can you please introduce yourself?

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Sure. Thank you so much. My name is Dr. Andy Spatier. I'm a doctor of physical therapy. And as Adriana said, I am the founder of Academy West Breathing Performance here in Bend, Oregon.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Tell us how you got into this space. I understand that you are you used to work in the ER.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

So I was actually the primary physical therapist for the intensive care unit at St. Charles Hospital. So the intensive care unit and the ER, they're they're sort of opposite sides of the coin. The ER is where people with emergencies come in when they walk in or they're brought in. The intensive care unit is where people end up. The sickest people, the most broken people, the people with the biggest issues that are, of course, intense, that's where they are. So I used to be the physical therapist there. Um prior to that, you know, I was a college athlete. I was lucky enough to play lacrosse in college. I was a professional athlete. I was a skier for several years. Uh, and even though all that gave me a lot of background, I went off to PT school kind of thinking I'd do one thing and came out doing another. The intensive care unit is not where I thought I would go, but it's what I fell in love with. Because I think I like meeting people on the worst day of their life. Okay. Yeah. I think it's a unique skill set. But despite all that background, I was breathing dysfunctionally the whole time. I had no idea. This this was just sort of an accident. You know, I was helping my patients take some deep breaths using a little device called their incentive spirometer. For anybody that's ever been in the hospital, it's the little plastic doohickey that you breathe into. You pull air through it, and it shows you how much air you're breathing. That's why they call it incentive, because you can see visually, oh, I took 1500 milliliters or 2,000 milliliters. And the goal is always to get people to breathe deeply in the hospital because most of the stuff that happens with our lungs that's a problem, like pneumonia, happens because gunk mucus fluid accumulates in the bottoms of the lungs. Okay. So as I'm helping people do this, one of my colleagues nudged me and she said, You know, I don't really know anything about breathing, but I know if you want to learn, you want to learn from Dr. Mary Massery.

SPEAKER_03 3:02

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

So Dr. Mary Massery has won every award you can win in physical therapy. She has been combining the clinical aspect and the research aspect of breathing mechanics for four decades. Wow. She's sort of the godmother of breathing mechanics within physical therapy. So I signed up for a course. The course was called If You Can't Breathe, You Can't Function. Now you have to remember, at the time, I am seemingly at the top of my game. I'm really well respected. I am definitely the best PT this ICU has ever had. We've we've completely revolutionized the way they do things. We're getting our patients on ventilators, we're getting them up and walking, like we're really doing cutting edge stuff. Wow. We lowered the entire length of stay by a whole day in the world. Yeah. I mean, you know, there's all these studies that point to how much better people's lives are when they spend less time in the ICU. I can imagine. So I really think I know what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_04 3:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

And so I sign up for this course and I fly out of Chicago and I arrive, and there's about 100 people in the room. I'm one of the only males, it's almost all females, and I'm certainly the only acute care therapist. Everybody else is a pediatric therapist. Okay. So there's physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech therapists. And I'm right in the front row. And in 10 minutes, I was made aware that I had no idea about any of this.

SPEAKER_03 4:28

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Because I could see, oh my gosh, I've been breathing dysfunctionally my whole life. And what's worse, I've been coaching the ICU patients to breathe dysfunctionally also in front of everyone on the worst day of their life. So, right in front of the PTs, right in front of the respiratory therapists, nurses, doctors, and nobody ever stopped me.

SPEAKER_02 4:50

Wow, that must have hit hard.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Oh, yeah. Because the way dysfunctional breathing is, it harms and hinders every system in the human body.

SPEAKER_04 4:59

How is that?

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Think of your breathing as less about lungs and more about muscles. The muscles that move your lungs, that's your breathing system. It's every muscle from your nose all the way to your groin. It's all the structures in the face and the throat, and it's the entire nervous system. When somebody is breathing functionally, meaning they're breathing efficiently in a certain sequence of these muscles. Diaphragm first, chest follows, shoulders stay still. This is achieved by breathing in the nose. Okay. With exhale, they let go and they slow down. What it does is it uses less energy, it achieves big inhales, it inflates the bottoms of the lungs. And it also mechanically pumps everything else. It pumps our blood, it pumps our guts, the muscles of breathing attached to the spine, so they support the spine. And slowing our breathing down regulates our nervous system. So when somebody's breathing functionally, they're helping every aspect of their life.

SPEAKER_04 5:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Conversely, if somebody's breathing dysfunctionally, meaning they're using the faster muscles like the chest and the neck and the shoulders, they're breathing in their mouth, they're neglecting their diaphragm, or they're using their belly instead of their diaphragm, which is a different thing. When that's happening, it's using more energy, it's causing smaller inhales to happen, it's messing up all the mechanical pumping of the body, and it's eliminating some of that structural support that we get from these muscles. Plus, it's training the nervous system to be more in a state of fight or flight. Sure. So biologically speaking, every human being feels how they breathe and they breathe how they feel.

SPEAKER_02 6:40

Can you say that again?

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Yeah. Biologically speaking, every human being feels how they breathe. And they breathe how they feel. So if I'm breathing dysfunctionally, it's making me feel more anxious. It's making me feel more stressed, more anger, more shame, more guilt, more fear. Sure. And if I'm breathing functionally, it's actually reversing those things. It allows me to control my emotional state.

SPEAKER_02 7:06

So But the iron irony of that, I mean, such a powerful statement, is that most of us are not even conscious of how we're breathing.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Correct. One of the funny things. So I I gave you mentioned this TED talk. Yeah. TED Talk that I gave was the five lies were told about breathing. Yes. One of the lies is that we just breathe. We say it all the time. Just breathe. Yeah. But we're never just breathing. We are always breathing and.

SPEAKER_02 7:31

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Like I'm breathing and sitting, breathing and talking, breathing and thinking, breathing and sleeping. Eating. Yeah. Correct. But because we are able to breathe without instruction, it often gets neglected until something is really hard.

SPEAKER_04 7:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

You know, so when we're afraid or when we're challenged, that's when all of a sudden breathing becomes this thing that really focus on. But the way somebody breathes consciously, on purpose, trains how they breathe subconsciously. Okay. Because the muscles that we're talking about are so different, the diaphragm is the slowest muscle in the system. And the chest and shoulders and neck, they're all much faster. So if somebody is trying really hard to breathe, use their breathing in one way or another, chances are that they're going to use those faster muscles more because they are faster, easier to recruit. Sure. On the other hand, if they know where their diaphragm is, how to feel it when it moves, and how to start training that, it becomes like a system that trains itself. So I'm in the ICU and I have this realization. And it's really hard to tell anybody. Because what am I going to go up to the respiratory therapist and tell them, oh, you're breathing dysfunctionally, or tell the cardiothoracic surgeon, oh, you're breathing wrong. Yeah. No, you can't do that because breathing is exceedingly hard to talk about. It's very personal. It's under all our clothes. We've been doing it our whole lives. I mean, it takes a lot of balls to call somebody a breathing expert. Because you're a breathing expert, you can do it your whole life, just like you said. So to even say something like, oh, you're breathing wrong, I never say that in my life. Because you're not. You're breathing right. I've seen enough people in the ICU not breathing to see that any kind of breathing is breathing right. And you may be breathing dysfunctionally. You may be breathing in a way that's harming and hindering all these systems. So I have this realization, and I don't really know how to talk about it to anybody. But I start kind of monkeying around with breathing as best I can. You know, along with my occupational therapist partner, okay, Miss Bridget, she and I would go around through the entire ICU and see all the patients, and oftentimes we're helping them do their PT and their OT together. And then at the end of that, she'd say, okay, now you can do your breathing thing.

SPEAKER_03 9:49

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

And that's sort of the problem because that's prioritizing the most important function in life. Last. So I had this realization. Okay, I'm a physical therapist, I'm a functional movement expert. What's the most functional movement? It's breathing 20,000 times a day. So maybe that's where I need to start. And the day that I had this realization, I feel like the universe listened to me.

SPEAKER_03 10:17

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

You know, it sent a patient. She's 36 years old. She's admitted to the hospital. She's on five liters of oxygen.

SPEAKER_04 10:24

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

And she's working really hard to breathe. You know, five liters is the most amount of oxygen you can really be on outside of the hospital. Okay. And she needs a drain in her left lung. She has terminal breast cancer, and she's gonna go home on hospice tomorrow, which is so not a PT diagnosis. Yeah. You know, PT is about like make me strong.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

And hospice is about like make me comfortable.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

Oh wow, that must have been strong.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

She is so uncomfortable. And I walk in this room and I see her chest and her shoulders and her neck and her mouth all firing. She's just gasping to breathe. And I began with breathing first for the first time ever. I got her to feel her diaphragm with her hand moving first.

SPEAKER_04 11:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

We had to do this laying down because when you lay down, it's a little bit easier because there's less gravity involved in breathing.

SPEAKER_03 11:21

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

And then when she sat up, it all fell apart. But rather than moving on, I stay with it patiently, got her diaphragm to move first. Diaphragm's a little bit like a shy little kid. You know, you can't just overpower a shy kid. You have to like be patient and encouraging and supportive. Exactly. So we got her diaphragm to move first. And then when she stood up, everything got worse because now there's more gravity and she's having a balance. You know, your diaphragm actually plays a pretty big role in your posture and your balance.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

The diaphragm does?

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 11:55

Really? Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Yeah, because it's the center of your gravity.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Yeah. It's this muscle that attaches to the lowest ribs, it attaches to the spine and to the sternum. And it's like a dome. Yes. That when you inhale, it pulls downward.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

Right. And exhale, it goes up.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Yeah, exactly. And exhale kind of moves back up. So most of the lungs are in the bottom and it inflates the bottoms of the lungs. It also sends a signal to the brain that says you're safe because if you're breathing deeply and slowly, it's like, oh, I'm not in trouble. Right. If I'm breathing fast, it's like there must be a tiger chasing me. So we get her to move this slow-moving muscle first standing. But it's really hard to tell, you know, because she's got this hospital gown on, and hospital gowns are notoriously kind of shapeless.

SPEAKER_05 12:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

And so I think she's getting it. I mean, I can tell like her shoulders and her chest are starting to relax, but she's still breathing and you know, her her her effort, her intensity is going down. But because I can't tell, I took a chance and I asked this woman on the worst day of her life to walk with me, a total stranger, into the bathroom and remove her gown in front of the mirror so she could see her body and see her diaphragm moving first. I've never done this before. And I'm I'm totally frightened because I I think she's just gonna, you know, get upset with me. I mean, it's a pretty big ask. Sure. The mirror is consistently the most scary thing for people. Like I can't tell you how often in my pay in my practice people say, I hate looking in the mirror. Imagine what it would be like on that day, right? She's got to look past her scars, she's gotta look past these drains, she's gotta look past all the muscle wasting, this unrecognizable version of herself.

SPEAKER_04 13:32

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

And see her diaphragm moving first. Because when she can see it and feel it at the same time, it drains her brain. Sure. Because we're visual. Most of our brain has something to do with our eyes. And then I just helped her back to bed. Because I'm not gonna make her go walk around the halls, right? This is a hospice situation. Just make me comfortable.

SPEAKER_04 13:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

When I came back the next day before she discharged, she said, Andy, what we did yesterday has made me feel better than anything has in the last five years. Wow. I want to do this for the rest of my life. So I started Academy West breathing performance that afternoon so I could legally see her in her home.

SPEAKER_03 14:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

Because this is 2019, and all I'm trying to do is just help her build this rocket ship while she's flying. Sure. So that's what I do. I go to her home like every week or two. Uh-huh. And we just start with breathing first. We get that diaphragm firing first, and then add more things. So breathing and get out of bed, breathing and walk around.

SPEAKER_04 14:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Anytime that her breathing became dysfunctional or she lost her diaphragm moving first, we would back off, focus on her diaphragm, get it moving first, and then begin building the activities. And I just watched this very brave woman transform. Over the next few weeks and months, the oxygen that she's requiring, that five liters, is getting turned down.

SPEAKER_02 15:04

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Her heart rate's getting better, her blood pressure's getting better. What she's doing is she's building this relationship with carbon dioxide, you know, which is what we exhale. Yes. She's keeping more of it in her body and she's tolerating it better, which opens all her blood vessels. It kind of helps get oxygen where it needs to go, which is into her muscles. She's also using less energy and taking bigger inhales. On average, you know, our patients tend to increase their max total inhale by about 40%, while decreasing the amount of energy used by about 50%. I don't what would you do if you could take twice as big an inhale with half the energy? I know I'd be able to do a lot.

SPEAKER_03 15:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

What she's able to do is she's able to move more. So she can do things like she's beginning to get out of bed on her own. She can go up and down the stairs, and she can even go outside and like balance herself as she moves because these same muscles that we're training, diaphragm, transverse abdominis, they're the muscles that support her spine. Sure. And her balance.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

And all of this she wasn't doing prior.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

No. She was, I mean, it's hard to explain. It's hard to explain the intensity of the hospital, but think of it this way. Hospice means it's too much work for me to breathe, and I'd rather not be alive. That's where she was when I walked in that room. And I'm just watching this unwind. We got to the point that she could go outside, sit on her front porch, and watch her kid ride his bike without oxygen.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

You know, and think of that like feel how we breathe. This is an emotional experience. Dysfunctional breathing, shame, guilt, fear. Shame I'm not who I used to be, or who I could be.

SPEAKER_03 16:54

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

Guilt that I should know how to fix this and I don't. Just breathing. And fear that it's getting worse, not getting better. That's where I met her.

SPEAKER_03 17:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

And now she's experiencing purpose and joy. And hope. And love.

SPEAKER_03 17:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

You can't feel those things when there's a tiger chasing your brain all the time.

SPEAKER_03 17:20

Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

So these tools that help her improve her quality of life. Seven months later, they improve the quality of the end of her life.

SPEAKER_04 17:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:31

Because she didn't die afraid.

SPEAKER_03 17:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

She died calm. And I saw her a couple days before. And you have to understand, as a PT, this is not what we do. We don't see people on hospice. Sure. They're opposite goals.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

Yeah, because when I think of physical therapy, I think of function and movement and mobility, not someone in their final days of their life.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

So I went to see her at the hospice where she is.

SPEAKER_02 17:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:58

And I really was nervous because I didn't I didn't know what I was doing there. I know that she wants this appointment, and here I am. And I walk into her room and she's just sitting there calmly.

SPEAKER_05 18:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

She's got some oxygen on for sure. But if you looked at her, her shoulders, her neck, not moving at all. Her diaphragm, which is at the base of the murder cage, is moving first. Her chest is moving after the ad right. Diaphragm first, chest follows. And she's just serene.

unknown 18:30

Just calm.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

And what I didn't realize at the time, but what I've been able to gain perspective on is it's like she's talking to me in a nonverbal language. That's what breathing is. Breathing is this nonverbal language that can speak to my own nervous system or to the nervous system of somebody else.

SPEAKER_04 18:50

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

And so she's sitting there days from her death co-regulating me.

SPEAKER_04 18:57

That's powerful.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Oh my gosh. I'm still processing what that is, but that's that's what we do in our practice. With I mean, we've seen about 12,000 patients. Well, 12,000 patient encounters since. Really? Yeah. Wow. That's no individual patient encounters where we're gonna start with breeding first and we're gonna focus on this one thing. Yeah. The total number of patients is about 6,000.

SPEAKER_04 19:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

And every single one of these people has been able to gain an understanding of what their breeding system is and how to use it differently. And those applications are really wide, right? Because yeah, this person, this is one patient going home hospice.

SPEAKER_04 19:36

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

But it's just as applicable to the professional athlete who's trying to get an edge.

SPEAKER_04 19:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

The person who's trying to get sleep, the person who's dealing with chronic gut issues or panic attacks. Like you name it, it has something to do with how you breathe 20,000 times a day.

SPEAKER_02 19:52

Why is that? That's very interesting to me. Like how it can encompass so many different conditions.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

Because your breathing system runs your nervous system. Like, name one thing in your life that isn't affected by stress. Pretty hard, right? Everything in our life has something to do with this experience of being human.

SPEAKER_04 20:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

And to be a human is to suffer. That's what we're here to do. I hate to say that, but we're gonna suffer. We're born into this world, we're gonna die, we're gonna experience pain, we're gonna experience loss, we're gonna experience all kinds of complex emotions. And our breathing dictates how we suffer. So whether that's the suffering like we're talking about with this patient who's going on my hospice, or just the suffering that you have when you go for a run. When you change how you breathe, it changes what emotions you experience, what your guts do, what your posture's doing, what your balance is doing. And we really are able to transform things into a different experience. So you know, I'll use an example of kind of the other end, okay? This is pretty early on. Um I met a wonderful physical therapist who was orienting the ICU, and I'm teaching him kind of the ropes. And he's a pretty high-level runner. He's been a runner in college, he's you know, run a bunch of marathons. And he says to me, He's like, you know, I really want to run an ultra marathon, I want to run 100 miles.

SPEAKER_03 21:27

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

But he's limited by fatigue, pain, uh, digestive issues, and negative thoughts. So we look at his breathing, and the way the way we evaluate people's breathing is we video it, and then we teach them about it, and then we show them their breathing. And so his was pretty darn dysfunctional. It was chest, it was mouth, it was neck, it was shoulders. The diaphragm is completely backwards. So we flip his breathing, we give him functional breathing. Like, okay, go running with your breathing first, breathing and running. Rather than running and breathing.

SPEAKER_04 22:01

Got it.

SPEAKER_00 22:02

Don't outrun your functional breathing. So he runs breathing in the nose, diaphragm first, chest follows, shoulders stay still. Let go, slow down. And in about three weeks, he's running the same distances and speeds, breathing slowly and deeply, mouth shut. About a year later, he runs an ultramarathon. He runs 100 miles with his mouth shut.

SPEAKER_01 22:25

Really? That's wow.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

He's feeling great.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

So he enters the Oregon 200.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

200 miles?

SPEAKER_00 22:32

200 miles.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:33

So he runs the Oregon 200 and breathes slowly, deeply, functionally the whole time. And you know, he tells this story. He's like, Andy, when I got near the finish line, I realized I didn't feel like I was suffering.

SPEAKER_04 22:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

I felt like I was dancing.

SPEAKER_04 22:49

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

You breathe how you feel. You feel how you breathe. And he basically just went out and meditated for like 56 hours.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

It's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

It's even more amazing when you hear that he beat the entire field by two hours.

SPEAKER_02 23:02

What? He came in first place?

SPEAKER_00 23:06

And the next year he went back and did it again.

SPEAKER_02 23:08

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

And beat his own time by three hours. His name is Dr. Ben Doolum, and he is one of the other physical therapists at Academy West Breathing Performance.

SPEAKER_02 23:18

Oh, okay. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Ben is a great example of what happens if somebody just takes this one thing, their breathing, and prioritizes it and does not relinquish it. For a period of time, yeah, they maybe have to run a little slower.

SPEAKER_03 23:33

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

But if they can do that, it starts to build this superpower. Their tolerance for carbon dioxide goes up, the strength of their diaphragm goes up. They get used to breathing functionally instead of going out there and having a panic attack, which that's technical people are doing. When you look out next next time you're, you know, if you're driving right now and you listen to this, the next time you go out and see somebody, watch someone running, watch someone crossfit, watch somebody doing anything. They're going, Yeah, the huffing and puffing that if they were sitting still, they'd be having a panic attack. But just because they're moving, we think it's normal. We have to practice how we want to feel. Do I want to feel like I'm having a panic attack? Heck no. Of course not. The second that somebody starts breathing dysfunctionally, chest, neck, shoulders, mouth, breathing faster, huffing and puffing like that. Yeah, it's like a ticking time bomb. Their performance is eventually going to crash. But if somebody can breathe functionally, deeply slowly, in the nose, diaphragm first, chest follows, shoulders stay still, let go, slow down.

SPEAKER_05 24:34

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

They are like a self-perpetuating engine that just feels better and better and better. And that stress of exercise, if somebody can do that while they walk or while they work out or while they run, it actually prepares them for the other aspects of their life, like stress in their relationship, stress of loss, stress of sleep. Everything is tied into breathing.

SPEAKER_04 24:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

So it's not uncommon for a patient to come into our office where, you know, they'll talk about like this chronic cough they've had, or this back pain, or, you know, I feel like I can't take a deep breath. It's like one of the most common things people say. And I'll start peeling the layers back. You know, we ask a lot of questions. We ask about, we ask about their breathing, but we ask about more of their life. Sure. Kind of understand, okay, well, when did this begin? Oh, this happened when my husband died. Hmm. So you've been dealing with this chronic breathing issue for four years and it started right when your husband died. Yeah. I guess nobody really put that together. And so as soon as we start talking about that, what happens? They get very emotional because it's just the grief that they literally haven't been able to move through. Right. And as soon as they start thinking about their husband, their breathing gets tight and they start getting more symptomatic. And of course, when somebody's breathing gets tight, they start getting more air hungry, which makes them more panicky and they start to feel like a tiger chase them.

SPEAKER_02 25:55

They're breathing how they feel.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

Exactly. But when we can change that and say, okay, let's think about that. Let's get your breathing to be functional, which takes some training. But what happens is a month later, two months later, further down the line in their care, we see people about every one to two weeks and then spread it out. So let's say we've seen them for like four or point minutes and it's two months later. You're like, okay, now we're now we're gonna talk about your husband. And I want you to breathe functionally.

SPEAKER_03 26:22

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 26:23

And they do that. And sure, they'll cry.

SPEAKER_03 26:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:27

But they're moving through that emotion. You know, they're not just holding it tight, they're not bottling it up. Like stress is undefeated. Ask anybody who's dealt with anything chronic. They just bottle all that up. What does that mean? It means gut problems, it means heart problems, it means sleep problems, chronic pain. I mean, this is why people do terrible things to themselves because they don't want to be a burden on anybody else. They don't want to confront that scary thing. It's too scary to think about the loss.

SPEAKER_04 26:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

But if we can look at it and breathe in a way that tells your nervous system, I'm safe.

SPEAKER_04 27:01

It's going to be okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

Exactly. Because it is going to be okay.

SPEAKER_04 27:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

You know, that that is that is the power of understanding breathing versus breath. So I'm I'm a stickler for language. Yes. And I really harp on that one thing, breathing versus breath. Because breathing is a movement, right? I've been talking about all these different muscles and how they move and the sequence in which they move. That's breathing, the movement that keeps me alive. Breath is the smell of my mouth. You know? Breath is the air that moves in and out. We take 20,000 breaths every day, but we are always breathing. So if I can think about it as a movement, it gets me a lot closer to breathing and. Got it. You know? And and I can't so in that realm, like I can't be out of breath. Just the ways we talk about. Oh, I'm out of breath. Are you though? Because you're only out of breath once.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

When we die.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

Yeah. My daughter said that to me the day before the TED Talk.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_00 27:59

She's brilliant. So Gigi says, you know, she's heard me rehearsing this and we're kind of talking these things. Yeah. My daughter Gigi says, you're only out of breath once when you die. I thought, wow, that's brilliant. That's going in the TED Talk. And I think that was the biggest laugh I got through the whole thing. It's like, oh yeah, of course. Never out of breath the ones. Yeah. But that that is true. You know, we we cannot possibly confuse mouth smell with the most important movement of my life. It's the difference between a noun and verb. And you know, as soon as I start saying breath, I'm just confusing people. Sure. Because even just spelling it, like try to spell breath and breathe. Right now, if you're listening to this, do you know which one's which? Yeah, one has an E, one doesn't. Right. It's really easy to confuse those.

SPEAKER_02 28:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

And then you see stickers that say just breath. It's very funny. But if you just stick with the word breathing, you won't misspell it. You won't mistake it. And, you know, sometimes people say, Oh yeah, you know, I'm using the breathing. And then I nudge them again. I say, Who's breathing? My breathing.

SPEAKER_04 29:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

Your breathing. Because frankly, if you're listening to this right now, it's your breathing. Nobody can do it for you. So I want you to understand it. I want you to fall in love with it. I want you to be so enamored with this cool thing, this movement that you're performing that you begin to hone it like a tool. Because how you breathe on purpose, even just a few inhales and exhales every day, trains how you breathe when you're not thinking about it. So it's not like I'm asking you to do anything extra in your life. Just take some of those 20,000 inhales and exhales and play the game differently. Play in a way that gives you an advantage.

SPEAKER_02 29:48

So any of us who are listening to this podcast could incorporate this in our daily life. Like maybe when we're sitting at a traffic light.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

So right now, imagine with your hand that you're holding this invisible tennis ball. Okay. Put that tennis ball just below your sternum. Right? That's the middle bone in your chest. So if you ever got like a soccer ball kicked in your stomach when you're a kid and you got the wind knocked out of you, I'm holding up air quotes wind.

SPEAKER_03 30:19

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

This is your breathing. That's your diaphragm. When you put that tennis ball there, now what I want you to do is you're going to take some little tiny dog sniffs. Kind of like uh if you've ever let a dog sniff your face, they they sniff differently than humans. They kind of go snip, snip, snip, like in, in, in, in, in, in. And we just do the tiniest little ones possible. And then let go. It's like each one is individual, but they are also additive. Now, I can almost guarantee you, wherever you are, the harder you try, the more your chest moves. So try less. Think shy little muscles. Snip, snip, snip, snip, snip. And let go. And now you can go away from the dog sniff and do a smooth human inhale. As I'm sitting across from Adriana right now, I'm aiming my diaphragm at her forehead. It moves slightly upward. It's really different than belly. Belly's everything down low. Diaphragm is a little bit higher. The more you feel that and see it and use it, the stronger it gets. So all we're doing is just getting that muscle to move first in everything. And what's cool is you can do it anywhere, like you said. Yeah. Sitting in your car, sure. But even tonight, when you wake up in the middle of the night and you're having a hard time going back to sleep, put your hand red in your diaphragm and focus on it. Now you're being productive. Sure. Which frankly, a lot of people come to our clinic for insomnia and sleep problems.

SPEAKER_02 31:48

Really? Is that the number one cause?

SPEAKER_00 31:50

Not gosh, I don't know what the number one cause is to sleep out to uh to sleep problems, but anything that we're doing that involves our nervous system, uh-huh, the main tool that we can actually can like access and change is our breathing.

SPEAKER_03 32:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

So if I wake up in the middle of the night and I have a tendency to just like sit there and think about all the future past that keeps me awake, like, oh, all the stuff I did yesterday, what am I gonna do tomorrow? And when am I gonna get to sleep? And how long has it been? Instead, if I'm just thinking about my breathing and feeling it, using it, I have now gotten out of that future past thing. Now I'm sitting there feeling my breathing, which is happening right now. Yeah. And I can hear it, which is happening right now.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

I would even say that's almost being meditative, you know, like being mindful of the present moment.

SPEAKER_00 32:40

Now, again, we get into language. I uh meditation is a word that people use a lot. Yes. And for some people, that's totally not a complicated term. That's fine. But where I come from in the ICU, that's not an option. If I walk into your room and you just had a heart attack and I'm like, okay, let's talk about meditation, you're gonna tell me to get out. Yeah, of course. Right and same kind of thing, like even the word mindful, mindful's a tricky word too.

SPEAKER_04 33:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

Because, like, you know what my my mind is? Full. I'm thinking a hundred thousand thoughts a day.

SPEAKER_03 33:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:09

And when I hear mindful, it just kind of sounds like mind your manners. So if we can just scrub the language and say, like, okay, let's just talk about breathing.

SPEAKER_02 33:16

You really want to keep it simple.

SPEAKER_00 33:18

Yeah, totally. That's about it. Picture that same ICU room, right? Person had a heart attack, person had surgery, or person tried to kill themselves and didn't work. That's these are my patients. If I walk in there and say, I want to talk about your breathing, I'm at least gonna get them to say, okay, what about my breathing? I'm so curious because they know they're doing it.

SPEAKER_04 33:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:36

But if I muddy the language at all, I'm probably gonna lose them. And that's really when I began this sort of at this point, it's like a quest, you know, to like crack the language open into a way that's understandable for everybody.

SPEAKER_04 33:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

I started looking everywhere I could. Who's talking about breathing? How are they talking about it? And everywhere I look, there's confusion. Whether it's confusing diaphragm and belly, it's classic. PTs love to do that, or it's yoga where people are using all kinds of pet language and Sanskrit and things like that, which just make it less approachable. All of us have some confusion.

SPEAKER_03 34:17

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

But if we pare it down in the nose, diaphragm first, chest follows, shoulders stay still, let go, slow down. Those 14 words are like the user's manual to the most important action you are performing right now and every day that you're alive. So getting that as the basis and eliminating all the other stuff. This is applicable not just for clinicians or for movement professionals, but anybody. For sure. You know, you're a teacher, you're a psychologist, you're doing some kind of physical labor. Like your breathing's the tool you're using all the time. I got to uh evaluate a patient this morning who's 15 and has a tracheostomy, which is a little hole in her trachea.

SPEAKER_04 35:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 35:10

Okay. This is like, I wish this on nobody. Of course. We're trying to help her get rid of it.

SPEAKER_04 35:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

But what we did was spent the first hour educating both parents and the caregivers on their breathing.

SPEAKER_03 35:24

Oh, wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 35:26

Because they have to support this person.

SPEAKER_04 35:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:28

Their nervous systems need to be regulated. Yeah, exactly. Regulated. It's a what do they say on every airplane you've ever been on? In case of loss of cabin pressure, please put your oxygen mask on first before you help others. Yes. Getting people to understand their breathing is getting them to do that. You know, the questions that I ask in our evaluation. I ask a lot of questions. We ask people about their sleep and their bowels and their bladder and their pain and their activity and stress and joy and like all these things. But at the end, I ask two really important questions. I say, Do you trust yourself? Do you love yourself? And then they look at me like, what kind of PT is this? But by the end, where I've gotten them to understand what their breathing is and how their diaphragm moves, and then I ask them, okay, put your hand on your body and evaluate your own breathing. They do it. I say, okay, can you feel your diaphragm moving first? And they look at me like, yeah. I say, okay, now do you understand why I ask, if you trust yourself? And I say, Yep. Because this is theirs. I need everyone to understand that if it's your breathing, nobody's gonna do it for you. And the more it becomes your own, the better your life gets. Pure and simple. And you know, I've just given this TED talk and it hasn't been released yet. Okay. I don't know where it's gonna go, but I hope that it provides me more opportunities to have this conversation.

SPEAKER_04 37:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:00

And to get people just thinking differently. Sure. Get people thinking from breath to breathing. Get people thinking from belly to diaphragm. Go from, oh, I lost it to oh no, I'm breathing and it's mine, and I own it. I love it. Because I I love it. I love this. I love that this is my job.

SPEAKER_01 37:19

Yeah, I can tell.

SPEAKER_00 37:25

More than anything, I'm just really grateful.

SPEAKER_04 37:31

Why?

SPEAKER_00 37:35

Well, I'm grateful I'm breathing. It's not breathing. For sure. Um I'm grateful that each person that shows up to clinic or group classes or even purchases an online course that they trust it to be enough to go there.

SPEAKER_02 37:56

Okay. Yeah. So no that's a big ask. It's a big ask.

SPEAKER_04 38:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

You know, like getting into your breathing is like flipping over all the rocks in your life. You know, it's like getting into it's it's your whole lived experience shows up in your breathing. You know, it's under our clothes, it's the parts of our body we don't want to talk about. And it's it is the thing somebody's been doing forever. So to examine it, it takes bravery. So I'm grateful that people are brave enough to go there. But what I feel is after gosh, seven years of running this practice, there's finally traction. I'm grateful that people want to talk about that. I think breathing's in the language more than ever. You know, there's I agree. Humans are like dying for a new way to manage their stress. Yes. And it is a very stressful place out there. But there's this cool part of your brain. It's called the reticular activating network. Uh-huh. It's the part of your brain that looks for the things you want to see. So, you know, if I'm walking around going, oh my God, I suck. I can't catch a break.

SPEAKER_02 39:04

Right. Self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 39:06

I will see that. I will see all the ways in which I suck. And yeah, I really can't catch a break. It's rough out there.

SPEAKER_04 39:11

Right.

SPEAKER_00 39:12

If I tell my brain, I want to buy a red F-150, I'm going to start seeing red F-150s everywhere. But if I tell my brain to pay attention to my diaphragm and to start using my breathing, it starts finding opportunities. So it's less about an exercise and more about like a way of being in the world. And what it very quickly translates to is I trust myself. And when you can go around saying that, you just crack the code. And it gets you pretty fast to I love myself. Which, if we could do that as a species, we're gonna be okay. You know, I I don't I don't know where everything's going, but I know we're better off like that. It's kind of like I don't know everything about breathing. I know this is better than just breathe. You know, moving through my life, breathing, and that's the goal.

SPEAKER_02 40:13

Yeah. How, Andy, has this adventure into breathing, empowering others, empowered your own life? How has your life, health, wellness been enhanced through this experience? Because I can tell that this is not just your work, it's your vocation, it's your way of being, it's your way of working.

SPEAKER_00 40:41

This has allowed me to find peace and healing in my own life. You know, I'm one of those people that is really good at taking care of other people. That's why I went into that profession. I'm like, I like to overfunction, I just focus on everybody else. You know, when I used to come home from the ICU, I just cry. I didn't know why. Yeah, it like snuck up on me, but you know you're holding a lot of space. Yeah. Yeah. And kids, kids that grow up in violent households sometimes, or like unpredictable households, and that's what I had as a kid. They grow up being able to feel everything and be like really tuned in. And so that's that's actually me. Like I can feel everything. And that is a blessing in some ways now, but it was a curse for most of my life because I was just really sensitive. And, you know, I'd be walking around and and just kind of like picking up on everything that's going on around me. But now understanding that and being able to regulate my own nervous system all the time, like really feeding my, you know, that system. I mean, I'm so obsessed with my breathing, it's crazy. That makes it so that I'm I'm subconsciously very regulated. So that attunement to what's going on around me, now I can control it. So if I sit across from a patient, I can really understand what they're feeling. And I I don't take it on.

SPEAKER_04 42:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:07

But I can I can hold up a mirror and show them who they are. Okay. Show them what they're doing and and and what's working and what's not. But it's allowed me to feel a peaceful relationship. I mean, my dad died 22 years ago. Wow. I'm 43. Okay. So I've been alive longer without him than with him. Yeah. And so I've had to build that narrative as to like what that means and who he is in my life. And I have found healing with that by healing my own nervous system and you know, finding, finding what's that original wound in me. Everybody's got one. You've got one, I've got one. Everybody listening to this, yeah, you have one. For sure. It's there. If I can examine that wound and breathe slowly, deeply, functionally, it tells my nervous system you're safe. Which that's how we heal. You know, that's what therapy is. I mean, our number two referral source are mental health therapists to Academy West.

SPEAKER_03 43:09

Really?

SPEAKER_00 43:10

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 43:10

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 43:11

Because, you know, they're giving people tools. Talk therapy is great. EMDR, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy, all that, it's really wonderful. And the rubber meets the road in your breathing. Because if I still feel unsafe in my body, whenever that traumatic event comes up, or whenever I'm around that person, I haven't I haven't completed the cycle.

SPEAKER_04 43:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

But if I can instead confront it, it's kind of like saying, okay, let me look at that scary thing, breathe in a way that makes me feel safe. And all of a sudden, that gets less scary. And when I repeatedly do that, things get better, things get easier. I'm not stuck anymore. You know, the the idea of being stuck means not being able to move.

SPEAKER_04 43:58

Yeah.

unknown 43:59

And what do

SPEAKER_00 44:00

Do with our breathing when we're really scared.

SPEAKER_02 44:03

We hold it in.

SPEAKER_00 44:04

Yeah, just tighten right up, right? Yeah. But if I can move my breathing, I can actually get myself unstuck. Doesn't happen overnight. It's the same reason that people come to Academy West to prepare for psychedelic experiences.

SPEAKER_01 44:21

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_00 44:22

Yeah. Somebody's going to have a psilocybin journey or something in that realm where they're going to really expand their consciousness. Those can be really scary because you don't know what's in there, right? It's all in your mind. And yet it can be terrifying. But if I'm breathing slowly and deeply and functionally the whole time, not holding, not counting, right? Not box breathing, but really controlling the tools.

SPEAKER_04 44:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:48

It allows for safety. So consistently, people come back with that, that phrase with like, oh my God, I saw this thing and you were there. I really was thinking about my breathing the whole time. That's that's a really high, that's a high good. You know, we're able to provide that because, you know, ultimately, it's the tool they take with them.

SPEAKER_05 45:07

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 45:07

That's your breathing. Like, you know, I'll say this to patients, like, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna work together for, you know, a few months, but you're gonna use these tools for the rest of your life. Yeah. And the more you use them, the sharper they get. Sure. So a lot of times people come back for, you know, like our group classes or our workouts and things like that, just to keep the tools sharp. But it's so delightful for me to see where this goes. Yeah. You know, whether it's something like that where they overcame like a big mental hurdle or they're saying, Yeah, you know, I I don't I don't have asthma anymore.

SPEAKER_03 45:34

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 45:34

It does not happen to me. I don't have that same feeling. Or like I just achieved that that big goal that I never thought I could do. Or I finally got some sleep.

SPEAKER_01 45:44

That's a big one. I think for most people, that's a huge one.

unknown 45:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:50

I had uh I had one very powerful patient who woke up in the middle of the night with a panic attack like this every night for 55 years.

SPEAKER_02 46:01

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00 46:03

Since Vietnam.

SPEAKER_02 46:04

Oh wow, that's terrible.

SPEAKER_00 46:06

Terrible. And every night? Every night. 55 years. 55 years. And when we were able to, we made impact on his breathing, but it wasn't until we gave him these tools where we said, okay, we're gonna teach you how to literally not breathe.

SPEAKER_04 46:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:21

For as long as you can and then breathe in functionally. Yeah. Right. Imagine drowning and then coming up and going in the nose, diaphragm, first chest, follow, shoulder, stay still. And it wasn't until we did that that he finally got sleep. I will never forget when he emailed me the next morning and said that he slept.

SPEAKER_03 46:40

My goodness.

SPEAKER_00 46:41

Like that's that's not physical therapy as I knew it.

SPEAKER_03 46:44

No.

SPEAKER_00 46:45

But I think it's I think it is where the profession can go.

SPEAKER_02 46:49

For sure.

SPEAKER_00 46:50

You know, PTs.

SPEAKER_02 46:51

You've taken it there.

SPEAKER_00 46:52

Well, just gotta spread that message a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 46:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:55

So it's one person at a time, one conversation at a time. But ultimately, you know, we're people have been telling physical therapists all their troubles for years. We're actually in a position where using this, we can we can really do something about it. It's not just about your neck and your shoulder and your hip and your back, even though your physical therapist using breathing first will improve all those things more than they realize. It's about like how do we heal how you feel? Yeah. How do we heal how you think? Yeah. How do we get you to like literally trust and love yourself differently? It means just understanding your breathing.

SPEAKER_03 47:32

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 47:34

It sounds so simple, so powerful. The beauty is it's in our control, it's in our hands, it's in our body. Like the potential is incredible for any of us.

SPEAKER_00 47:45

And then we get to let go.

SPEAKER_02 47:47

Most importantly, right?

SPEAKER_00 47:49

Yeah, because like, yeah, you get to control it, and then you get to let it go. Yeah. Do its thing. And that's the coolest part. Because if I had to control my breathing all the time, that would be an incredible responsibility.

SPEAKER_03 48:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:02

But instead I get to trust it. I get to control it, train it, use it, love it, play with it, and then do my thing, let go.

SPEAKER_03 48:12

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 48:13

And whatever's in there subconsciously will come out.

SPEAKER_02 48:17

Okay. So you said just a little bit ago that you think about your breathing a lot during the day. Um for all us who are more new to this, listening to the podcast, and want to embrace your words into action, what would your advice be for?

SPEAKER_00 48:39

The first thing that I had mentioned, which was putting your hand on your diaphragm. That's the most important thing. Another little thing that can be really helpful is listening to what's going on with your breathing. Okay. Our inhale, which is supposed to be in the nose, needs to be silent. Okay. Okay. Like I'm going to get really close to the microphone and see if you can hear me breathing.

SPEAKER_02 48:57

Yeah, please.

SPEAKER_00 49:00

Basically silent. A lot of times, people make a sound when they inhale. Okay, I'm going to make this sound, okay? This is me inhaling. You hear that a lot in people with lots of neck fat. Sometimes they do that. Sometimes people with vocal cord dysfunction do that. Most of the time that's not the case. Most of the time, when people make that sound on their inhale, it's because they learned it in yoga. And then they took it into their real life. Now, the people in yoga are not trying to hurt anybody, but they're training people to make that sound so it slows them down.

SPEAKER_03 49:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 49:36

But it's kind of like driving with your parking brake on. It'll totally slow you down. I could drive all the way to Redmood with my parking brake on. I'm just going to screw up my car. Sure. And that's exactly what happens. People restrict, that's that's a little uh anatomical structure called my glottis, which is uh it's a pair of vocal ligaments that are controlled by these little muscles. They're covered in these mucus folds. We call them our vocal cords because it's like way sexier than saying mucus folds. So my glottis needs to be open when I inhale, so there's no resistance. And as I exhale, I can, yeah, I can use it, I can slow it down, I can make that little whispering sound as I exhale. Or I can make sound. So glottis is fine to use on the exhale. Okay. We don't want it on the inhale. So it's almost like you're listening to the silence of your inhale. The only sound you should hear is air moving through your nose. Got it. That's fine. But anything that's in there, not useful. So paying attention to my breathing and slowing it down, not by restricting, but by moving my diaphragm first. Chest follows. The chest expands after the diaphragm. So if you can feel it like a wave moving from your diaphragm into your chest.

unknown 50:50

Great.

SPEAKER_00 50:51

That may be difficult because the chest is way faster than diaphragm. It tends to want to move first. My shoulders stay still. Those are the muscles of fear. Those are the muscles of survival. So if I'm using those to breathe, it's sending a signal to my brain that says, Tiger. So all that trains itself together. It's sort of hard to separate one.

SPEAKER_02 51:12

I understand. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:13

But really, if we know what to do and what not to do, that's it. In the nose, diaphragm first, chest follows, shoulders stay still. When it comes to exhale, any way you want to slow down is fine.

SPEAKER_04 51:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 51:27

There's lots of ways to do it. I can slow down making that little whispering sound. I can slow down by using my lips, which is fine. Very easy to control, but it also loses a lot of water vapor. And we live in the high desert, so we want to keep that water vapor in our bodies. Plus, if I'm just all the time, I'm gonna look kind of crazy. Like the other day, I was having a hard time getting my kids out the door. My son goes, Why are you using your breathing? Because I'm trying to hold it together, buddy.

SPEAKER_02 52:01

Um so going back to the exhale, the breathing, the exhale should happen ideally just through the nose is what you're saying.

SPEAKER_00 52:08

Yeah, if you can breathe in and out your nose, that's gonna be more helpful. But when you just breathe in and out your nose, it's hard to slow it down. Like you can't really control it. If I just go, it's fine. Yeah. That's why we can make that little whispering sound. Like it kind of sounds like a disapproving parent. Okay. Yeah. By far, by far, the most powerful thing a human being can do with their exhale is hum.

SPEAKER_05 52:31

Mm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 52:33

Mm-hmm. It is, it is using your system to slow you down.

SPEAKER_03 52:38

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 52:38

And it vibrates your airways, it vibrates your nasal passages, so it moves mucus around the way we need it.

SPEAKER_02 52:44

And it stimulates the vagus nerve.

SPEAKER_00 52:46

Exactly. So your vagus nerve, for those that don't know, your vagus nerve is one of the 12 nerves that emanates from your brain, your 12 cranial nerves. The term vagus means vagabond. That's where that comes from.

SPEAKER_04 52:59

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_00 52:59

Yeah. So the vagus nerve is named vagus because of the word vagabond because it because it wanders all the way through your body. It wanders from your brain all the way to your groin and it innervates all the structures of your throat. It innervates into your lungs and your heart and your esophagus and your stomach and your guts and your sexual organs, like all of it. All the things that are controlled by this rest, digest, and grow side of the nervous system. Basically, all of us. Yeah. I mean, it's the it's the super highway parasympathetic activity. Right. So when you hum, mmm, it stimulates that. And you can hum like you're singing a song, that's fine. But what I usually advocate for is this like mid-range that bends to low range. Mmm.

SPEAKER_03 53:45

Kind of like I went, uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 53:48

Because you know what nobody ever did when they're running away from a tiger?

SPEAKER_03 53:52

Mmm.

SPEAKER_00 53:53

It like tells us we're safe.

SPEAKER_03 53:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:56

And you know, you think about like people that are deep on the spectrum, like way deep on the spectrum, what are they gonna do? They're gonna rock and hum. Mmm. That's true. Because it self-soothes. Yeah. So if you go out for a run or a walk or you're having sex or whatever, and you want to use your breathing in the nose, diaphragm first, chest follows, shoulders stay still. Hmm, all that does is gives you a superpower. So we train our runners to do that. Run up pilot butte, breathing while you're humming. And it is a completely different experience.

SPEAKER_04 54:30

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 54:30

So playing those little games, what you're doing anytime, anytime you're putting your breathing first, you're accessing five things: physical, chemical, mental, emotional, spiritual. Physically, you're training muscles, every muscle from nose to groin. Chemically, you're manipulating oxygen and carbon dioxide, but you're also turning some of that cortisol, our stress hormone, adrenaline, into oxytocin and dopamine, like feel-good, love hormones.

SPEAKER_03 55:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:03

Mentally, emotionally, mental is like what you do with your mind. Emotional is what your mind does with you. Mentally, you're putting your thought machine into the place it needs to go. You're not like darting around being all future past, you're focused right now.

SPEAKER_04 55:16

Right.

SPEAKER_00 55:16

And emotionally, you breathe how you feel. Every human emotion lasts maximum 90 seconds.

SPEAKER_02 55:23

Really?

SPEAKER_00 55:24

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 55:25

Had no idea.

SPEAKER_00 55:26

So if I can inhale and exhale functionally through those 90 seconds, I can keep this. Yeah, it keeps me from like escalating and going further and further and further.

SPEAKER_04 55:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:35

And spiritually, the word spiritual, this is kind of a buzzy word. I'm absolutely making this. This is not religious, okay? Yeah. Religious, that's a book or a building or a bank account. Right.

SPEAKER_02 55:48

I understand that.

SPEAKER_00 55:49

Spiritual is about someone's connection to themselves and to the universe.

SPEAKER_02 55:56

Right.

SPEAKER_00 55:56

Like the word spiritual comes from spirit, derived from the Latin word spiritus, which is Latin for breathing. So if I'm putting my breathing first, even if I'm doing the dishes or walking or going to sleep, I'm engaging in a spiritual practice. I'm deepening my connection to myself and my surroundings. That's why this is a tool to be used. Because you train one thing, you actually train all five: physical, chemical, mental, emotional, spiritual.

SPEAKER_02 56:28

So that's beautiful. And to think also, you know, it's the first and last thing we do on earth.

unknown 56:33

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 56:35

It really is. Like Gigi said, you're only out of breath once.

SPEAKER_02 56:38

Yeah. Wow. Thank you, Andy. You're welcome. It's really empowering to learn that we have such an amazing tool at our disposal whenever, however, we want. And it's just to hone into that skill of being conscious of our breathing.

SPEAKER_00 57:00

It takes a little bravery.

SPEAKER_02 57:01

Yeah. Where can people in Denn find you, Andy?

SPEAKER_00 57:07

So our clinic is located on the west side of Bend. We're in the ground floor of the Hickson apartment building. Our address is 210 Southwest Century Drive, suite G170. We're right across from Bangers and Brews Fire Station. Yes. And you can find us on Instagram at Academy.west. And our website is Academy West Performance.com. And we are eager to help people that are curious, motivated, suffering to unlock their full potential. We do that in individual care. We do that in group classes. And we also have a host of online resources. Okay. And it it's if I can say this, it's such a privilege to be able to sit here and talk to you about this. Yeah. Knowing nothing. Right. To now coming really full circle to hear. It's a real privilege. So I I I appreciate the opportunity.

SPEAKER_02 58:03

No, on the contrary, thank you so much for being here. It's been such a gift to listen to you and really learn from from all your work. It's very impressive, all everything you've done. I keep on thinking about the young woman, the hospice patient, that was the inspiration and the motivation for you to start Academy West.

unknown 58:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:24

Her name is Patricia.

SPEAKER_02 58:25

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 58:26

And she is who she's who I have in mind every time I talk about this anatomy. I actually have an anatomical model. Yeah. And, you know, the model is named Patricia.

SPEAKER_01 58:39

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_00 58:40

Yeah. This is without her.

SPEAKER_01 58:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:44

I'm not here. Without here, without her, I'm still in the ICU. Yeah. And I don't know where that would have gone. But it took her being brave enough to take a chance. That really has unlocked so many things for so many people. Wow. So I'm I'm I'm grateful. That's we talked about gratitude. Yeah. I'm grateful for Patricia.

SPEAKER_02 59:05

Yeah, me too. Thank you, Andy.

SPEAKER_00 59:09

You're welcome.