Health Harmony & Happiness with Cathy

#85: Why Functional Breathing Matters to Your Rhythms

• Cathy Struecker • Season 3 • Episode 85

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How does breath relate to your rhythms? Or to balancing the masculine and feminine energy that reside within you?

Your breath connects the world within you with the world around you, and breath work can be the tool you use to link your own rhythms and the world's rhythm so you live in flow instead of chaos.

Your breath invites a more balanced, mindful way of living. In today's episode I'll uncover the connection between breathwork and your energetic rhythms. 

You'll learn:

  1. Why breathwork most certainly is related to your energetic rhythms
  2. How breathwork is similar to tracking your rhythms and the rhythms around you
  3. How breathwork can be a tool to use to your advantage during your cycle.

Today's talk could change how you perceive and interact with life's most natural process - breathing.  Breathing exercises can indeed help us slow down, cultivate mindfulness during chaos, and fill us up rather than drain us, just like tracking your Energetic Rhythms can do.

Breathing well, aka Functional Breathing, is breathing that optimizes the air exchange that takes place within your body.  Creating the right environment for this gas exchange to take place.  But in order to do that, one of the key elements of breathing well is actually to slow down your breath. And believe it or not using your body's natural rhythms and the rhythms around you involves that same element of slow. It's about creating a new baseline way of living. A more mindful approach to showing up in this world.

How you breathe is who you are as a person, so when you can slow your breath, your life naturally begins to slow down and feel less chaotic. Less rushed. Less busy all the time, even if it is full.  It seems to flow instead of fight the chaos that surrounds it.  Listen in to learn more.

Resources:
Get back into a routine this Fall and start tracking your rhythms as you do so - Daily Rhythms Tracker

Join me for a weekly virtual breathwork session - all sessions recorded, and you have access to all previously recorded sessions - Breathe to Flow Breathwork Class

How We Feel App (Android)
How We Feel App (iPhone)

Grab the full show notes and resources at www.cairnyogawellness.com/podcast85 and subscribe and listen wherever you catch your podcasts.


More Episodes Like This One:
#59: How You Breathe is Who You Are
#64: Yoga's Rhythm is Also Your Rhythm
#84: Harmony Within: Exploring the Body-Mind Bridge

We'd love to hear from you! Send us a text and let us know what inspired you from the show.

Join the Energetic Rhythms for Intentional Living community here.

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Speaker 1:

I know I've been talking a lot about breathing lately, at least on social media and in my emails, but how in the world does your breath correlate to your rhythms, with even balancing the masculine and feminine energy that we have, since that's kind of what we do around here? In today's episode, you'll learn why breathwork most certainly is related to your energetic rhythms, how breathwork is similar to tracking your rhythms and the rhythms around you, and how breathwork can be a tool to use to your advantage during your cycle. Welcome to Help Harmony and Happiness with Kathy. I'm your host, kathy Stricker. I'm a state patrol wife, mama to three lively kiddos, a yoga teacher, certified NLP coach and an energetic rhythms expert. As an energetic rhythms coach, I help action taking women use their body's rhythms and the moon's cycle to optimize productivity and avoid burnout without letting their desire to remain in control alter their focus, and this podcast is all about doing just that, and perhaps a bit more, so that you can create your own path to health, harmony and happiness. So come along with me and may this episode serve as a nudge to discover tools that could help you on your path towards more intentional living. Enjoy the show, hello friends, hello, hello, welcome to episode 85, why Functional Breathing Matters to your Rhythms. I just wrapped up the intentional breathwork simplified challenge and I'll be working on updating that and revamping it so that you can take advantage of the info that was in that course whenever you choose.

Speaker 1:

In the meantime, if you haven't yet downloaded and started tracking your rhythms, now is the time. It's September and it's kind of like a mini new year, I guess, if you consider it that Kids are going back to school, things are changing. There's the change in the season, so it's already a natural shift. But this is, lots of times, the place where you can get the momentum to just get some of the last things done that you want to accomplish for the year. You can wrap things up as we move into fall. That is the energy of fall. The energy of that rhythm is finishing things, completing things, celebrating things. So use this as a nudge to maybe get back to getting in touch with yourself, to remembering your own personal rhythms, so that you can use them to finish the year strong.

Speaker 1:

So how does breathwork actually fit in with tracking your own personal rhythms? Well, for one, knowing your own personal rhythms and the rhythms around you, like the seasons, the moon, all the other things that have a rhythm gives you a baseline, and to find that baseline you first have to begin to track it. Same thing with your breath. It's possible to track the natural breathing rhythm that you have fallen into, even if that breathing rhythm is not a rhythm that is the most optimal for your body. We all have a baseline right. There is a baseline to your natural, innate rhythms. There's also a baseline to what the seasons do.

Speaker 1:

We kind of know that summer is going to be hot. We kind of know that fall things are going to start to cool off and we have a little bit more patchy weather. It may be hot, it may be cold and it just depends. We know that winter is generally colder and that spring things start to bloom and grow and get warmer again, and that is the natural rhythm that the seasons put out there. Your body has those natural rhythms as well, and your menstrual cycle represents that. But your body has rhythms in other ways too, not just your menstrual cycle.

Speaker 1:

You have these other things called ultradian rhythms, and one of them is the rhythm of your breath. It's beautiful because your breath is always with you and you'll notice that when you get excited about something. When you get anxious about something, when you get worried about something, your breath might fall into a quicker rhythm. When you are calm, when you are relaxed, when you are living in a parasympathetic state, your breath is likely going to fall into a more relaxed, slow rhythm. And that's where we want to be living all the time. That's the baseline you ideally want to be approaching life from, because, even if you have action to be taking and things to be done, if your regular baseline is living in a place where it's a little bit slower, things are calmer, your response to those stressful things, those stressful situations, is going to be a little bit different. You're going to be able to approach them with a little bit more ease and flow, and that's what we talk about around here is flowing with life, even when it's challenging. So today I'm going to tell you all about why breath work is related to your energetic rhythms, how breath work is similar to tracking your rhythms and the rhythms around you, and how breath work can be a tool to use to your advantage during your cycle.

Speaker 1:

Now, one of the key elements of breathing well, or functional breathing, is actually to slow down your breath If you can be living in a little bit slower state. Your response to the stresses, to the challenges of life is going to be a little bit different than if you're constantly stimulated and aggravated. And, believe it or not, using your body's natural rhythms and the rhythms around you involves that same element of slow. It's mindfulness. It's about creating a new baseline way of living, a more mindful approach to showing up in this world. You've heard me say before that how you breathe is who you are as a person, and when you can slow your breath, your life naturally begins to slow down and feel less chaotic, less rushed, less busy all the time. Life can certainly be full, but it doesn't have to be or feel busy all the time. Those activities that make your life full, that maybe make your life feel busy right now, can actually fill you up instead of drain you.

Speaker 1:

We aren't trained or taught how not to think, but breath is the one tool we can use to do such a thing, so that we are fully present amongst the chaos that surrounds us, so that you can simply be in this world instead of doing all the time. There's a place for doing. There's also a place for receiving and a place for being. When you are being. You might still be doing, but you might also be receiving. You're in that state of flow.

Speaker 1:

Are there times in your cycle when you feel like you need more energy? Guess what? There are breathwork techniques for that. Are there times in your cycle when you feel like you need to calm your overactive mind or body? Well, there's breathwork techniques for that. Breath ties everything together. It can either energize or calm.

Speaker 1:

Breathwork has so much to do with allowing the flow of energy or Praana as we often call it in yoga your life force, energy to move through your body. Your breath determines whether that energy can move freely or whether it gets stuck. If you feel stuck in life, it's likely that your breath is a little off and perhaps slightly dysfunctional. And I'm going to just tell you there is no judgment from this woman if your breath is a little off, because I lived for years without optimizing my breath before I started to become more aware of it, and then even more years until I started to actually change the way I breathed off the yoga mat. You see, it was quite a while that I just modified the way I breathed when I was practicing yoga and I disregarded the rest of the time in my life.

Speaker 1:

But when you start to pay attention to how you breathe off the mat, when you kind of make breath the central part of how you live your life, you realize that it shifts the way you live everything in your life. When you control your breath, it's as though you are the driver of your life, not the passenger. You get to decide how you want to be or respond to the feelings and energy you do have, rather than just enduring the times you don't want to be feeling the way you are feeling or reacting the way you might be reacting. It's the same thing with using your rhythms. When you know your body's cycle, when you know the rhythms around you, you can use them to make life easier, to begin to flow with life and start steering the boat rather than letting the rapids take you wherever you can begin to see the potential for trouble ahead and have a plan for how to get through that trouble or go around it.

Speaker 1:

With your breath. You can do the same thing only with physically training your body, mind, to live in a new baseline state of calm, whether that state of calm is energized or relaxed, because, believe it or not, you can be calm and still energized and productive, you can be relaxed and calm as well, rather than constantly living in a stimulated or stressed state, always overthinking, feeling like there's something more you need to be doing, or rushing from one thing to the next. Your breath is the tool that connects you with your rhythms and, indeed, influences your own personal rhythms. If your breath is shallow, quick or held, your body can't function like it's supposed to and your cycle will start to reflect it. You may have more intense periods or premenstrual symptoms, and when you do have those intense symptoms, your breath is actually the thing that can help you lessen the effects of them, which is a beautiful thing. It can help you move through the discomfort with more ease, as it has the ability to shift perception and lessen pain, depending on the type of breath work that you're doing. The right breath work can also up-regulate you when you need energy during your cycle, or it can down-regulate you when you're feeling anxious or irritable during that fourth phase of your cycle, that phase right before your period, where we lots of times start to have those premenstrual symptoms.

Speaker 1:

Right, your breathing is a rhythm of its own and often because of chronic over-breathing as a result of living with low levels of underlying stress. Our bodies have become accustomed to living with lower levels of energy and even fitness. Much of the fatigue that we experience in life is actually due to over-breathing. When you're taking in more air than your body can actually use, your body lowers its tolerance to carbon dioxide, making you breathe even more, because your brain thinks it needs to get rid of excess carbon dioxide in order to regulate the pH of the blood. Stay with me here while I give you a little bit of a science lesson.

Speaker 1:

Carbon dioxide is the trigger needed in your system for the hemoglobin in your bloodstream to release oxygen into your cells, tissues and organs, which also includes your brain. If you are getting rid of more carbon dioxide because you're breathing more, you aren't able to use it to help with that gas exchange that is necessary to fully oxygenate your system. Your rhythm of breathing becomes faster and more shallow usually, which impacts the air that you're taking in from reaching the lowest levels of your lungs, where the gas exchange actually takes place. So if you are breathing more, you're limiting your access to this critical gas, which in turn, will make you feel less energetic and more tired, which has an impact on your overall wellness and fitness levels. So if your rhythm of breathing is too fast, if it is too deep, or you find yourself sighing or yawning or taking big breaths quite a lot, it's likely that your breathing is a little bit dysfunctional.

Speaker 1:

But it all can be fixed and that's the beautiful thing. You can begin to breathe slower. You can begin to breathe less air, actually, so that pH of your blood stays more in balance and you have more carbon dioxide in your system, so that the hemoglobin can release more oxygen into your system. That's your science lesson for the day. The rhythm you get used to by over breathing is low energy, high stress instead of optimal energy, moderate to low stress, which is possible with making changes in the way that you breathe. Breath creates channels for your energy to move freely, for you to clear things out and let go, for you to soften and relax, even in stressful times. So, indeed, breath is the connector of the world within you and the world around you. It's the indicator of how you are processing the world around you, and when you slow down to pay attention to it and use it consciously, you begin to live in a state of flow instead of chaos.

Speaker 1:

All of that being said, I am offering a breathwork class this month and it started yesterday, so it happens on Wednesdays at one o'clock central time. It's four weeks with the potential to be ongoing, but for now we're just doing it as a one month thing. You're probably thinking why am I telling you this when it started yesterday? I'm telling you this because it is not too late to sign up for it, even though yesterday was the first class. You get the recordings. It's all held virtually, so if you still want to sign up, you will get access to the recording that we did yesterday. You will also have access to the three subsequent recordings that are happening, coming up, and I'd love for you to be a part of them.

Speaker 1:

They're just 30 minute classes, so they don't take very long at all, and my hope is that you could use this as a little bit of a break in your day, or maybe take a late lunch and do part of it as your lunch. If I need to adjust the time at any point, we can certainly talk about doing that. I'm not opposed. I'm just trying this time out and if we need to adjust it, I will definitely adjust it. So if it's something that you're interested in but you're having hesitations about because you can't be on the calls but really want to be on the calls.

Speaker 1:

Reach out to me If you want to join. I will drop the link in these show notes to sign up for the class. It's only $35 for four classes, which is quite a steal. I get that they're 30 minute classes, but you will be guided through a breathwork practice that will either energize you, calm you or relax you it kind of just depends on the day. But either way it'll be a great midday break for you to tune into your breath and start to become aware of the power of your breath. So I'll drop that link in the show notes. I'd love to have you join us In the meantime, helping you find and use the rhythms in and around you to flow with life. I'm Kathy Stricker and you've been listening to Health, harmony and Happiness. With Kathy Cheers to cultivating your own version of health, harmony and happiness in your life.