Episode 72: The Power of One Conscious Breath: A Conversation with Michael Wood

Have you ever stopped to notice your breath? I mean really notice it?

In this episode of The Well-Tended Life, I sit down with author Michael Wood, a breath worker, teacher of presence, and spiritual companion who shares the incredible wisdom hidden in something we do every single day: breathing.

Michael reveals how shifting from reaction to response, tuning into the power of a single breath, and truly being present can transform our lives. He even shares how working with nonverbal autistic children deepened his understanding of connection, presence, and the electromagnetic energy of the heart.

Here are just a few heart taps from this episode:

1. Wisdom isn’t just in our head, it’s in our hearts and bodies, too. Are you listening?
2. We’re often tuned into others breath, but are we paying attention to our own
3. Conscious breathing doesn’t have to be complicated, but it can change everything.
4. The energy of our heart is 5,000 times more powerful than our head. So, what if we led with that instead?
5. A calm, conscious breath can shift a situation, offering peace, support, and connection.

Take a deep breath in and hit play. This conversation might just change the way you move through the world.

BUY HIS BOOK “ONE CONSCIOUS BREATH” HERE: https://a.co/d/1dGTMgo

Follow Him on Instagram HERE: @justoneconciousbreath

Learn More About Him HERE: pilgrimbreath.org

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Transcript

 Hey friends, welcome to the well intended life  podcast. What is a well intended life? Well, let me start by telling you what it is not.  A well intended life is not a set it and forget it life, nor is it a perfect life. It is though a life that is worked on every day in the sunshine and through the storms.

And the truth is what worked in our life gardens last year may not work in the next. That's why. Here at the Well Tinted Life Podcast, we're interviewing people who have grown and bloomed true in a variety of seasons and who are willing to share their well tinted wisdom and reed blocking advice  with us.

Listen in. 

 Hello everyone. And welcome to the well intended life podcast. I'm your host, Curie Wilt, a speaker, writer, and heart cultivator who is on a mission to help you and me. Grow through any season. Today's episode, as usual, is inspired by one of the quotes from my great grandmother's famous book, The Secret Garden.

And this one is a little bit long, but you're going to love it. It says, Mary was at the window in a moment and in a moment more. It was open wide and freshness and sense. And bird songs were pouring through.  That's fresh air, she said. Lie on your back and draw in long breaths of it. That's what Dickon does when he's lying on the moor.

He says  it feels like it's in his veins and it makes him strong. And he feels as if he could live forever and ever. Breathe it and breathe it. She was only repeating what Dickon had told her, But she caught Colin's fancy. Forever and ever? Does it make him feel like that? He said.

And he did what she told him, drawing in long, deep breaths over and over again until he felt something quite new and delightful was happening to him.  And y'all, Dickin knew the power of one conscious breath, and I'm wondering today, though, do you?  I feel like our breath and breathing is something most of us don't even really think about, right?

But yet today's guest, Michael Wood, believes that every conscious breath is actually a love letter to your body that can relax you and clear you and inform you. And it also has the power to move you from a reaction to response.  Michael is a qualified breath worker, a teacher of presence and a spiritual companion.

And I just can't wait to see what well tended wisdom he has to share with us today. So welcome Michael.  Thank you. It's wonderful to be here and to be with your listeners. Very privileged to be here. And it's a lovely introduction. Thank you. And I love that concept of being in moment to moment. And savoring the breath because that's really what we're going to try and do today.

Reflect on the breath from moment to moment and the power of the breath. And I'm a great believer that just one conscious breath is all we need to return us to ourselves and to bring us a sense of awareness. To a situation which sometimes has a sort of running on  in a very busy way. Our lives are so busy that we don't always just step out of them and assess where we are. 

And all we need is one, just one conscious breath.  , I know we are going to dig deep into that today, but go back for us just a little bit, , give us a, an overall view , of  who Michael is and who you have become has led you into this One Conscious Breath journey. 

Yes. , so I've just moved on from my job as the principal of a school for children with autism and complex needs. ,  prior to that, I've been in special education in different locations in Ireland. I worked with deaf students and autistic students. And before that, I lived in London and I always had marketing roles.

 I was in an office working here for different organizations trying To help them to be more market centered. And I found that it wasn't really my bag. It really wasn't me. Not so much the marketing, but just the office life.  I realized that I actually wanted to do more.

 The thing that I enjoyed most about my job was actually  training people. Found that was something I had, Quite a gift for so I decided to retrain and took the step to become a primary school teacher That was an interesting thing to do. It was also financially quite perilous because I'd  Qualified in marketing and I had quite a senior job.

And so I was back at the bottom of the tree again.  But it's felt that it's what my soul wanted me to do. And I moved from London to a lovely part of England called the Lake District. Sort of an area that would be very familiar to  the landscape that you were talking about in your introductory quote.

A very beautiful part of, with fells and open spaces.   From there I worked in primary education with younger children mostly, and then I moved to Ireland because that's where my heart was calling me, and I was thinking of moving from England to Ireland, although we speak the same language, it's like moving from the head to the heart.

In England we are quite cerebral and work in that space where an island is a bit more  free and anarchic and a bit more heart centered. And I've been in Ireland for the last 30 years, and I started working for an organization called L'Arche, which is for, with adults with a learning disability, living with them. 

 From there, I moved into special education, where I've been for 30 years.  So now I live in Dublin with my partner and our son and our dog, who's at my feet. And just love the great outdoors. 

I've been a meditator for 30 years  and three or four years ago during lockdown, I studied with Eckhart Tolle which was wonderful.

It was called the School of Awakening. But I realized that I was halfway there and I was only halfway there because it was in my head and I felt that the awakening, the lessons hadn't been fully embodied.  So I decided to study breathwork  and I was put in touch with a wonderful breathworker  in London. 

called Bini Damsby, who's American. And I had a series of ten, it's called Rebirthing or Conscious Connected Breathing Sessions with her on a barge in London. And that kind of,  that did it. That did it. I feel myself sighing there because that's what it did. It really helped me to let go.  Because while I've been meditating,  and although I've been Practicing spiritual lessons for 20, 30 years, and I changed my life to try and lead a more spiritual life. I hadn't done what I really needed to do was to let go. 

 I learned to let go in the breath and to surrender in the breath. And that's all about.  The exhale, practically, is all about knowing I'm exhaling fully. Under the direction of a qualified breath worker, I was able to let go of all the things that were stopping me from  fully letting go. So, all the obstacles I put in my way to my own  development, my own surrender, my ego, primarily, and all the things that we do to self sabotage, I had to understand myself.

More fully, and that changed everything. After that experience I got covid and  I, for the first time in my life, I was in bed for about two weeks. And I remember ringing my press worker saying, maybe looking for some sympathy. And she basically told me to rest up and shut up because that's exactly what I needed to do.

I needed to rest and to let go. And I did, and I think that was the lesson for me, just to let go and to surrender to the body and to the wisdom of the body. Then when I got back to work, everything changed. I was more of an observer. I was happy to go with the flow. Of the school and I didn't need to be the captain of the ship all the time.

I was happy to just be more watchful and mindful and just sometimes all I needed was a little, a light touch on the rudder rather than taking over the steering wheel and enable other people to develop and come along. So I think I became smaller and what became smaller was my ego.  

You said so many things. I was just writing down one of the things that you said that struck me was  that you surrendered to the wisdom of your body.  Say a little bit more about that. 

Well, I think we're under the illusion that the head is running the show. And the head is very happy with that illusion  that's where our ego resides. Think with breathwork or with meditation, we can suddenly, we can eventually see the picture that we're not  the thoughts in our head and we can start to disidentify with the thoughts in our head.

And so from that clarity, we enter more of a heart space with more of a body space.  And that's, I think, where our real wisdom lies, in our heart in our body. And sometimes in our body we also lock in certain traumas and certain  difficulties that we've had.  And sometimes we just need to let them out and to let go

and realize we're not the contents of our head. We're much deeper and more profound than that. And when we do  Surrender the wisdom of our body, then  We're tapping into our deep intuitions And we're going beyond the restrictions of our head And what our head Thinks is the answer  Because we don't get the answer  In the head with no head We get the answers of the head with our heart And by transcending it I love you just said, we are not the contents of our head  and you were talking earlier about the things that were blocking you, right?

The things that you needed to surrender and to let go.  And I can't help, but think the contents of our head, are the biggest things we have to learn to let go and disassociate.  With us, any of us who ever had any of those just crazy thoughts as you're driving down the road of imagining an accident or whatever we have to realize that, we don't even really have as much control over our minds than we really think we do.

Right, because, how many times have you thought something and went, wait. Wait, how did that pop in? Right? I didn't feel like I consciously thought that, they're coming from everywhere, but yet somehow we take those truths. We, whatever we think of becomes somehow truth in our body.

And it's not.  Yeah, I completely agree. It's a bit like Collecting all the junk mail that comes in your letterbox and thinking this is true. This is true. This is true. I'll do that I'll do that. I'll do that, but it's just pretty random. It doesn't mean it's yours or it's you It's just stuff that happens and triggers off you and it's just junk mail A lot of it is just junk mail and of course these days the junk mail has been amplified  And magnified by our phones.

So we're just going down deeper and deeper rabbit holes. And it's harder and harder to get out of them, and  one thought begets another thought. One scroll begets another scroll. And all of a sudden you're down this hole, and you don't know how long you've been there.  And so more than ever  we need to be conscious.

More than ever I think we need to take conscious breaths and just take that bridge.  between  what we're doing and our awareness. And then when we're on that bridge, we can look back and say, Is this what I want to be doing? Is this really what I want to be doing with my time? Because our attention is so precious.

It's the most precious thing we have.  We take it for granted. And it's like when we go online or when we follow our thoughts, we're just, people are using our mind rent free online.  And we're just a resource.  Yeah. Well, and you said the word awareness,  right? Is that one of the biggest things that I, that stopping to have a conscious breath  creates or cultivates?

Yes, it is. I think when we take that, when we take that conscious breath, we have a chance to move from reaction to response.  So most of our lives are knee jerk and instant reactions and so forth.  But when we actually  take a breath, we're actually  moving out of that situation and we're then able much more to decide what is right, what our body feels is right, what our heart feels is right to do now.

We're no longer reacting. And the book starts with a quote by Roland May just about that, the key to human freedom is moving from reaction to response.  And my  theory is that just one breath is enough to do that. Just one conscious breath.  Okay, so what does that look like?  Like, how is that practice?

Is it doesn't because I guess the question, the question I'm sure people are asking at home is well, do you have to breathe through your nose? People like formulas? What does that look like? Exactly? Does it can any old breath? Because I even know someone has made a comment to me that I am a, I'm a short breather.

I'm not a deep breather. And so I had to like, be more conscious of how I draw in a breath, but what does stopping for just one conscious breath? What does that look like? It makes us look like a dolphin.  And I'll tell you why,  because  we have a choice. We can consciously or unconsciously breathe. Okay, it's the only thing that we can do consciously or unconsciously.

So we can't consciously digest our food  or circulate our blood, but we can consciously breathe, and we can unconsciously breathe. But a dolphin can only do it consciously, and dolphins have to come up for air every eight minutes. Physically, they have to surface for air.  Can't they have lungs like us? They have a blowhole for nose, and they take in their air. 

And then they dive deep back into their life for about eight minutes.  And that's what I'm suggesting that we become kind of land dolphins. The, and when I started this, I set a timer every eight minutes or so just to come up for air, just to consciously take a breath. 

It's only five or six an hour,  but it's amazing what it can change when you just consciously come up for air. Like a dolphin  because you're consciously six or seven times an hour. moving from reaction to response.  But because we can do it unconsciously, we do, that's the problem.  The opportunity is to do it consciously.

The opportunity is to do it, as I say, six or seven times an hour and just see what happens. It's not, you're not taking any medication. It's a simple experiment. You're just becoming a land dolphin. You don't need to put on your flippers. You just need to breathe consciously. And it's very powerful. You'd be amazed. 

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All while building some community along the way. Or you can find me hosting and hanging out in a brand new part of their app that is dedicated to all things journaling.  Sound like fun? Check out the link in the show notes to download the Modern Prairie app today. Then you can join the journaling circle and sign up for the class or join the club today.

I can't wait to see you there. 

 It's the deceptively simple things, and I think that's part of the problem, is it's so simple, people think it can't work.  But it does.  So, Is it a deep breath? Is it a through your mouth through your nose? Does it matter? Or is it more just about the pause and the consciousness? 

It's the pause and the consciousness is what we want. I think the best way for me for doing that is a nasal breath and is a deep nasal breath.  So you can exhale from the mouth,  definitely inhale through the nose.  Okay. For a certain number. Do you do? Is it? Is it a number? Is it  a four or five seconds in 

four or five, three or four or five seconds out? 

Yeah.  So we're talking about eight seconds, an investment of eight seconds, eight times an hour.  Yeah, it is. Love the idea. And I don't know if you all at home just heard Michael exhale,  but I dare say it was the sound of peace. It's it was like a whooshing in in my mind, this is exactly what just came up, like a whooshing of the of the wind, like on a cold day in the forest.

It was so.  It was beautiful. Now mind you, you have practiced and you've done this over and over again. But there's something to, I think you even have a chapter in your book called The Sound of Your Breath. Yes.  Can you speak to that?  Yes, because I think the  breath is like a sort of onomatopoeia.

It's,  when we sigh, we let go. If you find yourself sighing,  don't judge it, jump on it, because it's actually, it's like saying, Hey, I'm not sure what to do right now. Well, that's okay. Then you've got  Oh, and that's the awe and awesome. You might just climb a hill and go, Oh,  what you're really saying is, wow, this is awesome.

And that's the awe is your breath response to beauty. You're looking into the eyes of a baby. You don't say. Goodness, that baby's got such beautiful eyes. I'm in a state of awe. You go, ah, it's so much more articulate. The breath is so much more articulate than words, and it's so much more honest than words. 

Yeah, I I can tell you the way my husband breeds, I can tell you what's going on,  right? Like I can hear him make a sound and I'm like, are you okay? Let's go. What's happening? Like it's a signal for me, but I don't know that I have never stopped  to listen to my own breath.  Right. We're so conscious and keyed into those around us.

But I think it'll be interesting to, to  be aware of my own.  Yes. And I think that awareness comes when your head is quite clear, because you're not going to hear your breath. If you're listening to the jibber jabber of the self narrative that's going on in the head. I think that's why something like meditation or conscious breathing is so good, because we disidentify with the contents of our head, which makes us available to hear the real stuff.

Yes.  The real stuff, which is how we're breathing, how, what's happening in front of us right now.  So good. Oh my gosh, so good. You talk about, right, by conscious breathing,  We get to choose our response right in this moment and that this is the key to our freedom and to talk a little bit more about that, like freedom from what exactly  freedom from our thoughts, freedom from identification with our thoughts of that.

That's who we are because we're not. We have 70, 000 thoughts a day. Wow. That's one a second.  So if you are your thoughts, then you're purely scrolling through your head. How can that be who you are?  So we have to start to dis identifying thoughts.  It's junk mail. It's, it's fine.

It's of no, we don't have to attach any, consequence to it.  But when our thoughts come from our interior and our interior silence and from our heart, that's where our wisdom flows. And that's when we need to pay attention. That's rather like you were talking about hearing your husband breathing.

That was that's your interior wisdom.  But to do that for yourself you, it really helps if your mind is clear and you're not identifying with these 70, 000 thoughts because you're too busy. You're too busy scrolling through your head  to actually reach any other kind of awareness. It's  so huge.

It's so amazing. It's it sounds like it sounds so simple, right? Yeah. How, I guess we've all lost it because of the constant busyness, right?  The constant things that are coming at us and the constant need almost, I feel like most people feel like they need that constant input.  But it's not true.

It's just mucking things up.  It's just mucking things up. And it's all been amplified nowadays. And we just think, when I grew up,  I remember being bored,  but now boredom is not even a concept, and  actually boredom is not that bad, but  I think that as our lives get faster and faster, we're just identifying more and more with the screen in front of us with the sound in front of us with a thought in our head.

We're lost.  We're lost in this continual exposure to stuff. It's just clutter. It's like we need to have a brain declutter because we can't see the wood from the trees.  So  talk to me  you were inspired to write this book and to bring this message forward partly because of the work with your nonverbal autistic  children.

Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, so much for bringing them up because they actually were my best teachers. I've had some great spiritual teachers, but they were my best. And it was the nonverbal ones because. We always say that, 91 percent of what we say is non verbal.

So they were 100 percent of that.  So getting to know them and getting to understand them was wonderful.  And a lot of them were  just purely authentic. They're just from their heart. They could be damn gross with you and they could be,  situations could get quite dangerous for them and for us. But it was honest and it was authentic and it was real. 

But what I found in all that honesty and authenticity and reality was that  when they were mad when something had set them off, we knew what they wanted, what they needed, which was take a breath. Let's go out for a walk. Let's just splash some cold water on your face or whatever.  You do that. But we couldn't do that because they were not available to listen. 

But what they were available to do was sense. So I had to become the breath I wanted them to be.  So I would sit down with them and try and breathe  audibly 

and really do a lot of sighing, conscious sighing. 

very conscious inhales and conscious sighing and just breathe audibly because you know our electromagnetic field of our heart is 5 000 times as powerful as our head  and these kids pick it up they just get it that's their heart people  so if you can change the energy around your heart you can change the energy around the situation and that's where the Real change can happen.

So it's pointless to me, say, Jason, take a breath. But if I can be the breath that Jason needs to be, I've got a chance of changing the situation. I'm also changing myself and I'm coping because these are quite stressful events. And if I can help myself.  I can help someone else. It's like we can all do that.

We can be on a bus and a mum with a couple of toddlers can be stressed out. 

But if we consciously breathe and emanate that gentleness and kindness from our heart and let go, we're really helping her. We're really helping a situation much more than judging a situation or probing. If we just are, if we're just present,  and kind  and use our breath  as our words,  we can change the situation.

And I've seen that happen. And if it can work with an autistic child in crisis, then it can work pretty much in any situation. Before we started, you mentioned, you said, if there's pauses in between, it's because making conscious breaths. And you said something to the effect of,  and it's only because.

The time or the space in between the words is just as important as the words. And I feel like even that same thought of with the woman on the bus, right, slowing down your words and breathing through your words is I'm even just I'm finding myself doing it now because I am.

I'm mimicking what you're doing, whereas normally I'm like, let's go, running around and love that idea of that the space in between the words are just as important as the words.  Yeah, I think that's also where rapport comes from, when a conversation flows. 

It's like there aren't two egos involved, it's almost just two beings, they're just relating to one another, and actually what's flowing is the breath is flowing between them.  And often, if you see a really good interview, you'll see the people's breath almost mirroring one another.  They're that much in sympathy, in empathy with one another, that their breaths are reflecting each other,  which is what was happening to us back then, when  we were responding to each other's breath.

Okay?  It's amazing. It's it's just another one of the things in this world that a reminds me that I don't even, I don't know what I don't know. And but that we are incredible beings  with powers beyond our understanding. Right. And I love it when people come on and peel back that curtain just a little bit to expose the  simplicity of the body and the complexity of the mind and the, and all of those things that, that help us to  truly live, have the ability to live different if we could just. 

Stay present, right? I have my mother in law has dementia and there are, of course, a lot of really sad, hard things about that. But 1 of the coolest things  is, is watching her be truly in the moment. Yesterday doesn't matter. Like even three minutes from now doesn't matter. One minute from now past doesn't matter.

She is right there in the middle of it. And I sometimes sit back in awe. Of that true presence that she is forced by her mind to enable her or sit in. And I think, okay that's the goal, right? It's being, it being right there and knowing that there's something as simple as a breath that can  bring me back there, right?

Because the world's going to pull us.  Yeah, right. It's going to life is going to, there's a sound is going to pull us away, right? It's very simple. And, but that idea of coming back 8 times a day or 8 times an hour.  It feels like it could be freedom, for sure, for a lot of people. 

And I think it's practical, too. A lot of us have our yoga practices or meditation practices or go for a run or pray twice a day. Whatever we do, we have a reflective practice.  And that is really helpful.  But we also need a portable practice. We need something that we can,  it's like an app, we can download a mental app and just surface for air every eight minutes.

Just take this dolphin breath because that we can have on the go. But we,  it's only really the enlightened masters who, whose presence is sufficiently strong to carry them through the day.  Most of us, me especially need. My one conscious breath just to reconnect me with that level of that state of awareness. 

And it's often family, you mentioned your mother in law and the blessings of it. And it's often in family that we get our strongest lessons and when we're most frail and frazzled and fraught  because life is difficult and people know our buttons in that family. And that's when we really need our unconscious breath just in the moment,  in the one you're being.

Needle by situation. Do you have enough presence  to take a breath before you respond?  And if you do,  you're becoming free. 

It's that simple.  It's so great. 

 Hey, let me ask you a few questions and I want you to answer them honestly. Are you exhausted from years of watering everyone and everything else but you?  Does it feel like your gifts, your dreams and passions are locked up tighter than the secret garden?  Do you struggle with things like anxiety, busyness, or maybe fear? 

Do you want to see more joy, goodness, and growth in your life?  Friends, after doing my fair share of weed whacking and life tending work, I know a few things to be true.  One, you can't keep pouring from an empty watering can. Two, seasons change and so should you.  Three, you only get one garden of a life to grow something big and beautiful.

Four, you can choose to live out this next season differently with more intention and fewer weeds.  And five, when women work together alongside each other, magic happens.  And that's why I created Cultivate You.  What is Cultivate You? Cultivate You is a six week online journey where I'll walk beside you and teach you new ways to water your dreams, to unearth your gifts, and finally tend to your relationships, your weed, and your need. 

In this live group experience, you will dig deep and discover a garden shed full of perennial tools that will help you to cultivate your best well tended life for seasons to come.  Want to learn more? Check the link in the show notes or head on over to thewelltendedlife. com.  This is your season, my friend.

It's time to tend to you.  Sign up today. 

 I was reminded in the last few weeks I was trying to get back into my yoga practice and I kept convincing myself that. Oh, I needed a new yoga mat or I needed a new 30 day program that would keep me on track, et cetera. And in my journal practice, which for me is a is probably my daily breath.

Right. I kept being reminded that I have exactly what I need already. And what I love about this eight eight and eight is that there are no excuses, right? You have what you need already. You don't need to go buy some running shoes. You don't need to sign up for a class. It doesn't cost you anything.

It literally costs you eight seconds.  So, you can't say it takes too much time either, right? You have everything you need to start right away which is also what's fantastic about your book. And don't worry, everybody will put the link in the show notes, but it's called just one conscious breath that profoundly simple practice that moves you from reaction to response and every single chapter.

Has a little breathing exercise in the back, and, there's a lot of books out there that talk about things but you don't just talk about it, you show people how to do it and how to do it so simply it's a it's a beautiful book, and I hope everybody goes out and reads it because it's not it's relatable, it's not a scientific Deep dive.

It's applicable and it's it's very good. I'm so thankful that you chose to take what you've learned and pass it on to the world in this way.  Thank you. That means a lot.  It came from my heart. I literally, I'm an extreme lark. I get up about four in the morning and I just wrote for two hours and I just held on to a pen and I disidentified with what my head was saying.

I was just writing. It was like it was coming from my body.  And 30 years of studying, the spiritual path and breathing and meditating.  Yeah.  And I suppose the breath has been my autobiography.  Mmm, yeah.  And it's an autobiography of my own awakening. And I think you have to be careful using these terms, because you have to be careful that the ego doesn't come in the back door. 

That's why we need to consciously breathe, because the ego just wants to get back in the driving seat, wants to get  back into head center.  Yeah.  So when you make statements like that, you need to be grounded in the fact that  you can keep breathing, you can keep your practice because otherwise you'll get sucked back into your head.

It's like a craving. Do you think that, do you think that's the illusion  that your head that your head can control things like, right? I feel like it's that, I feel like that's what most of us chase, right? Is the illusion that if I think it enough, I, If I, mull it over enough that I can control it somehow, but  we know, I, I know that the magic happens when, like you said, you let go, you surrender.

That's when the true ideas come. That's when the true  door is open  in the surrender.  Yeah, I think you're right that the head  wants us to identify with it.  Because then it's in control

Now the head is a, is massively helpful, but  it needs to be the server  of the heart, not the other way around.  And when it's serving the heart, then anything is possible.  That's when we can really create,  because it's coming from our flow, it's coming from within us.  It's coming from our own authenticity. 

It's not derived Only I can be fully me, only you can be fully you,  and we can only do that when we disidentify with the thoughts in our head and come from our heart space, and then let that inform  what we're going to do with our time and our attention.  So good.  Okay, so I introduced you as a teacher of presence,  a breath worker, and a spiritual companion. 

Love for you. Those are, and of course I call myself a heart cultivator, so I am all for of different things, but can you give me a, an understanding of kind of the breakdown of all three of these and how they work together or separately?  And I think that they're labels too, and we have to, the labels are helpful, but I think that ultimately  there's only one journey, which is to go from our head to our heart.

So these are labels. These are pathways that have helped me, but I will try and unpack them a bit. So a breath worker is someone who uses the breath  to help  the person they are working with to breathe.  embody  their  themselves and to work with an issue. So you'd often set an intention like by the end of this session, often an hour and a half,  I'd like to have new insights onto this problem in my life.

And it's, and it's often something concrete say my addiction to beer, so you set an intention like that and all the breath work it does. is accompanies them  and is present  and lets the breath  do the work, the breath of the client do the work

and  has faith this spirit of breath will actually  uncover the inner truth. Of the client and it does because I've been that person. I've been that soldier and I've trained with a wonderful Breath work school in america. A lot of the breath work phenomenon has come from america and it's really helped me and i've been on both ends of that.

I've seen the power of the breath what I love about it is it's not telling you anything. It's making you work out your own stuff because we all have, you said it, we all have our own answers inside us. We've just got to unpeel them. So that's a breathwork.  A spiritual companion is similar, but would be someone I studied in Ireland, a thing called Anamkara, which means soul friend.

And you would just be with someone. They tell their life story. And instead of counseling them to find their own truth, you would be helping them maybe to find  God in their story for them. So they will come to you with, they'd like a closer relationship with God. And you have trained in that and aware, can read the signs and can help them again to unearth their own relationship.

with God. Again, you're just a mirror. You're reflecting back. So the breath is physical.  Being a soul friend is just being present and mirroring back. Then I think a teacher of presence is something that  Eckhart Tolle has developed, but it's very simple. It's really what the children at school were teaching me.

The  power of your presence is so much that  it brings up the power of the person you're with.   The power of your breath is so strong that it changes the power of the breath of the person you're with.  When you're present you're fully aware and you're not cluttered with your own thoughts. You're not ready with the next question. You just are. And that are ness is so strong,  it provokes the are ness in the other person to come.  Being to being.  And it's interesting because I feel promise you every, everybody who's listening, when you're in the presence of someone who is truly present, you feel it,  you see it, you it's something that is still, that is unfortunately so unique that it sometimes even jars you.

Like some things, something's different about this person. Is truly here with me. And oh, my gosh, it is so good. I I have done a little breath work. Not much enough to put my toe in the water. Honestly, I was just curious about some of the things that I was seeing.

And I was like, what is this? This breath work thing. And so, I actually worked with a girl who was getting her I guess her certification. So she had so many hours, et cetera. And I found it. To be such a an amazing journey over the course of an hour. So for those of you at home that are like wondering what on earth breathwork even looks like I did it over zoom and the woman had me lie down and she could see me and she took me through several breath patterns.

And she encouraged me along my way and. Spoken a little bit. There was a little bit of music. But a lot of it for me was, a very, a rhythmic breath that, that felt to me as if it was it's almost like it, It has the power to tune out everything else so that you can tune in, and I don't know if that is the proper term, but that's how I felt the I you feel because you don't normally breathe in a deep enough way and a, in a truly saturating way, for lack of better terms.

I felt things in my body I had never felt before tingling all the way down to my toes. As if energy had, just replaced every single 1 of my cells. It's it's. If you are interested and think, what is this hocus pocus, right? Because we're always judging things before we experience them, I encourage you to put your toe in the water and try a breathwork session because it was It was so unique and it is something I'm so glad that I'm doing this interview because it's reminding me of, I like to do more because it was it was a place in a space that that did allow me to find a quiet part of me that I think is very difficult to get to for most people.

So, anyways. I just figured I would throw that in. I'm like my little two cents for breathwork. It's a wonderful testimonial from your heart and how just one session can be powerful. I think what's lovely having this podcast with you. I know you're based in Texas. I'm here in, in Dublin and I have an English accent, but I spent half my life in England, half in Ireland.

But the wonderful thing is this modern breathwork movement came from America. A lot of really great things. The last 50 years have come from America spiritually and the modern breathwork  movement started in California with a guy called Leonard Orr about 50, 60 years ago,  taking the lessons from the East and adapting them to a Western lifestyle. 

And now some of the best breathwork schools are in America. I studied within a school in America. It's an extremely powerful tool and it's been adapted to, to, to the modern world. So there is something new under the sun actually. And it is powerful and there is a, there's a global professional breathwork alliance.

So there's a professional body you can go to to get someone who's certified. But yeah, I think, given your testimonial and what we've been talking about, it is. It's something that's worth looking at.  It's certainly, it's not like medication. There's no side effects, there's no side effects. 

And certainly taking just one conscious breath, you're not going to bring up any stuff, you could in a session bring up stuff, and that's why it's good to have someone who's qualified and can help you sort it out for yourself  and make sure that you're okay.  But just one conscious breath won't bring up stuff.

It just brings up clarity and ease.  Yeah, and who doesn't need more clarity and ease,  right? Yeah. Oh my gosh.  Well, what do you hope people take away or do differently? Clearly one conscious breath, right? You do that, but is there anything else that you hope? I think if we all took a dolphin breath, if we all just took,  We just became land dolphins and took eight conscious breaths every eight minutes.

I think we could change the world.  I really do. I think we could move from reaction to response. I think we could be generous to one another and give time and become more present. I think, come up for air,  come up for air and be conscious. That's all you need to do.  Yeah, and you can do that in the middle of a doctor's office.

You can do that in the carpool line. You can do that in the restroom, in the shower, in the  kitchen, anywhere.  And don't judge it, because it's so simple. The head will say, ha, it can't work. It's too easy.  Because it knows, the brain knows, it's only complexity that works. It doesn't trust in simplicity. But my best teachers  were those neurodivergent children who were non speaking.

And they modeled the power of simplicity and authenticity and truth to me.  So don't listen to your head when I say it's too simple. Because, It's trying to get back in the driving seat.  Well, and if you do need to listen to your head, remind yourself that,  the complexity of a breath,  like even just, I'm always just, I'm fascinated by our bodies, but  the fact that how the breath comes in and it expands all the little capillaries and how it even goes in and out of your body is,  So crazy, amazing that it even works on a regular basis.

The fact that our bodies function in its complexity is amazing.  But it almost functions and thrives despite us. It's despite our head. Because if our head was in control of it, can you imagine what would happen? No. And I actually said to my husband we've got a lot of complex things that are happening in our family right now.

My mother in law just got put into a memory care facility and we've got a lot of sickness and things that are all up in the air. And I told my husband the other day, I said, I know this sounds strange, but I've actually found myself.  Feeling like maybe I'm not breathing, like not having a panic attack, but like having a sinking moment.

And then just an awareness of Whoa, did I like,  did I not take a breath? Did I not? So, I'm just, I'm super thankful that you are here and that you agreed to have this with me because I know I needed to hear this message. And I know there were people at home who would.

who are also leading lives that are hard, that that need the reminder to, to breathe, to just breathe.  So good.  Yeah. Life is complex for us all. Yeah.  I'm just, if we can give ourselves a break, we can just give ourselves a break without breath. It never lets us down. It's never let us down from the moment we're born to the moment we die. 

Take our last breath. It's always there. It's our best friend and I, just befriend that breath.  So good.  Oh my goodness. 

 And now it's time for my favorite part of the interview,  because it's inspired by my life tending journal practice. But let me be clear, this is not your grandma's journal. It's more of a growth chart, reflection diary, planting reminder, observation deck, and research notebook all rolled into one.  And when used daily, this journal practice is a life guarding game changer,  guaranteed to protect you.

beautiful purpose filled blooms in any season. Now it's by far the most important tool in my own personal life gardening shed. And I want to gift you a free journaling template today.  So check out the link in the show notes or head over to thewelltenderlife. com and download it and get started today. 

 A few questions of the podcast, which come from really my mission in life which is to help people lead their best well intended lives, which is not a perfect life.

It's a life it's worked on every day in the sunshine and the storms. And one of the questions I always ask Guess is about the life season that you're in, because I think one of the most important things that informs our yeses and our nose and how we do life is understanding the season that we are in.

So tell me a little bit about the season that you're in.  Because that's a hard question to answer because although I'm 61 and I'm in the autumn of my life in terms of my age. Actually, I feel I'm in the infancy of my life. I feel that I've, I'm in the third stage of my life.

Now, I had a stage in marketing and business in London and in education. And now as an author and a breath of a teacher, I'm in my third stage. And I think that this is what I really want to do. So in a way, I'm in the spring,  although it's an old, it's an old tree, it's perhaps it's shooting out in a new direction. 

Yeah. That's an exciting place to be a rejuvenating and exciting place to be for so many people. And it's probably a busy season for you, right? With a new book out and. All of this newness,  yes, and it's also about making yourself vulnerable because the book is actually quite vulnerable. We had a book launch in Dublin, a lot of my friends and people are swim with and run with,  were their lovely loyal friends and I thought, I don't know if they're going to read this. I'm not sure that this is their message. But I thought, look, it's vulnerable. It's when we're being vulnerable, we're being authentic. That's what the  autistic children showed me. They are so vulnerable. 

They're so out there. They're so misjudged and judged.  But it's the power of the simplicity and the vulnerability that makes them such powerful teachers. So, it's when we're getting vulnerable that actually we're getting real and we're getting really helpful.  That storm, being a little sapling in a storm. 

Think of all the potential it has and all the stuff it's having to cope with.  So good. Okay. Well, clearly we know you breathe on a regular basis and you said you meditate. Do you have any other regular practices that help you to live your best well tended life? I swim in the sea every day. And that's the Irish Sea just up in Dublin. 

I've got a little tribe of slightly crazy friends I do it with, and then we go for coffee afterwards. I walk, I'm passionate about the Camino so I'm a member of the Camino Society of Ireland. The Camino is a holy walk, a pilgrimage across France and Spain, and I've done two of those. Oh!

One of those in September, October of last year, and I'm planning to do a big one up from Seville in March. And I'm with a friend, we're developing an app to support pilgrims and turn it, turn the whole idea of walking into a walking retreat, a sort of dynamic retreat. Because lots of people want to have a retreat, but they don't necessarily want to go into a monastery and be still.

They want to do their own thing. So we're trying to look at the whole idea of walking and walking pilgrimage as an opportunity for people to have a dynamic retreat and creating an app around that. So I'm very passionate about that. And that's a 42 day walk from Valencia in Southern Spain. Up to Santiago de Compostela,  that's, although it's a huge area, I'm reminded when I was chatting to American friends on the Camino this year, that Spain and Portugal are still only two thirds the size of Texas where you live. 

Yes. It is. Yeah. I'm actually, and I'm in the middle of Texas almost. And so it's almost, it's it's, I think it's eight hours To the border one way and eight hours to the border the other way. So it can sometimes take a whole day to get across. Yeah, that's how it's going to end around.

Yes. No. Oh my gosh, that's so good. Okay. So the final part is based off of my journaling practice. We talked about that. That's my, this is my breath work in the morning. And part of my practice is based off a quote that said, Mary hadn't noticed it before, but she looked up and saw it and I believe that we're all rushing so fast.

And I'm a journalist, and we are missing the joy, goodness and growth that is planted around us every single day. And so in my journal practice, I spot that and write it down. To a make a note that it happened, but also to remind my heart that it's always there. So even in the middle of the storms, I know that I can open my eyes and be aware and see that there is joy, goodness and growth planted there because it's always been there.

And so I'm asking all my guests. Where do you spot joy? Where have you spotted joy lately? 

 I was in Spain. I just come back from Spain yesterday and I was in a barber's shop. I always, when I'm abroad, I always like to get my hair cut. It's a sort of nice way of interacting with people. You have sort of 20 minutes together.  And this barber shop  owner was just lovely.

And he made me a coffee and started chatting. And I don't have very good Spanish.  But I just sensed that this was someone who was coming from his heart, and I thought, I'm just going to sit here and breathe, and let it all happen.  And just surrender to his skill and his kindness. It was just the most beautiful experience.

It was just joyous, actually. We weren't talking together. He was just beautiful. really happy to be doing what he does and his flow. And I was just happy to let that happen to me and to receive that. Because sometimes I think if we were a giver, receiving can be difficult.  So that kind of came from an awareness of my breath.

And this was a holy moment, actually, this time in a barbershop in Alicante two days ago. was a holy moment.  Wow.  So good. All right. So goodness is a little bit deeper. Goodness is something that you would probably list a gratitude journal. But what bits of goodness are you feeling grateful for these days? 

I think I'm grateful. I'm profoundly  grateful for the community and the love that surrounds me. The community of breath workers that I'm a member of in America and have some wonderful American friends and my friends and family here in Dublin. And the constant connection with them,

The real, our real abundance and our real richness is in our  personal relationships. 100%. 100%.  One of the things I have to always remind myself is just, people of a project. I am a doer and so, the real good stuff is one on one with people. So good.

All right. Last question is about growth and growth is always a harder thing to spot because it happens in tiny little shoots, right? But where are you spotting growth these days in your life? 

I think it's in  a greater  acceptance of my vulnerability and a greater.  admittance of it, an ability to say, well, I'm not sure about this, or I don't know the answer, or  this is my story, and this is where I've messed up.  And I think that in doing that's authentic.  And I probably spent the first half of my life hiding that stuff. 

And I got in touch with it more now, and I'm more prepared to share it because perhaps I'm feeling a bit more secure.  Yeah.  So good. So good. Michael, thank you so much for coming on today. This has been  so lovely. I just, I can't even tell people how they can find you and follow you and buy your book.

Yeah, I'm obviously there's a book, Just One Conscious Breath, which is available on amazon. com. So you can still get a copy. Good copy, I think hurry for Christmas. I have a website  pilgrimbreath. org. You can contact me there and I can do breathwork sessions with people in America on Zoom.

I have an Instagram, justoneconsciousbreath.  You won't be surprised to hear I'm not brilliant at all this stuff, all this sort of,  but the book has come from my heart. So I would say, get a copy of the book, start there. And I'd love to hear from you if you've got any feedback and if you're interested in Breathwork sessions, definitely sign up.

Oh, and on, on our, my website.  PilgrimBreath. org, we're introducing a coherence breathing, a free coherence breathing exercise,  which is based on the Camino, the French Camino, which I did. So that's available for anybody who wants to sign up. That is so exciting. Oh my goodness. Thank you to everyone who's been listening to this podcast. 

I sincerely hope that this episode has inspired you today to  surrender to the eight seconds and eight times an hour of one conscious breath in order to live out your best well tended life.  So until next time, y'all blessings and blooms. Thank you, Michael.  Thank you. It's been a joy.

 Oh, my goodness. Y'all, that was so good.  Don't forget to check the show notes for my favorite heart tap moments from this episode.  What is a heart tap? Well, whenever I read, listen to a podcast or watch a speaker, I'm always on the lookout for those like head bob heart tap and aha moments. You know what I'm talking about?

These are the things that cause your head to Bob and agreement, your heart to make that tap moment. When a much needed word of wisdom comes along or your soul to scream, ah ha  That was the word I was looking for. So for each episode I like to share a few of my heart taps in the show notes with you, but I'm curious.

What are they? Are your heart tap moments from today's episode,  run on over and direct message me your favorite moments, questions, heart taps, and more over at Instagram or Facebook  today.  And if you were inspired by this episode or maybe learn something new, make sure to share this show with a friend or post about it in your stories. 

Finally, Could you do one more favor for me today? Will you take a minute and hop on over to Apple podcast and leave a kind and thoughtful review for the Well Tended Life podcast?  You see, this is how people find us. And every positive review helps to unlock the door for someone else to get in on the magic of life tending too. 

Thank you again for listening and being a part of this Well Tended Life community. And until next time, y'all blessings and blooms.