Hello and welcome to this talk.
It has come to our realization that many of you probably don't know who Blue River Breathwork is and so this will be one of two tracks that'll help answer that question.
And so first of all my name is Alex and I'm 50% of Blue River Breathwork.
I co-facilitate and co-founded this project with my wife Deegan and you'll hear more about her story in the next track.
And so I'd like to share just a couple of stories that kind of paints a little bit of the picture of my relationship to breathwork,
Breathing,
And my breath in general.
Some of these stories maybe you can relate to,
Others maybe not so much.
Either way I hope there is some connection that we can have in sharing these stories and listening to them.
And what I would first like to share is my early life and its relationship to breathing.
From an infant all the way until I was a young adult in college,
I had a host of respiratory issues from asthma,
Bronchitis,
Pneumonia,
Panic attacks,
And even respiratory viruses when I was less than one years old.
And my parents and caretakers when these episodes would emerge didn't have the knowledge or the resources to help and empower my breathing without the use of an inhaler or other medical modalities.
Sometimes when these asthma attacks or hyperventilation spasms would occur,
What I know now is that the way that we approached it was the exact opposite way of how I would approach it or coach it now.
So I feel very inspired and also responsible to bring the fundamentals of healthy daily breathing,
Tools,
Techniques,
And resources to people that have a loved one or have themselves a respiratory issue.
There's a lot that we can do to significantly improve our breathing by breathing a certain way and we don't have to be 100% reliant on the medical system.
Although those do have their place and they do work in a lot of circumstances.
But upon reflection,
Especially in my years as a teenager,
What I probably needed most was a person who knew the fundamentals of healthy daily breathing and a few tools and techniques to help my nervous system and my respiratory system find its natural way back to coherence and stability.
Which brings me to when I first discovered breathwork and when I discovered breathwork,
This was significantly after those respiratory-issued years and I was about 25 years old and some of you might know the name Wim Hof.
As a young male who was interested in athletics and sports performance,
It was inevitable that Wim Hof or Wim Hof Breathing would show up in my YouTube algorithm and I was just so inspired by his enthusiasm for breathing that I just had to try what he was talking about.
And I went to a YouTube video,
Which is not what I would really recommend for most people to use for their first breathing experience,
But it is what I used and I'm very grateful for it.
And in that process was the first time in a long time that I really felt connected to my breath.
The way I like to describe it is that the lights turned back on in my life.
It was a very simple switch just like a light switch that was currently off and then it was flipped on and when that turned on I felt connected to my body.
I felt connected to my emotions and that was a significant turning point for me that single experience when I kind of went from being an atheist to believing in something again.
Something that was beyond me that was beyond the mind and so it was in that single breathwork experience that things really shifted back into place for me.
And during that same time I was getting really excited about what I experienced.
So excited that I went on to hire a series of personal breath coaches and there was one particular time when I was hosting a company retreat.
During this time I was a sales manager for a very fast growing company and this was our kickoff the year retreat and we had just hired dozens of new people and we were all in the north woods of Wisconsin which is a beautiful place.
But then I had to give this kind of motivational speech in an intimate retreat sort of setting but also with the hoorah of the corporate world and I was really nervous for this.
I prepared,
I knew my talking points but still if you've ever done public speaking before which I'm sure you have there was still these jitters that I couldn't shake off no matter how prepared I was.
Well because I was an organizer of this event I had a few strings that I could personally pull and I decided to bring in one of my personal breath coaches with me to the retreat so he hung out with us and that was a fantastic experience.
But before I went on stage I went with him just into a back room and he guided me through some breathing techniques to get my mind,
Body,
Spirit prepared to deliver the speech and we did that it only took a few minutes.
I went on stage and totally crushed it.
It really felt like having a personal breathing coach was a secret superpower that I had for many things in my life not just the quality of my health but the quality of me being a leader,
The quality of me being a person.
And so I hope these three stories had some resonance with you.
I would love to hear if they do and this is just a little bit about what I'm bringing to the table with when I'm creating a track for you to listen to here on Insight Timer and when we do our breathing experiences online or in person.
So thank you very much for listening.
Sending a lot of gratitude to you and the Insight Timer team and I can't wait for you to hear Deegan's story.
Until then,
Happy breathing.
