Oliver James On Breath & Body Work Practices

Oliver James discusses body-led psychotherapy and how it connects breath and movement. He also shares the many benefits of breath and bodywork practices and how to incorporate such practices into your life.

Transcript

Breath work can be a little bit disturbing because you'll have experienced this yourself.

You're really changing body chemistry and very quickly.

I mean,

We're talking alkalining your blood to a certain degree within 20,

30 seconds.

Welcome to the one you feed.

Throughout time,

Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.

Thoughts like garbage in,

Garbage out,

Or you are what you think ring true.

And yet for many of us,

Our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.

We tend toward negativity,

Self-pity,

Jealousy,

Or fear.

We see what we don't have instead of what we do.

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.

But it's not just about thinking.

Our actions matter.

It takes conscious,

Consistent,

And creative effort to make a life worth living.

This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction.

How they feed their good wolf.

Thanks for joining us.

Our guest on this episode is Oliver James.

He's a body-led psychotherapist and breath worker known for integrating breath,

Movement,

And body work to support personal transformation and self-exploration.

Today Eric and Oliver discuss his book,

21 Breaths.

Hi Ollie,

Welcome to the show.

Hey Eric,

How are you doing?

I am excited to have you on.

We're going to be discussing your book called 21 Breaths.

And you've done a lot of study on breath work,

Which is an area I'm really interested in.

And so we're going to get into that in a minute,

But let's start like we always do with the parable.

In the parable,

There's a grandparent who's talking with a grandchild and they say,

In life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.

One is a good wolf,

Which represents things like kindness and bravery and love.

And the other is a bad wolf,

Which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.

And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at their grandparents and says,

Well,

Which one wins?

And the grandparent says,

The one you feed.

So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

So I have loved listening.

I've listened to quite a few of your podcasts and really enjoyed them.

And I was really looking forward to this question.

I'm not a big fan of it,

Actually.

More and more people are saying that.

But it doesn't sort of take away from it.

I think it's a beautiful parable.

But from my own point of view,

I think.

.

.

Are you open to roleplay for a moment?

So I'm wondering if you can say the final part of it again.

And if it's okay,

I want to play the kid.

Is that all right?

Because I think this parable is missing something.

All right.

So the grandparent says there's a bad wolf,

Which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.

And then the granddad obviously says,

Who wins?

And it's the one you feed.

The one who wins is the one you feed.

So as the kid,

I would say,

It sounds like the bad wolf is going to be incredibly hungry.

But isn't it dangerous to have a hungry wolf?

And herein lies the issue for me that I think 100,

Maybe a few thousand years ago,

The good and the bad was incredibly important for us as humanity just to work out some morality and kindness and how to treat human beings.

But sort of roll on to where we are today.

I think the black and the white is really hurting us to sort of be so fixed with it.

Of course,

Good is important,

Bad.

Let's face it,

Let's challenge it.

But when it comes to feeding one over the other,

My experience as a psychotherapist and religious as a person,

If I just keep feeding this good part of myself,

At some point I'm human,

I'm going to fall down.

And I worry for people.

I worry for us if we are unable to handle those darker moments because they will happen.

They absolutely do.

We all trip up.

We all fall.

We have greed.

We're cruel.

And anyone that thinks they're not,

I mean,

That's wonderful for you.

But from my own perspective,

I'm interested when that sort of shadow self,

The dark side,

There's so much energy there that we can use.

And in my own work,

We use it's body-led psychotherapy.

So if someone's sort of all light and good,

That's wonderful.

But often you never get to the real crux of the situation.

You can see it in their body.

You can see it in their posture.

So just getting them to breathe and move in a particular way.

And suddenly this kind of darkness comes out and it's laughter and it's growling and it's these incredible qualities that have energy,

Have sustenance in it.

And we can use it.

We can use that energy for good.

So I would just say,

I would be very mindful of the black and white.

Where's the gray?

And when that dark side comes out,

Why is it there?

What do you know about it?

How are you going to handle it?

And also how do you prevent yourself being pulled apart by it?

Yeah,

That's a great response.

Isn't a hungry wolf dangerous?

And it's interesting because I am such a middle way kind of guy.

It's interesting that I start a show off with a parable that is sort of in some ways black and white.

You know,

I always sort of return to just the idea of choice,

The direction we turn with choice.

But I am interested in what you said there about,

I don't have it exactly right.

A body led psychotherapist.

Body led psychotherapy.

Tell me about that.

Okay,

So I think most people are quite familiar with psychotherapy or talk based therapy.

You go to a therapist for a particular reason.

People tend to go when something's very challenging in their life.

And you would talk about the issue and share what's going on,

Explore consciousness through predominantly speaking,

Certain things are changing a little bit.

So in my own work,

And or I guess any body led psychotherapist,

We are very interested in what people have to say.

But we're also interested in the conversation the body has to say,

There's a saying that we often talk about that the body doesn't lie.

So someone can say whatever they would like to say.

And in session,

Often you'll find that the gift of a therapist is to spot where someone has said something that may be not authentic to themselves.

As a body led psychotherapist,

It's really simple.

You can read it in their posture,

In what their eyes are doing,

How their face is flickering,

How their tissue colors or discolors,

It all kind of shines there.

And it's like,

Oh really?

So that's what you feel.

That is not what your body is saying.

Let's see what that would like to do.

And so you can use breath,

Posture,

Mirroring,

All of this,

Just start moving the body and suddenly a different side normally comes through something that has that authenticity.

And you know,

Things like trauma,

Often the speaking about it can set things off or never really touches it.

But using really gentle movements,

Breathing again,

But also maybe some touch like a greed and trustful touch just sort of slows the whole nervous system,

Every part of the body down.

And beautiful things can happen from that place.

So with body led psychotherapy,

One level of it is looking for where what the person is saying is not matching what's happening in their body.

And it also sounds to me like you're using,

As you said,

Breath,

Touch different things to try and get clients to be able to access places that the conscious mind is not able to go.

Absolutely not connecting with,

Avoiding,

Blocked to,

And tissue holds many of those blocks.

So you can just do a very easy movement,

Moving the arms,

Moving the spine,

All of that and slowly freeze up.

You can really tell if someone's very rigid and tight in their thinking,

You hear it and how they think and express themselves.

Often that tightness and rigidity is all in the body,

Maybe in the neck,

Maybe in part of the spine,

And if you watch someone move,

You can see these tightnesses.

It's something that you sort of want to be gentle with.

It also requires a lot of trust and a lot of agreement.

So I wouldn't go around reading everyone at the bus stop,

For example,

And being like,

Oh my goodness,

What's that about?

But at the same time,

I did it in the beginning when I was training and it was actually tiring and painful to do it.

I bet.

So yes,

You're getting permission and then sort of observing and just taking someone in.

And also there's a lot of in therapy,

There's always relationship.

So that comes out in body-led psychotherapy as well.

Placing yourself in the first session,

Just even walking up to someone,

Standing back,

Finding out where they're most comfortable with you and why.

Sort of turning the body,

Getting them to move around and suddenly you find them really energized.

Like,

Oh,

I love you being literally five meters away.

That is comfortable for me.

And some people you can walk right into them and sort of smack chests and then you're like,

Wow.

Okay.

So maybe no boundaries at all.

Yeah.

And they're like,

Yes,

It's fine.

I think it's interesting to look at the places these modalities crossover.

You know,

In my own life,

I've done a lot of different practices of all different kinds over the years,

But they've primarily been sort of siloed.

I can see the connections between them,

But they're not actually happening at the same time.

So,

You know,

I've been to therapy a lot and it's sitting there talking,

You know,

I've done an awful lot of meditation and it's sitting there quietly.

You know,

I've done breathing,

But it's just breathing.

One of the things that I noticed in your book that I thought was interesting was there's certainly breathing happening,

But there's a fair amount of movement happening as well.

I did notice right away a crossover there,

You know,

Between breath and movement.

And it sounds like,

You know,

In your private work you do with people,

You're layering psychotherapy even on top of that foundation.

Yes.

I was going to say,

Well,

Listen,

We're going to have to do a session sometime because you've done breath work and it was just breathing for me that it's very rarely just breathing.

And I got a little bit confused by my working identity.

A few years ago,

I was a Pilates teacher and then I noticed things coming out with clients.

I could see something wasn't right with their body.

And also suddenly they started sharing a lot with me,

Sharing about their private lives.

And I remember my teacher at the time saying,

You are not a therapist,

Don't get involved.

And I suddenly realized,

Wait,

But what if that is going to be helpful for someone?

So then I started training as a body-led psychotherapist and it just opened up a whole new world.

For me,

It's not separating breath from psychotherapy,

From body work.

It's bringing it all in.

And sometimes you need that segregation because to do breathing could be very intense.

You can read it in the body.

In fact,

If someone has in particular what we call a very young wounding.

So perhaps something happened inside the womb or maybe the first year,

If they had no words at the time when that trauma happened,

It can be very difficult to talk about that.

So you might go into something different.

You might lie them down and there's no words in this place.

Just let them make sounds and movements.

And suddenly stuff comes out that was very unexpected.

And so sometimes breath work can be a little bit disturbing because you'll have experienced this yourself.

You're really changing body chemistry and very quickly.

I mean,

We're talking alkalining your blood to a certain degree within 20,

30 seconds.

And as that happens,

It has incredible impact.

But for some people,

That impact can be quite stressful.

It can be quite anxiety making and it feels like they're out of control.

And that's a brilliant place to be if you're OK to go there.

But if you're not,

Then it's it can be shocking.

So you just referenced how powerful breath work can be and how it can happen quickly.

And you and I sort of started wandering into this territory before the show and we paused so we could do it here.

And so let's wander in there now.

My question to you is this.

So you did I think you called it days of breathing,

Which went on a long time where like all you did was you immersed yourself deeply in breath work.

And it has this very transformative effect.

And you then talk about breath work very glowingly and meditation people go on,

You know,

Month long retreats and then they talk about meditation very glowingly.

I'm one,

Right?

My question is this,

Because I've been thinking about this a lot lately,

Is that I think for a lot of people,

What ends up happening is they're not in a position where they can do days of breathing.

They're going to do 15 or 20 minutes a day of breathing.

They're going to do 15 or 20 minutes a day of meditation.

And this happened to me over the years as well at different points.

So I do that.

And I have an experience that is fairly mundane.

And I hear these other people talking about this stuff as if it is completely life changing.

And I go,

Well,

Geez,

I did it,

You know,

Yesterday and today,

And it's not life changing.

They're saying it is either a I'm doing it wrong,

Or B,

It's not the right thing for me.

And I don't worry about this as meditation in our culture.

I think we have way oversold the benefits of mindfulness.

I think mindfulness is hugely beneficial.

Don't get me wrong,

It's foundational to all the healing that's happened in my life.

And yet,

I think sometimes we oversell it.

And as I was reading your book,

I was thinking about a couple things because you're actually pretty good at talking about this in the book about saying like,

Hey,

The first few times you do this,

You may not have a lot happen.

You may need to stick with this a little bit,

But just respond to kind of that whole long question slash non question.

Yeah,

That's a huge question.

I think where I would go with this is I'm someone who started in some form of self work,

Yoga,

Breathing from quite young,

Probably about sort of 1415.

And only because my mom was doing it,

She was doing Pilates,

I thought it looked strange,

And I was laughing at her.

And she's like,

Try it.

And she was doing roll ups with her feet under the bed and stuff.

And I was laughing my head off as I was doing this,

Nothing,

Roll on to like 18,

Did my first yoga class really hated it,

Nothing,

Come on to like 22,

Did another yoga class,

Hurt my wrists hurt my neck,

Hated it.

And so this kind of went on and on and on.

And what I would say about it is,

I believe there is an element of finding it experiencing what you need to experience when you're ready.

And so if something's feeling mundane,

Let it be mundane.

Like how are you Eric with the mundane?

Do you need a lot of excitement in your life?

Do you need big breakthroughs for you to continue doing something?

Or would you be okay,

Cleaning a toilet and getting it spic and span and just feeling absolutely rewarded from connecting with something and making a space that someone else and everyone else can enjoy.

My point being that when it comes to any practice,

Find the one that you enjoy.

I think that's really important.

If you're not enjoying it,

I wouldn't say stop pause,

Find something that you could enjoy.

And from my own perspective,

And I talked about this in the book a little bit,

But I'm also writing another book from a body led psychotherapy point of view,

I would say,

I'm aware practitioners may try and shoot me down.

And so I'm open to bring it on.

But you can look at someone's physicality and I feel I would be able to say,

Yeah,

You know what?

Mindfulness is going to be boring for you.

Your system needs something a bit more intense.

Go and do Wim Hof.

That is going to attract your attention,

Calm that very spinning mind of yours.

And suddenly you will find that place from there.

You'll be able to work towards the more subtle forms of meditation.

And then there's another system that I'd look at and I'd be like,

Wow,

Okay,

A lot of startle in here.

If they went and did a Wim Hof session,

They would be distraught.

I have not experienced it within a large group,

But I imagine people might leave the room,

Not come back after lunch.

If that's you,

Then don't worry,

Your system is just too sensitive.

Go to the more subtle,

Go to the mundane as Eric described,

Because your system can handle that.

And within that is the richness for you.

And then from there you can build and what we call build your container,

Sort of toughen it up.

And through physical gentle work,

You can get more fierce,

Stronger until you can handle the really intense stuff.

So if something happens,

Particularly,

I know in breath work,

And Kundalini in particular,

If you've experienced Kundalini,

You get people talking about having Kundalini psychosis.

And it really is just that their system has exploded somewhere within the energetic structure.

And we sort of need to plug that come back in again,

Calm it down.

You went too quickly for yourself.

I don't know if that explains the question,

But we're all different.

So we all need different things.

So many things you said there,

I think the last being really important.

We're all different.

We need different things.

I beat my head against the wall of birth meditation unsuccessfully for a long time.

It was pre-internet,

Just basic following your breath.

You know,

Like basic.

You really chose the hard one.

I did.

But it was interesting because if you go back,

We're talking 80s,

90s,

Right?

There's no internet.

There aren't teachers on every corner.

There's nowhere to go.

And I'm drawn to certain Buddhist thinkers,

The way that they think and they explain.

I'm like,

Yes,

Yes,

Yes.

Like finally I found a philosophical system that resonates with me and they're saying,

Sit quietly and do this type of meditation for 30 minutes.

And so I try years of,

Of on again,

Off again,

On again,

Off again.

And there were several things that helped me break through that.

One was starting really small,

Just being like,

All right,

I'm going to do way less of it.

But the other was that I discovered sound meditation.

I discovered that what I would do instead is just listen and I would go outside and my object just became sound and all of a sudden it changed.

And then to your point,

As I developed some concentration that way,

Then as I went back into breath meditation,

I went,

Oh,

Okay,

I'm getting a little bit more traction here because I was able to develop concentration in a way that was more suitable for me.

You know?

And so I think had I tried to learn all this in today's day and age,

I probably would have come across that a lot more quickly.

It just was a different time when I was trying to learn this stuff in 1988.

Yeah,

I think that's something that I hear a lot.

I remember going to a psychotherapeutic community in Holland.

That's where I trained.

And when I first arrived,

I was like,

Was like 26,

27.

And I was young in the community.

And I could see people who was in their 60s and 65s.

We were chatting and they're like,

I wish that I had found this when I was 26 because my whole life would have been different.

And I was like,

I just felt so grateful at the time.

Roll on a few years and maybe felt a little bit smug about it.

Oh,

Yes,

How developed am I to be here at 26?

But then suddenly 18 year olds were turning up and I was like,

Oh my goodness.

And I found myself stopping,

Almost saying to them,

You know,

I wish I found this when I was your age.

And it's like,

You know what,

It's not about wishing anything different to what I have been doing,

Trusting.

And I think for those people that had to really do the research and turn up at that club on 56th Street and really put the effort in there was beauty in that.

And you found it when you found it.

And for those that are sort of speeding through it at the moment,

It's amazing what's possible.

But also,

Maybe you might miss a little bit of that effort and finding,

You know,

Things are a bit difficult and you've got to claim it for yourself.

There's something there.

Yeah,

You know,

Some of us who were around way before,

You know,

Us old people,

You know,

I often think about like,

If you wanted to hear a song,

You had to go to the record store.

And often they wouldn't even have the record because I was always into,

You know,

Odd music.

And so I'd go to the record store.

And they'd be like,

Well,

We can order it and it can be here in four weeks.

And so when I started realizing like,

The first time I don't know whether it was Spotify or Napster,

Whatever it was,

When I was like,

Wait a minute,

I can listen to nearly any song in the world like that.

I was like,

This is the greatest thing that ever happened.

And I still generally feel that way.

But there was something to the effort,

The anticipation and the slowness with which you would engage in that piece of work.

As you describe it,

I'm like,

You know what I think the word is,

Is patience.

Yeah,

It's something that has to be learned.

And there's many ways of learning it.

And one is going to record store and needing to wait four weeks for your record.

In today's standards,

That would not work.

They would be uproar,

Someone would go to another provider,

And they would want it within 24 hours.

And,

You know,

If that's you as a person,

It's like,

Ooh,

That sounds juicy to work on.

Yeah.

Well,

I do think it is interesting to think about if we all sort of collectively agree,

Which I think most thoughtful people do collectively agree,

Like,

All right,

Things are happening all together too fast,

Right?

There's too much coming at us.

There's too much information coming in.

I do think a question that we all have to ask ourselves is what ways and in what places are we going to choose to slow that flow down a little bit,

So that we are able to engage more deeply with things.

So the benefit of today's world is I don't think somebody would spend 15 years trying the wrong type of meditation for them.

Because you'd be like,

Well,

There's 50 different practice,

You know,

I can contact 20 different teachers in two minutes.

So I'm not going to just keep doing that.

So that's the positive of where we sit today.

The negative is and I think we see it and I contribute to it by making a podcast like this is a new idea every day,

A new practice every day.

It's interesting because I really liked the way you said if you're not enjoying the practice,

Don't stop but pause and think a little bit about it.

And I really like that.

Because there is a certain point with practice where practice becomes practice,

Like you have to show up,

None of us want to show up all the time for anything,

At least no one who's wired like me.

And so there is a certain point where we go,

Okay,

I want to keep with this because I know there's depth here.

I recently went through this with my Zen practice.

And I was like,

Okay,

I've been very deep in the Zen practice.

I've been doing koan work for a while.

And I'm at a point where it feels very dry to me.

And I feel really interested over here,

Like I really called over here.

And I have a spiritual director and we talked you know about it like and he was like,

I think this is just the dry period,

The desert,

You've got to go through it.

And that's not what I chose to do.

I chose to ignore my spiritual director's advice,

Because I have a long standing general feeling which is trust my curiosity,

Trust my enthusiasms.

When I started Zen,

I said,

I'm going to commit for x amount of time knowing my tendency and I was way,

Way past that original commitment.

And so I went,

I'm going to trust my curiosity this time.

But I think that's an ongoing question for all of us as we do this type of work is where do we dig in deeper where we are?

And where do we explore more widely?

How do you think about that in your own life?

For me,

It's where there's discomfort,

Discomfort in my body,

Then I'm to explore it rather than say ignore it.

And if there's discomfort in a conversation,

If I find myself triggered,

Old behaviors coming through,

You know,

I've had a lot of psychotherapy,

So I feel very fortunate to know what they are.

It doesn't necessarily help my partner,

Or my friends and family.

But at the same time,

I can spot it relatively quickly.

That to me is where there's interest.

And there's a little bit of juice to explore.

So that I would take to my therapist or take into a practice,

A self practice,

Listening to you,

The word that came to mind was impulse,

Like follow your impulse,

I think that's really important.

And in there,

There's an ability to gain confidence of self,

You know,

Working out what you need to do.

And also,

There is a place where I remember doing the passion.

I don't know if you've done those.

It's like 11 day silent retreat,

And loved it for the first three days,

Day four and five hated it,

Wanted to leave.

And sort of confusing one,

I knew I wasn't going to go,

But allow myself to think,

Oh,

How nice it'd be just to get in my car and drive away.

And that's when I was like,

Wow,

Here is now the work begins.

Yes,

Yes.

So welcome.

Yeah,

It was stunning.

You have to get to that point.

And you talk of the desert,

And the desert can seem so lacking in any signposts or anything.

So for me,

I find maybe the intensity is a bit easier to work with.

That's the discomfort,

I guess little discomfort in the desert beyond boredom.

There's discomfort there as well.

It just takes a bit longer to go through.

I've talked about this before that my most prominent situation in life is a I've talked about depression and my depression for me when it feels like it's around is mostly a complete barrenness.

It's not a sadness.

I can work with sadness,

I can work with anger.

There's lots of things like I feel like I've got some skills.

Working with nothing is harder.

And I think that's kind of what you were just saying,

Right?

How do you engage with that sort of complete disconnection or emptiness?

It's a numbness.

Yeah.

So I mean,

With clients,

There are clients that I'm working with right now,

They're in that place.

And what I say to them is to make friends with it.

I think it's kind of almost a cop out to say that.

But what I mean by in terms of make friends with it is within that numbness is a protection.

And there's something that your consciousness doesn't feel is ready,

Or it's blocking it in some way.

So finding peace with that is a very beautiful key to open that door.

For as long as you're judging it,

Then that is the bind that is holding you back from the numbness.

Whereas if you're just like,

Okay,

I'm numb,

And rather than be like,

Damn it,

I'm numb.

I don't know what do I need to do?

Really,

That is the same trauma that creates the numbness,

The gentleness.

I like your affirmation of I will do this for this period of time.

They were the numbness for five days,

10 days a year,

Whatever it is you decide,

Stay with it.

And then afterwards,

Explore something different.

Yep.

Yeah.

So one thing I know,

Well,

All right,

Not turn this into a personal therapy session in any way.

But these are the sort of questions that I think lots of listeners have.

Also,

One of the things with my depression is I've alternated between two views with it.

And one view is sort of similar to what you said,

I just sort of welcome it.

And I go,

You know what,

It feels like it rolled into town.

I don't know why.

There's nothing here.

The analogy I've often made is it feels like an emotional flu.

It just feels like I got sick.

I don't know why.

I check,

Am I taking care of myself?

Am I doing all the things I know how to do?

And you know what,

I'm not going to make a big fuss out of this.

And a few days later,

It kind of just rolls out of town,

Which it does.

Yeah.

So that's one approach that has served me pretty well.

The other view,

Though,

Is more the view of what you just said,

Which is,

Is there something that unwilling to feel that is causing this to recur and come back?

And so should I be digging into it in some way versus just sort of like,

You know what,

Relax,

Let it come,

Let it go.

Okay.

So I think the question I would ask is,

Where is your aliveness blocked when it happens?

Where is it that life is restricted,

Restrains and perhaps it's with relationships,

Perhaps it's with food,

Either we withhold from it or use it too much.

Maybe it's with substance use.

And I think it's knowing the parts of you that are compensating,

Spotting them,

You may need someone to help you spot them if you haven't spotted them already.

And it's always helpful to speak to someone because yes,

You may know the two or three,

But there might be another one that's there and you just didn't know that it was an issue.

If there is a compensation,

That's where I would dig.

Whereas the numbness itself,

I don't know that finding peace with it is,

In my experience,

More healing because you don't judge it.

And suddenly you're like,

Oh,

It's just how it is.

I love just sort of rolling in and rolling out again.

So it's almost like,

Let it roll in,

Let it roll out.

But during that time,

How are you compensating?

And it would be within those compensations that I would unpack with someone.

And it's like,

Oh,

You're pulling at your hair at the moment.

For the rest of the session today,

Let's not pull your hair.

See what happens.

And you'll see the hand go to the hair.

Like some people pull that eyebrow,

For example,

And you'll see the hand go and they're like,

Oh my God,

It's happening.

But then that opens up what it is that the numbness might be there to protect.

Something you said there triggered a question that I wanted to ask you about breathwork.

But you led me into it,

Which is a question about breathing.

In the book,

You start off with some tests,

Ways of testing how well you're breathing.

And I've done versions of those tests.

They all make sense to me.

Here's the question,

Though,

That arose for me as I looked at those.

And as I think about breathing,

As I thought about breathing more broadly.

When I think about breathing,

I know how to do it correctly.

You know,

I've done enough of these interviews.

I've done enough of it.

I mean,

I know how to breathe correctly when I think of it.

It's the thinking of it.

It's the being conscious of it.

And I think that this is a problem far more fundamental than breathing.

I think this is a fundamental problem that most of us face,

Which is that we know a lot of the ways to respond wisely and skillfully to life.

We might have practices,

We might have tools.

We've got a lot of things.

It's just that the pace of life and the busyness of life makes it very difficult for us to remember to check how my breathing.

And I'm curious if you have any thoughts on how in the midst of a busy life to touch base more often like,

Okay,

How am I breathing?

You know,

Because the 20 minutes that I practice breathing is great.

It's good,

Certainly better than doing nothing.

But then there's still 23 hours and 40 minutes that I'm breathing in whatever my habitual pattern is.

Okay,

So listen,

I think that is the beauty of breath work over perhaps almost any modality.

You are breathing all the time.

You sure are.

And your body has been breathing from since not only the moment you were born,

But in essence,

The fetus has something called breathing movements,

It practices breathing movements in the womb,

And it's aspirating the fluid in the womb and then sort of pushing it out again and that's preparing the lungs.

So this sort of mechanism is,

Is expanding and contracting.

So this thing is going all the time.

So the first thing I would say is,

And I talk about it in the book,

Many people think,

Oh,

I don't know breath for me.

And I sort of smile a little bit because I'm like,

Oh,

Did you know you're breathing?

So you think breathing or breath work isn't kind of important to you doing it.

And you're doing it because you are yawning,

Sighing,

You're holding your breath during a stressful moment,

You're hyperventilating during exercise,

You're already doing it.

So the first thing I would say is,

Rather than worry about connecting with breath every second of every moment that comes with time.

And that comes into that days of breath where you I've chosen seven days,

10 days,

A year of just sort of solid breathing.

That's what I want to do myself at the moment we were speaking at the beginning,

I'm a little bit out of sync with breathing and with self care,

Because I'm doing a very sort of human project of renovating my house and it's very difficult.

It's dusty.

My body doesn't like breathing in it.

I'm wearing face masks a lot.

So for me,

Rather than sort of do the breath work,

I've just sort of let it go.

And I find myself in the middle of the night waking up spinning mind.

And I'm back into some very interesting stress,

Very interesting in a voice that I have not heard in a really long time.

And it's painful and it's traumatic.

What's happening in the morning?

I'm like,

I know better than this.

I know what to do to calm those voices to come back to myself.

Why am I not doing it?

I'm just so grateful for this period of time because I feel more compassion and more sort of like understanding when someone says,

But I don't know how do I sort of come into that breath when I need it?

And it's kind of like,

Relax into it.

You'll know when you need it and you'll practice it when you can.

And at the same time for myself,

When I wake up at three in the morning and my mind is spinning,

Then I guess it's a sort of familiar sensation.

I'm there again.

It's happened.

And I will take a big breath,

Exhale.

And there's a breath in the book that's really good for sleep.

I will begin it.

And suddenly I'm like,

Oh,

Thank goodness for that.

And then suddenly without knowing it,

Mind spinning,

Spinning,

Spinning.

And I'm like,

I guess it's just noticing the sensation that is the discomfort.

I'm like,

Oh my goodness,

I'm tensing my stomach.

Let it go.

I've forgotten to breathe again.

It's knowing your body,

Knowing what it feels like when that darkness hits.

Yeah,

You said that earlier,

Noticing discomfort and going into it.

I think in this program I teach called Spiritual Habits,

The question I'm trying to answer is the one I just sort of posed a little bit,

Which is like,

How do we bring this into more of the moments of our lives?

And like you just said,

I feel like the most powerful trigger,

We can have triggers like remind me,

Like my phone reminds me.

But if my own internal discomfort can start to become a trigger in internal family systems,

I think they call it a trailhead.

If I can use that to sort of catch my attention and go,

Oh,

Wait,

Now I can do something with this.

You know,

It's sort of an awareness based trigger,

Which we all have mostly for the negative,

Right?

We're not aware.

We have the emotional trigger.

There's no awareness to it,

Though.

It just it's like emotion and response.

And it's happening at almost,

I don't know if I'd say subconscious level,

But it's happening outside of like,

We're not really aware it's happening.

And so I think to your point,

The more we can sort of recognize like,

Oh,

Okay,

Yep,

Tension,

Discomfort,

Suffering,

Racing mind,

Like,

Okay,

It's a chance to practice.

Yeah,

It's a chance to practice.

And I think the wonder of it,

And I really noticed it over these last seven months,

Is that I've lost a lot of that electric connection,

The sort of neuro connections that I had developed that was so helpful for me just to feel incredible all the time,

And slowly losing them because I wasn't practicing it,

It made me realize the importance of practice,

And the importance of giving some time each day.

So I'm very aware that I'm like,

Oh,

You know,

You'll find it when when you're ready for it,

Etc.

There is a place to practice and develop the tools that you will need.

And it will just happen.

So I really noticed it when I first started Pilates,

I had a lot of neck and shoulder issues.

And my Pilates teacher put their hands on my shoulders and just said,

Breathe.

And I found my shoulders lifting their hand up,

And they just kept holding it and suddenly my shoulders dropped.

And actually,

Though it felt very nice,

It was unremarkable.

I'm making it sound better than it was.

It was unremarkable.

Where it was remarkable is I then answered my phone,

And I realized my shoulder has lifted,

And it dropped mid while I was on the phone.

And I just burst into tears.

I was like,

Oh my goodness,

There's so much reaction.

And I just didn't know that it was happening.

So finding the signs,

You know,

This is where we do need others to help us.

Yeah,

Others are so helpful.

I just did some Alexander technique lessons.

It's just something I've been curious about and heard about for years.

And I thought,

Well,

I wonder if there's anybody in Columbus doing it.

And sure enough,

There was a guy and I don't know that it's the thing for me.

But I was really struck by the core idea of habits of motion,

These habitual ways in which we move that we are completely aware of.

And like we talk about a lot in mindfulness,

Or,

You know,

Bringing some awareness to the habits of the thought patterns,

It's a really about bringing awareness to the way the body habitually moves.

They've got a phrase for it that I'm missing that says it better than that.

But that was the essence of what I took from it.

I love Alexander technique was one of the first practices I really connected with when I was in a lot of pain,

And I didn't understand it in the beginning,

It was up and down,

Up and down,

Held my neck up and down,

Up and down.

And if there's anyone that practices Alexander technique and going,

Oh my goodness,

This guy's not selling it.

That's what my practitioner did with me.

And it was so boring.

And I sort of hated it.

What was interesting is week three or four,

Suddenly,

Like,

Oh,

My goodness,

I am fighting this guy in the same movements.

I thought don't fight him.

And suddenly things muscles were dropping and releasing.

And I was like,

Wow,

I fight.

I really have so much fight in me.

Yeah,

It's a beautiful practice.

Something else I was struck by in your book,

Because of its absolute absence in most other places,

Which is consistently surprised me.

Because it's sort of an old school technique that I have always found helpful,

But seems to have not made it into the modern mindfulness,

Breath work world very much is this clenching of muscle and relaxing of muscle.

You have a lot of that.

And I've always found that for myself,

I think they used to call it progressive muscle relaxation.

But I've always found that to be a really helpful technique.

Talk to me about why that's seems to be a fairly core part of a lot of these exercises.

Okay,

So it is not a core part in the work I do one to one or in group sessions,

It is a core part if I don't know someone,

And I want to support them to a feel their body,

And be for their muscles just to get a rough idea of what is possible for them,

Whether that be tension because the muscles are completely chilled out and not engaging or tightness because they're walking around like a knot,

The contraction of everything.

Since I wrote this book,

And I am not going to get the opportunity to meet every person that's reading this book,

It's just such an incredibly effective and easy way of someone feeling their body,

Noticing where they are today,

Because it's different depending on the day,

And it's safe compared to other practices that I might do with someone.

So we have groups every Wednesday online,

But also we have live groups in those sessions,

I don't do necessarily,

I do other things,

Things that feel a little bit more embarrassing,

And that if I wrote it in the book,

People would be like,

I'm out of here,

And they would close the book and never continue.

There's a sort of warm up process and that tension and then letting it go.

Everyone gets it and no one,

As far as I'm concerned,

Feels concerned by doing it.

I think I would be a negligent interviewer if I did not wade into what's embarrassing.

Every listener is like,

What is it?

So now I have to ask the question.

When you say things that are more embarrassing,

Give me an example or two.

Shaking?

Yes.

Interestingly,

I do put it in the book.

You do?

But again,

I sort of talk about it as exercise.

So it's shaking and shake as hard as you can until your breath starts getting labored.

And what that is doing,

It's a very subtle way of a releasing tension,

B improving circulation in your whole body,

Because we just know that we're going to be a little bit lacking in that full body blood flow and oxygenated cells.

People aren't moving enough,

Not walking enough,

Not dancing enough,

Whatever it is they're not doing enough,

Have a good shake for three minutes.

And that would be embarrassing.

Another one might be a fast breath practice where you would like,

So my partner came to when we met,

I told him that I ran a breath group and he's like,

What,

What is a breath group?

And I was like,

Come along and have a go.

And anyway,

I had done enough breath groups to really not worry about looking at his face as he was practicing,

But you could see scrunching up and turning around and sort of,

He just wanted to leave.

And after he had the bravery to say,

I didn't like it.

And I thought,

Why didn't you like it?

What didn't you like about it?

And he's like,

Everyone sounded like trains and I couldn't get out of the sound of it.

And he was like,

It was just,

Yeah,

I got stuck on that.

If I wrote that in the book and people begin it,

If that is embarrassing for them,

Then they'll stop it.

And then that breath is lost on them.

But there's some beautiful things you can do that.

Yeah,

That fast breathing practice is one that I find,

I don't know that I,

The word I would use is embarrassing,

But I am more hesitant to do it in my house.

And my partner's totally on board with all this kind of stuff.

And I don't know why there's something about it.

Maybe it's just the noise that it causes.

It's a noisier practice than,

Say,

A 4-7-8 type thing.

So it causes a hesitation.

Yeah.

So without turning this into a session,

And this goes for myself as well,

Where do I make myself small?

Where do I hide myself or put someone else's experience above my own?

Then that would be an interesting question.

So I'm always saying to people in my classes,

I was like,

Oh,

And this,

So I do body tapping.

So that's another one that some people find very embarrassing.

We had one person walk out in the middle of a body tap.

I really wanted to go up to them and just be like,

Please just hold my hand a moment.

I'm not going to body tap with you.

Sam,

Please come and lead the class.

Body tap.

I didn't because everyone,

It was a big sort of high energy body tap class.

And I thought,

You know what,

Just let that person go because I think they'll find this in their own time.

But as I'm doing this,

I'm always planting the seed in everyone.

When you're on the bus,

Body tap,

When you're in Walmart over here with Tesco or Sainsbury's body tap,

Move,

Shake at the milk aisle.

Just do it.

If you feel that tension,

Just take a moment.

Shake and shake and shake and shake and shake,

Breathe.

Everyone's going to stare.

Everyone's going to look and you are healing the world because you're just opening when they see that next,

When they go to a class.

That's what that weirdo was doing.

We just lost 15% of our listeners.

They're like,

Goodbye.

I am not shaking or body tapping at Walmart.

If you logged off already,

You'll definitely want to go into that discomfort.

Let's talk about a practice or two specifically.

And I was wondering if you would share with us geometric breathing.

Beautiful choice.

Well,

It's beautifully drawn out in the book.

Those are very lovely pages in the book.

Tell us about geometric breathing.

So geometric breathing,

I've trademarked that,

Interestingly,

Because when I when I started creating it,

I was like,

Oh my gosh,

This could be huge.

And not that I believe any breath work should be owned by anyone,

But just to sort of name it and what it's about,

I just think it's beautiful.

So sorry to blow my own trumpet there.

But anyway,

What is basically about shapes in looking at a shape and breathing it.

So easy one would be a triangle.

What everyone knows is square breath or box breathing inhale for four,

Hold for four,

Exhale for four,

Hold the breath out for four.

So there is this very clear geometric shape and then a triangle.

Inhale,

Hold,

Exhale.

So I was doing this and I really loved these sort of shaped breaths.

And then within my days of breath,

We're probably going to lose more listeners here.

But basically what started happening was my mind,

It became visual rather than breath.

And I just saw this black line into the distance as I inhaled.

And then it kinked when I held my breath.

And then it kinked when I exhaled and I was like,

All right,

So this is box breathing.

But then I sort of zoomed out and it went to the next one and the square got bigger.

And then the square started turning and then shifting and shifting.

And this geometric shape started forming in my mind.

I like a mandala and I was just blown away by it.

And I thought,

This is a way of breathing.

It's a way of teaching it.

So what's so beautiful about it is the shape starts very small.

It's very easy and practical.

Two counts.

Everyone can,

And then the next one would be three counts,

Four counts.

And then the shapes,

As I sort of describe it,

But they expand and they stretch across the page and then they disappear off the page,

Basically,

With the knowledge that some people can take these shapes and keep going with them.

And I think that's the beauty of geometric breathing,

That you find your level and you can stretch yourself to your absolute boundaries if you would like to.

There's no end to this.

And you can lose yourself with geometric breathing.

I really want to make an app with it,

Actually.

And I just think this opportunity to breathe even sacred geometry,

I mean,

Selling my ideas here,

Putting them out there,

But sort of taking something that has structure and formula and breathing it.

It's beautiful.

And so if we were to practice it,

Like you said,

We might start with when you say two,

You mean breathing for a count of two.

Yeah,

So this is the thing about breathing.

Many of these sort of counted breaths,

It's helpful to see them like a ratio and you'll see people count like one,

Two,

And people get a bit confused that the breath is seconds.

Seconds can be unhelpful,

Particularly if you don't have a clock or a stopwatch or anything and your timing's not right and people are like one,

Two,

Three.

And you see this all the time.

If I hand a breath out in a class,

Everyone's breathing it differently.

And so you sort of want to work with that.

So a count is just a ratio,

Basically.

Yeah.

Do you recommend that you sort of go up,

Up,

Up?

So you know,

I'm doing it for a two count,

A three count,

A four count,

A five count,

Which is giving it the geometric piece and then get to like where your highest level is and stay there?

Or do you sort of ascend and descend?

You can ascend and descend as I talk about in the book.

Go to your level that is maximum for you if it's uncomfortable,

Come down one or two levels.

Stay within the comfort,

But a stretched comfort rather than going to a place that is hurting you or stressing you out.

As soon as your system is stressed with the breath,

You've gone too far.

The breath wasn't designed.

It never wanted to stress you out.

You have stressed yourself out because it's just too much for you.

So just come back a level.

So there's another breath called the dive and that is a breath that gets used by free divers and if you are not careful,

That is a very painful breath because it seems like a test,

A competition with yourself to hold your breath and the free divers,

That's not what they're doing.

They're not trying to get to the point where they're like dying all the time.

The training is to stretch their limits to a comfortable level and then when that happens,

Your body's like,

Got it.

I'm all right.

I'm happy to do this with you.

Whereas if you always go to like,

And you're sort of afterwards,

You've just,

You've blown your fuse a little bit and your body will probably not want to do it next time.

Yeah.

You talk in the book,

There's an exercise in there about as you exercise,

Trying to breathe only through your nose.

Yeah,

Nil by mouth.

I try it when I'm riding that when I'm doing the cycling.

It's an interesting gauge of fitness is,

You know,

To what level can I push and still breathe with my mouth closed?

What's the benefit of that?

What is the benefit of that?

So if we start by saying that our physiological design is to breathe through the nose,

And I know we can breathe through the mouth,

But if you look at the structures around the mouth and the structures around the nose,

The mouth is not capable of doing what the nose does.

And for that reason,

Mouth breathing is long term,

Quite dangerous,

Literally quite dangerous to be doing if you're in an environment that's very dusty,

For example,

Your opportunity to breathe in particular,

In some way is magnified a lot,

Basically compared to the nose.

So then there is this misconception that if I push myself through exercise,

That I have to breathe through my mouth.

The reason that you're doing it is because there's a part in your brain called the brain stem right at the back of your neck.

And it is reading not oxygen,

It's reading carbon dioxide.

In fact,

It's reading hydrogen ions,

But basically as carbon dioxide increases,

Hydrogen crosses the blood barrier and this brain stem is reading it and it goes,

Oh,

Come on,

We need to breathe quicker because carbon dioxide is going up and that's not good for us.

It breathes faster.

So our mouth can breathe much faster,

Meaning we can get to a more relaxed breathing very quickly.

It's a discomfort thing again.

I'll just breathe through my mouth.

But actually,

If you force yourself only to breathe through your nose,

As I talk about in the book,

If you're going to do that in an exercise class,

If you go to a HIIT class and you breathe only through your nose,

You're not going to make it if you haven't practiced this before.

So always go just to 60%,

Your HIIT instructor will probably be very furious at you.

Do it anyway.

So go to 60%,

Just go to that edge where you're like,

And you're just breathing as best you can through your nose.

Then what will happen is you'll begin to train your system to handle higher levels of carbon dioxide.

That's the first thing.

So we can handle higher levels of carbon dioxide.

And interestingly,

When that happens,

Like a chemical change happens in the blood called the Bohr effect and your hemoglobin,

The red blood cells start dropping oxygen.

They don't want it.

They want something else.

So they dropping the oxygen and all the cells in your body that need oxygen and like,

Thank goodness and they're sucking up this oxygen.

So even though you feel out of breath,

It's got nothing to do with oxygen.

Your body's fine.

Your body's taking in probably more oxygen breathing this way.

Also your lungs are going to get serious opening because your whole musculature is going to have to breathe a lot harder.

But the circulation from that,

The lymphatic movement from that,

We're talking just incredible for your health and your wellbeing.

And on top of that nitric oxide to your nose,

You've got cells in your nose that release nitric oxide.

And that's really amazing for blood pressure,

Libido,

Particularly for men,

Really good for erections.

And it's an incredible molecule that they're just really exploring now.

I guess it's been around for a while,

But the benefits to our health from this nitric oxide and nose breathing and you don't get it from mouth breathing in the same way is remarkable.

The book has so many wonderful breathing exercises that are very different from each other.

Each one has a reason to do it.

And you explain the science in them really well.

We just got a taste of it there at the end of the interview.

We didn't get it earlier.

But like I said,

I think it's one of the better breath books I've seen out there by a long shot.

It's really good.

So listeners,

I'm going to have Ollie lead us through a breathing technique in our post show conversation.

If you'd like to get access to post show conversations,

To add free episodes to a special episode I do each week where I share one of my favorite poems,

One of my favorite songs and I do a teaching,

You also get access to that by becoming a member of our community at oneufeed.

Net slash join.

Ollie,

Thank you so much for coming on.

I really enjoyed the book.

I've enjoyed this conversation and getting to know you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me on Eric Spina Rule privilege to share breath with you.

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Reviews

Really great talk! Very useful. Oliver has some good meditations on Insight. Thank you for these interviews. 🙏😊🌀