The Chief Psychology Officer

Ep63 Transform Your Emotional Well-Being Through Breathing Techniques

August 19, 2024 • Dr Amanda Potter CPsychol • Season 3 • Episode 63

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Unlock the secrets to enhancing your emotional well-being through the transformative power of breathing techniques in this enlightening episode. Dr Amanda Potter and Kristian Lees-Bell are joined by Jessica Livingstone, a seasoned yoga and meditation teacher, who takes us on her journey from the high-stress corporate world to founding a thriving yoga and wellness studio. Jessica shares profound insights into how breathing techniques in yoga can significantly impact our emotional health and balance, drawing from both historical and modern influences. She explains how incorporating breath awareness into our daily routines can lead to greater relaxation and a more balanced life.

Delve into the world of coherent breathing, where synchronizing your breath can harmonize your body’s systems and promote a state of calm and clarity. Jessica introduces us to Yoga Nidra, a form of active meditation that helps even the busiest minds find peace. Listen to Kristian and Amanda’s reflections on their experiences with coherent breathing, and discover how it can serve as a rejuvenating midday reset. This episode explores practical applications of these techniques, emphasizing their potential to enhance both physical relaxation and mental clarity in everyday situations.

We also discuss the importance of practicing presence through mindful breathing techniques to combat the autopilot mode of living. Learn about various methods, such as alternate nostril breathing and box breathing, and their specific health benefits. Jessica shares practical tips on how to seamlessly integrate these techniques into your daily life. As we wrap up, we express our heartfelt gratitude to Jessica for her invaluable insights and thank our dedicated listeners for their continued support. Stay tuned for more exciting episodes aimed at enhancing your wellness journey!

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Kristian:

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Chief Psychology Officer with Dr Amanda Potter, Chartered Psychologist and CEO of Zircon, and I'm Cristian Lees-Bell, Senior Consultant at Zircon and Business Psychologist. Today, we'll be discussing how we breathe and how we can more effectively use our breathing techniques to calm ourselves and soothe ourselves during challenging times.

Amanda:

Hi Kristian and hi Jessica, our guest. We're really excited to be talking to you. Thank you so much for agreeing to come and join us today.

Jessica:

Well, it's an absolute pleasure and thank you for inviting me.

Kristian:

Thank you so much, Jessica. We also really enjoyed our team's session that you just delivered actually today, guiding us through a breathing exercise and helping us to be particularly relaxed after lunch. So we're really looking forward to finding more about breathing and the benefits of breathing techniques. Would you mind introducing yourself first?

Jessica:

Yes, of course. So my name is Jessica and I'm a mother of two, and I have been teaching meditation and yoga for about 17 years now, and obviously a huge part of that is all about the breath, so I've learnt many different breathing techniques over the years that I find incredibly helpful, for me particularly and the way that I lead my life, and then, obviously, for all the people that I teach. I initially set up a studio and ran that for around eight years where I saw lots of different guest teachers coming along and many hundreds of students and I think throughout all of that teaching and learning skills and practices that we do with the breath is fundamental to everything, so I'm really happy to be talking about that today.

Amanda:

How amazing and it was through our conversation, wasn't it, Jess? About what you get excited about and you were quizzing me because you'd heard about the podcast through our connections and we realized that you and I have got similar passions, which is all about wellness and my new found love of neuroscience and your love of neuroscience too, Jess, and we realized that you've got a real expertise and depth of knowledge around breathing that I felt would be really helpful. And because I've just read the breath book, which was amazing, and I didn't realize you could even write a whole book about breathing and nostril breathing Because of that book. It made me realize there's still a lot more to learn. And I'm not someone who's been particularly active in the meditation or the yoga space in the past, because I've always been way too active and I've not been great at slowing down. This has been great for me and I'm super excited about this podcast and I loved the little meditation section that we did with the team earlier. So, Jess, thank you.

Kristian:

And Jessica, I'm interested to know how you came to set up your yoga and wellness studio. So it wasn't just something that you did on the side or part time. You had workshops, events and retreats and, as you say, being around the world to learn these different strategies. So what sort of triggered that change of career for you? Because you worked in corporate didn't you before organising.

Jessica:

It was great and I really loved it and I was good at it.

Jessica:

But I realised, I think I sort of reached a point with it where I think my life was a bit out of balance and it was a bit too much hard work and maybe hard play and I sort of reached a point of feeling quite burnt out by it all actually.

Jessica:

And that led me to find some different well-being practices for myself, and I found yoga, and that would have been 20 years ago now and I started practicing and I just thought, wow, this is really fascinating to me because this is way more than, for example, just an exercise routine. This is a way of life, and it had so much history and depth to it that I just was hooked really. And so I made the leap to train and it coincided really well because I decided to freelance and move into that arena, which I never thought I could do. Being honest, I always thought I needed to be employed you know, nine to five but I found I could, and then I also got pregnant. So that sort of juncture, I think, in my life meant that I could change things up, and that's when I started to train to teach.

Amanda:

That's amazing. So was it from the beginning that you're interested in breathing techniques?

Jessica:

Yeah, because I think once you start to learn about yoga, you realize that you're not doing yoga unless you are focused on the breathing. So yoga, in terms of the movement and asanas we call it, which is postures when you move through different postures it's about synchronizing those postures with your breath. Amazing.

Amanda:

So why is breathing and why are the techniques so important?

Jessica:

The thing about breath when I'm teaching breath is I feel like we don't pay attention to it because it's just something that we do. It's just so automatic, so we don't think about it. And why would we necessarily? Automatic, so we don't think about it. And why would we necessarily? And then I think what happens is people aren't aware at the really strong link between our emotions and our breathing. For example, it's really important how we breathe and how much we breathe, and indeed how that breath is working will impact how we feel. I think I said to you before Amanda it's something that always stayed with me that the first thing we do when we come into this world is we take a breath, yet we're not paying attention to it, and I think what I've learned is that when you start to pay attention to it and you understand its connection to how you feel, you then dive into this whole area of all these different people that have come before, people like Gandhi, buddhist meditators, even Russian special forces. They've all used different breathing techniques.

Amanda:

When I was doing my research about breathing ready for the podcast, one of the things that I was so surprised about was the fact that, on average, we take 20 breaths per minute, yet good practice is that we should actually take between five to six breaths per minute. In the same way as us consuming too many calories, as humans, we also consume too much air or oxygen. Jess, what's your view on that?

Jessica:

It's quite an alarming but also very interesting fact. I think the statistics on it are that about 30% of the world is actually over-breathing. Part of that, if you look at it, is we're just not being taught really how to breathe in a way that enhances how we feel, and I think we're also. Well, I don't know how you find it in your field, but certainly in mine I see so many people who are very busy and maybe highly stressed and that is turning into this over-breathing. You might also be familiar with it, known as the adrenaline breath, because it's the breath that is much higher in the chest, and the reason it's known as the adrenaline breath is that it activates adrenaline, so it shifts you quickly into that fight, or flight state.

Amanda:

So the sympathetic nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system, yes, that makes sense. And is that the same thing as shallow breathing? I've heard of shallow breathing.

Jessica:

Yes, it would be very similar. I mean, I think shallow breathing isn't quite as bad as the getting to sort of, you know, 25, if not more breaths a minute. If you think about when you get really frightened, you know we breathe quickly, don't we? But it's just that because people's bodies have habituated to it, They've just habitually moved into this way of breathing and they're just not aware that they're doing it. So I would say one of the first things that I try to do with people is to teach them to try and regulate their breath, or just feel like they've got some control over their breath and try to lengthen and deepen that breath, slow it down.

Kristian:

I think we're all doing that now, aren't we? Yeah, I am.

Amanda:

I'm doing it now. So how does it link to heart rate? So if we're breathing quickly either that shallow breathing or the adrenaline breathing of 20 to 25 breaths per minute does that impact your heart rate because of the sympathetic nervous system?

Jessica:

Does that impact your heart rate because of the sympathetic nervous system? Yes, it does. They measure that through heart rate variability. So literally every breath you take will impact the rate of your heart. So the two are intrinsically linked with one another.

Amanda:

So we can activate the parasympathetic nervous system and reduce our heart rate, which is, of course, something that's good for our health, because we always have that tested, don't we, when we go and have our blood pressure done by our breath. So by slowing down how we breathe and making it deeper and longer, then we can slow down our heart rate and regulate our heart rate as well. So is it the case that it could be irregular if we're doing this kind of erratic breathing or shallow breathing?

Jessica:

that it could be irregular if we're doing this kind of erratic breathing or shallow breathing.

Amanda:

Yes, I don't know whether you've talked about the vagus nerve on your podcast.

Jessica:

We have indeed on the Compassion podcast actually. Okay, there we go. So there's links between the two. So the vagus nerve just for those who are less familiar with it, is known as the wandering nerve, and it's known as that because it goes to so many organs, and one of the things that happens when you learn slower, deeper breathing and I'll give you a bit more specific on that as we move on is that it taps very quickly into the vagus nerve and it puts that brake on the heart so it starts to slow the heart rate down pretty quickly and also it sends loads of signals from the body to the brain that you're starting to calm down.

Jessica:

And that's why I've always believed that we are so overly sort of mind dominated, thinking too much. Maybe some people struggle with intrusive thoughts. If you use your breath, then what you're sort of doing is you're hacking in, if you like, through the body into the mind, and then you have a chance to pause and then you get a chance to calm and then I feel like you're back in the game, if that makes sense. You know you're able to sort of interrupt some of those intrusive thoughts if you like and come back to the present again and realize that you've got a bit of control over how you feel.

Amanda:

Do you know what? I think there's an amazing link there, because if we talk about self-compassion and self-care and we talk about the activation of the vagus nerve, then if we focus on our breathing and we try to eliminate those negative thoughts and show self-compassion, then we might be able to reduce the impact or the risk of rumination or catastrophizing. So I wonder if there is a link with breathing and removing those negative, intrusive thoughts that we have when we're depleted or feeling low.

Jessica:

Absolutely, and I know that you're a proponent of walking. Some of these things can come in combination. You know, if you're feeling sort of highly agitated, it might be good for you to move the body in some way, and then what you're doing is you're shifting some of that energy, and you can do that with your breathing. You know you can start to move and then maybe you could start to slow down the walking a little, and then you could be. I know that you also know about the physiological sigh or you can then start to lower and deepen that breath perhaps as you move. Or which is why I think it's so amazing is one the breath is free. Everything in this world these days, especially in the well-being space, we're all told to buy this, do this. Everything seems to cost more. Breathing is free. It's our gift, isn't it? And you can very quickly learn how to do it much better for your own mental health.

Amanda:

I think that's brilliant. You mentioned in our last conversation about coherent breathing.

Jessica:

What is it? Well, it certainly came to my attention at a conference I went to, probably about 10 years ago now, called Yoga and the Brain, and that was at UCL in London, and two doctors there who've become now pretty famous for this work were presenting, and their names are Dr Gerbarg and Dr Richard Brown. They're actually a husband and wife team. They were always doctors, but he was also into other methods and ways of being, from the East and from India, so he really got into yoga and he discovered all these different breathing techniques that there are. And then, because they were doctors, they then explored the science behind it all and they discovered that this breath that they named the coherent breath and I'll tell you why in a minute was so beneficial for the body. And they work with all these different survivors of trauma. Actually, they worked with people from survivors of the 9-11 attacks.

Jessica:

So they're very passionate about this coherent breath and essentially, really all it is is slowing your breath down to. I would say just do a count of six seconds. So you would do a count of six seconds in and six seconds out and that takes your breath down to, instead of doing sort of 20 breaths per minute. It literally takes it down to about five or six breaths per minute. So you're really really slowing it down, and the reason it's called coherence is that it brings the systems of the body into coherence.

Jessica:

Which also is really interesting about compassion, because the studies that they've done is they noticed that people in states of compassion or in states of appreciation, gratitude, for example, also bring their body and their heart rate down and they also bring these different systems of the body into these states of coherence, which is basically the opposite of dissonance, where we're very stressed, for example, or when we're very angry, or when we're very sort of in this alpha hyper mode. The graphs that you look at, which I found really fascinating, these graphs show that the brain waves and the heart waves are completely out of sync and they're very jagged. When you learn this breathing technique you can also do it through meditation, the meditation that I taught you today, and there's many other ways to stimulate the vagus nerve you shift yourself into this parasympathetic mode and then you see these beautiful graphs of coherence between the brain waves and the heart waves.

Amanda:

So coherent breathing, then, is helpful. You mentioned when you're under pressure. So one of my resilience risks, for example, is impulsive, also impatient, which is why I've not really done any meditation or yoga in the past, because of those two risks. So then, the coherent breathing will help me to pause, to give me a sense of clarity and, in that moment, help me to give me time and space.

Jessica:

Then, presumably, Well, that's the fundamentals to it that I really believe offer you so many chances to do your life differently if you like. Someone taught me many years ago that you can start your day at any time and maybe that breathing in some senses allows you just that momentary reset. But I do really feel it's something that needs to be practiced. No-transcript used to being anxious and sort of being in that state. It can feel quite frightening or it can make you feel a little bit out of control to take that breath down. So it takes time and that's where sometimes I will say bring in movement, because the movement sort of releases some of that anxiety before you then move into perhaps some more breathing, if that makes sense.

Kristian:

Absolutely.

Jessica:

Yeah.

Amanda:

So what was your strategy with the Zircon team today? Jess, Would you mind just talking through for our listeners the approach that you took with all of us?

Jessica:

with all of us. Well, it's interesting that you were saying about that. One of the reasons why you haven't got into perhaps more breathing or meditation is your impulsivity, or maybe your business in your mind, and that you prefer exercise. So what I would say to that is it's really common. That's probably why I teach the form of meditation that's called Yoga Nidra, because it's an active form of meditation. That doesn't mean you're jumping around the room. You can, for example, do walking with it but what it means is it gives the conscious mind I would call it your thinking mind it gives it something to do. So I find that often people who are very busy or thinking a lot or are a bit more pulsive, they need to give that part of their brain, if you like, something to do to allow the subconscious to kick in and allow you to start to relax and let go, despite all your best interests not to.

Amanda:

Despite all the old habits telling me to get up and do some jobs.

Jessica:

Exactly so you get into the practice despite yourself in that sense, and that's why I tend to use that form of meditation with most people, because actually most people are like that- what was your experience of it, Christian?

Kristian:

For me, I think it's always a pleasure because I mean, as being a psychotherapist and coach, obviously using breathing techniques and even visualization strategies, I deliver a lot of this stuff. I'm guilty of probably not being on the receiving end or I'm sort of practicing it myself as much as I think, as I could do. So I think, having that opportunity to actually, you know, even lie down and have a time and the space just to focus on you know how I feel and also been going through something which is slightly different. So you know, this was a completely new experience for me in terms of the way that the Jessica delivered it. Yeah, for me it took a few minutes to relax enough, to feel as though I was focused enough to really sort of go through the process and then, after a few minutes, yeah, I think my physical relaxation, rather than my mental chatter, really quietened down and then it was bliss from that point on once I was physically relaxed for a few minutes. What was your experience, amanda?

Amanda:

I loved it. I was in the garden actually and it was amazing, until the dog decided he wanted to lick my face and then my son decided to tie my shoelaces up. So, other than those two moments of crazy, actually what I loved about it was listening to Jess's voice and doing what I was told. Because, jess, you were calmly telling us to pay attention to different parts of our body or our breathing, or to the ground beneath us. So because I was laying on the grass, so I was very obediently doing what I was told, it meant that I was getting quite a lot from it. And what's so amazing is the chatter on the Zircon team, chat on Teams just things people saying, using your words, christian, it was total bliss. That's exactly what another colleague has said, and Angela says she feels completely rejuvenated and she wasn't ready to get up. I think it was a real gift. Actually, it's particularly doing it halfway through the day. It's just a lovely thing to do.

Jessica:

Yeah, well, there's a lot in that. There was a lot I would unpack in both of your responses there. One is that I really recognise and I teach quite a lot of different coaches is that when you're in that role, you are actually incredibly good at what you do, but you're equally giving out, expending quite a lot, and actually it's as you well know. It's really helpful for you to allow someone else to take the reins at times so that you can receive that practice. Also, I would say that the time of day I mean you can do it at any time and, as I said to you before, you can practice yoga nidra in 10 minutes to an hour and bring the breathing into the practice, and then you've got a really well rounded practice and you could do it in the morning to rejuvenate yourself, or you could do it in the afternoon when you get that afternoon lull. I've got two children. I would do it before they came home from school. Prepare yourself For the onslaught.

Jessica:

Yeah absolutely, I get that. It's really good for insomnia, so you can do it to wind down. You know, before you go to bed or in the middle of the night, if you've woken up and your mind is whirring. But what I think that yoga and certainly the breathing has offered me in terms of my understanding of it over the years, because there's so much to it and it's so vast that you just keep learning. But I would say that it's really allowed me to learn how to be really present. And I think all these things meditation practice, breathing practice, whether you're exercise, physical asana they're all things that we have to practice and I think it's really helpful for people to view them as a skill. I think people sometimes want to sort of go along, do one session and think, ok, well, that's me sorted and actually we have to revisit. We have to revisit and revisit. And the more that you do that I'm sure you know you're building that part of the brain, for example, with meditation, that allows you to sustain attention and to sustain focus.

Amanda:

I think for me there was a lovely quote that came from a client recently, from Laura McLean she drops in these amazing quotes whenever we're working with her and she said you're not responsible for your first thought, but you are for your second thought and your action.

Amanda:

And it made me think about the fact that it's a space of 200th of a millisecond between the chemical release of neurotransmitters and hormones in the brain and then the first feeling or thought that we have. So therefore, we're not responsible for that first thought, but I love the idea that the breath and the slow breathing or the deep breathing or the coherent breathing would help us to extend the space, I think, between the first and second thought, so that we're more rational and more in control of what we think, therefore how we act and behave as a result and I think that's for me the biggest thing, being someone who is impulsive, because I definitely speak before I think and I definitely act or eat before I think I find myself having eaten something without even realizing I had it in my hand. You know, I'm one of those people that act so quickly, move so quickly sometimes, that sometimes don't really realize how did I get here, because I'm kind of distracted, if you like.

Jessica:

But I think that's so common, isn't it? If you think how we lead our lives now, so many of us sort of shift into that autopilot mode, don't we? Where we're just going that's part of it for me is learning how to wake up again, if you like, you know, to switch us out of that autopilot and come back to the land of the living.

Kristian:

Being present.

Jessica:

Yeah, but we need to do that often by using the body to come back. One of the things that I often give out on retreats when I teach retreats is at the end of our weekend. I remind them of a story I was told about how Buddhist monks not only ring a bell, but they will carry a pebble in their pockets and the pebble is there as the reminder to wake back up again. So they put their hand in their pocket and they feel the pebble, or somebody rings the bell and it's like oh, come back.

Amanda:

Executive presence that's one of our other topics. All of us struggle to remain attentive, to be present. We know about the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. I can never pronounce it. My brother, if he's listening, will chuckle. That's all about attention and focus, and many of us struggle to listen, to retain our attention. So again, how brilliant if we focus on our breathing, that could help and it's something that can be learned.

Jessica:

I think that's the thing you can learn to be present by practicing various different things. You don't just practice being present. For example, you can practice your breathing, you can practice using your senses. So that would be, for example, one of the things that I will do in my meditation teaching is bring people more into their senses. What do they see, what are they hearing, what are they feeling? And just by practicing that you become much more present, much more alert, and then actually, over time, what you find is that your senses are more developed, and the more developed they are, the more here you are.

Jessica:

And I think I mentioned to you before, amanda, the other part of learning how to be present is active listening. So you choose, which I find for me with parenting, is such a great thing. You know, this is why I have such an issue with mobile phones. We all do it, but they take us away, don't they all the time. And I think particularly about children. You know, parents just not being there, children not being there, we're removing that connection between human beings. So I try really hard and I'm really not a perfect parent, but I try really hard that when one of my children is talking to me, to look at them and to listen to them.

Amanda:

Great practice, great skill, something to really role model as well, isn't it as a parent? But I know we are prone to being busy minds and that's when we're at our worst.

Kristian:

Jessica, I'm curious about other breathing techniques that you use and teach. For example, I've heard and used a box breathing physiological size, but I know also from reading the book by James Nestor that there are plenty of other breathing exercises that also have some potentially really powerful impacts as well on our health and well-being.

Jessica:

Yeah, absolutely, there are hundreds and hundreds and I also think, a bit like meditation, it's down to what you resonate with. So I think that I find what let's call it the coherent breath or the six and six breath. I've also sort of called it the Nirvana breath. So I think that I find what let's call it the coherent breath or the six and six breath. I've also sort of called it the Nirvana breath because I think it's so great. I found that really, really helpful for me and that's the main breath that I teach. But I also teach, for example, alternate nostril breathing which, to be really simple about it, is about helping you balance your systems in the body. So you bring the breath in through one nostril and you take it out through the other nostril and then you bring it back in. You can also do that with your mind in a meditative sense, and it's just incredibly calming for the system. And, again, it doesn't take very long. Box breathing yes, very well known. Again, it doesn't take very long. Box breathing yes, very well known. It's all about the pause in between the breath where you're holding the breath.

Jessica:

But some of the simple things I would say as well is, say, of an evening when you're watching television, what happens often is that we get stimulated or triggered or activated, for example, by bad news, and then what we do is we gulp the breath in and we hold it in the system. So I just like to draw people's attention to that is that whenever if you feel yourself being activated or triggered, become conscious of what you've done with your breath, whether you've started to over-breathe or whether you've started to over breathe or whether you've started to hold the breath you know in tension in your chest and try and let it go. It's the same with emails. I think I mentioned to you before, amanda, about when you come into work. They did all these studies about they're calling it the apnea email or something like that. People are coming in feeling really overwhelmed by the amount of emails in their inbox, which so often people are, and then they're just not breathing because they're responding immediately and they're holding on.

Jessica:

So I would really encourage a letting go and then maybe you know the six and six breath or just learning to deepen that breath down into the belly, to drop the shoulders, to relax the jaw, to let the tongue get a bit heavy, put your feet on the floor, feel yourself shifting your energy sort of in and down into the body, and then you just start to ground and to settle and then all those other breathing techniques. If you've got a great teacher they can come. But I just like to keep it really simple on the whole. It isn't rocket science. We can all do it and we can all learn it do you know?

Amanda:

there's three points. I've had to write them down because from what you said, which are really interesting, which are the first one was around holding your breath. I'd also read about the fact that we hold our breath quite a lot at work, which is just crazy because of bad news emails or just the anxiety levels that we constantly hold our breath and then we breathe out. But I read something else about actually, if we learn to hold our breath on purpose, learning to deal with the carbon dioxide that we get from holding our breath is actually good for us. It makes us stronger, which is really interesting. And, considering my mum bless her. She passed from having long life asthma and she only had 20% of her lung capacity when she passed, but all her life she had really severe asthma. In the end it was pneumonia, but carbon dioxide was evil for my mum because she couldn't expel it. She got delusional and she used to have visions and all sorts of terrible things because of being not able to expel the carbon dioxide properly, couldn't breathe out sufficiently. So it's so interesting that a little bit of it is good for us because it makes us stronger. It makes us last longer. So they were two things. And the third thing was around the nostril breathing.

Amanda:

I don't find alternate nostril breathing easy. I've tried it. I find it very awkward. It's not something I naturally can do is to hold one nostril and then breathe in and out and then hold the other nostril, breathe in and out. But the science of it is quite flummoxing because, according to the science, if you breathe through the left nostril, it activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the rest and release, and it lowers our body temperature, it lowers our blood pressure, it reduces our heart rate and it activates the creative side. But then if we hold the right nostril, then it does the opposite. Now if you breathe out the right nostril, it does the opposite. Hopefully people are following me. You're probably better reading the James Nestor book because it's got a whole section on nostril breathing and alternate nostril breathing. But it just seems so crazy to me that different nostrils activate the opposite side of the brain and also activate and deactivate the sympathetic or the parasympathetic nervous system in order to create that balance. You said, jess, I just think our bodies are incredible. I agree.

Jessica:

And what I would say about nostril breathing, if you found Jess, I just think our bodies are incredible, I agree. And what I would say about nostril breathing, if you found it challenging, is, again, it's a practice, but also stick with one that's working for you. And sometimes, yes, when we're holding the breath, you're increasing your capacity to deal with stress, but it's also how you hold the breath. So if I was teaching you a breathing technique where we're holding, I would also be teaching you how to hold it, so you're not holding it in a really tense wound up way, you're not like all shoulders up, fists clenched or anything.

Jessica:

Exactly so. It's actually very different and we sort of look at it in an energy sense and you might move it to places in the body, or you might pause at the end of your exhale, for example, and the yogic belief on that, which I think is just beautiful, is that the mind, the thoughts, suspend. So the moment that you pause at the end of an exhale or or at the end of an inhale, your mind and your thoughts are said to really quieten, and I found that that actually does work when I notice it. And, as I always say, yoga is experiential. You have to experience these things, but that's quite a different holding to when we hold, when we're really stressed.

Amanda:

I think this is the calmest, most chilled podcast we've ever recorded. Christian, I think I'm the most relaxed I've ever been.

Kristian:

You do look relaxed, yeah, and I have to say throughout the podcast then obviously I'm listening and I'm mindful, but my shoulders have kind of come up a little bit Then I've definitely been allowing them to let go of tension and, yeah, just take a nice deep breath. I found actually there was one technique that I got from the James Nesta book. I'm probably pronouncing this wrong, but Botteco breathing. Is that right, jessica?

Kristian:

I know it in a different way because obviously people that have picked up on different breathing techniques I'm not as familiar with that one, very similar to what we've been discussing about extending, I think, the time between inhalations and exhalations, I think the time between inhalations and exhalations, and there's something called the control pause, which he refers to as a kind of diagnostic tool to assess your respiratory health and progress as well in terms of breathing.

Kristian:

So I actually practiced this morning. So I got a stopwatch, I kind of sat up straight and then you were asked to sort of exhale and then obviously then stop the exhale and then pause and then see how, basically, how long it takes for you to then take a breath in without straining too much, and so, over a couple of tries, then I sort of, yeah, extended the time I was able to do that, but yeah, it was. It was interesting as a, as a technique, I think, to show me that I think I probably had quite a lot of tension at the time because the more I was relaxed and the more practice I had, I was better at that exercise. So, as you, going back to what you said about practice, yeah, I think it's really important in this, isn't it?

Jessica:

Yeah, it is, and actually I was thinking about what Amanda was saying about her mom and the carbon dioxide thing is also about allowing us to learn to expel air more effectively. Learn to expel air more effectively so it's true in a scientific sense is that there are sort of let's call it stale air, if you like that can sit at the bottom of the lungs because they just haven't been utilised properly. And if you learn to lengthen your exhale, then you're learning to expel some of that air and then what that does is it frees you up to then inhale, so you've got more space to inhale.

Jessica:

What I see so many people is that they're not utilizing the whole of their lungs. So often if I'm teaching, I'll say think about breathing into your back body, because of course your lungs go all the way down, they go into the back. They're very wide, they're all around, you know, underneath the rib cage. Often, again, I might teach what's called the barrel breath, where you're taking the breath down but you feel like the lungs are coming out a bit like a barrel. So you're expanding the capacity of your lungs and we survive from oxygen. People seem to think we get our energy from food, and we do. But we get so much of our energy from the breath we're learning to utilize all of our lungs more effectively. Then we're always going to be able to bring in more oxygen.

Amanda:

So I think my last question is around tips for our listeners. Jess, Do you have just a couple of tips that people could take away? That would be helpful.

Jessica:

I would say I think it's very easy to feel overwhelmed by too much information. So I tend to start with people and just make it simple and easy. And I would say try and find a teacher if you can, and learn how to just slow your breath down, allow your shoulders to drop, as I said. So just make it simple and do it whenever you can do it. So sometimes I'll be in the car, I'm thinking about it, then maybe I'm doing the dishes, I'm slowing it down so it becomes part of your daily routine. Maybe it's when you, after you've brushed your teeth, you know, you just try and integrate some of these practices in a really simple way. But I would say that the first part would be find a teacher and maybe that understanding that if you're going to learn, for example, a new skill, if it was a new language you need to practice it, and then you will start to really notice the difference quite quickly, I think.

Amanda:

And Christian. Can you recommend anything from your psychotherapy days?

Kristian:

Definitely. I think this topic about breathing I think is essential for people working particularly in sort of stressful, busy corporate environments. I think is critical because we experience lots of transitions. So whether we've just finished writing an email, then we have to go into a team meeting, then a strategy meeting and then we have to innovate and be creative and constantly be driving forward. What I will often teach in coaching and therapy sessions is literally what we've been through.

Kristian:

So if somebody's feeling as if they're sort of stressed on, then that high alert, particularly at the beginning of the day when they've got that barrage of emails, they're not going to be creative or innovative or clear thinking if they're in that fight or flight mode.

Kristian:

So breathing techniques, as I say, I think, as Jessica's right. So breathing is something which is simple. I often use a 7-11 sort of breathing strategy where you breathe into the count of seven and breathe out, hold for a moment and then breathe out to 11 or as much as that person can comfortably do, and I think also, as well as the physiological benefits it gives, as we've talked about a sense of control of space, and I think that is sometimes what's lacking in today's corporate environment is we need to build in some elements of space of pauses so that we can actually respond intelligently rather than being on autopilot and just being driven by things. So breathing is something I would literally instruct and help and support people to do, because people are stressed and so they need to get into that calm mindset before they sometimes tackle all of these very complex strategic problems that they have to solve.

Amanda:

Well, how fabulous, I think, listening to both of you. I've learned so much and to continue to learn. As I continue my 30 years of psychology, I realize how little I know about it. I'm learning every day, and so I really appreciate your expertise. Jess and Christian, thank you so much for hosting.

Kristian:

Pleasure.

Amanda:

I've really been reflecting on the link between resilience, psychological safety, team effectiveness and how we look after ourselves, self-care, self-compassion and, at the real heart of that, breathing. So if we can take a moment to take deeper breaths and to just slow things down, we might be more able to create environments that are truly inclusive and where people feel like they're being listened to, and so on. I think there's a really lovely link between the work we're doing with our clients in creating highly successful, attentive teams and, at the very core of it, self-compassion, self-care and learning to breathe deeply and coherently. So loved it. Thank you both very much, very calm.

Jessica:

It's my pleasure. It was wonderful to be here. Thank you.

Kristian:

Thank you, jess, and thank you to our listeners. If you've enjoyed this podcast, then we would love it if you could share the podcast with one friend or colleague and hit that follow button on your podcast provider. Hopefully we can keep on the conversation. So thank you everybody. Thank you, jessica, for being our guest, and I hope you all have a wonderful and successful day.

Amanda:

Thank you, Christian Bye.

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Dr Amanda Potter

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Tim Hepworth

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