Summary:
In this episode, Emma Masters explores the transformative power of breath work and its role in personal wellbeing and self-awareness. She discusses her own journey from the corporate world into holistic practice, emphasizing how breath work helped her reconnect with herself and process difficult emotions. Emma shares insights on how breath is deeply linked to our nervous system, trauma, and subconscious patterns, and how conscious breathing can foster calm, clarity, and healing. Listeners are invited to reflect on their own relationship with the breath and consider how mindful practices can lead to more embodied and present living.
Transcript:
Vanessa Leone (00:01)
Hi Emma, group therapist, how are you?
Emma (00:03)
Hello. It’s actually gone really fast since we last did this.
Vanessa Leone (00:09)
It has gone really fast and I’ve had the anticipation for this episode like so much. I’m really excited like just to dive into this because I feel like, yeah, hearing all of this coming from the way that you tell stories, the way that you talk, the way that we talk, I suppose. So if you’re watching this or if you’d like to watch this, highly recommend.
because I think this topic, we’re going to talk about breath work today. And the funny thing about this topic is that, you know, I remember at uni, there being like a tiny little blob about the science of breath work in a physiology lecture. Yeah. And here we are. I don’t want to say how many years later, but years later and
Emma (00:52)
We don’t need to. We don’t need to say.
Vanessa Leone (01:08)
It’s this huge thing. But the funny thing is I have this flashback to when I knew about the science of it. And it, doesn’t it blow your mind that like we can know something but not know it.
Emma (01:23)
Yeah, I think it’s innately within us, you know, I think these skills and these tools have been used for thousands of years across all nations. It’s really just over the recent times us in the West or I mean, we’re not technically in the Western Australia, but you know what I mean? Have forgotten and I think it is a forgetting. It’s not never had. It’s just a forgetting. then now we’re really remembering these skills and these tools and bringing them back into mainstream.
It has blown up in the last couple of years, exponentially. But I think it’s because post COVID, we just really realized the importance of wellness and looking after ourselves and down regulation and, or maybe on the flip side of that, how stressed we are and how much we need tools to be able to regulate our nervous systems and our emotions. And I guess then it just all happened at once that this tool that was already around, right? We’ve been using breath work for a really long time and in different ways in another,
but I think all of a sudden it just got grabbed hold of and then you know when anything gets grabbed hold of in that way it then becomes super mainstream, a buzzword, everyone’s talking about it, everyone’s using it, everyone’s trading in it. But I think all for the better, know, as long as the training is good and the science is there when it comes to people delivering and holding space with breath, think the more the merrier, right? Why not get everybody using this incredible tool that we have just right here inside of us.
Vanessa Leone (02:22)
Yes, you have touched on like five of the questions that I’m going to ask you.
Emma (02:52)
Sorry, it’s because we like saying things.
Vanessa Leone (02:55)
We do, we do. We’re in sync. We are in sync.
We just started. So I’m going to, we’re going to start there. We talked about breath work being a buzzword. And I think this is where it potentially, because it’s blown up so much, it can be a little bit confusing when we say breath work. What are we actually talk about? Like, what do you mean? Let’s, let’s dive into that.
Emma (03:04)
Yeah, so breath work is an umbrella term, right? It’s just talking about everything we do with our breath. I think people sometimes expect certain things when they’re going along to a breath work class or a breath work session, because of things they may have seen on Instagram or somewhere on the internet. But breath work is really anything along this very large spectrum of ways that we can use our breath. And I think we do need to look at it as this spectrum or a line where
we can change or alter the speed of our breathing in order to take control or, yeah, I guess take control is a great word of our nervous system. So I can start there, which is that we obviously have our parasympathetic and our sympathetic nervous system. And we can almost switch into those different systems using our breath, like a remote control, which is really cool. So we start on one side of our breathing speed, so our slower BPM, for instance, per minute. It’s all about bringing us into a state of calm.
rest and digest, that parasympathetic nervous system. And there’s a lot more research when it comes to the slower breathing techniques and how it can bring us into a state of peace, it can reduce anxiety and depression, it can help with PTSD, all of these incredible, incredible things. But then as we start to increase the rate of breath, all sorts of other cool things can happen too. So as we start to breathe,
a little faster than we normally would, we can start to look at performance. So we can actually enhance performance. can create alertness and energy in the body. If we are about to go into a meeting and we need to be pumped up, we can use our breath to do that. And then we can go even further along the spectrum where we start to breathe faster again. And I guess that’s stuff, the juicy stuff, the fun stuff that we see on the internet where people are getting these incredible emotional releases.
They’re getting, you know, all of the fireworks, the lights and the love, you know, they’re able to maybe connect with higher consciousness. They’re able to see visions. They’re able to go on journeys, all of these incredible things that we see in altered states of consciousness that we can achieve through breath as well.
But the incredible thing is, is it is a spectrum. And so my teacher says that no matter what, there’s a breath for that, right? So it’s like, no matter… matter what you’re going through, we can find a breath that can help you with it. So whether it’s that you, as I said, are needing to be distressed and calm down, or whether you need to be pumped up, or whether you need be emotional healing, there’s a breath for that. So it’s pretty cool.
No matter what you’re going through, we can find a breath that can help you with it. So whether it’s that you, as I said, are needing to be de-stressed and calm down, or whether you need to be pumped up or whether you need some deep emotional healing, there’s a breath for that. So it’s pretty cool.
Vanessa Leone (05:51)
Mm, I like that. Just the little answer there, like there’s a breath for that. That’s smart and it’s very clever. And I think you paint a really nice picture there having it on a spectrum because it does create this, like you said, journey and this tap on, tap off. can move further down if I need to, or I can drive it further up. And that’s the same with exercise. It’s the same principle as an exercise intensity. So, you know, we can use those as parallels and obviously you would.
breathe differently when we’re exercising. that’s the very, close link that we can establish there. I recall from our first conversation, and I’ve had a few conversations with people now, and it’s not even on purpose, but they use this term called over -breathing. Can you explain this?
Emma (06:37)
Yeah.
So as a population, as a human race, we’re over-breathing. So if you look back to the 60s and 70s, we were breathing considerably less in terms of how many breaths per minute we were taking. And so it comes hand in hand with stress, right? If you think about it, if we’re stressed, we’re going to breathe more, we’re going to breathe more shallow and up into the chest. If we’re calm and at peace, we’re going to breathe lower, slower and deeper. And so it’s kind of like chicken or the egg.
Is it that we have become more stressed as a nation and therefore we’re breathing more? Or is it that we started breathing more on there before we’d become more stressed? Who knows? But both are very deeply correlated. And so what we want to try and get people doing is breathing less. We want to get them to breathe slower, lower, deeper, preferably through the nose. Our mouth isn’t designed to be the major vessel for taking in breath.
it is the nose that we should be breathing through. And so that’s why you’re seeing lots of things come through that are very popularized like mouth tape or nasal strips. These are all tools that can help us breathe A, through the nose, but also hopefully make our breath more efficient so that we can actually start to take fewer breaths per minute.
Vanessa Leone (07:51)
I love this. I’ll definitely put my hand up for an over-breather and not a purposeful over-breather, not even when I was stressed. think it’s, I think that a lot of us don’t even realize that it’s a conditioned stress response, even when you’re not in stress. So that’s, that’s the other thing as well. Or people might be like, well, I’m not stressed at the moment.
Emma (08:08)
Yes, yeah.
Vanessa Leone (08:13)
Yeah, but you might’ve had quite a big portion of stress or maybe even as a kid, you weren’t breathing that well, which is definitely what I kind of came to the conclusion as. And that set, those breathing patterns set you up for life until you kind of have a look and dive back into those. Then you’re like, that, okay, all of these things start to make sense now. And I find it really fascinating particularly this kind of over-breathing, is there a universal breathing rate or is that actually really personal, kind of like your heart rate variability?
Emma (08:53)
No, there is a breath that we should be looking to move towards. So six to eight breaths per minute would be like an ideal world. We’re not there at the moment. That breathing rate is, we’re quite far away from it a national average. So we really want to try to be slowing down our breath quite purposefully to get it to that space, up to 12 breaths per minute. Excuse me. So, but like we’re probably breathing closer to like the twenties.
or the late teens. So we really want to try and slow that breathing rate down. And we can do that in two ways. We can sort of have a very purposeful practice, which is a breath class, a breath, you know, class in ER, so something on an app or on YouTube where we can take time out of our day to actively slow down our breath. There’s also amazing protocols that you can use for breath retraining where you kind of purposely are taking lower, slower.
deeper breaths or very small amounts of breaths to build our tolerance to CO2. And then in turn, that should slow down your breathing for the rest of the day. But then there’s also just the sort of things that we could do throughout our day every time we become conscious. you know, noticing if you are breathing through your mouth, okay, that’s right. Look at me, I’m breathing through my mouth. I’m going to close my mouth. Or notice if you are breathing quite shallow in the chest, okay, I’m going to just stop for minute and take five or six low, slow, deep breaths.
And those are the things in turn, the more conscious practice and then the stuff day to day that we can be that we can be doing to help us breathe in a more efficient way. And then of course, mouth-pacing, which I said before, is a real popular thing for people to do at the moment. And basically the reason is because you might be doing all of the good work during the day. You might be doing your practice. You might be consciously breathing every time you stop at traffic lights and thinking about breathing into the belly, breathing through the nose. But then at night, the body’s pretty clever.
It’s sort of built up. It’s… CO2 levels during the day and then it’s going to be like, okay, this is my time and open the mouth and kind of dump all of that CO2 and undo all the good work you’ve been doing during the day. So the mouth taping just ensures we’re continuing that practice even when we sleep. So we’re closing the mouth and we’re only breathing through the nose to continue that, you know, breath retraining or to try and increase our breath efficiency.
Vanessa Leone (11:07)
I love that, I love that. Now, you started talking about science and I got excited, so I think I’m going to push this forward.
I know. Alright, I’m a geek everybody, we know this. So you talked about CO2, carbon dioxide. Not a lot of people realize that it’s not so bad for us in terms of this breath work. So what’s going on here? Why did CO2 get this like such a bad name? It’s bad gas, bad poison, or bad for us? And how do we start to think around that?
Emma (11:23)
Well, I think I don’t know why it got a bad rap, to be honest. I think it’s because it’s a waste material, right? So like when we’re breathing, as we exhale, we’re letting go of CO2. So I guess people in people’s brains, they’re thinking, okay, well, we’re dumping that, right? We’re letting go of that. It’s something we obviously don’t want. But it’s just, you know, that’s just how we breathe. That’s how we manoeuvre our respiratory system. So this CO2 tolerance is something we actually want to build up because the more that we get used to just
)
continually dumping CO2, our tolerance decreases, right? So then when we do start to retrain our breath, it’s gonna feel very uncomfortable when we start to then take on more CO2, if that makes sense. So that’s why, say we’re doing slower, lower, deeper breathing, maybe it’s your first breath class, and you’re told to do a breath hold, or you’re told to kind of just only breathe in the bottom of your lungs, you might start to feel a little bit anxious, you might start to get these little contractions in the diaphragm.
And that’s just your body’s natural, I guess, reaction to the CO2 to try and get you to breathe. But it doesn’t mean that we should be just succumbing to that natural urge. When we’re starting this process of breath retraining, we kind of want to push through that sensation, a little bit like a free diver would if they’re learning to hold their breath for really long periods of time or any of those kinds of modalities. So yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, like getting used to the feeling of lactic acid. Exactly.
Vanessa Leone (12:59)
Like a muscle burn in class, same kind.
Emma (13:06)
And so when we’re breath free training, we might feel this need to urge to breathe, but actually the more we continue with our training, the longer we’ll be able to tolerate CO2 in our body and the more efficient our breathing will become. So it’s actually about holding on, getting a bit of an injection of love for your CO2 in your body. We don’t want to reject it. We actually want to forge a relationship with it instead.
Vanessa Leone (13:30)
Yeah, it’s kind of like that. I like to think about it like broccoli. There’s a compound in broccoli that’s actually like, it’s not anti-cancer, it’s actually kind of cancerous. And the reason why broccoli is really good for you is because then your body internally develops these like antibodies to build up these anti-cancer things because you’re kind of consuming a little bit of it. So it’s kind of that same thing. Like to get better at anything, you kind of need to push through that.
that urge or that challenge, that initial kind of discomfort phase to then drive it up. So do you have like a little practical, you know, breath work or a breath hold that, you know, like you said, if we’re sitting at the traffic lights or whatever it might be, we decided to take a minute away from our screen at work. Is there something that comes to mind that we can do really quickly?
Emma (14:21)
I think my most Favorite breath is the most researched breath as well, and it’s heart coherence. So it’s a beautiful breath. It’s really easy to remember because it’s just five counts in, five counts out. But this is the most researched breath into taking us into a state of calm and to bring us into our parasympathetic nervous system. And so maybe we could all do it together now. So if everybody just gets comfortable, sits up straight, wherever you’re at, please don’t be doing this. If you are driving, do not close your eyes, but you could.
Absolutely do it with your eyes open. But if you’re safe to do so, maybe close down the eyes. And then just start to become aware of the breath to start because often we’re completely even disconnected from the breath coming in and out of our body. You we’re so up in our minds and unaware of what’s going on below, you know, head level that sometimes it just takes a moment to recognize, that’s right, I am breathing. And then maybe you just start to become aware of where the breath is traveling in your body. So
Maybe you notice if the belly rises and falls with the breath, or maybe it’s just the chest rising and falling.
So just take a moment to notice that.
And if you do notice it’s just the chest, maybe even try taking a hand on the belly and heart and seeing if you can just breathe down a little lower, a little deeper into the belly, letting it expand.
Once you can feel that breath expanding into the belly, let’s meet on empty lungs and then take a breath in for five, four, three, two, one, and then breathe out for five, four, three, two, one. Breathe in through the nose.
and breathe out through the nose.
Breathe in, just silently counting those five counts and out in your own mind.
Just keep your focus on that five count inhale.
And that five count exhale.
And perhaps you can place the tongue just gently on the roof of the mouth as you breathe.
And every exhale, maybe just feeling the shoulders drop, the body soften.
And then lastly, maybe even just drawing focus on the heart as you breathe.
conjuring feelings of joy, of gratitude, of love, connection.
And then let’s maybe just take one more round of that breath.
and then just gently let it go. And then open your eyes when you’re ready.
Vanessa Leone (17:38)
Thank you.
Emma (17:39)
Hmm. And
so that’s the most optimal breath for reducing cortisol, chronic stress. It’s said the best dose of this, if you can remember it, is at 3.6. 5. coherence. So the coherence breath is the breath that we just did. And you want to try and practice it three times a day. And then it’s six breaths per minute, which is what we just did, five breaths in, five breaths out, five counts. And then we want to try and do that five times per day. So
three minutes, oh sorry, is that yeah, three minutes of
six breaths per minute. So five in, five out, five times a day. And if you can do that, you’ll see some beautiful results, especially if you find that you’re very stressed, you’re very anxious, then it’s really gonna help you come back to your body and reduce all of those anxious feelings and a lot of your stress levels will come down.
Vanessa Leone (18:33)
I just had like a funny moment of anxiousness because I’m really bad at counting and I’m like, my God, and then I’m like, I’m not just going to put a timer on. Exactly. No, that’s brilliant. And
Emma (18:40)
Let the clock do it for you.
Vanessa Leone (18:51)
I think as well, potentially there’s a bit of that anxiety that is inducing around people who are starting to practice breath work or who are starting to get into it or who are potentially becoming a little bit more self-aware about their breath and they actually notice, I’m breathing poorly and what’s happening. But I really love the simplicity of that because it’s just, it’s even as well. Like it’s…
It’s not super calming to the point where you’ll be super sleepy, but it’s also not very awakening. because there’s kind of, like you said, there’s those, those differences there. So let’s maybe talk a little bit about some of the different types. That one was the most research that you said, really great. Lots of evidence to suggest in like huge benefits across the board. What are, what are some other ones that are around that other people might do?
Emma (19:48)
So if we come back to that spectrum then, as I said before, like we want to optimally get back to breathing eight to 12 breaths per minute, right? That’s kind of where we want to sit in terms of, we know that our breathing is our most optimal. So the more we can practice in that space, the nice slower, lower, deeper breathing, just like we just did then, the more we’re going to kind of start to enhance the breath coming back to its homeostasis, the place that we want to be with our breath rate.
But there’s also cool things that we can dabble in when we purposefully start to breathe a little bit faster. So when we breathe around 12 to 25 breaths per minute, we call that performance breathing. let’s say you want to get into a bit of a flow state. You’re about to go into a work meeting, perform a really important presentation at work. You want to reduce the monkey mind a little bit. Just get out of your head and a bit more into your body, ready to take on a task.
Then breathing slightly faster, a slightly faster breath practice is going to help you do that. And you know, there’s lots of different schools of thought. There’s lots of different breaths out there, but ultimately, the thing that matters the most is the rate of breath that’s gonna give you the results. So you might have one school telling you to do a certain pattern of breath, like for instance, if we look in the slow breathing range, there’s so many things that we can do there. We can do the heart coherence breath that we just did.
You can do a four, seven, eight, which is a breath in for four, a hold for seven, a breathe out for eight. It’s a really beautiful thing to do to extend that exhale to really bring you into a state of calm. You could do box breathing where you breathe in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. But ultimately all of those things, if you think about it, are just reducing your rate of breath in order for you to breathe more efficiently, right? And bring you into that parasympathetic state. So the same kind of goes as we start to pick up the breath speed.
The most important thing is the rate of breath to help us get the result that we desire. So that 12 to 25 breaths per minute is that performance breath. It’s going to help amp you up and get you into a bit of a state of embodiment, ready to go and get you out of the mind. So that could just be as simple as starting to bring up the rate of breath in through the nose, out through the mouth.
Maybe you did that 20 times and you’re going to start to feel the body filled with energy. You’re going to start to feel less tired. You’re going to start to feel a little bit more connected to your body. It’s going to feel really nice. Then as we start to move up the scale, as I said, where the kind of what we see as the fireworks and the fun on social media and things like that, that’s in that 25 to 75 breaths per minute range. And that’s where my particular school, we call it breakthrough breath. Some people call it.
holotropic breathing, conscious connected breathing, there’s lots of names for it. But this is where we’re breathing at that slightly faster breath rate again. Often we’re breathing only through the mouth quite consciously. And what that can do is we can start to enter the unconscious mind. And this to me is like kind of fascinating because this is where we move away from just the science into a little bit of where it holds hands with spirituality. And that gets me really excited because I actually believe that this is almost where there’s this beautiful bridging of the gap of the two.
That gets me really excited because I actually believe that this is almost where there’s this beautiful bridging of the gap of the two, which as you know I’m very passionate about, it’s what my business is about, it’s about bridging the gap between the known and the unknown, right? Where actually the science starts to prove the things that maybe we’ve known for internally for a long time. So when we start to breathe out faster rate, okay let’s take it back a bit actually, there’s three major parts of the brain. We’ve got the brain stem.
which is our reptilian brain. We’ve got the mammalian brain over the top which is the limbic system. And then we’ve also got the prefrontal cortex that sits on top, much like a computer over the other two sections of the brain. And when we go through trauma,
and it doesn’t have to be big trauma, it can be that you had a fight with your boyfriend two weeks ago and you just maybe didn’t deal with all of the emotions in the moment. Our body is really smart. It tends to store those away. It puts issues in the tissues, as my teacher likes to say, right?
Vanessa Leone (24:00)
Mm, I like that.
Emma (24:04)
Yeah, and first of all, that’s really smart, right? Like that prefrontal cortex is always just trying to help us out, but sometimes it hinders us because we’re not doing what our animal mammal friends would do in the wild, which is they would deal with it in the moment. They’d go through some kind of trauma, maybe not an argument with their boyfriend, but they might try to get, they might get eaten by a lion or half eaten by a lion and manage to escape. Very traumatic event. They would have absolutely been in that sympathetic or even freeze state of their nervous system. But
then when they come back out of that, incredible thing happens. And you can Google this on YouTube and things. The animal will start to shake. The animal will literally shake off all of that nervous tension, all of that cortisol, all of that adrenaline. It’s going to just shake it away. And then once it’s done shaking, it takes a couple of deep breaths. And then it’s over. There’s no storing those issues in the tissues. There’s no story created about why that trauma happened. It just gets on with its day and probably ends up back in its…
parasympathetic nervous system, munching the grass down by the watering hole, right? But us humans, we don’t do that. We, as I said, we store these emotions, these traumas in our nervous system, in our body. And over time, that can cause problems. It can cause negative patterns in our behaviour. It can cause disease. And so we need safe and effective ways to remove, I guess, these energies, these emotions from the body. And so when we breathe fast, this incredible thing happens.
We are obviously increasing oxygen to the brain and we’re able to switch off almost temporarily the prefrontal cortex, which is kind of cool. It’s like we’re putting the computer offline, which I find so fascinating. And when we do that, it actually gives us access to that limbic system, to the mammalian brain where the emotions are stored. It gives us access to the unconscious mind, which is pretty cool. And so then…
When we’re breathing, especially for extended periods of time in this conscious connected way, the body has this incredible way of releasing some of those stored emotions or energies. And that can come through in lots of different ways. It can come through in physical sensation. So you might feel tingling, stiffening of the muscles in the hands called tetani. You might get the urge to move the body. The hips might not only move, the spine might want to move.
You might want to let out noise, you might yawn. There’s lots of different ways that the body releases that pent up energy. Or you might feel things anywhere on your spectrum of emotions, which is also really incredible. So you might suddenly feel really sad, you might feel waves of grief, you might feel anger, and those things are expressed in the moment through the body. So you might cry, you might get a bit of rage, but you also might feel things on the other end of the spectrum too. You might feel extreme joy, euphoria, pleasure.
anything you can think of on the range of emotions, you might get access to that. Sometimes we get given memories of past experiences, we might understand perhaps what’s passing through us, other times not. Sometimes we don’t need to know. Sometimes we just have to accept that we’re releasing these strings from the body and not attach any story to them at all. Just know that maybe that was some grief stored from at some point and I just moved it through me, which is kind of nice in a way. We don’t have to actually re-experience the traumatic event itself. It just gets to be released from the tissues.
And honestly, it’s one of the most beautiful things I get to hold space for. It’s amazing to guide people through that style of breath and witness them release these things that could have potentially or are already causing them problems in their life. And when done correctly in a supervised guided manner, it’s a really incredible tool for deep healing.
But yeah, it’s definitely, there’s less research in that section. There are people absolutely studying it and trying to understand how we’re accessing these, you know, these greater altered states of consciousness. Some people describe, you know, connection to something bigger, to God, much like people see when on psilocybin or other mind-altering substances, we seem to get the same kind of effect when just breathing, which is kind of crazy. So yeah, much more research to be done in that space, but just,
from firsthand witnessing it, it’s a pretty incredible tool and I’ve seen some great, incredible, mind-blowing transformations in people. So I feel very honoured to be able to hold space for people in that way.
Vanessa Leone (28:30)
an excellent answer. It’s I didn’t expect anything less Emma. Sorry, there’s a couple of things that came up there that I’d love to like go over with people and I think that this is where the skepticism of breathwork comes in because you gave us just a really simple daily practice, a bunch of them to be fair, that named a few of them and
Emma (28:32)
Long as always.
Vanessa Leone (29:00)
Like, like anything on social media, it’s not sexy. It’s not fun. It’s not transformational right there in the moment in a very visible way, but it might be transformational for you in the moment that you can feel more calm or you can feel more at peace or a more at ease or more clear or whatever that is. But that’s a very subjective and internal feeling. And that’s great. That’s totally fine. But like you said, with this, you know,
altered breath work, uptake, increased uptake of oxygen. You know, there’s some interesting things that happen. I, you know, a lot of people will say things like, Oh, you know, it’s, it’s not real or it’s just in your head. And my kind of, my kind of question is if it’s happening in your body, if it’s happening in your head, what makes it not real?
Like how is that not real if that’s something that that person is experiencing there and in the moment, who are we to say that that’s not a real experience or they’re not living something past or they’re not seeing something that we can’t see or feeling something that we don’t know. And I find that kind of straight out dismissal. Well, I find it very frustrating.
Emma (30:15)
Hmm.
for people that haven’t experienced it, right? And I think that’s the thing with anything like this, it has to be felt. It isn’t something we can logically do with our brains. We can learn all we want about the science and there is real science. That’s why I do love it. It’s not just, it isn’t just the complete belief in something mystical. Although I do believe in lots of mystical things, I also am deeply rooted in facts.
that’s the dichotomy of my entire existence is that I live with the fairies, but I also do, am quite skeptical for a lot of things. And that’s why I do love breath and why I love teaching it because I’m able to give people the science behind the mysticism as well. So, you know, for example, if I’m holding a circle or a breath workshop, it’s up to the person, right? They could be a deep skeptic and therefore I can just…
say just take the pure fact, the pure science of what’s happening within the body in this moment. Or if you’ve got someone that’s deeply spiritual, they’re able to also take on board the both. What I have found a lot of the time is even the most deeply skeptical people, I change their minds because they then get to have a felt experience of what is happening in that moment. I’ve had people witness extraordinary things, connect with loved ones that have passed. I’ve had people
have premonitions, I’ve had people go on mystical journeys to the universe, but not everybody experiences those things, right? Some people might just see colours, some people might just have deep, it’s a very embodied experience where it’s just a lot of feeling and emotion. But either way, whatever is given to them, what is gifted to them in that moment, I’ve never had anybody come out still a skeptic, I must admit that. But I think…
I think you’re absolutely kind of hit the nail on the head, which is actually something my kinesiologist, I used to work with an incredible kinesiologist back in Melbourne when I lived there. And again, I am all about the mystical, but you we went really deep in some of our sessions and we did like past life regression and things like that. And my skeptical brain goes, I feel like I’m just making up a story. You know, when you’re you’re told to explain where you are and what you’re seeing and, and I would tell her, but I was like, I feel like I’m just delivering you a made up Disney movie. Like I don’t, I don’t.
I don’t understand the difference between it being actually a past life memory or me just giving you something from my wild and wicked imagination, which I have one, you know? And she said to me, she said to me, does it matter? She’s like, I agree with you. She goes, I’m also, I’ve always been skeptical through my years of this training. She goes, I 100 % believe in it now due to experience of working with clients. But she said, but ultimately does it matter? Because even if you’ve made up that experience in your mind, somewhere in your subconscious, subconscious, that needed to come through, right
And so if at the end of the made up or non-made up experience that your subconscious has brought through, if there has been any form of healing or improvement in your life or letting go of past experience or trauma, then does it matter? Does it matter if you really saw those things or whether somehow your subconscious brain or conscious brain made them up? Ultimately, if it’s led to some kind of improvement in your life,
doesn’t matter or are they the same thing? Is it all just a much of a muchness? Do know what I mean? We have no idea of what’s happening in the land that we can’t see, right? It’s the unknown. None of us know. But I love to have a little faith in it after what I’ve witnessed through my life. But if you do, your perspective, you know, like I’m not take, I’m never going to try and convince anybody otherwise. And that’s why I love that there is this kind of science behind the breath as well, as opposed to other forms of, you know, psychedelic experience or
which there’s so much study of research in now as to right, but let’s say you take psilocybin as an example, like there’s more, think, what’s the word, what am trying to say? Like more ability to say, it’s just a drug. You’re just experiencing a drug induced effect. You know, not again, I don’t agree with that, but I can see why people could say that, right? Whereas with breath, like we’re just breathing. It’s just breath. Like there’s nothing else. We haven’t taken a substance. haven’t
I haven’t slipped anything into your cacao before the ceremony. People have asked me that before. I was like, no, nothing in your cacao, promise. You know, like, just just cacao and just your breath. And I think that actually for me makes it more exciting because you haven’t got that excuse of, I took this substance or this could have altered my state of being. You know, it’s just breath. Yeah.
Vanessa Leone (34:39)
I want to I want to come back around to that and kind of even reinforce it further because I love this point. Because we can’t if you had to write what an emotion is, you like, do you know what I mean? Like it’s an emotion happens in your brain, but it’s not a thing. But where’s it expressed? It’s expressed in your in your body.
you feel it. There’s there’s no there’s no emotion without a physical response. And that’s also documented. Heart rates change. Blood, blood vessels dilate or constrict vision changes like quite literally your vision, your field of vision changes depending on different types of expressions of of emotions. So if we have all this research on emotion and we know that it changes our physiology,
physiology and it changes our biology. Why is it such a big step then to think that breathing is also doing the same thing and you know, could produce these amazing and interesting results. I have been craving to do a breathwork, like a breathwork session for, I’m dying to, to be fair, cause you know, I think it’s super interesting. I’ve done, I’ve done quite a few and I love them all.
All of them have different kind of touch points. And I think that for where I’m at in my own journey of life and emotion, it’s going into your studio, knowing who you are and our connection would produce a completely different result than going into someone’s who I don’t know or a new place or something like that. for sure. And so I think that there’s also, you know, for people who have gone out there and gone to a breath work or who have done some kind of breath work practice and like,
Emma (36:37)
Safety is important.
Vanessa Leone (36:47)
And maybe they didn’t get the vibe or they produced that negative emotion in them, which I would say is potentially still probably a good thing because it’s still producing that emotion. I think I would recommend giving it another go. And do you have any tips for someone who is looking for a breathwork practitioner or something like that, questions to ask or something that they can do to feel a little bit more safe in that space?
Emma (37:14)
Because I think you’ve really nailed it there, which is it’s a feeling of safety, right? Like I think with any of this stuff, if you don’t feel safe and you don’t feel safe in the space that’s been created by the practitioner, you’re going to just have a harder ride of a time, right? Because this is all about being able to let go and feeling free to express. Because things can come up in these bigger breathwork journeys that you might want to scream.
you might want to cry, ugly cry out loud. And if you haven’t got the safe space to be able to do that in, then you’re going to hold back and you’re doing yourself an injustice in that moment, right? Because it’s almost like you’ve opened the channels. It’s ready to move through. You’re ready to release all of the good stuff. And then you’re blocking it back down, you know? And just making sure that, so firstly, safety. Yeah, you want to feel safe with the practitioner. So
I’d recommend maybe not diving straight into a big breathwork ceremony if you’re brand new to breath. I think going along to some more gentle breath flow type classes just to help you understand the sensations that you might feel if you start to breathe at faster rates. So for example, at therapy, we offer two different breath type
classes. They’re just 45 minute classes on the timetable. They’re popping up everywhere now, which is amazing. There’s even some breathwork studios around and about that are epic.
What happens in those classes is it’s almost like this gentle introduction into what even becoming aware of your breath is like. So we run two different kinds of classes, one which is pure parasympathetic. So all of those beautiful slow breath techniques that we kind of touched on, followed by sound healing. So everything about that class is just low, slow, deep.
It is gentle. You shouldn’t feel too much emotional response. Sometimes you do though, because we’re so.
stressed as a society that even bringing somebody down for a moment into their rest and digest where they may have not been for a really long time can bring forward lots of emotion because finally their body is feeling safe and will often release emotion and energy when we get back to a safe place. yeah, so they can be emotional but often they’re a lot more gentle, right?
And then we also do another class called release where we kind of delve into this world of fast breathing, but for shorter periods. So we really only breathe in that sort of conscious connected way for three, four minutes and then start playing with breath holds because they can just feel magic. And then we kind of down regulate from there. And what’s beautiful about these classes are if we think about our nervous system and we talked about it before, we’ve got our parasympathetic, our rest and digest, and we’ve got our sympathetic, our fight and flight.
And we’ve also got freeze above that, yeah? So a state of complete disassociation, disconnection from body, which we can often dive in in this society and this world as well without going through something super traumatic. So let’s say you live in a fairly chronically stressed world. You may not have been down at the bottom of that chart for a really long time.
You might just be dancing around that middle. You get up, you have a coffee, a little bit more into that chart. We go into a stressful work meeting, more stressed.
Yeah, you then have an argument with your partner, more stressed. Then maybe you go do a workout, you blow off some steam a little bit down, but then you go and go back onto emails and you kind of go back up again. And then you go to bed kind of stressed. So you wake up kind of stressed. We’re never actually in that parasympathetic. So the beautiful thing about kind of meeting people where they’re at with breath is that we’re actually able to connect to them in a deeper way. So take that.
that stressful scenario. If I was to ask that person that is super chronically stressed to sit down, be still and breathe slow, do you think that’s going to be easy? No. Like they’re probably actually really fight it the entire class, feel very uncomfortable, be very agitated, be very fidgety. I see this in class all the time, right? Because
that person is just not ready for being almost dragged into the parasympathetic, right? They’re just, they’re not going there and their body is going to fight it. Whereas if it’s kicking me and saying, don’t, I’m not used to this.
It’s almost like you’re trying to do that too fast. Whereas if you take that person and you meet where they’re at with breath, with some faster paced breathing, know, like you’re taking them into that sympathetic or meeting them in that sympathetic system, followed by a few breath holds to start to kind of like find a little peace in the body and it feels a bit juicy and nice. It gets them a bit out of their head and a bit more into their body. And then you start to breathe slowly and maybe introduce some sound healing and all those beautiful yummy things. They’re far more easy.
to come down into that parasympathetic response. And then they’re able to lie still, and then they’re able to rest and join up with exercise because that’s what we do. That’s why I often recommend if you’re going to meditate or you’re going to try and find some stillness or calmness, go blow off some steam first. So go do the high energy class, go blow off the steam, meet yourself where you’re at in terms of sympathetic, but then maybe go do some slow breathing after that because you’re more able to bring yourself down into that state. And so that’s what we do even in our group fitness classes, right? Is that we’ve got that kind of
of progress in mind, that kind of trajectory. So to skip back to where I was going with that, introducing yourself to breath in that way is really good because you’re just doing those short periods of fast breathing. You might start to feel some of that physical sensation in the body. You might start to feel some of that emotional release, but in a much more smaller ghost. And that way, if this particular practitioner also does longer ceremonies or workshops, you’re going to start to build trust with that.
person as well and understand their mythology and the way that they guide so that then once you’ve kind of got used to breathing and started to connect to your breath in a better way, then going into a fuller, longer workshop will probably feel far better on the body. So that’s definitely a number one recommendation is finding a practitioner perhaps you can work with in that way, especially if you feel very disconnected from your breath. If you feel like you could be one of those chronically stressed people, that you have no connection to your breath.
I would definitely start small.
And then there was another thing I was going to say, and I got into a big stream of consciousness.
Vanessa Leone (43:39)
like it.
No, that’s great. That’s fine. I, this will be the last kind of question and you just touched on it perfectly. Is breath work meditation?
Emma (43:42)
Oh, no, not at all. And it’s actually, it’s, I think it’s, or you could say it’s the meditation for people that can’t meditate because what breath is doing, especially for that active and the stressed is it’s giving your mind focus rather than trying to tell you to empty it, right? Like as much as even when I teach meditation, I try and explain it’s not an emptying of the mind. It’s an allowing the thoughts to come in and out. Whereas in breath work,
actually often find that we’re using the mind to our advantage to explore the sensations in our body. And that’s the only way I can really describe it without you physically feeling it. especially when we breathe fast and we’re able to kind of put that prefrontal cortex offline, some people experience no thoughts. They kind of go into a real mystic land where they’re just completely embodied. For me, I’m very neurologically driven. So for me, it’s almost like I separate the two. I’ve still got my mind kind of dissecting what’s going on in my body. And I love that.
because it no longer is the mind in the driver’s seat. It’s like the mind is in the back seat and the body is leading and the mind is just able to say, what’s that sensation down in your hip? Go and explore that. What happens if I move my hips? the sensation grows. now I can move that sensation through my body. Now I feel this emotion. I’m able to kind of intellectualize what’s going on in my body and I freaking love that. I love that disconnection where, as I said, the mind is kind of in the back seat rather than where it normally is, which is absolutely in the front.
telling the body to go away. So I think especially for the active brain and all the chronically stressed, that’s why breath work is for me far better, far more superior than meditation because we’re able to give the mind actively something to do while we reap all the benefits of what we would see in meditation.
Vanessa Leone (45:41)
That’s such a great answer to that question, I have not heard it explained like that before. Thank you, that was, and actually that was like your shortest answer ever. Are you okay Emma?
but seriously, it’s, I’m, definitely on, on your side of the active brain, find it hard to sit still that agitation, you know, and also I, I think that a lot of what I would have as meditation, like if you’re watching me, there’s always constant kind of movement. So it just that sitting still, I find very challenging when I can sit still, it’s really nice.
there’s always a moment to focus. Like the only thing that’s going to keep me sitting still is a book. That’s like the only thing exactly the brain is.
Emma (46:30)
then you’re still keeping the brain active, Like we’re still, we’re now
in the fantasy world of dragons and fairies. Yeah.
Vanessa Leone (46:36)
Correct, exactly. And so that’s,
that’s breath work as well, right? Because you have to concentrate on timing and breath and you you get to concentrate on what you feel and that kind of stuff as well. But all of the times that I have done a very kind of intense breath work session, there has been, like you said, the sensation of, I don’t want to call it thought, but that moment where
It’s very hard to describe without actually being in it. It’s clarity in fog. I don’t know how to, it’s such a contradiction, but it feels right. And I think that that’s, that for me is, is that peace. It’s you’re clear, but you don’t have to look at anything. That’s where I kind of go for that, that clarity, but there’s nothing. Yeah, there’s, yeah, there’s,
Emma (47:10)
Yeah.
Mm.
I love that. space. This space.
Vanessa Leone (47:33)
And I think that that is, for me, the most beautiful part when I know I get into those states. I haven’t felt anything super emotional come out. I get a lot of fireworks and lights and colour and sensation in my body, lots of sensation, but then it’s always followed by that. I just want to call it like a fog, that shroud, the mist comes in and it’s like,
Peace.
Okay.
Yeah, that’s, that’s cool. And especially after all the fireworks, it’s very, it’s a very interesting, it’s like the smoke or something, but, that’s just a fun way to describe it. And maybe one day I’ll learn to meditate. I’m not putting too much pressure on myself.
Emma (48:08)
And don’t, you I actually don’t think you should. I think there’s meditation or there is presence, which is actually what we’re craving, right, for everybody with a tool that feels good for them. I think I understand when people say, you know, there’s discipline involved in learning to meditate, and that’s true. And we can all do with gaining discipline in our lives. We shouldn’t make everything easy. However, I do think when it comes to presence practice, why not choose something that feels good in your body that you’re able to access?
often. And so if moving feels like your meditation, do that. If art feels like your meditation, then do that. If breath work feels like your meditation, then I think take whatever is best for you that you can access more easily because if it’s too hard, you’re not going to do it. It’s like habit forming, right? Choose the thing that’s going to be the easiest way of creating a new habit, not the way that’s going to make it super difficult. And so you give up after two minutes.
sitting in lotus and forcing yourself to meditate is just not feeling good for you, choose a different mode of meditation. Because ultimately what you want to get to is finding that peace, finding that presence as many times throughout your day. So finding a way that it feels good is far more beneficial than forcing yourself or trying to gain that discipline to do it another way that doesn’t feel natural in your body.
Vanessa Leone (49:42)
I love that. That time flew, Emma. And I feel like I have like five other questions that I didn’t even ask you.
Emma (49:45)
I remembered one thing, I remember the one thing I was gonna say around choosing, and I think it’s a good thing to end on, which is that I think there’s many things where I don’t mind where people learn by experience, but I would say when choosing a practitioner for breath work, choose someone that’s got good qualifications, recognizable qualifications. There’s no governing body at the moment, it is very ungoverned as with most things. So always trust your gut, right? But I think there is a lot of ways, especially when doing the deeper,
breakthrough style breaths, where you want your practitioner to be trauma informed, you want them to be able to hold safe space, case you go through anything and you need their support. So yeah, I’m all for learning by doing and not always taking every qualification under my belt, but this one I made sure that I went to an incredible teacher and breath facilitation school so that I could really understand and I’ve not regretted it because for me there is a lot of science.
and you wanna have that science under your belt, you wanna have the hours of experience, you wanna have the mentors, because everybody’s reaction to breath is different, and everybody’s reaction to trauma is different, and so you wanna be able to handle that, and be able to give your clients onto people if you can’t handle it either. You wanna have a good process,
a referral process, yes, you did the word out of my mouth, yeah, so.
Yeah, I think it’s important. So always checking in with that as
well, I think is essential just to make sure that you know you’re being looked after and that you’re in safe hands so that you can feel safe in any given circumstance.
Vanessa Leone (51:23)
Mm. Wise words, Emma. Very wise words. Thank you so much for your beautiful time. I appreciate you. We appreciate you. And until next time, because it won’t be that long. Bye! Yes.
Emma (51:29)
You’re welcome.
next time. Yay! Love these chats. Bye!
Vanessa Leone Movement Therapist 