S03E09 Transcript: Stuart Sandeman on Breathwork

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Gemma Styles [00:00:01] Hello, I'm Gemma and welcome back to another episode of Good Influence. This is the podcast where each week you and I meet a guest who helps us pay attention to something we should know about as well as answering some of your questions. This week we're talking about breathwork the science behind harnessing all breathing, how exercises can help us to access our emotions. And our guest treats us to a guided breathing session to help with balance. So joining me this week is Stuart Sandeman. Stuart is an author, radio host on breathing coach. He's worked with everyone from Olympic athletes to business executives. A trained respiratory coach, Stuart has studied both Eastern methodologies and Western science and brings all of this education together. In his show, Radio One's decompression session, as well as through his social media app and courses. Let's start right at the beginning. Why breathing for you? Because, I mean, it's something we're all doing every day, hopefully. How did you come to kind of work in this area? How did breathing become such a big part of your life?

Stuart Sandeman [00:01:24] I know it sounds so bizarre, isn't it? Like when did you start breathing? And in some ways, I really discovered the power of breathing through quite a hard time, actually. My girlfriend was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Gemma Styles [00:01:37] I'm so sorry.

Stuart Sandeman [00:01:38] Before that, I was. I was a DJ. I was touring the world, playing music and all sorts and producing music. And, yeah, when she was diagnosed, it kind of moved me heavily into this body mind space, looking at conventional treatments of health and wellbeing, thinking all the amazing alternatives that were out there and also evoked this kind of like, what is life about? Where do we go after this lifetime? So some big questions of that moment. And sadly, she didn't make it. She she passed away. I wish I when I tell that part of the story, I feel like people are waiting for me to say breathing saved her and everything was amazing. But it wasn't till afterwards that I found breathwork through grief. I didn't know much about it. I just took my mum for Mother's Day to a breathing class. That's as far as I'd thought. My mum was is into yoga and I was meeting her that day. I was running late and I didn't have anything and something popped up online saying Breathing Workshop and I bought it from my mum and went along with her the following week and. It was that moment that that particular. Breath practise that kind of turned on the light bulb. The wow. How could this how could I have overlooked this thing that we already have on us? And what happened in that session was so weird and wonderful and amazing and powerful. A lot of energy shifts and a very cathartic release. Probably the first time I've really let myself go emotionally through grief, or maybe even my life in some ways. Like I've always held myself together and I thought that was a good thing. But in that Breathwork class, I allowed myself to feel for the first time and let my guard down. And I had this big cathartic release. A lot of emotion felt like the way of grief was kind of evaporating off me. And I felt that my girlfriend was there holding my hand, which was so bizarre and amazing and supportive. And that got me kind of excited. Or also before I got excited, I thought, Right, I'm actually I've lost the plot something. So I'll just say this is like I have gone through so much and I am like hallucinating or this is happening. Either that or someone. I thought maybe someone's popped something in my drink before and they did not seem to take to do that. They were very lovely. I mean.

Gemma Styles [00:04:04] That's quite a reaction.

Stuart Sandeman [00:04:05] Yeah. And then I thought, well, actually, maybe there's a third option. And that third option is breathing. Breathing has the power to actually allow you to let go of that tension, physical tension and emotional tension and tap into this deep space, this powerful space. So that was me from my first session. I thought, Right, I need to see if this is a one off. I need to do a bit more of this just to see what really happened, then uncover that. And the more I practised, the more I got from it. Initially it was grief, but I started to notice my energy increase, my sleep going deeper and better, the voice in my head being much kinder to me, having more energy, just feeling a little bit like I was coming back to a version of me that had been very distant for a long time, and even more so than grief. It felt like I was actually connecting to a real part of me. So it was. That was that was my introduction. It was through that, that particular first session, diving deep for that particular practise. And I often questioned things. I'm quite a sceptic to a lot of things, but I like to question things. I like to understand things in a way my mind going to a logical way. And so the experiences that having was having through these practises were not logical at all. So I set off on my way to try and find out as much as I possibly could about breathing. And I set up a business called Breath Pods where I helped others release tension, whether that's physical tension, whether that was using our breath to control how we feel throughout the day, that reducing our stress or creating more energy or finding a bit more flow or working through some of these more complex emotions or challenges that life brings, like grief for moving house or changing job, or going through a Break-Up or not being able to sleep at night. What is actually happening here and what's happening in the body, in the breathing cycle so that we can kind of work through some of this stuff. And so, yeah, that's how I got into it and that's kind of where I went from it, I think, with many practitioners. It tends to be something that's helped them so much and they just get so much from it that they just want to share it with the world. And that was certainly the case with me. I thought, Wow, this is something so amazing, so accessible. We already have it, we're already doing it. And how do we actually learn more about this and have awareness of how our breath interacts throughout our day so that we can feel good? I know that sounds very broad and simple, but but ultimately that's what breathing is. It allows us when we remember to breathe, we can change the way we feel making we can make the most of any situation.

Gemma Styles [00:06:44] Yeah, absolutely. But I mean, that's so interesting. And it made me think of something and I've probably mentioned this before on the podcast even, but. Thinking about emotions and breathing. So as someone who's struggled with depression and anxiety and people always say, you know, exercise is a good thing to do because endorphins and it's generally good for you and all the rest of it. But I always say if I'm too sad already, I can't exercise because I just cry. Which and that's what it was making me think of when you said that. And I feel like it's one. As soon as I was kind of exercising and getting out of breath. It kind of the emotions would just sort of pour out of me and that's. Yeah. Made me think of. Just for me personally, I can really see how that sort of connexion would work.

Stuart Sandeman [00:07:37] Yeah. No, it's it's really interesting because often I think about why we're getting such endorphins through our exercise and and movement and our breath changes throughout that we are our breath speeds up. We're needing more oxygen to ourselves. We breathe faster in a heartbeat, faster. So we're causing the body to shift. Shift. It's chemistry and change. We're kind of our mind and body is always looking to be balanced.

Gemma Styles [00:08:03] Sure.

Stuart Sandeman [00:08:03] But it balances itself with what it perceives as the right thing to do at that time. And a lot of our breathing is it's all automatic, but is linked to how we are our stress response. So when we go into some sort of exercise, we're kind of a late that stress response. And I know that sounds bizarre sounds like we don't want to do that, but we get stressed, which is actually a positive stress where it motivates us and excites us and gets us moving. So, yes, it's interesting that you've made that connexion if you're feeling down, that that allows you to have this emotional shift. And what I'd say is allow that to happen because it when you're sharing it there, it sounds like what you tend to do is actually I'm not going to exercise because I'll feel.

Gemma Styles [00:08:48] Yeah.

Stuart Sandeman [00:08:49] And what everything I teach and this is the same for myself before coming into Breathwork. It's the world around us. Says it's not okay to freely feel. If you're feeling, you're maybe showing vulnerability and that's not a good thing. This notion of strength is often praised, and it certainly was for myself as a big boys don't cry is this old belief that I always had? I'd done martial arts all my life. Teddy bear called Tough Ted. So when it came to something like grief. I thought, well, I could actually access it and I didn't want to access it because I thought that on an unconscious level that root break, this pattern or conditioning or own strength that I'd built up. So for yourself, that might be something around that as well. Like it's okay to feel and it's and I actually say once we get better at feeling, we allow our breath to move. Because when we access feeling through our day or different emotions, our breath moves swimmer excited our breath can a jiggle was up and down in my table. Yeah, and when we're laughing will our breath does something different. When we're joyful, our breath expands Remember feeling stressed and anxious, we actually contract. So are the rhythm in which we breathe is also a measure of how we're feeling and a measure of our emotional status. And that's a lot of the work that I do with people and a lot of stuff that I talk through in my book, Breathing Breathe Out is actually how do we stop these contractions, stop ourself from holding on, because as well as our breath moving through emotions and changing when we feel emotional. Part of that emotional cycle is actually needed. We have this it's called integration and we have and Harvard research says it takes 90 seconds, 90 seconds from the moment we have that emotional experience. For it to complete and to complete a cycle, it needs to move energy and motion as what emotion is. And when we allow it to move, we have to usually have some sort of emotional experience. We laugh, we cry, we shout with rage or something happens and our breath moves. Now, because we maybe deem consciously it's not appropriate to do that is not appropriate to shower and scream or laugh where we shouldn't or burst into tears when we go into exercise. So what we do is we hold our breath. We hold our breath to stop ourself from feeling. Because unconsciously we know that if we breathe through it, we probably have to feel it. So that's maybe like when you engage in the exercise, you're forced to breathe because your exercise is building up that energy level and you need your your breath to move. And that's maybe causing this actual shift to happen. So what I'd say is, is. I get so excited when people share these things with me because I'm like, You need to come and do a session. Come and do session with me. Yes, absolutely. Because. It will unlock. It will unlock what? What you're holding on to. And this is something that you might be aware that you're holding on to. Or it might be something that's deeply rooted from our past. Even things like our childhood experiences, where we've learnt how to interact with the world through our peers, through our parents, through our schooling. We hold on in certain ways, and that is all the way we hold on is holding our breath. So once we can unlock some of that stuff, we can feel what we need to feel and allow ourselves to have those integration cycles that we maybe have been holding on to for many, many years. Then we free up that space and you can enjoy your exercise without having to have an emotional outburst. I don't know. I'm using years yourself as an example, but that's for anybody, anybody that's maybe avoiding situations because they know it will make them feel a certain way. What I'd say is actually get better at feeling what you need to feel and be more aware of that as well. And we can start making a positive change and all that comes with a move in our breathing cycle.

Gemma Styles [00:12:51] Yeah, I mean, I find it really fascinating even thinking back to I mean biology at school was my favourite subjects. And I remember even learning about, you know, different systems in the body. I always thought breathing. It's such a fascinating thing. And I think partly because we do it automatically or kind of unconsciously. But as soon as you think about it, you can start controlling it. But as soon as you stop thinking about it, you still carry on and do it anyway. I feel like it's quite an unusual system in that way.

Stuart Sandeman [00:13:22] And that is the magic of it, because it's the for me, I feel it's the bridge between your unconscious mind and all the systems in your body that we don't necessarily have control of and your conscious mind. And that is where there's so much power in understanding how we're breathing in the moment, because we can take control of our breath. And if we take control of our breath, we actually send a signal to our brain to change what that signal is, too. So to make a bit sense of that, if. A breathing, like many systems in the body, is often override by a stress response because our primary response of our mind is to keep ourselves safe from danger. So a threat comes in the room, the tiger comes in the room, we see the tiger. We saw our senses pick up. We might hear the roar. We might even smell its signal sent to our breathing. Breathing increases, heart rate increases. Blood flow moves to our legs and we leg it all. We try and fight off the tiger.

Gemma Styles [00:14:20] So that's the runoff or.

Stuart Sandeman [00:14:22] Yeah, or we have the third response, which might be interesting for yourself because there's third responses. Freeze.

Gemma Styles [00:14:28] Oh yeah. I change my answer. I pick that one.

Stuart Sandeman [00:14:30] Yeah. So freeze means that if we draw on a curve, we've, we've been aroused by that threat. So hurry up, everything's going up. And then we realise in that split second that there's no way out. So the body says, Right, okay, we move into what we call parasympathetic response, which is bizarre because that's actually the rest response. But in that case, the freeze response is still a stress response, and we shut down.

Gemma Styles [00:14:54] Mm hmm.

Stuart Sandeman [00:14:55] So we shut down in the hope that whatever is the threat will not see us and walk past us. The tiger just goes past. Or if we do end up in the tiger's mouth that we don't feel anything, we're numb. So that's what this the psychological freeze response. So this is how we're built for thousands of years, our ancestors the same. Our lives are very different. So if we have experiences that create a stress response, we can get stuck in a freeze response. And in that freeze response, we feel numb, we feel a lack of motivation. We find it hard to go and do things are being social situations and we often it's that kind of withdrawal response that is often linked to people who are feeling depressed or feeling anxious. And what we can do is actually work back through that and allow the body to shift and let the body know that that the tiger's not in the room anymore. And I know that seems like a simple thing when we know a tiger's not in the room, but the tiger's we have in this day, the tiger's in our head. And what's really quite interesting about breathing are the body and the unconscious mind is it doesn't know the breathing. The brain's trigger to our breath, does not know the difference between an experience happening in our environment and an experience just fabricated through thought. It triggers the same response. So if we are worried about an event or we're worried about our to do list, or we've got what we should have done yesterday, or what we should be doing tomorrow or money or whatever, is that we're maybe these common worries, things people have, then it can be triggering these different responses and causing our breath to react in a way as if the tiger's in the room. So a lot of people get stuck in these these stressful breathing patterns, either through habit because of the stressful day that becomes a month, becomes a year or because of an experience where they hold their breath. To stop this flow of emotion that we talked about earlier. So the nice thing is that it's all unconscious. That's all happening in the background. But by understanding, well, how is my breath flowing? Is this the right way or wrong way for this situation? Can I now take control of it? So if I take control of it, I'm going to shift the way I'm feeling in this moment. Probably shift my behaviour in this moment as well. And I can actually. However I like to think of as a hack. We're hacking into our body system or changing our body chemistry every time we take control of our breath so that we feel different. And that's where it's so, so powerful. So that might be I can't get to sleep. I really want to sleep right now. I need to wind down. Well, if we are breathing in a stressful way, something is telling our body and mind. The tiger's in the room and we're not going to go to sleep because there's a tiger in the room. Yeah. So we if we then tell our body and mind by breathing a certain way, calming our breath, that sends a signal to the brain, says, no, there's no tiger in the room. There's this two way street between our mind and our body. And and the breath is sitting in the middle of that, controlling our heart rate and controlling what's happening with the signal going back to our mind. So again, there's lots of different situations that I will link with. I mentioned sleep, but it could even be digestion. Hmm. If we're having digestion issues, then. The body and brain might just think there's a tiger in the room. And if we think there's a tiger in the room, then it says, Well, our digestion can wait. We'll deal with that later. We need to survive right now so our blood flow is going elsewhere. So it's really fascinating because it is something we can control and it's something that when we control it, we start to access parts of our body and mind that we ordinarily thought just happened by themself we had no control over. So that's why I find breathing such a empowering tool because. If we are feeling anxious or. Feeling stressed or feeling overwhelmed or have an experience where we are kind of thrown off a little bit. Then we can come back to our breath and allow ourselves to have that kind of integration cycle of emotion and allow ourselves to change our nervous system. So we tell the body that we're safe and everything is okay. And that's why I just think it's such a such an amazing tool to have.

Gemma Styles [00:19:27] Yeah. And I love that that all makes very scientific sort of sense to me. I mean, that's the the way my brain kind of works, I guess. But I mean, as you said at the beginning, how you came into Breathwork and this sort of space, how you discovered it. And it felt like I mean, it sounded like it was kind of like this magical experience. And you said that you want it to go away and find out what was happening and how it worked. When you. Divert. What are we saying, though? When you dug into it, did you find that you were able to logically, kind of scientifically explain exactly how all of these things work? Or is the. A spiritual element to some of it for you. Do they blend together or how would you say your kind of approach to to breathing lungs?

Stuart Sandeman [00:20:22] Yeah, that's an amazing question that I've been trying my hardest to figure out. And this is I talk about this in my book, can breathe in, breathe out because I had these magical experiences and it wasn't just me. I start when I started working with clients, people would share like AM. This happened the other week. I was running a workshop as part of the book tour and somebody at the end said, I, who is an older lady. And she said, I just let go of the grief of my dad who passed away when I was nine years old, and I brought everyone in the room to tears because she said she'd been holding on to that tension in her body because she at that time she wasn't allowed to kind of show tears or grief wasn't really a thing. You just kind of got on with it. And she shared that at the end, and everyone in the room was in tears because she allowed herself to move forward. And she said a bit similar to me. She said, I felt like my dad came in, pinched my toe and said, I'm off now and so sweet. And it was so, so amazing and so powerful. And that I mean, that's one of many, many people stories that happens now. It's quite hard to quantify. And that's something I've been doing and I share a story in the book. I'm not getting that too much away, but I basically started working with a mentor and a scientist on this stuff and I met him. I was doing a conference in Ibiza as part of a music summit that was over there, and I was quite new to where they made my journey into teaching, etc. And I was invited over and I had a bit of imposter syndrome anyway. I was like, Oh, why am I? How come I'm here? Because then experts from around the world. So I was like feeling a little bit uneasy, anxious. And I got into this minibus to go to the venue and they picked up other facilitators. And this guy sat in front of me in a Panama hat and he looked just looked super intelligent. You know, you could just you could just tell. Yeah. And he turned around and he said, Oh, hey, I'm, I'm, I'm Dr. Nahm. I've heard about your breathing that you teach. What's this? And he went straight and for the call he said, what's the scientific evidence behind it.

Gemma Styles [00:22:30] Now I've got Dr. No but.

Stuart Sandeman [00:22:32] No solid answers. They're like my, my imposter syndrome kind of went tenfold like, oh. And it was like a tumbleweed moment and the bus can start rolling. And in my head is like, you're useless. Although I didn't say anything like that. But, you know, and your mind just like, oh my God. Right, yeah. Teach us stuff. And I don't know, I don't know if you'll answers. And the following day he, I didn't know that I was being quietly investigated by him. And this doctor, Norman Rosenthal, this gentleman is a researcher. He lives in the States. He discovered seasonal affective disorder. Oh, wow. And light therapy. And he tours the world talking about transcendental meditation and he maps all this stuff by science. And he he came up to me the following day and said, I've been checking in with other people and they've been sharing how amazing your session is and how amazing the experience is. I'd love to do a session with you. So we did a session together and. He just beforehand a shared like the through this experience you might feel some emotion come up you might have have kind of experiences from your past come up and he put his hand on my knee and I told the story loads and he's fine with it because it's in the book as well. If you hand me, let me, dad. Pain in the eyes has had I been a therapist for 40 years, I'd be very, very surprised if something came up and I thought, Oh jeez, imposter syndrome again kicks in. Glad you.

Gemma Styles [00:23:58] Over.

Stuart Sandeman [00:23:59] My head. Yeah. And but he had to magically he he laughed, he cried. He went through like every emotion on this emotional spectrum. And at the end I thought, wow, what happened this is has been incredible session for him. And I said, Oh, do you want to share anything? And he just said, That was interesting. And I was having had affected his things and went off again and.

Gemma Styles [00:24:19] Took the cancer.

Stuart Sandeman [00:24:21] Yeah. And he, he then I didn't see him because he flew back to the States, but I got a call from him the following week and he said, Hey, is Norm and I've shared a bit more about recession, what happened? And he said, I'm really excited about this because the science is quite patchy so that it would excite him as well. And he said and it was so powerful and I've not been this excited for a long time about a practise. Would you like to embark on a scientific study on this? Let's let's have a look at this dilemma deeper. So that's where I kind of it was like I went into that whole experience knowing that there wasn't answers for some of this stuff. But the proof is in the pudding, both my personal experience. But there are many, many other people having these spiritual experiences and. You shared. I know I talked about science, but I like to think that's what science is. Questioning stuff and trying to figure things out and saying, well, something's happening here. Let's figure out what that is. Is it the imagination? Is it something bigger? Are we tapping into something, some magical force somewhere else? Whatever it is, it's really helping people. And let's uncover a little bit more. So we went off and we he he kind of mentored me into collecting a whole body of of. Like anecdotal experiences from people that did sessions and we documented 636 of them and the book got stopped because of coronavirus. Initially, that kind of paused things in terms of our research, but we started to map it and what we were doing is mapping into categories, looking for similar experiences and saying like, how do we map this into into a body of work to say something's happening here and then we can take it a little bit further to figure out what's happening in the mind, what's happening in the brain. We have ideas because we are in that particular way. There's lots of different ways that I teach people to breathe. But that particular practise where we have this deep and release of emotion and a kind of a letting go of our past experience, a kind of a reset of our brain breath connexion. I often think of it as like control, delete on the computer and for our body and mind and breathing where we can just let go of all that stuff that's been like causing system defaults and problems in the background and. Yeah. So we've we've started working with that. To me, there's some really interesting things coming up in our event and obviously we are shifting the chemistry of our body. We in that particular test, we create a very alkaline environment in the body and we breathe in a certain way that. Elicits a stress response. I know that sounds scary to people, but we deliberately work with the sympathetic system, but we keep ourself in a very calm state. So we're kind of playing off these systems a little bit as well. And what we've what we're finding is. In traditional meditation with the like, under stimulating the body and mind. Hmm. How do you understand me? They. How do we like to close our eyes and think about that singular thing? And, I mean, some people go to silent retreats and maybe do fasting and have these very magical experiences that are that are hard to quantify our mystical experiences. So we found that there's something happening in the under stimulation world that is being mapped. But this was going the other side. What happens if we overstimulate through breath and and what seems to be happening is we allow our brain, the default mode network in the brain to switch off. So we're not no longer stuck in this train of thought or the spirals of thought there, overthinking and looping around. And there are some studies to suggest that we elicit different chemicals in our brain as well during this process that allows us to kind of transcend our usual day to day experience so that we can tap into old memories or tap into a deep part of our brain where we're holding on to stuff and as well as something this physical experience. So it's something we're still working on at the moment and we're hoping to have a paper out soon. Hopefully this year the paper was made to come out before the book, but we got a bit delayed, so it's something to start and we're looking on, looking at and working on, and it's a fascinating space to explore and both because of the potency of it, but also the. It's a kind of an unknown space at the moment. So and it's trying to demystify the mystical in some ways. Yeah. And, and sometimes I'm like, well, let's just have those mystical experiences. But I do think it's an exciting space to figure out what's going on.

Gemma Styles [00:29:03] Yeah, definitely. I'd really like to try and at least understand how things work. So that's what it's great to me. I can't wait to read the paper when it comes out. I like how you were describing. That it's kind of more of a stimulation because it's in in the same way that meditation as a whole. I feel like it's quite well accepted that that is something that's really good for you. But I personally, even though I think it probably would be good, I've really struggled to get into that with any particular depth. Like I'll have a go every so often, but I find it really difficult. To get to that kind of under stimulated switching my brain off space. So I feel like this kind of going the other way sounds like it might possibly work a little bit better for me. But how would you say for me, for example, starting from a beginner or from for anyone listening, how do you start to or how could you start to build in these sorts of practises to your life? Or how do you have a go and get started and see if it works for you?

Stuart Sandeman [00:30:09] Yeah, that's a great question. And the nice thing about breath is we can go both ways. We can actually slow a breath right down and really under stimulated so we can use breath as a meditation or we can go the other way and overstimulate and get to that same space. The under stimulation approach is definitely more sustainable over time, but I may do some of these deeper breath work practises. It takes us to a space that meditation will take you to, but at meditation it will take a quite a dedicated practise to get there. And I think in our busy, over distracted world, our minds are just being pulled from our attentions, being pulled everywhere, from our phones to adverts to what we've got to do. We're just overloaded with stimulation. So it's quite hard to then just sit and just let that all simmer down. Certainly when we build up in practise, often like meditation or traditional forms of meditation are such an advanced practise. And because of the modern world and the world that we live in, and when we use our breath as a tool to meditate, exercises the doing part of our mind. So meditation is about being being with what is and sitting there, which is quite hard for us. But if we give ourselves something to concentrate on, which is why some meditations is a mantra or words to a phrase to repeat in your mind, to your mind wanders off you bring it back to the word with breath when we just concentrate on our breath throughout that if we're fully focussing on our breath, then we're allowing ourselves to be fully present in the moment. Because if we're thinking about our breath, we're breathing right now, as opposed to on breathing of in the future of the past. So the action is doing so we're doing something, we're doing we're breathing. We're breathing. And the fact that we're breathing is creating a very present moment awareness. And that present moment awareness is meditations. The meditation kind of sneaks in the back door and all of a sudden we're in a being state, although we've been doing the whole time. And that's a and that is a really nice thing to have this real simple entry point into meditation. Because what I do, I mean, meditation is such a big umbrella and it falls under that umbrella, but it's a form of meditating that I think can allow people to access meditation a lot quicker and easier. And when we do these deeper breath work practises, the amount of times people have said and this being the same case for me. As it takes you to a place that the the the judges and their gurus say that the meditation takes you to in a much quicker way for our modern mind, AFL and many people have worked with and what that has done for myself and others is it gives you a bit of a reference point because of that. I think that that that was it, that was meditation. I was there. So then often I find that people then after doing some sessions are after doing breathwork sessions, they then can find meditation much easier to do. They go, I can actually now sit down and meditate and close my eyes and have a have a nice experience because I can kind of gauge for where, where I'm meant to be with that, that experience. So so I went off and went on your question. But your question was, how do people. Have I got that right? How do people engage in this? How do they actually how can they start a practise? I mean, the first thing is understand, like pause and stop. Stop. How are you breathing right now? That awareness of knowing how you're breathing. Is this the right breath for this situation? Is the tiger chasing me or my running for a bus? Probably not if you're still. And but if that's happening or a short, shallow breathing, our breathing is tiring breathing constriction in our body or, you know, posture, even our clothing choice. If we go high waisted jeans or a tight bra or sucking our stomach and have tight abs, then it's going to affect the way that our breath is flowing and it's going to send a skewed signal about our environment to our brain. So there's. The first thing would be just checking in with yourself. How am I breathing? Okay. Can I use my breath to calm myself down? I often get people just to calm themselves because most people are overstressed these days. And in terms of the deeper work, deeper practise, I mean, everything's in my new book and is going to sound like a singer selling here so much. But but literally breathe in. Breathe out is packed. From start to finish, we can work through this whole process. I wanted it to be as if I was there with you holding your hand through this whole process. And it took me a while to beat it altogether, to write to your project, to finish it. And so that that again, is a really nice entry point because at the beginning of the book, I talk about what your breathing says about you, what are and what are typical breathing archetypes or patterns that we fall into some quick fixes. Is it the clothing choice? Am I breathing in my chest? Am I breathing irregularly? Am I pausing throughout the day? Sometimes people stop breathing when they're concentrating hard, like on their emails. Are other things something I catch? The only time I seem to really catch myself pausing and holding breath is when I'm doing DIY, which isn't that often, by the way, but I'm not holding my breath to like get a screw in or something. But yes, there's different times. We will change the patterns of our breathing and it will start to change what's happening in our body. So I talk about a lot of that and breathe and breathe out. The first part is about fixing our breath. The second part of the book is all about am deeper. How do we uncover what is causing my breath to be out of alignment? What's holding me in these patterns or archetypes? And usually that's due to our childhood, our past conditioning. I shared about that. Can a tiger coming in the room? But if we just switch that tiger analogy for a second for a dog, if a dog came in the room, one of two things would happen. You'd either get the excited breath and your breath would go like this and you'd run off towards the dog and you scratch behind his ears and you'd feel endorphins and you feel feel great. The other side might be you see the dog and that the tigers come in the room. We hold our breath refreeze or we run to the other side of the room, which is the same experience. But two people can have a very different reaction. Now, that is because of our past systems, of our mind, of what we perceive the dog to be. So if a big dog baulked at your nipped your hand at three years old, your brain would fire wire and say dogs are not safe. So we create a belief dogs are not safe and we avoid the dogs. Or somebody else tells us, don't ever go near a dog, dog's going to bite your hand off. So we learn from somebody else that dogs are not safe. So we avoid the dogs that felt experience and learn to experience. So we can see that what happens from our past will change the way that we interact in our day to day. Mm hmm. I've used that very simple example of a dog there, but you can see how any experience makes sense because of that stress response. Because the link with our mind. Because how we move forwards. So. A lot of this stuff is we're able to kind of unwind some of those old patterns and systems in the mind and the body by using our breath as the key between this kind of conscious part to the unconscious part.

Gemma Styles [00:37:38] Amazing. And just just briefly, you're going to treat us to a little session of sort of guided Breathwork meditation a little bit later in the podcast. So what kind of breathing are you going to take us through?

Stuart Sandeman [00:37:50] John I was thinking about this and what I'm going to do because there's lots of different types, like I said, and we've talked about it kind of. It's tough to calm the can of Luke working with the nervous system a lot. The other stuff I do is working with athletes and how do we actually optimise our whole body and system through using breath. But I thought what would be a nice thing to do is actually work with a very simple practise that allows us to find complete balance, a complete balance between on and off and about practise, goal, box breathing, really simple and you'll have some music to it. And what this allows us to do is we'll be breathing in and equal lengths because our breath stretches us on is a bit like you feel in the car and our breath stretches us off. So breathing's quite binary in that sense. If you start breathing more air, we're going to be more on. If we start breathing more out and slowing things down, we're going to be more off. But if we sit in the middle, we find this really nice, coherent space. And it's a great way to be because our heart rhythms start to find coherence and are heart rhythms to our brain find coherence, and we start to feel the sense of flow. So it really helps to focus with flow. And it's something that Navy SEALs actually do before going into conflict. And you can imagine I mean, can a task force like the Navy feels they don't want it still? So in the Navy SEALs, they don't want to go into a conflict situation as super star and relaxed, and they don't want to go in feeling like trigger happy, like really, really stressed. They want to go in. In a really state of flow of mind balanced, energised, focussed. And the way they do it is using this technique. And what's super interesting, when we do it together as a unit, people start to flow together as a unit because all the breath, the heart rate and the brainwaves all start to synchronise as one. So it can be a really helpful technique to do with your team or with your workmates or even your family if you're just trying to find a level of synchronisation between everybody. It's a great technique to use.

Gemma Styles [00:40:00] Okay, amazing. I can't wait. Well, we will get to that very shortly. But before that, I'm going to ask you some lovely people's questions every week. My guest today will be answering your questions on the first one comes in from Camilla, who says High drama in high school. I'm really looking forward to that episode. Lately I've been having lots of anxiety and panic attacks, like more than the usual amount, and I used to find that deep breaths really helpful. But the last few times I just couldn't manage to make it work for me. Any advice on how to make it better with some breathing exercises?

Stuart Sandeman [00:40:33] Great question. And and it's probably a two pronged approach to that. We're wanting to have a tool to have when we're in that state of panic or panic attack or anxiety to tell the body that we're safe. So the first thing I often say, if in doubt, breathe out, if in doubt, if we're feeling stressed or feeling anxious, overwhelmed or in a panic state, a nice, long, drawn out breath. So doubling our breath to our breath causes the vagal nerve to signal to the heart, to slow it slow down a pace and sends a signal to our brain for everything just to calm down. Now the thought might kick in again, and we just need to keep on breathing that way. So I'd have to say in the moment of panic, in the moment of anxiety or stress, breathing through your nose. Feeling our belly rise. Pause and hold at the top and then breathe out, at least for a count of eight, and use that our breath to relax your shoulders, face, jaw and just really, really calm the body down that way and just repeat that. So that's and that's what's what helps in the moment. Now, if you're noticing that these experiences are happening more and more frequently, there's probably an underlying reason or cause for that happening that what happened around that moment, has there been a peak experience or some sort of experience that's happened around you, or has the workload increased at work or whatever? Is this causing this kind of shift happen? Is it sleep related? Is it diet related? I like to do a bit of detective work around that because that's ultimately what we want is to bring these down to less frequently, if at all, and then if it ever happens, you got a breathing technique to use. So when we are feeling a lot of anxiety throughout our day or of having these panic attacks, I'd come back to some of the deeper practises and breathe in, breathe out, try to uncover where am I holding breath? Because if you're maybe in a breath holding pattern, maybe your diaphragms completely paralysed, that deep breath is actually just a big chess breath, which might be eliciting more stress. So really uncovering am I breathing optimally at rest? What is my natural breathing pattern? Can I make sure I'm using my diaphragm, my breathing through my nose throughout the day as much as possible? So can we create this very this framework of relaxed breathing throughout my day? And then if something happens that triggers a anxiety attack, can I then use my breathing in that moment to calm myself down?

Gemma Styles [00:43:10] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and I think that's an experience I can kind of relate to as well in terms of. So this was a few years ago when I first started seeing a therapist and I'd never done any kind of work really on sort of realising where I was having a feeling in my body or anything like that. And at the time I would quite often have the sensation that when I was really on edge and full of anxiety, I felt like I couldn't breathe. But through kind of doing that work, I realised that I felt like I couldn't breathe because I was already holding my breath. So where I was trying to breathe in, there was there was no nowhere else to go because I was just holding on to it too much already. So yeah, I can. I relate to that by.

Stuart Sandeman [00:43:58] Holding on to that tension. It's what happens. We freeze up, we create that tension, our shoulders are neck. The whole body goes into the stress response, this fight or flight response. And it can feel yeah, it can feel like we can't we're not getting off air or we can't hold breath or someone sitting on our chest. So, yeah, it's really important that we, you know, even positive affirmations in those moments. I am okay. This is just an experience that's happening and allowing ourselves to breathe through it and balance out the chemistry of my body. Because what happens is we're all in panic as we end up hyperventilating. We breathe so fast. And what happens is the carbon dioxide drops, so the carbon dioxide drops and we can actually get cramping in our hands. And then it creates more panic because we think I'm out of control what's happening here. And we cannot go into this big of a spiralled state and the mind spirals as well. So it's about taking control in that moment of knowing that, yes, I'm feeling this. Let's take a moment. Slow my breath down, nice, long, drawn out breaths, calm myself down in that moment. You shared something amazing there as well, Jemma, about noticing where that is, noticing where you're feeling. I talk a lot about where we're holding tension in our body body and breathe in, breathe out. Because where we're holding tension can actually give us more information about what we're holding on to, linked to the meridian lines in our body, linked to Chinese medicine and where we're actually holding that tension. Is it in our chest? Is it in our throat? Is it in our back? Is it in our abdomen, is in our hips because each one of these different places tells us maybe what we're holding on to?

Gemma Styles [00:45:39] Yeah, I'm definitely going to I'm going to go back and revisit this because I haven't really thought too deeply enough for quite some time. But it's yeah, love, all of this kind of stuff. Next question from Kelsey, who asks, What is something I can do in situations where I can't step away and breathe for context? I'm a manager in a fast paced café and it's always go, go, go. When things get stressful and I want to centre myself, I often try to control my breathing, but usually something else demands my attention.

Stuart Sandeman [00:46:07] And the nice thing about breathing is we can do it in the battlefield, we can do it in the busy restaurant, we can do it, and we don't need to take yourself away. So the exercise we're going to be doing today, the box breathing exercise where I might deliver it in a kind of meditative way. Closing down your eyes. But actually, I do that all the time throughout my day. Walking from A to B and you might be able to say, I'm just going to nip to the toilet. Can someone cover this? Just walking to the toilet. Gather yourself. Use your breath to calm the system down. She might be able to create a little risk space around a situation. If you can't, then you can still breathe. In those moments. You might find in those moments that we end up breathing a lot through our mouth like this, because at the moment the body's saying we're we're under attack, the stress is kicking in, and it's just the busy restaurant and we've got lots going on. And the likelihood is that the thoughts that are happening in the mind in those moments, there's dead remote attention is being still stolen. Then we're triggering that stress response from we actually elicit this faster breathing. So making sure our mouth is closed, if you can, breathing in and out through our nose. In those moments, it's just going to slow everything down and allow us to find that better state of calm throughout that moment. So I think we don't always have to do it in a meditative way. Sometimes I will be just about to do something and I'm starting to feel anxious, whether it's like a public speaking thing or something like that, or maybe on my radio show or I'm starting to feel like, Oh, the anxiety, or just to go live or a podcast or whatever it is. And I can just. That's all of 10 seconds for maybe a bit more. 12 seconds and four, four, four, eight. Such 12 seconds there. We can create that spaces during. The midst of chaos.

Gemma Styles [00:48:09] It's good to know we always need need some tools for the midst of chaos. That's why we all live these days.

Stuart Sandeman [00:48:14] You're bang on because life gets stressed sometimes. I'm not one to advocate like, Oh, you just do this in life or never be stressful again. Mm hmm. Life happens, and we go through experiences that are hard, and we go through challenges and we feel things, and we have stressful days. Or sometimes you just wake up and we just feel like, Oh. Like today I'm with a band. The main pipes up is at, Oh, no, I'm feeling crappy. Today's going to be a bad date. Our minds starts going in overdrive. In those moments, we have the power to change our own about saying, No, wait a second. Let's change my breathing. Let's pause. Change my breathing. Even if that's when you're up and on the go, concentrating on your breath is a safe place for the mind to go. So yeah, it is really, really handy when we can just start bringing a bit more awareness around that. What nice thing about that question is that she has the awareness of her breath already. She notices. But. But I'd say just start to practise in those moments to breathe and start to feel that focus come through.

Gemma Styles [00:49:15] Perfect. And then lastly, so kind of had a few variations on a theme for this question. So I chose Allie's question because it was very succinct. So Allie says, focussing on my own breath can stress me out. Any advice for getting past this? And I'll kind of I'll elaborate slightly to some of the other questions. So there was somebody who had said that when they could feel they were anxious and they were going to try a breathing exercise. They kind of connected them. The fact that they were focussing so much on their breath with being anxious and focussing on their breath kind of made them more anxious. I feel like people aren't used to putting that level of kind of to to pulling something subconscious into being conscious. And I think that's where a few people had similar questions as to how do you get past that?

Stuart Sandeman [00:50:10] Yeah, there's a there's a few routes awry that happen. Sometimes people distract themselves from feeling and then when they stop and pause, it kind of says, this is actually how you're feeling and it evokes emotion and and that can be a difficult thing to work through. What also happens is. Breathing as much as being a kind of physical, mechanical thing that's linked to how we feel. It's it's all about chemistry. Our carbon dioxide is acidic. But it's in water. So when it's in a blood, the bloodstream becomes acidic. If this starts building up, the brain says, take a breath. So the likely thing is for many people is when they stop and pause because they're think, I'm feeling anxious, I need to stop and take a deep breath. Then the naturally start to slow down and carbon dioxide increases because they're slowing down their breath. Now, if we are stressed all the time on the other side or the other side of the scale, if we're stressed all the time, our breathing increases. So carbon dioxide drops. Carbon dioxide drops, which changes the nature of our body. And the body doesn't like our pitch kind of veering too much out of its range. So when that happens, we hold on to acidity. We don't when we go to the toilet, we don't pay as much to balance our levels and we get stuck in this fast cycle of breathing. And with that vast cycle of that new normal of breathing, because that is now balanced. But we're at this fast rhythm that's creating more stress. So you get stuck in this kind of cycle of breathing. So when we stop and pause and think about our breathing, the carbon dioxide increases and this elicits a change in the body, and the body says, whoa, changing again, I don't like this. And that can create for many people are feeling or anxiety or a feeling of not getting enough air or I feel a bit suffocated. And so it's it's something that. Sitting with just taking it really slowly, sitting with it. And just I like to just, like, teeter around with that sensation and find it. I'm. Be curious. Oh, why is this? I'm stopping and pausing and I know the science says that breathing is going to make me feel better, but I'm not. So let's just end this a little bit longer. Fill our book in this space. Start working with it. And because. Once we do, we can kind of get through that barrier. But a mrs. Gent tends to be because of the chemistry of our body, which is eliciting this slight change in chemistry that can feel a bit strange at first. So I often get people saying things that that draw to me saying, you know, and I concentrate on my breath. It actually wigs me out a little bit as my mind's like, Oh, my God, you're not breathing, okay. Oh, my breathing. Am I doing it right? And it comes back to this train of thought, this train of negative spiral of thinking, which again, is just a safety response, is all to do with safety. Our mind is wired negative so that we can keep safe. And we're always looking for dangers and things like that, so so that we can create the best response in any moment. So I'm. Yeah. The other the other part that that could be also is if we are really stuck in a breathing pattern. So when we go to concentrate on our breathing, we still got a holding pattern happen. So that deep breath for many people, we may go on taking a deep breath, but I'm not breathing in my chest. And that was actually what I just did. There is actually a stress, a trigger of stress. It wasn't it was a deep, deep breath, but it was a chest breath and it was fast through my nose and is now causing creates a lot of stress in the body so I often just. Nice and gentle in breath. I know we're talking almost a deep breath here, thinking about that in breath, but concentrate more in the breath. Can we breathe out? Nice, long, drawn out breath and on the hour breath. Try and concentrate on a body part. Like relaxing your shoulders. Like relaxing your face, relaxing behind your eyes, relaxing your legs, your your hands, your feet. And then we can kind of move out, distract herself away from that alopecia as well. So there's a few ways we can work around it. It might be chemistry, it might be the physicality of where we're breathing, and it might just be this this slight change of what's going on for us in that moment. But it's really worth exploring and having a bit more curiosity around it to understand why is this coming up for me? What is this? Why is it because I'm so distracted and I'm having to feel something? Well, can I just sit? Can I create a space like. How badly do you want to feel? Good. In some ways, some people. Yeah. It just will go. Actually, I tried that once. That's not for me. But this is research backed and science backed. It does work well. Changing the chemistry or working with the nervous system. We're telling the body we're safe. The mind might find that difficult at first, but over time, working with it. But just take it slow. Take it slow and work with it and just start to be interested and curious of awareness because a lot of that is just awareness. All of a sudden we stopped and paused. And now we realise. Something. We feel our heartbeat. I got all my heartbeat. Oh, that's. Last time I felt my heartbeat was when I was panicking. So we start to think, Oh, actually, now that I can feel my heartbeat, I might be panicking again. And those thoughts and are eliciting a panic response. So it's it's kind of playing around with then saying, no, that's just my hobby. Oh, no, that's that was my breath just flowing and I'm slowing it down. And that's okay. I'm safe. So just positive encouragement for yourself to be like it's okay to feel what I'm feeling right now. It's okay to feel like different changes in my body.

Gemma Styles [00:56:01] Well, that was a perfectly timed question because I'm going to completely hand over to you for the podcast for a lovely few minutes now, and hopefully we'll take that advice on board and have a little go. Others exercise and see how you feel and I will see you on the other side.

Stuart Sandeman [00:56:23] So we're going to go into breath practise. So I'd like you to get into a comfortable position. You can be seated or lying down and invite you to close down your eyes or bring them to a soft gaze. This will allow you to bring your attention inwards. And in this space, just noticing how you feel right now. That's how your body feels. Her mind feels. And I thought you to bring some awareness to the air around you. That's where breathing begins. So notice the air around you, maybe even noticing the texture of the air as it touches your skin. I'd like you to follow that air, Sapphire. That air into your nose. And noticing which part of you expands, you're breathing in your chest. Are you breathing, Llorente? Barely. Is it easy? What's happening in your mind? We're just bringing some awareness to the air flowing from around you and to you. And then back out without trying to change it too much. Did. So wherever your breath is, I'd like us to all start deepening our breath. Deepening our breath, using our diaphragm, our primary breathing muscle. Which moves downwards. Opens up like a parachute opening up downwards. So a lower belly will rise before our chest. So let's place our hands in our lower belly. So you can feel it. Rise and fall. I'm going to breathe in for a count of four, feeding our belly rice. Then pause and hold for a count of four. Just keeping calm and still. Then breathe out for four. Good and hauled before. Get source pin to three, four, hold to three, four and out to three, four. Hold two, three, four. So keep going in. Kill your belly rise. Hold. Just keep calm and still. And breathe out that in your shoulders. Relax. And hold the hold or the bomb can feel quite challenging. But stick with it in two three. Four, pausing and home to three for handouts. Two, three, four. And hold to three. Four. Keep it going in fear. You barely rise. Hold. Keep calm and still. I'm sorry. That's. Relax your body, relax your mind and hold their. You got this? Let's keep going in. Hold. I don't. And hold. In. Hold. Hundreds. And hold. If your mind starts to wander, just keep on with the currents. Keep breathing in. Hold. And out. And as you breathe out, just letting go of any stress, any strain, any worry. Finding a real sense of balance. And that's what we're doing here, are balancing our breath in our breath in equal measures were on and off. Energised, focussed and out. And hold as do a couple more in. Hold. And out. Hold. Nice. Okay. Last round in two, three, four, hold. Two, three, four and out. Two, three, four and hold. Two, three, four. Okay, good. Let's take a nice, deep recovery breath and to breathe in. Four, four. Hold. Slow breath out of your mouth. Just let your whole body relax as slow as you can at this time. I still want more of those deep breath in. Pause and hold. Slow, rather slow or this time. You're breathing. Come back to our natural rhythm. You know, seeing this sense of calm, the sense of balance that you've created today. Okay. Now, slowly, slowly. Arriving back into your space, wiggling your toes, your fingers. Loosening your neck, maybe having a stretch. Thanking yourself for taking the time to find balance. Let's take another deep breath in. Pause, slow breath. Our shoulders drop even more as you open your eyes coming back into your space. So. Welcome back.

Gemma Styles [01:03:51] Hope everyone enjoyed that session. How did it go for you? Did you like it? Let us know on socials. Before you go. Still, I've got three things I ask every guest, and that's if listeners want to find out more about what we've been talking about today. Could you recommend us? Something to read, something to listen to and something to watch, please?

Stuart Sandeman [01:04:09] Yes, I'd love to. So something to read. I'm going to just say my own bit right.

Gemma Styles [01:04:15] Now as well. You should encourage it.

Stuart Sandeman [01:04:18] Good stuff. Yeah. Something to read as breathe and breathe out. And as my new book and a lot of the stuff that I shared, I have everything as much as I have learnt about breath and breathing up it in there. I've tried to make the science as easily understood as possible and there's loads of practical exercises or stuff from stress to manage your pain, to manage your headaches, and to then some of the deeper stuff to work through our past, our experiences, our traumas, and then how to optimise our breathing in sport and at work, public speaking, etc.. So there's something really for everybody inside that.

Gemma Styles [01:04:55] Perfect.

Stuart Sandeman [01:04:56] Next up, something to listen to. And I've put together a series on on BBC Radio One called The Decompression Sessions, which is music to get the good vibes flowing. And then it's tools to manage your mindset. So everything from managing anxiety, some fun things like improving your memory. Sometimes their mixes like get to get to sleep mixes that's more ambient. Sometimes deep focus mixes to help us if we are doing some studying or doing some work. So that's a really good one to go and listen to. It's on BBC Sounds, our BBC iPlayer. You can you can listen to it there. So something to watch is something I watched recently on Netflix. And I find it fascinating is a documentary called Fantastic Fungi.

Gemma Styles [01:05:43] That in my watch list is amazing.

Stuart Sandeman [01:05:46] Yeah. Is on the watch list. Yeah. Well, it definitely, definitely watch it. It's just so amazing to just learn more about the natural life and the life of of mushrooms on the planet. It just blew me away. I thought it was very, very interesting. So definitely worth a watch.

Gemma Styles [01:06:02] I love that recommendation. And I always find in terms of, you know, calming and coming back to a nice centred place. I like watching nature shows for things like that because, you know, it just makes me feel like a speck on a planet.

Stuart Sandeman [01:06:14] And it's shot so beautifully and I think that's part of it. It's like this just magically shot, I don't know. And even there is it and it must be animations and like, wow, I have really done this elixir are so good and says worth watching and it's so interesting. Just yeah, just again, it's like a world I didn't really know much about. And then I watched that and I thought, wow, this is this is incredible.

Gemma Styles [01:06:39] Thank you for listening and thank you to you for joining me. If you want to try out breathing exercise again, we'll leave a timestamp for it in the show notes so you can come back to it later. If you enjoyed the episode, I'd love you to subscribe to the podcast on whichever platform you're using and if you've got an extra minute, you could leave a rating on review as well. Your views make a big difference and help other people find the podcast. See you next week.