#61: The Power of Breathwork, with Brenda Winkle

Love Is Us: Exploring Relationships and How We Connect

Learn more about Brenda:

Website: https://www.brendawinkle.com/

Podcast: https://www.brendawinkle.com/podcasts/your-yes-filled-life

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brendawinkle/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brenda.winkle111

Learn more about Karin:

Website: https://drcalde.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theloveandconnectioncoach/

TRANSCRIPT

Intro:

Karin: This is Love Is Us, Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in clinical Psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love Is Us.

Episode:

Karin: Hey, everybody. Today we're going to be talking about breath work with my friend Brenda Winkle. And Brenda had been on my show back during episode number 38 where we talked about boundaries. And I'm so excited that she agreed. Come back and talk about her work as a breath work facilitator. And the reason I'm so excited about this and the timing is that I've been learning about breath work just in small bits over the past few years. You know, one step at a time. And the more I learn about it and the more I experience about it, the more I appreciate it and can see how powerful it can be for a lot of people. So the timing of this episode is really interesting because during, during my practicum training in becoming a psilocybin facilitator, we had four days of the practicum, and for an hour and a half each morning, we did breath work. This facilitated breath work experience, and it was a little bit different than I think Brenda does. It's called Vivation. There are lots of different kinds of approaches you can take, but it was incredible to hear everyone's experience of it. You know, people talked about their back pain disappearing and feeling like they were in this state of bliss. During the experience, you know, someone else talked about how they were able to relax for the first time in months after some really difficult experiences. I felt like I was able to let go of some of the trauma that I had experienced back in January, and it was a very physical release and it felt incredible. And then someone else talked about how there was, you know, this thing in her childhood that always upset her and nod at her, and it just seemed to not bother her anymore after this. So it was really incredible to hear people's experiences and, you know, it can be used in different ways. It doesn't have to be that you do it for an hour and a half or even an hour. It can be just a simple technique, like Brenda walks us through toward the end of the episode. So I hope you like this one, and I hope you will leave me a review. I would love to get some more reviews, and I really appreciate, appreciate you being here. So here we go. Welcome back, Brenda.

[03:13] Brenda: Hi, Karin. Thank you for having me.

[03:16] Karin: I'm so glad I get to be able to say welcome back. I think you're the. My second repeat guest, so I'm excited to have you back and talk about breath work this time, because last time we talked about boundaries, right?

[03:33] Brenda: Yeah, that's right. I'm excited to talk about breath work, too. So thank you for having me back. It means a lot. Well, good.

[03:39] Karin: I'm glad to have you here. In case someone missed the last episode. Tell us where you are in the world.

[03:45] Brenda: Well, I live in Lake Oswego, Oregon, which is a suburb of Portland, which.

[03:50] Karin: Is really close to me.

[03:53] Brenda: In fact, that's how we met. We were on your podcast the first time and realized that we were, like, 20 minutes apart. And so we became friends in person after that podcast episode, which was so fun.

[04:06] Karin: Yeah, super fun. And you even got to come over and spend Christmas with my family.

[04:12] Brenda: That's right. It was so nice.

[04:14] Karin: Yeah. We've gone on some adventures together since that time, so that's really fun, too.

[04:19] Brenda: It is. It's been great.

[04:20] Karin: Tell us what. What keeps you in Lake Oswego nowadays?

[04:25] Brenda: Well, I don't know what keeps me here. That's a really interesting question. Um, I have a dog. His name is Bentley, and he's about a year old, and he is a greyhound, an italian greyhound mix, and he loves to run. So it's interesting that you ask me what keeps me in Lake Oswego, because right now, what's alive for me is Bentley really wants to run in a yard. And so I don't know for sure if Lake Oswego is the. Is the ending place, because Bentley needs a yard. So we'll see.

[04:58] Karin: Yeah. So do you think you'll stay in the Pacific Northwest?

[05:02] Brenda: I think so. And also, I'm open to something different. If something different were to present itself, I'm trying not to control outcomes. And, you know, whenever I get ready to embark on something that's a change, I have to remind myself not to control the outcomes, because it's really easy for me to think I'm not going to control the outcomes. Except for this one and this one and this one. Ah, yeah.

[05:30] Karin: I can relate to that. So tell us what you do for work.

[05:34] Brenda: I'm an energy healer. I work with high performers, helping them set better boundaries, take on less from other people so they can determine what's theirs and what's not. And I help people heal their nervous systems, and I do this through somatic coaching, breath work, and energy healing.

[05:50] Karin: Yeah. And so that's what we're here to talk about today.

[05:53] Brenda: Yeah.

[05:54] Karin: And tell us how you came to do breath work.

[05:57] Brenda: Well, so this is such a long, twisty story. You know, the short answer would be that I met my mentor at a retreat and decided, like, what is this? I have to have more. I have to learn more. But the long answer is, I was an educator for 26 years, and in 2008 or 2009, I discovered this new classroom management methodology called Yoga for editing. And a lot of it I didn't end up implementing in my classroom. Some of it I did. But one of the things that made me really curious as a practicing yogi was, could I incorporate the breath part in my music classroom? And so I started to incorporate the breath part mostly as a way to manage my own stress, and realized that not only did it help me manage my stress, but it helped my students manage theirs. So in 2008, I started to use breath, not knowing there was a term for it in my classroom. And I carried that up until I ended my career up in 2022, which is also when I began to get training as an official breath work facilitator. And if you would have said you're going to be a breath work facilitator, I would have laughed at you, because I would have said, that's a job. Like, someone's job is to help do breath work. And yes, indeed, that is a job.

[07:21] Karin: Yeah. Yeah. And you said that you started noticing it for yourself and for your students. What did you notice in your students when you did breath work?

[07:32] Brenda: I noticed that, number one, any unwanted behaviors started to dissipate, which was a real surprise. I was doing the breath work in my classroom to manage my stress. I was going through a divorce. I was navigating, being a single mom of a really young kid, and I just needed some relief. And so it was really, it was really self serving. I just knew I needed to breathe. And what I saw was that the behavior started to go down. I saw that the student engagement started to go up. And then the really interesting thing was that I only had to request them to do the breath patterns one or two times. And then for the rest of their time with me, they would walk in and request it. They would say, I've had this kind of day, can we do this thing? And so they began to use the breath as a tool. And even then, I didn't know it was called breath work. I just thought it was something we were doing, you know? But breath work is any time that you take control over what is an autonomic nervous system response, we don't usually think about breathing. And so when we start to think about breathing, we can call that breath work.

[08:49] Karin: I love how it also really fits in well with the kind of teaching you were doing, like, what you were teaching as well, right?

[08:58] Brenda: That's right. I was a music teacher, a choral music teacher. And so when we think about the breath, we have to breathe in order to sing. And so we talk a lot about diaphragm, which is the muscle that is in your belly that connects to the bottom of your lungs. And it's the. The muscle that's shaped a LIttlE bit like a bowl. And when you use the diaphragm to breathe in, it pulls the lungs down and out, creating more space. And when we use the diaphragm on the exhale, or if we're singing or vocalizing or speaking, that diaphragm turns inverted. So it's like an upside down bowl forcing the air up and out through the lungs as the lungs, it contracts the lungs, because the lungs are tissue, not muscle. So the diaphragm is the muscle that makes the lungs work, so to speak.

[09:50] Karin: Maybe you can expand a bit more on what breath work is so people have more of a feel for it.

[09:57] Brenda: Yeah. When we take control over the autonomic nervous system through the breath, we're practicing something called a somatic experience. Soma is the root word, the greek root word of SoMAtic, meaning in the body. So we're getting into the body, and this is known as a BoTToms up approach. So talk therapy or behavior cognitive therapy, I might have that, those words mixed up in order, but that's considered a bottom or, excuse me, top down approach, where we're starting with the mind, with breath work, we start with the body. We know that our bodies store experiences, whether they're positive, negative, or traumatic. And when we go into the body using the breath, we can help move that energy.

[10:47] Karin: Also, the nervous system has everything to do with this as well. So maybe you can give us just a little bit of an orientation to the nervous system.

[10:56] Brenda: Absolutely. So your nervous system really has one job, and that's to keep you alive. So when your nervous system's one job to keep you alive, it's going to do this in one of two ways. It's going to either activate the sympathetic nervous system or the parasympathetic nervous system. So the sympathetic nervous system is the nervous system that comes online when our body or our mind perceives a threat. It could be something like we're running from a tiger, or it could be preparing for a major presentation. When our body perceives stress, we go into what is known as a stress response, fight or flight. And so that would be the hyper activity of the nervous system would be fight or flight, hypo activity. In other words, an underactive nervous system would cause us to go into freeze or fawn, fawning, being people, pleasing, like your life depends on it because your body thinks it does. And so when we're in a stress response, our body is trying to conserve resources. And in order for our resources to be conserved, a lot of the normal systems go offline, like our digestion, like our conscious ability to make decisions using our whole body. That's why we can make really crazy decisions when we're under stress, is because we don't have access to our whole mind. So the stress response is something we all experience, whether it's fight, fight fees or fun. And interestingly, we don't get to choose. We don't get to say, I'm going to, I'm in a fight today. That's what my nervous system is going to do. No, that's not how it works. Your body is just going to respond to whatever other load it has and then make a decision from there. So what we would love to do is to bring ourselves into homeostasis, into the parasympathetic nervous system, which is really related to the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is the largest, longest nerve in the body. But it's not just linear, it's like a tree. It starts at the base of our spine and it goes all the way up to the base of our skull, like in those little lumpy things at the back of your head. And it has like tree branches that go all through your body, regulating literally everything from your voice to your digestion, to your sexual function. So when your vagus nerve is online, you have access to all of those body systems. When you're in a stress response, the vagus nerve goes offline as a way to conserve resources. And so when we are engaging in breath work or other somatic practices, the end goal is to bring back the vagus nerve so that we can activate the parasympathetic nervous system or homeostasis. And sometimes that's known in a yoga class as rest and digestion.

[13:53] Karin: How does breath work tie into all of that, and how does breath work impact the nervous system?

[13:59] Brenda: Breath work is really nourishing for the nervous system. So I'm a trauma informed breath work facilitator, and that's important to name because breath work can activate a nervous system as well as soothe a nervous system. And so there's not a one size fits all breath pattern or approach, because every body is unique, and the body that you have today is not the body that you had yesterday is not the body that you'll have tomorrow. And so there's not going to be a one and done formula. But in really general terms, breath work helps the body bring the vagus nerve back online to reduce the stress response. And we also know there's new data being, I mean, there's. There's scientific research happening all over southern California in particular, that suggests that we can reach non ordinary states of mind using breath work that are very similar to different types of micro dosing. But it's with only the breath, like.

[15:01] Karin: Holotropic breath work, right?

[15:02] Brenda: Exactly.

[15:03] Karin: That's right. Yeah. That's something I'm familiar with, with the work that I've started doing lately. But maybe we can get into a little bit of a personal story. So, as some of my listeners might know, a tree fell on my house in January, and I watched the whole thing happen. It was really traumatic, and Brenda was a really wonderful source of support for me. So maybe you can, you know, tell people what was happening and what we did to help with that.

[15:35] Brenda: Yeah. So when you're in a stress response, especially caused by trauma, and the trauma is active in your body. And before we go too much further, let's define trauma. Trauma, according to me, is anything that's too much, too fast in a way that exceeds our nervous system's capacity to cope. In our bodies, there's no hierarchy of trauma. We try to create hierarchy, and we try to talk about big t and little t trauma. And really, the only thing that that refers to is how long it's going to take you to heal the trauma. But your body just doesn't care whether it's big t, little t, or anywhere in the middle. If your body experiences trauma, your body is experiencing trauma. The end. So this was a traumatic experience because you watched a tree that you love fall, and not only did the tree fall, but there was, you know, animals that no longer had a home, and that was very, very emotional. And then your. Your house was damaged and I thought I was.

[16:33] Karin: I was done. You know, as it came toward me, I did think I was going to die. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was pretty big.

[16:40] Brenda: It was really big. And so what we did is we just took some slow, deep breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. And when we put presence on the breath, we can begin to slow the thought process that's in the mind sometimes. It's like a boulder rolling down a hill. And so if we can begin to slow that boulder rolling down the hill just a little bit with the breath coming back into the body, it can help us release some of the energy behind the boulder rolling down the hill. And the boulder is usually emotions. And we're so scared. And I'm saying we, because this happens to me, too. When we're really experiencing strong emotions, our first go to, if we think about, like, our ability to process pain, our first go to is to push it away. I don't want to feel it. I don't want to know it, I don't want to see it. And if we can allow ourselves to get present with what is, and experience the pain, whatever that looks like emotionally, we know from lots of scientific and neurological research that the emotions will last around 30 seconds. Excuse me, 90 seconds. And this isn't to say that in something like this, that 190 2nd thing of breath is going to heal you. That would be a lie. That's not true. But 90 seconds of breath can release some of the emotional charge, and then another 90 seconds can release a different level of emotional charge. And so if we think about, like, grief, for example, is a really big emotion, we're not going to solve grief in 90 seconds, but we can get through this wave of grief in 90 seconds, and we can use the breath to get to the other side of this wave of grief, because when we.

[18:33] Karin: Skip over the body's need to regulate, we really can't process even at any other level.

[18:42] Brenda: Right, right, exactly. Because it overrides our thinking brain. And so then we're in total survival, and we make decisions based on our survival. We're not making decisions based on anything other than how can I stay safe right in this moment? How can I stay alive right in this moment? And that's why we say things we don't mean to the people that we love. That's why we make decisions that aren't in keeping with how we really feel about things when we're in those stress responses and we're only using our brainstem.

[19:16] Karin: Yeah, and I just want to make the connection to relationships like you started to do as well. That is, you know, when we're in conflict with someone, especially with someone we love, we can feel really triggered, and that can activate our nervous system, put us in that sympathetic mode, and then it's hard for us to think and communicate and connect because our bodies are too activated. And so that's why, you know, one of the things that I often do with couples that I work with is teach them a breath pattern and recommend that they do that together and co regulate, and that can be really helpful so that they can then connect and work through conflict and. Yeah, feel. Feel a lot better.

[20:08] Brenda: And, you know, the institute of Heart math has done thousands of studies on heart coherence. And the way that we create heart coherence with another person is through the breath. So when you're telling couples to breathe together or it's so healing on every level because it creates that heart coherence, that co regulation. So that's so, so important. And such a good, good tip.

[20:34] Karin: Yeah. And I'll recommend that couples, you know, practice this regularly and try to practice it together at least once a day. And if they can do it holding hands, great. But if they can do it heart to heart, even better.

[20:46] Brenda: Yeah, I would love that.

[20:48] Karin: Yeah.

[20:48] Brenda: That's amazing.

[20:50] Karin: How can people incorporate this into their daily lives?

[20:55] Brenda: It's really easy. So, you know, let's say you had something kind of upsetting happen. You got an email that just made you feel upset. The next time you have three or five minutes, whether it's you're at work, you're in an office, you're in a cubicle, or whether you're at home, go walk. And as you're breathing, create a pattern of your footsteps to your breath. So maybe you're. You're taking four steps on the inhale and forceps on the exhale. Breathing in through the mouth. Excuse me. In through the nose and then out through the mouth. So you can just create, like, a cadence that you're breathing to. And, you know, the more upset you are, maybe the faster you want to walk. Slash, breathe. And then as you find yourself calming down, you can slow that pace a little bit. But you could do this in a bathroom stall. You can do it in the grocery store. You can do it as you're walking through from your cubicle or your office down the hall. You can do it even as you walk from your home office to the kitchen.

[21:55] Karin: That's so interesting that you say that. Cause I have this memory that is coming up for me of when I was a kid, and I'd be probably walking home from school and doing that, matching my breath to my steps. And so it just makes me think that this is something that our bodies want to do.

[22:17] Brenda: Absolutely. We're so intelligent and we know so much, especially when we're kids, about how to self soothe. And then somewhere along the line, we kind of forget. And, you know, one of the things that I'm noticing as I'm, as I'm going into conferences and breathing large groups of people is that we feel self conscious about even allowing our breath to be heard. And so there's this whole group of people, professional people, who are scared to let people hear them breathe. And, you know, if you could just get courageous. Not you, Karen. I'm talking to our listeners. But listeners, if you could get really courageous and just let someone hear you take a deep breath, you'll feel so much better.

[23:07] Karin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's funny. I'm going back to that story, walking home. As a kid, I always thought that that walk home was so long. I was always wishing for, like, a magic bed that I could ride home so I not have to. And so I'm just imagining that was something that I did to kind of get me through that, what seemed like this forever. Walk home.

[23:34] Brenda: Yeah. You know, I walked to and from school, too, and mine wasn't a bed. It was a magic carpet.

[23:40] Karin: Yeah. And you did you have to walk uphill both ways as well?

[23:45] Brenda: Yeah. In the snow.

[23:46] Karin: Yeah. Right, right. So, so one of the things I also recommend to clients, and I learned. I started to learn breath work when I was working as a therapist, and I was specializing in helping people who had panic disorder. And one of the things that I would help people do is just keep their overall anxiety levels down so they didn't hit up against that upper limit. That would then propel them into panic mode. And one of the things that we would teach is diaphragmic breathing. So breathing low all the way so that your, when you're breathing in, your stomach goes out. And we would teach them to do that, like, three, four times a day in all different kinds of body positions so that they weren't just doing it when they felt bad, because then they would start to associate breathing like that with when they were feeling bad.

[24:52] Brenda: Right, right.

[24:54] Karin: Yeah.

[24:54] Brenda: And one other thing that is really helpful with anxiety is lengthening the exhale. When we elongate that exhale, it creates a. We lower the blood pressure, and we slow the heart rate. So you can increase your heart health and your heart rate variability by lengthening those exhales. I've done that for years when I'm getting my blood pressure drawn or my blood pressure taken, because I have to admit, sometimes I get a little nervous in the doctor's office, and I know that I don't have high blood pressure, and so I don't want them to think that I do. So I'm always like, okay, I'm going to take a really long exhale right now, and I just. I don't talk to the nurse. I just breathe. And my blood pressure is great.

[25:38] Karin: It's great. Yeah. Yeah. We are all human, aren't we? And, yeah, I really love that longer exhale as well, and I have been using it daily, especially since this happened in January. So, yeah, that has been a gift to me, for sure.

[25:57] Brenda: That's so good.

[25:57] Karin: Yeah. And another human story. I don't like getting my blood drawn, and I think, I don't know if I told you this story, I had to get my blood drawn shortly after this whole tree incident, and my body was just, you know, I was going through the roof and. And so I woke up the morning, I had to get my blood drawn, and I used that pattern, lengthening the exhale, and I felt completely different afterwards.

[26:31] Brenda: That's so good.

[26:32] Karin: Yeah. And I felt so jazzed that I could do that, that I was even, you know, singing and celebrating on the way to get my blood drawn, which is.

[26:42] Brenda: Oh, that's so good.

[26:44] Karin: Not a usual story for me. So that's how powerful it can be.

[26:49] Brenda: It is powerful, and it's empowering. When we realize that we can do something so simple as modify our breath and we can make better decisions, we can step into our own power. We can change how we feel about something, and we can eliminate that sense of fear or dread that comes with non preferred activities like getting your blood drawn or whatever it might be. It's so empowering.

[27:16] Karin: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So is there. Is there anyone for whom breath work is not recommended?

[27:26] Brenda: You know, I always like to tell my clients it's really best if you visit with your doctor first, just because if you're under a doctor's care, your doctor's gonna know best. But in general terms, it's safe for everyone, with specific modifications for a few things. So if you have known cardiovascular things, there are certain breath work patterns that are not going to be safe for you. So you'll want to let your facilitator know that that is the case for you, so that your facilitator can help modify to make sure that the breath pattern is safe for you.

[28:02] Karin: So can I, can I interrupt for a second? So you're talking about like arrhythmias and high blood pressure, that kind of thing?

[28:08] Brenda: Anything with heart.

[28:09] Karin: Okay.

[28:10] Brenda: Anything with heart. You want to make sure you let your practitioner know because there are certain activating breath work patterns that are not going to be appropriate for you because they raise the blood pressure, which wouldn't be safe if you have different kinds of heart conditions. Pregnancy is another one. Breath work is absolutely safe to use in pregnancy. But again, there are certain activating patterns that are not going to be appropriate. And we also want to always think about when we're pregnant that we're moving energy from the top of the head down through the root. So any breath work pattern that would move energy from the root up would not be appropriate during pregnancy because we want the energy to always come from the head down because the baby will eventually come down.

[28:58] Karin: Tell me more about that. I'm curious why that is.

[29:01] Brenda: There is a breath work pattern that you can activate all of your chakras, like all your energy centers. And so you, in doing that, you're starting at the root and you're lighting up all of the upper chakras and then coming out through the crown of the head. And that one would not be appropriate in pregnancy.

[29:19] Karin: Okay.

[29:21] Brenda: So, but other than that, it's generally appropriate. But if you have health conditions, like a neurological disorder, like multiple sclerosis or something, you want to make sure you communicate with your facilitator because they're going to help you modify things. And there are some cases of neurological things like multiple sclerosis or ALS or different things like that, that your doctor may not want you to do breath work. And so if you're under a doctor's care for something like that, it's important to work with your facilitator and your medical practitioner.

[29:57] Karin: Okay. And I'll just say that in a previous episode, I talked about how I will be starting to do work as a psilocybin facilitator. And one of the things that we've learned and talked about a lot in the training is bringing in breath work.

[30:15] Brenda: Yeah.

[30:16] Karin: Especially for people who might be having some challenging experiences, because it is so new for people to have this expanded state of consciousness and to, you know, move through the stages of consciousness that can feel very different. Different and a little bit scary sometimes. And so that breath work is really important, and it's really important for people to practice it ahead of time so they can more easily. Then go ahead and jump into it if they need to.

[30:47] Brenda: That makes so much sense that you're teaching the skillset before you need it, and I think that's good practice anyway, right? Like, when I was teaching kids, I never taught kids when they were escalated. That's not when you teach something new. You teach something new in the calm moment when you don't need it, so then you can use it as a tool when you do need it.

[31:07] Karin: Right. So how have you seen breath work help people?

[31:11] Brenda: So I've seen breath work literally change lives. It changed mine. It absolutely changed mine. When I discovered breath work, I was losing a dog. And so I'm the mom of one human. She's 23, and she was getting ready to move out. And my companion for the last 13 years was a dachshund named Hutch. And as she was approaching getting ready to move out, he was dying, and I knew it. And between her getting ready to be, like, out on her own and me losing this dog, I didn't know what I was going to do. And I was in this mastermind call, not realizing that anything was going to happen. And this woman popped into the call and led us through a breath work session. And I didn't know what happened, but I knew that from the time that I logged on the call and the grief was so acute, and I felt like it was crushing and so heavy to the time that I ended the call and I felt light. I felt like I could access my thinking brain. I could think clearly. I still had a little bit of sadness around what was happening, but I had capacity to cope. And so I was like, I don't know what just happened, but I'm curious. And then she came in again, and a similar thing happened. And then I met her in person at a retreat in Malibu, and decades of trauma left my body, and I felt like I was a totally new person. Things that I was totally aware of were holding me back, were no longer holding me back. And it was so interesting because I could feel myself thinking, oh, I would normally be doing this to sabotage my effort, and I'm not. And it was wild. And so now, as I'm bringing into clients, and it's been about a year that I brought it to clients, I'm seeing their lives transform. There's one person who came to me because she had such debilitating back and neck pain that she just couldn't function. She couldn't do anything. That was fun. She went to work, she came home, and she sat as still as she could until it was bedtime, and then she went to bed, and she did that every day. So she started working with me just because she needed some pain management. Now her pain is managed. She has started a new business. She is happier than ever. She has new friends, a new lease on life. She just opened up a Reiki studio in her town in Nebraska, and she's flourishing in ways that she never dreamed. And so it's just. It's literally life changing.

[33:54] Karin: So it can help with chronic pain, it can help with trauma. What else can it help with?

[33:59] Brenda: I would say almost anything. It can help with relationships, it can help heal inner child wounds, it can help heal. And that one, sometimes you need support to move through, depending on what your inner child wounds are and how accessible they are to you. I have found it to be kind of the magic bullet for just about everything. And it sounds improbable, but, like, if I have a headache, I'm going to go do breath work. If I have a stomachache, I'm going to go do breath work. If I'm upset or sad or angry, I'm going to go do breath work. If I get into a conflict with somebody, I'm going to go do breath work and then come back. If I needed a new idea, if I want to energize and amplify something, I go do breath work. It's just we. We have this in our bodies. Like, we are the drug that we've been looking for. It's so cool.

[34:54] Karin: And so can you walk us through one that you'd like to share?

[34:58] Brenda: Yeah. So I'm going to do something really gentle with everything in mind that I told you, because I don't know what our listeners are listening with. So this is going to be a very gentle, easy. And when I say easy, not necessarily easy for you, but easy in your body. And so what we're going to do is we're going to breathe in through the nose, and we're going to breathe out through the mouth. And what we're going to do is connect our inhales to our exhales, creating almost an idea of a circle. So it's called the halo active breath because it creates that circle of connecting. Inhale to exhale. And so I won't use any music, but I'll have us actively breathing for about four minutes. Does that sound okay?

[35:43] Karin: That sounds great.

[35:43] Brenda: Okay, so the first thing I'd invite you to do is to decide, would you like your eyes to be open, or would you like your eyes to be closed? And if you're doing either one, I would invite you to just look around your room, notice colors and textures and shapes. And then on a scale of one to ten, I'd invite you to rate how safe you feel. And if you feel anything less than a ten, can you change something to increase your felt sense of safety? Can you add a blanket to your lap? Can you close a door? Can you lower a blind? Can you adjust a light? And sometimes those really simple things can make us feel so much safer.

[36:32] Karin: So go ahead and pause if you want to do that, and then come back.

[36:37] Brenda: Yeah, just get yourself really cushy. And however that feels. You can lay down if you want, but there's no need because we'll just be here for about four minutes. So, invitation just to start to notice your body. Let's start at your feet. Maybe just wiggle your feet connecting with the ground or your socks or your shoes, and just feel the bottoms of your feet connecting with the earth. And then let's bring your awareness up to your bum. Feeling the bum in your chair or on your couch or your bed. And just feeling that connection and noticing if it feels easy to notice the connection or if it feels difficult. No judgment, just noticing. And then an invitation to bring your awareness to the tip of one finger. Doesn't matter which one. And then perhaps you could bring another finger next to that one. And maybe you wiggle them together or touch them together. Just notice that sensation. And now, invitation to bring your awareness to your nose. Noticing the outside of your nose. Maybe one nostril has more airflow than the other. Maybe they're the same. Just notice. And when you feel ready, I'll invite you into a breath. In through your nose, out through your mouth, connecting. Inhale to exhale. And for these first few breaths, we'll try to eliminate the pause between the inhale and the exhale, just connecting them into a beautiful circle. You get to choose the perfect depth for you and the perfect pace for you. Notice if you want to sigh or take a bigger breath or yawn, it's all welcome. Keep that breath circulating in the body. And if, as you slow down to breathe, you start to notice emotions or sensations or little aches and pains, that's okay. They get to be here. Sometimes when we slow down, we start to notice things that were running in the background. It's all welcome. Keep that breath circulating in the body at the right pace and depth for you. That's it. We'll do a few more rounds of breath just like this. Now I'm going to invite you to create a pause between the inhale and the exhale. Whatever length of pause feels right for your body. Maybe it's a short pause, maybe it's a little bit longer. That's it. And as you breathe and you keep that breath circulating in the body, invitation to notice if your body wants to move. Does it want to shift position? Does it want to shake out the hands as their energy ready to release. And full permission to give yourself whatever your body needs. A yawn, a sigh, a shake, maybe a cry. And then keep that breath moving in the body with a gentle pause of the perfect length for you between the exhale and inhale. And maybe you notice you need to take a big, deep breath. Maybe you notice you want to sigh. It's all welcome. Invitation to do what your body's asking you to do. That's it. Just keeping your attention on the breath. I know you've got thoughts going in the background. That's okay. They get to be here. That's what our minds do. And just bring your attention back to the breath. Always back to the breath. Invitation to play with the pace of your breath. Perhaps it would like to slow. Perhaps the pause would like to grow, maybe not. Invitation to listen to your body. And when you're ready, I'm going to invite you to take the deepest breath in you've taken yet today. And to let it out, however, feels good. Just notice what's here now. How do you feel now compared to four minutes ago? Yeah.

[43:08] Karin: Thank you, Brenda.

[43:08] Brenda: That's good.

[43:09] Karin: Yeah, I appreciate that.

[43:12] Brenda: Yeah, you're welcome. I have a way that people can get a little bit longer experience. I have a free course called breath work to strengthen and trust intuition. And you can access [e-mail]. Breathe. And that might be fun for people to try. And there's a couple breath patterns in that course where you can choose your own adventure.

[43:35] Karin: Yeah, absolutely. And I was hoping you would, you would tell people about how they can, can learn more. And, you know, I usually at this point, ask my guests, um, if, well, two questions. One is, if there's one thing you'd like people to walk away with after listening to this, what would it be?

[43:56] Brenda: The thing I would really like people to walk away with is a deep knowing that they can impact their lives positively simply by mindful breathing. You don't have to know a specific pattern. You don't have to have a facilitator. You can just take some deep breaths. Any time in the day that you start to feel tension or anxiety or any unwanted emotion building up, and you can change the course of your day with your breath.

[44:28] Karin: Great. And I usually ask about the role of love and the work that you do, but you already answered that last time, so I want to ask, and I think you might ask a similar question on your podcast is, what kind of books or podcasts are you into right now?

[44:49] Brenda: So I'm bringing out an oldie, and this is from, I think, twelve or 13 years ago. It's called e squared. It's by Pam Grout, and it's one of my favorite books. It's got 13 energy experiments in it. And I had her on my podcast, and one of my friends was listening to that episode, and it made me think, I want to go back through that book. So I'm rereading e squared right now. And then I'm also reading a book called made to stick, and it's about why some messages stick and others don't.

[45:26] Karin: Oh, that's. Yeah, that's interesting. There's another book called make it stick. And when I was working as an academic coach, that was one of my go tos, but I think they're similar. So that's interesting. Do you like it?

[45:42] Brenda: I do. So this one has, it looks like a piece of duct tape across the COVID It's not, but it's, like, raised and it's textured and it's pretty cool. And it's with two brothers who are teaching why some things really stick in our minds and why some things don't. And so if you've ever wanted to think about how can you get grippy with a blog post or a podcast or a social media post or something that you're writing, I think it's a great book.

[46:14] Karin: No, great. Awesome. And when you told us how we can join you in some of this work, how else can people learn about you?

[46:27] Brenda: I'm on Instagram, erendawinkle, and every Tuesday at 02:00 p.m., Pacific, I offer breath work. And I'm getting ready to expand on that and offering a zoom link so we can have some music, because with Instagram rules, we can't. We can't add music over Instagram. So every Tuesday at two on Instagram, you can join me live for breath work. You can ask questions, you can bring in certain scenarios and different things you want to breathe into. And then I'm also on all the other platforms, but Instagram is really where I hang out the most.

[47:00] Karin: Okay, wonderful. Well, thank you, Brenda. This was really wonderful. I think that people will get a lot out of this.

[47:08] Brenda: Thank you for having me and thank you for being interested in this. It's so cool and I'm so excited that you're bringing breath work to people in your psilocybin work. It's really, really cool. Congratulations.

Karin: Thank you.

[47:21] Karin: Thanks for joining us today on Love is us. If you like the show, I would so appreciate it if you left me a review. If you have questions and would like to follow me on social media, you can find me on Instagram where I'm the love and connection coach. Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music, Ali Shaw for my artwork, and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be love. The best way to be love is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together.