 Take a, through your nose, take a full inhalation, hold it at the top for a moment, take a little extra sip, and then burst the bubble of your exhale, big sigh, observe how it lands at the bottom. And let the exhale pause for a moment to simply feel into and wait for the call distinctively from your body to say, it's time to return back to breathing, and if possible, in and out through your nose. So this is a unique mechanism of our biology as humans and this physiological sigh, if you will, which was coined that phrase by my friend mentor at Stanford, Dr. Andrew Huberman. And this perspective came through from the research they were doing back in the early 1900s with the iron lung. And over the years, what they were doing is oscillating a breath rhythm for these people inside the iron lung on a very even cyclical breath wave. And there was a quite high mortality rate. And what they began to explore is how can then we shift the breath oscillation and what's happening here. Now, we all, as humans, we've been breathing our whole lives. It's something inherent and fundamental in how we live, how cells take in oxygen to then go in through this whole process to produce ATP, the life-giving energy for us to move, groove, float, enjoy the ride of life. And ultimately, these hundreds of thousands of little sacks inside of our lungs, the alveoli or the alveolus itself, has this mucus membrane. So as we're moving through our day and breathing, we all are unique in that we have different breathing patterns, different breathing habits. And what can happen over time throughout our day is that those little alveolar sacks can stick together. And just like if you put water inside of a balloon and empty it, it creates surface tension. So there needs to be a little extra inflation to then pop those alveolar sacks open. Now, why am I sharing this? And this discovery of then changing the breath rhythm in the iron lung was revealing that there is an internal mechanism inherently from Mother Nature within us as humans, as mammals, to take this larger breath about every five minutes or so. And ultimately, what's happening there is the alveolar are popping open and we're promoting lung integrity so that you can have optimal diffusion of oxygen and CO2 from the body, the bloodstream, into the lungs through inhale and exhale. And as they experimented with this through the iron lung, the oscillation changed where there would be a light, low, slow, rhythmical oscillation of breathing. And then every five minutes or so, an extra full inhale. And mortality rate drastically shifted and they saw positive results from that. And so consider this physiological side to be one of your breath superpowers throughout your day to help promote lung integrity. So you can promote optimal oxygen exchange and optimal oxygen delivery to your body and your brain. This past year, there was a paper that was published and it was exploring cognition with breathing. And here we are as modern humans, we have access to technology or cell phones and screen time. This, I mean this powerful light, the shining in my eyes, I can barely see any of you right now. But what they found in this study is that blue light hitting our eyes is impacting this side rate. And it was a comparative study to reading on a smartphone versus a paper medium. And the memory and the recall on the paper medium was drastically higher than that of the smartphone. So the parallel that they drew here was that through overactivity of our neocortex, the side generation was being suppressed. So ultimately my intention of today is to share with you some perspectives of mechanism, the mechanistic perspective from a lot of the research that's been done now over the decades within respiration. And so this physiological sigh as one of the arrows in your quiver that you can take on the road with you throughout your day. So we've been about five minutes in now. Let's take another deep, full breath. Extra little sip. Feel into that expansion and inflation and then pop the bubble. And you can wait, pause at the bottom to feel into that call from your body to take a breath. Return back to a natural flow in and out through your nose if possible. So the physiological sigh, promoting lung integrity, promoting oxygen delivery. Down at the University of Florida there's a gentleman named Dr. Gordon Mitchell and he's been studying respiration for decades. He is in the realm of hypoxia. And hypoxia means low oxygen saturation in the body. And his specific focus is with spinal cord injury patients. So what they're doing is with an external device having patients put on a mask and they're breathing a concentration of low oxygen, seven to eight percent. And you breathe that for about a minute and then you go back to normoxia, remove the mask and breathe normally. And you do that for an interval of 15 minutes or so. And what they've begun to see through this intermittent hypoxia is a drastic increase in somatic motor control. So people who are unable to walk are now starting to gain function back in their legs. They've also seen a robust increase in respiratory motor control. So an improvement in efficiency of our breathing muscles. Subsequently there's some other adaptations that happen. When you're just like being at altitude your body has to respond and adapt. There's such an intelligence in our bodies. And there's this activation of erythropoetine. So your body's starting to build and produce more red blood cells. Something that lands armstrong and some other athletes have gotten into trouble with over the years. And so a positive implication for an increase in endurance. There's also a release of BDNF, a connection to improved cognition and memory. Something called VEGF, VEGF, it's vasoendothelial growth factor, production of more capillaries in the body. Another connection to memory there as well. And notably outside of this particular study hypoxia is also connected to the epigenome. We're activating a sirtuin gene that is part of longevity. So all of these pieces that I'm highlighting here are just giving some perspective around breathing and our general health and well-being. For that matter, check, check. Hello. Yeah, there we go. Why breathing practice? It's something we're all doing, but why take the time throughout the day to even focus on something like this to... Check, check. Okay. Working with the technology. Am I coming through? Hello, hello. Okay. We'll just keep it rolling. We'll just keep it rolling. So from these mechanistic approaches, I like to come from this perspective of the connection between our brain and body shapes the experience of the mind. And as we strengthen this connection between our brain and body, we can start to build skill in how we steer our state of being. Breathing inherently is part of the autonomic nervous system. And within that, the two branches are sympathetic nervous system, which we often hear as fight or flight, but also consider and think of alertness, focus, energy, solar plexus, sunshine energy. On the other hand, we have our parasympathetic branch, rest digest, but also calm, sleep. Other protective mechanisms like freeze mode, think of the possum who plays dead. So all of these, all of this intelligence within the nervous system plays a role from moment to moment based on all of this stimulus that's happening around us in our lives. And inherently breathing is part of this autonomic function. We don't have to think about it. How amazing. Because if we did all the other things that we're doing, we would forget to breathe and we can go days without food, water. Some of us just a few minutes without breathing. David Blaine kind of popped the lid off with his Guinness World Record of over 20 minutes in a tank and having sharks around him and all kinds of other crazy stimulus. So how can we tap into this innate power within ourselves to steer our state of being through the day, regulate our energy and be able to tap into these wells of potential? And that's really what captivated me growing up. It's so great to be here in Maine. I'm from Massachusetts, grew up Alpine ski racing as my, my competitive sport. And then I got into power yoga. And really that's what captivated me in this realm of breathing and that I started experiencing getting out of my thinking mind all the time and looking into the isoteric side of breathing practice, thousands of years of tradition, different techniques, Pranayama. To then I came coming across a man named Wim Hof and working with him for the last handful of years with the specific breathing techniques that he intuitively explored and innovated through, as he says, going out into nature. And we all have our own potential and power in the way that we are serving and sharing our gifts with the world. I feel a deep synergy and I'm honored to be here for the Float Conference and that we are kindred in that way. How can we create spaces and environments for people to connect with themselves, to be able to help promote their health and wellness, to feel a sense of community and belonging? That's what we all want inherently as mammals in our nervous systems, to feel safe and social and engaged. And so that pursuit inspired me to start stepping out into nature, hiking mountains barefoot in my shorts in the snow, hanging out in frozen waterfall basins in the winter and just tapping into something that I didn't think was possible within myself. And from doing techniques like the Wim Hof method, it opened up the whole world of the science, like we've spoke to, the Psi, hypoxia, these adaptations and benefits that can yield deeper cognition, greater endurance depending on your goal, whether you're an athlete, a CEO, a business owner, a float owner, a mom and dad, a student, whatever it is that you're up to in life that you can pull from this well within you, the breath being the stream of life that steers your state and connects you to yourself, to your environment. It's really a language that goes beyond words. I'd also like to acknowledge the work of Dr. Justin Feinstein in research around carbon dioxide, where people are breathing in a shot of CO2 and the impact that that is having on our startle response, feeling panic or anxiety. And so as we move through our lives, sometimes, as you know from also reading James Nester's book, Breath, the New Science of Lost Art, if we get into dysfunctional breathing patterns, especially mouth breathing up in our chest, and we're over breathing, we're lowering the level of CO2 in our body. And research has shown that that creates vasoconstriction, especially in the forebrain, so we can experience headaches, we can experience confusion, frustration, a lack of focus. And then we also create the sensitivity to carbon dioxide. So whether we fall into a pattern of holding our breath, all of a sudden CO2 builds up and we're feeling anxious. Again, back to this real-time regulation of our state of being. So where then do all of this fall into the foundation of ourselves and why breathing practice? Again, I like to break it up into two parts. We can have offline breathing practice, kind of like what we did yesterday. We created a container, a set time and focus environment to explore techniques and certain patterns. And then throughout your day, as you're walking, going to work, engaging with family, friends, whatever it is that you're up to, that you can deploy breath patterns or a certain technique that feels good for you that helps bring more focus or get you out of thinking so that you can be in the moment with a conversation or reduce and down-regulate from any anxiousness that maybe you're feeling. And so those two sides are really then how we can build skill within our daily life and begin to leverage this simple thing that we're all doing to ultimately become our own superpowers. And within this, we go to the gym, we have our personal goals in pursuit of health and wellness. And where then and why then does breathing get neglected? It's coming to the forefront. It's becoming something that is now more accessible and more understood. But I always come to this question of why breathing practice. And so if we're exploring certain patterns and techniques, firstly, we often go to the external. What can I do that's going to make me feel good? Whether it's the list is endless. In that sense, how can we make breathing not prescriptive? Often people are saying, oh, what technique should I do? Cyclical patterns, box breathing, 478, all of them are great. But how does it feel for you? And ultimately I ask that question for your own perspective, not to try and change your behavior, but in changing our perspectives, we can open ourselves up to new possibilities through experiencing it for ourselves. That we're not living someone else's life, but we're the ones that are the pilots steering the ship. And thus breathing practice becomes intuitive from the inside out rather than prescriptive from the outside in. And the invitation within that is to start playing around with patterns and techniques to see what feel good for you. Let's take another extra full inhale. How to sip and then big sigh. It feels pretty good, right? So to the point of why breathing practice again, if we take time, whether it be five minutes, half an hour, an hour some days to explore certain patterns, cyclical, acyclical, Wim Hof style breathing techniques, engaging with some of these adaptations, low oxygen, high carbon dioxide, low carbon dioxide, low oxygen, there's no right or wrong in how you explore what pattern you do. But in doing so, simply focusing on your breathing for that interval of time, you're building and strengthening again this connection between brain and body. Within the brainstem, my mentor, Dr. Jack Feldman out of UCLA discovered the cluster of neurons that's responsible for the oscillation of the inhale. So there's these burst neurons that are then even communicating to so many other layers of the brain. This is the kernel of breathing where that oscillation and driver to then cause the communication down to the phrenic nerve, which is the nerve that engages the diaphragm in its contractions. And from there it communicates to our memory, our emotion, our cognition. Think even within smelling something. Respirations involved in that. And from memory sparks an emotion, sparks a whole state of being within ourselves. So though there are lots of things known about breathing from this neurobiological perspective, and all of the great research that's being done, it's maybe just the tip of the iceberg. So within even that, what's possible? And through taking our time to focus on breathing for five, ten minutes a day, that we start to strengthen our diaphragm, our primary breathing muscles, the intercostals. And through strengthening and coordinating our breathing muscles, that ripples out into everything we do, whether we're going on a run, lifting weights. There's this phenomena called the metaboroflex where if you are out on a run or you're doing this really high intensity workout, but your breathing muscles aren't strong enough to keep up with the demand that there's then blood shunting that happens. And the blood is pulled away from the muscles in our legs, our periphery, because our breathing muscles can't keep up with the output. And all of that blood then goes to them to help maintain. This is a survival mechanism. Our body needs those muscles to operate so that we then get the oxygen in. And again, sharing this perspective in a sense of, wow, well, if my diaphragm and my external intercostals and internal intercostals, pelvic floor, all of these muscles are coordinated, strong and powerful, adaptable and responsive to the moment, just as they are doing from moment to moment, each breath is totally unique. Take about a billion to 700 million breaths in your life. If we are asleep maybe half our life. If through our day we're not thinking about breathing because it's something that happens unconsciously, wow, how many moments or how many breaths are actually conscious? Not to say that they all have to be, but what if through spending time with conscious breathing we can then program healthy and functional, powerful and adaptive subconscious patterns of breathing that's labial and responsive to the moment. I think breath is a behavior. It's a way of being. Our way of breathing impacts our way of being. And our way of being impacts our way of breathing. For example, what happens when someone cuts you off or all of a sudden someone pops around the corner? Just think for a moment, what does that breath look like? It's an inhale. The inhale is connected to sympathetic innervation in the nervous system. Faster inhales will drive you into a more alert state. Just something to bear in mind as you want to steer your state. What happens when you get home after a long day or there was a close shave out of nowhere? It's an exhale. Exhales are more connotated and connected to parasympathetic innervation. So when you're feeling overwhelmed or over aroused or you want to down regulate to more calm, the focus is on the exhale, lengthening, extension of the exhale. Something then to be intuitive with and play with on your own so that you are self-empowered from the inside out with your breathing. Connecting now and considering this primary breathing muscle architecture, the diaphragm, the intercostal muscles, the pelvic floor as more of a subtle nuance within this whole breath wave that happens from inhale to exhale. Let's not forget that everything is connected. No system works alone. The diaphragm itself you could consider well in its origin, diaphragm is partition. It's a barrier. It separates our abdominal and thoracic cavity. One of our biggest lymph nodes lives right underneath the diaphragm. We have our spine, mainline artery, vein. So I always consider the diaphragm to kind of be like a toilet plunger. Each inhale is moving cerebral spinal fluid, moving lymphatic fluid helping to promote the circulation of our blood from feet to head to hands throughout our whole body. And within that is this whole fascial network. And cool that we're in Maine Dr. Tom Myers who's up in the northern regions has been exploring dissections and looking at fascia for decades. And it's quite fascinating to think often in anatomy things have been separated. We look at one muscle. But the fascia like the spider web is connected and woven through all of the musculature in our body. And there's something that in the perspective of fascia called the deep front line. It runs from the arch of our feet up through our shins, our quads, through the pelvic floor, the quadratus lumborum, our psoas makes its way up into the diaphragm itself through the lungs, the airway all the way up to our tongue. So this deep front line runs fully and congruently through the whole body. And as you may have heard the phrase our issues live in our tissues. We can store down emotions. We can have injuries from an impact or traumas that we have on our body. And the fascia can get tangled up. And all of a sudden one of our psoas is tight. That's impacting our right hemidiaphragm for example. And then the breathing isn't as fluid. So I'm sharing this because I was quite struck in what James Nestor spoke to yesterday about lying on our back for a breathing practice or whether you're in the ICU or how we can then be in postures and that breathing is directly connected to posture. So for the sake of the float, why breathing practice? Well we're floating in space in this beautiful container with thousands pounds of salt. And how lovely to just be able to surrender into that. Bring in some real-time regulation of breathing but consider what's possible then if you work with a Rolf practitioner or a functional fascial specialist or using your own tools like soft rolling balls and integrating that into a breathing practice. But then we can that's ultimately what I like to call the shampoo and conditioner for the fascia. So then it can glide and be fluid. And if we can align this structure of our physical body and then consider it we can yield a deeper experience potentially in a float. If we're having tension in our diaphragms and our soas and we're arching in our float, then there's constriction in some way to the potential deeper relaxation that's available by creating this alignment and allowing everything to fall into place through the release of certain fascial networks in our body. More fluidity in our breathing as well. So those are a few compelling pieces around breathing practice. How we can shift our chemistry to leverage adaptations for our epigenome for more red blood cell production for more longevity, metabolic efficiency how we can promote lung integrity. And let's take another one, extra full inhale. Add a little gulp and burst it. Now all of this brings us closer to our nature. We inherently are nature. And in a modern time when we're of course in our nature have evolved this beautiful technology but it can pull us into states of chronic stress it can pull us into our heads and thinking planning, doing. How can we fall back into simply being and allowing this continuous process that we're all uniquely in in our lives the process of becoming, of learning, developing evolving, awakening, building and expanding in what is our consciousness this depth of who we are to then share our gifts with the world. And again there's no right or wrong time to practice breathing but for the sake of considering nature the cycle and circadian rhythm of the day that brings us closer to our nature. Of course there are limitations potentially with shift work or how we've been our living, our lifestyle. That's a big piece that I love to share about how can we share tools and integrate in body tools that empower our lifestyles and breathing is the main component of that. So to consider then a takeaway for all of you breathing practice in the morning waking up, get outside capture the morning light so that those photons stimulate and engage you into the up regulation for the day healthy cortisol levels energy drive and focus and then consider breathing practices that are stimulating for that up regulation Wim Hof method practice exhale pulsations again strengthening your breathing muscles steering your state into alertness, presence and focus for the day maybe that's 10 minutes in the morning even some rhythmical and cyclical patterns that make you feel grounded and connected maybe you take a little time mid afternoon if you're feeling anxious or you're starting to feel low energy you can bring in and deploy that more up regulated breathing pattern and then think at the end of the day we want to down regulate we've had our tasks, responsibilities the to dos and it's time to start shifting our state to get ready for a great night's sleep where we rejuvenate our body where we entrain and ingrain the memories and the learnings of the things we did that's where then this down regulation longer exhales slower breathing nasal breathing especially seeing the setting sun blue yellow contrast light to engage those mechanisms for circadian rhythm and sleep so the final take away there's no right or wrong in how you deploy breathing practice but to open up the possibility and the curiosity of what techniques can you add into a quiver so that you have these different arrows to shoot throughout the day that in one breath you can change your state and continue then to innovate and find techniques that help you inspire the extraordinary in your life so thank you for being here thank you for sharing thank you for your openness I would love to talk and share I'll be hanging out for the rest of the day and on the float conference platform there is a landing page I have an online platform and I invite you to come join for some live stream practices there is a free pass on there available for all of you and for that to be an opportunity to continue exploring themes and connecting to mechanism and how you can intuitively embody and integrate practice into your life so thank you