 everybody. We're live again. Day seven of our little slowing down learning to go slower seven day challenge today, we are going to do the very basics of using your breath as a tool to help you slow down and become a little bit more mindful. I know some of you are a little freaked out by the idea of focusing on your breathing. And if you are, that's okay. We will address that. But today is all about breathing because you know, we weren't going to get through a seven day mindfulness challenge without talking about breathing, right? I mean, I'm contractually obligated to talk about breathing at some point. And today is it. So we're going to end the series today with breathing. For those of you that kind of hung out for all seven days and came down and chatted and shared and, you know, participated. Thank you. I really appreciate that. We're going to wait for the crowd to start to stream in here. Here they are. I see some folks showing up already. This is great. Maybe we'll have our biggest crowd today. You never know. Like 40 people yesterday, which is really cool. Again, I will remind you that if you are what if you are watching from inside my Facebook group, I cannot see your name. I'm only going to see Facebook users. Sorry about that, guys. But that's just the way it has to be. I'm going to turn on the chat overlay so that you guys can actually see each other's comments as they come in. That's that seemed to work out really well yesterday. Before we get going, just I can't point at it since I changed the screen right now. But thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for all the support for 7% slower. I was absolutely blown away at three o'clock this morning to find out that it hit number one over Dr. Amund's book, change your brain, change your life, I believe it is, which has been like a perennial bestseller in that category for a very long time. And Dr. Amund has been around a long time. He has earned his stripes. He is a bit of a mental health legend. And yes, there is my little lizard brain book on top of that in the rankings blew me away. So thank you guys so so much. I appreciate it. I really do. Bessie is here. Very good. Let's see. I just started watching your podcast. I'm glad you did. I hopefully it is you're getting stuff out of it. For those of you who do not know that I have a podcast, which I would be hard pressed to think anybody watching doesn't know that it's at the anxious truth comm slash listen, you can see it. Listen on Spotify, Apple podcast, Google like every place there are podcasts, find the anxious truth and listen to them. Lots of good free information dating back in six years, seven years now. So yeah, there's that. Let's see. Thanks, Eric. Appreciate the congrats. Victoria is here. Bethany is here. We got 20 people. Let's get cooking. We'll get into it, right? So breathing. What I always say, first of all, let me acknowledge the folks that are a little bit freaked out by the idea of focusing on your breath. I understand that for a lot of you, focusing on your breath is really, really, really a challenge. If you have breath centric and breath focused anxiety, and you spend all day long really like overly focused on your breath, this can either help you. So just kind of listen a little bit because we're going to talk about belly breathing. Or it might trigger you a little bit more and you find it really difficult. Now I know I don't normally talk about triggers or avoiding them. But in this situation, if it's something that you're really struggling with, you don't have to use your breath as a focus tool, right? So we're really only using our breath as a tool to focus on only because it's convenient. If you are alive, you are breathing, and therefore you can use your breath as an attention point where you can put your attention, because learning to slow down learning to be more mindful when we need to in the moment is really about putting our attention somewhere and learning to keep it there. So we can use our breath for that. But if you find that it is just too difficult for you to start to focus on your breath, because that is a problem for you. That's okay, you can apply these principles to other things, you can use the same principles and other parts of your life. So stick with me here. Alright, so mindful breathing. The first thing I want to talk about with with breath is it is not magic. So I know there's a tremendous amount of talk about grounding and cleansing breaths. And there's a whole like, movement called breath work, which is not a thing I am ever, ever talking about like we're not talking about breath work. And I'm never talking about this as some magic way to like shield you against anxiety or banish your anxiety, banish your stress or banish your fear. The breath is not in any way magic. I'm sorry, I'm just going to say it. It does not connect you to the universe. It's just it's just the thing that your body does. It's totally natural and it's always with us. So I'm get really, really practical and simple about this. If you are standing upright, if you are alive, if you are awake, if you are breathing, then you are breathing, and we can use our breath as a focus and attention training tool. So I think I want to talk about one of the most common problems that people have when it comes time to use their breath as a as a focus mechanism, or they try to use their breath as a calming mechanism, and we're not doing that here. We're using it as a focus training mechanism and a way to start to slow things down. One of the most common mistakes is that people continually try to fill their lungs to the very top. Like everybody thinks that, you know, oh, take a deep breath, take a cleansing breath is this big like, and then they wind up doing the big like that is a bad breath, because if you find that you are doing that, you are trying to fill your lungs to capacity, because you think you should take a very deep breath, inhale negativity, whatever it is, inhale, positivity, exhale negativity, you hear all these cliches, right? So if you think you're supposed to fill your lungs right up to here, and then do the big that's a bad idea. The reason why that's a bad idea is because I have to turn off my my thing here, or else it's going to black my screen. The reason why that bad idea for so many is that a lot of people who are dealing with anxiety problems and are chronically stressed tend to be chronic over breathers, and you may be actually feeling a little bit of hyperventilation. So when you hyperventilate, you get a little tingly, a little numb, things start to feel a little weird, your dpdr may kick in at a higher higher level, your heart rate starts to go up. So you could be making things worse if you're trying to breathe that way, because you think that's what like calming breaths are, then you would be wrong. And you also see a lot of things, and I know I'm going to probably catch heat on this. If I see another image on social media with somebody that has their hand here, and I see a lot of people talking about, you know, after a panic attack, what's your self care after a panic attack? And everybody has their hand here in these images. I don't want you to put your hand here, because this isn't about hand over heart, you know, chakras, like self love. This is about the mechanics of breathing well. So I want you to put your hand down here, like on your belly. You can't see my belly. I'm sorry, I have to like jump up for you to see it. Put your hand down here. And I will put up here on the overlay. There is on my website at the anxious truth com slash skills. You will see an exercise that I have linked. It's a video from the University of Michigan, where a woman is teaching another woman how to do diaphragmatic breathing. It's incredibly boring. It's super dry. There's nothing special about it. But you are essentially breathing into your belly so that your chest and shoulders do not move. So right now I could take a super deep breath ready, but I can't breathe in any more than that. That's as much as I can fill my lungs and you did not see my chest or shoulders move in any way, right? There's a reason for that. Your diaphragm will expand. So if you do want to get a deep breath for some reason, you expand your diaphragm, you don't try and expand your ribcage. So you breathe into your belly, you breathe in for some count, and then you breathe out for a longer count. So it's in. And you see how my exhale is really slow. So I want you to start to practice that skill. If you want to start to use mindful breathing as a way to slow yourself down and focus on your breath and be a little bit more mindful, just practice that for a minute or two as many times as you can during the day. Breathe like that. All right. So mindful breathing is not panting. It's not taking giant breaths and then trying to calm down because you will blow off a lot of carbon dioxide that way. And you start to get that hyperventilation over breathing thing going on, right? So that that's the way I want you to start the idea of mindful breathing is with belly breathing, you know, box breathing. Sure, you could do that. I suppose you could follow. And there's a bunch of apps out there that make you follow like the expanding circle, breathe in, breathe out. Those are kind of cool. But for the most part, it's super simple. You breathe into your diaphragm. You do not expand your chest and your rib cage. You don't lift your shoulders. Your exhale is slow and controlled and lasts longer than your inhale, which keeps you from blowing off all that carbon dioxide. And really, truly, if you want to talk about relaxation, which again, we're not breathing to relax. We're not breathing to beat down the panic or the anxiety. We're breathing to learn how to focus on our breathing and use that as a slowing and mindfulness training tool, right? So but if you want to talk about relaxation, yeah, there's a lot of work that says diaphragmatic breathing that way does trigger a bit of a relaxation response in your nervous system, your parasympathetic nervous system specifically. Might it have that benefit? Sure, it might help. But if you're in the middle of like level seven anxiety heading toward level 10 panic, trust me, that relaxation response is like bullets off a Superman on that panic. It's not going to destroy your panic right away. So just know that going in. So I would really, really, really urge you to check out that video that's on my website. Watch it. Practice that you might suck at it at first. It's okay. And again, acknowledgement if focusing on your breath is really a problem for you, then maybe you don't want to do that now you can use other focus training skills, right? But first learn to breathe that way and practice that that is what you want to do. Then we want to get to the point where we are literally just paying attention to that breath. So when your mind is racing and you find that you are in speed demon mode and your lizard brain is telling you go fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, like I wrote in that book, 7% slower, then one of the things you could do is to say, oh, I'm just going to stop for a minute or two. I don't have to stop for 10 minutes. You don't have to sit cross legged on a cushion. You don't have to climb to the top of a mountain or sit on a beach. I can just stop for two minutes and I can just do nothing but breathe. And I can put my attention on the sensation of the air entering my nose and then out through my lips. That's all I have to do. And when I have more thoughts, I can acknowledge those thoughts, but I could bring my attention back to the air entering my nose and leaving through my lips. So all that is, you give yourself a minute, a minute and a half to two minutes to just take that break. You cannot help but to slow down. So mechanically, it's almost impossible to breathe that way and to dedicate 60 to 60 seconds to two minutes of that and not slow yourself down. It's almost impossible to do that quickly. You cannot rush through a diaphragmatic breathing break. So this is one of the things one of the reasons why I like this technique a whole lot because you could do it anywhere, anytime. It's super convenient. And honestly, I know a lot of people once they start practicing this, they get so, they enjoy it so much and it becomes so useful that people begin to practice all the time. I practice while I'm driving, I practice while I'm loading the dishwasher, I practice while I'm mindfully brushing my hair. It becomes a real tool that they can use to say, Oh, I'm an overdrive right now. Let me bring it down to a simpler level and just get back to my breath for a minute. Again, not because it's magic. We're not connecting you to any spiritual energy here. We're just slowing you down and training your attention. That's it. And if your mind wanders away from your breath, that's okay, just bring it back. So like everything else I've talked about for the past six days, same rules applied today. If you're struggling with it, practice. There's no failure here. You're just learning new skills and you're trying new things. So it's okay if you're not so great at it. So let's take a look here at some comments. I see that there are a lot. Don is here. Emily is here. I'm trying to take my life back from panic. Do it. Emily, you can do it. I know you can do it. I've been practicing all morning says Adrian. Very good. Okay. I'm always excited when I see you here. You might want to get out more. I'm not that exciting. But thank you. I appreciate that. Donna says I remember this couldn't get a breath that would catch. Yes. We can we can live with never getting a deep breath. I want to put this up on screen because it's really kind of important Donna's comment here. It's understood we can live without getting a deep breath. So that sensation of and I know we're going to veer off a little bit. This is really about slowing down and being more mindful. But I do understand the connection of breath to those anxious sensations. So we'll talk about that a little bit. That for me, I can give you my own personal experience. The feeling of I wasn't able to get a deep breath, which is still a common anxiety symptom for me sometimes and for many people. Usually I can trace down to a feeling of constriction here at the base of my throat and at the top of my chest. And then I would try to combat that by expanding my ribs as much as I could and trying to get that full feeling up to here. That's called air hunger. When you feel like you just you can't get enough air. Reality was I had to say, okay, I'm going to trust that I am getting an affair and I'm going to not do that. I'm going to breathe into my belly and look at that. I'm not dizzy. I'm my heart is not racing like I had to let reality teach me the lesson that Oh, if I just breathe into my belly and allow this tightness to be here without trying to stretch it away with my lungs, then everything turned out okay. So that was a big, big, big deal. What Donna just said there, learning that you don't have to fill your lungs up to here in order to stay alive or escape some horrible thing. So let's see here, me is here with her really me is here with her lung and breathing emojis. I don't even know where you find these things. How is this even possible that that's a thing? Olivia's here. What up? Sean's here. England is here. Love it. I love what you debunk the woo woo. You know, I love your woo. I respect your woo woo. But we're not about the woo here in Nestle. Kosovo. Wow. Welcome. That's, I don't think the first time I've ever seen somebody from Kosovo. So welcome. Glad to have you here. Let's hide that. And let's see what else we have. Yes, demonstrations. I do that in the hand thing. This thing, right? I'm going to post about that at some point the next week or so. And I'll probably, you know, it'll be a bit of a spicier post. I do understand the sentiment here. I really do. It's built on self compassion and self love and, you know, all of that stuff. I understand. But hand here is not a good practical thing. If you're proud, if you're struggling with breathing, do not put your hand here, put your hand on your diaphragm and feel your belly pushing out. Like that's kind of where you want to be. Super important. I know it sounds like a silly little thing, but trust me on this one. Let's see here. Show us really show us all the breathing. I'm still brushing my hair. Love it. Says Victoria in for four out for six or eight counts. That is my morning and night routine, three to five minutes. Excellent. I mean, if you could get into a regular, I was trying to get people to make this a regular practice, right? And this is also sort of part of basic meditation. So when you are sitting and practicing basic meditation and focus skills, usually for me, I'm breathing this way. I tried to do my when I'm meditating, I'll make sure I breathe into my nose after my mouth, make my excels a little longer, breathe into my belly. It's not super exaggerated, but that is the breathing that I use. So it is connected to the practice of meditation before. And the counts, by the way, in for four out for six, in for five out for seven, in for three out for five. It doesn't matter what the counts are, and the counts might change from hour to hour. If you're a little bit more amped up physically, then your counts might be lower. Because if your heart rate is up at 110 and you're super anxious, it might be harder to breathe in for six and out for eight at in the beginning. So you may have to do three and five as until you calm down and you could take longer breaths, right? So that's a dynamic thing. There is no hard and fast rule three and five, four and six, six and eight, there's no hard and fast rule. Just exhale longer than the inhale. That's the important thing. Okay, so let's put this up. Monique is saying welcome Monique. I learned that the breathing I learned how CBT did not help me at all. It felt like I was hyperventilating. Okay, good. So I'm glad that you recognize that it wasn't helping you and it made a change. I'll tell you a quick story where 16 minutes and I want to go for about another four minutes. When I was first experiencing panic attacks, this was way back in the 80s, right? When I was having my first experiences, I had a psychiatrist who worked at the health clinic at the university I was attending who told me to calm down by taking deep breaths. And he told me to do and the very next day, I was rushing myself in an absolute blind panic to the infirmary on campus, because I couldn't get to a hospital in time, because my face was tingling, my lips were tingling, my nose were tingling and my hands were locked like lobster claws. That is the extreme form of hyperventilation before the next step is you would pass out and it would be fine. I would start breathing again. But I did not know this. A psychiatrist taught me to calm down with deep breaths. He taught me how to hyperventilate. Nice job. I will can see that man in my eye right now. I can see him in my head. That was not cool. That was not cool. Rene is here. Let's see. Jane is here. Methods are helping you excellent. Love it. This is important too. Let's put this up real quick. You can't start breathing slowly when you have a panic attack. It's not a magic trick. Yes, you can slow your breath down while you're having a panic attack. But if you don't practice this all the time, good luck. Because how many times have you heard people say when they get really anxious, I know what to do, but everything goes out the window. Well, there's a reason why and I say this stuff all the time. There's a reason why the military runs drills. There's a reason why sports teams practice and scrimmage. There's a reason why musicians rehearse and actors and artists. There's a reason for that so that when you have to do it on stage in the performance in the game in the conflict, you know what to do. It's become almost automatic. So if you do not practice this when you are feeling okay, then you cannot expect to use it on demand as a rescue tool. It needs to be a skill that you just learn and put in your tool belt and you take them out and you use them when you need them because you have gotten better at them and you are used to them. That is really important. I find so many people that say, this doesn't work for me. And when I ask, well, how often do you practice? I get dead air. They don't practice and they think they can wait till I have a panic attack and then I'll somehow try and breathe away Drew said and it'll go away. And that's just not ever going to happen. So whether you're dealing with panic anxiety or stress, doing this on a regular basis and using your breath to slow yourself down just for a couple of minutes, a few times a day randomly as you could fit it in, goes a long, long way. Practicing slowing down, practicing this breathing, practicing being more mindful and training your attention really, really helps so that when you have to do it, it's a bit more automatic and you don't have to think about it and try to do a new thing that you're not really good at like get good at it when you don't have to. Now for some people, I see a comment breathing makes me more anxious. Again, if that's a thing for you, you don't have to use your breath as a focus point. I cannot say that enough, right? This good question I'll answer this real quick, even though it's a little off topic is a comment for meditation to cause some anxiety. That's a good question. It is a thing I will talk about some more as we go. But I don't know if I would say that it's that meditation causes more anxiety. I think for a lot of people that are in anxious state, the idea of sitting to meditate, well, they'll say that it makes them more anxious. But in reality, if you're just going to sit silently and quietly for 60 seconds and try basic meditation, then yeah, you're going to feel all the feelings. Somebody once said to me, you know, but if I do that, then I'm just left with the sensations and the answer to that is correct. You are so it's not so much that it will cause anxiety. It probably means that you are always trying to run away from those anxious sensations and thoughts. And when you try to meditate, you stop running away and they are right in your face. That probably is what that is, right? So hopefully that answers that question at a very basic level. It's helpful to have fun with these practices. It is it's true. It is very true. My meditation, let's say this real quick. My meditation app says that each and every breath is different. I never seem to get that. I'm not sure I get it necessarily either other than what I mentioned not too long ago, which was about four or five minutes ago, which is that the cadence of your breath can change depending on your circumstances. So you cannot look at at one special kind of breath always being absolutely correct. That's probably what the app is trying to teach you. Breath is very dynamic. It's changing all the time. So allow it to be different. Sometimes it will be slower and deeper. And sometimes it will be maybe a little more shallow and quick. But nonetheless, you can slip things down even if you're taking breaths, they're a little bit more shallow and quick. All right. Yes, somebody who says they had the lobster claws scared the hell out of me to be honest with you. I was driving the car with my then girlfriend. I was getting I was starting to get really anxious. I was starting to panic. And I remembered that the psychiatrist had taught me to take deep breaths. So I did. And literally within a minute and a half or two minutes, my face and lips started getting tingly and numb and my fingers and toes. And then when my hands and toes locked, it was like, well, it's been a good run. Yes, I was about 19 years old. And I figured this is it. I'm done. This is what it means. This is what it feels like when you die. It was terrifying. But that's what that is if you get lobster claws. It means you're over breathing. Renee says, Oh, I always put my hand on my chest. Yeah, take that. Get out of here. I'm so happy to see this person here. I'm just gonna flat out say good Marcy's here. Marcy is one of my oldest friends in the entire world. Love you, Miriel. Marcy is married to an even older friend in that I have from my junior high days. So I love them. Thanks, Mars. So an over breather learned to control my breathing. Good takes work, right? Yes. To answer was I ever on medication? I have three podcast episodes that I did that talked about my medication experience. So if you'd like to go listen to those you absolutely can. I told you the whole story. And there you go. So let's see over breathing eventually hyperventilating has been my main issue trying purposely trying to yawn. Twice a day and not anxious. Okay, so I'm having the problem to know exactly what to do. Crystal, you're rocking it. Crystal's talking about how she is you know, practicing all the time, which we have to do. It's never about how you feel. It's about how you react. Let's see here. Oh, yeah, that's because you had the lobster claws, right? Same thing. I mean, I'm telling you, she was in her little, it was a Datsun. That's how old I am. They were Datsuns. That's what Nissan used to be, by the way, FYI. So we were in her little dot me knows Marcy knows Marcy knows who I was with. If Marcy is still here, Marcy Simon, you know exactly who I was with that was in a red Datsun 200 sx, you know who was driving me across the campus in Buffalo. And yeah, we went up like at the, you know, the I guess the infirmary or the health clinic because I was convinced I was a goner. That was that was rough. Anyway, the stations will go lower allow it. Very good. All right, guys. So 22 minutes. Listen. So this is the end of this one day seven. I appreciate you hanging out here. The whole point of this was to sort of support the lessons that are in this book. So if you do not have the book and you're interested in the book, you can go to 7% slower.com. I will put that up on the screen right now. In case you do want to check it out. If you have checked it out already, you have it. Thank you so much. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you supporting this. And here's what I'm thinking. We should probably do this regularly. Like I really have learned a lot doing these seven days of live streaming, set up a new camera and everything. So I'm kind of digging it. So I'm thinking we may do I can't I don't think I could do every day, but we may do a little five and 10 minute things, you know, that will schedule maybe two, three, four times a week, which would be super fun. And yeah, we'll go over more of this stuff. Mia is Dotson old also. And Marcy knows exactly who I was driving with. That's why I said Marcy is one of my oldest friends in the world. I'm really so excited that you're here. I don't even know why, but but really, really. So anyway, so yeah, so we will look at maybe doing little, you know, teaching things, maybe three, two, three, four times a week if I can, I'll try and schedule them for about this time. I will try and give you guys advanced notice. How about that? Amazing, right? And yeah, thanks for coming by. Thanks for sharing. Keep practicing the things. Keep practicing all the things all the time. I promise like things can improve when you get better at these things. So yeah, that's it. I will see you guys in the next one. And if you want to find these, they will stay on the Facebook page. They will stay in my YouTube and I post them to my IGTV after about an hour will be in my IGTV. So wherever you want to come back and watch these, it will stay in the Facebook group. So there you go. Thanks guys. Totally appreciate it. And I will see you very shortly, hopefully in the next few days or early next week.