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It Gets To Be Easy
We empower women to grow confident in creating their most healthful & joy-filled life with ease.
It Gets To Be Easy
Enhancing Well-Being and Performance Through Breathwork with Campbell Will
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In this episode we welcome a special guest. We discuss how to unlock the profound secrets of breathwork and its transformative power on your health and performance with integrative physiotherapist Campbell Will. Campbell draws from his vast clinical experience to reveal how mastering your breath can elevate your well-being, enhance performance, and tackle dysfunction at its root. Discover how simple and accessible breathwork techniques can become your go-to tools for self-empowerment and overall happiness.
But that's not all—we also dive deep into the importance of small, consistent self-care practices and heightened body awareness in managing anxiety and stress. Campbell explains how minor adjustments in our breathing can act as early warning signals, helping us to course-correct and prevent stress from building up. By integrating these moments of self-regulation throughout our day, we can maintain balance and ultimately avoid burnout, thus fostering a more resilient nervous system.
Lastly, we navigate the intricate spectrum of the nervous system and the challenge of transitioning from a heightened sympathetic state to a more restorative parasympathetic state. Campbell offers insights into the discomfort many feel when attempting to relax after prolonged periods of high stress and shares strategies to ease this transition. Plus, learn a simple yet effective five-minute daily relaxation practice and uncover the crucial relationship between managing daily activities and achieving quality sleep. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to enhance their emotional well-being and overall health.
- Connect with Campbell: Instagram @breathbodytherapy
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Welcome to it Gets To Be Easy Podcast where you're granted permission to live your most healthful and joy-filled life with ease.
Speaker 1:We are your hosts, katie and Shawna, and together we've been cracking the code to creating our own realities with ease, and now we've set out to help you grow confident in this too.
Speaker 2:Hey friends, welcome back to the show. Katie and I are so excited today we have a guest here with us, and Campbell Will is an integrative physiotherapist with a primary focus on the role of breath on human health and performance. How cool is that. His experience spans from ICUs, neurosurgical wards, working with elite athletes and in private practice and across the spread of this clinical settings. Campbell really noticed that there's this widely unaddressed commonality which is breathing. So when it's done correctly, it elevates and enhances our performance. We know that and we've tapped into that personally. But also, when it's done poorly, it drives dysfunction.
Speaker 2:Can't wait to talk about that piece. Campbell utilizes this diverse background he has you guys to experience and really help practitioners shift their focus from disease and dysfunction to health, to happiness, to freedom all the things that we've been empowering here on the show and his holistic, multidisciplinary approach focuses on restoring balance to the body, the mind, emotions, energy. These are the topics we've been talking about, campbell on the show for the past month or so. We've really been digging into body messages and tapping into what our body's telling us. So we can't wait for that and we know that you see breath as a tool that really is accessible to all of us and it really provides that foundation of health and wellness. So we can't wait. Welcome, campbell, we're so glad you're here.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. I'm really excited. I think this is going to be a beautiful conversation.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Yes, so do we. We do All right, so let's just jump in. So, of course, you all know, having listened in, that you know we do prepare questions. We've got some things that we think you'll be interested in, but we also know that this conversation will just unfold and some greatness is going to come out, so we hope that you guys will continue to press play here.
Speaker 2:So, Campbell, I know when I was you and I actually connected through Instagram. That's how we met, right, Love that that the world is able to bring us there. But I know that something really stood out to me that you've said recently was that breathwork isn't a trend, and I really, really love that. You know somebody who has done breathwork in supporting kids in my role as pediatric occupational therapist. Like you know, it kind of bugs me sometimes because I don't want it to just be like a buzz, right, it really is bigger than that. But I want you to expand on that Like. Tell us, tell the audience, you know how you personally went from seeing breath work as this woo-woo thing, right, that it can be looked at sometimes, to this real transformable piece of healthcare.
Speaker 3:Yeah it's. I mean, and I always I have to preface, you know, I thought it was a trend too when I saw the bars and the Wim Hofs and the athletes talking about it and celebrities are jumping on the bandwagon. But then I kind of just like started to dive a little bit deeper and I'm like, well, it is really this foundational piece of health. You know, it's the first thing we do when we're born, it's the last thing we do before we pass away, and it's really this single process that sustains life between those two points and using the breath. But underneath that, it's really just a function of human health. And when it isn't working well, it starts to cause really untold imbalance and accumulation. And when it's working really well and we start to have a grasp of it, it just becomes this incredible tool that's very versatile, that requires no equipment, there's no barrier of entry, it's approachable for everyone and I think it's just fascinating.
Speaker 3:Right, we see this world of like breathwork exploding over the last kind of five or 10 years. But breathing, before we talk about breathwork, is not something that's taught. You know, we're not taught it as kids, we're not taught in school, we're not taught it within the medical profession right, like the five years of physical therapy schooling I did. We did one lecture on the diaphragm and it was on neurological injuries. You know it's like if this nerve gets severed. You know it wasn't on how it relates to emotions and mood and energy and stress and like all of the things that most people are actually struggling with you know, it's.
Speaker 3:it's not about, you know, breathing being this kind of pathology. It's really about breathing being this tool of self-empowerment pathology.
Speaker 1:It's really about breathing being this tool of self-empowerment. That's so good, that's so good. My sister just gave birth three weeks ago and her partner had never had someone who had given birth at home. No drugs, and that was the key thing was just like the power of your breath and what it can do for your mind and your body and how you receive pain or discomfort. I always go back to birth because with the body and the mind but it's just the way you phrase that too. It's that is so simplistic and everyone's like just forgets how to use it and it's such a simple tool and honestly, I think that's what it is forgets how to use it and it's such a simple tool.
Speaker 3:And honestly, I think that's what it is People forget how to use it and there's this kind of mentality that because it's automatic, it must be taking care of itself. You know and I always have this little kind of like sentence that I leave people with which is like automatic doesn't mean optimal. You know, just because we're doing something all the time doesn't mean we're doing it well, and we have many examples of that. You know, just because we're walking around doesn't mean some people walk poorly and have bad biomechanics. You know, it's like just because it's happening all the time. I think that's the reason people are like oh well, I'm breathing, like what do I need to pay attention? What do I need to know about it? And I think that's where we have this just hugely. You know we've kind of glossed over and we've just forgotten that breathing, you know, is such a powerful tool. Just because it is partly automatic and it's happening in the background doesn't mean we shouldn't give it our full attention.
Speaker 1:Campbell, what was your aha moment for this transition?
Speaker 3:for yourself.
Speaker 3:It's actually. It's funny when I get asked that I like I know the exact moment. And it happened working in ICU as a respiratory physiotherapist and I had kind of two realizations. The first was that oftentimes I was the first person to talk to someone about their breathing and this was in intensive care. I'm like, wait a minute, you know like why is this the first time that you've heard about this? And you're typically at end of life or in really really dire straits. And then the second thing is I actually had a client that I was working with, a patient that you know.
Speaker 3:My job in ICU is really to go in and check that someone was breathing well and also to help them mobilize, so get them out of their bed and maybe take them for a walk if they were up for it. But I was coming to see this older gentleman who was very unwell and our job was to just get him out of bed and take a few steps and sit in the chair and just the sheer. You know how hard that was for this guy. And when he sat in the chair and eventually caught his breath, he said to me he said, when you can't breathe, nothing else matters breathe. Nothing else matters.
Speaker 3:And I'd never, you know here I was working in ICU as a respiratory physiotherapist and those words struck me as like you know what I've never even considered that, I've never considered not being able to breathe. You know, I think most of us have had the moment where we get the wind knocked out of us on the playground or something and we have that few moments where we really can't breathe and it's panic stations. You know, it's really not a nice feeling, but other than that, I think we just take for granted this thing. That's happening 25,000 times a day, but when it does go wrong, we really start to see things go wrong, and so that was the kind of catalyst for me being hmm, you know, there's something more here that I wasn't taught, that I didn't learn, that I'd like to know more about because I'm just seeing it show up in every facet of my own life and also my professional setting.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, okay, so let's dive into that a little bit too. Like, so what do we do to start paying attention to that before there's an emergency, before it's something we have to tune into?
Speaker 3:Yeah, great question. It starts. You know, I always like to phrase this as using kind of offline tools and online tools, but underneath everything else, you know, I often get asked like what does the breathwork practice for X and give me a breathing exercise to do this for Y? You know, and I think below that or before that, is this really interesting and important piece called awareness, and it's often the piece that people skip over. You know, if someone says to me, give me a breathing exercise for anxiety, but they don't develop the awareness around what provokes their anxiety, then we've just got another tool of symptom management. You're waiting until you're anxious and then you're trying to alleviate that or mitigate that anxiety.
Speaker 3:Awareness is really interesting because oftentimes there is a at least physiological influence, but oftentimes a physiological driver to states of anxiety, and so there's all this really fascinating research to show that you know, breathing changes. Before someone has the I feel anxious, right, they notice this emotional state that they're in. So what would happen if someone was able to notice hey, I just started breathing a little bit faster or shallower, or my breath's high up in my chest and my shoulders A lot of times, and this is why, when you said the word body messages, I was like, oh, this is going to be a great conversation, right, these are little messages from the body saying we're veering off course, right, like here is me telling you to course correct. But if I don't have the awareness and I don't notice those changes in my breathing, my body's going to give me louder and louder messages, right, whether that's anxiety, whether that's pain, whether that's burnout, you know. But the awareness piece of noticing, oh, my breathing is changing, there's my opportunity to course correct, right, to bring myself back towards balance. And when we notice those little messages, it's not a lot of work, you know, it's not now I need to go and do 30 minutes of breath work.
Speaker 3:Oftentimes we're talking about a course correction. That's like five seconds, right, oh, my breath just got higher in my body or I just stopped breathing. Let me start breathing again. Let me take that nice slow, diaphragmatic, rhythmical breath and set my nervous system back on a different direction. And if I continue to catch those little, I'm off balance, I'm veering off course and I course correct. Well, a lot changes about, you know, rather than this accumulation of stress and overwhelm and I get to the end of the day and perhaps engage in some non-optimal strategies because it's just all pent up throughout the day. It's like I course correct, I course correct, I course correct, and that gets me through the day very differently in terms of how the nervous system kind of functions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's so powerful and something that we've been tapping to personally and in conversations here. It's just so wild, like when we get tangled up in hustle and we think about, like all the things that were just go go, go, go go. There are stories in our head, right. Our ego has been telling us like I can't take that, like yeah, okay, fine, I can tell I'm breathing here, but I can't take the time to do that. Like I know personally that I've done that in the past. Like those are stories, right, but I just love the empowerment that you just said there is, like it truly is something so small, you know, throughout the day, that is having such a powerful impact and not sending us into these crash and burns because we haven't tapped into it and then it's, it is more extreme, and so it is sending us to like, okay, now we we don't have time and we don't have all the things that we want to be able to engage in, because now we're in this complete overwhelm because we didn't tap into it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think you made a really important point there, shauna, that what I'm talking about is not hey, take a 30 minute break, go and lay on your yoga mat and do breath work, right. I you know that most people are like I don't have 30 minutes, and so, instead of setting ourselves an unrealistic expectation, it's like where can we kind of like set the bar so low that it's really unlikely that we aren't going to engage in it? Right? And some people, some clients I work with, I'm like let's just commit to one minute, right? Like, do you really not have one minute? And when we kind of phrase the conversation that way, it's like, you know, it's pretty hard to tell yourself I don't have one minute to look after myself. And I always say to people like, if you don't, have a minute.
Speaker 3:We need to have a different conversation, right? If you can't allocate 60 seconds to self-care, we need to have a different conversation, right? I get when people like I don't have 30 minutes, right. I get when people like I don't have 30 minutes.
Speaker 3:You know, I've got three kids and I go to business and it's like I get it, you know, like I got a two and a half year old where we're three weeks out from number two and it's like time comes in little pockets, right. It's like I don't have my 60 minutes to do my breath work routine in the morning it doesn't exist anymore. But I do have five minutes of the day. And how I show up as a dad and a husband because I'm taking those little moments of self-care right without the context of self-care being this luxury of bubble baths. It's just like. No, it's self-regulation, right. It's me just looking after my state in the moment and repeatedly doing that throughout the day so that I don't get to the point of right, the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back. Now I am really stressed, now I am really overwhelmed, um, and then I start to do things that perhaps I could have mitigated by being a little bit more aware throughout the day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'm going to jump around here a little bit because I feel like it's you know, something that you said there, like your clients, that you've been working with Kimo. I'm super curious like what are they noticing from the nervous system? Like you know, we've talked about that on the show and been tapping into that personally and I I know my nervous system is in a state of healing right now and it's wild the things that it just it really did go into autopilot with some things because it felt like it had to, because that's what I was pushing it right. I just love to talk about that. Like what are your clients seeing as far as that impact over time of those little incremental moments on the nervous system?
Speaker 3:Yeah, those little incremental moments on the nervous system, yeah, so I always like to kind of describe the nervous system, rather than most often we kind of get the nervous system is explained in this kind of one or the other right. It's binary, it's like fight or flight or rest and digest, and I really like to like take that and be like okay, those are two ends of the spectrum and in between those two points we have lots of different states that we can be in. You know a simple example if I wake up in the morning, it's like okay, so a sleep is one end of the spectrum, and then I could go all the way up to a panic attack, right. But it's not like I flip the switch, it's like sleepy, awake, alert, anxious, stressed, panic, right. And so when we have that idea of the nervous system as a spectrum, what have that idea of the nervous system as a spectrum? What I tend to find is that the clients that I usually work with are resting on one end of the spectrum. Let's call it the sympathetic end of the spectrum, right.
Speaker 3:And I always like to make this really important point that oftentimes and this is kind of I think what you were touching on Shona, it's that it's not a mistake when people find themselves in that state right, it is oftentimes a survival mechanism, right?
Speaker 3:Or I went through, right a period of time where it was necessary for me to be in this heightened state right, this state of higher arousal. And so, whether that's childhood, whether that's early adulthood, whether that's the last couple of years, like, our nervous system continues to adapt to the environment that we're in. And so if I've gone through a period of time of really high stress, high stakes, high pressure, then the resulting state is I'm going to be left in that more sympathetic end of the spectrum. And so when we start to take these little momentary practices that accumulate over time is we start to move down that spectrum, right Away from the fight, flight, sympathetic arousal state, towards the kind of rest, digest, repair, restore. And that's where it gets really really interesting, because the autonomic nervous system it's kind of the conductor of the orchestra right.
Speaker 1:It's deciding where am I sending energy?
Speaker 3:Where am I allocating resources? What functions are we engaging in? What are we shutting down? And so, when I'm at that sympathetic end, it's like we're going to allocate resources towards survival and action and short term right At the expense of these processes that we associate with longevity. Right, the repair, the restoration, the digestion, the managing inflammation, like the stuff that matters tomorrow, next week, next year. And so as we start to move down that spectrum, my nervous system gets the message that it's okay for us to start diverting resources away from survival towards restoration. And so many people that are stuck in that fight or flight state, right, they can't heal. Right, not because they're not doing the right things. They could be doing all the right things, but they're doing it in this very sympathetic pursuit state. Right, I'm looking for the solution, I'm searching, I'm trying everything, and that's keeping them in this sympathetic state.
Speaker 3:But beyond that, even outside of the practices that they may be doing, right, your breathing can suggest to your nervous system that the sympathetic state is the right state to be in. Right, if you're breathing shallow, if you're breathing up in your chest, if you're breathing with your mouth, that pushes us in towards that sympathetic state. And so even while someone is like end of the day you know what, I'm just going to take some time and sit on the couch and relax. But if their breathing pattern, right, still suggests sympathetic nervous system, that's where they're staying. And so even in their downtime, right, they're still in that sympathetic state. And the longer I've been there, the more familiar it becomes. And that's where the kind of I think oftentimes this final piece of the puzzle comes in that the parasympathetic state can feel a little bit uncomfortable to people.
Speaker 3:If you've been in the hustle, hustle, go, go, go, do, do, do state for a long time, tell me how fun it is to relax and sit quietly. You tell me how fun it is to relax and sit quietly. You know, like all of the to do list comes rushing up. I should call up, I should clean the house. You know I haven't cleaned the oven in a while. It's like the activity just like. That's my nervous system being like, hey, we're not really familiar with this. Let's go back to what we know, which is go, go, go, do, do, do. I'm more familiar with that. And so then people go. Well, I can't meditate, I don't like breath work, I can't relax, it's like it doesn't work for me. You know, not understanding that there is an adaptation that needs to occur, like the more times I dip back into that parasympathetic state, the more familiar it becomes, and then over time, that's where I start to rest, like that's the resting point of my nervous system.
Speaker 2:Okay, so that makes a lot of sense. Katie, right the bumpy road when we started talking about rest and what that felt like and how much awareness that took right. Oh my gosh, there it is.
Speaker 1:I feel like the more that we've moved towards being comfortable, being uncomfortable, in that rest state, the less tolerance I have to be in that sympathetic state still. So it's, you know, finding myself in these moments of like I almost feel more overwhelmed, because I'm more aware of how overwhelmed I am. Yeah, and so I feel like you've talked a lot about how we can benefit, like what are the long-term transitional benefits and how we get from A to B. But that one minute is so key and getting there, how have you worked through for yourself, for your clients, like getting them to take those, like what sort of routines and habits are we implementing? Just to start small, with that small awareness? Because, yeah, it was, it's bumpy, it's still bumpy.
Speaker 1:Just had this conversation with my sisters where it was like we can't have chill. Our mom's in town and we're watching her and the three of us look at each other. We're like, oh, wow, there, it is right there. That's where we learned no chill. So that's I'd love to hear also. It's like you know the self, self regulation, but also in this piece of like, put it into the people who are trying to transition from hustle, but someone like myself who I can't fully get away from it, even though I know I don't want to be there anymore.
Speaker 3:Yeah, really good question. And so the where I always take a question like this is, I think oftentimes people feel that when we're talking about self-regulation and going to accessing more of the parasympathetic state, that we lose access to the sympathetic state. Right, a lot of my high performers, right that almost feel like I'm successful because of my anxiety. Right, like that's my hustle, that's my goal and without that am I still going to be able to do what I do. And it's not as though we're like we're turning you into this like Zen monk that doesn't get phased, and it's like you know that's not going to happen either. It's that we have an ability to return to baseline. Like I call this the rebound. You know it's like, yes, right, something can still pull you up. Right, that maybe makes you feel stressed and now you're more aware of that state.
Speaker 3:Our ability to get back down to calm is what we're talking about, right, the example I often give is that you know someone cuts you off in traffic. If five hours later you're still worked up about that, you have a poor ability to rebound. Right, you're telling your partner at dinner that night some asshole cut me off in traffic this morning and it's like, oh, you're still in that sympathetic state, right, whereas someone else someone cuts them off in traffic and 60 seconds later moved on, right. Yes, they still had the response sympathetic on pupils dilate adrenaline, whoa, you know, and they got rattled by it. But then, vroom, they just returned to baseline. And when we're talking about that state of the nervous system, well, the person that still worked up about that at dinner has spent the previous six hours in that survival state where they're not prioritizing repair, restore, regenerate, right, they're prioritizing action, whereas the person that can return quickly, it's like oh, I just spent the next five hours in that state where my body is supporting itself and so you're a hundred percent right.
Speaker 3:That, like, once you start to come out of it, it becomes way more obvious. You know, it's like the paradox that it's like it gets a little better, so it gets worse before it gets better. It almost feels like and I think it's a really interesting tipping point because you're not any more stressed, overwhelmed, you know, sympathetic. It's just that you now recognize when you go up there, because you're spending more time out of that state and so it can be like whoa, I don't like this. But if you then take that moment of reflection of like, oh, this is just how I was navigating the world, right? This was just my normal right A year ago, five years ago, whatever it is. And so now, yes, it feels really like obvious and very uncomfortable, but that should be my kind of like. Oh wait, how do I get back to baseline? Like, how do I spend less time here? Because it is really evident when I am there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like that I love that and I think it really goes along the lines of something that we've been noticing in ourselves and really trying to share and empower here is noticing it without the judgment. So I love what you just said is just recognizing like oh wait, that was just how I was doing it before, you know. And then being able to make that conscious choice of like, oh actually, this is what I want to do now and you know, be able to switch back to that baseline a lot quicker.
Speaker 3:That's really cool. Also, just having the expectation that it's going to be, you know, it's not like oh, now you know the tools that they're just like incredibly effective, right? Sometimes you're like, oh, I've been running around this state all day, you know it wasn't. I caught it in two minutes and I re-regulated and here I am again. It's like, oh, I had one of these days, you know, I didn't notice, I wasn't aware I was on this autopilot once more. But, as you said, it's like the self reflection moment of wait, you know, end of the day, I noticed, hey, today was one of those days. You know, what am I working on? Where am I trying to get to? What could I have done better? You know, not in a judgment way, but just in a self reflective like how can I do better tomorrow? I think is a really important thing.
Speaker 3:And the final kind of piece I find with that is that with, with the idea of the nervous system, you know, is when you have the okay, coming back to the idea of, like parasympathetic being a little bit uncomfortable. If you're told that and you expect that, it's like part of the process, right. But if you think, oh, doing breathing exercise is going to make me feel blissed out and Zen. And then you do it and you're agitated. You then fall back into like what's wrong with me? This doesn't work for me. What am I doing wrong, you know? Whereas if someone explained, hey, it's probably going to be kind of uncomfortable, you're probably not going to like it early on, but that is part of the process. So then when someone encounters that discomfort, they're like cool, I knew this was coming right, like this is part of the process, rather than I'm doing this wrong as well. What's the point? And so I found a lot of the time you, what's the point? And so I found a lot of the time. You know, like when I first kind of learned about breathwork and everyone talked about down regulation. It's really calm and I'm like this kind of makes me feel more agitated.
Speaker 3:But then I just spent so much more time learning about the nervous system and had that realization of like oh, this is just my nervous system trying to stay in the familiar Right. It wants to make me busy and active and doesn't want to sit still because that's how I grew up, right, that's how I, that's the, the world I lived in. And as I started to recognize that and just spent a little bit more time and gave myself a bit more grace, that it's not meant to be all bubble baths and roses, right, it's like this could be challenging as well. But then I got to this point where I'm like, oh, this is what relaxation feels. Like Like hadn't really felt this before, you know, because I just my relax was just less active, like it wasn't relaxed at all, it was just slightly less on, you know, until I first started to feel like, oh, this is actually what relaxation is, and I honestly feel I mean, I can only speak for myself and the handful of clients that I've had this conversation with but I think most people have no idea what relaxation is right.
Speaker 3:Like I ask people like, what's relaxation feel like? And they tell me about the absence of stress. Well, I'm not tense, I don't have a headache, I'm not rushing, you know it's like no, no, what's relaxation feel like? They're like.
Speaker 3:I'm just not these things. You know, and I think people confuse relaxation for exhaustion, right, they're like I get home at the end of the day and I drop onto the couch I'm like that's not relaxed, that's tired. You know, like you can be relaxed and alert, you can be relaxed and not tired. They're not kind of, you know, those states aren't tied together, but for me it always was right. What I call relaxed was when I was just exhausted. And now I've realized like relaxation can actually be this very like energy giving state. Right, it's like this well, that you can dip into where it's like oh, there's my recharge because I relaxed rather than I think relaxation is when I'm tired and going to bed.
Speaker 2:Wow, I am so glad you pointed that out. I think that one. It's so empowering for our listeners to hear that and I know permission for me myself too, of just knowing that it is going to feel uncomfortable and it doesn't mean that we're doing something wrong or we should give up right Because of that. And then, yeah, just being able to tap into the practice of awareness because we want to understand what that relaxation feels like for us as the individual. It seems really key to this. So are there suggestions that you would have for that? Let's say that I mean, katie and I talk about our own awareness practice and sometimes I feel like it's so many pieces of it are so automatic now that I forget that maybe someone's new into this and not having a practice of really going inward and really focus on that awareness. What are some ways that you know we can tune in to this awareness around breath and being able to recognize our own relaxation states?
Speaker 3:Yeah, amazing. So I like to kind of stack things on top of each other because that seems to be most effective. So, yes, we could start with here's how to breathe. But there's nothing magic about breathing. If I'm continuing to think about things that stress me out, you know like I could breathe slowly, but we worried about the presentation I have to do tomorrow and I'm not going to feel relaxed. Right, so the layer is like we have our, our breath or our physiology, which the simple act is like close the mouth. Right, so we're breathing through our nose and just make it a little bit slower and a little bit deeper, right, like I think oftentimes we jump to like what's the practice? And now we're very cognitive, right, like, do I count? Do I do this? Am I meant to? You know, it's like we've already gone away from the body back into the head. So, just like, little bit slower, little bit deeper.
Speaker 3:I sometimes call it goldilocks breathing, right, not too Not too fast, not too slow, not too deep, not too shallow. It should feel just right, you know, but it is a little bit slower, a little bit deeper. So now my breath is kind of sending a message to my nervous system. The second thing is what am I doing with my body? Right, it's my forehead all crunched, are my temples tight, is my jaw clenched, are my fists, my shoulders, my pelvic floor, my belly right. I just kind of go a little top down and be like relax my head, relax my face, my shoulders, my belly right, and just kind of like wind down the body a little bit. Right and this is a five second thing, right, it's not like it needs to be a long guided practice. I'm just like relax my forehead, my jaw, my shoulders, my belly. So now my breathing is slow, my body is relaxed. And then what I found most effective is I use this big thing we have in our head, right, that loves to live in the past or the future. Right, we know, if I asked either of you to remember you know the worst thing that's happened to you in the last 12 months, it would start as a thought, right, you'd think of that and very quickly it would become more than a thought. You'd start to feel in your body the remnants of that memory. Right, the brain's not that good at telling the difference between something that's happening and something we're imagining, right? This is why, as a species, we can give ourselves anxiety today about something that's happening next week. Right, like and it's not just like, it's like my heart rate changes, my cortisol increases. There's a really biological response to thoughts. And so when we flip that and we think, when was the time I felt relaxed, when was the time I felt appreciative, grateful, awe, compassion, love, whatever emotional state we want to choose that we have a strong memory tied to right. And this doesn't have to be. When I explain this practice to someone, we're not looking necessarily for the big grand memory. It could be the little thing. Right, I go to this. There's a little waterfall near where I'm from in Cairns that I can hike up this little trail and it's usually just by myself. I can sit under the tree, I can hear a waterfall, I'm just surrounded by rainforest, right, and I just get this sense of awe where I'm just like wow, and I, if I remember, like if I close my eyes and I go to that little spot. I get this feeling of awe in my body because I've been there enough times, right, and I've taken in the sensory information and my brain goes oh yeah, we know what state to generate based on this thing that's happening in my head. And so when I give people, I often say there's a little bit of homework attached to this and to the listeners, right, I encourage you to do this homework.
Speaker 3:Sit down for half an hour, grab a piece of paper and a pen and think of some really positive memories that you had a really strong emotional state tied to them. That holiday we were on, I was sitting on the beach watching my kids play in the sand and I just felt like content, right, this is it, this is that you know? All right, well, go back and remember that. Where was the sun? Right, was it on your skin? Could you hear the waves? Were there palm trees? Were your kids laughing? Right, who was there? Right, make it really sensory, really dive back into that memory.
Speaker 3:And an interesting thing happens when we do that right, you'll start to feel how you felt in that moment. But it's only effective because you've first changed your breathing and added relaxation to your body. If you're rushing around like crazy. You're in the supermarket, it's like and you're trying to remember that time you're on the beach. There's a mismatch of information. Your body is saying we're not relaxed, my heart rate's erratic, my breathing's erratic, we're tense, right. Yet I'm just trying to conjure up this imagery in my head and it doesn't. There's no alignment there, right, so it is.
Speaker 3:I slowed down my nervous system through my breath. I further slow down my nervous system through my body. Right Now, my body's in this really like safe, supported state. And now I can go up into my head and be like what did that feel like? Right, how did I feel during that moment? Right, this memory.
Speaker 3:And now I've combined these three wonderful things, right, my breathing, my body, and then my visualization, my memory. My, you know how we want to call that, but it's a big driver of emotional state. And then let that be a little five minute practice, right, and make that a daily five minute practice, if you can, right, where I literally set a timer. I sit down, I spend one minute slowing down my breathing. I spend one minute relaxing my body. I spend the next three minutes just diving into that lovely memory, right, and I keep coming back to like my breath is slow, right, my body is relaxed and oh yeah, there was that thing that happened and so, and so was there and they said that and I felt this way and it's like, and you'll come out of that five minutes, it'll go by like that and you'd be like oh, I feel like I had a nap, I feel restored, right. I feel just like there's a very obvious shift in your state because you've combined some very powerful drivers.
Speaker 2:So so cool. Oh my gosh, thank you for that. That feels so empowering and so helpful and so doable too. So that's the piece that I'm really appreciating for that is that it feels like I can see where that can fit. Throughout my day, I know I've personally been talking about how, like I'm'm pretty good at the book ended things right my morning routine and my end of the day but there's this in between where I'm so busy doing all the things that I need this sort of thing in the day. So thank you for that.
Speaker 3:And I can't stress like how much that little five minutes goes when we're looking at the big picture of the nervous system, right, because you like most, ron and myself as well, it's like, yeah, I can engage in my morning practices when I wake up, but then the day happens right and it's like, oh wait, and then I have my wind down practice at night. And I've found that when people can kind of dip into that parasympathetic state throughout the day, even if just for a minute, even if it wasn't the full formal practice that I just described, but one minute, of just finding that slower, deeper breath, right, it's just like I just direct the nervous system back to this state of recovery momentarily. But it's like the analogy I often give to people and I when I work with people on sleep, it's like they tell me about their day. It's like I wake up, I'm in my inbox or I check my phone and get the kids ready, I'm off to work, and it's like it's just the whole day right, it's just like active and then dinner and wind down. It's like, and then I just like drop into bed and I expect to fall asleep and I'm like tell me what happens. Like I'm wired. I'm like, yeah, surprise, surprise, you are expecting just to be able to, like, hit this off switch when you haven't hit it once today. Right, the more times you touch that off switch throughout the day, the easier it is to find at night when it's time to wind down. You're like, oh, I've wound down multiple times today, even if just momentarily, and I found for myself that was a huge unlock for my sleep. It's like it's not just about how good my nighttime routine is, it's about the previous 14 hours. And did I manage my state throughout the day? Or was I in this very heightened state from the moment I woke up until now? And did I manage my state throughout the day? Or was I in this very heightened state from the moment I woke up until now? And now I'm just trying to like magically turn my nervous system off, and I think people forget that.
Speaker 3:You know, our nervous systems did not evolve. We're not designed to deal with the amount of stimulus that we get today. Right, that never existed before. That you could wake up and just be in this constant state of activity. Right, we would wake. It was dipping in and out, right? Yes, there might've been some moments of stress. Go hunt some food, build a fire, whatever. But then there was these lull periods. But now, with technology, you know, with this hustle culture that we're immersed in, it's like you can and you more or less are in this on state from the moment you wake up to the moment you hop in bed at night, and we wonder why so many people struggle to switch off, to feel their body to sleep. Well, you know, it's like yeah, well, we need to rewrite that kind of like up and down state that the nervous system is meant to have throughout the day. It gets far easier than to wind down at the end of the night at the end of the night.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that that's you know, that's we talk about. You know, you know breathwork is free, but the aura ring is is is really tapping into that key aspect of like giving you the awareness. If you can't do it yourself, you have this tool that's helping recognize. Well, you need to have more restorative moments throughout the day in order for you to have X, y, z. You know, as you go forward Just quickly to. The time has probably passed, but I'm going to say it anyways. But you were like let's do this homework, which I know we're going to do some homework but I was like what if my happy place is Disneyland Campbell? It's like where you're never low, but what is it about being at?
Speaker 3:Disneyland. I'm assuming you were there with your kids rather than by yourself, Katie.
Speaker 1:I mean I could go either way, but yes, but what is it about Disneyland, right?
Speaker 3:That memory that you have, that feels like a positive memory, right, because it's probably not the lines that I was in. You know the busy it was, probably watching the, just the blissed out, ecstatic face on my children, right, it was seeing all of the energy of these other children that are just like, whoa, there's this, there's that, and that uplifted you. Right, it's like the excitement. So it doesn't always have to be a calm, relaxed memory, right, but it's you picking it like why is that memory really powerful for me, right? What is the emotional state that it kind of corresponds to? And it might be one of excitement, right, excitement is a beautiful emotional state to have, and so I often use that exercise, like you know, more often than not people need it, or it's more, it's more necessary, with the kind of like winding down, but I have some that want to feel confident, right, that want to feel empowered.
Speaker 3:So it's like, okay, well, when was that memory? And it's like, oh, actually, when I got my postgrad certificate and I stood on stage and I didn't think and I felt this like uplifting sense of achievement, cool, right, there's a memory that's tied to a certain emotional state that you want access to, and so there's no kind of rules to that or boundaries as to, like, what type of memory it has to be, as long as you can identify it's like this was the resulting state that I got into and that's what I want to have access to. Cool, then any memory works.
Speaker 1:Just trying to throw something else out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's so great that you did that too, because I think that was a powerful point, that sometimes, when we think about self-care and relaxation and all of that, it really truly is like us just thinking about the calm and the Zen. But you know, sometimes during our day we need a pep up too, right, and so I could see where that tool of going to that memory of that is going to also be able to, you know, increase your energy. If that's what you're looking for, so I could see where this is an incredible tool to move through different states that we need to be aware of.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and let me just share an example from a client I had, because this one always made me laugh. Right, like I explained this exercise and again, people often think I'm asking them to think of like the birth of my first child, my wedding day, you know, it's like these big things and I was going through this was like when was the time that you felt, and I think we were just going for like gratitude or something and he was scratching his head for a while and thinking of this and that and I just looked at he came to a conclusion. I could see he didn't want. He's like like the driving range and I just like hit the ball so sweetly out of the center and I just want and as he's explaining this to me, I watch his whole demeanor change. Right, he's in the moment he's like telling me about the feeling that he gets and I see it right in front of me, right as he's talking through that moment of hitting the golf ball, perfectly in the sweet spot. I watch him change. I'm like that's, that's the thing, because I just watch the impact that it has on you.
Speaker 3:The other really common one right is probably it is the most common, I'm not going to say nearly like it's the one that always comes up for anyone, if they're like look, and they're like, you know, when I get home at the end of the day and I open the door and my dog is there, just like wagging its tail off, it's going to fall over, like that brings me joy. I'm like me too, like I know what that feeling is. And again, as they're explaining it, I'm watching them change. Right, they're just melting in front of me because they're going back to that memory. And so, again, it doesn't need to be this like what we think is, like this big, important memory.
Speaker 3:It could just be getting home at the end of the day and your dog's wagging its tail, and how does that make you feel? Makes you feel loved, makes you feel, makes you feel grateful. Whatever it might be, it's like cool. And those ones can often be more effective because they're really inbuilt right. You've got home and your dog has made you feel happy hundreds of times, right. So it's an easy program for your nervous system to run if you give it the right stimulus.
Speaker 2:So powerful. Oh my gosh. I have really just loved this conversation, but, kim, I want to ask you is there anything else that you feel like you wanted to chat about or to add into the conversation to make sure that our listeners are really getting this? I want this to land for them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I always come back to awareness. I actually teach, like in the practitioner program, I teach this kind of framework and it's something that I work with all my clients on and it's something that I think is just really valuable and I call it the ACO framework, which is awareness, control optimization. I think oftentimes people want to jump to control or they want to optimize something without first doing the work of awareness. And so, like that ACO of awareness control optimization, like it's applicable everywhere and not just for breathwork, but like, if you're someone that struggles with anxiety, right, developing the awareness around the situations, the environments, perhaps the people, the things that are linked to your anxiety, can be some of the most valuable work you can do. Yet most people jump straight to control, right, like what is the thing that I can do to control my anxiety? And they haven't recognized what is it that actually provokes my anxiety? Right, and oftentimes, as we touched on the start, there may be a driver that is definitely within your control. Right, it's your breathing, it's your posture, it's what you're thinking about, the internal narrative, those things. But working through that framework of like building the awareness around the thing that I want to change, then starting to kind of tweak the knobs and the dials right, controlling and using certain practices. Then finally, we go to optimizing, right?
Speaker 3:I think you know all of this talk of like breathwork and cold plunges and saunas and exercises, like that's all in the optimization end of things. And if you're someone that's in this chronic sympathetic state, you've been in fight or flight like you don't need 30 minutes of hyperventilation, breath work, you don't need an ice bath, right, you need to build awareness and you need to slowly start to control or influence. And, yes, eventually, when you build the capacity, you want to stretch your comfort zone. You want to do all these wonderful things like that's when those tools come into play. But because they're so, you know, popular and they look cool and it's a great social media thing, it's like everyone thinks, oh, the ice bath is going to fix my nervous system.
Speaker 3:The hour long breathwork session is going to be transformational for me, and oftentimes I think it's the little things that we do every day, right, that I think we gloss over and we think it needs to be this big thing that's going to change how I feel, and in fact, it's the accumulation of little things, and so I think that the final thing that I'd perhaps leave people with is, instead of seeing your health, you know, or your wellness, as something that can be fixed, you know, in one fell swoop, it's like it's a practice, it's a pathway, it's like these little things that we do day by day by day by day by day, that eventually I get to that point of like oh yeah, my health's better, right, not because I fixed it, because I started making these very small, consistent changes and over time they all start to stack up.
Speaker 2:Wow, so, so powerful. That's incredible. And something you said earlier too is that oftentimes we're in survival at the expense of longevity, and that really landed for me, because that's it. If we're staying in that survival mode, then it really is at the expense of us feeling the way that we want to feel. So thank you so much for that, campbell. How can our listeners stay in contact with you, follow along with what? Everything you have going on?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the best place is definitely Instagram. I'm most active on there at Breath Body Therapy and I always encourage you, like it's me on my Instagram and I really like I'm super passionate about this branch of work. It doesn't even feel like work anymore. So if you do have questions, right, people are often like, oh yeah, this breathwork stuff, but my situation, no, it wouldn't work. For that, you know, it's like we often categorize ourself as this, like n of one. That's like, yeah, it works for everyone else, but there's no way it would work for me because of x, y and z. So, if that doubt comes up, shoot me a message and be like is there any way Breathwork could help with this? Right, and I already can tell you the answer is yes. And the reason I can say the answer is yes is like Breathwork is not a tool of symptom management.
Speaker 3:You know, it's not this special like it's really a general tool that supports the underlying system. Right, it supports the person rather than the problem, and I think that's what's missing for a lot of people. It's like what do I need to help me thrive? Right, well, when we look at the nervous system and physiology and emotions and how do we support those systems. That's very different to how do I manage the symptoms that I'm experiencing or focus on the problem that I have. And so breathwork, really like I don't want it to sound like it's a panacea and it fixes everything and it doesn't right, it requires work and there's lots of other things that need to happen, but it's this really interesting general tool of support right, that supports the system. And when we do that, I think we all know right, innately we have this capacity for healing and regeneration and living well. Right, but the environment has to be right, and so that environment being external and internal, a big component of that, a huge lever we can kind of pull on, is breathing.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for helping us set up that environment today, Campbell.
Speaker 3:It's been a pleasure we appreciate you.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:We want to welcome you, to tune in, stay close and grow with us. Come feel empowered, inspired and connected.
Speaker 1:Check the show notes to follow us and, of course, we'd love for you to take us on social media and you share what lands for you until next time.
Speaker 2:Breathe on purpose, stay curious and trust your intuition.