Breathe into the body. You are safe. You are home.
In our busy, frenetic worlds it's almost impossible to stay present. And with all the pain and trauma that most of us have, but haven't processed yet, who even wants to be? But all those unexamined emotions and feelings don't go away by ignoring them. We've talked about this before on the podcast, but the body remembers.
What happens when we start practicing mindfulness and become more present? What tools can we use to work with discomfort? We aren't the first people to say it, but focusing on your breath is a free and eternally present method for healing.
Join Sarah Novak, a breathwork coach, and I as we talk about this frequently overlooked resource and how to use it to change your life.
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COME BACK TO THE BREATH feat. Sarah Novak
Julia: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone. Welcome to Becoming Divine. My name is Julia Wesley, your host. And today I have Sarah Novak with us. She is a breathwork coach, speaker, and entrepreneur. Her mission is to eradicate human suffering by bringing awareness back to the breath. So thank you for so much for being with us today.
Sarah: [00:00:33] Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to have this conversation. It's going to be fun.
Julia: [00:00:36] Yeah, me too. Breath work is one of those so simple yet, so often overlooked techniques to be present with yourself. So let's just dive into it. How do you use breath work or maybe more importantly, why did you decide to use breathwork as a way to get people observing their body and getting in touch with their pain?
Sarah: [00:00:56] Yeah. So a little bit about how I started and got into all of this was I was actually a personal trainer and a fitness coach, and I had a fitness wellness program.
And with that was a piece of mindset. And so I really started diving into mindset and I just kept diving and was like, okay, I'm really loving, like the bigger, deeper mission behind fitness. You know what people are thinking and that beliefs that they're running on and things like that.
But as I started diving into that, I found a huge disconnect, especially in the fitness space between the mind and the body. Most people were really heady and they were just up in their minds, but weren't dropping down into their body to really understand where those emotions were coming from, where their triggers were coming from and how they were showing up in their bodies.
And I experienced that with myself too, at the time I was in bodybuilding. And so I was very disconnected from my body and I was very disconnected from the feelings. I was very disconnected from a lot of things because I was very focused on the physical, especially with bodybuilding. Like I had to look a certain way.
I had to be a certain way. So I dove into meditation to help with my anxiety because my anxiety was just at an all time high. At that time, I was going through a lot of different things, especially with bodybuilding was really stressful. But what I've found is that the more I tried to sit still, the more uncomfortable I felt, especially in my brain, but also in my body, I was kind of like, what the hell am I doing here?
What am I supposed to let go of? What am I supposed to do? It's just, all these questions came up. And so as I was putting that out there and saying, okay, like maybe there's something else here. Like maybe there's something here that, that's a trick for me or something that's just different.
I was just putting that out there. I got on Instagram one day. And there was a couple of ads that had showed up for me about breath work. And I was like, okay what is this? And one of them just caught my attention. So I followed along and just went down this rabbit hole.
And I tried this I don't know, I think it was like a five or a seven minute audio. And I was like, okay. What the heck did I just experience? What was that? Because I felt wildly uncomfortable. I was just like, okay. I've never felt this ever in my life before, but what the heck did I just experience?
I was just so wait, what? This was so cool. So I got on a call with someone. And I thought I was actually signing up just for a course and that I was just interviewing for this course, when in reality it was signing up to be a facilitator. And it was like the first time she had ever run this program.
So that was just like clunky and new and whatever. And I was just like, okay I'll go to San Diego. This will be fun. If anything, like I can just do this on myself and I have another certification of my own pocket. Okay, that's awesome. I'll figure out a space for this, kind of was my mindset.
Like I really had, no, I had no intention of using it. It was just more like, where am I going with this? So I show up, I do a week's worth of breathing. We learn how to do it. The breathing was probably about an hour or so a day, maybe a little bit more.
From when I got there to, when I left, I still had some of those similar feelings, but how I shifted and became more comfortable within myself and not only within myself, but like really understanding, oh, my gosh. Okay. I do have some traumas. Oh my gosh. Okay. These are some of my triggers. Oh my gosh. This doesn't really resonate with me.
I started understanding more about how my body comes online and how that's showing up for me. That's what I like to call, like my intuition, speaking to me, where I was able to tap into that and have that come forward to where I could really use that as a guide and listen to it.
So from that point on, I was like, okay, yeah, I have to make this transition. And so I made that transition. And then the second part of your question was how do I use it? And how I use it in my daily life is different. And this is what I teach with my clients too, is I don't use breath work as a practice to become addicted to.
I know that a lot of people can become addicted to healing or transforming, or like getting to this next elevation of who we are. I use breathwork as a way of, how am I needing it today? How's my body feeling and how can I move through this emotion to get to the emotion I want to? Some days I don't use breath work.
Some days it looks like I need more of my meditative sessions that I do, which are like really long, deep, immersive sessions. And then other times it's my integrative blends, which are just like quick, rapid just change your energy really quickly. A lot of the times when I'm having really high anxiety, I do use the integrative blends. Just because my system can't quite handle that deep immersion because I need to regulate it first before I go into that deep immersion. So just depends on what's going on in my life and like where I'm at. I just sprinkle it around and figure out and use my intuition and be like, all right, what am I needing today?
Julia: [00:05:55] Yeah. Do you ever find, people are surprised that you focus on the breath? Because everyone breathes. And I don't think anyone would consider just focusing on your breathing, and breathing intentionally, to be something that can be transformative.
Sarah: [00:06:10] Yeah it's so foreign and even still for me sometimes.
And I've been doing this for over a year now where I'm like, what the heck's going on here. It's so fun to be able to see that transition when I talk about it and then people try it and yeah. Oh, God, like I had no idea that this is something that was possible for me. So I think that's like the most fun part about it is when people are so shocked by their own ability to self-heal because we have all the answers already.
We already know, like our body is the healer. It already knows what it needs and what it needs to d o. We just have to surrender and let go of our mind to be able to drop into it, to allow the body to do its thing. And it's such a foreign concept because we're not taught to do that. We are taught to think about a solution, put an action towards a solution and then move through the problem.
When this is like counterintuitive to that thought. It's let go of everything you're thinking, and drop into your body. So then you can go forward and create an aligned action. So it's really foreign concept and I love it when people get shocked. It's like my absolute favorite thing.
Julia: [00:07:17] Yeah. There's a reason why the Buddha teaches you to focus on your breath, when you're learning meditation. And it really is that transformative. I know, especially Thich Nhat Hahn, he always talks about go back to the breath. Focus on your breath, come back to the present. And I like how you mentioned that the body is the healer and the body knows what to do.
When we think the body being the healer, we always think physically for some reason. Especially when we're talking about something as kinesthetic as breath work. I think people might not think that it's kinesthetic because it's just breathing. But you're incorporating your body. But breath work is a really great way to get in-tune with where you're storing something emotionally in your body, right? Oh, why are my shoulders tight? Let's breathe into that. And I like the idea of being able to breathe into a specific part of your body.
I don't know if you do that in your practice, but that is something that I learned and I'm like, oh crap, I'm holding all that in my hips. And I wouldn't have known if I didn't.
Sarah: [00:08:15] Yeah, it is. So when I work with a client and we're going through a deep immersive session usually not a lot of times, but sometimes physical pain will come up for them.
And truly that's just where we are storing a lot of our stress or anxieties or emotions that we are holding onto. So our vessels aren't meant for a place of storage. Like our bodies aren't meant for a place of storage of emotions. It's meant to bring the energy and use it for whatever we need and then release that energy.
Somewhere along the line, based on evolution and things like that, we have learned to hold on instead of learning to let go. Humans by nature, we want to feel safe and comfortable. So causing pain to ourselves and holding onto our pain is safe, uncomfortable, because it's an experience we've already experienced. We know what that experience is. We know what that feels like in our body.
So we're like, okay, I'm gonna hold onto this because I made it through. And for some weird reason, I just want to hold on to all my pain. The foreign part, especially through utilizing breath, is feeling that emotion that you've stored for so long, that's now manifested into the physical pain body, to release and let that go.
When we use intentional breath exercises, focusing on the breath and then breathing in a very specific pattern, we unlock the ability of being able to force anything and we can really drop into our body. And it just happens naturally. It's just something that as a part of the process, that's what happens.
And it can be a really scary place and a really big place of resistance that I see on a lot of my clients. Because they're facing a lot of these like inner demons that they've kept in their own like personal Pandora's Box that's now being unlocked because you're able to go to this place of like, I'm in my body.
I can feel all the energy. I can feel how alive I feel right now. And I can feel how much I'm hurting. And that's scary for a lot of people, because the only way you can let something go is by feeling all of your way through it. And it's going to bring up tears and it's going to bring up sadness, or it's going to bring up a trauma loop and it's going to bring up some things that are really uncomfortable.
But that is the only way to move through it. And the most powerful way I have found amongst myself and my clients is using the breath to tap into that. And I don't know where, and what genius next to Buddha and whoever else found that ability for us to be able to self heal, but I find it so powerful and so beautiful that we have access to doing our own self healing at any point in time, in a day. As long as we just know the right pattern and how to do it. It's beautiful.
Julia: [00:11:02] Yeah. And I think you bring up a good point about how doing breathwork and other tools like this can actually make it seem like it's getting worse. I hear a lot about how sometimes people shy away from doing meditation because they're like, it made my anxiety worse. And I'm like, that's because you're trying to let go of it. So I really dealt with depression and anxiety and it did seem to make it worse. It seemed worse, but really all I was doing was giving myself the space and the permission to experience the anxiety I was trying to push away.
Because I was having panic attacks. And that's one of the signals that your body's like, you can't hold onto this anymore, friend. Like you're going to have to let go. But then as you're saying as you keep breathing through it, and it's especially important to have the support that someone like you would offer, like that's how you get onto the other side of that bridge.
Sarah: [00:11:53] Yeah, and truthfully, when we're thinking about pushing through our resistance and pushing through our pain in order to heal, that is a part of the work.
That's just the scariest part that we have to go through because if we cover it up with a band-aid and we don't actually heal the wound from the root, and we just cover it up with positivity and we're fine. And everything's great. And now I'm doing my affirmations and all these things-- they have their time and a place-- but you have to go to the deepest core wound.
And unfortunately you have to heal all of the trapped feelings. And a lot of times they are uncomfortable feelings. I don't like to say bad because that puts a bad connotation on it. But an uncomfortable feeling that you have suppressed for so long and the longer you suppress it, the bigger it is that you're going to feel it.
Not every single session are you working through the same feelings that are coming up. Sometimes you're working through something that's really activated that week. That could be negative. And the following week, or even the following session, you're working through something that's really positive and blissful. And so every single session is different and that's where I really wire into my clients and say, your body knows what's best for you.
Whatever is coming out for you in a session, or even when you're doing your own practice at home. That is what your body is needing in that moment. So I'll allow it. You're safe to feel and it's safe to, emote and express yourself in this way. Because emotions are universal.
So every single human being feels sadness the same way. Every single human being feels grief the same way. We all feel joy the same way. We all feel happiness, the same way. It looks the same way on our facial expressions. If you were to see pictures of faces with all these different emotions, you should be able to point them all out.
Just because they're all universal. So there should be no shame or judgment around feeling sadness or feeling grief or feeling unhappy or depressed or anxious because it's what everyone experiences at different parts in our lives. The thing that is the troublemaker is when we decide to shame that and push that away and say, I don't have anxiety, or we can't have that right now.
I need to push this to the side to feel better. The body will always bring it back up and if you don't deal with it that first time, it will come back and it will be louder and more clear and more messy. Like with your panic attacks, like they got so bad that your body was like, hello lady.
I've been trying to tell you like this long time now. So at one point in time, you're going to have to face it. And I think this is the most gentle way to do it. Because we have something to hold onto. Like our human brains are like, okay, we need something that's safe and we need something to focus on.
So by using a breath pattern, it gives our mind the permission to say, okay, so all we're doing is breathing in this weird pattern. It's a little bit odd, but we're going to go with it here.
Julia: [00:14:45] I liked what you said earlier about it's safe to experience your emotions. Because I don't really think people feel that most of the time. Or it's safe to experience certain emotions in certain quantities at certain times. But not too much of it and only in certain situations. And that, that can definitely be why we push it aside and why we think pushing it aside is making it go away.
But it's not. Like it's in your energy. If it showed up, if you didn't give it the opportunity to go away, like you're still holding onto it. That can be a bitter pill to swallow, right? Because that's most of our crisis management techniques, because we don't have better ones.
Most humans, we're pretty terrible at it. Especially here in the Western world where we think that it's all go, and we have to keep moving. And what are emotions? Those suck. And we don't have a sort of spiritual foundation. A personal practice, I guess I should say, as being normalized and where we create the opportunity for ourselves to deal with that. Other cultures are much better with it, but we're really not. And I want to talk more about a personal practice because this breath work is really the opportunity to-- you breathe every day. Why not make it a personal practice?
Sarah: [00:16:00] Yeah. So with how we breathe every day, this is what I call like the body breathing.
It's an automatic response. I'm not thinking about it right now. As I'm talking to you, it's just happening. I can feel it once I start talking about it right now, I can feel that I'm holding my breath a little bit, just because I'm, actively thinking about what I'm trying to say to you.
And then as I slowed down a little bit I feel my body relaxing and I can feel that I'm taking a little bit more deeper breaths. But that's still an automatic thing. That's just my self awareness of what's happening within the body, and this practice. When we are intentionally breathing, that means that we are breathing the body.
We have decided to bring on a specific type of amount of energy into our bodies to facilitate the change of energy that's happening within our bodies. So when we bring on this much energy, now, what it's doing is it's stirring around everything and saying oh, we're like alive. And we're awake now instead of so stagnant.
And it starts moving the energy the way that it's supposed to. So when we use this as a personal practice, not only can you make shifts, and day to day, you make shifts upon how you handle situations. You make shifts on how you show up in situations or circumstances or family events or whatever it may be.
You start transforming into a very, I wouldn't necessarily say like calm and grounded, because there's a lot of people who are very high energy that are also calm and grounded. I more mean calm and grounded as a place of serenity. Where we can be really collected and together to show up as ourselves, and being comfortable with being seen. Because we've dealt with a lot of these limiting beliefs through our own personal practice.
So yes, working with a guide is amazing because it o ffers you this safe container to be held when you're not used to that. And help form this habit for you to do this on your own.
We're taught so much about physical wellbeing and physical wellness, but we're never really taught about emotional wellness and emotional wellbeing. So to me, this is just as important as going for a walk every day or going to the gym or eating healthy or drinking water. Like it's just as much a survival thing that we need to be able to do, because if we don't know how to regulate our own emotions and handle our own emotions without being reactive, how can we teach other people to be more calm and grounded and serene? Or how can we even teach our kids? You can't teach that if you don't know how to do that with yourself.
And no one's perfect. But it just is about learning how to emotionally regulate yourself so that you can almost reteach yourself some things that maybe weren't taught to you.
There's so many benefits to having a personal practice, but I would say that emotional wellbeing and emotional wellness would be like the most important thing. Because when we know how to regulate our emotions, we then can understand, okay, this is what's triggering me. Like I need to take some space right now, or, we can come at it from a little bit of a higher version of ourselves rather than such a triggered place of okay, you are triggering me now.
I'm going to react to you and scream and yell at you, or you're triggering me and I'm going to shut down on you or, whatever it is that your response is. Or I have too much anxiety, I can't even deal with any of you people right now. Whatever that looks like. Just that alone, the emotional wellbeing piece, I would say it would be like the forefront of having a personal practice.
Julia: [00:19:28] And it's definitely when you don't have your emotional wellbeing, no matter how bright and sparkly your life may be, you're never going to be able to recognize it. Everything's going to seem like it's a bottomless pit.
Sarah: [00:19:38] Yeah. And you won't even be able to access any type of fulfillment. Or any type of happiness or serenity. Like how can you feel true bliss and true happiness, if you haven't dealt with all the baggage, the emotional baggage that you're holding onto? That would just be fleeting there. It wouldn't be an actual feeling of bliss where you can look at everything in your life and feel actual bliss.
It would just be a emotion that comes up for whatever circumstances is showing up for you in your life. Working on emotional wellbeing and working on emotional wellness means that the emotions are around all the time and you can feel simultaneous emotions at the same time. You can feel sadness and happiness at the same time, but you can only do that if you work on your emotional wellness.
Julia: [00:20:23] And I think that's a good point, being able to feel two emotions at the same time. Because I can be mad at someone, but still love them at the same time. Like that's an example. If you have kids, love your kids, but you can be mad at them at the same time.
And being able to, you use the word regulate, your emotions. And I think it's important to make that distinction that we're not telling you to like, put it like put little dials on them and say, oh no, I'm going to ignore my anger right now. Or we're going to put, limits on them or something.
We're just saying that when you get more in tune with your emotions, all of a sudden your pot stops boiling over, right? Like you recognize the signs. You're like, oh, I need to take a breath here. I need a second. But when you're able to get in tune with your emotions, you actually create more space to recognize other emotions at the same time.
So let's say rage is a big one for you. That's been popping up for me and the people in my life recently. But anger is one of those things that we're not really allowed to experience fully, especially if you're a woman and especially if you've got some sort of conditioning that says you're supposed to be someone who takes care of people.
So allowing yourself to feel something like rage and to get in tune with it and feel it in your body and, dare I say, revel in your anger a little bit, allow yourself to enjoy your anger.
Sarah: [00:21:43] And that sounds so crazy to even think about okay how can I enjoy anger? Like how can I feel into my anger? It's perfectly normal. Like I said before, to feel angry. Every single human will feel angry. We have to understand where that anger is coming from and how we can move through that.
So when it's triggering you, you know what place to go into or what it is that you're needing that's best for you. Then you can only do that by working with your emotions and having like regulations around your emotions, like regulating yourself. And that's such a foreign concept for us and that's so new right now.
I see a couple of people talking about it, but it's not really quite there yet. It's so strange for us in this society, because you look at some other countries in the world, they're very much more on the opposite of how we work. They work a little bit and they rest a lot. We work a lot and rest almost never.
So it brings a lot of different emotions for us. And it brings a lot of different societal conditioning where we have to unravel that a little bit and really see, okay, do I believe in that? Is that what's correct for me? Or do I want to move into something else?
And we do that by working with them.
Julia: [00:22:51] Yeah, exactly. I actually think this is a good segue into how connecting with your emotions and your body taps into your intuitive nature. How everyone has an intuitive nature. Do you want to talk about that?
Sarah: [00:23:04] Yes. So your intuition is really just an inner knowing it's like a gut feeling that you have.
Intuition, isn't something that is like this big, huge woo thing. Although woo-woo people do talk about intuition more than other people, just because we're a lot more open-minded. When we're talking about trying to unlock our intuition, what we're really doing on the day-to-day when we're ignoring our emotions, as we are stuffing our intuition further and further, because we are trying to think about our problems through our minds.
We are trying to think about how to solve the problem, when you can't think your way through a problem all the time. Sometimes you have to feel your way through it. And that's something that is also very foreign to our brains because our brains are logical. A plus B equals C. Our brain always needs an answer to the problem. It always says, okay, so this is our problem. This is our solution.
The inner knowing our intuition says, this is the solution. We don't care about the problem. This is what we're going to do. I don't care if you feel like this is weird, or this is a stranger where this is coming from, this is what we need to.
And it will grow and grow and grow. However, if you're not familiar with how that shows up for you in your body, that visceral yes and that visceral no. If you're not connected with your body, there's no way for you to truly be connected with your intuition. Because you don't even know how that intuitive feeling shows up for you in your body.
Some people it's in their stomach, some people it's in their head. Some people it's in their throat. It depends on who you're talking to and where that shows up for you and what that sensation and that feeling is. So that's how we use breathwork is to drop into our body and really find out what that visceral yes is and what that visceral no is and where it shows up.
Because a yes feels very different in your body than a no. And that's not something you can think about. That's only something you can feel. So when we're using breath work to drop into that body, that's how we're unlocking and accessing our intuition because we're moving through some of the emotions that are blocking that.
And we're also able to feel like, okay, this is something I got really excited about. This is where it showed up for me and my body. So I know that when someone invites me to a luncheon, I can tap into my body and say, what feeling came up to me when that question was asked for me?
Do I actually really want to go, or am I saying yes out of obligation? So that's how we can start to take our lives from a different approach. Rather than obligating ourselves to say yes, because it's the polite thing to do, or it's the, societal thing to do. Is this truly, actually something we're wanting?
Once we can start to do that and learn to lead our lives from an intuitive place of this visceral yes and this visceral no, and start really, truly trusting that it's going to guide us in the right direction. Even if we're really unsure. Like my story with breathwork. Like my intuition just guided me there. I just showed up and I was like, all right. And it revealed itself to me later.
So that's the kind of, a little bit more of an extreme thing. But tapping in really gets you to a place of being able to lead your life from these like gut feelings of saying yes, this is truly like something for me or no, like this isn't anything.
That goes a little bit into boundaries too. Where once what's right for you and your actual system, then you can start putting up some boundaries of saying no, that's not really right for me. And get really comfortable with saying yes and no. And yeah, breathwork is like the best way for me to be able to tap into that because the only way you can do that is working through those emotions.
Julia: [00:26:37] I Interviewed the lovely Victoria Shaw and she was talking about the same thing you did when it comes to intuition. How your intuition will take you from A to Z without any of the letters in between, because it doesn't need it. It's your brain that's like, no, hold on a second.
Like, why am I doing this? How did we get here? What was the decision? What was your thought process? Did we weigh the pros and cons? And your intuition is like, Oh my God. I think it's funny when we're talking about intuition. I do work with people who sometimes have a more intellectual, like a cerebral understanding of the emotion that they're feeling.
They don't necessarily have a body recognition. They're like, no, I just just know I'm angry. And I'm like, okay, perfect. But even if you're someone who's more cerebral about how your emotions pop up, it's still really helpful to tune into your breath because when we're talking about intuition, embodiment is necessary, right?
You can't get grounded, practical, applicable, intuitive information if you're not present in your body in some way. Because then you'll just get information that's like, cool. Put it in a book, but how do you use it in your life?
And so it's not that that information isn't useful for humanity as a whole, but really your spiritual practices and, your embodiment practices should help you enjoy your life. And so being with your body, you can't escape. At least you shouldn't and no, it's like being present with yourself is just it's unavoidable when we're talking about enjoying the process of being human,
Sarah: [00:28:08] Yeah, and to be honest with you, like this body that we have, it's something that needs to be celebrated. So why aren't we working together with it? We work together with our mind all the time, but why aren't we working with together with this bigger vessel that we had that fuels a lot of everything?
Like your brain doesn't really feel anything. It just says what you're feeling. Your body is what actually feels it. So if we don't know how to embody those emotions or even embody what it looks like for for the most perfect version of ourselves that we want to move into. As we're all trying to move into a different version of ourselves.
That's why we're healing. So when we take away all of those pains and all the wounds, what is that person that we really want to become? That's where we're using breath work to move into that person. And be able to feel that because that person at the end, doesn't all of a sudden magically not feel anger or rage or sadness or joy or grief-- that person still does. But they just know how to manage it differently and be like, okay, today I'm really mad.
So I'm going to go punch a like boxing bag. You know what I mean? Versus the person who like I'm really mad. I'm going to take it out on you.
And that's how we can learn how to embody too, is by visualizing what we want to be and breathe into that, feel that work through that, and then move into that next version of ourselves.
Julia: [00:29:28] Yeah, exactly. And I think we keep talking about like the real heavy trauma that breathwork can bring up, but this is even useful to you if you're like I don't really think I've got anything deep going on there.
Sarah: [00:29:40] Yeah, and for me, honestly, when I first started doing breath work, I was like, I've dealt with all my stuff.
Like I'm good. And then I started breathing and realized that I really hadn't dealt with it in a different way. And even if you don't. I'm not even talking about trauma as in something really major, or bad happened to you. Like you're going to have trauma from work. You can have trauma from your friends.
You can have trauma just from brothers, sister. Like you're going to have trauma in a lot of different ways that show up for you. Trauma for me is identified as something happened to you and it stung you like now you have a little bit of a chip off your shoulder, not in a bad way, but it just took a piece off of you.
That's what I identified trauma as is any type of circumstance or situation where it hurt you and you are still running from that hurt in your daily life and daily situation. So yeah, it's not anything like major, huge. It can be something small and minute as you not being friends with someone anymore.
Julia: [00:30:33] That's an excellent point, right? It's not like the trauma Olympics. No one's handing out prizes. It's anything that makes you feel as if you're disassociated from a certain part of yourself. And you bring up a good point where when you start doing breath work, you're like, oh, I thought I was done with that.
And it's really because you're just going deeper into it, right? Like now the opportunity has presented itself for you to heal on a deeper level and you're ready for it. Because if your body is handing it to you or, like you're emotionally ready and safe enough and equipped enough to deal with it on a deeper level.
So it's almost like leveling up in a way when you can circle back around to it that way.
Sarah: [00:31:14] Yeah, and even if you do use breath work to work on a specific instance or whatever, and you felt like you've healed it, it may come up later again, because it might be activated from a different angle.
Our point of doing breathwork is never to go in and heal a specific thing. We are working with intentions. I do use various need-based journeys where they're really intentional of like embodiment or safety or anger, things like that, that we're wanting to access. But we're never really going in and saying okay, so this happened to me when I was kid, and this is something that I want to work on.
You can do that too, and use that as an intention, but mainly we're working with more of the positive intention that we want to be rather than the negative intention we're trying to move away from.
Julia: [00:32:00] So you're trying to access these more good feeling aspects and you're just dealing with whatever comes up in the way, and is blocking you from already having it.
Sarah: [00:32:08] Yes.
Julia: [00:32:08] Yeah, because the other way you would need a like a degree in therapy. Yeah.
Sarah: [00:32:13] I am not a therapist. No. I just help people access their emotions and then move them through that.
Julia: [00:32:18] Which is truly invaluable. I remember I did take some psychology courses before I was like, you know what, forget it.
I'm going to be a medium. And one of the things I discovered was there are indigenous cultures, I think it's probably either in Alaska or way up in Canada, they like don't experience anger in the same way we do. The way that they experienced disappointment and the way that they have been taught as children to deal with their anger means that it's not that they don't feel it, right? But it doesn't destroy their day.
So when they're a kid, the parent, when the kid expresses anger and hits them or something, they will act out the extreme version of that consequence, right? Oh, you hurt me. I'm crying now. And they'll act it out. And the kid will be like, disturbed. Oh, I didn't understand that my anger had that kind of consequence.
And so they'll act it out to the point where, and there'll be like, hit me. And the kid will be like, no, thanks. I don't want to do it. And so that translates to when you're older, you feel anger, but you deal with it in a more productive way than just creating more pain and suffering in someone else.
So maybe I think this was the example that was given, they were working on creating like a fishing hook or a fishing line and they broke the line and they're like, All right. Let's just start again. So it's they felt the anger, they dealt with it and they're like, all right, onto the next.
And that is such a healthy way to deal with anger. And probably because they've done the presence work. That's what the whole acting through it is like, breathing through it, being present with it, presenting a new way of being like, oh, you know what? I don't think I want that. I don't want that.
Like the anger is okay, it's telling me I don't want this, but at the same time, I also don't want what the anger is bringing me either. And I think that breathwork is a really great foil for that. Like it, it shows you that this is all right let's breathe with our anger. Or maybe let's breathe with our disappointment.
And instead of reacting with our anger, our disappointment let's move through it. Let's see what it's going to teach us. What do we want? That's why I love breath work.
Sarah: [00:34:29] And that's exactly a perfect example of how those kids learned how to regulate their emotions, instead of being triggered by their emotion.
Julia: [00:34:39] yeah. And this may be a little off the wall, but do you ever incorporate breath work in yoga?
Sarah: [00:34:45] I don't use yoga. But I do use breath and movement. My workshops are something that I do in person. Because you're allowing the expression of the emotion or expression of the energy breath, and movement is something that is literally so beautiful and it's so fun to do when you're doing it. But no, I don't. I don't utilize yoga and yoga breath work is a tiny bit different than the breath work that I do. Yoga breath work is because you're stretching, you're needing to breathe through. So you can go deeper into that stretch.
For me, what I'm doing with like my meditative sessions, we aren't really intentionally moving the body. The body will move if it wants to move. Shake up the hands or people will move their body around and some people will get up and whatever. But yeah, I have done some workshops and it's funny that you bring this up because I had actually just done a workshop with breath and movement in the park and it was cool.
Julia: [00:35:42] The reason why I brought it up is I've done breathwork and I'm like, I have to move my shoulders or something. Because it was stored in there. And my body's like, you're going to need to move this. Like physically move this as well. And so it's not weird if all of a sudden, like your elbow jerks, like it just needed to move.
Sarah: [00:36:00] Yeah. And a lot of my clients will experience that too, where they'll just start like shaking their hands out, or they're move their body around, not thrash, move from side to side or their legs will move around or things like that. And I encourage that in my sessions too.
I cue them to do that. I say move how your body feels like it wants to be moving. Because it just gets that energy flowing and moving and it sends it out a little bit based on, what you're doing. My hands a lot of the times we'll get really tingly, and so I shake them out.
They almost feel like they're falling asleep, so I'll shake it out. And I'll really bring on the breath a lot deeper when those physical symptoms are coming up for me, because I know that I'm really trying to force all that energy out. So like my inhale, my exhale will become a lot more intentional at that point because I'm really trying to breathe all that energy out and visualize the energy coming out of my body.
Julia: [00:36:46] Yeah. I love that. Do you want to tell people how they can learn more about this and work with you?
Sarah: [00:36:51] Yes, totally. So the best way to get in touch with me is on Instagram, at breathe with underscore Sarah with an H and M you can send me a DM, or you can just go straight to the link in my bio, which will connect you with a discovery call that we can chat and talk about, how it is that I can best serve you.
I do free breathwork sessions. So just reach out to me on Instagram and we can do a free session on you and see how it works for you. Okay. The best way to get in touch with me
Julia: [00:37:20] Thank you so much. That was a jam packed episode, and I enjoyed speaking about breath work with you.
So thank you so much and we'll call it.
Sarah: [00:37:29] Awesome. Thank you.
Julia: [00:37:30] Thank you. Bye.