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A couple taking a selfie with their pets

Transcript – Celebrating Your Pets With Brittany Derrenbacher

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Celebrating Your Pets With Brittany Derrenbacher    [INTRODUCTION] [00:00:02] PF: Welcome to Episode 352 of Live Happy Now. There's a big holiday in February that's all about love, and it isn't Valentine's Day. This week, we're talking about National Love Your Pet Day. I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week, I'm sitting down with Brittany Derrenbacher, a clinical mental health counseling intern and founder of Luna Bell's Moonbows, a special needs animal rescue. In celebration of National Love Your Pet Day on February 20th, Brittany is joining me to talk not only about what our pets do for us, but to look at how we can learn to celebrate them every day, and enrich our lives in the process. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:42] PF: Brittany, welcome back to Live Happy Now. [00:00:45] BD: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I'm really happy to be back. [00:00:49] PF: Well, we have National Love Your Pet Day coming up. And of course, we thought of you, because you know pets, and you know how they work. And so I really wanted to talk to you about this, because we're all crazy about our pets. But they do so much for us that we don't even think about. So I wondered if you could talk, first of all, about some of the gifts that our pets are giving us that we're not even realizing. [00:01:11] BD: Yeah. I mean, I feel like this episode should really be called like the power of pets. [00:01:17] PF: Ooh, I like that. [00:01:18] BD: Yeah. Because I feel like the gifts that they give us are endless. I mean, really, we could sit here and talk about this for hours, because I think even if we were able to brainstorm through just an exhaustive list, I think there's still something that could be added to it daily, right? And I think it's most important first to talk about the joy that they give us. I think that is the most important gift that is so unique to animals, because it's that no strings attached kind of joy. And I think that there's like nothing that compares to that, right? I mean, the joy of coming home to our animals. And for those of us who work from home, I mean, I know for myself and probably for you, we’re super lucky that we get to spend time 24/7 with our pets and really soak up all the benefits. [00:02:09] PF: Yeah. [00:02:10] BD: But I think they also help us gain a sense of responsibility. So they're showing us this like unconditional love. And they're always there when we need them. So those are like kind of like the main things that you might think of when you think about, “Okay, well, what do pets give me on a daily basis?” Those are kind of the main things. But the unconditional love of a pet can do more than just keep us company, right? [00:02:35] PF: Yeah, it's a constant return on our investment, because it's giving us something emotionally. [00:02:41] BD: Right. Yeah. And that's really like where we get into – I kind of call it like the four benefits of pets in our lives. And it crosses a couple of different boundaries, but we have mental health, and mood boosting, grounding. And that is like connected to like outdoors. Physical health, which, of course is connected to exercise. And then socialization. So those are like the four main benefits I think that animals uniquely give us. [00:03:09] PF: That's cool. Can we dig into each of those just a little bit? [00:03:11] BD: Absolutely. Yeah. [00:03:13] PF: Because I noticed mental health is first. Because, as a therapist, I guess that is always going to be forefront for you. But I thought that's really cool, because we don't think about the mental health improvements we get from pets. [00:03:23] BD: Oh, yeah. I mean, it's estimated that 68% of US households have a pet. And I think that that number is growing, especially given the circumstances that we're in with COVID. I think a lot more people are bringing animals into their home that weren't able to do so before. So I love that you're having this conversation about the relationships that we have with our pets. And I think what better way to really honor the love for your pet than to have a day where we literally are talking about and spreading the message that owning a pet will change your life in more ways than just joy and love. And I really believe that the better we understand that human animal bond, the more we can use it to improve people's lives. So thinking of mental health, just off the top of my head, like interacting with animals has been shown to decrease levels of cortisol. So we're going to get kind of scientific here. [00:04:21] PF: We thought so. [00:04:21] BD: I know it’s your jam. You love that. But cortisol is the body's natural stress hormone. So just by virtue of interacting with our pets on a daily basis, we're decreasing that, which is awesome. But it's also really cool to know that if you sit there and pet your dog, your cat, whatever your pet is, for 15 minutes, that you're literally releasing all of the feel good hormones into your body. So you're sitting there. You're petting Morocco. You're petting Josie. 15 minutes. You're releasing oxytocin, prolactin and serotonin all into your body just by petting your, dog which I feel like is so cool. [00:05:02] PF: Yeah, that's amazing. Because there's not other ways to get it that easily, I don't think. [00:05:09] BD: No, I don't think so either. And I think like just thinking about being able to pet your dog and really hokes your body into that relaxed state. This is also super helpful in lowering your blood pressure. So it’s cool to think of like our dogs and our cats can lower our blood pressure. And I also realized, too, that you asked about mental health, and I kind of tiptoed into physical health. But even if we're just thinking about stress, like stress is mental health, right? And so these animals that we used to associate in the past with keeping outdoors, right? Animals weren't really considered in the past to be in home companions to humans. And now we have this understanding that animals in our pets can provide so much more to us than just having this fun dog to run around within the yard. They live in our homes, and they literally are bringing so much into our lives and nurturing our mental health, our physical health, just our overall well-being on a daily basis. And so not only do pets have the potential to decrease our stress, but they can help improve, like we were just talking about, our heart health. Like that's incredible. [00:06:25] PF: Yeah. And I think about how many times a day I laugh because of my dogs. And we know that laughter is so important and so cathartic. We simply don't do it enough. And even on days when it doesn't feel like there's a lot of things in the outside world to laugh at, they're going to make me laugh. They are going to deliver joy no matter what else is going on. [00:06:46] BD: Yeah. And like that deep belly laugh too, right? [00:06:50] PF: Yeah. [00:06:50] BD: But that goes back to those feel good hormones. And that's something that we're experiencing on a daily basis with our pets that I think it's very easy to take for granted or just not even realize. [00:07:01] PF: Yeah. Yeah, that's true. And so what about grounding? Because grounding is something I love. It's so important, and we don't get enough of this. And can you talk a little bit about what it is and why it's so important for our physical and emotional well-being? [00:07:17] BD: Yeah. Well, I also love to talk about grounding, because I think mindfulness is kind of inherent in the work that I do. And it's what I always try to help my clients with. But I really love to talk about how pets are our teachers. I think about most of the life lessons that I've learned in my life, especially from just the animals in our rescue, they've all come from dogs. They've all come from the animals that I've met in my life. And especially in the compassion fatigue for animal care professionals work that I do, I really stressed the importance of what our animals can teach us. And I think that they model resiliency to us, to humans, in a way that no one else can. I mean, even if you just think of like Josie and Morocco's story. [00:08:02] PF: Right, right. [00:08:04] BD: Like the resilience behind your dogs, and just where they've come from, and who they are now, and how interesting, and amazing, and loving they are. So there's the resiliency in that. And I also think that they have this beautiful way of teaching as mindfulness that no book can really do or no like Buru can. But they teach us like the cheesy saying, like, “Every day is a gift,” right? That is like the ethos, especially for dogs. And I'm not minimizing cats, birds and all the other pets out there that people have. But like – [00:08:36] PF: Have the hate mail, please. [00:08:38] BD: Yeah, no hate mail. No. Cats are hilarious, because I think that they just have this way of like just navigating life. Doing exactly what they want to do with no shame. [00:08:49] PF: Right. They’ll just give you that look that's like, “You're not going to do anything about it.” [00:08:53] BD: Yeah. But, yeah, our pets teach us that living each day is a gift, and living our lives with loving presence. And I love thinking about that phrase, loving presence. Because I think animals know that the ultimate point of life is to enjoy it, right? Like that is why we're here. And I think playing with our pets can take our mind away from problems, take our mind away from daily stressors, and really place this in the here and now. And that is literally like mindfulness 101, the here and now, and embracing the sacred pause. Tara Brach talks a lot about the sacred pause. And I think just that idea that truly living in the moment is such a huge gift that they give us. [00:09:40] PF: Yeah. And sometimes we might get in the mindset of feeling like it's frivolous to go play. But there is something very essential about that kind of frivolity and that kind of bonding that's taking place when you are playing, and the kind of joy that it's bringing to you. [00:09:55] BD: Yeah. And even just thinking about that, like physical nature of that, too. Physically, our animals encourage us to move. They are often why we have a connection with the outdoors, which I do think connects to that idea of grounding too, being outside, having our feet on the earth and experiencing life outside of our home. And even on days that we don't want to move, right? Like we don't want to get out of bed. Life is too much. And I the past two years with COVID, it has been this way for a lot of people, just the idea of like waking up and having to face another day in the middle of a pandemic. But especially dogs, they make us move. [00:10:41] PF: Yeah. [inaudible 00:10:41]. [00:10:42] BD: Yeah, yeah. I have to get out of bed every morning. I have to take my dogs for a walk. They need that. They need that to live and to enjoy life. And they really motivate us to play and seek adventure. So going back to that cultivation of joy that you were talking about and playing. [00:11:02] PF: And then like you said, it forces us to be in nature. And even if your nature is in the city, and all you're seeing is a tree at some point. But that is so healthy. And that's so good for our mental health and our physical well-being to just get outside and be present in nature for even 10 or 15 minutes. [00:11:20] BD: Yeah. Stopping. Smelling the roses. [00:11:24] PF: Yeah. Picking up the poop. [00:11:25] BD: Yeah. Stopping, taking a pause with the fire hydrant, whatever you need to do to be connected to the outside world. But even just like hiking, going to the park, walking or running through the neighborhood. For me, specifically, I love to do dog agility, and maybe even traveling. Going somewhere long distance. Packing up your animals and getting out of town. And that is something that I think is an amazing, unique thing to be able to do. And, I think, also in thinking about this, this really promotes human socialization. I think – Yeah, like, we often talk about animal socialization, right? But animals equally give us that gift as well. And being able to go out and do things with your pets and meet other humans. I think, you, I love hearing you talk about all of the people that you've met through walking your dogs. [00:12:24] PF: Right, right. That's the thing. We've told people who had like, say, they moved to Nashville, and they have trouble meeting people. We’re like, “Get a dog.” You will meet everybody. You will meet more people than you actually want to meet, because it's such a draw. And I did. I've met so many people and made lasting friendships with them because I was out there walking Archie. And it's pretty incredible. [00:12:46] BD: Yeah, I love that story. And like, for me, for agility. I've met so many people. And I see it's predominantly women that are doing agility. And I think it creates this community. They all do competitions together. They will travel together doing things with their dogs, and they're just active, and happy, and laughing, and enjoying life vicariously through and with their animals. [00:13:13] PF: Yeah. I’d say what a tremendous way to walk through life is to – When you really recognize the value of that animal companion and can really cherish it and enjoy it. I'm going to be right back with more of my conversation with Brittany. But I wanted to talk for just a moment about how to make your world a safer place. The online world can be an unpredictable one. And while we'd like to think that we're always safe, that isn't necessarily the case. As we spend more of our lives online, we increasingly find ourselves thinking twice before clicking on a link or opening an email. Or we might be worried about getting scammed hacked, or even falling prey to malware or identity theft. The good news is, there's great real time protection available for you and your family. When you use the browser extension, Guardio, you can do your thing online with complete confidence that every click is safe. You can run a free security scan right now to see what threats are on your browser. And then if you're interested in their protection, it 20% off your plan when you sign up at guard.io/livehappynow. That's guard.io/livehappynow. And now, let's get back to my conversation with Brittany Derrenbacher and learn more about the many gifts our pets give to us. One thing that you do that I find so important is the work that you're doing with – You have an emotional support dog, and you're helping others deal with trauma with a pet. Can you talk about how that works and kind of some of the work that you're doing? [00:14:49] BD: Yeah. This is probably, like you said, my favorite topic to discuss, because I really get to see firsthand how much animals can help humans in a handful of supportive ways regarding mental health. I love to use animals in therapy. We have a lot of special needs dogs that I think uniquely are able to teach other people lessons and teach them like really cool things about being imperfectly perfect, right? [00:15:17] PF: Right. [00:15:19] BD: And there are therapy animals, emotional support dogs, service dogs, psychiatric service dogs, seeing eye dogs. Like I feel like I could go on and on. Like physical rehabilitation. Animals that visit hospitals to visit children that are recovering and going through chemo treatments for cancer. There are therapy dogs as crisis intervention after traumatic events. This is something that I'm really specifically interested in, because I think it's an incredible service that is available that most people don't know about. And that's that trained dog handler teams are called to sites of crisis and provide comfort, and provide stress relief, and emotional support for those that have been affected by natural disasters or mass shootings. For example, there's the Tree of Life synagogue shooting. They brought in a team of handlers and their dogs to provide support. This happened at Sandy Hook as well, and Virginia Tech massacre. But there's really some wonderful research surrounding this topic. And I think that a section of human animal interaction of the American Psychological Association is really doing an amazing job of presenting on these topics and bringing awareness of understanding about the human animal interaction. And I think, for us specifically, in the work that I do, going back to Violet, she is a 40-pound bulldog with hydrocephalus. [00:16:52] PF: Okay, tell us real quick what hydrocephalus is for people who don't know. [00:16:55] BD: Yeah. So hydrocephalus is literally water on the brain. And it is an accumulation of that fluid that has nowhere to go. And so you'll kind of see like a dome-shaped skull on the animal's head. And this is a condition that our rescue is very passionate about. It happens to humans as well. And a lot of times, dogs can have mild symptoms and live really long, beautiful lives. And sometimes it is a hospice situation where we give them the best life that they can for as long as possible. Violet has very mild hydrocephalus. So she is doing beautifully. She's not on any medication, and she is just absolutely wonderful. And again, like has that resiliency and is able to share such a beautiful story. But yeah, she visits nursing homes, senior memory care facilities, college campuses in the therapy room with me. And one of her favorite people to visit is a 101-year-old Holocaust survivor. [00:17:56] PF: Oh, that's so cool. [00:17:56] BD: Yeah, that is incredible. He loves it. I think he's able to really like tap into this childlike joy that he hasn't been able to experience in a long time. And one of the first stories that he told my husband, when Violet went to visit, was that it reminded him so much of his childhood dog. And so now, when Violet goes to visit, like it is expected, like, “Where's violet? When will she be here?” So yeah. [00:18:22] PF: That's fantastic. So we know that pets give us so much. Like they just give and give. And even when we don't treat them well, and we don't treat them as well as we should, they are still loving and they give to us. So when we're looking at Love Your Pet Day, what can we do to be better pet parents? How can we better return that kind of affection and meet the needs of our pets? [00:18:47] BD: I love that you asked this, because I think that we really owe it to our pets to give back to them as they give to us. That has really been like my goal in life, especially with rescue work, is to try to give back as much as possible to these animals. But I think it's also important to even just raise that as a question, right? Like we shouldn't just be asking what animals can do for us. We should also be asking what we can do in return for them. And I really do believe that the most important thing that we can do is constantly provide that love and stability. Patience. Patience is really key, right? [00:19:24] PF: Yeah. And not always easy. [00:19:25] BD: Yeah, exactly. And positive reinforcement. I also like to tell people, like give them their time. Stop rushing them on the walks. [00:19:35] PF: Yeah, this is a great topic. And that's something that you and I have talked about. And I want to dig into that a little bit more, because that is so important, and it's easy for us to forget. So like can you talk about that just a little bit? Like how can we learn to be more mindful of giving them their time and making those walks their time? [00:19:55] BD: Yeah. And I think that's where we can really embrace the tools that they teach us of mindfulness and being present, like taking that deep breath and saying, “Okay, I'm going to leave the house and really be in the here and now with my dog because this is their jam. This is literally what dogs are on this earth for, is to roam, and sniff, and explore, and enjoy their life.” And how many times do you – And I'm guilty of this. But how many times are you out and you see people really pulling their dogs along and they're trying to sniff the fire hydrant? They're trying to sniff the grass? And they're like, “Come on, come on, come on, let's go.” Imagine being in HomeGoods and you are in the pillow aisle, right? You're looking at those soft throws, and then someone's behind you like nudging you on like, “Come on, come on. Let's go, let's go. Hurry up. Hurry up. Hurry up.” Why would we want to do that and deprive our animals of that joy, and being able to do something that they're just like so excited and pumped to do? I mean, that is literally [inaudible 00:20:58]. [00:21:00] PF: Yeah, yeah, because I've tried to get really thoughtful in terms of when I don't take my phone with me when we go on walks anymore. And that makes a big difference. And when we were in Nashville, and we would see – At the dog park, like see people. And their dogs out there running around, and they're just on their phone. And it’s like, “Oh, my gosh, you're missing out on this whole opportunity to play and interact before you go lock your dog up in an apartment again.” So that's one thing. I've ditched the phone on the walks. And I really tried to take it. Like when they stop and are sniffing, it's like really use it a time to take a breath and really like start looking at my surroundings. Like let me be as inquisitive as they are about what does the air smell like today? And what is the sky doing? And it really makes a huge difference in resetting your day when you go back to your office. [00:21:50] BD: Oh, yeah. I mean, it's like literally doing a body scan in nature with your dog, right? And I love that you mentioned putting the phone away and just, again, incorporating that loving presence that we talked about earlier. I think, for me, uniquely, I'm often having the conversation on the other side with people because I specialize in pet loss grief. And I often am having conversations with people about what they wish they had done, and that they would do anything to be back in those moments with their animals. And so I think that's something that's important to keep in mind, too, is like really allowing ourselves to enjoy these moments when they're given to us and be present, and just connect with our animals, and just embrace the beauty of life, and not be stuck in a situation in the future where we are analyzing this should have, would have, could haves. [00:22:46] PF: Right. Yeah. Because I know some times we're given notice that we're losing a pet. And sometimes it happens very quickly. And I've had it go both ways. And I had one that I lost very quickly, and it was like, “Oh, my gosh, if I had known that was my last walk with her, I would have walked for an hour.” I just would not have stopped. [00:23:06] BD: Endlessly. Yeah. [00:23:07] PF: Yeah. And so I think that's a great mindset to have. Not that, “Oh, my pet is going to die.” But like I have to look at every moment I have, every chance I have to interact with them as a valuable one. [00:23:18] BD: Yeah. And I think like now there's science behind it, right? There're so many studies that have been done showing what animals can do for us, just reducing the loneliness and increasing the social support, boosting our moods. Literally saving lives in regards to depression and grief. And we are given an opportunity every day to embrace all of those unique gifts and qualities that animals can give us. And like why would we not embrace that and soak it up every chance? [00:23:50] PF: That's right. That's terrific. So yeah, so we have this one day where we'll talk about Love Your Pet Day. But I think it's a great practice to be able to enter every day as Love Your Pet Day. So what would be like your advice? How do we keep that top of mind so that we really do change that relationship with our pet? [00:24:12] BD: Yeah. I really think just embracing that animals don't ask for much in life, and are the gifts that keep on giving. And they also teach us to be better humans, right? They teach us to navigate life in a smarter, more beautiful way. And so just continuing to talk about how awesome life is with animals and how amazing the human animal bond is. That's what I love to talk about, is the bond that we have with our animals. It's just so incredible. And it's unlike anything in life. And even just having conversations like this where maybe someone will listen to this podcast and say, “You know what? I'm going to go to my nearest shelter, and I'm going to adopt a dog today, because I want to like live life with this kind of joy.” Like that is a unique gift. And that is a message worth spreading. [00:25:08] PF: That's excellent. Brittany, you always have so much to say about pets, and you're doing such incredible work with humans and animals. So we're going to, of course, have our landing page and let them learn more about you and where they can find out about some of the work that you're doing. But thank you. Thank you for coming back and talking pets with us. [00:25:25] BD: Yeah, thank you. [OUTRO] [00:25:30] PF: That was Britney Derrenbacher, talking about how pets benefit us and what we can do to enrich their lives. If you'd like to learn more about Brittany and the work that she's doing, just visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all new episode. And until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]
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Celebrating Your Pets With Brittany Derrenbacher

There’s a special day in February for us to celebrate love — and it isn’t Valentine’s Day. In honor of National Love Your Pet Day on February 20, host Paula Felps sits down with Brittany Derrenbacher, a clinical mental health counseling intern and founder of Luna Bell’s Moonbows, a special needs animal rescue. She’s here to talk about why pets are so good for our physical and mental well-being, and then tell us how we can learn to celebrate them every day — and enrich our lives in the process. In this episode, you'll learn: Four of the main benefits of having a pet. How pets can help people heal from trauma. How to add more joy to your pets’ lives. Links and Resources Facebook: @lunabellsmoonbows Instagram: @lunabells_moonbows Healing From Pet Loss With Brittany Derrenbacher Follow along with the transcript by clicking here. Don't miss an episode! Live Happy Now is available at the following places:           
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Well-Being

Revolution of the New Year’s Resolution: A Real Soul Evolution

Good habits to practice to help keep your health and wellness goals on track. It’s early January. It’s dreary, misty, and cold outside. Members of my tribe slowly check in with me to say Happy New Year and inform me that they are doing a dry January or that they got up extra early this morning to get their workout in. Or that they are going to lose that extra weight they have been intending to take off. I cheer them on, support them, uplift them, but I cannot help but think to myself, what about after January? According to the Journal of Clinical Psychology, nearly 50% of Americans intend on making a New Year’s resolution but only 60% keep those resolutions after the first month and only 8% keep those resolutions for the year. Despite the intention to make positive changes to our lives every new year, such as losing weight, drinking less and getting more sleep, the success rate of achieving those goals is low. Intending. What exactly is an intention? Dictionary.com defines it as “an act or instance of determining mentally upon some action or result.” So how do we change an act or an instance of determination into many, repetitive acts of intention. Enter the word we all know—resolution. Dictionary.com defines a resolution as “a formal expression of opinion or intention made,” and “the act of resolving or determining upon an action [or] course of action…” Even more telling is Dictionary.com’s “other words for resolution: resolve, determination, perseverance, tenacity; strength, fortitude.” These are the words you will need to carry you through to the end of 2022, not just till the end of January. It’s great to intend the night before to wake up early by setting your alarm, telling your friend you will do so, and getting to sleep a bit earlier. And it’s great when you actually do it. But how do you power yourself to make it a habit. What will give you the staying power to see your project through to the end, to stay the course, is resolution. Here are six good habits you can practice during the year to keep your health and wellness goals on track. Resolve Embedded in the word intent is the implicit I will try, or I want: the desire. But embedded in the word resolve is the solve—the Resolving and Re-soling of the problem or the project you intend to accomplish or achieve. Determination The word has a finality about it, and within it contains the word “terminal”—reminiscent of the last bus stop, the terminal. Resolution is what gets you to the last bus stop, the end goal. But of course, the journey is not about the end, it is the about the journey itself, the tale of how you got yourself to the gym after work when you were tired and hungry. Perseverance To persevere is to keep going even when you don’t want to or when you feel like you can’t. It is what peels you off the cozy, comfy couch. It is what pushes you past what you think is the bottom of your tank, only to find there is more. According to the VIA Institute on Character, perseverance is the strength most associated with life engagement and achievement, which both adds to your happiness and well-being. Tenacity Tenacity is holding on. It is what makes you put down the chocolate bar and pick up the apple instead. Apples are high in sugar, pectin, and fiber, and power you through workouts. Chocolate feels good for a minute while it melts on your tongue into silky softness, but then comes the sugar crash and hunger cravings. And no way to power yourself through anything. Tenacity is accepting the weak moments but staying the course because you respect yourself too much. Because you will be happier later. Strength Strength, like anything, has everything to do with practice. Even more than the physical muscle, you need to flex the mental muscle that takes your intention of making a healthy food choice, over and over, until you do it without much thought because it has become embedded into your psyche. Fortitude It takes bravery to admit your failures and to get back up and try it again. Fortitude is not perfection. Fortitude is knowing you may have lost the battle, but you will win the war. Even though your intention may have failed you when you overstepped the boundary of the one square of chocolate a day (one square becomes one row which becomes, gasp! the whole bar…), it is resolution which allows you to rein in your raw desires and stay the path. Practice Makes Perfect Healthy habits are no different from any other habits–they require commitment, practice, grit, and most of all, the boring daily grind repetition that is required to transmogrify your intent–your will–into your resolution–your real soul evolution.
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Well-Being

Transcript – Discover Your Authentic Power With Ashley Bernardi

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Discover Your Authentic Power With Ashley Bernardi  [INTRODUCTION] [00:00:02] PF: Welcome to episode 349 of Live Happy Now. Many of us are feeling fatigued and a little bit powerless by the trauma of the past couple of years. But today's guest is going to tell us how each of us can use this time to find our authentic power. I’m your host, Paula Fels, and this week I’m talking with Ashley Bernardi, author of Authentic Power: Give Yourself Permission to Heal. She's here to talk about how our most challenging times can hold the secret to our authentic power if we'll just give ourselves permission to feel it and heal from it. She'll explain what she learned during her own healing journey and tell us how we can use those same techniques to find greater happiness. But before we get to the interview, I want to take just a moment to talk to you about one other way that you might be feeling a little bit powerless. When it comes to our online lives, we are increasingly at risk for scams, hackers, identity theft and so much more. If you're like me, you're spending more and more time online, and you might sometimes worry about how safe you and your family are when you're browsing the web. That's why I started using Guardio, which is a safe way to spend your time on the web with the confidence that you're protected from online threats. You can run a free security scan and find out what threats are on your browser. And then if you're interested in their protection, you can get twenty percent off your plan when you sign up using the link guard.io/livehappynow. That's guard.io/livehappynow. And now, let's hear from today's guest, Ashley Bernardi. [INTERVIEW] [00:01:41] PF: Ashley, welcome to Live Happy Now. [00:01:43] AB: Thank you so much for having me, Paula. I’m so excited to be here. [00:01:47] PF: I’m excited to talk with you. People don't know, we've had a lot of email conversations over time because of what you do as a publicist. And I’m really excited to be able to talk to you about this beautiful book that you've written. And it's so important, because it really delves into what happens when we take time to look at our own trauma. And how did you decide to write this book? And why now? [00:02:11] AB: Oh my gosh! That's a loaded question. I love it. So I felt called to write it in the early days of the pandemic, so March, April 2020. And what happened during those early days, as anybody who's listening can relate, is we were faced, or at least for me, with so much fear, anxiety, depression, grief, having lost friends early on in the pandemic, old colleagues, confusion, despair, all of these messy and uncomfortable feelings that I believe that society tells us that, "Push those feelings down." "Be happy." "You don't need to feel those feelings." And like sometimes my husband has said, "Just cheer up [inaudible 00:02:56]." And I talk about this in my book. It's like my biggest pet peeve. So what I found was – And during those early days of the pandemic, those feelings and emotions were bubbling up. And instead of pushing them back down, numbing myself out, ignoring those feelings, which is what I have done in the past, I gave myself permission to feel this time around. And what happened was I started journaling about it. I started interviewing many healing experts about it. They're included in my book. And I felt called to share my personal journey of healing from trauma, which I’m sure we'll get into, and how I dealt with and process that trauma now versus what I did before. And what I learned is that there is so much power and transformation by giving yourself permission to feel and what authentic power is. And giving yourself permission to feel is truly the antidote to help you access your authentic power, which to me is the wisdom that we all have within us. It just takes us getting quiet and still and turning off that noise and then in turn trusting that wisdom, trusting that intuition and those gut feelings that come up for us and doing something about it. [00:04:05] PF: And one of the tough things is taking that time to be quiet, because it is so uncomfortable. It's not like when we get still with those messy feelings like, "Oh, this feels good." And we have so many available distractions now. So how did you keep yourself on the path of going deeper? [00:04:22] AB: So that is such an important question. And I’m going to say, to answer that question, I have to start with what I did first, because I know how uncomfortable it is to feel these feelings. Nobody wants to. And to tell this, I’m going to take you back to my first trauma. And that was when I was 11 years old, and my father died of a sudden death heart attack right in front of me and my sister and my mom. And my mom and sister tried to give him CPR. I ran out to call 911 to get help from the neighbors. And what we learned was that there was nothing that we could do to have saved him. His heart was 90% blocked. And that trauma was so severe I did not want to give myself permission to feel the horrible feelings that I felt. The shame that I felt of I could have done more to save my father's life, the grief that I felt that my number one person was no longer in my life. And so growing up, even though despite trying to get – My mom, of course, tried to get me help with grief counselors. I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't tell my friends that my dad had died. I will never forget my first boyfriend, he didn't even know. I didn't tell him my dad died. He just found out. There's a great find through someone else like just to tell you how much I did not want to address it. And I carried on like that for a long time. And of course, as some listeners may know, when you bury these feelings, and your trauma, and your pain, it can come out in other ways. It has to come out somehow, right? So for me, it came out in lack of boundaries, and people-pleasing, and destructive relationships, a destructive relationship with alcohol, and work addiction. Like anything that I could do to numb myself out from feeling my own pain. I was obsessed with feeling everybody else's pain. I was a producer for CBS News, and one of my jobs was as a field producer traveling the country covering breaking news stories. And they were horrific breaking news stories. I covered the Virginia Tech Massacre. I covered missing parents, missing children. And like the irony of that is that I was obsessed with covering somebody else's trauma because I did not want to address my own. Flash forward to about you know a couple years later in my early 30s, I was no longer a producer. I was now starting this growing PR business. And another trauma hit me over the head that was an undiagnosed mystery illness coupled with postpartum depression at the same time. That mystery illness ended up being diagnosed as Lyme disease. So I had Lyme disease and postpartum depression at the same time. There was no more room for me to hold any more trauma in. So it was like the universe almost gifted me with an opportunity to purge everything. And it was when I got quiet and still, because I truly could not move my body, did I start to feel all these feelings from my childhood and past start bubbling up. The trauma of my father's death. Just various other uncomfortable moments. And I let myself feel them. I let myself grieve from my father. I let myself grieve for my health, for my mental health. I mean, I had postpartum depression. I was put in a part-time hospitalization program, which is you go into a hospital eight hours a day and you come out. And I did that for several weeks just to get the mental health support that I needed. And I learned the transformational healing that occurs when you get quiet, and you get still, and you give yourself permission to feel. And I want to say this, back to your first question, is that I know how hard it is to get still. I never sat still. It wasn't until my body forced me to get still and I had nowhere to go. And I learned through – Like when I first started doing small acts of, let's say, meditation, I could only get through 10 seconds of meditation. And that of course is a great starting point. I gave myself some grace for that. And now here I am six years later and I could meditate for hours if I wanted to, but I’ve got work to do. But I just learned that, first of all, it's those baby steps to get quiet and still even if it's five breaths. Like for anyone listening out there today, get still for five breaths and see how you feel after. Like science proves that even in 90 seconds, we can change the way our feelings are moved through us, and even our our mindset by taking 90 seconds to just let yourself breathe. [00:08:45] PF: So how hard was it to take others on this journey and tell them about it? Because this is your healing journey, but it's really a universal theme because it tells others – Kind of shows others how to walk down a path of healing. Was it difficult to be that open and honest? [00:09:02] AB: I love this question so much. And yes, let me tell you this. I don't think I would have healed, and I don't think I would continue to heal if I didn't open up and get vulnerable. Because I first thought that I could just go through my feelings and my physical, and mental, and spiritual woes on my own. And sure, absolutely, there's a lot of inner work that I needed to be doing by processing my feelings. But I found that when I started opening up, and I first started, of course, with my husband. Just getting real and honest with him with what was happening. And then with a couple very close girlfriends, I told them, and I was like, "This is what's happening with me. Basically, I feel like I’m dying every day, and I really miss my dad." And just really being open and honest. I was met with so much love and compassion. And that motivated me to continue to heal. And so then I slowly found that the more I talked about what I was going through, I connected with other people who had similar experiences. But I also was met with so much love and compassion, and community support, and connection that gave me this, again, like my authentic power and motivation to heal. The more I got honest and vulnerable first with myself, then connected with others, that's where transformation happened. [00:10:26] PF: Now, when you were going through this, at what point did you realize the whole concept of authentic power and how this all played together? Because obviously, you had to dig through all your dirt first and then make something out of it. [00:10:39] AB: Yeah, I love that question. It took years. And I’ll say this. It probably wasn't until the pandemic when I had all these uncomfortable feelings bubble up again. And instead of pushing them back down, it was like, "Oh my gosh! I know what to do now. I’ve taught myself how to tap into my authentic power." And it was that kind of aha moment of, "I already know – I have all the answers. I know what to do. I know what I need to support myself." I’ll say it wasn't until March of 2020 did I have this aha moment. I know how to tap into my authentic power because I had spent years unknowingly teaching myself how to do it. And that's when I felt called to write a book about it. [00:11:20] PF: One thing that you introduced that I really want to dive into is the FEEL framework. [00:11:26] AB: Yes. [00:11:27] PF: So how about you talk about what that is? Explain what it is and how it works? [00:11:31] AB: Okay. So, yes. The FEEL framework is something that I came up with and I taught myself. And it's how I learned how to access my feelings and process my feelings and move through my feelings in a safe, gentle and loving way. Because as I mentioned earlier, and this is probably the case for many people, is that we don't give ourselves permission to feel. So what I did was this is again what happened in the early days of the pandemic when I was like, "Ah! I know what to do now." So first I’m going to focus on the emotion that I’m feeling. So what is that emotion or that feeling that's bubbling up for you? And I always like to say that maybe you can't name or identify that feeling also. Maybe it's just like this off feeling, or something's just not right. You don't know if it's sadness, or despair, or what. That's fine. Just focus on what it is. Then I want you to enter that feeling. And usually this is the part where people don't do, because it's so hard. You're going to give yourself permission to enter within that feeling. That means get curious. Where is it showing up in your body? Because oftentimes, if you're feeling anger or if you're feeling an uncomfortable feeling, your body is likely feeling it too. Where is it showing up? Maybe you're clenching your shoulders. Maybe your stomach is upset. Mine certainly gets upset when I’m feeling anxiety. Maybe you have a headache. I mean, just notice. But enter. Allow yourself to enter within it. The next part is experience that emotion however it feels safe and right for you. So perhaps it looks like crying. Sometimes sadness can look like laughing. Perhaps it's journaling all your feelings and then burning that piece of paper, which I’ve had people do. It's whatever feels safe for you. In my book, I interviewed Dr. Jamie Hope, who is an ER physician, and she talks about ways that we can stress hard and stress soft. Because as human beings, we're very primal. So when a child has a meltdown, you see this child kicking and screaming. But as adults, we don't do that because we've been socially conditioned to hold our feelings in. Whereas this child who's kicking and screaming is actually just getting their emotions out in a primal way. They're processing their emotions in real time. So that's what I’m hoping that people can learn to do. Whatever you can do to experience that emotion and process it in a safe way, that is what's recommended through the experience part of the FEEL framework. And this can take as long or as short as you want. So as an example, for me, I like to go through the FEEL framework on my yoga mat. And there have been so many times where I allow myself to feel an uncomfortable feeling. It comes up and then I just sit sobbing in child's pose and I let it go. And then the last part of the feel framework is listen, learn and love that emotion back. So first of all, by listening to that emotion, what is it here to teach us? Get curious as to what might be coming up. Why is it here? So in the same way that we experience joy, and happiness, and inspiration, I believe we're meant to process these uncomfortable and messy feelings as well. People see them as negative. But perhaps we can learn from them and see them in a different light. And then also, the final part of that L is love that emotion back. It's there to teach you something. It's there to support you. These feelings are meant to be processed and felt. So focus, enter, experience, listen, learn and love it back and that's the FEEL framework. And I recommend for anyone who's listening to try this out and see how you feel afterwards. And oftentimes you might just say, "Okay, that was cool." But what I’ve noticed is when I go through the FEEL framework, I feel so much better sometimes days and weeks later, because I’ve given myself permission to express my emotions, to process my emotions instead of bearing them in. And that's where like the consistent healing keeps coming up too. [00:15:19] PF: Right now, we, as a planet, and you kind of alluded to this earlier, we have gone through and we're still experiencing a form of trauma. And some of us have lost loved ones. Some of us have lost lifestyles and careers. Some of us have just lost our hope. And so everyone is going through some sort of sense of grief and loss. And it's our nature to kind of downplay it if we haven't had that big loss or what we perceive as someone has it worse. So as we look at what we've gone through with COVID both individually and as humankind, how do we start using your principles to work through that? And first of all, to acknowledge that we all have something that we're dealing with on some level? [00:16:02] AB: Yeah, I love this question. And I think one of the ways I want to answer first, is because I thought a lot about this during the pandemic, is trauma comparisons. And I used to do this as a kid, or even when I was a producer at CBS. Their trauma is so much worse than mine. [00:16:19] PF: We would call that top that woe. [00:16:22] AB: Yes, tap that woe. But, I mean, what if we imagine that like our woes are all equal? I's all collective, right? We're all energetic beings experiencing different things. But I’ve learned that it's not healthy to compare someone's trauma versus somebody else's. What you're experiencing is validated. And I want you to validate that for yourself and give yourself grace. We are all going through a collective trauma. Yes, it may look different for people. Some people may have lost a job. Some people may have lost a loved one. That's still loss. That's still grief. And that's meant to be processed. And so something that I can offer to get started, if you're not sure you know where can I first start accessing my authentic power and giving myself permission to feel, is walk yourself through the FEEL framework with so much love and compassion. Knowing that the first time that you do it is going to be very uncomfortable. And maybe it's only going to take a minute. But see how you feel after that minute. Give yourself baby steps. And I think that's the other thing that I want to say is that, as you know Paula. I’m an entrepreneur. I’m a type a personality. I like to get things done. I like to get things done quickly. But what I’ve learned in my healing journey is that it's completely opposite. There's no giant leaps to feeling better or spiritual healing. It's all about those baby, baby steps. And it goes back to the first day that I tried to meditate. Could only do it for 10 seconds. And I absolutely hated it. But I can say, if you're willing to take those baby steps and then be consistent with them, that is where the change makes. And I actually learned through my science and well-being course at Yale that if you can stick to being consistent with something for four weeks, you'll make it a habit. So one of the things that I had committed to during my time in the course was I’m going to make sure that I’m meditating every day for four weeks. And guess what? Like I barely missed a beat since I started that habit. It just becomes like brushing your teeth. So making small habitual changes, maybe it's a 10 second meditation, then it's bumped up to 20 seconds, then it's bumped up to 30 seconds. Maybe it's journaling once a week, then it's bumped up to two days a week. Or setting a timer to journal one minute, then a minute 30. It's all about those baby steps of progression. And then also, listening to your authentic power, which is that wisdom within you of what's going to work for me to heal. Like ask yourself that. Get a journal out today and say, "What does my heart need to heal? How is my heart feeling today?" Because I find when we ask ourselves these powerful questions and allow ourselves to free write and journal, you'll find that you already have the answers within you. You know what you need to do. Sometimes we just have to hear ourselves talk. [00:19:10] PF: Right. We need someone to tell us what to do, and that person to tell us is ourselves. [00:19:15] AB: That's exactly it. That's exactly it. And we are constantly, as a society, looking for and being marketed everywhere of this magic thing, this magic elixir, this person, this program, this course, this, this, this. But really, it's just you. It's you. You are the expert of your own life. You already hold the wisdom within. You know what you need to do to heal. Yes, you shall get doctors, and loved ones, and loving gentle care and support, and safe support surrounded, because connection is a part of healing. But that wisdom that you have is already within you. [00:19:48] PF: Terrific. Yeah, we just have to discover it and go a little deeper. And that's one thing I like about your book so much, is that you give different options. Like you really do give us – As you said, it's not one size fits all. And try on these different things. It's like going to a buffet. It's like you don't want everything on there. You're just like, "Hey, maybe I’m going to check this out and see how it works. And if I don't like it, I’ll try something else." [00:20:07] AB: Yeah. And if you don't like it, that's cool. Be nice to yourself. Say, "Well, I tried it. I’m gonna move on. Move on." Be kind to yourself as you're on this journey and experimenting with healing modalities. [00:20:18] PF: Absolutely. Now, obviously, this is a very heartfelt book. So what is it that you wish for the people who read it? [00:20:25] AB: Thank you so much. And I’ve gotten so much, I guess, praise from just people that are close to me, or friends of friends, or strangers about how they have appreciated my vulnerability and speaking my truth. And my hope is that by me speaking my truth, which was really really hard to do. I mean, I had to write about the night my dad died. And that was very healing for me. But also to speak that truth hoping that other people will know that it's okay to get vulnerable. That healing is possible. We can always have hope within us. And that you are the expert of your own life. That healing is always possible. And if you're going through a tough moment right now or a tough year right now, like many many of us are, one of the affirmations that I have in my book, and this is an affirmation I gave myself when I was going through Lyme disease and postpartum depression, is this is temporary. This moment is temporary. I didn't even believe it when I told myself that at the time, but I would affirm it every single day. And guess what? It turned out to be true. It turned out to be true. And that is such a testament to healing. And that these messy and uncomfortable moments and allowing ourselves to feel them, those moments are temporary in the same way that joy and sadness is temporary. So I guess that's a lot of messages. The bottom line is my hope is that people will find inspiration to explore healing modalities, access their own authentic power, and provide some hope as they go through their healing journey. [00:21:53] PF: Excellent. Well, Ashley, you give us a great – You make a great tour guide through this healing journey. So thank you for coming on the show and talking about it. And we're going to tell people how they can find your book, how they can learn more about you. And again, I just thank you for sitting down and talking with me about it. [00:22:09] AB: Oh, thank you so much for the opportunity, Paula. This has been such an incredible, and thoughtful, and insightful interview. [OUTRO] [00:22:20] PF: That was Ashley Bernardi, talking about discovering our authentic power. If you'd like to learn more about Ashley and her book, Authentic Power: Give Yourself Permission to Feel, or follow her on social media, visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast link. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. And until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]
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Well-Being

Transcript – Harnessing the Power of Your Breath With Josh Trent

 Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Harnessing the Power of Your Breath With Josh Trent [INTRODUCTION] [00:00:02] PF: Welcome to Episode 343 of Live Happy Now. No matter where you are right now, we're all doing the same thing, breathing. And this week, we're going to teach you how to do it better. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I'm joined by Josh Trent, the founder of Wellness Force Media, host of the Wellness Force podcast, and creator of the BREATHE: Breath & Wellness Program. Josh has spent the past 19 years as a trainer, researcher and facilitator, discovering the physical and emotional intelligence we need to thrive in today's modern world. He's here with me to talk about how our breath affects our physical and mental well-being, and offer timely tips for using your breath to get through a hectic holiday season. Josh, welcome to Live Happy Now. [00:00:48] JT: Thank you for having me, Paula. [00:00:51] PF: We are talking about something that we think we all know about, which is breathing. But even though it's something we do from the time that we're born, I was surprised as an adult to find out how little I actually knew about breathing. So before we dive in and get our master class from you in and breath work, can you explain what it is? [00:01:12] JT: So breathing is a lot like meditation. But the difference between breathing and meditation is breath, work and breathing, it's this skill that you cultivate over time. But unlike meditation, really what breathwork is, is, it's an active form of clearing your mind and centering your body that is going to produce immediate feedback. And this is the key differentiator. So this is what lets go of stress and to calm the monkey mind is really important to literally change the way that your body responds or reacts to stress coming in. I like to say that breath work is the only autonomic or automatic lever that we can pull that actually can modulate our stress. [00:01:51] PF: And it's such an incredible tool, because we're using it whether we realize it or not, when we start rapid breathing in anxious situation. So we're kind of doing it in the dark side of the breathing. So we're using our breath regardless of whether or not we realize it, is that correct? [00:02:07] JT: Absolutely. The challenge that we all deal with is that most of us – And if you look at many of the PubMed studies and scientific research, most of us are breathing incorrectly. And I know for first audio, people might be like, “Wait, what do you mean I'm breathing wrong? I breathe all day long.” [00:02:22] PF: I've been doing it for years. [00:02:24] JT: Yeah, I'm breathing right now. But the key is, we are adaptive creatures. We are adaptive human beings. And so whether you're spiritual or scientific, you don't need a report card to know that when you do breathing and breath work properly, you feel different. You are more happy. You have less anxiety. You have less depression, right? Anxiety is a focus on the future. Depression, rumination on the past. So what brings us to the current moment doesn't mean that we're on a cliff, wearing a white robe, chanting. What brings us to the current moment is the way that we can modulate with our autonomic nervous system, and we can get into that, how our breath can help us modulate our stress and really melt away the stress, because stress is essentially energy. And emotion is energy in motion. So when we have energy that is stuck in the body, literally and figuratively, the best thing we can do is breathe. Because we can actually start to modulate and remove, let go have that stress without having to take a pill, without having to do something unhealthy. So it's a really wonderful tool that I personally have been using for the past seven years. And there is a deep, rich scientific body about the benefits of breathwork as well. [00:03:31] PF: Yeah. I want to dive into that. But I'd like to hear more about your journey as well. How did you discover this? What was it that drew you to it? [00:03:39] JT: You know, what drew me to the breath was my own anxiety. So I was actually born, and my mom struggled with manic bipolar. And so for anyone that's dealt with that personally or even familiarly, when you have a headquarters as a child that is not safe, or maybe vacillates, or changes, the challenge is to feel safe in your own body. And so breathwork is a very somatic practice. And when I found it, I was actually working with a guy named Mark Devine. He's an ex-Navy SEAL commander. And I was doing some breath work with a bunch of special operations people at a conference. And I could not imagine seeing this with so many tears as I had. I started crying. I didn't know what was going on. It was just like a tremendously surreal experience. And I later found out that our tissues literally store energy. And you can look at Bruce Lipton's work, or even Joe Dispenza’s work. Our issues are where we store – Really, they're stored in the tissues. Our issues are stored in the tissues. So when I was moving that chi, or that prana, that energy that we call here in the West, through breath, I actually was able to have a cathartic process in the breath, and I was hooked. That was 2015 or so. And since then, it's just been a deep dive for myself personally and for my global students as well. [00:04:53] PF: Yeah, you've done a tremendous job of building this up in such a short time, and you're such an excellent presenter of what it does. So let's get into that. Let's talk about and start with our physical state, and talk about what using our breath can do for our physical well-being. [00:05:09] JT: So one of the best ways that I describe this, maybe if somebody is just starting their breathwork practice. Your diaphragm – So we'll go to the physiology first. The benefits of breathwork, starting with the physical state, is that when it comes to well-being, we have a very ancient system, and it's called the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve attaches all the way from the back of the cranium, all the way down the spine, and it innervates around what's called our enteric nervous system. And also, it has nerve endings in our diaphragm. So the beauty of doing conscious connected breathing, which is what we teach in our BREATHE: Breath & Wellness Program, when you breathe properly, with the right muscles, the right technique and the right posture, you start to do what's called vagal toning. You tone your vagus nerve. The primary function of the vagus nerve – It has many functions, but one of its primary functions is to modulate our parasympathetic and our sympathetic branches of that autonomic or that automatic nervous system I was talking about. So whether you're a scientist or not, basically, there's two sides of this nervous system. One of them is fight and flight, one of them is rest and digest. So when we have a proper use of breathwork, through the diaphragm, we are literally physically pushing on those nerve endings that tone our vagus nerve, which allows us over time to have what's called more vagal tone. The higher we have vagal tone, the more adaptive we are, the more resilient we are as human beings, as men and women, to stress. And so that's just the primary function of breathwork. But the ancillary benefits are so beautiful. Not to mention just being in the current moment, which is the best place ever. But there are certain things that breathwork can do like increasing nitric oxide. Respiration, by the way, 70% of how we cleanse the body of toxins is through breath. The other 30% is bladder and bowels. So this nitric oxide stimulation, this also helps protect the cells from oxidative stress. Now, this is a type of stress that's oxidative for the reasons that our body ages faster when it appears in larger quantities. So reducing oxidative stress through breath holds. This is what has been shown to reduce this process, to literally slow the aging process. And then the last thing I'll mention is it's really freedom from the stress of the default mode network. The default mode network is a very ancient system that's also tied in to the amygdala. The amygdala communicates with that vagus nerve that I mentioned before. So when we're doing our conscious connected breathing, and we're pushing on those nerve endings, and we're doing our diaphragmatic breathing and our belly breathing, essentially, the default mode network gets turned down. The volume of that mental access in our brain gets turned down. Now the default mode network is it's a part of our brain, it's the prefrontal cortex, the posterior cingulate, and also the amygdala. This is what activates when you're trying to do a myopic task. So if anybody out there has ever felt like, “Gosh! I literally can't focus. I have brain fog. I can't seem to finish my report. Or I can't seem to focus at work.” Promise, from me, and 1000s of people that have done this breathwork for a program, it's the only way to really send to yourself without caffeine, without drugs, without all these things that really aren't always needed in the current moment. So those are some of the physiological benefits, the default mode network, the vagal toning. And really getting us here right now, which is where all the good things happen anyways. [00:08:36] PF: And what is the proper way to breathe? If someone's saying, “Okay, I'm in my car right now, and I'm breathing wrong.” And maybe they're feeling a little tense, or maybe they just know they're going into a meeting and they're going to feel tense. What is the proper way to breathe? How do we start this? [00:08:52] JT: So I'll give an analogy and then I'll go right to your question. The analogy is this, if anybody out there is parents – And, Paula, I don't know if you have children, or if you have maybe cousins, or nieces, or nephews at all. [00:09:03] PF: I have nieces and nephews. [00:09:04] JT: Great. So you know that when a child is very young, children are very happy. They haven't had a lot of life that is experienced for them to believe that they're not safe or that they're not happy. Look at how children breathe. The answers are always found in nature. When you have a child and that child is two years or less, they naturally breathe through their nose. Now why is that? Right? Why is it when a child breathes through their nose that they're happy? It's because that is how nature designed us to breathe. And I tested this, by the way. I have a five-month-old son. I plugged his nose really quickly and he started to choke. And it validated – Of course I let go after a second. [00:09:46] PF: Yeah, I’m assuming. [00:09:46] PF: I wasn't choking my son or anything? But I noticed that because it validated all the scientific literature that I had researched in creating the program and I thought, “Wow! If it's good enough for my child, it's good enough for me.” And when we breathe properly through our nose, everyone should be inhaling smoothly through their nose. And we can try this right now. If you just release your jaw, wherever you are – It's totally safe to do this while you're driving. We're not going to do a deep cathartic process. Wherever you are, roll your jaw around five to six times. So roll your jaw around five to six times and just release any pressure you feel in your jaw. We carry a lot of stress in our jaw. Roll your neck around a few times, keeping your eyes on the road, being safe. And just feel for a moment that all the stress you carried on your eyes, on your cheeks, on your jaw, and your neck and shoulders, just let that go. Take as much time as you need. And I want you to practice doing with me right now six, circular, conscious, connected breaths. Imagine there's a balloon behind your belly button. Every time you breathe in through your nose, I want you to fill a balloon behind your belly button. So let's just do one together now. Inhale through your nose, fill a balloon behind your belly button. And let it go. When you let it go, you obviously naturally let it go through your mouth. Let's do two more together. Watch your belly go out as you breathe in through your nose. Inhale, belly goes out. Exhale, belly falls. One more time. In through your nose, and breathe out. Now doing that six times without a stop at the top or bottom, that is called a conscious connected circular breath. When you breathe conscious and connected, and you fill your belly, like there's a balloon inside of it, you actually are pushing on those nerve endings that we talked about when it comes to the vagus nerve and vagal toning. So that is the number one way that we can all learn how to breathe. Now from there, that's the baseline, obviously. And there's lots of postural techniques, and training, and training the right muscles, and training the right posture, how you sit, how you stand. But the beginning of it all is actually identifying, “Am I a horizontal breather? Or am I a vertical breather?” Or this is the third, am I a reverse breather? So I learned this from Dr. Belisa Vranich. She is a very renowned specialist. She wrote Breathing for Warriors. I was one of her students. And in my journey, I found that a lot of the clients I would work with, they actually had, Paula, a reverse breathing pattern. Now the best way to know that is remember when I was guiding us there through those circular breaths, if you take a breath in, if you're breathing in through your nose, and your bellies going flat, you're a reverse breather. [00:12:29] PF: Oh, no. I'm a reverse breather, Josh. [00:12:30] JT: Okay. Well, then we would need to work on that if you're one of my students. So what we want to do is when we breathe in through our nose, as we inhale through our nose, we want our belly to fill. So inhaling through the nose, belly fills. Exhaling through the mouth, belly collapses. And it doesn't matter your state of health. Everyone can do this slow conscious connected breathing. So that's a great place to start. And then also, what we talked about in the program, is identifying if you're a vertical or a horizontal breather. Vertical breathers, they raise their shoulders when they breathe. They're breathing into their neck in their collarbones. They're literally bypassing. They're shutting off all the health benefits of doing that belly breath and really breathing through the diaphragm. So that's a really great starting place as far as how do we breathe correctly? And I'll tell you, I guarantee somebody said, “Hmm, I'm probably not breathing correctly right now.” So that's a good starting place. [00:13:22] PF: And how much time do we need to spend on this? Is it something we like to have a practice if we're going to do a breathwork practice? Because, honestly, let's face it, it's like, “Okay, if I can choose learning to breathe versus learning to meditate, this is way easier and faster.” So how much time do we need to invest in it? And is this something we work on daily throughout the day? How do we do this? [00:13:46] JT: I found that when I traveled the world, I went to Copenhagen for 30 days. I trained heavily for a month there. I went to Sedona. I went to Costa Rica. I went to Arizona. I mean, I traveled around. And I learned from all these masters, both ancient styles and contemporary. And what I found was, you can do breath in 3, 5, 7 or 10 minutes a day. That's all you really need to start getting these benefits. A lot of what has been popularized, Paula, is this cathartic breathing. And I'm sure maybe we've seen it online where there's people like breathing really heavy and their bodies are flailing around. That's fine. I think there's a time and a place for that. And I definitely recommend that people do it with a qualified practitioner. But when it comes to the other two phases of breath work, one of them is acute breathwork and the other one is meditative, or proactive. Acute breathwork can be done in one to three minutes. You do not need more than one or three minutes to do a very specific style of breathing. And there's many, many, many that we talked about in the program, because so many people deal with different varieties of stress, anxiety, stage fright, relationship, things like this. There's breathing for sleep. There's breathing for creativity. There's breathing to ground you. There's breathing to bring you up into your creative center in your brain. But everyone, everyone can do the acute style breathing in about one to three minutes. Obviously, that second phase is a little bit longer. Some of the practices that we have guided in the program are more around seven minutes. And then some of them lead up to actually 21 minutes. And I'll say this, if you have trouble meditating, the best and most powerful thing you can do is learn how to breathe properly for three minutes with the acute, and for maybe 7 to 10 minutes with the proactive, or the wellness breathing. That's the most powerful thing you can do for people that can't meditate is actually learn breath work first. Because as you learn the breath work, you'll be able to be more still, and you'll be more clear, and then you can meditate. [00:15:40] PF: And so we know it's doing great things for us physically. And we know in that moment, it releases that stress. What does it do for us long term? And how does that affect our emotional state? [00:15:52] JT: So the major impact of this is we'll go back to the default mode network. And there was actually a study done, and I can link this for the show notes here, and it's titled Default Mode Network, Meditation, and Age-Associated Brain Changes. What can we learn from the impact of mental training on well-being as a psychotherapeutic approach? And what they found was the default mode network showed a high level of simultaneous activation during rest, while their activity diminishes during the performance of goal-directed tasks. In other words, we were able to be in the present moment when we're consciously practicing this breath work over time. As you know, the default mode network is a scanning mechanism. And so if we are constantly in a state of stress, we're constantly scanning. We have elevated cortisol. We're in that sympathetic branch of the nervous system. And the default mode network is totally lighting up. So what we all have to realize is not only does the science show us that, obviously, increased presence over time will lower cortisol. It'll lower blood sugar. The number one thing that I've seen in my practice, and also in almost 20 years now in the wellness industry, it's not that people want to be losing weight, and letting go of weight both emotionally and physically so they can be happy. It's actually about gathering all the tools to be happy first, and then the weight, it just melts away. It literally goes away on its own. So to paraphrase, you don't lose weight to be happy. You first cultivate happiness to let go of weight. And that is the biggest long-term health benefit of breath work. It lets go of physical. And most importantly, it lets go of emotional weight. [00:17:31] PF: We've had so much focus on health in the last couple of years, people really being concerned about how to improve their health. And this is such a simple, but effective and meaningful way to improve your physical and your mental well-being. [00:17:46] JT: It really is. And honestly, it's tattooed on my body. It's “Se posso respirare, posso scegliere.” And what that means in Italian is, “If I can breathe, I can choose.” And I got that tattoo because when I was struggling with my anxiety back in 2015, 2016, I really needed something that didn't come in a pill. I wanted something more natural. And I was like, “Well, what's it going to be?” I too, went down the path of meditation, Vipassana meditation, sitting for 10 days in silence. And these are great things, but they're not accessible for everyone. Every human being, once they learn the fundamentals of how to sit, the muscles involved, the posture, the breathing techniques. Once you learn it, it's yours literally forever. And I guess that's the most powerful thing that comes from learning the breath, because the breath is your ally. It's your friend. Whenever we can breathe, we can choose. We can choose to show up loving. We can choose to show up happy. But what do we do, Paula, when we're stressed? We hold our breath. We go “Hmmp!” right? And we stopped breathing. So when we're not breathing, we can't choose anything, because all we're focused on is the feeling of stress inside of our body. [00:18:52] PF: Yeah. And I feel like a lot of us have been holding our breath for about two years now. [00:18:57] JT: Exactly. [00:18:58] PF: And that brings up another point, where we're in the middle of the holiday season. And there's, once again, a lot going on. And already, holidays were already stressful enough. This is kind of adding another layer. So your advice, people who are facing the holidays, whatever it is they're going through, what's your advice for them to be able to take a breath and get through this feeling better. [00:19:20] JT: Find a space in your home, where you live, on your land, in your car, somewhere. find a space that you create a little nook for yourself. It could be in your master bedroom, It could be in your kid’s room. Well, maybe not in your kid's room. But it's going to be somewhere where you know when you go there, that you can sit, you can be with yourself, and you can melt away what you're feeling. Because what you're feeling, and I'll say this from my own personal experience, you are not your anxiety, you are not your depression. You are experiencing anxiety. You are experiencing depression. But energy in motion is described as emotion. So if your experiencing an emotion of depression, or sadness, or anxiety, it's the pain teacher. It's you yourself. It's the lessons of life of a higher power, if you hold on to one, wanting to wake you up. Wanting to point you in the right direction of your own healing. So don't run from these feelings. The worst thing we can do, Paula, is to run from our feelings. The most powerful thing we can do is create a safe space in our home, create a little nook, and start to do this breath work once a week, then twice a week, then three times a week, then maybe seven days a week and multiple times depending on your level of stress. That is the number one thing you can do in this holiday season. I've done it myself, right? In-laws aren't always the easiest to deal with. Go into the next room, find your space, use a guided practice, like we haven't – There's many guided practices in the program. They are for different emotional states. One of them that I find is the number one that people write in about is the feeling of overwhelm. And overwhelm is actually you just needing a break. It's just you needing a rest? Well, if you don't have a lot of time, and maybe you only have 20 minutes or less, or maybe three minutes, you find that space in your home, you find that safe space, and you go there and you give yourself that gift of breathing properly. So you can start to increase your vagal tone, all these physiological benefits we talked about. And I guarantee you, when you're done, you will feel so much better. And you'll be able to live more happy. I mean, that's really what your show and what this movement is all about. [00:21:25] PF: I appreciate you sitting down and talking with me today. You have so many great resources we're going to direct our listeners to. You've got a fantastic website. As you mentioned, you've got your own podcast. And I know that we all have a lot that we can learn from you that we could never fit in a 30-minute podcast episode. So thank you for sharing this time with us and helping us start on this journey. [00:21:45] JT: Paula, it's been a pleasure. And I know we're at holidays. And for a lot of us right now, we've had a lot of changes. So I just want to offer this gift. If anyone is feeling inspired, just use a code, use a discount code. It's a holiday code. It's holiday25. And holiday25 will get you 25% off of the program at breathwork.io. So that's my gift to everyone. [00:22:07] PF: Thank you. [00:22:07] JT: I'm doing that because it's really important that we all use this tool. And I want to make it more applicable to everyone. I'll tell you, it's already inexpensive enough, but you're going to love the extra saving. So holiday25 at breathwork.io. [00:22:20] PF: That's terrific. And we'll put that code on our page as well. So if someone's in their car and it's like, “Oh, what was that?” They can just hit the landing page and use that. [00:22:30] JT: Wonderful. It's been a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you for the beautiful questions. And I trust that we all will breathe easier after this conversation. [00:22:38] PF: I know I will. Thank you so much. [00:22:40] JT: Thanks, Paula. [OUTRO] [00:22:45] PF: That was Josh Trent talking about how to use breath work to improve your physical and emotional well-being. If you'd like to learn more about Josh, listen to his podcast, get a free wellness guide, or learn more about his program, visit our website at live happy.com and click on the podcast link. And as we continue this holiday season, Live Happy wants to make your holiday shopping easy. Visit our store at livehappy.com and check out our new live happy beanies and hoodies, because giving happiness is always in style. We offer free shipping on orders of $75 and more. And if you use the code LIVEHAPPYNOW, you'll get 10% off your entire order. So check us out and start checking off that gift list. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all new episode. And until then, this is Paula Felps reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]
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