The Breather #18: It’s all connected.
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April 18th 2023
Hi fellow breather and somanaut,
I woke up to my breath 10 years ago.
It happened during a yoga class.
Suddenly, I realized “Holy moly, I have a breath!”
I know, quite the insight, ey 🤪
Until that day, I was taking breathing for granted.
Probably just like you and most people out there.
It’s just something we do to stay alive, right?
Well, let’s look at what keeps us going more closely.
The breath has 4 components:
an inhalation
an inner retention (breath hold)
an exhalation
an outer retention (breath hold)
The possibilities to work with these elements are endless, especially when we add on these 5 variables of the breath:
ratio / rhythm
frequency
volume
nose vs mouth
anatomy and muscles of respiration
Now, here is the cool thing:
Every little change you make to the components and variables has a different effect and impacts your nervous system in a slightly unique way.
It means that you truly have a powerful remote control in your hand.
One that is actually very complex and intricate.
With this device (aka your breath), you can influence your entire physiology and way of being:
Changing your breathing impacts your gland function and endocrine system.
This changes your organ function and blood chemistry.
Your blood chemistry impacts your emotional state.
Your emotional state impacts your brain function and thoughts, which vice verse impacts your emotional state.
It’s all connected, my friend.
This is why we say: how we breathe is how we think, feel and live.
Which means that breathwork is the most effective bottom-up modality there is.
One big part of the vision for the work that I do:
To get as many humans as possible to understand the basic principles of breathing and the nervous system.
Knowledge is a way to empower yourself:
Once you know how all the buttons of your remote control work, you have the power to change your life.
📚 CHECK THIS OUT 📚
Resources I highly recommend you check out:
👄 Mouth breathing, nutrition and dental health. Does mouth breathing change your face? Why are kids’ teeth decaying at the rates they are? Dr. Lin is one of the leading voices in dentistry, calling for changes to our nutrition and breathing in a bid to prevent against a wide variety of ill effects such as crooked teeth, stunted facial development and narrow airways.
🌀 Why grounded spirituality matters. A great discussion with Jeff Brown around meditation as medication, patriarchal spirituality and spiritual bypassing. “The more deeply grounded you are in your body and selfhood, the more fully you are here. The more fully you are here, the more spiritual your experience.”
🫀 Heart rate variability (HRV) measurement position: lying down, sitting or standing? Simply changing posture provides a challenge to the body, which needs to re-adjust in a number of ways, and therefore makes our HRV measurement potentially more sensitive to stressors, and therefore more useful. Marco Altini is my go-to source for all things HRV. This is also a good article if you think yours is too low.
🪑 If you sit for more than 6 hours a day, read this. Sitting is an important factor in nervous system dysregulation. Not kidding. Humans were meant to move but modern life doesn't promote that much these days. This article shows you effective ways to reverse the effects of sitting.
💨 12-minute daily hypopressives breathing practice. Hypopressives (stomach vacuums) are a great way to tap into the relationship between your pelvic floor and diaphragm. When regularly practiced, these exercises can help both with pelvic floor relaxation and with the symptoms of prolapse.
🌬 BREATHE WITH ME LIVE! 🌬
Join Breathwork Alchemy's next monthly powerful signature deep dive session:
Date: Sunday May 14th (we have to push the April session back a bit as I will be travelling)
Time: 4pm GMT London / 5pm CET Berlin / 11pm EST New York
Where: Online via Zoom / pay what you can
💨 LIVE Community Breathwork SESSIONS
Join my weekly “Breathwork + Somatics for Nervous System Regulation” sessions on Instagram:
Every Thursday at 6pm BST / 7pm CET / 1pm EST
On my instagram @breathwork.alchemy
You can also find some of the latest replays on my feed (all of them live in my foundations course)
[🪐 UPDATES FROM MY UNIVERSE]
🏄 I finally started surfing again after one year of healing my shoulder injury. It feels like my life is complete again!
🫁 I am working on updating my breathwork and nervous system foundations course. It's been more than a year since I released it and it's time to upgrade it with some cool resources, new guided breathwork sessions, somatic practices and a 30 day practice plan. I want it to be the best course out there for functional breathing and nervous system regulation.
🚙 We are driving up from Portugal to Germany in a week to teach the offline part of our breathwork teacher training aka. The Breath Lab Retreat.
🎓 Applications for our 9-month teacher training open on May 9th(🇩🇪🇨🇭🇦🇹)! Get on the waitlist here.
🙏 I'm incredibly grateful for life and my healthy body.
Going for my first longboard surf with Toni ;)
Leaving you with a little quote:
“The coping strategies that initially helped us survive as children over the years become rigid beliefs about who we are and what the world is like. Our beliefs about ourselves and the world, together with the physiological patterns associated with these beliefs, crystallize into a familiar sense of who we are. This is what we come to view as our identity.”
– Laurence Heller
Keep feeling, keep breathing, stay awesome!
#letsgetregulated
Conni 🐋
Founder of Breathwork Alchemy
PS:
You can always hit reply to my emails to get in touch with me or ask me any questions you might have.
When you're ready, here is how I can support you:
→ Breathwork + Nervous System Foundations Course:
Learn how to regulate and rewire your nervous system. Access more calm, energy and focus by using the power of the breath.
It will teach you how to properly and safely use the remote control (aka your breath) for your nervous system. Get it here.
Conni Biesalski - Somatic Coach | Breathwork & Meditation Teacher
Oxygen Advantage | Buteyko Method | Neurodynamic Breathwork
Somatic Experiencing©
Founder of Breathwork Alchemy & Co-Founder of Intesoma Breathwork Teacher Training
Regulate your nervous system, process your emotions, and come home to your body.
