Transcription
100% LSDs, psychedelics, mushrooms, you can produce the same non-ordinary states. We have a chemical factory in our brain and and it'll generate whatever chemicals we prompted to do. And so, yeah, absolutely. That's that's one of the beautiful things about the breath.
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There's the breath within the breath. You know, in the Jewish tradition, ruach, the breath within the breath. And in the east we talk about prana or qi or ki. So it's more than just air.
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There's life force. There's energy. The words inspiration, expiration, respiration. The root of that word is spirit. Of course, breathing is a spiritual practice and a process. What if the most powerful psychedelic isn't a substance, but your own breath?
In this episode, breath work master Dan Brulee reveals how conscious breathing can unlock altered states, heal trauma, and awaken a deeper connection to life, all without leaving your body. With over five decades of experience training Navy Seals, Olympic athletes, and spiritual leaders, Dan shares the simple science-backed techniques that shift your state in minutes. This is breath as medicine, breath as prayer, breath as portal. So take a deep inhale because what Dan shares may just change the way you live. And if it moves you, breathe it forward. Share, comment, or leave a review so others can find their way home to themselves. Enjoy.
Well, hello super amazing, beautiful souls wherever you are on this planet. Uh, we have another beautiful guest uh on the show today. We've got Dan Brule. I have to say with the French accent. Uh, welcome to the show.
>> Thank you, Katherine. Thank you.
>> So, the way that we love to start, Dan, is we always love to ask our guests, what inspired you to do what you do today?
>> Yes. Well, every day I'm reinspired. I've been I've been here in uh near Geneva for five days and you know a miracle a day you know watching people uh release trauma watch them wake awaken uh you know destress uh connect with their hearts um h it's just fantastic to be around when that kind of stuff is happening and um I was originally inspired as a little a little boy in kindergarten in Catholic school [clears throat] and the uh the priest came to visit our class on a Friday and he talked about the first book of the Bible, Genesis, and how God took the dust of the earth and formed the body of man and breathed into the nostrils of man the breath of life. I don't know. There was just something so exciting about that. I couldn't understand why everybody wasn't excited like what what God is breathing into us. What? And I think I got too animated. I just had vague memories of the the priest trying to push my shoulders down and put me back in my chair and the nun was tapping me on my head. I guess I got too animated, but it was a spark. And then I can't tell you how many times I got the wind knocked out of me growing up. I had several near drowning experiences. My first job was an X-ray technician. I was x-raying people's lungs. And um I was a deep sea diver in the military and practicing breath holding and mixing gases. And that first event when I was in I was an X-ray technician. Um I had taken a CPR course, cardopulmonary resuscitation. And within two weeks of when I took that course, I was up in the intensive care unit with a portable X-ray machine. And the guy that I went there, he flatlined. His heart stopped. He died. And um that beep beep began the beep. And so I took the pillow out from behind him. I stuck this big flat board underneath him and I pumped on his chest five times and I blew into him and he woke up and blinked. It's like what a miracle. And and the miracle of breath, you know. And every time I took a chest X-ray, I would tell a person, taking a deep breath, hold it, and then click, I take their picture. And the closer I watched them, I realized everyone was doing something different. I gave them the same simple instructions. Taking taking a deep breath, hold it. And everybody did something different. the muscles they used, the expression on their face, what they went through to accomplish the deep breath, what they even thought or felt was a deep breath. And it was as if the breathing, the breath itself began speaking to me. And I could see that in a person's relationship to their breath was an expression and a rel and a reflection of their relationship to their body, to the world, to life. And it just kept getting further and further deeper. Uh, one of my jobs in the military was training uh, survival special forces people. And so we push them to their limit. [clears throat] And I realized that when someone is pushed to their limit, they default dysfunction in one direction or the other. They either run around like a chicken with their head cut off yelling a bunch of stuff that doesn't help anyone, doing a bunch of things that doesn't help, or they just froze and they were like a zombie. And I realized that when I when I stressed them, they were the ones who either hyperventilated or they held their breath. And I thought, okay, here's the thing. When I get attached to a new team, I haven't trained with these guys. I don't know who they are and I'm going to find out the hard way. One of those guys I'm going to need to be a human straight jacket. I need to tell them to sit down, shut up. We're not all going to die. You know, get control of yourself. And he was the one who hyperventilated when we stress them. And the other was a zombie. I need to kick him in the butt. Make them do something. You get a blanket. You get some water. And I had to get them moving. And so it they revealed to me which way they would go into dysfunction by how they breathed. And my whole life that's what I've been doing. I read breathing like other people read palms or handwriting or posture, body language. I read the breath and just fascinating to me. And there are there are breathing patterns that well, every every psychological state, every emotional state, every physiological state has a corresponding breathing pattern. And we know this. The the way you breathe when you're afraid and upset or angry is different than how you breathe when you're relaxed and peaceful and calm. And so there are details to that. And so every time our state changes, our breathing pattern changes. And the magic is it's a two-way street. If I change my breathing pattern, I change my state. And there are breathing patterns [clears throat] associated with very high ecstatic states and extraordinary abilities. And there are breathing patterns associated with profound states of bliss and peace. And so I'm I'm getting people to breathe as a way to get control of their energy, upregulate, downregulate, to connect at the heart, um, to to show up more fully, to be more human, and to awaken in us uh some higher uh capacities, let's say.
>> I love that.
>> Who wouldn't want to do that every day? Absolutely. Absolutely. But it's such an unconscious act, right? Breathing is something we take for granted. We're not really consciously aware of it until someone like you makes us consciously aware of it.
>> Or until they have a problem with it. We don't give anything. Well, the western culture, we don't give anything attention until we have to. And um, yeah, that's exactly right. And breathing is the only system in the body that's completely automatic and it's totally under our control. That's that is not an accident of nature. That's not a coincidence. That's an opportunity. That's an invitation to take part in our own nature and our own evolution.
>> Yeah. But you know when as you were saying, I think it's also it's like it's almost like uh you what you were describing there's not just a physical element there's a spiritual element to it right if you get if you are taught in a way that you can breathe to elevate the level of consciousness that you speak about um I mean people go and do awaska trips to do things like that you're saying that you could do with the breath.
>> [snorts] Oh, 100% LSDs, psychedelics, mushrooms, you can produce the same non-ordinary states. We have a chemical factory in our brain and and it'll generate whatever chemicals we prompted to do. And [clears throat] so, yeah, absolutely. That's that's one of the beautiful things about the breath is um [clears throat] that there's there's the breath within the breath. You know, in the Jewish tradition, the breath within the breath. And in the east we talk about prana or qi or ki. So it's more than just air. There's life force. There's energy. The words inspiration, expiration, respiration. The root of that word is spirit. Duh. [laughter] Of course breathing is a spiritual practice and a process. Yeah.
>> Oh, yeah. And yeah. Wow. There's so much I could go where we could go with this. So just just go back what you were saying. So you can actually by meeting someone by understanding or just watching their breath you can identify what kind of individual you're dealing with just by the way they're breathing.
>> Yeah. And if you just give them if I ask them to do a couple of things with their breath then it can really come to the surface you know really be I have a principle I call the effort to energy ratio. So we get a certain amount of energy from every breath we take. And how much energy is it costing you to breathe? And some people as soon as they start trying to breathe, it's they're using up so much energy that there's no energy left to do the healing or the growth. And so one of the principles or the techniques I use is I tell people, imagine how would you be running? How would you be breathing if you were running up a hill as fast as you can? You wouldn't even have to think about breathing. Your body would make you breathe because of the demand for energy. And so the problem is that's not a problem. It's just a fact. All that energy you would brea, you know, you're breathing deep powerful breaths because your body needs that energy to run. Well, if you were to lay down and relax completely and make yourself breathe that way, your body would try to stop you. It goes, "Why are you I don't need all this breathing. I'm just laying here relaxing. Leave me alone." And the chemistry will try to dominate your breathing because there's no demand for energy. But if you insist on giving the body energy and the muscles don't need it, [clears throat] that energy has to go somewhere. It's got to do something. It does awakening. It does healing. It does growth. It purges stuff that's trapped in our nervous system. It uh it it pumps pain and tension out of our body. The breath now takes on another role that normally it wouldn't take uh because our body sort of trumps everything. you know our if you need breath for survival you don't have time to be spiritual or you know it's live breathe or die and when I first started teaching this the form once I got out of the military the form of it was called rebirthing developed by Leonard or really beautiful and the whole one of the principles of that was that birth was such a traumatic event you know you went from the womb to the world. That's like a death. You know, the world, you know, comes to death and then you struggle. You get through the birth canal and and you come out under bright lights. You've been in the dark for nine months and now you come out under bright hospital lights. Or you've been in the womb where the temperature is a couple of degrees above body temperature. It's warmer in the womb than the rest of the body. And now you come out into an air conditioned hospital room and you're wet. [laughter] Well, of course your system goes into shock and a lot of these systems in our body, digestive and endocrine and all that stuff. All those systems come online at the same time. And so birth is a shocking traumatic [clears throat] event and it and it leaves us with a certain kind of stress or tension. Most people at the time when I was learning this, there was a book out, you know, is there life after death? And my question was, is there life after birth? Did you manage the birth process with all of your capacities intact? Or did you fry some circuits? Did you short circuit? Did the trauma block sensitivity? And that first breath we took, it was like fire. and and the first breath usually was taken because someone slapped you or shook you or they wrenched your spine straight after you've been curled up for nine months. And so uh we were left with with this these ideas that the world is a dangerous place and life is about struggle and it hurts to be alive and and that inhibits us through life and we repeat those patterns and different things trigger that original trauma until you breathe it out of your system and you and that's why it was called rebirththing. people felt like they were in a new body. When you pump that primal trauma out of your system, you your you're more sensitive. Your antenna work better. You you connect more deeply. And at the same time that rebirththing came out, Arthur Janghoff, who was famous for primal therapy, primal screen, they both kind of developed at the same time. And at the same time, there was a French obstitrician, Frederick Laboet, whose book was called Birth Without Violence. And he realized, wait a minute, babies don't need bright lights. Let's make the room warm. Let's make people quiet, no harsh, no sounds, you know, no loud noises. And any nervous people, get them out of the room. And he kept a tub of warm water on the side of the mother. And when the baby was born, [clears throat] they put the baby in warm water before they even cut the umbilical cord. And so those babies uh laboyet babies and water babies maybe people have heard of the underwater birth movement a lot of babies being born in Australia I think where you're from and around the world women giving birth to the baby in a warm in a hot tub and the baby comes out and the cord is still connected and the baby swims around it doesn't need to breathe it's getting the energy from the cord and when the baby is ready to breathe and they come up as soon as air hits the face, it triggers the breathing mechanism. And it's a very natural transition from the womb to the world, much less traumatic. And so rebirthing was meant to heal that that original trauma, to recover from that original trauma. And we realized that every other trauma was sort of a repeat of that original trauma until you cleared it from your system. So that's where we started with breath work or for me that's where I started is like what's the the deepest trauma that we have and have you ever really recovered from it and if you could recover from it how would life be [laughter] that is so fascinating and it's so true if I go back I mean I'm just I'm talking about I'm just thinking about when I I gave birth to my son as you were saying that so true and I have seen a lot more water births as you're speaking about It it's interesting what you were saying. So we come into this world breathing. We leave this world with the breath, right? So it's there's that whole transition. But I didn't think about the trauma side of coming in with the first breath.
>> Yeah.
>> So, yeah, what do you do when you when you're in pain? You hold your breath. You make yourself hard. It's try and protect yourself from the pain. And most people have been doing that since the day they were born. and they don't even realize it because it's subtle. And like any tension, if it's there all the time, you stop noticing it. And so we're we're living with this trauma in our body, it's like boiling a frog. It's so gradual, so subtle, it doesn't register. But it's it's preventing us from being fully human. hand is preventing us from expressing let's say our divine potential. The more subtle aspects of our being uh aren't being felt, aren't being sensed, aren't being awakened uh because we're sort of numb. We numbed ourselves in a way to cope with life. And um and you know the body doesn't understand the difference between intense pain and intense pleasure. Within a certain zone, yeah, this feels good. This hurts. But when you get outside of that zone, the only thing that our system experiences is intensity. And so joy is intense. Life is intense. Peace is intense. And so if you're if you're afraid of intensity, you can't experience the fullness of life. And so in our effort to block intense pain, we're also blocking intense joy. And we never know it. We don't realize it until we learn to relax into intensity. And that's one of the really beautiful things about breath work. It gives you a way to navigate intense situations in a way that's that's better than what most people do. You know, there there's [clears throat] responding to very primal survival sort of mechanisms and breathing allows us to uplevel those coping mechanisms. For example, going unconscious. If you're a if you're experiencing something you can't handle, you pass out. You go unconscious. You can't process it. And so what happens if you were to experience intense joy? You just you couldn't handle it. So breathing teaches us to [clears throat] handle more energy, to contain more energy, and to begin to sense and work with more subtle energy.
>> So what is the right way to breathe? because there's so many different breathing techniques. Now I'm hearing about, you know, my son was talking about taping your mouth to sleep at night. There's this thing you can put on your nose. And I was like, I could not sleep with a tape across my mouth. But you know, he was just saying you have a deeper sleep, you have a better sleep. So, and there's different breathing techniques. So, what is the right way to breathe?
>> Well, you know, there are many there are so many techniques out there. ancient ones from the Dowist tradition, Buddhist tradition, Confucious, martial arts, yoga, you know, the east. It's a [clears throat] science in the east. Well, what I try to teach, I teach a lot of different breathing techniques. If you want to calm yourself down, you practice one certain breathing technique. You want to wake yourself up, you practice another one. You want to balance your nervous system, you balance your breathing. Um, you want to deal with pain, you breathe a certain way. you want to have better sex, you breathe a different way. So there are so many different breathing techniques out there. And so I think what's important is to teach fundamentals. What do all and there are so many different styles and schools of breath work now, you know, and they and they put their own name on it and um and none of it is new. These are ancient things that people rediscover or they put a little twist onto it. But it but these are ancient things and so principles I think are more important to teach. If there are certain fundamental principles then you can combine those principles in different ways and get creative. So um so that's what I try to there are there are certain fundamentals of breathing no matter what breathing exercise it is what technique who's teaching it what do you call it there are certain basic fundamentals and if you master those now you can do things you know you can put things together you can improvise you you have a lot of tools you know which one to use when to apply for what you want to shave two strokes folks off your golf game, I can help you breathe to do that. You want to get rid of headaches, anyone can learn to do that. You want to do deal something with your asthma, there were breathing techniques for that. You want to see God, there are breathing exercises for that. And this mouth taping you mentioned, that originally comes from Bouteco, a Russian guy who taught breathing for asthma and Patrick Mchuan and other people. Bouteco meth is very popular in Australia and mouth taping is important. I have an interview uh on Saturday this coming Saturday with two doctors who are writing a book about uh myofacial development and mouth breathing. If you if a baby is a mouth breather, the shape of their face as it develops is different. Their teeth and it has a ripple effect throughout their entire system. So nose breathing is really important. If you are an unconscious mouth breather, you're snoring at night, you're suffering from sleep apneoa, and you're not making use of what nature provided you to purify the air, to condition the air, to produce nitric oi oxide, uh, you know, antibacterial, antifungal, and the then the breath isn't serving your brain. is just feeding the body. And so there is special tape for taping your mouth closed. It's just a little piece. You put it on. If you want, you can open your lips, but it's enough of a little subtle cue that generally most people, it helps them not to breathe through their mouth when they're sleeping. So, it's useful.
>> Yeah. And [laughter]
>> it's interesting you talked about the two doctors cuz I just heard uh that just the other day that depending on how you breathe can actually uh alter the shape of your face, your jawline, everything.
>> Oh, hell yeah. It's profound because there's a position where the tongue when you're at rest and your mouth is closed, your tongue should be stuck to the roof of your mouth and you should be breathing through your nose. And if you don't do that, everything just starts to get out of out of alignment with nature. And um uh and and you know, imagine if suddenly you couldn't see how much stress that would put on the body because you you need to see to survive. Well, we forget that the sense of smell is even more primal than sight. An infant recognizes its mother by smell before the sight. And it's and so if your nose is blocked, imagine the stress that creates in your in your nervous system. A survival door, a window, a door to survival is now blocked and locked. And you don't even notice that profound stress because it's it's happening in your lizard brain. It's happening in your lyic system. and you're living up here in your neoortex. And so breathing breathing is controlled [clears throat] by the most ancient part of our brain, the lizard brain, the crocodile brain, the frog brain. And it also monitors every breath you take. And so if I go through the day breathing like this, [snorts] like gasping for breath, rushing my inhale, that sends an emergency signal to my brain. Be careful. Watch out. Right. And so without realizing it, certain breathing behaviors, habits, [clears throat] breathing patterns are actually producing anxiety, creating stress, triggering fear just because of our unconscious breathing patterns. And so if I go through the day breathing like this, [sighs]
>> [sighs]
>> I'm sending a very different message to that lizard brain. It goes, "Whoa, I must feel very good. I must be very safe. Everything must be okay." And so you are already tricking your nervous system with unconscious breathing patterns and you don't know it. Putting a key in a door and you hold your breath. Trying to remember something, you hold your breath. Getting up from a chair and you hold your breath, you're sending an emergency signal to your brain every time you hold your breath, whether you're conscious of it or not. Because that ancient part of us, you know, we're like an antelope chomping on the grass in the Serengeti plains and there's a noise in the bushes. um that moment of breath holding that's that's an emergency reaction. And so if you're doing that unconsciously throughout the day, you're keeping your system in a stress state. And so you need to breathe consciously. And here's one of the most interesting latest I try to follow every breathing study and report. It's hard because there's so much of it now. But Stanford University, the Uberman lab at Stanford University published the results of their study on the sigh, a sigh of relief. And they call it cyclical sighing. One sigh after another, like cycle through a sigh again and again. Five minutes has more benefits than any meditation technique they've ex explored and any stress or coping technique out there. Five minutes of conscious physiological size more powerful more beneficial than any other stress and coping technique or yeah so duh that's how powerful the breath is if I abort my exhale for example for example, I don't allow myself to exhale completely I don't allow that exhale completely ah Ah, [sighs] relaxation is in the exhalation. And so if I rush into the next inhale before I've really let my body complete and enjoy that exhale, and that's our lifestyle. Everything's hectic. We're going, we can't stop. And we need to stop. [snorts] Take your time on the inhale. Imagine something beautiful. your favorite fragrance, your favorite person, the most beautiful place, the most beautiful moment of your life. Generate some pleasurable mental event while you're breathing in. And then when you breathe out, relax your jaw, relax your neck, relax your shoulders. And now you're you're training your system to stay calm, to be energized, and you're in a beautiful state just by breathing consciously and putting a certain quality into your breath. Whatever quality is in your breathing, that's going to be reflected in the quality of your thoughts. that's going to be reflected in the quality of your body, the feelings and sensations that you have, your chemistry. And so conscious breathing, it's about as a powerful spiritual awakening tool and a self-regulating tool at our disposal. And most people aren't using it at all. They're oblivious to it.
>> Yeah, we know. I'm having a bit of a giggle cuz I'm I'm just imagining myself sitting in the office sign for about five minutes going [sighs and gasps] doing that for five minutes. My team will be going, "What is she doing in there?" [laughter]
>> Exactly. Yes. Yeah. Well, look at yawning. Yawning is a very natural reflex and neuroscientists cannot find any single activity that lights up more parts of the brain that has more neurological benefits, physiological, emotional, psychological benefits than a simple yawn. And I think it was Midwestern University about 20 years ago in United States did a study on the sigh and they found that the average person uh experiences a physiological sigh about 12 times an hour or about every five minutes whether you like it or not your body this inhale that's twice as big as normal happens and that's what a sigh is. A sigh is an inhale that's twice as big as usual. And that double-sized inhale, that extra stretch is what produces what we experience as a sigh. [sighs] And it's so important that nature made us do it. Nature couldn't trust us to remember to take some deep breaths now and then. And so uh and what what I teach is and most people have experienced that if you're just enjoying and all of a sudden you notice this big breath comes out of nowhere. You didn't do it. You didn't think about it. You didn't make it happen. Nature made you do it. And so the way the medical people understand it is that we have these alvoli, little tiny microscopic air sacks out at the ends of the branches of the bronchial tree. You know, you look at the the the respiratory system, it looks like an upside down tree. You got a main trunk, two main branches, smaller branches, smaller and smaller, diffuses everywhere in the lungs. And at the end of those tiny branches, you have these uh things called alvuli. They're microscopic air sacks. And under a microscope, they look like clusters of grapes. And this is where the exchange of gases takes place. And so if you don't hyperinflate those alvoli from time to time, you're going to lose your respiratory capacity. And so nature couldn't trust us to take a deep breath. What you don't use, you lose. And so nature makes us take a deep breath about every five minutes. And so I say double down on nature. The next time that happens, do it again consciously. In fact, don't even wait. you have an important phone call, [sighs] take a few big breaths after you get through with an uncomfortable conversation. [sighs and gasps] Take a few breaths. And when I was in the military, um, that's two things that we that I learned to watch [clears throat] for and to train guys to be on guard about. One of them is this ability to take a long pleasurable inhale and ah [sighs] a nice releasing sigh of relief. When a person is in a panic, they can't do that. When they're under stress, they can't do that. And it's a chicken or an egg thing. If you can do that, you can't be in panic. And when you're in panic, you can't do it. So, and so I we were training people, Air Force pilots, deep sea divers, people in high stakes life and death situations. They're trained to breathe. Lives are at stake. Millions of dollars. If you can't regulate your energy, your heart rate goes up to 180 beats a minute. You could be the best marksman in the world, but you can't even find the trigger of your gun. And um and if you're not relaxing, you can't move gracefully and and and you're sort of dominated by this pain and panic in the system. And what do you do in that moment? You you don't reach for your weapon. You don't reach for your radio. You can't call your mother. you get a handle on your breath and you bring your system back into balance, back into a a a performance state. But most people aren't trained to do this even though we have all have our high stakes, you know, events, an important conversation with our teenage child, a presentation at work, an appointment at the dentist. And the better you are at breathing and relaxing, the easier you navigate to manage all those things.
>> Wow. I've got a couple of things that just bubbled up. So once when you were talking about breathing about the the tongue on the pallet, I remember um one of my mentors uh master Chaokui, he's now passed away. He used to ask us to meditate having the tongue on the pallet to connect with the pineal gland before meditation. So as you were saying that I just remembered him saying that which I was like oh I haven't thought about that for years years and years and years.
>> Yes. And it also that place where the tongue naturally finds it's it's an electrical point there and it completes an electric cycle. So like Montacia who taught microcosmic orbit um uh there's a energy circuit and in acupuncture there's a main two main channels the do and the ren channel well where that cycle meets is that place you're talking about and in yoga they tell that when you're doing these breathing exercises you put your tongue on the roof of your mouth but where exactly do you put it and so if somebody reads that oh Yeah, I need to put my tongue on the roof of my mouth. You're like somebody in the blind. You're just like hoping you hit the dart board with your eyes closed. You got to wait until you become sensitive to energy and then the tongue finds that place by itself. When you relax, nature tells you where to put that tongue. Right? So, um that's one of the things about breathing is you learn to become more sensitive to subtle energy. and and then all the they're little subtle things, but they're very important. And so for someone who isn't doing really deep subtle energy work, none of this stuff even matters. You know, you're you're if you're a coal miner, you're not worried about a little dust. You don't care about scraping yourself when you rub against the wall. You know, you're in and so that's another good analogy. You remember in the old days they used to take a canary, a parakeet down into the mine with them because the bird was so sensitive and there are poison gases, odless, tasteless gases that will kill you down there. And miners were dying from these poison gases until they started taking a canary into the coal mine. and they keep an eye on that bird and the bird is so sensitive if the bird knocks peels over you get the heck out of there. Breathing is the canary in the coal mine for us. It's the very first thing to go out of balance when anything else in our system goes out of balance. And so if more sensitive you are to your breath, the more aware you are of your breathing, you can stay ahead of problems. And so this ability to uh breathe energy [clears throat] and not just air. Anybody can huff and puff and breathe air. [clears throat] But can you breathe the prana? Can you breathe the chi? Are you sensitive to that energy? And breathing awakens in us an ability to get sensitive to this subtle energy and you can prevent a lot of problems. Here's something. Since the day you were born, your breathing has been like a pendulum swinging from the left nostril to the right nostril. And anybody listening right now, if they check and breathe in and out, you're going to find one of your nostrils is more constricted and the other is more open. This is a bio-ythm since the day you were born. You can set your watch by it. And this is the first rhythm to go out of balance when anything else goes out of balance. There's an entire system of yoga based on this suara yoga based on the left and right nostril dominance. Right nostril open, left brain, left nostril, right brain. And so these yogis plan their whole day when to do a math problem, when to chop vegetables, when to listen to music, when to plant seeds, and they and they they plan their whole day around this bio-ythm. You're trying to do math when your right brain is active. Not a good time. And so they they have methods and techniques for controlling this p this rhythm. And there's a certain time when the nostrils are equal. And in yoga, they have this and pingali, these two uh energy channels that wind around the spine. And then there's a central channel, sushima channel. And when that channel is open, it's because both of your nostrils are equally open. And that's when you have certain abilities. That's when you do certain meditations. That's when certain capacities are more easily accessed. And so I was a fanatic about this. I was a suary yogi for about 18 months. I drove my family, my friends crazy because I carried a little crescent mirror in my pocket and a little notebook. And every five or 10 minutes, I [clears throat] take out this mirror. [snorts] I breathe onto it and you see these two clouds. And you could see one cloud is big, one cloud is small. It has this shape. And and I would draw in my notebook the size and the shape of the clouds. And where was I? What was I doing? How did I feel? What was happening around me? And you start to make connections. And you realize that, and I don't I don't I'm not encouraging everyone to be a fanatic like I am, but some of these things can really awaken you to some important stuff. You get up in the morning, you sit on the edge of your bed, and just take a few minutes to breathe. Be aware of your breathing, sense your breathing, and and compare that to the state you're in. And some days we get up in the morning and wow, we are ready to go. We're clear. We're g and other times like I can't get going. Check your breathing. You woke up when your breathing was in a certain phase and then you realize, okay, I'm just going to wait 10 or 15 minutes before I have my coffee or get off onto my emails or whatever and I'm going to let my system kind of, you know, let find a good state and that's where conscious breathing comes in. So, I teach two things. I teach breath awareness. Be aware. How are you breathing? What does it feel like? What moves? What where does the breath go? That's passive. You don't even have to breathe in any certain way. You're just becoming more intimate with your breath, with life. And then there's conscious breathing. These are the yin and yang aspects, active and passive. So conscious breathing is where you give your breathing a certain rhythm, a certain quality, a certain pattern. You breathe with a certain intention. You're doing the breathing. So we have being and we have doing. The breath is breathing us and we are breathing the breath. It's the cosmic dance. It's the dance of life being breathed and doing the breathing allowing the body to breathe itself and you breathing the body. And you're gonna find that the habits and patterns of your breathing, they are not, let's say, optimal. Um, if your breathing was optimal, you'd be a yogi master, you'd be a mystic, you'd be a saint, you'd be a oneenter, you know. Um, only rare there's that 1%. And and that pyramid 1% 5% the top 20 the bottom 80 that pyramid shows up everywhere. Finance, medicine, music, entertainment, engineering, there's a there's a and many of people are in the 1% of the financial world. And when I was an X-ray technician, I met an orthopedic surgeon. This is in 1969. and hip nailings, putting a pin in a broken hip. It was new. And this guy worked for the company who manufactured those hip pins. And he was traveling around the US training other doctors in this surgery. And when I first met him, he was a 1enter. He was if there was 1% of the doctors in the world were masters at this surgery. He was the master of the universe when it came to this particular world. And when I first met him, he was my the first word that came to me was elegant. He he had elegant and he had this grace and he had a genuine charisma and he was he was aware of details and and I could just in in my interaction because I was the X-ray technician. When they put a pin in in the hip, I would go up there to the surgery room and take an X-ray so they check the position of the pin. And so I got to be around this guy and he had a palpable sense of confidence, of elegance, of grace. And when I looked at his breathing, that's exactly how he was breathing. And I realized, oh my god, if you're in the 1%, whether it's in finance or music, entertainment, medicine, do you breathe better than the average person? Are you more aware of your breath than the average person? Do you turn to your breathing in moments when it wouldn't occur to the average person? I have found zero exceptions to that. I've met presidents. I've met celebrities. I've met the richest people in the world. I've met the the most profound yogis. There are no exceptions. They do. The breath is one of the keys to performance. Take a tennis player or a golfer. If you're in the top 10 tennis players of the world, your skills are so close, you're all at that elite level. And so on any given day, anyone who has even a little advantage, they take the day. They win the day. And so that subtle thing, breathing is part of that subtle thing that gives us that little edge to come out first, you know, and and I found that in athletes. I found it everywhere. And and there was a time when I thought I met this guy uh Risby. He's a hedge fund manager in Palm Beach, billionaire, ultra billionaire, you know, 1enter. and my book had just come out. And so, um, my publicist said, "Hey, I got this guy. He's having a party. He hired the Gypsy Allstars to come and perform at his private party, you know, a million dollar party. I mean, who has a million dollars to spend on a party once a month, you know, and so I was invited. I had some books. I was giving books out." And I got a chance to talk to him and I asked him, I said, "Hey, do you you ever do any breathing?" "No." He says, "I don't." I said, "You don't practice any kind of breathing?" "No, no, no." I said, "You don't you don't like manage your breath when you're I don't think about that, Dan. I have I don't He goes, oh, wait, wait, wait a He says, "No, actually, when I'm trying to sleep at night and if I'm something's going around, I got to deal, it's going in my head and I can't sleep, I take a long inhale. I give myself this sigh of relief." Tada. Yes, I knew it. I knew it. And they said, "Wait, there's something else." He said, "My wife and I noticed that when one of us yawns, the other one yawns. So, we actually play this yawning game together. That's breath work. [laughter] So there are no exceptions.
>> That is so cool. That is
>> Yeah.
>> Amazing. But so with So you're saying that if we then become more conscious because there's this real I'm looking at the conscious and unconscious side of the breath. It's like there's there's it's almost like the breath is the bridge between the conscious and the unconscious.
>> Exactly.
>> Yeah. So, so it is important for us to be more aware of our breath as in consciously breathing every day at least five minutes a day.
>> Oh, minimum. Yes.
>> minimum.
>> Exactly. Yeah. And [sighs and gasps] see that that makes me want to breathe. Is the breath connects the mind to the body. You said it. It is literally the bridge between the mind and the body. It's the bridge between the subconscious mind and the conscious mind. It's the bridge between our conscious mind and the divine mind. And the breath connects everything. The breath connects me to the world. When we are breathing, we are taking in energy and information from the world. And when we breathe out, we are pouring ourselves out into the world. The breath connects me to my heart. It connects my heart to other hearts. It connects us to each other. We are all sucking off the same bubble of air on this planet. Some of the air that's in your body right now was in the Buddha's body 2500 years ago. some of the actual molecules of air that circulated in the body of Jesus, Caesar, you know, go the great saints, the literally some of those molecules of air are now circulating in our body. And the breath that's in you now was in the dog outside yesterday. And the breath that's in you now is going to be in the bird flying over. We are all sucking off the same bubble of air. and it connects us. And that's a spiritual principle. Oh, we're all connected. We're all one. Yeah. It's not just a pretty spiritual idea. It's a fact in reality. And it's scary because you're in a crowded room with a bunch of people. And whether you like it or not, air that was in every cell of their body, you can't get more intimate than that, is now touching every cell in your body. And so we need to kind of like rethink some things and co interesting what CO did social distancing masking stay away from me and all the respiratory problems that happened with CO now I'm afraid to breathe because I'm going to catch something and and a lot of breathing conscious breathing and breath work became very popular during COVID because even doctors and everyone one was recommending it. There was a it was a crisis, right? And so it had some some benefit to co, you know, um it it made people aware of their breathing and uh and it got them practicing breathing exercises, but why wait until you have an illness before you do something? Why not do it before you have an illness? Why wait until you have a crisis? It's like, "Yeah, I'm gonna quit smoking. Yeah, I'm gonna quit smoking." And you meet the person a year later. "Yeah, I'm gonna quit smoking." But then they go to the doctor. The doctor says, "You have cancer." Boom. They quit smoking that day. It's like desperation is a great motivator. If you're desperate, you're going to make the changes you need to make because you have no choice. But what about inspiration as a motivator? What if you have the most amazing, beautiful experience of your life? That's going to motivate you to do more of whatever it was that just gave you that experience. And that's what I love about breath work. I guide people into breathing patterns that trigger blissful states, ecstatic states. And when you get through, you don't need discipline. You don't need proof. You want more. you want more of that and you're motivated by inspiration instead of desperation.
>> I'm so inspired just by listening to you and I I've I've had that desperation what you're talking about. I've had panic attacks so I know when you were talking about being constricted not being able to breathe. Uh it is it's like your breath is cut right at the heart center and it's very shallow your breathing and then you go because you can't deep you you can't breathe deeply.
into the belly. You do go into this state of panic. It's like I can't breathe, you know? And but it's all, and when I think about the air, it's constantly going in because I remember I was, um, I used to do a lot of running and my mentor used to say to me, "Breathe out externally more as you're breathing." So it was in through the nose and in through the nose. My, it was a game changer for my running. I cannot tell you. I was able to do half marathons. I, it was amazing.
So breathwork is, is, is, is not just a, it's not just a thing like it's kind, it's not a fad because everyone's doing breathwork now. It's essential for health, like you're saying.
>> Yep. And that's what I, I was doing breathwork before it was a thing, you know, and, uh, and I'm happy that everybody's jumping on the bandwagon these days, but some people just, I used to be able to say, "I've never met a breathworker that I didn't like." That's getting a little hard to say. I've still never met a breathing exercise or technique that I didn't like. Um, but some people just aren't suited for this work. Some people are just, they're compassionate for the cash in it. You know, they're, they found a little thing and they're influential. They don't, they learned one thing and now they think they're an expert and they're out there with a 100,000 followers on TikTok and they're just putting out, you know.
[laughter]
>> So true. So true. And doing a lot of trauma work. I know. I'm conscious of your time as well. I am conscious of time. So, uh, we'll definitely have to come get you back on the show because there's so many questions that I have to ask you, but I'm also conscious of your time. I agree with you. I agree. So, Dan, because of your time, uh, constraint as well, because I know you've got other things to do. Uh, we'd love to wrap up the show with three shiny golden nuggets. So, what would be those three practical exercises that you would like to leave for our, our audience today?
>> Yes. So, as it happens, I have a formula for transformation. And the first part of the formula is wake up, con, awareness, the consciousness factor. The second part of the formula is relaxation, the release factor. And the third part, in the ingredient, the third ingredient is breathing. It's the energy factor. So what I like to give people is, uh, three exercises. One to, to become more conscious, more mindful, a mindfulness practice. The other is to learn to breathe in a way to relax. And the third is how to generate energy or access energy. Right?
So first of all, breath awareness. And, and so if you close your eyes and I ask you this question, how do you know that you're breathing? What are the feelings and sensations? What moves when you breathe? What does it actually feel like when the air comes in and the air goes out? You don't have to breathe in any special way. You put your attention at the tip of your nose and bring all your attention, all your energy to the tip of your nose. And as you breathe in and out, what are the details? You might notice the air is a little cooler coming in, a little warmer going out. What else can you notice? You're looking for details that you never observed before.
And then bring your attention from the tip of your nose deeper into your nasal passages. Let's say around the bridge of your nose. And bring your attention there and sense the breath from deeper into your nasal passages. And then bring your attention to your sinuses and your skull. And maybe at this point, you start to recognize that breathing, there's a light aspect to breathing. There's a sparkling. There's a, there's a lightness there. And when the breath goes through the sinuses, there are turbinates that make the air spiral. And most people don't pay attention to their sinuses until they're blocked. So when you breathe, see if you can sense the breath. Meditate on the feelings of the breath. Tip of the nose, bridge of the nose, skull, and sinuses.
And then bring your attention to your throat and sense the air as it passes through your throat. Is there a sound there? In yoga, they do this Ujjayi breath where you deliberately create a little constriction in your throat, like that Darth Vader sound, but just sensing the breath from your throat. And then come back around tip of the nose, breathers and nose, sinuses and skull and throat and create a little wheel of breath and awareness. And then pick up the breath under your collarbones and notice the movement. And then notice the breath around your heart in the center of your chest. How much spaciousness there is there. And notice the expansion and the relaxation. And then follow the breath all the way into your belly. And notice your belly moving. Your belly pops out when you breathe in. The belly button goes towards your spine when you breathe out. Follow the breath all the way to the floor of your pelvis. Try to experience your breath with your whole body.
So this is an exercise in becoming more conscious, more mindful. It's a breath awareness exercise and you can do this anywhere, any time because the more aware you are of your breath, the more aware you are of everything that's happening inside of you. And [clears throat] you even become more aware of your environment. The more conscious you are of your breathing, the more conscious you are of everything. The more aware you are of your breath, the more aware you are, period. So that's breath awareness. You can do it anywhere, anytime. It's meditation, like meditative awareness, using your breath to become meditative because I don't think, I don't think a life without meditation, a full life without meditation, is possible. You're missing 90% of your life if you don't meditate.
So the second is relaxation. How do you breathe to trigger relaxation? You breathe in through your nose. Imagine something beautiful. My favorite fragrance, for example, is lilacs. I love the smell of lilacs. Or the smell of bread baking in the oven. [snorts] Or when my first son was born, the way he smelled, oh my god, just so beautiful. And so you have a resource like that and you take your time on the inhale and you access one of those resources. What gives you pleasure just thinking about it? And you think about it as you breathe in. Take your time on the inhale. And when you think you're very full, try to take in a little more. And then you snap the exhale loose. [sighs and gasps] You let the exhale go. You set the exhale free. And in the same moment, drop your jaw. Relax your shoulders. The moment that you release the breath, release a muscle. Release a joint. Release a, a group of muscles. Release a collection of joints. So you draw a long inhale in and then exaggerate the letting go on the exhale. [sighs] And do that again and again and again and you're going to move into a really relaxed state. Use your exhale. Relaxation is in the exhalation. If you take a long slow exhale or through pursed lips, if you lengthen your exhale, you are triggering the parasympathetic branch of your nervous system, which is the rest, digest, relax, recover. So that's breathing for relaxation.
And there are lots of breathing techniques for energy. I'll just give you a quick Sufi technique. Two sharp inhales. I call it sniff and poo. Two sharp sniffs. [snorts] Make them two sharp inhales where you're charging yourself. [snorts] Do that for a few minutes and you got so much energy buzzing, you might want to take some sighs of relief to come back into balance. You can generate energy with your breath. Um, and you can bring it all together into one exercise that makes you more conscious, helps you to relax, and generates energy. And let me give you that as a takeaway. It's 20 connected breaths. 20 circular breaths. So you breathe in, out, in, out. No pauses, no gaps, no breath holding. In and out, in and out, in and out, in and out like a wheel turning. And to start, you could breathe through your mouth just to make it more interesting and more fun. And you can make noise and it's just easier to play with. So you go.
>> [sighs]
>> And the fifth breath is a long inhale on the big side. And then four short breaths. [snorts] 20 connected breaths. Four short, one long. Four short, one long. Four short, one long. And then do them through your nose. [snorts] Meditate before you do those 20 connected breaths. Meditate after you take those breaths. You're going to discover you are more conscious, you're more energized, and you're more relaxed.
>> Oh, Dan, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show. You are fascinating. Brilliant. I'm like energized. Just, I could listen to you all day long, but I know you've got to go. So, I just want to say thank you so much for your time, your energy, and sharing your wealth of wisdom. We'll have everything in the show notes. Have a great time while you're in Switzerland, and I can't wait to get you back on the show. You're amazing.
>> A thank you. Thank you so much. And I, I'd like to leave people with my favorite thing. Um, that is that concepts get you nowhere. Training gets you everywhere. Breathing shouldn't be a philosophy. You need to do it. [laughter]
>> Yeah.
>> And, and so start with it. Whatever is fun, that's enjoyable, get your foot in the door, get into the game, and then build on your skills. And ultimately, I, my best advice is you can make every breath a prayer. Make every breath a prayer. Um, what is your highest aspiration? What is your wish for the world? What is your hope for your children? Focus on it. [snorts] And turn it into a breath. And that's a prayer. And to the best of your ability, begin to recognize and experience that every breath is a blessing. [clears throat] Thank God you're alive. And every breath, if you stop and recognize it as a blessing and be grateful for every breath you take, your life is going to go to a really beautiful level. So, every breath of prayer, every breath of blessing, concepts get you nowhere. Training gets you everywhere. Thanks for this time. You know, I'm a missionary for the breath. So you don't have to twist my arm to come back and talk about breathing.
>> Oh, I love it. And we'll have all your trainings that are available. You do them online as well, don't you?
>> Yes, I have online courses. Breathmaster.com. I'm in 15 countries this year. It's, it's easy to find me if you're looking to breathe.
>> Can't I just love the work. Keep doing what you're doing. You're amazing. You're beautiful. So, thank you so much. Thank you for the opportunity.