Breathwork as the Gateway to Emotional Liberation with Jeffrey Williams

[00:00:00] Hector: Fellas, what's going on? I hope this episode finds you well. And as always, I hope this episode leaves you better , than when it found you. And a lot of the episodes we get pretty like esoteric and we fucking talk about like, you know, I realized probably some out there shit sometimes, and sometimes it's deep and it's real and, you know, relationships and that sort of stuff.

[00:00:52] Hector: Sometimes we get out there today. It's a little bit of both in the sense that maybe it's something that's on your radar, maybe it's something that's not. But it's something that's extremely practical and I know if you start to implement it Like, holy shit, it's going to fucking change your life.

[00:01:09] Hector: Cause it changed mine. And a lot of you guys know that the impetus for the show was who was the demise of my relationship, right? I don't know if that's the right word to use. Is that word demise sounds kind of strong, but that's. Yeah, that's where I'm at. And it was fucking, you know, it was, uh, frankly, it was the hardest thing that I had ever gone through in my whole life.

[00:01:29] Hector: Like emotionally, physically, like my, I just, I, my body was not able to, I mean, I didn't want to get out of bed. You know, like it was, there was periods and time periods of like serious, I don't know. Well, you can see serious depression, but like for sure depression, right? Like check that box. Like didn't want to move so unmotivated, like just, and the, the challenge You know, is, is that when you've got a business that needs to be runs, you have clients that need to be served.

[00:02:01] Hector: You've got Southern California rent that needs to be paid. You've got kids that need to be fed. Yeah. I mean, you have all these regular responsibilities. It's like as much as just laying in bed is sounds like something. Yeah, like, you know, take your time. Like, oh, you know, be sad and whatever. Like, there's all these kind of, you know, things that people might tell you, right?

[00:02:22] Hector: You know, you gotta feel your feelings and it's like, okay, that's fine. However, my feeling, my feelings right now is incapacitating me. And so , what the fuck do I do? how do I move through this? Right. And, and breath work was one of the things and one of the key tools, and I guess I probably talked about it on a lot on this episode, but so I won't get into it too much, but it was the thing that unlocked for me, like how to move forward.

[00:02:46] Hector: Okay. Like how, how do I process and get past this overwhelming feelings, overwhelming emotion without, you know, Needing to go off the rails or go, you know, take it out on somebody or, you know, get involved in any number of vices to help, you know, hide or, disguise these sort of feelings. So anyways, that's why, and I don't, know how much I really get into it on the conversation, but I wanted to share that it was, impactful for me.

[00:03:16] Hector: So hopefully this makes an impact for you, but, uh, let's get in today's episode with Jeffrey Williams.

[00:03:22] Hector: Jeffrey, welcome to the modern masculinity podcast. Thanks for being here. My man,

[00:03:26] Jeffrey: Yeah, excited to be here and have a good conversation with you, man.

[00:03:30] Hector: take us into your world. You are a father of four. You're also a partner. you have a business and a platform and a number of things that you're, behind and creating, a lot of roles that we wear, a lot of hats that we wear as, as men, and we find that that tends to Each of those hats kind of carry their own load.

[00:03:49] Hector: What sort of weight or what sort of load are you carrying today as a man that you feel you're still sort of doing the work in?

[00:03:57] Jeffrey: That's an incredible question. yeah, I would say that just wearing all of those hats is huge. I mean, being able to, as a dad, show up for my kids and be there for my business show either in my relationship, show up and be there and all of that. Requires me actually showing up for myself first and foremost, as, you could consider each of those hats, like a sphere of concern, I've got. Concern for the wellbeing and like the deepest yes for my kids and each of them and what I would love for them to be able to do in life. And same with my wife and same with my own mission and vision and the businesses that I'm working with and the modalities that I'm responsible for those lineages, being carried out into the world and growing in their impact.

[00:04:47] Jeffrey: And so much of it is, it can be insane if. You don't have a way to continuously turn the attention back inside, right? Because when you've got all these things going on, you have all those hats. If you don't have discipline and the ability to have discernment within yourself, those things can all just be spinning and spinning and spinning.

[00:05:11] Jeffrey: And without the ability to turn back inside and sort of clear the queue and be able to come back to some sort of center point. That reminds me of what I'm doing it all for. Like, what is my highest chief aim, What is the thing that inspires me that fulfills me that I love and care about so much that is the ultimate driver behind me showing up all these things in any way, Because the easily can become. A type of like, Oh, duty, Or, uh, this is all like I things I've, I have to do. And as soon as you start hearing, as soon as I start hearing and I hear others use the words, I have to, I'm supposed to, I should. I need to, those are all indicators that we've lost our connection to the inspiration that's in there.

[00:06:06] Jeffrey: And now it's become a part of conforming to the conditioning or the responsibilities that we've shifted the roles from one board in which I see why I'm doing the deepest, why the big, why, why I'm doing all the things to a victim hood drama triangle role where now I'm just like, Oh, I have to, I need to, I'm supposed to.

[00:06:26] Jeffrey: So I think that the biggest responsibility for me as a man, and I think this could be for any human as that, I have to get really clear about what it is that turns me on and wakes me up in the morning and connect with it regularly. Otherwise it can be a lot, right? It can be like many times I feel like the jester juggler where I'm just like, Oh my gosh, how many things am I spinning around on these plates?

[00:06:53] Jeffrey: until I take a moment and go, wait, that's not the way I love feeling about all these things. So how am I going to drop in and take my awareness, my attention and intention and go back inside to connect with what It was really driving me to begin with.

[00:07:10] Hector: Yeah, it seems to be a theme on the show, or maybe it's just in my life, and I'm connecting the dots for myself in the sense of the This need for guys to take initiative of their purpose. And I can only speak contextually for the guys my age, you know, in their thirties, and we were, we were great. We were built to be great cogs in the system.

[00:07:32] Hector: think about it the way that we were, we're like the last millennials were like the last sort of, yeah, they were the last sort of cogs in that machine in the sense of, We were just told, go to school, get a good job, get a degree, whatever it is, work this system. And at the end, there'll be this happiness or there'll be this whatever, right?

[00:07:53] Hector: Some, fairytale land that we were all promised. And I think a lot of us bought into it. And I don't know. How many have realized that there is a need to wake up that, that they're still living in that fairy tale land, that most of their programming and their mindset and their habits and everything from nutrition to relationships, to career, to everything was built in that sort of matrix that is really crumbled over the last, I don't know, X amount of years, pick where you want to draw the line.

[00:08:22] Hector: But. I know for me, I followed that system and I just rode it into the way I wrote it into the rocks, just like boom into the rocks. and it was only when everything started to fall apart that I go, Oh, wait a minute. I don't know that this actually was, maybe I was going where they were telling me, but perhaps they drew a map that actually led me into the rocks.

[00:08:44] Hector: not to this tropical island that I was promised.

[00:08:49] Jeffrey: Oh my gosh. Yeah. I think that I was incredibly fortunate. I'm a little older than that. , I'm what in what they call the X annuals, which is kind of a weird. Little middle thing because I'm not really in a millennial, but I'm not exactly a Gen X or whatever So from the very beginning I was massively disillusioned by What I was experiencing in school and in everything else, right?

[00:09:15] Jeffrey: And I mean I was very just like push back against it push back against it And that was school. That was organized sports, organized religion, all the things. And I also had the great fortune of having a dad who won. I was one of three boys to my dad. Did pick the nine to five, he state worker left the house at seven, came home at six every night.

[00:09:41] Jeffrey: And I was like, fuck that I'm not doing that. And I just knew from the beginning that I wasn't buying the fantasy and nor was you see, anytime you have a fantasy. That's being given you're simultaneously have to be holding on to something a resentment So there's this polarity and these planes called the planes of suffering and so anytime instead of being present Being alive in who you are and what drives you, then you end up in out first, no longer at very present second, holding onto fantasies and infatuations of some, like you said, fairytale and simultaneously holding onto something you despise and resent because they.

[00:10:25] Jeffrey: One can only exist without the other. Everything is always balanced in, in this world and in life, including in ourselves. So most people spend their lives blind to the downsides of their fantasy or blind to the upsides of the things they despise and resent. And in doing that, they're holding themselves in these planes of suffering instead of actually collapsing those two poles into this moment and recognizing the inherent balance and then start, living, start pulling a piece out of the fucking now and make manifest what it is that lights you up.

[00:11:01] Jeffrey: And I haven't worked for anybody. I've always worked for myself. I've started my own businesses. I've taken the things that light me up and recognize if they light me up, they're going to light others up. And there's a big need in the world for these things that bring us back into the present moment.

[00:11:19] Jeffrey: I call it creating a portal into the present. And for me, that's so much about. Our bodies, like our bodies live in the presence. Our mind can be all over the place. And when the mind holds onto something, some trauma or drama or some fantasy and expectation, it inhibits the body's natural flow, the natural balance that's inherent in the body through the brain and the nervous system.

[00:11:43] Jeffrey: It's parasympathetic sympathetic. We have to have these, balancing aspects in place in our bodies and our metabolism in order to function and stay healthy. And for me, it's always been about like, how vital can I be? How alive can I be? How fulfilled can I be? How much can I fill my life with the things I love?

[00:12:01] Jeffrey: Because that's the easiest way to make a life that I love, Is to fill it with the things I love. So from the very beginning, it was like, well, one, I'm going to push back against this system that I don't see to be very fulfilling. That literally the way through is to like, give up really living until later.

[00:12:19] Jeffrey: No, that didn't interest me at all. So what could I do? What can I engage in? And it was a combination of looking into the past, so like going back to ancient civilizations and cultures that still had systems that were pre, our liberal, progressive, push that we've been in some form or another since.

[00:12:40] Jeffrey: The Greeks and the Romans a bit, but most certainly the last few hundred years with America and French and all this stuff that there was something that just didn't smell right about this kind of idea that we have to continue to drive into progress and push and push at all costs instead of like live and actually find fulfillment.

[00:13:02] Jeffrey: do something that made a difference that to me was far more interesting. So I just decided I'm going to do that. It makes sense

[00:13:09] Hector: Yeah, I want to go back to for sure. I want to go back to something that you said about, you know, coming back to the body. And I saw a real on Instagram the other day that, and I think it was actually on a Friday night as I was heading into jujitsu. So that's why it stood out. But it said basically something to the effect of, if you see a person going to the gym on a Friday night, they're dealing with a different kind of demon.

[00:13:31] Hector: And I was like, yeah. I related to that because I was like, yeah, that's me. that's why I'm going to jujitsu and also. I think that there's a lot of truth to that, In the sense of it's becoming more and more common for people to see exercise and lifting weights and whatever, you know, whatever form of exercise as The word that's coming to mind is an antidote, but as a some way to improve their mental health, that's becoming more and more mainstream and trendy. and I think that it really is this doorway into what you're talking about in the sense of, I know for me, of one of the biggest ways that helped me get through my sort of separation and, my relationship and all the things were there was, was going to the gym.

[00:14:14] Hector: that physical exertion, there was, there was something happening in the mechanics there that allowed me to kind of better process those emotions. And we can also talk about breathwork and, the hundreds of hours that I've done of that.

[00:14:25] Hector: But, that, sort of thing is seeping into the mainstream a little bit, through, this fitness and mental health world. And I think it's just, it's speaking right to this greater thing of what you're talking about in this kind of physical or excuse me, the emotional world that the body lives in that, hasn't really been part of the conversation thus far.

[00:14:46] Jeffrey: when you could think of it as in terms of this like modern scientific rationalist, deterministic model that we've all. grown up in it acted and proposed and held as a truth that the mind and body were separate, which is just absolute bullshit. we cannot separate them. It's like throwing out tens of thousands of years of human experience and culture and tradition that.

[00:15:15] Jeffrey: Every one of them had the mind and body as inseparable because whatever it is, it's just simple, I have kids. Okay. So when they're really in their heads are really emotional, there's a lot of things I could do, As an adult, especially one growing up in this society, it's like, Hey, what's wrong?

[00:15:35] Jeffrey: And getting into like, trying to take them into their heads. About what's going on. And this is going to lead into breathwork. I just realized because there was a man named Wilhelm Reich, R E I C H. He was contemporary. Him and Carl Young were both students of Freud at the same time. Freud was like, great, let's just use a.

[00:15:58] Jeffrey: This will be good for the masculinity podcast here. One of the classic tales of Reich and Young and Freud was there was a patient and this patient had erectile dysfunction. So anytime even if he was attractive or attracted to this woman, And he wasn't going to have relations with her, he couldn't get a heart on.

[00:16:19] Jeffrey: Okay. And so there he goes to therapy. so a Freud is running the therapy and young and Riker, the apprentices and through all of this stuff, they, did regression, they did all these other things. And they led him back to a memory when he was, I think, three, maybe four, when. In his house, his mother was giving birth to a little sibling, and he walked in on it, saw her gaping vagina bleeding and her screaming.

[00:16:50] Jeffrey: And Freud said, that's it. Okay. Now, you know why you're messed up. can be a well adjusted human and go back to your life. And Reich was like, dude, still can't get a heart on, like, it's not okay. This isn't working. And he kind of took the night, an idea from Einstein, which is you can't solve a problem on the level that was created.

[00:17:12] Jeffrey: And so he had a perception, right? Which is a mental. process of perceiving something associating the perception of a female body part used for sex and other things, right? And with something traumatic and terrible, so it triggered this in his body. And they're like, cool, now you know why you're messed up.

[00:17:32] Jeffrey: You're good to go. And Reich was like, fuck no. I got to develop a different system. And so he started this idea of the psychosomatic armoring that we create through our traumas, through our, where we feel violated, where we feel voids and, things perceived as missing or lacking in our life, we lock up, right?

[00:17:53] Jeffrey: And our whole bodies create. A type of armoring that can even shut down our physiological function. Something as natural as an erection. So he goes, screw this. I'm developing a system called no talk therapy. You're not gonna talk. You're gonna come in And in this he was wild. He had you get buck naked and start to breathe, start to open your mouth wide because the wider you open your mouth.

[00:18:17] Jeffrey: There's a connection to. The lowest part of our body, right? There's this channel from the mouth to the rectum. So opening your mouth wide automatically starts to open things in the pelvic floor and genitals and belly. And so he developed a system of moving and breathing and sounding without words that helped to unlock what was held in the body.

[00:18:39] Jeffrey: Because every trauma, every experience that we have is held In the body. So that what we hold in the body, but haven't integrated then inhibits, sometimes it creates emotional derangement. It can cause physical derangement, inhibit physical function. So his system was the first of its type in the West and was Most people don't know this, but it's the father of all psychosomatic therapies, all breath work, whether it's Stan Groff or, Leonard Orr or other folks who came along in the 60s and 70s, Reich had already paved that path for everybody.

[00:19:17] Jeffrey: And he was wild, but also incredibly effective. I was fortunate enough in 2002 to meet, a teacher who is running the Reikian Institute. So he was trained. Reich only trained two people, and one of those was a professor at UCLA. And he trained my teachers. so for the last 22 years, I've been engaged in that type of breathwork and many other types of breathwork, but nothing quite as effective in liberating it, waking up of incredible power and energy in the body, the wisdom in the body that's innate.

[00:19:54] Hector: Yeah, I have to temper myself because I'm, you know, that running joke, they talk about CrossFit or like vegan people of like, you know, how long does it take before someone tells you that they do CrossFit or that they're vegan, right? Like that's me with breathwork, or at least when I found it, because I'm like, how have people not figured this out yet? And that's that it's far from the like, plenty of people have figured it out. But I guess in my sense, I was saying, how has it not become mainstream? You know, back in, I've been doing meditation for over a decade. I don't know, almost probably, I guess, maybe 15 years now or so, maybe a little less, that's not important.

[00:20:28] Hector: This is not the number. what is important is. Not that I had hit a plateau, but I had realized that there was an inherent limit to meditation in the sense of what you're talking about is that it's very in your head and that's where it stays. And it was great for helping me process ideas or come up with ideas or helping me get my head clear and, definitely had some value and merit and still does for sure.

[00:20:53] Hector: But I also realized that if I was trying to meditate, and use that to help me work through my divorce and separation, it was not effective in that I would just sit there and dwell and I would come out and I would be no more clear. I would be no more. I would feel no better. There would be no more peace.

[00:21:10] Hector: And so when I found, you know, breathwork and other sort of somatic tools, uh, It, it was, it was just eye opening for me. And so I try not to be like that spazzy person that like pushes the Kool Aid on people. But breathwork is something that like, man, I have a feeling that in five years we're going to wake up and it's going to be as sort of trendy as meditation has become over the last little bit because of all of the value it does and healing trauma and healing all of these things that, that you sort of hinted at.

[00:21:41] Jeffrey: Yeah. I think that it's, I mean, I've been doing it for well over 20 years intensively and have served thousands and thousands of clients. And. I too have been waiting for that critical mass to happen. Like how is this just, I mean, everyone's doing it every day. You're breathing. You can't not do it. Then so easy to help people see the vital importance of it.

[00:22:04] Jeffrey: Like. You can live without food for a long time. You can live without water, not as long, but pretty long. You can't live without breath very long. That's how vital and important this is. So of course it holds the key to your, everything, your life, your life force, your life expression, your cellular memory.

[00:22:22] Jeffrey: It's all in there. And breath is the literally like, The key to unlocking that. So one of the things you touched on was meditation. And one of the very, from the very beginning, first starting to meditate in high school a little bit in the early nineties and like, damn, this is hard, my mind, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:22:41] Jeffrey: Oh wait, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I came across some teachings, that. Really like expose the Western mind and there was both through Osho Rajneesh and through, Kundalini yoga, which was like meditation, sitting down and meditating is kind of silly unless you have primed your body first. So there's this whole school of thought, and it especially applies to the Western mind.

[00:23:11] Jeffrey: That if so, maybe you've even tried this like go to jujitsu, right and Go all in for an hour or two and when you're done Meditate and just notice the difference in the quality of that meditation is huge. So

[00:23:28] Hector: just a quick story, just the other day we were in the middle of rounds, which is afterwards, we're basically, we just tried to kill each other for five minutes at a time and we were in between rounds and I was walking over and some guy was like, I don't know, I must've just, I don't know how I look, but he's like, are you okay, bro?

[00:23:42] Hector: And I was like, ah, it's just post round endorphins, it's just that endorphin rush that, sort of hits after that. and similarly, I know exactly what you're talking about in the sense of after, you know, your body kind of goes through something like that, there's a different sense of peace that's allowed.

[00:23:55] Hector: there's a different sense. And so anyways, I was reminded of that, story. Cause I must've been making a silly face for them to ask about it. But I was just like, yeah, I'm feeling good, man. Just got strangled for five minutes and didn't die. So, all great here.

[00:24:08] Jeffrey: Exactly. That's a lead into, the best, those are the best States is like when you've actually, we're meant to use our bodies. We are hunter gatherer bodies. Our bodies have not changed, even though we've pretty much created sedentary lifestyles after million years of. Adapting to life on earth as human bodies in these spacesuits and like we moved, we squatted, we ran, we did a lot of things outside in our bodies all the time.

[00:24:36] Jeffrey: And we're now sitting and looking at screens and we're wondering why people aren't well? Grow up! look at what's going on. Look at the body and the physiology and what's required to have health. Is you have to have, you can't have health that's just mental. It has to be both. Is like looking at the rates of obesity, the rates of childhood illness, and then we're wondering why we have a mental health crisis.

[00:25:01] Jeffrey: it's ridiculous to me that that's even a question. And I wanted to talk about this piece because I think this is really important, especially again for the Western mind who might be after this, listening to this might be finding. Their way to some breath work or some other somatic experience and practice.

[00:25:19] Jeffrey: It's important to remember, and this is very, was very lost on the West, which was like, let's use yoga. So the Vedic traditions of yoga, which is asana practice in the West. The whole purpose of the asana practice, which could be your, all your sun citations, all the yogas and everything else that people are doing at the gyms and the yoga studios.

[00:25:41] Jeffrey: The purpose was to prepare you for shivasana. Shivasana is when you lay down on the floor at the end and you turn your palms up and you let your feet open and you die. Shiva, Shiva was, is the destroyer, is the, is death. it's the most important part, like there's entire cultures that they live their life, the entire life is a preparation for death as the most important thing.

[00:26:05] Jeffrey: And back to, like, what you asked me with the question of wearing a lot of hats and everything else, one of the secrets is to die regularly. Die before you die, to have these little petite morts, these death, these tiny deaths. And a breath work session can be a tiny death. an orgasm can be a tiny death.

[00:26:23] Jeffrey: It's a, it's a release from the constructs of the mind and the identity. And so back to the yoga thing's like what I, what's appalling in so many ways is that so many yoga classes, it's like an hour long yoga, And they'll do 59 minutes of asen as. And then lay down for a minute and you're done. Whereas any real yogi I've worked with from the East, who is Hadn't necessarily been very enculturated in the West. It's like 40 minutes of yoga, 20 minutes of laying on your back. And as a Westerner, that is like one of the most difficult things to do. Is just lay there and do nothing. And to die into this moment.

[00:27:06] Jeffrey: To let go and fully release. But that's actually how we integrate. What's going on in our lives. And it's actually how we continue to show up and be present is that we work our bodies intensively, and then we. Rest. It's this dynamic right between activity and rest or relaxation and mastering that is huge and not many people do it.

[00:27:32] Jeffrey: It's the ability to go from full activity to full softening and Wilhelm Reich talked about how, in the West specifically, we have this image of fitness and it's this like hard body and hard six pack and there's abs. And he's like, those people have. So often have digestive disorders, they, can't soften their bodies.

[00:27:53] Jeffrey: And he talked about having the, an abdomen for instance, that could, if it were punched, it could harden in the moment to meet that punch. And if it were to be laid, if a baby were to be laid on it, it could soften into a pillow that a baby could be comfortable on and that that was health. that having that range in our physical experience to meet the moment, to meet whatever is coming at you in life, in your circumstances, to have that poise, to be able to both soften and contract, to both get active and relax, And in that is our health. And it also gives, it's. The body can do the mind can do so if your body has that range, so does your mind will have the adaptive capacity to respond effectively, rather than be caught, which most people are caught already responding to something else. So they can't.

[00:28:47] Jeffrey: Make a really well informed response. They're already in response. 98 percent of people are chronically in fight or flight in their sympathetic part of their brain back in the man million at best, probably reptilian level, the brain function, and they're in a response and they're playing predator prey games, whether they're conscious of it or not.

[00:29:06] Jeffrey: It's a stress state and we're chronically stressed because one, we're not moving our bodies and breathing them very well. Like we had for tens of thousands of years. Second, because we were well adapted to life on earth and there's simple stress, like a bear who has a clear beginning and a clear ending, like there's the bear.

[00:29:22] Jeffrey: Oh shit. You know, go into this fight or flight, either fight it, run, freeze and play dead. You either die or you don't. 20 minutes later, you're like, cool, I'm back to picking berries. And the brain knows how to shift out of that. Clear beginning, clear ending. What we have now is modern complex stress. So, someone pulls up in front of us in a car, puts us into a stress state.

[00:29:42] Jeffrey: Then the brain is waiting for the bear to go away, everything is okay signal, and then you get the bills and you get to that next call and then a text come in and then on and on and on and on and you can see the news and you scroll your Facebook or whatever. All of those are more stressors and they're triggering like, Oh, okay, I'm just going to keep protecting.

[00:30:00] Jeffrey: Let's pump some more cortisol. Let's just rob the liver of all the pregnenolone and create cortisol. Forget the DHEA and the vitamin D and all the other good brain hormones. I don't know when this is going down, but it sure seems like it's going to, so we're really maladapted to modern stress. And that is at the core of disease.

[00:30:20] Jeffrey: There's not very many diseases that aren't connected to stress because the body naturally heals itself. It naturally self governs it's naturally balancing, but stress overrides that because it puts us into survival mode protection because it puts life first. It's like, let's survive. And once the threat's gone, then we'll get back to dealing with processing our waste and eliminating and growing and repairing and digesting and resting that'll happen later.

[00:30:49] Jeffrey: So I don't know very many people that I see that aren't in a chronic stress state and it's measurable. I've measured tens of thousands of people in the last 20 years that are in a stress state. And it's easy to see,

[00:31:03] Hector: Yeah, I'd love to over the next little bit of our conversation or the duration of our conversation kind of share, my and our and your sales pitch for, breathwork, Because if they made it this far, I'm sure they are, you know, they're interested in it. But the two, Things that come to mind for me is, I've heard a couple of things.

[00:31:23] Hector: The first is, know, breathwork can be like, one breathwork session can be like a X amount of time of therapy, right? I don't know, pick your time, a month, a year of therapy or whatever it is. And I think that that's one benefit for people is that it's, it's really a great way to go in and unstick all that stickiness and unclog all of that stuff.

[00:31:45] Hector: And so, if that is what you think is the prime should be the primary selling point that we could start there or. Is the primary selling point, this sort of maintenance thing, this ongoing, like, yes, there's stuff to deal with in the past, but I also think that there's a ton of benefits that we can experience in the now as well, whether that is, I don't know, you, you know, better than I do, but, clarity or, regulation with the body or whatever that is.

[00:32:09] Hector: So if you were trying to sell somebody on, on why they might, or you had to kind of. Put together the, the promotional campaign for breath work. Which of those two avenues do you think is the one that you'd prioritize?

[00:32:22] Jeffrey: I mean, they're both, I'd say equally important. And you might be able to connect the third to the second, which is how important is it to feel alive? Because I mean, when you breathe, I'm sure you've had this experience. It's not always just like shits and giggles, it gets a lot of times.

[00:32:39] Jeffrey: It's like, oh shit. It's like,

[00:32:42] Hector: No, no.

[00:32:42] Jeffrey: and the body

[00:32:43] Hector: to go do my breath work in the truck in my car outside because, the noises that I'd make, would scare the kids. Would wake up, would wake up the house.

[00:32:54] Jeffrey: Yeah, then, yeah, and so you're also talking about a key aspect to breath that I think is important to highlight is that Breath often leads to sound and it's like primordial, you know, it's primitive in the sense that it's like Oh, you know, there's all sorts of expressions and you have kids So, you know too that one of the things that kids do really well is they fall down they cry Right.

[00:33:17] Jeffrey: And then they sound and then they just pop up and they're playing again. Whereas like the average adult falls down, I'm okay. I'm okay. You know, and like tries to pull this cool card and like man up or whatever. It doesn't actually express. And then they carry that with them. For a while. So there's this beautiful aspect of expressing yourself and like being authentic with, if it hurts, then yell, you know, or cry or whatever.

[00:33:42] Jeffrey: And that breath work often leads to contact with those things, with the things you've suppressed or have been repressed. when you're trying to live underneath the pressure, right, pressure, repression, suppression, the pressure of that, it's really Hard and it can be like uncomfortable. And so question I often ask is like maybe you think your life is great if your life You feel like is great and you've been living with it without even breathing How good could your life be if you learn to breathe and you learned to open yourself up and flood yourself with?

[00:34:20] Jeffrey: Energy because breath isn't just air. It's there's energy right? There's tons of free electrons, for instance, and those are what supercharge and our batteries and give us resilience in life and breathing is a direct interface with the field around us. And so we're like bringing in new life energy, letting go of old stuff.

[00:34:41] Jeffrey: And so it's really like clearing a cleansing, a revitalization. And like what you said about therapy, I've had countless times where people got up and said, wow, that was better than 10 years of therapy one session because of how they not only like came in contact with something, a blockage, a trauma. A situation, but they breathed into it in a way that they actually gained resolution, they saw the other side because breath is this beautiful dynamic as well. Like we talked about earlier, you could use any polarity, but inhale. Exhale, and the imbalances that we have in our life are always a reflection of that. So if you look at someone, there's a breath for every state. So if you are anxious, it's like, it means you're inhaling more than you're exhaling. And that just symbolically. If you can grasp it, is that you're, whatever's happening now, or you believe is about to happen, you're letting become overwhelmingly more than what you're letting go. So the inhale is so much that it's generating an anxious state, because we have to maintain balance between inhale and exhale, just as we have to maintain balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic, in our brains, in our metabolic activity.

[00:36:02] Jeffrey: So, breath is this huge, Access point. And when you start to, let's preface this with, it's important to have a safe container. It'd be like, whether people out there use psychedelics or not set in setting are really important, like what your mindset and your intention is and the setting that you do that in breath work is as potent as any psychedelic in my experience.

[00:36:24] Jeffrey: And it's really important to have a clear intention, a clear container in a safe space for that. Like your truck is great, if you have enough experience and you're like going to my truck and I'm going to read this out, that can work. It can be dicey if you don't, because breath will lead you to your stuff, and it will seek to relieve the pressure, and so by doing that, you might cry, you might make sounds, you might have your whole body clench up in a way that you can't control for a while.

[00:36:58] Jeffrey: And the only way out is through, there isn't like, I can just, I'm going to back out now. You can't really back out that if you have someone with you that knows what they're doing, they might be able to guide you in changing your breath and therefore changing the state you're in over a few minutes. And that's totally doable.

[00:37:19] Jeffrey: But to sell breathwork, it's like, it's both and it's you, one, you're going to feel more alive than ever, because if you breathe continuously for a little while, you're going to start to buzz and tingle with life. You're going to stream life energy through your body and you're going to be like, Whoa, this is a thing.

[00:37:41] Jeffrey: This is okay. and it's actually like. Coursing and channeling, routing out all the circulatory and nervous system pathways in your body as you breathe, increasing their gauge, making those wires bigger so you can handle more of life. Breath is a real, it's both on the performance side, it's like incredible at increasing your capacity to focus, to be productive and creative.

[00:38:09] Jeffrey: And on the therapeutic side, it is the most integrative way to come in contact with whatever it is that is inhibiting you, blocking you, getting you stuck

[00:38:20] Hector: Yeah. I want to talk a little bit more about the therapeutic side. but I don't know that. Cause I feel like that maybe that's just for me and where I'm in it, world I'm in, but you've talked about the productive side, is there anything else that you might add in, in the sense of, Oh yeah.

[00:38:37] Hector: And also, for someone who is, looking for the productivity side, they're like, Jeffrey, everything's great, life's good, like I'm just trying to make it better. And I too think that breathwork can really be a tool in that. Is there anything else that you think might, be used in that promotional campaign?

[00:38:52] Hector: And if you will, for someone who is looking to increase their productivity.

[00:38:56] Jeffrey: to for sure. And I think one thing you can say is that it gives so, okay, let's go back to this. Like there's a breath for every state. It's kind of like, say there's, you know, 300 different emotions or feelings that you could have as a human being. I'm sure there's more. But, and it's like having cable TP.

[00:39:14] Jeffrey: So if you find yourself in one state and you can wake up to how you're breathing and you can become aware, you can change the way you breathe and therefore change the station, right? So it's this system that's incredibly important to understand about which is that it's both autonomic. Automatic means you don't, most people don't think about their breath.

[00:39:34] Jeffrey: They don't consciously breathe. And yet they're breathing, but unlike digestion, which is also that same way, I don't think about digesting my food and it just happens, hopefully. But in the case of breath, I have the control in my hand and I can say, Oh, wait, right now, I'm about to enter into a meeting where I've got to be on and there's a breath for that, right?

[00:40:00] Jeffrey: So I can, if I'm really nervous, I can start to breathe in, for instance, to down regulate my vagus nerve. And I can breathe in four seconds, exhale, 10 seconds, nice and slow and pause for two and repeat that pattern for two to three minutes. And after three minutes, I'm going to feel significant change in the way I am.

[00:40:22] Jeffrey: And I'm going to walk into that meeting and be able to go, okay, cool. I'm ready. Or if I am feeling super exhausted, but I have to presentation or meeting, or I have to do this thing. email. I can break my breath into four equal parts on the inhale and four equal parts on the exhale. And each of those parts, I can powerfully contract my diaphragm and my abdomen.

[00:40:46] Jeffrey: And that's going to signal my brain to come into a greater step, uh, state of balance. It's going to bring me. Out of that sleepy, tired into sort of an alpha state where I'm ready to be on. So in that way, it's very functional breath work can be incredibly functional on top of therapeutic.

[00:41:08] Hector: Yeah, I remember. Well, I think that's, great for me because there are times where I'm like kind of in that lull and I already had my second coffee for the day, so I'm like, can't do another one of those it's in those moments where you're saying sort of an upregulated. rhythm or, cadence, whatever you want to call it, that would be a good choice there.

[00:41:26] Hector: And then consequently, end of the night, trying to wind down, go to sleep, that's more of the place for a down regulation, sort of thing. And so being, skillful in when you deploy them, that's huge. one more story, cause I don't know, I feel compelled to share I have an audience of one right here at least, but I remember I went to a, breath work. I don't know what you would call it. Like an event. His name is Vitaly. I can't say his last name, but he hosts, , you might've seen the Instagram ads. It has these ads where people are just bawling and they're crying and they're just having these, crazy experiences.

[00:41:59] Hector: And I was like, Oh, that looks fun. So I went to him. And, I remember, in the middle of it, like just saying, and this is right when, the peak of the separation, all these sort of things. I just remember being like, I'm not ready, like screaming in the middle of this auditorium where everyone's going to do it.

[00:42:14] Hector: Like, I'm not ready. And it just like, You talk about these transcendent moments, and what's interesting is that as painful as that was, right, as painful as those moments were, I've equally had times where, it feels like I'm, I don't know, meeting or talking to, God or whoever like you have these really these you see both sides of it, ?

[00:42:33] Hector: And so that's it's equally Spiritual and equally connecting and you know You're able to to really connect with whatever that you know You feel is out there or in there and then also it can be sort of this really healing Modality, all in one, it's a really interesting tool in that regard.

[00:42:51] Jeffrey: Yeah. I think one of the things I was thinking about sharing with you and because regards to ourselves as men, and I think in our relationships, , and it goes this way with, breathwork because breathwork tends to do that. It's one, I've only find, found it to give someone what they're ready for.

[00:43:10] Jeffrey: It doesn't mean their mental constructs are like, yes, I'm ready for this. They often fight it like I'm not ready. Right. But I bet you, by the end of that breathwork session, you, Recognize that you were ready, right? Is that true?

[00:43:25] Hector: Yeah, that night was about, was about becoming, yeah. So in that moment, I think that that was the truth, but through more, that was a four hour kind of night. And, and I try and regularly do a, daily 10, 15 minutes, something like that. And at least once a week, a 30 to 50 minute session to kind of clear stuff out because I'm not me.

[00:43:47] Hector: It's like that Snickers thing, it's like, you start to realize the potential of, of utilizing it. So, um, all that to say by the end of that, I felt like I was, felt like I was in a position to be ready. Yeah, at least it was, But,

[00:44:00] Jeffrey: will, it put you in touch with probably what was the biggest obstacle for you that was up next, because that's, kind of how the body serves us. it doesn't, just like floodgates are open all your shit all at once. there is an intelligence to how the body works and how the breath engages the body.

[00:44:21] Hector: it feels though, like, oh, that's it, this is it. I found the answer. And then you go back in and they're like, I don't know. Here's another one. Here's something.

[00:44:27] Jeffrey: no, that we are

[00:44:28] Hector: Here's the next boss.

[00:44:30] Jeffrey: We're in infinitely deep, these human bodies and beings, and one of the things I think is important to like, reveal about breathwork and anything somatic, and I think this relates to everything, is that life, one, we're conditioned, especially with that fantasy that you mentioned earlier of like, do all of this and get to this happy place where everything is good and it's all good.

[00:44:54] Jeffrey: All good is a fantasy. And. All support is a fantasy part of being stuck in the limbic system and seeing life through the amygdala, which is what happens when you're stressed is that you start to buy into the fantasies. you tell yourself, Oh, I need a support. All I need is support. And you're trying to get away from, so think about predator prey, right?

[00:45:16] Jeffrey: I'm trying to get towards the prey and away from the predator, but in from an empowered standpoint and from the prefrontal cortex and the neocortex in the brain, when our blood flow, glucose and oxygen are in this human level of function, we embrace support and challenge equally. We're not running from the challenges towards the support or vice versa when we are at our human level of function, where we're living aligned with what we love, with what turns us on and it lights us up and fulfills us and inspires us that part of us.

[00:45:46] Jeffrey: And all of us have had a moment like this when it was something we loved. So we embrace the challenge. We were like, this isn't a problem. This is an opportunity. And. There's so much babying going on in our culture around victimhood and around, that we all deserve to just be supported. And I'm a huge advocate for embracing both support and challenge and breath work is both of those.

[00:46:16] Jeffrey: And the thing about it. Depending on which methods and how you're engaging in it is you don't necessarily know whether it's just going to make you feel alive and, lit, you could say, or going to bring you in contact with your next biggest block. And so it could, and it's a combination of both, like sometimes to get to feeling really alive, you have to engage with the challenge or the biggest block , and that's okay, Life isn't supposed to just be. Easy. it's about embracing both because that's where the growth is. And if we really learn to ask ourselves good questions, we can reveal in any given moment that there is equal balance between challenge and support. But in our minds and our perceptions in the, polarized perceptions, It's easy for us to tell a story of how, life's just hard and nothing goes my way, and no one's here for me, and this is my problem, and I am willing to hear that, and I'm also willing to ask if there's space them to hear, to be asked some questions.

[00:47:22] Jeffrey: Because If you can get skillful asking questions, whether it's to yourself or others, you can quickly reveal how life is balanced, how the support that You didn't perceive is actually there and it's equal to the challenge you're in or vice versa. And that's super important back to kind of what you said at the very beginning of like, how do you wear a bunch of hats?

[00:47:46] Jeffrey: How, do you deal with that, the pressure or whatever else comes along with running your businesses and having kids and having a family and a partner? It's one, I've been really fortunate to come in contact with a lot of great teachings. That have come out of, history, and one of those, the ideas out of Taoism and Dzogchen, Tibetan Buddhism, even the Vedic traditions, shamanic traditions, all of them point to this idea of the great perfection that everything is already balanced, whole and complete.

[00:48:18] Jeffrey: Nothing is missing. And so if I am perceiving something to be missing or out of balance, that's an inside job, right back to like why it's so important to go in and whether that's with breath work or with movement or jiu jitsu or yoga or whatever, my thing is edu and It's a combination of all of them.

[00:48:38] Jeffrey: So it's like a self reflective inquiry into myself while I move through a series that pivots my spine and opens everything up and gets things flowing. It's important to go inside with the knowing that everything is balanced and ask the questions that can reveal that balance. And one way that you or your audience can come in contact with this concept of the great perfection.

[00:49:01] Jeffrey: is remembering something in your life that at the time you went through it, it was total shit show. You couldn't stand it. You thought the world was ending. You couldn't see the light. at some point, then a week later, a year later, a decade later, you recognize Oh my God, without that thing happening that I couldn't stand happening, then I couldn't be where I am now.

[00:49:26] Jeffrey: The idea of 2020 hindsight, And when you look back, you can go, Oh, I can't believe I couldn't see that. Then I was too emotional. I was too polarized. I was too caught in the story. But eventually all of us, in my experience, all of us can find something in our life that occurred that where we were like hating it in the moment and recognize, and that could be.

[00:49:48] Jeffrey: I know for me in the divorce, right, as, and the moment I was like, no, this isn't happening. You know, like fighting tooth and nail and then got through it and was like, this is the most liberating, perfect thing that could have happened. And I see it as a graduation, a ceremonial graduation, pretty psychoactive.

[00:50:10] Jeffrey: And pretty intense to go through and my life is perfect because of it. And so being able to see that, and if you can find one of those big ones in your life, you'll start to recognize that these teachings that have been passed down for thousands of years are true. And that if life seems Messed up or out of balance. It's an inside job and only you can go in and sometimes with a guide or with someone else to ask the right questions, to reveal the inherent balance and everything, and that's like a trampoline out of those planes of suffering into a plane of Fulfillment of being aligned with something that matters to you, that you might even be able to make a difference or an impact in the world, but certainly are going to make an impact in a difference in the way you feel and the way you experience your life.

[00:50:59] Hector: Yeah. Great stuff here, Jeffrey. If people want to get more connected with you, go deeper in your world, where's the best place for our listeners to go?

[00:51:06] Jeffrey: you can check out vitalist project. com V I T A L I S T, project. com, or you can know, if you want to connect with me one on one, that's sort of the teachings I do in the connection to my academy that I run out of Dallas and then the movement stuff that I teach, if you want to just do one on one stuff, you can check out lifestyles of light. org is my personal website. And then I think I wanted to give all of your audience, just a gift of, A free workshop, if they wanted to check it out, it's have a happy spine. com and that'll give you a little bit more of a, I think it's like a 75 minute workshop, talking about neurophysiology stress, our bodies, our brains and how we can use movement and breath to radically transform ourselves and deliver ourselves to this beautiful moment.

[00:52:03] Jeffrey: We call the now.

[00:52:05] Hector: Amazing. And we'll link all that up in the show notes as well. I want to thank all of you for being with us today. We would be forever grateful for a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts. And if you know someone who needs to hear this, someone who's on the edge about breathwork or maybe needs it in their life, hit that share button and send them a message.

[00:52:22] Hector: Let them know you were thinking about them. Bye. But, it's always a pleasure being with you. We'll see on the next one. There you go.