Welcome And Topic Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:06

We are live. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another Beauty of Breathing podcast recording over here on Maya Moves on Instagram. And for those who register, you can listen to all of our podcast recordings live. So today I have uh presenting Campbell Will, an integrative physiotherapist specializing in the role of breathing in human health and performance. His experience spans ICUs, neurosurgical awards, elite athletes, and private practice, where he recognized breathing as a commonly overlooked factor in both performance and dysfunction. Through his holistic multidisciplinary approach, Campbell helps practitioners shift their focus from disease to health by restoring balance of the body, mind, emotions, and energy. You guys already know how much I'm gonna love this. We believe that breath is a powerful tool to everyone and a foundation for lasting health and well-being. Today's topic is physio physiology of anxiety. Welcome to the Beauty of Breathing platform. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01 1:17

I'm doing really well, Renato. I'm really excited to chat.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Thank you. And oh my gosh, you are in Hawaii.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Yes, uh, we've lived here for about two years.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

So one of the best places for you to be able to embody all of this.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Yeah, it really is. I mean, there's there's definitely a special energy here.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

So, what first led you actually, before I ask my first question, tell me a little bit more about yourself. Where are you from? How did you got uh get into this field?

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Yeah, so I'm originally from Australia, um, a little town called Cairns. Um, I went to school for physiotherapy there. I started working, um, and then I met my now wife who's from the US. And so that started this kind of like not being in one place. Um, and that was kind of the the same time that I was looking to, well, how would I take physiotherapy outside of a hospital where I won't be able to work anymore? And that was really my introduction into breath work. Um, it was kind of a it was something that had interested me for a while. I went down and did the Wim Hof training, um, and that really just like opened up this box, Pandora's box, uh, and a rabbit hole

Campbell’s Path Into Breathwork

SPEAKER_01 2:20

that I've just still been going down, you know, and that was probably 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

That is amazing. So, Wim Hof, I know that in the airway field we learn a lot about Boteco, and Wim Hof is like completely the opposite.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

How did you feel when you first learned about it?

SPEAKER_01 2:36

It it was I I've definitely kind of like I wouldn't say moved on since then, but I've broadened my horizon, put it that way. Um, but I'm very well, you know, it was a really awesome introduction to what breath can do. Um, you know, hiking a mountain in the snow, just wearing a pair of shorts, it blew my mind, right? I'm from the tropics. I used to just like if it was a little bit cold, I'd be wearing a sweater, you know. It's like and here I was like hiking in minus five degrees, just wearing a pair of shorts and feeling fine.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Are you serious? It is actually possible.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

It was, and and I until I did it, I would have thought, like, this sounds a little bit out there. Um, but there I was like hiking up this mountain, and it wasn't like just grit your teeth and bear it, like I was warm, I was having fun, it was connected, like it was this really, really eye-opening experience about the potential that we have. Um, from there, it kind of like I wanted to know more about the physiology. I wanted to know how this worked, why it worked, why it doesn't work for some people, you know, and that kind of just threw me into this world of the nervous system. And from there, I kind of put together my own kind of approach that really looks at treating just dysfunctional breathing first, right? To kind of like restore that to an optimal state. And then from there, we can kind of use breath as this really powerful tool, whether it's to increase our energy, regulate our emotions, manage our stress. It's one of these kind of like kind of as weird as it sounds, does everything. Um, as long as you're kind of applying it with precision.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Very good. Well, what first slides you to explore the connection between breathing and then anxiety?

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Honestly, it was it was not an intentional exploration on my part. It was more clients coming to me. Um, you know, patients coming and just struggling with anxiety, and then us seeing like, wow, this really works, right? Like a lot of the clientele that I was working with at that time who struggled with anxiety were like, this is the first thing that's actually made an impact on my anxiety. And so that just kind of like told me that there was something there. Um, and then I just kind of like kept going down that path. And again, no, it wasn't something I chose, but now predominantly, like, I would say 95% of the clientele I work with is for anxiety.

Why Anxiety Responds To Breath

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Um, those that don't want to go on medication, that want to manage it holistically. And I've just found breathing to be such a critical piece, you know. Like I'm yet to find someone who struggles with anxiety that doesn't have dysfunctional breathing.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

You know, my next question, you just answered it. Uh, it's interesting that a lot of times in this airway field, they talk about body posture, which we know the body posture will affect negatively your breathing if you have bad posture. But also the posture automatically triggers anxiety. You know, that whole posture of you having your shoulders rolled forward, being in this crunched up position. Um, your body already sees that as something not great.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

Yeah. And to make it even more tricky for people, Renato, like if anyone's watching this on Instagram right now, I could almost guarantee their posture is head forward, shoulders rounded. Like it's not always this postural dysfunction as much as

Posture Screens And Shallow Breathing

SPEAKER_01 5:33

it's an environmental influence. You know, we're on screens, we're at desks, we've got chronic stress, we've got back pain, like all these things shape our posture. And then our breath kind of conforms to that shape. And now we have these two big drivers, right? My my nervous system kind of listening to the way I'm holding my body, rounded, defensive, protected, and that's forcing me to breathe up into my chest, shallower, faster, stimulates the nervous system. And so it's really hard for people to escape something that they're doing 20,000, 25,000 times a day, and oftentimes it's just a result of their environment. I think that's a really important part for people to understand because a lot of people go, Well, like, why did my breathing break? You know, like what happened? And it's usually not just like something happened, it's well, you might sit eight hours a day at a desk and you might spend five hours a day on your phone, and you might have been through this period of chronic stress. And those things go on to kind of shape the way that we breathe. And then that baseline shifts. And if I'm breathing, you know, fast, shallow, up into my chest erratically all day, like I'm going to feel anxious. That's not a dysfunction and it's not a disorder, it's a perfect response from our nervous system based on these inputs that are saying, hey, something might happen out there, right? This threat. So, like, anxiety is the correct response in a lot of those situations. We just need to kind of help someone understand how do we like rework that relationship between like my posture, my breath, and my environment, because that has the biggest impact on my nervous system.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

Uh, how old is your youngest patient?

SPEAKER_01 7:01

Youngest patient, probably five. I don't work with a lot of kids, and I've kind of made a rule that if I'm working with the kid, I'm also working with mom and dad.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

I love that. That's always to be my functional therapy too.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

You know, it it's such a like if a parent's coming to me saying, Hey, my child is anxious, you know, and I want you to teach them these exercises, like, well, what are they modeling and what environment are they in? And is there a way that instead of the child has to fix this problem, this could be a little family exercise, right? We could all take time and regulate our nervous systems. Um, because more often than not, you know, I don't want to paint with too broad of a brushstroke, but more often than not, the the anxious child has an anxious parent. Um, and so, like, how can we change that modeling at home rather than just like we're only gonna give exercises to the kid? Like, let's all do this together.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

That is so true. And I was even discussing with a colleague not long ago about um we need to understand what kind of environment that child lives in in order to make sure they're gonna be good candidates for myofunctional therapy. Because I can see them once a week, once every other week. However, if they're not in a very supportive and comfortable and safe environment at home, these exercises are gonna be the last thing they're gonna do, the last thing in their mind. You know, they're just trying to survive, make sure they get a good meal and not, you know, get in the way of parents fighting or whatever else can be going on. Um, so very, very important that the whole family is kind of aware and and invested in whatever they they decide to do. That's such a good um good advice. From a physiological standpoint, what happens in the body during an anxious state?

SPEAKER_01 8:46

So I always like to kind of like almost come at it from the other side, right? So, like the experience that someone has, right? If you ask most people to describe their anxiety, we get a pretty common set of answers. My heart's racing, right? It's hard to breathe, or I can't take a full breath. Maybe I get clammy, maybe my palms get sweaty, maybe my mind races. These are these are descriptions of physiology, right? Like, so if we then take one step back and we say, well, what drives heart rate to increase? What drives the feeling of air hunger? What drives an acceleration of brain waves, right? Is breathing. And so,

Anxious Kids And Family Patterns

SPEAKER_01 9:22

like, if you and I, right now, or anyone listening, started to breathe fast and shallow for the next 30 seconds, our heart rate's gonna go up, our blood pressure will increase, our brainwaves will accelerate, right? We're gonna start to feel what we would call anxious. And so if we look at it in that direction, we can kind of reverse engineer and be like, okay, well, what would happen if I was able to influence the driver of that state rather than looking for the external cause of my anxiety, right? A lot of people think like my anxiety happens to me, right? Something out there, a social situation, an environmental thing that makes me feel anxious. And that's a really disempowering frame, right? If it's something out there that's making me feel anxious, there's not a lot I can do about that except remove myself. But if I look at, hey, there's something out there that causes me to change my physiology, which then drives me to feel anxious. That little in-between step is really important because guess what? We can control our physiology. And so a lot of people oftentimes lack the awareness of what they might be doing internally, right, physiologically, that could be contributing to what they call anxiety, right? Someone with social anxiety that holds their breath when they walk into a room but doesn't know they're holding their breath, right? That changes the chemistry of their blood that provokes a response from their system, which might be like, I gotta get out of here, right? And they go, Oh, this environment makes me feel anxious. But they didn't realize that the environment made them hold their breath. And it's actually the breath holding that's actually changing the physiology that's making them feel like so when people have that, like, oh wait, you know, and we can kind of what I call walk upstream and find out, hey, what are you doing before you walk into that environment? Are you hyperventilating? Are you holding your breath? Is your breathing really erratic? Are you bracing? Because if we can catch that and then give you some intentional kind of cues and practices, then maybe when you walk in that room and you're not holding your breath, you don't actually have that spike of anxiety, right? You might not be 100% comfortable. I'm not going to paint that picture, but it's like that shift isn't often enough for people to recognize. Okay, what else do I think gives me anxiety? Like I work with a lot of moms who started having panic attacks when they were driving, right? Like really anxious, really panic to get behind the wheel. And with all of them, right, an hour before they even get in the car is when it starts, right? They start breathing faster, they start bracing, they start anticipating what if I have an anxiety attack while I'm driving? Now I'm scared. So all of this feeds forward the moment they sit in the car. Like, anxiety is more or less a sure thing at that point because we've been driving our physiology for the last hour without even knowing it, or maybe the last couple of days. And so, like, I think the biggest skill for people to develop is awareness. It's like, how does my breathing change when I'm thinking about the social situation, driving the car, going to the meeting, whatever it might be? And then that's my opportunity to actually do something about it rather than now I'm anxious, what do I do?

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Because that's usually what people do. They just want a fix to that immediate symptom. But there are so many things that happened before that led to that.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

A hundred percent, you know, and I think this is just a cultural or social phenomenon. Like we are we we usually wait until something's broken before we try and fix it, you know, and so that idea of like now I'm feeling anxious, what do I do? Well, it's a lot harder, you know, like we're making our own job much harder to try and recover from anxiety versus prevent myself from feeling anxious.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

What do you think is the biggest issue right now in children's lives that it's impacting their anxiety levels compared to when I grew up? I'm not gonna say you because you're way younger than me. When I grew up, you know, 20, 30 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

People don't like to hear it, but I can't help but point at technology, you know. Like I think we're probably in a similar like I grew up riding my bike and climbing trees, and like we didn't have the internet.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Oh, you were in Australia and I was in Brazil, so it does make sense there.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Yeah, you know, like I remember when we got dial up internet when I was like 14, you know, and it's like we were able to use that thing for like an hour each day, and I had to fight with my brother, you know, it's like most of the time it wasn't just

Tech Stress And Modern Nervous Systems

SPEAKER_01 13:32

it wasn't there. Yeah, the world that our you know children and adolescents are growing into today is a very different world that you and I grew up in and that everyone grew up in. Like, I think we can try and think of like, oh well, the technology, the stimulation, the phone, but it's like it's so much deeper than that because now parents are more stressed and there's more financial stress. So maybe mom and dad are working two jobs and they can't afford a babysitter, so then out comes a device, right? Those devices didn't exist 20 years ago, right? We had to make do, and and perhaps the stresses and the pressure was different. So I think it's it's hard to just point at like, oh, it's a phone or it's an iPad or it's technology or screen time. I think it's this whole big picture where yes, we are moving away from nature, social connection, towards indoor artificial light on a screen. We can then point to artificial food, we can point to sleep disruption, right? I think it's this like you know, this breeding ground of a bunch of different factors that are culminating in why children are finding it so hard to focus, right? Why we've had this massive explosion in what we would quote unquote call ADHD. And I think there's other ways to look at that. Um, I think maybe you and I agree there. But we're always looking for this smoking gun, right? Like, oh, what is the cause versus I think it's more the way that we're living, you know, and I would mirror like the rates of anxiety and ADHD and behavioral dysfunction in children is like we're seeing the same thing with anxiety and depression in adults, you know, and it's like it's a byproduct of the way we're living. We have this sorry, go ahead. There's this kind of unsustainable pace with attached to technology. We are kind of pushing these really important aspects of our physiology away, like sleep and recovery, right? Like there's more stresses because of the hyperconnectivity, right? Most people, it's something like 86% of people, the first thing they do when they wake up in the morning is check their phone. That's a really new phenomenon, right? Like, and I don't think we comprehend how my nervous system responds to being connected to 8 billion people. And guess what? News is never positive, right? So it's like I'm attached to this thing, right? We we evolved in tribes of maybe two to 400 people, and now I'm connected to 8 billion people constantly, 24-7. Of course, that impacts our nervous system.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

And I heard something about as soon as you wake up, if it starts scrolling and having that every three seconds or so uh dopamine release early in the morning, then you're more likely not to have the normal dopamine release throughout the day when normal life is happening and uh you're less motivated, you don't have, you know, burnout happens way more. Um, you don't feel excited about doing things at work anymore. So another thing that we need to think of. I actually started purposefully not touching my phone anymore after I wake up for at least an hour. I just have to do my morning routine, you know. I have to make sure everything is in place. I have to do my prayer, I have to do my worship music and my tea or whatever, you know, supplements, everything that I usually, you know, have to do in the morning. And he he has made a big, uh, big change already of the way that I feel, the way that uh uh the rest of my day goes. Um but you mentioned something. Oh my gosh, it's life changing, really. So that's just simple.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Like I with all the clients I work with, I try and I implement what I call a sacred 60, which is exactly what you just described. But I say the last hour of the day, the last 60 minutes should be a sacred time. And the first 60 minutes, right? So, like, let's say you want to go to bed at 9:30, 8:30, your phone goes in airplane mode and you don't touch it, right? It's it's done. So that last hour of the day, your nervous system actually gets the opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

That gives me a little bit of anxiety just saying it. Right in my phone in the airplane mode.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

I want to kind of walk through this because a lot of people will have the same visceral reaction that you just did, like, oh wait, I need my phone before I go to bed, right? But the same thing when I wake up in the morning and that phone's already on aeroplane mode and it's not within

The Sacred 60 Phone Boundary

SPEAKER_01 17:31

reach, right? And I get the opportunity for my nervous system to transition slowly right into wakefulness and same at the end of the day into restfulness, right? The first few days that people do it, and I usually get people to start with 30 minutes rather than 60, but it's a good goal to build up to. But what we think, right? That first day where I'm like, oh my god, where's my phone? Or what am I gonna do before bed? That is just a it's my nervous system seeking what's familiar, right? I if I use my phone before bed for the last however long, couple of years, right? As soon as I take that away, my nervous system is going to seek it. The same way that you just described, like when people use their phone in the morning, that seeking of dopamine throughout the day is because of how did we get dopamine first thing? I touch my phone, boom, little dirt burst of dopamine. My brain is gonna keep seeking that same form of dopamine, right? It's like that's why I'm gonna check my phone 50 times today. It's because the moment I get bored, or the moment my brain's like, oh, where did I get that easy dopamine earlier? Grab the phone, right? But if I don't have that opportunity, we have this adaptation that occurs. For most people, it's like three, four, maybe five days where it's kind of uncomfortable and a little, but then I adapt. My nervous system stops seeking the phone because I've broken that little chain of you know, chain of events. And a lot of times people like day one, day two, there's like, there's no way I could do this. Like I'm gonna wipe my knuckle my way through it every day for the rest of my life. It's like, no, no, no, just give it like two or three more days, and then you won't even remember the feeling of wanting the phone or needing the stimulation. And so just giving people that idea that it's like, yeah, it might be a rough couple of days, right? Where there is a adaptation occurring, but as soon as that happens, like the quality of sleep changes, the quality of your morning changes, your energy throughout the day changes, your stress levels change, and it's like you'll never look back.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

Oh my gosh, you know, that's so interesting. Um, when I first started, again, exactly how you mentioned, it was like, oh my gosh, what the heck? And the problem is not even to me personally, the problem is not even like scrolling on Instagram. That is my problem. However, in the morning, it wasn't really the issue because I've trained my algorithm to just give me, you know, positive things, um, personal growth messages and worship and you know, Bible verses and things like that that usually help me, you know, yay, upbeat, let's get going. The problem is that I work a lot on my phone, a lot. So the second that I get there, I'm already seeing the messages coming through that are for you know related to work or other things that do bring anxiety. And I'm I mean, I spend a lot of hours on my electronics, unfortunately, because again, I have five assistants, they mostly live out. So I'm always, you know, contacting them and making sure everything is running in both of the companies. Um, but it does, it can bring a lot of stress. What I have to keep reminding myself is that it's still gonna be there. Yeah, it's okay. Their question is gonna be there. I'll be able to answer when I can. Nothing is gonna change. If somebody has to wait 60 extra minutes to get a response from me, it is okay. It is a okay.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

So um that it has it's a really important point because when we like again, I think we've kind of fallen into this what I would call like an unrealistic or unsustainable expectation that like I need to be getting back to someone the moment. It's like this this didn't used to be the case, you know. When I tell people to put their phone on airplane mode, they're like, but what if someone can't contact me? I'm like, what do you think people did 20 years ago, 30 years ago? You know, what if you went to the movies or what if you went to a it's like people couldn't contact you, they left a message and you got back to them when you got home. You know, it's like this like adoption of technology, we've forgotten that we didn't used to have it and it wasn't a problem then, but we've got so used to it. And again, the pace of I need to get back to people immediately. A lot of the times when I chat with clients about this, they're like, but what if? And I'm like, really, let's play the what if game. Like, what if you didn't get to the emails until nine o'clock versus eight o'clock? Really, what do we think is going to happen? They're like, Well, I guess when you break it down, like like sometimes it's a it's a ungrounded fear. Like we think that oh, there's no way I could do that. But if we actually sit with it for a couple of minutes and talk it through, you know, and maybe that is setting a boundary, or maybe that is notifying my team or my assistants and say, Hey, I'm not logging on until this time. So are you able to to check messages at that point? Right? Exactly. More often than not, it's just An agreement with myself, and it's like it won't burn down, it'll be okay. You know, it's like that extra hour is so important for your nervous system, so that the rest of the day you're actually more engaged, more steady energy, better focus because your nervous system has an opportunity to warm up, right? And to then be in this like mode of action and execution, rather than I woke up and bang, there's inbox. There's oh my god. Now there's all this these open tabs in my brain. I've got to get back to those three people, I got to send an email to the assistant. And it's like you haven't even had your tea yet, right? Or you're and it's like there's already eight things swirling around in your mind. It's like that costs you in terms of resources and terms of load for your nervous system. So people, but it's like there's a cost to carry those unmade decisions and those tasks that you have to do versus like approaching that, like now I'm ready to turn on. Like when I pull down the top of my phone and I take it off aeroplane mode, like I'm ready, like I'm prepared to engage versus like bang, it just kind of like hits me from now. I'm in it.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

Yes, and even my children in the morning or before bedtime, again, if they want my attention, if they want and I'm already busy with something else, I'm not fully there. Yeah, you know, I can be there presence-wise, but my mind is already somewhere else and it's not healthy for them because they feel it. Um you mentioned ADHD as adults. Um, can we talk a little bit about ADHD and how different is it from kids to adults in the airway field? We usually say 60 to 80 percent of children that are diagnosed with sleep disorder with um ADHD or they're taking ADHD medication actually have sleep disorder breathing, which is disordered breathing during the day and during sleep. Um, do you think that's similar to adults? What do you think could be the cause?

SPEAKER_01 23:52

I personally do. You know, the the broad research hasn't been done as much as it has for children, but we know the prevalence and the rates of dysfunctional breathing. The problem is that there's

ADHD Sleep Breathing And Mislabels

SPEAKER_01 24:03

not really a clear diagnosis or diagnostic criteria for what is dysfunctional breathing, right? We can say it's mouth breathing, but is it mouth breathing 80% of the time or 100% of the time or 50%? Well, it's chest breathing. But again, it's like chest breathing's appropriate if you're exercising really hard. So it's really hard to create these criteria of like what is dysfunctional breathing? So I think it just gets missed a lot of the time. Like the way that our medical system works is it's very built on labels and diagnostic criteria and classifications. So because we don't have one for okay, you have dysfunctional breathing, it just gets kind of swept under the rug, right? And we look at symptomology.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

Can we use the same for ADHD?

SPEAKER_01 24:44

I think it is, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:45

So, what is the definition?

SPEAKER_01 24:47

Because you know, the this to me is like the bigger problem is the way that our system works, right? Is we take a set of symptoms and then we match it to a label or a diagnosis, and based on that diagnosis, we get given a treatment. The treatment is designed to get rid of the symptoms, yeah, right. So the whole model is to suppress or eliminate symptoms. But if we actually shift our thinking and think symptoms are messages, right? They're prompts, they're a body talking to us and asking for change. And so, just like a fire alarm goes off in a house, we don't just rip out the fire alarm, we look for the fire. You know, like trying to eliminate symptoms is the same as trying to rip out the fire alarm instead of looking for what is lighting the fire, where is the fire? And so when we look at the symptoms of ADHD, right? And then if you look at the symptoms of sleep disordered breathing or sleep apnea, they're the same. Right. And so we, because of this classification of like you have to have this label, which now means you traditionally get this medication, we're not really looking at causes, we're looking at symptoms. So we're not looking for a corrective model of how do we restore the system to its optimal state so that the symptoms stop being expressed. We're just trying to get rid of the things that we call symptoms.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

And I think that as you were saying, our lifestyles are so different now that they used to be. So, in my personal opinion and professional opinion, there are so many adults nowadays with ADHD. You know, my gosh, I see people posting all the time. Oh, this is what is wrong with me. Finally, I was just diagnosed with ADHD. But then again, we are overstimulated to the max. And this is not how we used to live before. Human beings were not designed to be able to receive this much input constantly. Because whenever you look at the symptoms, almost everybody has, you know, some of those symptoms. Like, yes, I'm very forgetful. Yes, I can't keep up with whatever, I lose my stuff, or you know, I procrastinate, whatever the, you know, some of the symptoms are. But I feel like at some point, everybody nowadays can relate to a little bit of ADHD symptoms. And I truly believe it's just the change, or including you know, the change of lifestyle that we have now with so many things going on at once, and we just can't keep up.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

Right. I could not agree more. You know, like I wholeheartedly agree. And again, like right now, when people identify with this label, like it's kind of framing it's like we we're broken, we're the problem. Right? There's something wrong with me that I can't focus, that my energy is all over the place, that I'm fatigued. And it's like, well, when we start to see like how many people can identify with, like, oh yeah, like you just said, like, I forget stuff, I find it hard to focus, I find it hard to switch off at night. I'm using my phone too much. It's like maybe this is a byproduct of the way that we're living, not a personal flaw. Like, there's not something wrong with our biology, it's responding exactly as it's designed to to an environment that we were never meant to inhabit. Like our nervous system evolved in a completely different environment to the one we live in today. You know, if you look at anthropological studies, if you look at you know genealogy, it's like it was more or less the same for about two million years. And in the last 50 years alone, right? Technology, internet, artificial light, travel, artificial food, industrial farming like that's just 50 years. But go back 500 years, again, there's a blip on the radar to human evolution, and it's like, yeah, the world was largely the same for 99.9% of evolution in the last 50 to 100 years, we've completely flipped it on its head, and then we see this massive spike of anxiety, depression, suicide, autoimmune, lifestyle. It's like we didn't just break, right? We're responding to an environment that we're living in. There is a massive mismatch of our nervous system and our human biology and the environment that we live in. But the problem that we're going down this pathway of pathologizing our response to our environment is like there's not really an upside to that. Like, we're just gonna have more people diagnosed with more labels, taking more medication, and not actually looking, hey, maybe we need to change the way we live, not just continue to medicate ourselves or like pathologize ourselves. Like, maybe I do need to create a boundary between myself and my phone. Maybe I do need to make time to get sunlight on my skin and in my eyes and touch the ground and be in social connection. Like, without those things, in my mind, it's pretty simple to see why we have you know a 50% increase in anxiety in the last 50 years. Yeah, it's pretty clear, but we're just like there's we're writing more prescriptions, there's more medication being taking, but we're not seeing the rates of these conditions come down. To me, like that is one of the most glaringly obvious signs that we're not doing it right, right? If you look at the rates of prescription for depressant medication and anxiety medication, they are just on an upward trend. We're not seeing a downward trend, right? If the medication worked, the more that we prescribe it, we would see a reduction.

SPEAKER_00 29:53

Yeah, but they don't they don't fix depression, right?

SPEAKER_01 29:57

So it's like it's evidently like the solution isn't to medicate ourselves for some proposed imbalance of our brain chemistry, right? Which has been kind of debunked, right? It was just a big marketing thing. Maybe the solution is actually listening to our body and saying, Hey, my body's expressing all these symptoms or messages. What do I need to look at in terms of the way that I'm living so that my body can stop expressing these symptoms?

SPEAKER_00 30:21

And I cannot unsee the fact that Apple, and I love Apple, I have every Apple product that you can think of times 10. I I'm huge technology nerd, I love that stuff. First time things come out, I'm the first one to get it. I'm one of those. Uh, but I just cannot unsee the fact that it's an apple and it's a bitten apple. And what happened in the Bible? We were all in paradise, and all of a sudden somebody bit an apple, and we're out of paradise. We're stuck in this, you know, other place in the real world with tons of issues. It's just I can't unsee that anymore.

SPEAKER_01 31:01

I've never, well, now I can't unsee

You Cannot Outmedicate Lifestyle

SPEAKER_01 31:03

that. I've never even thought of that. But it's like that's that's a really interesting kind of like piece to look at.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

Yeah, why do you think it's a bit an apple? You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

I mean, his kids were not uh allowed to use iPads and look at it's it's such an interesting, you know, like that aspect of like where technology is going. I I saw an article yesterday of like some AI companies pledging two billion dollars to to cure all disease. I was like, this is interesting. What is it? It's looking for more medication, right? It's looking for more that's not medicine in my mind. That's this modern version of symptom suppression. And so, again, like the the incredible tool that is artificial intelligence, right? It's like we're still directing it in the same damn direction, right? Which is like, oh, how do we suppress symptoms? How do we find better drugs to better suppress the symptoms of our body saying this is not sustainable? It it's just backwards in my mind, right? Like, we can't out medicate a bad lifestyle. It's it's that simple because our lifestyle is what we live 24-7, you know, the same way that you can't out-breath work a dysregulating lifestyle, like someone doing 10 minutes of breathing exercises a day, but living the other 23 hours and 50 minutes in a state of urgency and multitasking and rushing like they're on fire, like that 10 minutes ain't gonna cut it. We need to change the way you live, right? Like breath-based tools are great, right? I'll stand by them, but behavioral change is also equally important. Like, and I think we're again just the byproduct of the system is we think, oh, well, if I just do these 10-minute exercises, I can continue to live in an unsustainable pace, right? If I just take this medication, I continue to do the things that are perhaps provoking, like why my system is responding this way, instead of what is a little bit quote unquote harder, is to actually address, hey, the way that I'm living, right? Like my lifestyle might be the actual cause of these symptoms. This might require me to address the way that I'm living rather than just like try and do some corrective exercise every now and then.

SPEAKER_00 33:09

Exactly. Oh my gosh, your breach. Um, and I have so many other physiology questions and things like that. So maybe we're gonna have to have you come back on the beauty of breathing. So I'm gonna use the last few minutes that we have uh to talk a little bit about some maybe some practical tools for our listeners. Um, if someone is listening right now and feels anxious, what is the first thing they should do with their breath?

SPEAKER_01 33:36

With their breath? I would encourage people. The the common answer is change it, right? Slow the breath down. I would encourage people to start by observing, right? Is by just being with their breath, right? There's a really key question I encourage people to ask, which is what is happening? What am I feeling rather than why am I feeling it? Our mind is a meaning-making machine, right? So my body expresses a set of symptoms. My heart might be racing, right? There might be tension. And my mind's job is to understand why is that happening. So my mind will come up

Start With Awareness Not Control

SPEAKER_01 34:11

with lots of different stories. Oh, it's because you said that silly thing on the podcast yesterday. It's because the meeting you have tomorrow, you don't want to, it's because the investors, it's because it's going to look for a meaning to make up to attach to this is why you're feeling that. So when we get stuck in why am I feeling anxious, right? Our mind's job is to give me a reason. And it's going to bring up all the things that could be making me anxious. The fight I have with my partner, the argument I have with my kid, right? It's like all of it's there waiting to say this is the reason you're anxious. When we shift that question away from why am I feeling anxious to what am I feeling? Okay, well, I'm feeling my heart racing, I'm feeling my shoulders are tense, I'm feeling my jaw is clenched, right? There are things that I can do about that. I'm feeling that my breath is fast or it's shallow or it's tight, whatever it might be. In the act of noticing, right, we are shifting what part of our brain is active. So we're going away from the meaning-making machine to interoception, right? To inner awareness of like, here's what's going on in my body. I'm sensing rather than interpreting. And in that act of sensing, we will naturally tend to see it's like now that I'm aware of my breath, it usually will almost slow itself down. I don't need to control it. It's like, hey, oh, whoa, it's really fast. That's faster than it usually feels. It starts to rewrite itself. Oh, I'm aware. Whoa, my heart is pounding out of my chest. Sit with that. And I just noticed that maybe it's not so loud, or maybe it started to slow down. So before we jump into like controlling our breath or fixing it, is like, what's actually happening right now? Not why is it happening, not what label am I giving this? What am I actually feeling? And in that act of noticing, there's an opportunity to notice, oh, my shoulders are tensed. Oh, well, what would happen if I just drop my shoulders? My breath is held. Okay, what would happen if I sighed and I went back to a slow breath? And approach this through the lens of curiosity, you know, what would happen if, rather than like, oh, I need to fix this, right? Which is control.

SPEAKER_00 36:04

So that idea of like long anxiety, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:07

Exactly. Because we can't like we're not a we're not a machine that we can go, oh, we just flipped the switch and now I'm not anxious, right? So if the two questions that people remember is what am I feeling, not why am I feeling it, and curiosity, not control. Oftentimes that's gonna give us this little recipe where things will just like take a little step down, down, down, down, down. We're never gonna go from high anxiety to completely calm in the space of 10 seconds. Our job is to go from high anxiety to a little bit less and then a little bit less and then a little bit less, and then maybe over the course of five minutes, I'm like, Whew, I'm I'm I'm on more stable ground now, right? And then I might be able to identify what was it that was making me feel anxious. Oh, right, this pitch, this meeting, this argument, this thing. It's like, okay, so like now I can use this lovely brain that we have, right, to think of this is what the cause was. So next time in the same situation, what can I do about it? Versus again, I don't know why I'm anxious, it just I'm just anxious, right? Like the amount of times people will say to me, I'm I'm just an anxious person. It's like, well, what could we do about that? You know, like just because you've been an anxious person doesn't mean you always have to be an anxious person, right? We have an opportunity to kind of like write a different program into our nervous system, but it takes awareness and it takes practice.

SPEAKER_00 37:23

Yes, I mean, that's amazing. Talking about breathing, uh, if you guys have not tried intake breathing at, that's something that I usually recommend to all of my patients uh who have nasal valve collapse. So the way that you can test it, you can look at yourself in the mirror and take a deep breath in. If you notice that your nostrils slightly close, that's called nasal valve collapse. So any types of nasal dilators um will really help open up that little valve, and all of a sudden you can breathe better. I just posted um a reel, and it should be in my stories on my own moves right now. Uh, or you can go under partners, anyways, you can find it out there. Um, they're little magnets that you put on your nose and they have different sizes

Nasal Valve Collapse And Better Airflow

SPEAKER_00 38:07

of these uh things that go around your nose, and it opens up your nostrils. And I always thought that, like, oh, the small one is for me, you know, and uh somebody's a little bit bigger or the bigger one. But I tried the different sizes the other day, and I was amazed of how much more it opened my nose because it was a bigger size, uh, and how much better I could breathe. There's so much I think can impact your breathing. That was one of the questions that I got recently. Well, didn't you fix your airway after you had falto expansion? Well, it could be hormones, it could be allergies, there's so much more that can affect your breathing. So take a look at intake breathing. We have uh a link for you guys for with a discount uh in myomove. So uh go run and get that link so you can try it yourself. And I'm gonna start wearing to the gym now. I want to get a clear one so I can wear it to the gym and see how much that's gonna change my uh workout. Um, before I ask you the last question, can you tell us a little bit how can people find you? Where are you? What is your Instagram?

SPEAKER_01 39:10

Yeah, so best place to find me is Instagram, breathbody therapy. Um, I really just like to me, it's just the what I would call the applied science of breathing. Changed my life 100%. You know, it makes me a better dad. It's just one of these tools that I think is a missing piece for so many people, right? It's like this understanding, and you know, I've spent 10 years teaching breath work, and I think the the clearest way to describe it is it's a tool of self-empowerment. You know, it's like it's not someone telling you what to do, it's like you learning about your own biology. Oh, when I breathe like this, this is how I feel. You know, breathing is it we actually have this respiratory print, right? Like the same way that everyone has a unique fingerprint, we actually have a unique breathing print as well. And so if anyone kind of like tries breath work and thinks, oh, breath work doesn't work, that's kind of like, you know, it's like, well, maybe that wasn't the right type of breath work for me. Maybe the way I was engaging in that breath work needs work. So, like, if you ever feel that like breath work doesn't work for you, I'd encourage you to rethink that, you know, and perhaps follow along, ask questions and really kind of understand like how do I need to use my breath? Right? That is a very unique individualized question. That's like it we need to go beyond, oh, just do box breathing or just breathe slow. You know, it's like, but how you do that matters and when you're doing it and why you're doing it and what your past patterns are. Like, there's so much to be said for like our breathing is shaped by everything, right? Like you were just pointing out, you know, whether it's hormones, whether it's sinus infections, whether it's postural, whether it's stress, whether it's learned patterns, like there are so many factors there. And so I think the more that people can kind of just like start to see, hey, my breath is this really important input, it kind of tells my nervous system what state to be in. It is in charge of how much energy I can produce, and it is completely up to me. Like, I can shape it, I can change it, I can modify it, I can train it. And so that should be really like a call to action for a lot of people. So if you feel as frustrated as Renata and I do about the medical system, it's very built on suppressing symptoms. Well, take charge of your own breath, take charge of your own health, right? Take that personal responsibility on of understanding how your body works because the more that you know, the more confident you'll feel, the less uncertainty, and like all these things go on to change your nervous system.

SPEAKER_00 41:24

That's beautiful. Last question. Can you walk us through a simple breathing exercise to regulate the nervous system?

SPEAKER_01 41:32

Cool. Let's do we're gonna do this, we're gonna do a sigh of relief. But all right, so I just want to kind of point out we have all these inbuilt tools, right? A sigh, a yawn. Anytime my breath changes, this is my nervous system attempting to self-regulate. But again, culture, society, right? It's like a lot of people uh have gotten trouble for taking a sigh, right? Oh, and then so what are you bored? Are you upset? You know, it's like, and so there's this like kind of bounce back where it's like, oh, that thing, like I gotta suppress it, I've got

The Sigh Of Relief Practice

SPEAKER_01 42:08

to make it quiet, I've got to protect, I've got to not let it happen, right? I remember getting yelled at in school for for yawning, right? Yawning is like my brain trying to reset itself. You know, it's like it's a really important part of my nervous system for all of us. And it's like if you got in trouble for that, like I still catch myself trying to suppress a yawn, right? Because I'm in public or whatever it might be. And it's like, hey, this is my nervous system literally attempting to regulate. So we're gonna take a sigh, but we're gonna make it a really intentional sigh.

SPEAKER_00 42:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 42:33

The first part is we're actually gonna start by exhaling, not inhaling. Most people have a lot of air left in their lungs just at rest. So if I try and take a breath in, I'm kind of filling up the top of the lungs. Like, first we're gonna empty the bucket out. So whenever I'm just to breathe out, slowly like you're blowing candles out on a cake. And you're gonna keep going until you feel kind of like the abs kind of engage a little bit. Now I'm empty. You're gonna close the lips and you're gonna silently breathe in. It's gonna be slow, it's gonna be full, right? It can be a nice big breath. We're gonna pause at the top and we're just gonna notice the tension, the shoulders, the chest, and we get one opportunity just to let it fall out. And like let there be a noise. I'm gonna do it one more time and then we know the steps, right? So we're gonna exhale first, we're gonna empty the bucket, gently breathing the air out of the body. Now we've created space slowly and silently through the nose. Little pause at the top just to notice, and then just really letting it fall out with a little bit of a sound. And then take a small pause at the end and just let the natural breath kind of find its way back in.

SPEAKER_00 43:48

I love that. I do feel more relaxed. That's so easy.

SPEAKER_01 43:51

Right. And you know, the amount of times if I if you did that three times, right, the next time that you felt a little overwhelmed, a little stressed, a little anxious. Just instead of like, oh, I gotta do 10 minutes of breathing exercise. What if I just took three sighs of relief? Right. The first one is not gonna be very good. It's gonna be like, oh, that was kind of so the second one, you get an opportunity, like, how do I make that a little softer, a little heavier, a little more effortless, right? And it's usually the third one that really kind of lands for the nervous system. And so just I'd encourage people today, right? Even if it's just today, try that. You could try it three, four, five times today, where it's like, oh, I'm noticing something. Let me just intentionally give my nervous system a message, right? We don't sigh like that when we're running from a tiger. We never have, we never will. So my brain is gonna respond really predictably to that pattern of breath. But oftentimes, again, it's been kind of shaped out of me because I'm hunched over a desk or I'm in an office and I can't, you know, make that noise. And so sometimes you've got to practice and like reinstall the psi, and you do that, and all of a sudden you have a tool that's really effective.

SPEAKER_00 44:59

I love that. Thank you so much, Campbell. That was such a good time over here in Beauty of Breathing. I've learned so much from you. I totally want to schedule again for you to come come back for us to get a little bit more technical.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

Let's do it. I'm excited to do that.

SPEAKER_00 45:14

Thank you. Everybody, have a wonderful day. And as soon as I hang up right now, I am gonna do three more sighs of relief. I really like that.

SPEAKER_01 45:23

Me too. I think everybody else should as well.

SPEAKER_00 45:25

Yes, thank you so much. Have a wonderful day, everybody. Make sure you're following us and all of your or your favorite podcast platform, Beauty of Breathing. Love you, bye.