Friday Reflection: with Breath

Happy Friday. Welcome to Friday Breath. I'm really excited to be here. My name is Jean Nichols. If we have not breathed together or held space together, I wear many hats, literally and figuratively. But today's hat is simply as a coach and as a breath worker. I'm a certified breath worker. I do Reiki and coaching of all sorts, life coaching, wellness coaching. And so we're here today. I am giving you a little bit of my backdrop for today. I am in Port Douglas, Australia. And if you've been following along with my friend JC, you will know that we both ran the Sydney Marathon.

But what's really fun is behind me, you'll see some runners starting to run through and there's actually a race happening today. And I did pause for a hot second to think about maybe joining them on whatever their run is because it finishes on a beach, which is just over on the other side of these trees. But yeah, so we're here today and It's interesting. I like to bring breath work into our Friday sessions, or at least a conversation about breath and how that breath can impact our bodies. And today I wanted to share just a little story with all of you.

I am about to head out and go on a boat to go snorkeling. And I'm very excited about this. We are in Port Douglas, and that is where the Barrier Reef is. And we're in Australia, so it's going to be a really cool experience, an experience that not everybody is able to have, but also in a few decades, it's likely that no one will be able to have it again, just based on the transition that's happening. However, what's funny about that is I'm a great swimmer. I love water. And I have gone scuba diving.

I'm not scuba certified yet, but I did have a scuba dive experience. And I get panicky when I can't breathe. Many years ago, And this is why and when I started my breath work journey many years ago I was in a situation and I was under an extreme amount of stress. I was in a relationship that wasn't very supportive of who I am and It just caused a lot of stress for me and there were a lot of things that were happening I was young I was graduating college. I was starting my first job my mom and dad were going through some medical issues.

So it was just a lot. I was carrying a lot. And as a high empath, I feel everything. I feel it in my chest, in my shoulders. I can feel it in my whole body. So for me, that moment in time was really wild because I couldn't find a breath. And I just remember going to play a softball tournament. I had done a short triathlon in the morning. It was a hot day. I went to go play a softball tournament in the afternoon. And you know, when you're in your 20s, you do stuff like that. And so I went out there and I had an asthma attack and I never had one before ever.

But it was so bad, like I can actually feel it right now. I couldn't breathe and I was gasping for air and I didn't know what was happening. And what I found out later wasn't just that I was having an asthma attack. I was so stressed out that my body was in a panic. And I don't take a lot of medications. Most of the time they work in reverse in my body. And so when the doctor gave me an inhaler to use, it really reacted weird in my body and I just, I couldn't, I couldn't It just was too much. I felt even more anxiety when I would use it.

So I needed to work with my breath to figure out how to find calm. So I started on my runs. I would go for runs training for these races and I would try to understand when I started to feel the tightness in my chest. Now I'm not saying this is for everybody and I'm definitely not a doctor. But for me, what I wanted to try to understand was my mind-body connection to what was happening with my breath. And so I would start to feel it overwhelm and a sensation in my chest where I couldn't breathe on my run someday.

And so I would start to walk, and I would give myself permission to walk. And I would take some deep breaths. And those breaths would help me to calm, and then I would start to be curious about what was happening. Or I would feel something. Sometimes I would just start to cry. And it would just be so overwhelming, and I would let all my thoughts out. And you know when a child starts to cry so hard, they start to gasp? It's actually a child's natural way to soothe themselves from whatever traumatic feeling they're going through, through that expression of crying.

And so I would take time with that breath and I would really listen to my body and my mind, what thoughts were happening that was causing that tightness in my chest, that was causing the emotions and the thoughts. And over a period of time, I got to understand my body so much better and my breath so much more and how to use it and control it. But I have this fear. from that time of not being able to breathe. And so we're going snorkeling today and the last time I went snorkeling was many years ago and I didn't understand it.

I didn't understand that you couldn't inhale as soon as you came above water and instead you have to exhale and you have to teach yourself just a different perspective on breathing. So Today we're going to do this epic thing. Just a new experience. Hello, hello, good evening. I miss you too. Coming here from Port Douglas, Australia, just over this little set of trees is the ocean. Yeah, so breath. So we're gonna do this thing today. We're gonna go snorkeling and I, if I'm being 100% honest with you, I already feel my heart starting to race.

I already feel like a tightness in my chest. And I know that there's something in my brain that is causing me to just feel this right now. And here's what's great. It's okay. Because whatever's gonna happen, I'm gonna get in the water and whether or not I use the snorkel, I know I could hold my breath. And sometimes just having the snorkel in my mouth is what physically creates a panic in my mind. So if I take it out and I just hold my breath and I come up above for air, that's what I need to do and it'll be great.

But when we are working with our breath and we start to understand what's happening in our bodies, we get to really experience our emotions, our thoughts in a very different way. Our body is just going to naturally breathe no matter what. Even if we are in a breathwork session and I facilitate, it's called conscious breathwork. So that breath where you're gasping for air like a little child at the end of a cry, that's kind of what we do, not totally, but similar. But we create that experience to help deep healing.

And our breath can be used in so many ways. Active breath. So right now, today, I'm simply going to invite you to breathe with me. I'm going to invite you to take a long, slow breath. We'll count to three. On the inhale, we'll exhale for three. And we'll do it three times. So three, three, three. I also do this in patterns of five. I find that patterns help people to focus until we don't need to focus on the breath anymore. So let's do it. Three count in. Inhale. Exhale. Let's do that again. Inhale.

Exhale. One more time. Exhale. How do you feel? Now threes can be fast. The difference that I also like to include is a pause for three. So if we inhale for three, pause for three, exhale for three, pause for three. It allows you to ground a little bit more. So I'm going to let you try that one. We'll just do one to see how it feels different. Inhale for three. Pause. Release. Pause. Breathe. Our breath is a wild, wild Reset. Our breath can help to reset our brains, can help to start to rewire our neurons so that we can get more comfortable.

It helps to reset our whole system, depending on how you want to activate your breath. Now, each Friday, Through the month of September, I'm going to bring in a different style of breath so that we can practice. And I'll talk about how breath can help us, but mostly it's Friday and we're here. So whatever happened this week, it's already gone. It's already in the past. Wherever you're at right now in this moment, it's the only moment that we know. It's the one we're in. Whatever's coming, whatever's not here yet, We can't control because it's not here.

We don't know how to experience it. We don't know how to move through it. So when I go to get on that boat, today I'm just going to breathe in the fresh air. I'm going to look for the dolphins. I'm going to experience a new experience that I've never had before. And when I need to come back to my breath, I'm going to give myself permission to take a time out and do exactly what I need in that moment. And between now and the walk there, I'm simply just going to look around the beautiful space around me and just find some gratitude.

So Friday I invite you to breathe, to find gratitude for what you went through this week. Even if it was hard, there's something beautiful inside that. You might not see it yet, you don't have to see it yet, but whatever it was, it was yours. And we're here right now, breathing. Finding gratitude in our bodies, gratitude in our days. And we are allowing ourselves to have a smooth transition into whatever comes next and remembering that we can always come home. Home to our breath, home to our heart, home to our heart center.

So I'm sending you all the love from Port Douglas, Australia. Jules, it's always so great to see you. I can't wait to see you in person and give you a big hug soon. Enjoy the rest of your day, enjoy your evening, and we'll see you soon.