Saturday Breathe Together!​

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Of a pulmonary condition. Anybody who’s just severely deconditioned. Okay. Gravity plays a huge role in physiology. So what do I mean by that when we’re lying flat in our bed. Okay. And I want you to think of this in terms of, is gravity assisting. In other words, is gravity adding, is gravity taking away or is gravity doing nothing? So when you’re lying flat in your bed, like this gravity is pushing down, but it’s not generally moving your blood flow up and down. So this is standing up, lying down, sitting down would be sort of, obviously, you know, it’s sitting down is, but when you’re lying like this, and when you go from lying down to sitting on the side of the bed, gravity shifts, and what that means is that gravity then becomes assistant and gravity then pushes down and brings the blood to the lower body.

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Okay. now when you’re sitting down, you have some stoppers there and the stoppers are your hips and your knees. And those kinds of slow things down a little bit, like if we had water rolling down a Hill, and then we had some boulders, you know, kind of along that Hill, when the water got to that Boulder, it would slow down the pace a little bit, but when you’re standing up, okay, there’s no stoppers there. And blood will pull in the lower body. And the problem with that is that when blood pools in the lower body there’s no venous return. So venous return means when you are pumping your calves, then the blood is coming back up. It’s returning to the heart. The heart gets stretched and the heart can continue to pump effectively when that blood is all in the lower body.

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Okay. Imagine your toilet bowl. And you’re trying to flush your toilet bowl, but you haven’t let the tank fill up yet. Right? So it’s like, you can flush that as many times as you want, but it’s not going to give you good output. Same with the heart. So with the heart cardiac output is made up of heart rate times stroke volume. And what that means is that if the stroke volume or how much you pump with each stroke is diminished, then the only way the body can adapt to that is by increasing the heart rate. So many people with dysautonomia say, I could just be sitting here. I stand up or I walk across the hall and my heart rate goes from 75 to 150. Right? And if you think about the physiology behind that, and if you think about the reasoning behind it, and if you understand it, then we can actually affect physiology as opposed to just simply being affected by physiology.

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So keep that in mind. And what we’re going to start to do is to start teaching you and we’ve already started it and we’re always kind of doing it. I’m always kind of doing it, but I want you to start problem solving and thinking, okay, I am about to go from lying down to sitting, sitting up. What does that mean for my blood flow? And if my blood flow all winds up in my legs, but what does that mean for my heart? And what does that mean for my head? Right? Cause I, I get lightheaded. And what does it mean when you go from sitting down and you remove those stoppers to standing up and now we have an even greater pole on gravity and the heart has to be even faster. The good news about this is that it can be trained. Okay. It can be trained.

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And a lot of people don’t know this. And it takes time. The neurologic system, you know, does not recover quickly. It does not get trained quickly. It’s going to take weeks or months, but it will come back. But if you do the right things and by that, I mean, if you do things that are going to be calming on the system that are going to teach the system, then you will come back more committed, sorry. Then you will come back more quickly. And if you do things that are continuously excitatory to the system, then that is going to be irritating to you and it will take longer and you will experience more setbacks. So again, the key is we want to inch along with this until we know that what we’ve done so far is good. Even breathing. Okay. Some of the therapies that we do start with the words you may feel like you’re not doing anything and that’s okay. I’d rather you feel like you’re not doing anything. Then you feel like you’re doing too much or you feel like you’re not doing anything. And then the next day or the next week, you’re pinned to your bed.

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Okay. So today we’re going to start with the most basic breathing. Okay. And it doesn’t matter if it’s breathing or walking or other types of exercise, we always want to go with the lowest possible denominator. Okay. Now, one of the people I spoke about yesterday or spoke to yesterday is really the perfect example of what I want to say and what you should be doing and what you shouldn’t be doing. And if I spoke to you yesterday and you know, I’m talking about you and it’s okay to tell your story, raise your hand. Okay. Perfect. She knows. Okay. So here we go. So bootcamp is designed to go very, very slowly. So initially when we started boot camp, okay, we started with a four minute walk. But even in bootcamp, we say, if you can’t do four minutes, do two minutes and two minutes. Okay. if you can’t do two minutes,

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Do one minute and one minute and one minute and one minute,

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Even more important for COVID bootcamp. So I spoke to somebody yesterday and they said, well, you know what I started doing. I started doing three times a day and I started doing, adding a minute each day. So instead of adding a minute, which is what bootcamp is, they added a minute in the morning and a minute in the afternoon and a minute in the evening. And the important thing to keep in mind with that is that at the very beginning, it’s, it’s the most important for you to go slow. Okay? Because let’s say you were even doing a minute in the morning and then

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A minute in the afternoon and a minute in the evening. And then you went to two,

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Well, you just doubled your workload in one day. So you just went up and workload by a hundred percent. And if anybody here is a scuba dive or you know that the first 33 feet are the greatest pressure change because you go from one atmosphere to two atmospheres. So it doubles. Okay. So at the very beginning, I would much rather you clear the slate at this moment. Okay. If you’re satisfied with how things are going, like if you think things are starting to move along for, you know, setbacks, awesome. Stay the course. If you still feel stuck or you feel like it’s up and down, up and down, and you’re not sure what the rhyme or reason is to that, then I encourage you to use this wonderful Saturday as a reset button. Okay. And start from scratch. So there’s things that are related to time.

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There’s things that are related to different counts. There’s things that are related to frequency. And that’s what we have to become aware of. So we’re going to start the breathing. Okay. Typically we will advise people to try to breathe in for two and out for four, if we had to say, if you had to say, you know, like the heart rate textbook is 80 blood pressure textbook one 20 over 80, we would say textbook breath in for two, out for four. But a lot of people can not do that or find it uncomfortable for various reasons. So if what you’re doing is making you uncomfortable, then it’s actually going to be excited Tori for you. And what that means is that if it’s excitatory for you, it’s going to be sympathetic charged. And it means it’s going to be anti healing. So I only want you to do what it is that you can do.

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So we’re going to start with some basic breathing. Now, why are reasons? What are some reasons that people can have difficulty breathing? It could be a physiologic problem. Okay. It could be a physical problem. When we say physical, a lot of people report that when they start to take a breath in, they come to a point where it’s like, there’s a stopper. Okay. So they come to a point of resistance. And at that point of resistance, it’s like, if you were filling a cup and then all of a sudden somebody shut the cup, you can’t take a deeper breath. Okay. So you never want to try to fight that point of resistance. Okay. Because it’s only gonna make things worse. Same thing with our respiratory patients, the harder you work to breathe, the harder it’s actually gonna make it to breathe. So what we have to do is we have to finesse this.

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If anyone’s a martial artist and I see a lot of you look like martial artists the idea is we want to go with the soft art, not the hard art and the hard art is like karate, which is meet force with force. We want to go with the soft art, like Tai Chi like Ikea, where it’s blend with this force. And so your body is going to set the limit for you. Your body’s gonna set the limit for you and let it do that. Don’t resist it. So the first exercise we’re going to do, okay. And I don’t care how slow you do this. I don’t care how, you know, quietly you do this. How we, you know, w not how gently you do this. I want you to find a point of comfort. Okay? So first and foremost, find a comfortable position.

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And the first thing we’re going to do is I’m going to give you as few restrictions as possible. I’m going to give you a few limitations as possible. I’m going to give you as few rules as possible. The only rule that I want you to follow for this moment is I want you to breathe in through your nose for two. Okay? So you’re going to breathe in for a count of two, and you’re going to breathe in, in, and then you’re going to blow it out. However you like, okay. I would encourage you to blow it out gently. I would encourage you to try to blow it out, using what we call pursed lips, which is

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If you don’t want to do it that way or experiment with different things, I promise you, nothing is going to happen to anybody while I’m watching you right now. Okay. You’re going to be okay. So experiment with different things. Because as you know, if you don’t know how to swim, you’re not going in the pool. And if you don’t know how to breathe, then you’re not going to do the things that are going to make it more difficult for you to breathe. Okay? So for now, I just want you to get comfortable with this. Another reason why people can have difficulty moving air, both in and out is because the airways go into spasm and Trop air. So aligning the smooth line in the airways, we have smooth muscle and smooth muscle can constrict and relax. And our goal is to get that smooth muscle, to relax as much as possible.

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So we’re going to spend a few minutes now, and I want you, if you feel comfortable doing it and you feel more comfortable doing it, you can close your eyes when you do this. But nice and easy. And just watch me for a moment before you do it. I want you to find a comfortable position and just nice, easy breathing in through your nose for a count of two. And whatever you do with that breath afterwards is your business. And then it doesn’t have to be continuous. Okay? I want you to do it at a pace that you feel comfortable with. So I want you, you know, a lot of what we teach with respect to breathing is very regimented. It’s very paced. And it’s like, [inaudible], if you go off the track, well, wait a second. We have a situation here, right? There’s no situations here.

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I just want you to breathe in for two, three through your nose and get used to feeling, what does that feel like? Okay. So nice and easy. We’re going to breathe in, in, and then as you feel comfortable, simply let that air out gently and not until you’re ready. Only when you’re ready. And only when you’re calm. That’s when you take the next breath and we’re going to breathe in, in don’t put any pressure on yourself to do it quickly, to do it forcefully, to do any type of exhalation. Right now, we are simply monitoring. We are taking stock. We are scanning. Nice, easy breathing. Be aware of sensations. You don’t have to become obsessed with them. You don’t have to become agitated or excited or anxious when you feel something different. Simply take note of it and continue on your way. If you feel anything uncomfortable, dizzy, short of breath, chest pain, pressure, simply stop and take a break. If you feel like you’re getting sleepy, if you feel like your eyes are getting heavy, if you feel like your head is getting wobbly, then you are doing it right. And that is what we mean by parasympathetic activity.

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Nice, easy breathing in through your nose.

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[Inaudible]

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Try to keep your shoulders down and relaxed. Keep your upper chest relaxed. Nice.

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[Inaudible]

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Stop. When you get 2000 breaths, just kidding.

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[Inaudible]

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Nice, easy breathing.

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[Inaudible]

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No keep breathing. And what you may find is that after a certain period of time, you may want to take a deeper breath, or you may feel comfortable taking a deeper breath, or it may feel natural for you to take a deeper breath. And if that happens, you can start to breathe in for three. And the exhalation again is going to be no pressure. Nice and easy. Just let the air out. Now there’s a lot of different sort of meditative and visual type of things that if, if that’s the type of stuff that you like, or if you don’t know if you liked it or not, you can focus on trying to breathe in a nice white Blowing out, sort of a, a dark, smoky energy. Nice, easy breathing, breathing in for either two or three. And nobody jump ahead to four yet. I know you long haulers, a type A’s don’t jump ahead to four. Nice, easy breathing.

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[Inaudible]

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And now if you’re good with three, you can try for you. Shouldn’t be stretching though. So only if you have four down, Pat, go to four. If not stay with three, and if you’re still working on two that’s okay. Also, we’re probably going to stop at five. I’m afraid to go to six and six is afraid to go to seven because seven ate nine. Okay. so let’s just now you should be breathing in for two, three or four. And the other thing you could do is if going to four is tough, then you could do three and then try for four and then go back to three again. Okay. Right now what we’re doing is we’re teaching you about your powers and the power of breath. So we’re teaching you that you have the ability to go from two to three and from three to four, let’s shoot for 10 more breaths at your own pace, no rush. And again, if your highs are getting heavy in your head is getting heavy and you feel like you’re zoning out, just go with it. It’s okay. When you get somewhere between six and 10 breaths, I want you to return to normal, quiet breathing. If your eyes are closed, if, and only when you are ready, feel free to rejoin the room with calm, by opening your eyes. And then once everybody is back in the room, we’re going to give it one more minute or just sort of quiet breathing.

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And would anybody like to share what that experience was like for them? Hey Eva, you can, you can just unmute yourself and then you can share.

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I was, I wanted to go to bed and it was very good. Can I ask your question please?

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Maybe I, I will reserve the right to say, I’m not going to answer it now though, but what’s the question.

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How long do you take the bread? Right. And you let it out. But then with me way like a little while to go back.

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Okay. I got you. I’m using you because I don’t want to bust up everybody’s vibe. Hang on. So here’s the deal. So that’s a great question. Okay. So the question is when she takes a breath in, right, she has to wait a little bit because it’s not like, you know, there’s this big open thing. It’s like, we have to reverse direction. So we come to the top where we’re inhaling, then we have to wait and then you let it out. So the answer for everything right now is wait. As long as you leave as need as you need to, and as short as, as comfortable. So the point is there’s no absolutes. Okay. Right now the goal is for you to find that peace and harmony. And I don’t say that, although I could say it, I’m proud to say, say it with hippie in intonations, but we’re looking for calm, right?

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We’re looking for a respite from this constant assault on our senses. That is the world today. And that is COVID and post COVID and everything else. So as long as you need to. So, so be it, it could be account of one. It could be account of two, and we will change these over time. So what we just did was the most basic, right? So everybody can do that. What we just did, we did in for two, in, for three, in for four. So if you can’t breathe in for two, then everybody can breathe in for two. It’s that simple, because you have to breathe in for two to get air into your lungs. Okay. So if nothing else, this is something that you can do, but don’t do it 20 times a day to start do it once and then let the pool ripple watch the effect.

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Okay. Because we know that even breathing is exercise. Okay. And we know that sometimes even that one inch over the line can be too much, right? It’s like, if I want to take your picture at the grand Canyon, and let’s say, you know, you’re 10 feet, there’s 10 feet between us and the grand Canyon. Well, you could go anywhere in that 10 feet, but if you go 10 foot and one inch, well, that first steps doozy. So same thing here. Okay. And that’s why with COVID and long haul, we’re trying to just find that balance point. We want to go, not, not necessarily to the very edge of the cliff, but we want to get close to it without going over it. Anyone else? How did you feel during that?

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Feel free to unmute yourself. Okay. So somebody will said somewhat akin to mindful awareness, absolutely mindfulness awareness. But, but also what we’re trying to do with this is we’re trying to not be so aware, right? So we’re looking for the balance of awareness, because like, how many of us, when something’s bothering us, we become hyper aware of it. It’s like, we’re so aware of it. We’re looking up every article I’m going, let’s say every television show. And we want to ask every question. Sometimes I say to people, I say, Hey, just get off Facebook for four hours, you know, or something like that. So we want to be as aware as we need to, but not over aware, not hypervigilant about this. And sometimes things will pop into our head that are not pleasant and rather than become obsessed with it. And rather than focus on it, it’s that we acknowledge it and say, you know what? This is this is something and we’re going to let it go, Lucille. I see you. You’re welcome to unmute yourself. You’re on mute. Now. Go ahead. I was chill.

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Thank you. When I got to, when I was able to count to four, I felt elated. And I thank you for that. My problem. And I wrote this when I get outside and I start walking, I immediately stop

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Reading to my mouse. Okay. So that’s, that’s a different story than what we’re talking about now. And I’m happy to talk about it. Okay. But I want to stay focused on this. So avoid the tendency to leave this space. Okay. We are in the room together. Now some of our rooms like Dawn’s are nicer than others. You look like you’re in the forest, but, but avoid the tendency to think about, well, what about right? Well, what if I can do that? Well, what if I go outside and I lose my breath for now, let’s focus on what we can do. And don’t let the things that you cannot do interfere with the things that you can do. And right now it’s like, if we’re learning how to fly a plane, we’re going to save takeoffs and landings. Like for later on, we’re going to save the challenge for now.

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It’s fly in peaceful air, right? And let’s keep the plane steady. So there are techniques for that Lucio, but for now, how many people, any who else wants to, wants to talk for a moment and share there. Someone wrote very exp someone wrote a, should we be holding the breath before exhaling? So the answer to that is you can pause, but you never want to be holding the breath, right? So you never want to be like, you can keep the circuit open though. And all of this should be zero resistance, zero resistance. Very calming, felt a little lightheaded after a while, but felt V but then felt very relaxed. Okay. So if you are starting to feel lightheaded, some people do get lightheaded when they over breathe, back it off, back it off to twos again. Okay. The point is you have control of the gas pedal, and that is what I’m going to try to teach you and get you to experience over the next several days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries.

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It may take that long, but it’s okay. So the key is you have control and you know that if you’re driving on the highway and you see someone’s red lights ahead of you, right. You slow down, you take your foot off the gas, and that’s what I want you to do here. I want you to learn when it’s okay to press, when it’s okay to take your foot off the gas. Somebody wrote my lungs feel hard and are resistant at first. Okay. So I like that at first. Okay. So if you’re feeling the resistance, okay. Stay with, to stay with too, because what we’re doing when we do this is we’re slowly relaxing and stretching the smooth muscle inside the airway. And that’s why I said, if it feels like you want that next, and it feels like two is no longer filling you, then go to three.

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Right. And if it feels like three is not feeling you then go to four. Alright. What is a long hauler? So I will answer that or that I’m not going to answer that now and, and try to stay in the room each count. How long should each count be? So think of it like this again, it’s up to you. Okay. Find your comfortable pace. But it shouldn’t be like in two, three, four, one, two, three. It’s not like, it’s not like right. You know, it’s not like Robin Williams and in burden birdcage. No, it’s, it’s just like, it should be like nice and easy in, in, and blow two, three, four, but whatever makes you again, there’s no rules here. Okay. So imagine this, what dysautonomia means is there’s either a problem with how the brain and the autonomic nervous system sends signals to the body, or there’s a problem with how the body receives those signals, or there’s a problem with how the body sends those signals back to the brain and the autonomic nervous system, or there’s a breach, or there’s a problem with how the brain and the autonomic nervous system receive it.

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So imagine this you’re learning and you’re in a new relationship with your body. Oh, you like this? I like this. You like this. I like this reintroduce yourself. Okay. And just like, some people love sushi. Some people would never eat sushi. Okay. So you have to get to know what your body likes and the more information you give to your body, the more and the more your body will learn how to use that. And the more information the body gives back to the brain, the more it will learn how to use that. And an analogy that I use is imagine if all of a sudden it were pitch black and we had to navigate our way around, well, we wouldn’t run. Just add it. Right. We may do that once until we get knocked out, wake up on the floor, but we will feel around the room and we will feel with our feet.

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And we will feel with our hands and little by little by little, the brain will learn and remember that. And it will start to create these images on its own. And that’s what we’re trying to do again. Okay. So here’s other things I kept yawning. Why was that? Because you’re tired. No, I’m just kidding. I hope it’s because you were relaxed. Is it, but it’s okay. Don’t, don’t overthink. Okay. Thinking is the enemy of the parasympathetic nervous system. Is it normal to have a late inspiration squeak when you debrief? So the answer is, is it normal? No. It’s like a wheeze. It could be a little wheeze. And that come from a number of different things. It can come from COPD. It can come from pulmonary fibro. There’s a lot of different things that could do it. And there’s a lot of different things that can cause it, but just go with it.

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It’s okay. Or stop right before the squeak. And that squeak may be an area of increased turbulence. Right? You may have a mechanical blockage there. You may have mucus there. You may have some airway spasm there. So if you get to a point where you’re uncomfortable or you hear a squeak or something feels unusual, I would say just back off a little bit, just back off a little bit from that and work just a little bit backwards and then it may go away. Okay. But again, it’s like the same thing. If we’re stretching our hamstrings, if we overstretch it at first, or we go to quick, it’s gonna reward you by going into spasm. Same with this welcome relief to focus only on what I can do and simply relax with the flow. Listen, your body will set the limit. Okay. Don’t push it.

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Okay. Don’t push it. And you know, the one thing I’ll say to you is that you will heal, okay. Believe it or not everybody is healing. Okay. Because time will heal. There’s a reason why it says time, heals all wounds. It may not be as quickly as you want it to be. And some of the healing may be completely invisible and completely undetectable to you. Okay? So you have to have a little bit of faith here. Not just in me. I’m not asking it for, in me. I’m asking it. Have faith in yourself, have faith in your own toughness and resilience have faith in your body’s ability to bounce back and to learn and adapt, and also be kind to yourself. Don’t push yourself. Don’t ask yourself for more than you can do. This is a tough spot. This is a tough spot for the world right now.

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Okay. So we have to say, you know what? This is the moment. What are we going to do about it? We can’t force this moment any more than we can force anything. Okay. And when I say that, you know, your body may be healing in undetectable ways. Think of it as two trains that are kind of digging towards each other in a mountain, they can be one inch apart. Okay. And it’s still dark. And only when they make that final connection, do they see the light? And that’s how the neurologic nervous system works. Okay. And unfortunately, the neurologic nervous system is slow. It’s a slow healer. It grows slowly. I’m going through the same thing with monkey right now. Monkey had a spinal cord injury. I believe he’s healing. It’s going to take time now, but you cannot say, you know, why isn’t it today?

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Why isn’t it today? Why isn’t it today? Why isn’t it today? That is the opposite of healing. That is sympathetic outflow one Oh one. And that sympathetic outflow is anti healing. So it’s really, you know, you can fight it or you can go with it. You can accept it or you can resist it. Okay. If you resist it, your body’s going to show you. Who’s the boss and it’s not going to be you. So if you accept it with grace, with calm, with trust, with faith and know that your body is doing its best for you, and it may be working behind the scenes. Oh my, I just got the chills. When I said that I’m inspiring even myself, but, but the idea is have faith that your body is working behind the scenes for you. Okay. You know, and I’ve heard my buddy, Joel, Osteen say things like this about God, okay.

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This is not a religious sermon, but have faith that the body is resilient and trust that it’s going to happen. It’s not going to happen as fast as you want it to. That’s the answer for everybody. Cause if that’s the case, it would have happened to. Right. And you wouldn’t need to be here, but this stuff is very healthy for you. Maintain equal number of inhales and exhales. Correct. So great question. Yes and no. Okay. If that feels good for you and do well physiologically, that’s not how breathing generally works. So physiologically when you’re doing a breath. So the inhalation is an active movement. And what we mean by that is that there’s actually muscle activity that so the diaphragm contracts and that’s what inflates the lung and the diaphragmatic contraction is, is quick. Under normal circumstances. The lungs during quiet breathing will deflate passively.

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So if we were to look at it, the inhalation would be about half. As long as the exhalation. Now there are different type of respiratory conditions. Things like you know, restrictive lung diseases like pulmonary fibrosis, where you have difficulty breathing air in or CLPD where you have difficulty blowing air out. So again, we are trying to wiggle our way in and find what our body wants. The reason why I specifically didn’t give you an exhalation today is because it doesn’t matter. Okay. Quite frankly, doesn’t matter when we’re sitting here and doing this, if I said, okay, breathe in for two, out for four. And you were like, Oh, wait a second. I’m on behind schedule. Wait a second. I can only bring them for three. And then that’s this right? The idea is get out of this quiet disk because we know that when that brain is firing and firing, it’s like, Oh my God only throw it out.

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It is shooting out adrenaline. It is shooting out adrenaline. And that is the very crux of sympathetic nervous system activity. So this today is step one. So here’s the thing. So Chuck, there’s something called the respiratory scale. Okay. That I made up, which is make a line, get a piece of paper, make a line down the center and don’t do this right this second. But it’s very simple. You don’t have to write this down. You’re going to remember it. One side is inhale. One side is exhale. Two, three, four, five, six. Okay. So if you’re a singer, okay. The opera singer doesn’t start with because she will hurt herself or he will hurt himself. Okay. Or he already did hurt himself. And that’s why he’s thinking like that. But the idea is, don’t worry, it’ll come to you in a few minutes. You’ll know what I meant.

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But the idea is that you know, the idea is that you can’t unmute. Okay. I’m going to get you in one second, Janice. So the idea is that if you start too hard, okay, you’re going to injure yourself and you can injure your larynx, your voice box. You can, you know, and you can do it with a skeletal muscle and you can also do it with your respiratory muscles. So I would say, try breathing in for two, for the first one, don’t even worry about the inhalation exhalation. Okay. For now let’s just focus on one because we’re not coordinating this with activity yet for now, we are using this as a method of just being, just be just exist and breathe. So you could breathe now later on down the road, which is like step seven. So don’t even try this yet, but it would be in for two, out for two, in, for two, out for two.

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Then you could try in for two, out for three, in, for two, out for four, in for three. And there’s all these different combinations. And you know, especially when it comes to like pulmonary rehab or cardiac rehab, like, we want to be like, well, you have to do it like this. And everybody on the group kind of says, I have to breathe in for two, out for four. And once it doesn’t work like that, okay. Life doesn’t work like that in anything. So we give you different ingredients. And the idea of pulmonary rehab or cardiac rehab is that we’re not supposed to create this regimented army. Like schedule it for you. It’s we give you tools. You try them out. You see what works for you. If it works, use it. If it doesn’t work, don’t use it. It’s okay. I’m not going to get mad. I don’t know, stock and in for two, out for four. So do what feels comfortable for you, Jan. Let’s see. Why? Why, why can’t you can’t unmute. Yup. There you go. You’re good. Good morning. How you doing?

(00:41:14):

I have a serious, serious sinus infection going on. So excuse my appearance. The pursed lip breathing. What was just did very relaxing. I love it. Any position better than the other, doing this exercise.

(00:41:30):

So the answer to just about every question is maybe can never go wrong with maybe. And it depends. Okay. So the answer is, it depends. What do you want to do with this? Okay. If it’s simply, we want to use relaxation. We want to quiet the sympathetic nervous system. We want to zone out. We want to get some peace. We want to get some relief from this chaos. Then the position doesn’t matter. Okay. Then the position should be something that is as comfortable for you as possible. That is going to support you and not get in your way. Okay. Now let’s say we do that. You had a right lower lobe, pneumonia and secretions were a problem for you. Well then lying on your left side is going to put your airways in a position so that you can drain that, left that right lung most effectively and fill up the lung with air.

(00:42:25):

If it were the left lung, then lying on your right side. If you’re trying to catch your breath. Okay? So a lot of people are worried about not being able to catch their breath, in which case, things like this are very helpful. So leaning forward, okay. Why is this helpful for you? Okay. This is helpful for you for a number of reasons. Number one, my abdominal contents drop down, clearing the way for the diaphragm, right? So if I’m standing like this, think of gravity, pulling everything down and the diaphragm has to contract down. Now I do this. Everything drops forward. The diaphragm is free. The other thing is that when you fix your upper extremities, okay, that also supports respiration. The other thing this does is it shifts the blood. And this is one of the reasons why proning was so important in acute COVID.

(00:43:20):

Okay. But what this does is normally, okay, our thorax is the stabilizer. So this is what I call open chain activity. And in open chain activity, my thorax is a stabilizer and my chest does things like this. And this, my back does things like this and this, my shoulders do things like this and this and this. But when we fix the hands or the arms and you could do this, you know, laying down, you could put your elbows down. But when you fix the upper extremities and the upper extremities become the stabilizer and the thing that’s moving is your rib cage. And it’s helping you to elevate and take a deeper breath. But for just the purpose of breathing and calm and quieting, the sympathetic nervous system and enhancing that parasympathetic outflow, then the position is less important. Great. Thank you. Sure thing. Thank you. All right. Other other comments or questions? Any other responses? How do people feel

(00:44:30):

Anyone have a

(00:44:32):

Negative experience with it? Anyone feel anxious? Anyone feel out of control? Anyone feel irritated besides me? No, I’m just kidding. So now here’s the thing. We’re going to do one more exercise and then that’s it for today. Okay. That’s it for today. And the reason why I say that is because I’m looking around this room and I know a lot of you guys you’re like, Hmm, this was good. It’s good. If I do it once I better do it twice. If I do it twice, I miss probably going to be better. If I do it 20 times, it’s not like dollars. Okay. It doesn’t work that way. Okay. So what we need is we need you to do this. We need you to accept the next exercise and then spend the rest of the day, seeing how you feel. And don’t overthink it. Don’t write me a journal as to how you felt.

(00:45:25):

Minute by minute, we got to quiet the brains. We’ve got to quiet the brains here. Okay. There’s too much activity going on and it’s not just you guys. It’s the world. It’s the world. It’s just too much chaos. And this is a way that we can quiet this and find that piece for ourselves. Yeah, boot camp. If you’re in boot camp, you could do boot camp, but don’t add anything new. Okay. So if you’re doing bootcamp, stick with bootcamp, we’re going to do one more exercise. So I’d like you to maybe try a different position than you were in before. So if you were sitting up before, maybe just sit back and find someplace where you can be totally supported, you know, give yourself kind of the feeling of being somewhere you like, whether it’s lying on a lounge chair on the beach or lying in one of those floats in a pool or whatever it is that makes you feel good.

(00:46:26):

And what we’re going to do is we’re going to start again with two and we’re going to breathe in, in and let it out gently. Okay. So now watch me for one second before you close your eyes, okay. I want you to, we’re going to add a little arm movement to this and it’s not going to be anything complex. And you’ll also notice that as far as gradations, we’re sitting for all of these, right? In a few days, we’re going to go to standing and other, other things. But for now I want you to find emotion for yourself that is very comfortable. And I don’t, I’m going to just show you a couple of, and I don’t, it doesn’t really matter what it is, but one that I like it’s very easy. It’s just sort of feel your arms rise up and then sort of push down as you exhale, sort of like lifting this sort of healing water, and then gently pushing it behind us. So now as we lift, we’re going to breathe in for two. So we’re going to in,

(00:47:30):

In

(00:47:48):

Yes.

(00:47:49):

And again, if you feel your head getting heavy, that’s okay. If you feel your eyes wanting to close more, let them do it. That is parasympathetic activity breathing in.

(00:48:09):

And if that even feels like a lot, it’s okay. Just put your hands on your knees and just maybe turn your head down a little bit and just sort of words that I like to use during this time are grace and hope and humility and calm and peace because now is not the time for pushing or arrogance or for overdoing. It now is the time for just reflection. So if you want put your head into a comfortable position, nice, easy breathing in for two. And if you’re still warm from before and you want to go right to three, you can do that as well. So nice, easy breathing.

(00:49:07):

And if three is good, feel free to put a little more gas, I guess. I mean, oxygen and air and through your nose, blow it out gently. And if you find that you’re breathing in for four and everything’s going smooth, and then all of a sudden you feel like, Hey, maybe I’m a little too far from shore that’s okay. Don’t panic. Come back to three.

(00:49:53):

With each breath, feel yourself, getting a little bit warmer, calmer, more relaxed, sinking into yourself,

(00:50:20):

And also don’t feel the need to continuously breathe in sank. If you feel like you want to take a rest at the bottom and slow your entire respiratory cycle, take less breaths per minute. That’s great. And you can do that because you’re taking a bigger breath with each one. So nice, easy breathing. And if you stick with this and you don’t overthink it and you don’t put too much pressure on yourself and you just go with whatever your body is giving you that day, you will get better at it over time. And it will take you less time to get into the rhythm, less time to relax the airways and less time to get into that zone, where you are warm, comfortable, protected, accepted at peace. And when I say accepted, I don’t mean by other people. I mean, you accept yourself, you accept your body’s efforts, because again, your body is working for you and have faith in that and trust it and give it that time to do what it needs to do at its own pace. And it will give you the time to do it at your own pace. Nice, easy breathing.

(00:52:19):

And if, and only when, if, and only if, and only when you feel ready, you can start to open your highs and return to the room with calm and peace thoughts, feelings, experiences.

(00:53:26):

Good morning. I’m sorry. Come on in. I’m sorry. I joined late. I didn’t look at my email, but I’m really glad I caught that last one because it was just lovely and really nice to be talked through it because sometimes we just don’t take that extra step to find peace in the comments earlier here. Cause I’m in Washington state. So would a good way to begin my day. Thank you. Awesome. can you hear me? I got up to five inhalations, so that really was wonderful. Wonderful.

(00:54:09):

So five installations is like you stretching a little further towards the floor. That means you’re loosening up. Okay. And again, this is not about the numbers. It’s not about, you know, the achievement. This is about you learning to trust your body and allowing your body to learn how to trust you again. Because right now this has been, we’ve all been shipwrecked. We have to learn how to swim again. We have to learn how to walk again. And that takes time.

(00:54:45):

No, I wasn’t concerned about the number. It just felt good.

(00:54:48):

Yeah. Cause you, cause you loosened up, you loosened up and, and now you have control from level two to five inhalation. Right? And think about it like this. If you know, taking a deeper breath in is like using a bigger cup, right? So if you have a big cup as compared to a Dixie cup, well guess what, you could breathe less. So when you find yourself and now knowing that you have this control, okay, when you find yourself breathing 20 breaths per minute, 24 breaths per minute, 28 breaths per minute, 40 breaths per minute. Talk to yourself and say, wait a second. What the hell am I doing? I know exactly what to do here. And then slow it down and regain that control when that car is out of control. Remember that you have a break, you have a break, right. And you know how to use it, just use it gently.

(00:55:51):

Gotcha. I needed this today.

(00:55:58):

I needed this today.

(00:55:59):

This is great. Yeah. This is great. Anyone else, Noah? I just wanted to mention something in the breathing out. Yes. And I think I have a little [inaudible] underneath my asthma. It felt comfortable for the time to

(00:56:24):

Let my breath out as long as possible, it just kept going out and out. And then my diaphragm automatically took the breath to, to take in again. And that’s the first time that I’d been comfortable letting my breath out. And I would imagine, is that really good for me to do or one for anyone to do or

(00:56:48):

A it’s great for anyone it’s especially good for people with any type of CLPD asthma. So COPD and asthma are both what we call obstructive diseases. And what obstructive means is that you have difficulty with the exhalation phase. Okay. And if you think about a pulmonary function test, right? What does a pulmonary function test ask you to do? It asks you to take a breath in and it asks you to blow out as hard and as fast as you can. And the reason for that is not because it’s good for you. The reason for that is because it’s diagnostic and it’s because that elicits the airway obstruction that elicits the air trapping that elicits the Bronco spasm. Okay. And had you started, okay. Now think about this. Some of you got up to how many people got up to five.

(00:57:46):

Okay. That’s a good number. How many people got up to at least four? How many people got up to three? All right. So think of it like this. You know, so now you have control from two to whatever number you got up to today. Okay. And is going to get better. It’s like we’re lifting weights, but we’re using the threes and the fours and the fives. And then as we get good at this but had you just gone to the five. Okay. Or had you just gone right up to the four in the same way that if you don’t stretch out a skeletal muscle, you can hurt yourself or you can, you know, go into spasm. So that’s why the importance of this scale is crucial. So wherever you think you are always start at two and work your way up when your body tells you.

(00:58:38):

Okay. So have a great day everybody. And and I’ll be here tomorrow is a secret. There’s going to be like a, there’s going to be like a secret speakeasy. Cause I’m not sending out an email about it, but you could spread the word if you want tomorrow at noon right here. Okay. And we’re going to go to the next phase. Now, if you’re in boot camp, do your boot camp day to don’t go bananas and try to repeat this 24 times. Okay. For now just kind of bask in the afterglow of this calm for a little bit. Okay. Trust me. The chaos will still be there when you’re ready for it. Okay. But for as long as this lasts, enjoy it and have a great Saturday. And I’ll see you tomorrow at 12, everybody. Bye. Bye. Cardiovascular condition, any type of a pulmonary condition, anybody who’s just severely deconditioned.

(00:59:35):

Okay. Gravity plays a huge role in physiology. So what do I mean by that? When we’re lying flat in our bed. Okay. And I want you to think of this in terms of, is gravity assisting. In other words, is gravity adding, is gravity taking away or is gravity doing nothing? So when you’re lying flat in your bed, like this gravity is pushing down, but it’s not generally moving your blood flow up and down. So this is standing up, lying down, sitting down would be sort of, obviously, you know, it’s sitting down is, but when you’re lying like this, and when you go from lying down to sitting on the side of the bed, gravity shifts, and what that means is that gravity then becomes assistant and gravity then pushes down and brings the blood to the lower body. Okay. now when you’re sitting down, you have some stoppers there and the stoppers are your hips and your knees.

(01:00:38):

And those kinds of slow things down a little bit, like if we had water rolling down a Hill and then we had some boulders, you know, kind of along that Hill, when the water got to that Boulder, it would slow down the pace a little bit, but when you’re standing up, okay, there’s no stoppers there. And blood will pool in the lower body. And the problem with that is that when blood pools in the lower body there’s no venous return. So venous return means when you are pumping your calves, then the blood is coming back up. It’s returning to the heart. The heart gets stretched and the heart can continue to pump effectively when that blood is on the lower body. Okay. Imagine your toilet bowl. And you’re trying to flush your toilet bowl, but you haven’t let the tank fill up yet.

(01:01:25):

Right? So it’s like, you can flush that as many times as you want, but it’s not going to give you good output. Same with the heart. So with the heart cardiac output is made up of heart rate times stroke volume. And what that means is that if the stroke volume or how much you pump with each stroke is diminished, then the only way the body can adapt to that is by increasing the heart rate. So many people with dysautonomia say, I could just be sitting here. I stand up or I walk across the hall and my heart rate goes from 75 to 150. Right? And if you think about the physiology behind that, and if you think about the reasoning behind it, and if you understand it, then we can actually affect physiology as opposed to just simply being affected by physiology. So keep that in mind.

(01:02:16):

And what we’re going to start to do is to start teaching you and we’ve already started it and we’re always kind of doing it. I’m always kind of doing it, but I want you to start problem solving and thinking, okay, I am about to go from lying down to sitting, sitting up. What does that mean from my blood flow? And if my blood flow all winds up in my legs, but what does that mean for my heart? And what does that mean for my head? Right? Cause I, I get lightheaded. And what does it mean when you go from sitting down and you remove those stoppers to standing up and now we have an even greater pole on gravity and the heart has to be even faster. The good news about this is that it can be trained. Okay. It can be trained. And a lot of people don’t know this.

(01:03:02):

And it takes time. The neurologic system, you know, does not recover quickly. It does not get trained quickly. It’s going to take weeks more or months, but it will come back. But if you do the right things and by that, I mean, if you do things that are going to be calming on the system that are going to teach the system, then you will come back more committed, sorry. Then you will come back more quickly. And if you do things that are continuously excitatory to the system, then that is going to be irritating to you and it will take longer and you will experience more setbacks. So again, the key is we want to inch along with this until we know that what we’ve done so far is good. Even breathing. Okay. Some of the therapies that we do start with the words you may feel like you’re not doing anything and that’s okay. I’d rather you feel like you’re not doing anything. Then you feel like you’re doing too much or you feel like you’re not doing anything. And then the next day or the next week, you’re pinned to your bed.

(01:04:30):

Okay. So today we’re going to start with the most basic breathing. Okay. And it doesn’t matter if it’s breathing or walking or other types of exercise, we always want to go with the lowest possible denominator. Okay. Now, one of the people I spoke about yesterday or spoke to yesterday is really the perfect example of what I want to say and what you should be doing and what you shouldn’t be doing. And if I spoke to you yesterday and you know what I’m talking about, you and it’s okay to tell your story, raise your hand. Okay. Perfect. She knows. Okay. So here we go. So bootcamp is designed to go very, very slowly. So initially when we started bootcamp, okay, we started with four minute walk. But even in bootcamp, we say, if you can’t do four minutes, do two minutes and two minutes, okay. If you can’t do two minutes, do one,

(01:05:28):

One minute and one minute and one minute and one minute,

(01:05:31):

Even more important for COVID bootcamp. So I spoke to somebody yesterday and they said, well, you know what I started doing. I started doing three times a day and I started doing, adding a minute each day. So instead of adding a minute, which is what bootcamp is,

(01:05:49):

They added a minute in the morning and a minute in the afternoon and a minute

(01:05:53):

Evening. And the important thing to keep in mind with that is that at the very beginning, it’s, it’s the most important for you to go slow. Okay? Because let’s say you were even doing that

(01:06:05):

A minute in the morning and a minute in the afternoon and a minute in the evening.

(01:06:09):

And then you went to two minutes, well, you just doubled your workload in one day. So you just went up and workload by a hundred percent. And if anybody here is a scuba dive or you know that the first 33 feet are the greatest pressure change because you go from one atmosphere to two atmospheres. So it doubles. Okay. So at the very beginning, I would much rather you clear the slate at this moment. Okay. If you’re satisfied with how things are going, like if you think things are starting to move along for you, no setbacks, awesome. Stay the course. If you still feel stuck or you feel like it’s up and down, up and down, and you’re not sure what the rhyme or reason is to that, then I encourage you to use this wonderful Saturday as a reset button. Okay. And start from scratch.

(01:06:59):

So there’s things that are related to time. There’s things that are related to different counts. There’s things that are related to frequency. And that’s what we have to become aware of. So we’re going to start the breathing. Okay. Typically we will advise people to try to breathe in for two and out for four, if we had to say, if you had to say, you know, like the heart rate textbook is 80 blood pressure textbook one 20 over 80, we would say textbook breath in for two, out for four. But a lot of people cannot do that or find it uncomfortable for various reasons. So if what you’re doing is making you uncomfortable, then it’s actually going to be excitatory for you. And what that means is that if it’s excitatory for you, it’s going to be sympathetic charged. And it means it’s going to be anti healing.

(01:07:52):

So I only want you to do what it is that you can do. So we’re going to start with some basic breathing. Now, why are reasons? What are some reasons that people can have difficulty breathing? It could be a physiologic problem. Okay. It could be a physical problem. When we say physical, a lot of people report that when they start to take a breath in, they come to a point where it’s like there’s stopper. Okay. So they come to a point of resistance. And at that point of resistance, it’s like, if you were filling a cup and then all of a sudden somebody shut the cup, you can take a deeper breath. Okay. So you never want to try to fight that point of resistance. Okay. Because it’s only gonna make things worse. Same thing with our respiratory patients, the harder you work to breathe, the harder it’s actually gonna make it to breathe.

(01:08:42):

So what we have to do is we have to finesse this. If anyone’s a, a martial artist and I see a lot of you look like martial artists the idea is we want to go with the soft art, not the hard art and the hard art is like karate, which is meet force with force. We want to go with the soft art, like Tai Chi like I KIDO where it’s blend with this force. And so your body is gonna set the limit for you. Your body’s going to set the limit for you and let it do that. Don’t resist it. So the first exercise we’re going to do, okay. And I don’t care how slow you do this. I don’t care how, you know, quietly you do this. How we, you know, w not how gently you do this. I want you to find a point of comfort.

(01:09:29):

Okay? So first and foremost, find a comfortable position. And the first thing we’re going to do is I’m going to give you as few restrictions as possible. I’m going to give you a few limitations as possible. I’m gonna give you as few rules as possible. The only rule that I want you to follow for this moment is I want you to breathe in through your nose for two. Okay? So you’re going to breathe in for a count of two, and you’re going to breathe in, in, and then you’re going to blow it out. However you like, okay. I would encourage you to blow it out gently. I would encourage you to try to blow it out, using what we call pursed lips, which is, but if you don’t want to do it that way or experiment with different things, I promise you, nothing is going to happen to anybody while I’m watching you right now.

(01:10:20):

Okay. You’re going to be okay. So experiment with different things. Because as you know, if you don’t know how to swim, you’re not going in the pool. And if you don’t know how to breathe, then you’re not going to do the things that are gonna make it more difficult for you to breathe. Okay? So for now, I just want you to get comfortable with this. Another reason why people can have difficulty moving air, both in and out is because the airways go into spasm and trap air. So aligning the smooth line in the airways, we have smooth muscle and smooth muscle can constrict and relax. And our goal is to get that smooth muscle, to relax as much as possible. So we’re going to spend a few minutes now, and I want you, if you feel comfortable doing it and you feel more comfortable doing it, you can close your eyes when you do this.

(01:11:09):

But nice and easy. And just watch me for a moment before you do it. I want you to find a comfortable position and just nice, easy breathing in through your nose for a count of two. And whatever you do with that breath afterwards is your business. And then it doesn’t have to be continuous. Okay? I want you to do it at a pace that you feel comfortable with. So I want you, you know, a lot of what we teach with respect to breathing is very regimented. It’s very paced and it’s like, don’t touch, don’t touch [inaudible]. And if you go off the track, well, wait a second. We have a situation here, right? There’s no situations here. I just want you to breathe in for two through your nose and get used to feeling, what does that feel like? Okay. So nice and easy. We’re going to breathe in, in, and then as you feel comfortable, simply let that air out gently and not until you’re ready. Only when you’re ready. And only when you’re calm. That’s when you take the next breath and we’re going to breathe in, in don’t put any pressure on yourself to do it quickly, to do it forcefully, to do any type of exhalation. Right now, we are simply monitoring. We are taking stock. We are scanning. Nice, easy breathing.

(01:13:09):

Be aware of sensations. You don’t have to become obsessed with them. You don’t have to become agitated or excited or anxious when you feel something different. Simply take note of it and continue on your way. If you feel anything uncomfortable, dizzy, short of breath, chest pain, pressure, simply stop and take a break. If you feel like you’re getting sleepy, if you feel like your eyes are getting heavy, if you feel like your head is getting wobbly, then you are doing it right. And that is what we mean by parasympathetic activity. Nice, easy breathing in through your nose.

(01:14:45):

Try to keep your shoulders down and relaxed. Keep your upper chest relaxed. Nice stop. When you get to 2000 breaths, just kidding. Nice, easy breathing. Now keep breathing. And what you may find is that after a certain period of time, you may want to take a deeper breath, or you may feel comfortable taking a deeper breath, or it may feel natural for you to take a deeper breath. And if that happens, you can start to breathe in for three. And the exhalation again is going to be no pressure. Nice and easy. Just let the air out. Now there’s a lot of different sort of meditative and visual type of things that if, if that’s the type of stuff that you like, or if you don’t know if you like it or not, you can focus on trying to breathe in a nice white, clean energy and lowing out, sort of a, a dark, smoky energy. Nice, easy breathing, breathing in for either two or three. And nobody jumped ahead to four yet. I know you long haulers, a type A’s. Don’t jump ahead to for nice, easy breathing.

(01:17:25):

And now if you’re good with three, you can try for you. Shouldn’t be stretching though. So only if you have four down, Pat, go to four. If not stay with three. And if you’re still working on two that’s okay. Also, we’re probably going to stop at five. I’m afraid to go to six and six is afraid to go to seven because seven ate nine. Okay. so let’s just now you should be breathing in for two, three or four. And the other thing you could do is if going to four is tough, then you could do three and then try for four and then go back to three again. Okay. Right now what we’re doing is we’re teaching you about your powers and the power of breath. So we’re teaching you that you have the ability to go from two to three and from three to four, let’s shoot for 10 more breaths at your own pace, no rush. And I can, if your eyes are getting heavy and your head is getting heavy and you feel like you’re zoning out, just go with it. It’s okay. When you get somewhere between six and 10 breaths, I want you to return to normal, quiet breathing. If your eyes are closed, if, and only when you are ready, feel free to rejoin the room with calm eye, opening your eyes. And then once everybody is back in the room, we’re going to give it one more minute or just sort of quiet breathing.

(01:20:48):

And would anybody like to share what that experience was like for them? Hey Eva, you can, you can just unmute yourself and then you can share.

(01:21:08):

I was, I wanted to go to bed and it was very good. Can I ask your question please?

(01:21:23):

Maybe I, I will reserve the right to say, I’m not going to answer it now though, but what’s the question.

(01:21:32):

How long do you take the bread? Right. And you let it out, but then with me to wait a little while to go back.

(01:21:46):

Okay. I got you. I’m using you cause I don’t want to bust up everybody’s vibe. Hang on. So here’s the deal. So that’s a great question. Okay. So the question is when she takes a breath in, right, she has to wait a little bit because it’s not like, you know, there’s this big open thing. It’s like, we have to reverse direction. So we come to the top where we’re inhaling, then we have to wait and then you let it out. So the answer for everything right now is wait as long as you as need as you need to, and as short as, as comfortable. So the point is there’s no absolutes. Okay. Right now the goal is for you to find that peace and harmony. And I don’t say that, although I could say it, I’m proud to say, say it with hippy in intonations, but we’re looking for calm, right?

(01:22:44):

We’re looking for a respite from this constant assault on our senses. That is the world today. And that is COVID and post COVID and everything else. So as long as you need to. So, so be it, it could be account of one. It could be a count of two and we will these over time. So what we just did was the most basic, right? So everybody can do that. What we just did, we did in for two, in, for three, in for four. So if you can’t breathe in for two, then everybody can breathe in for two. It’s that simple because you have to breathe in for two to get air into your lungs. Okay. So if nothing else, this is something that you can do, but don’t do it 20 times a day to start do it once and then let the pool ripple watched the effect.

(01:23:42):

Okay. Because we know that even breathing is exercise. Okay. And we know that sometimes even that one inch over the line can be too much, right? It’s like, if I want to take your picture at the grand Canyon, and let’s say, you know, you’re 10 feet, there’s 10 feet between us and the grand Canyon. Well, you could go anywhere in that 10 feet, but if you go 10 foot and one inch, well that first steps to doozy. So same thing here. Okay. And that’s why with COVID and long haul, we’re trying to just find that balance point. We want to go, not, not necessarily to the very edge of the cliff, but we want to get close to it without going over it. Anyone else? How did you feel during that?

(01:24:30):

Feel free to unmute yourself. Okay. So somebody will said somewhat akin to mindful awareness, absolutely mindfulness awareness. But, but also what we’re trying to do with this is we’re trying to not be so aware, right? So we’re looking for the balance of awareness, because like, how many of us, when something’s bothering us, we become hyper aware of it. It’s like, we’re so aware of it. We’re looking up every article, I’m going to say every television show. And we want to ask every question. And sometimes I say to people, I say, Hey, just get off Facebook for four hours, you know, or something like that. So we want to be as aware as we need to, but not over aware, not hypervigilant about this. And sometimes things will pop into our head that are not pleasant and rather than become obsessed with it. And rather than focus on it, it’s that we acknowledge it and say, you know what? This is this is something and we’re going to let it go, Lucille. I see you. You’re welcome to unmute yourself. You’re on mute. And now go ahead.

(01:25:39):

Thank you. When I got to, when I was able to count to four, I felt elated. And I thank you for that. My problem and I wrote is when I get outside and I start walking, I immediately stopped breathing to my mouse. Okay.

(01:26:04):

So that’s, that’s a different story than what we’re talking about now. And I’m happy to talk about it. Okay. But I want to stay focused on this. So avoid the tendency to leave this space. Okay. We are in the room together. Now some of our rooms like dawns are nicer than others. You look like you’re in the forest, but, but avoid the tendency to think about, well, what about right? Well, what if I can do that? Well, what if I go outside and I lose my breath for now, let’s focus on what we can do. And don’t let the things that you cannot do interfere with the things that you can do. And right now it’s like, if we’re learning how to fly a plane, we’re going to save takeoffs and landings. Like for later on, we’re going to save the challenge for now.

(01:26:57):

It’s fly in peaceful air, right? And let’s keep the plane steady. So there are techniques for that, Lucille, but for now, how many people, any who else wants to, wants to talk for a moment and share their, someone wrote very exp someone wrote a, should we be holding the breath before exhaling? So the answer to that is you can pause, but you never want to be holding the breath, right? So you never want to be like, you can keep the circuit open though. And all of this should be zero resistance, zero resistance. Very calming, felt a little lightheaded after awhile, but felt V but then felt very relaxed. Okay. So if you are starting to feel lightheaded, some people do get lightheaded when they over breathe, back it off, back it off to twos again. Okay. The point is you have control of the gas pedal, and that is what I’m going to try to teach you and get you to experience over the next several days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries.

(01:28:12):

It may take that long, but it’s okay. So the key is you have control and you know that if you’re driving on the highway and you see someone’s red lights ahead of you, right. You slow down and you take your foot off the gas. And that’s what I want you to do here. I want you to learn when it’s okay to press, when it’s okay to take your foot off the gas. Somebody wrote my lungs feel hard and are resistant at first. Okay. So I liked that at first. Okay. So if you’re feeling the resistance, okay. Stay with, to stay with too, because what we’re doing when we do this is we’re slowly relaxing and stretching the smooth muscle inside the airway. And that’s why I said, if it feels like you want that next breath and it feels like to is no longer filling, then go to three.

(01:29:03):

Right. And if it feels like three is not filling you, then go to four. Alright. What is a long hauler? So I will answer that or that I’m not going to answer that now and, and try to stay in the room each count. How long should each count be? So think of it like this again, it’s up to you. Okay. Find your comfortable pace. But it shouldn’t be like in two, three, four, one, two, three. It’s not like, it’s not like, like, you know, it’s not like Robin Williams and in burden birdcage. No, it’s, it’s just like, it should be like nice, easy in, in below two, three, four, but whatever makes you again, there’s no rules here. Okay. So imagine this, what dysautonomia means is there’s either a problem with how the brain and the autonomic nervous system sends signals to the body, or there’s a problem with how the body receives those signals, or there’s a problem with how the body sends those signals back to the brain and the autonomic nervous system, or there’s a breach, or there’s a problem with how the brain and the autonomic nervous system receive it.

(01:30:14):

So imagine this you’re learning and you’re in a new relationship with your body. Oh, you like this? I like this. You like this. I like this reintroduce yourself. Okay. And just like, some people love sushi. Some people would never eat sushi. Okay. So you have to get to know what your body likes and the more information you give to your body, the more and the more your body will learn how to use that. And the more information the body gives back to the brain, the more it will learn how to use that. And an analogy that I use is imagine if all of a sudden it were pitch black and we had to navigate our way around, well, we wouldn’t run. Just add it. Right. We may do that once until we get knocked out, wake up on the floor, but we will feel around the room and we will feel with our feet.

(01:31:06):

And we will feel with our hands and little by little by little, the brain will learn and remember that. And it will start to create these images on its own. And that’s what we’re trying to do again. Okay. So here’s other things I kept yawning. Why was that? Because you’re tired. No, I’m just kidding. I hope it’s because you were relaxed. Is it, but it’s okay. Don’t don’t overthink. Okay. Thank you. It was the enemy of the, the parasympathetic nervous system. Is it normal to have a late inspiration? Yeah. Squeak when you debrief. So the answer is, is it normal? No. It’s like a wheeze. It could be a little wheezy and that could come from a number of different things. It can come from CLPD. It can come from pulmonary fibro. There’s a lot of different things that could do it.

(01:32:04):

And there’s a lot of different things that can cause it, but just go with it. It’s okay. Or stop right before the squeak. And that squeak may be an area of increased turbulence. Right? You may have a mechanical blockage there. You may have mucus there. You may have some airway spasm there. So if you get to a point where you’re uncomfortable or you hear a squeak or something feels unusual, I would say just back off a little bit, just back off a little bit from that and work just a little bit backwards and then it may go away. Okay. But again, it’s like the same thing. If we’re stretching our hamstrings, if we overstretch it at first, or we go to quick, it’s gonna reward you by going into spasm. Same with this a welcome relief to focus only on what I can do and simply relax with the flow.

(01:32:57):

Listen, your body will set the limit. Okay. Don’t push it. Okay. Don’t push it. And you know, the one thing I’ll say to you is that you will heal, okay. Believe it or not everybody is healing. Okay. Because time will heal. There’s a reason why it says time, heals all wounds. It may not be as quickly as you want it to be. And some of the healing may be completely invisible and completely undetectable to you. Okay? So you have to have a little bit of faith here. Not just in me. I’m not asking it for, in me. I’m asking it. Have faith in yourself, have faith in your own toughness and resilience have faith in your body’s ability to bounce back and to learn and adapt, and also be kind to yourself. Don’t push yourself. Don’t ask yourself for more than you can do.

(01:33:57):

This is a tough spot. This is a tough spot for the world right now. Okay. So we have to say, you know what? This is the moment. What are we going to do about it? We can’t force this moment any more than we can force anything. Okay. And when I say that, you know, your body may be healing in undetectable ways. Think of it as two trains that are kind of digging towards each other in a mountain, they can be one inch apart. Okay. And it’s still dark. And only when they make that final connection, do they see the light? And that’s how the neurologic nervous system works. Okay. And unfortunately, the neurologic nervous system is slow. It’s a slow healer. It grows slowly. I’m going through the same thing with monkey right now. Monkey had a spinal cord injury. I believe he’s healing. It’s going to take time though, but you cannot say, you know, why isn’t it today?

(01:34:50):

Why isn’t it today? Why isn’t it today? Why isn’t it today? That is the opposite of healing. That is sympathetic outflow one Oh one. And that sympathetic outflow is anti healing. So it’s really, you know, you can fight it or you can go with it. You can accept it or you can resist it. Okay. If you resist it, your body’s going to show you. Who’s the boss and it’s not going to be you. So if you accept it with grace, with calm, with trust, with faith and know that your body is doing its best for you, and it may be working behind the scenes. Oh my, I just got the chills. When I said that I’m inspiring even myself, but, but the idea is have faith that your body is working behind the scenes for you. Okay. You know, and I’ve heard my buddy, Joel, Osteen say things like this about God, okay.

(01:35:50):

This is not a religious sermon, but have faith that the body is resilient and trust that it’s going to happen. It’s not going to happen as fast as you want it to. That’s the answer for everybody. Cause if that’s the case, it would have happened already and you wouldn’t need to be here, but this stuff is very healthy for you. Maintain equal number of inhales and exhales. Correct. So great question. Yes and no. Okay. If that feels good for you and do well physiologically, that’s not how breathing generally works. So physiologically when you’re doing a breath. So the inhalation is an active movement. And what we mean by that is that there’s actually muscle activity that so the diaphragm contracts and that’s what inflates the lung and the diaphragmatic contraction is, is quick. Under normal circumstances. The lungs during quiet breathing will deflate passively.

(01:36:46):

So if we were to look at it, the inhalation would be about half. As long as the exhalation. Now there are different type of respiratory conditions. Things like you know, restrictive lung diseases like pulmonary fibrosis, where you have difficulty breathing air in or CLPD where you have difficulty blowing air out. So again, we are trying to wiggle our way in and find what our body wants. The reason why I specifically didn’t give you an exhalation today is because it doesn’t matter. Okay. Quite frankly, doesn’t matter when we’re sitting here and doing this, if I said, okay, breathe in for two, out for four. And you were like, Oh, wait a second. I’m on behind schedule. Wait a second. I can only bring them for three. And then that’s this right? The idea is get out of this quiet disk because we know that when that brain is firing and firing, it’s like, Oh my God, it is shooting out adrenaline.

(01:37:44):

It is shooting out adrenaline. And that is the very crux of sympathetic nervous system activity. So this today is step one. Okay. So here’s the thing. So Chuck, there’s something, the respiratory scale, okay. That I made up, which is make a line, get a piece of paper, make a line down the center and don’t do this right this second. But it’s very simple. You don’t have to write this down. You’re going to remember it. One side is inhale. One side is exhale. Two, three, four, five, six. Okay. So if you’re a singer, okay. The opera singer doesn’t start with because she will hurt herself or he will hurt himself. Okay. Or he already did hurt himself. And that’s why he’s thinking like that. But the idea is, don’t worry, it’ll come to you in a few minutes. You’ll know what I meant. But the idea is that you know, the idea is that you can’t unmute.

(01:38:41):

Okay. I’m going to get you in one second, Janice. So the idea is that if you start too hard, okay, you’re going to injure yourself and you can injure your larynx, your voice box. You can, you know, and you can do it with a skeletal muscle and you can also do it with your respiratory muscles. So I would say, try breathing in for two, for the first one, don’t even worry about the inhalation exhalation. Okay. For now let’s just focus on one because we’re not coordinating this with activity yet for now, we are using this as a method of just being, just be just exist and breathe. So you could breathe now later on down the road, which is like step seven. So don’t even try this yet, but it would be in for two, out for two, in, for two, out for two.

(01:39:29):

Then you could try in for two, out for three, in, for two, out for four, in for three. And there’s all these different combinations. And you know, especially when it comes to like pulmonary rehab or cardiac rehab, like, we want to be like, well, you have to do it like this. And everybody on the group understands. I have to breathe in for two, out for four. And once it doesn’t work like that, okay, life doesn’t work like that in anything. So we give you different ingredients. And the idea of pulmonary rehab or cardiac rehab is that we’re not supposed to create this regimented army like schedule for you. It’s we give you tools. You try them out. You see what works for you. If it works, use it. If it doesn’t work, don’t use it. It’s okay. I’m not going to get mad. I don’t want to stock and in for two, out for four. So do what feels comfortable for you, Jan. Let’s see. Why? Why, why can’t you can’t unmute. Yup. There you go. You’re good. Good morning. How you doing

(01:40:31):

Here? I have a serious, serious sinus infection going on. So excuse my appearance. The pursed lip breathing, what we just did. Very relaxing. I love it. Any position better than the other, doing this exercise.

(01:40:47):

So the answer to just about every question is maybe can never go wrong with maybe. And it depends. Okay. So the answer is, it depends. What do you want to do with this? Okay. If it’s simply, we want to use relaxation. We want to quiet the sympathetic nervous system. We want to zone out. We want to get some peace. We want to get some relief from this chaos. Then the position doesn’t matter. Okay. Then the position should be something that is as comfortable for you as possible. That is going to support you and not get in your way. Okay. Now let’s say we do that. You had a right lower lobe, pneumonia and secretions were a problem for you. Well then lying on your left side is going to put your airways in a position so that you can drain that, left that right lung most effectively and fill up the lung with air.

(01:41:42):

If it were the left lung, then lying on your right side. If you’re trying to catch your breath. Okay? So a lot of people are worried about not being able to catch their breath, in which case, things like this are very helpful. So leaning forward, okay. Why is this helpful for you? Okay. This is helpful for you for a number of reasons. Number one, my abdominal contents drop down, clearing the way for the diaphragm, right? So if I’m standing like this, think of gravity, pulling everything down and the diaphragm has to contract down. Now I do this. Everything drops forward. The diaphragm is free. The other thing is that when you fix your upper extremities, okay, that also supports respiration. The other thing this does is it shifts the blood. And this is one of the reasons why proning was so important in acute COVID.

(01:42:37):

Okay. But what this does is normally, okay, our thorax is the stabilizer. So this is what I call open chain activity. And in open chain activity, my thorax is the stabilizer and my chest does things like this. And this, my back does things like this and this, my shoulders do things like this and this and this. But when we fix the hands or the arms and you could do this, you know, laying down, you could put your elbows down, but when you fix the upper extremities and the upper extremities become the stabilizer and the thing that’s moving is your rib cage. And it’s helping you to elevate and take a deeper breath. But for just the purpose of breathing and calm and quieting, the sympathetic nervous system and enhancing that parasympathetic outflow, then the position is less important. Great. Thank you. Sure thing. Thank you. All right. Other other comments or questions? Any other responses? How did people feel?

(01:43:48):

Anyone have a negative experience with it? Anyone feel anxious? Anyone feel out of control? Anyone feel irritated besides me? No, I’m just kidding. So now here’s the thing. We’re going to do one more exercise and then that’s it for today. Okay. That’s it for today. And the reason why I say that is because I’m looking around this room and I know a lot of you guys you’re like, Hmm, this was good. It’s good. If I do it once I better do it twice. If I do it twice, I miss probably gonna be better. If I do it 20 times, it’s not like dollars. Okay. It doesn’t work that way. Okay. So what we need is we need you to do this. We need you to accept the next exercise and then spend the rest of the day, seeing how you feel. And don’t overthink it.

(01:44:41):

Don’t write me a journal as to how you felt. Minute by minute, we got to quiet the brains. We’ve got to quiet the brains here. Okay. There’s too much activity going on and it’s not just you guys. It’s the world. It’s the world. There’s just too much chaos. And this is a way that we can quiet this and find that piece for ourselves. Yeah, bootcamp, if you’re in boot camp, you could do bootcamp, but don’t add anything new. Okay. So if you’re doing boot camp stick with boot camp, we’re going to do one more exercise. So I’d like you to maybe try a different position than you were in before. So if you were sitting up before, maybe just sit back and find someplace where you can be totally supported, you know, give yourself kind of the feeling of being somewhere you like, whether it’s lying on a lounge chair on the beach or lying in one of those floats in a pool or whatever it is that makes you feel good.

(01:45:43):

And what we’re going to do is we’re going to start again with two and we’re going to breathe in, in and let it out gently. Okay. So now watch me for one second before you close your eyes, okay. I want you to, we’re going to add a little arm movement to this and it’s not going to be anything complex. And you’ll also notice that as far as gradations, we’re sitting for all of these, right? In a few days, we’re going to go to standing and other, other things. But for now I want you to find emotion for yourself that is very comfortable. And I don’t, I’m going to just show you a couple and I don’t, it doesn’t really matter what it is, but one that I like it’s very easy. It’s just sort of feel your arms rise up and then sort of push down as you exhale, sort of like lifting this sort of healing water, and then gently pushing it behind us. So now as we lift, we’re going to breathe in for two. So we’re going to breathe in, in

(01:47:06):

And again, if you feel your head getting heavy, that’s okay. If you feel your eyes wanting to close more, let them do it. That is parasympathetic activity breathing in.

(01:47:27):

And if that even feels like a lot, it’s okay. Just put your hands on your knees and just maybe turn your head down a little bit and just sort of words that I like to use during this time are grace and hope and humility and calm and peace because now is not the time for pushing or arrogance or for overdoing. It now is the time for just reflection. So if you want put your head into a comfortable position, nice, easy breathing in for two. And if you’re still warm from before and you want to go right to three, you can do that as well. So nice, easy breathing.

(01:48:24):

And if three is good, feel free to put a little more gas, I guess. I mean, oxygen and air and through your nose, blow it out gently. And if you find that you’re breathing in for four and everything’s going smooth, and then all of a sudden you feel like, Hey, maybe I’m a little too far from shore that’s okay. Don’t panic. Come back to three

(01:49:11):

With each breath, feel yourself, getting a little bit warmer, calmer, more relaxed, sinking into yourself.

(01:49:32):

[Inaudible]

(01:49:37):

And also don’t feel the need to continuously breathe in sank. If you feel like you want to take a rest at the bottom and slow your entire respiratory cycle, take less breaths per minute. That’s great. And you can do that because you’re taking a bigger breath with each one. So nice, easy breathing. And if you stick with this and you don’t overthink it and you don’t put too much pressure on yourself and you just go with whatever your body is giving you that day, you will get better at it over time. And it will take you less time to get into the rhythm, less time to relax the airways and less time to get into that zone, where you are warm, comfortable, protected, accepted at peace. And when I say accepted, I don’t mean by other people. I mean, you accept yourself and you accept your body’s efforts, because again, your body is working for you and have faith in that and trust it and give it that time to do what it needs to do at its own pace. And it will give you the time to do it at your own pace. Nice, easy breathing.

(01:51:36):

And if, and only when, if, and only if, and only when you feel ready, you can start to open your highs and return to the room with calm and peace, thoughts, feelings, experiences, come, come on.

(01:52:47):

What’s that?

(01:52:48):

I’m sorry. I joined late. I didn’t look at my email, but I’m really glad I caught that last one because it was just lovely. Thank you really nice to be talked through it because sometimes we just don’t take that extra step to find peace in, in the comments earlier here. Cause I’m in Washington state. So what a good way to begin my day. Thank you. Awesome. can you hear me? I got up to five inhalations, so that really was wonderful. Wonderful.

(01:53:26):

So five installations is like you stretching a little further towards the floor. That means you’re loosening up. Okay. And again, this is not about the numbers. It’s not about, you know, the achievement. This is about you learning to trust your body and allowing your body to learn how to trust you again. Right. Because right now this has been, we’ve all been shipwrecked. We have to learn how to swim again. We have to learn how to walk again. And that takes time.

(01:54:02):

No, I wasn’t concerned about the number. It just felt good.

(01:54:05):

Yeah. Cause you, cause you loosened up, you loosened up and, and now you have control from level two to five inhalation. Right? And think about it like this. If you know, taking a deeper breath in is like using a bigger cup, right? So if you have a big cup as compared to a Dixie cup, well guess what, you could breathe less. So when you find yourself and now knowing that you have this control, okay, when you find yourself breathing 20 breaths per minute, 24 breaths per minute, 28 breaths per minute, 40 breaths per minute. Talk to yourself and say, wait a second. What the hell am I doing? I know exactly what to do here. And then slow it down and regain that control when that car is out of control. Remember that you have a break, you have a break, right. And you know how to use it, just use it gently.

(01:55:08):

Gotcha. I needed this today.

(01:55:15):

I needed this today.

(01:55:16):

This was great. Yeah, this is great. Anyone else, Noah? I just wanted to mention something in the breathing out. And I think I have a little cop D underneath my asthma. It felt comfortable for the first time to let my breath out as long

(01:55:44):

As possible, it just kept going out and out. And then my diaphragm automatically took the breath to, to take in again. And that’s the first time that I’d been comfortable letting my breath out. And I would imagine, is that really good for me to do or one for anyone to do or

(01:56:05):

It’s great for anyone it’s especially good for people with any type of CLPD asthma. So COPD and asthma are both what we call obstructive diseases. And what obstructive means is that you have difficulty with the exhalation phase. Okay. And if you think about a pulmonary function test, right? What does a pulmonary function test ask you to do? It asks you to take a breath in and it asks you to blow out as hard and as fast as you can. And the reason for that is not because it’s good for you. The reason for that is because it’s diagnostic and it’s because that elicits the airway obstruction that elicits the air trapping that elicits the Bronco spasm. Okay. And had you started, okay. Now think about this. Some of you got up to how many people got up to five.

(01:57:03):

Okay. That’s a good number. How many people got up to at least four? How many people got up to three? All right. So think of it like this. You know, so now you have control from two to whatever number you got up to today. Okay. And is going to get better. It’s like we’re lifting weights, but we’re using the threes and the fours and the fives. And then as we get good at this but had you just gone to the five. Okay. Or had you just gone right up to the four in the same way that if you don’t stretch out a skeletal muscle, you can hurt yourself or you can, you know, go into spasm. So that’s why the importance of this scale is crucial. So wherever you think you are always start at two and work your way up when your body tells you.

(01:57:55):

Okay. So have a great day everybody. And and I’ll be here tomorrow is a secret. There’s going to be like a, there’s going to be like a secret speakeasy. Cause I’m not sending out an email about it, but you could spread the word if you want tomorrow at noon right here. Okay. And we’re going to go to the next phase. Now, if you’re in boot camp, do your boot camp. Day-To-Day, don’t go bananas and try to repeat this 24 times. Okay. For now just kind of bask in the afterglow of this calm for a little bit. Okay. Trust me. The chaos will still be there when you’re ready for it. Okay. But for as long as this lasts, enjoy it and have a great, and I’ll see you tomorrow

(01:58:42):

At 12, everybody. Bye. Bye. Love you.