Barbell Shrugged - [Body By Breath] The 5 P’s of the Parasympathetic Nervous System w/ Jill Miller, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash #683

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

Pre-Order Jill Miller’s new book “Body By Breath” Jill Miller, C-IAYT, ERYT is the co-founder of Tune Up Fitness Worldwide and creator of the self-care fitness formats Yoga Tune Up® and The Roll Model® Method. With more than 30 years of study in anatomy and movement, she is a pioneer in forging relevant links between the worlds of fitness, yoga, massage, athletics and pain management. She is known as the Teacher’s Teacher and has trained thousands of movement educators, clinicians, and manual therapists to incorporate her paradigm shifting self-care fitness programming into athletic and medical facility programs internationally. As the creator of some of the world's best mobility tools, she has crafted original programs for 24 Hour Fitness, Equinox, YogaWorks, and numerous professional sports teams. She and her team of 500+ trainers help you to live better in your body with an emphasis on proprioception, mobility, breath mechanics and recovery. She has presented case studies at the Fascia Research Congress and International Association of Yoga Therapy conferences. She has the rare ability to translate complex physiological and biomechanical information into accessible, relevant moves that help her students transform pain, dysfunction and injury into robust fitness. Jill is the former anatomy columnist for Yoga Journal Magazine and has been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, O Magazine, Shape, Men’s Journal, Good Housekeeping, Women’s Health, Yoga Journal, Self, and on the Today Show and Good Morning America. Jill is regularly featured on the Oprah Winfrey Network. She is the creator of dozens of DVD’s including collaborations with Tom Myers, Katy Bowman and Kelly Starrett DPT. She is the author of the internationally bestselling book The Roll Model: A Step by Step Guide to Erase Pain, Improve Mobility and Live Better in your Body and contributed a chapter on SMFR to the medical text book Fascia, Function and Medical Applications. Based in Los Angeles, CA, she is a wife and mother of two small children and is currently writing her second book.   Join Jill for her live (and replay) online classes at Union.fit Follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram Read Jill's articles on the Tune Up Fitness blog here. To learn more, please go to https://rapidhealthreport.com Connect with our guests: Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram  

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, we're hanging out with our good friend, Jill Miller. If you don't know Jill Miller, you definitely need to get over to Instagram, check everything out she's got going on, but she has a brand new book coming out that we're gonna be talking about today called Body by Breath.

And guess what? When this thing arrived at my house and we talked about this, this thing weighs like eight pounds and is loaded with every bit of information that you need to know to succeed when it comes to down regulation and understanding how the breath impacts not just mental health and the health of your body,

but also how you can start to understand it for performance. And we really dig into some really deep concepts, which is one of my favorite things to do with Jill because she really is one of the not one of she is probably the the number one resource when it comes to understanding the breath she's now on her fifth trip to barbell shrug which is very cool as always friends you can head over to rapid health report calm and you can watch Dan Garner and dr. Andy Galpin dig into labs, lifestyle, performance analysis through Rapid Health Optimization over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show.

Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash, Joe Miller. Welcome back to Barbell Shrugged. How many times is this now? This might be fourth or fifth. I'm not sure. We need like the Saturday Night Live, like you get a special jacket if you've been here five times. Yeah, like what color would it be? Because I think on Saturday Night Live, it's like, it's a red jacket. Yeah. What color should we make it?

Maroon red? Like this? I got the shirt on. We'll give you the maroon t-shirt. I got a very special t-shirt from Andy and Dan when I was in the gym. There you go. That's it. That's awesome. Love that. She's got it right next to you. Biomolecular athlete. And when I do wear it in public, I get pulled aside by men.

Just so you know, so far, no women have pulled by this is just you know a a demographic study the men love that t-shirt i love that yeah that's the nerdy stuff i love it so dan and andy um we gotta get you some some rapid gear one of these days i have i have i've been wearing it there yeah yeah i've. You got one of these fresh Yetis? We got to get you guys one of these. No, we don't have that yet. I don't have any more gear. I promise we're not going to just talk about swag.

Tell me about your new book, Body by Breath. When this thing showed up to my house, I thought we ordered like there was like a new something for our kitchen or something inside this package because it weighs like eight pounds. Close to eight. I know for a fact that you wrote every single word in there. Yeah, there's 480 pages here. And, you know, last August or August before last, they cut 400 pages. I was going to say, if there's 480 pages in there, that's a thousand plus words of you or pages of you writing and then them going let's cut half of this oh my gosh tell me uh it's a legit textbook thank you yoga tune-up was

another book that was just absolutely insane i mean role model method role model method sorry yoga tune-up is the name of the company sorry i. I see that big logo back there. That's I'm all messed up. Um, the, um, how come this book needed to be written? Tell me about it. Oh, well, so, okay. So rewind to the role model method book. So the book, uh, came out in 2014, November, 2014. And it was a book that covered my approach to self myofascial release. Now, when I, first of all, when I was approached by the publisher, Victory Belt, 12 years ago, 10 years, many years ago, they, they saw me doing a show with Kelly Starrett of the Ready State. And I remember those. Yes, on Creative Live. And I

presented a seminar within his show on fascia. And then I presented an hour-long seminar on breath, which are really my two beloveds. And they approached me and they said, we'd like you to write a book. We'd like your book. And I said, well, I don't have a book. And they said, we'll write one and we'll publish it, which is, I know Travis's eyebrows just went this body. So that just doesn't happen in the world of book writing. Like people toil for years with proposals and they shop it from publisher to publisher. And here's this publisher that gave me a golden egg and said, we just write a book. We'll probably publish it. And so I had to really think about what book I wanted to write. And actually I did have a book about posture that I had been writing for teens. And, but I knew I'm not going to get that to a victory about like, they're not going to put a posture book about teens. So, and I knew

that self-myofascial release was really starting to trend and that I had something important to say. And I was, you know, very close in with fascia research and that I, you know, I wanted to put my methodology out there. The book I really wanted to write though, was this one. I wanted to share my approach to breath work and core work because I truly thought it was life-saving and revolutionary. But to be honest, 10 years ago, 12 years ago, the only place where breath was trending was in the yoga space. It really hadn't crossed over into the performance space all that much, although that ball was just about to start to lift off.

And then certainly in general population, it didn't. Fast forward, you've got a pandemic where breathing is front and center and breathing ailments and anxiety are now a lingering ongoing challenge for global populations. The book has really happened finally at the right time, but I started writing the book about 14 or 15 years ago, depending on how I scale it. 2004, 2004 actually wrote some of the seed work for it because I taught a workshop, a three day course called the Core Integration Immersion. So this book is an amalgamation of some of the coursework I had in this course called the Core Integration Immersion and another immersion I created called the Breath and Bliss Immersion. Plus, it's like hundreds and hundreds of other pages of, of other stuff. So the book had to be written, um, for many of the reasons I just stated, but more, um, more focally when I started

writing the role model, I put a call to action out to my community. And I wanted to know how had this work, how had myself self myofascial release approach helped you in life? You know, was it a performance related thing? Did it help you heal from a knee surgery or back surgery or elbow pain or what have you? Separated shoulder. Yes. So whatever, I really expected these physical stories, but every story that came back to me had a very loaded emotional component as well. And people kept reporting that they had these self-regulation results and side effects of using the ball work no matter where they were using it. And so I really wanted to dig in because I knew that was true for me in my body. Like when I use the therapy balls, like I had this complete state change. And so I wanted to really dig into the physiology behind that and the affect change

and the state change that happens with the rolling. And so that element is very present in body by breath. When, um, when you start to lay this thing out, how do we introduce, how do you introduce breathwork as kind of like a concept? If somebody's coming in as a complete, complete amateur, very first day one, and they buy this book, obviously it's 400 plus pages. They've got a lot to dig into and they're going to learn a lot. But how do we start to introduce? No, I'm not scaring people. I, everything that you put in there that I've

thumbed through is like, I think that being the most comprehensive resource is very important. So if you're going to do it, you might as well do it for 480 pages because now you've got a body of work that matters. It's easy to read too. So before people get afraid, it's very easy to read and like easy to understand. So it's not like going to be this crazy textbook. It's going to freak you out. And there's a ton of great pictures and all that making it easy to get through. Specifically to that point,

how do you not make it so comprehensive or not comprehensive, but so complicated or scary because it is such a large concept. If someone goes in and buys this book, like what is really step one? And as they go through this kind of journey. My husband didn't read the book until the very last minute. And my husband is, I would say your audience in general. No, I mean, you have a very elevated audience. I don't mean, my husband is not an anatomist and my husband is not going into the lab.

My husband's love language is spreadsheets. And then he likes to not feel pain. Me too. I love spreadsheets. Not the not feel pain thing. I spent my whole life feeling pain. But the spreadsheets, I can like relate. Okay, just to put some context on it. Right. So I've

been in the body space for like 40, 40 years. So my love language is I love, you know, anatomy and I love captions and I love labels and I love fascia. Oh yes. All right. So here's how I describe the book to my mom. The book is in two parts. Part one is the science and the why. But part two is the recipes. So when you get a cookbook, most people aren't going to read the first 80 pages that are going through the chef's journey into, you know, the Icelandic outback looking for special reindeer droppings. And, you know, like that's the part of the book that's part one. What they're going to go to right away is I want to know how to cook reindeer. And they go into part two and look for the recipe. So part two is written extremely generally, but specifically, I mean, it's accurate cues and whatnot,

but it's written with very, very mild explanations of the why. What starts to happen is I hopefully created an enticement. You're doing some of these practices and then you start to have these experiences, these embodiment experiences. And you wonder, why did that happen to me? Why did I have that feeling? Why am I having these thoughts? Why also do I feel this unbelievable sense of release or relief or whatever? Then you'll go back to part one and start paging through, well, maybe, maybe I should look at the zones of respiration, the biomechanics of breathing, or how this relates to a nerve called the vagus nerve. So you start to get interested in what's happening to your physiology, what's

happening to your sense of self. And all those explanations are really thoroughly outlined for you in the beginning of the book. And then there's other people that maybe you're just, maybe you are an Easter egg hunter. Like when you get the book, there are so many sidebars and boxes and there's even QR codes that I've, excuse me. Pop button. There's, well, my mother-in-law is texting me about a birthday. Sorry, I should turn off that. Of course, there's a lot going on over here. So there are QR codes that lead you to succinct videos that can give you video learning or audio learning if you're getting exhausted with your eyes on the page. So I tried to create a very multi-dimensional learning experience

because people learn in different ways. And I can really appreciate that. Can you dig into the vagus nerve a little bit? I know that if I say, can you talk about the vagus nerve? We might be here for like four to six days. But what is it? And I have a fun story that I want to tell you after you kind of give some high level things of what I do with my kids.

Vegas nerve, go. Great. So the Vegas nerve is a gigantic nerve. It's like a transatlantic cable that comes out of your brainstem and it innervates areas of your lungs. It aerates a very specific area of your heart, and then it plunges all the way down through your respiratory diaphragm and innervates the majority of your organs. The nerve was originally called the pneumogastric nerve. So it was a nerve that folks thought was, you know, its dominant impact was on digestion as well as respiration and cardiac health. head that are also about mastication, so about chewing, swallowing, and even facial affect, even the expressions of our face. So it's tied into so many different systems of the body. The vagus nerve is generally thought of to be our chief parasympathetic nerve. So that's a part of the autonomic nervous system. So we have the sympathetic fight flight,

and then we have the parasympathetic rest, digest, recuperate. How do we access it? Well, we can access it. One of the easiest ways to access it is through breathing, but we can also access it through pressure. And that's one of the things that my book details in many ways. There's really five different, what I call the five's one of the things that my book details in many ways. There's really five different, what I call the five P's of the parasympathetic nervous system. And this, for the coaches that are listening, this really actually gives you a programming concept. So when you illuminate these five P's, it helps to create a parasympathetic dominant state in

the body. Shark family, I want to take a quick break. If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to rapidhealthreport.com. When you get to rapidhealthreport.com, you will see an area for you to opt in in which you can see Dan Garner read through my lab work. Now, you know that we've been working at Rapid Health Optimization

on programs for optimizing health. Now, what does that actually mean been working at Rapid Health Optimization on programs for optimizing health. Now, what does that actually mean? It means in three parts, we're going to be doing a ton of deep dive into your labs. That means the inside-out approach. So we're not going to be guessing your macros. We're not going to be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually going to be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you. Nutrition, supplementation, sleep.

And then we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most severe things first. This truly is a world-class program. And we invite you to see step one of this process by going over to rapidhealthreport.com. You can see Dan reading my labs, the nutrition and supplementation that he has recommended that has radically shifted the way that I sleep, the energy that I have during the day, my total testosterone level, and just my ability to trust

and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to rapidhealthreport.com, watch the video of my labs, and see what is possible. And if it is something that you are interested in, please schedule a call with me on that page. Once again, it's rapidhealthreport.com, and let's get back to the show. When you illuminate these five Ps, it helps to create a parasympathetic dominant back to the show. When you illuminate these five Ps, it helps to create

a parasympathetic dominant state in the body. And so that can happen through number one, strangely, it might sound through perspective. So giving yourself a framework in which to allow body-based feelings to occur. So you're allowing for the feelings of your body to take up room. And so a perspective in layman's speak is mindset. So setting a mindset that allows relaxation to arise within you. So for example, when I'm doing a relaxation practice, I might say to myself, all of me is welcome here, or I allow myself to relax completely. Or I rest. Might be that simple. I rest.

The second P is place. Your body really likes to be in a safe place. And so when you're trying to illuminate parasympathetic features of your body, it's helpful to be in a quiet space, in a somewhat dark space, and in a warm space. Now, sanctuaries are not always ideal, but if we're looking for really what are the ideal sort of lab of championing recovery and parasympathetic values, you want to have those things met if possible. The third thing is position. The vagus nerve loves to have a certain pressure reflex in place for it to become one of the dominant leaders of your brain state. And that is your position is grounded and

possibly in a gentle slope. So that is you would lift your pelvis a little bit higher than your heart, a little bit higher than your neck to initiate something called the baroreceptor reflex. So when your pelvis is higher than your heart, which is higher than your brain, gravity impacts your blood flow. And when the stretch sensors on the side of your neck within the carotids, which by the way, are laced with the vagus nerve. When those carotids sense that more blood than necessary is coming towards the brain, your brain's going to do anything it can to protect what's known as the blood brain barrier. Your brain can only have a certain volume of

blood coming at it. And so those stretch sensors in the side of your neck sense this extra blood flow and very quickly send a feedback loop to the brainstem. The vagus nerve starts to fire its motor signals and the heart rate slows down, your breath rate slows down. And so this is a very, very free and cheap way of creating a parasympathetic dominant. Can I ask a question? Yeah, there's two more Ps, but you know, any time. Yeah. Are you really, are you literally talking talking about like say i'm laying in the bed and i put pillows under my legs and my and my hips yeah yeah it's like i'm taking so many notes you put the little yoga pillow under your uh under i've never been in yoga do i look like a yoga to me buddy but this is great stuff you can put so you can put some weight plates underneath your pelvis okay you only need a couple inches you can put so you can put some weight plates underneath your pelvis

okay you only need a couple inches you can even put the body by breath book underneath your pelvis of course because i'm a tool maker i use the gorgeous ball which is right over my shoulder here so and that has another effect oh that ball that you sent to us i mean like right oh okay that Oh, okay. Same one LeBron James uses. That's right. LeBron loves the ball. I'm a Jordan fan, but cool. Whatever. We can get to Jordan. Okay. So the gorgeous ball, just as an aside, the gorgeous ball is an air-filled, grippy, pliable ball.

And so that ball can actually take a hold of the sacrum, the soft tissue of the sacrum and create gentle traction of the pelvis away from the lumbar spine. So it can create additional decompression. So that brings us into actually our fifth P, but I'm going to, I'm going to go to the fourth P and then we'll come to the fifth P. So the first P again, perspective, second P place, position. The fourth P is what you're probably all here for. you see the book called Body by Breath, it's pace of breath. So your breath pace is one of the ways that you can override your sympathetic nervous system and you can start to really slow down the pace of your whole body by extending your exhalations. So in general, extended exhalations are going to harness the vagus nerve, and that will additionally help to slow down your heart rate and slow down your breath rate.

There's so many different ways to play your breath. And obviously, the book is filled with things like that. But that's just sort of the general button around P, the pace of breath. The fifth P is palpation. So that fifth P, I started talking about that with just the traction of the sacrum and the thoracolumbar fascia. Palpation, we can use the therapy balls. We can also use gravity and position to impact different regions of the body that are innervated by the vagus to really augment and compound a vagal tone to really chill you out. And so that includes

zones in the face, neck and head zones within the thorax, and then zones within the gut region that are, um, that are innervated by the vagus. So those are really the five P's of parasympathetic dominance. And those are outlined. Oh my gosh, there's a hundred exercises in the book that illuminate that, but that's really the programming, the programming outline for any coach that's trying to help their people. You don't need to manifest all five Ps, but even like hitting one or two. And if you hit three, that is a compound pharmacy that is much cheaper than a Xanax with no bad side effects.

Wow. This is good stuff. Um, when, when you're at a yoga class and doing the home at the end, is that a vibration that reaches the vagus nerve? Is that why they do that? So one of my, one of my, uh, one of the clinicians that I work with, he said that the different, um, frequencies are like,, don't call me because I don't know the exact science about this. I do study voice and I do study singing. And for me, singing is my number one medicine. But I think it has something to do with the diameter of the neurons and the frequency that you're hitting

within your notes. But aside from that, what the OM does directly relating to parasympathetic dominance is it's an extended exhale. So when you're singing or humming, you are extending your exhales. You're also actually training your respiratory muscles in a beautiful way to have this wonderful eccentric moment, right? And the other thing about the OM is that the humming also oscillates air within the nasopharynx, and that happens to release nitric oxide. It's one of the ways that you can get slicker in your vasculature. By the way, fascial rolling also releases nitric oxide within your body. And so that is also another way to keep your vasculature smooth and greasy and healthy in the best possible way. Wow.

Would you say the extended, like extended exhales has something to do? I know I read a book by, was it James Nestor? And he believes that, you know, that the gas exchange happens in the lungs. A lot of times if it's the lack of carbon dioxide, that might be the reason why there's not as good of an exchange as possible. So like, do you have more of a scientific answer for the, you know, the extended release? So the extended release is actually going to create a buildup of CO2 in your body. Yeah, that's what he said. Yes, yes, yes. And so it's, it's over time, your body's better able to tolerate these high levels

of carbon dioxide. And when you are a little bit, I don't want to say overdosing, but when you're able to tolerate higher levels of carbon dioxide within your body, it does help to lower your overall anxiety levels. And it makes you just more efficient at gas exchange. Yeah. Metabolically. I mean, that's what, that's what got me when I was reading the book, I meant to read the book to put me to sleep. And then like, he started making so many good points. Put you to sleep. Which then I got your book, which now it's keeping me awake too.

So like, yeah, he's the one who started it just because I honestly, I was not a believer. I was like, this breath thing is like, you know, silly. I thought because i'm so scientific based but now i'm learning all the science and the only silly one was me so i'm so grateful to james um he kicked the door open for general population to really take in the the importance of breath as a as a self-actual medical tool. I mean, and it's so cliche as they want like yogis. I'm not, you know, the martial artists I've been doing this forever, but they have, cause they got it. They got that. It created abundant energy. It created state

change. It helped with focus. It helped with every system of the body. And so it's like seeing it deployed into athletics in the most amazing way by those who are moving it into the training and athletic space. And I'm huge shout out to my friend, Brian McKenzie for all the work he's done there. It's like, I mean, I think already the top athletes in the world probably already knew this stuff, but it's the trickle effect into upper and mid-level and also the coaches that are in place in athletic trainers and performance coaches on teams. We're seeing an uptick in our own community because I've been training people for years and people getting pulled in to do special workshops and classes for teams because it is so effective at helping with all of the

aforementioned things. Yeah. I'm also interested. Oh, go ahead. Sorry. Go ahead. I was going to say, I have your book right here. I'm just flipping through.

I see there's a big section in here on breathing exercises. Can you give an example of some of those and why someone would need them? But also, how do you know if you should do a certain exercise over another? What are some examples of conditions or pain or movement dysfunction or something that would indicate you need to do a specific breathing exercise? All right. So there are a hundred exercises, more than a hundred exercises in the book, and they're, they're cordoned off into four different categories. So one category is breath or breathe role. Category two is role. Category

three is move. Category four is non-sleep deep rest or yoga Nidra. So these are really the four different categories of exercises to choose from that create what I call this compound pharmacy of parasympathetic dominance. By the way, let me just rewind a second. The book really is a recovery Bible. So this is work on the slower side of the nervous system. So there are other breath type of trainings that you can do to really stoke sympathetic virtues regarding breathing. But this work is very much about rest, digest, restore, recuperate, rejuvenate, and so on. And so it is, yeah, I think that's good to say about that. Here's the first example that I want to give to you, Doug. So there's been a subpopulation of people that have been coming to me for the past, I'd say 18 months. And those are people with long

COVID symptoms. Now long COVID, as well as anxiety, these are two diseases that all the disease tracking indices are saying are going to be the really biggest population illness problems, population diseases for the coming years. And so with the long COVID folks, they're still having difficulty with their HRV. They're having difficulty with brain fog, concentration, and of course, they're having difficulty with breathing. Nighttime breathing has also become incredibly problematic, hypoxia, and so on. So poor oxygenation in tissues at night, sleep, erratic brainwaves, and so forth. So in hospital or in treatment, a majority of the work that is being given to them is chemical medicine and then, you know, lifestyle changes. But what's missing is the mechanical component, especially like mechanical component to induce

whenever you want. And what I mean by that is using manipulations of the thorax via a tool like a gorgeous ball or like a rolled up yoga mat or a bunched up pillow to maneuver the ribs to compress and decompress the lungs to do what I call squeeze the sponge. So many of these people who've suffered with long COVID, especially I'm working with one guy who was a CrossFit owner, young CrossFit owner, early 40s, also a professional in the law system. And he got early COVID, got Delta and was hospitalized for six months. And for 10 of those weeks was in a medically induced coma, lived on a respirator five months, three kids. I mean, you cannot, I mean, it's just like, I just get this cold sweat just thinking about how many

individuals like him there are very healthy individuals that don't know joe miller well well so so of course there's a lot of scar tissue within his lungs and it like really resembles somebody with cd or even like cystic fibrosis, right? So we have so many of these individuals that are out there that are having difficulty expectorating. The coughing is creating new pain syndromes for them, right? Because you're just, you're sort of riddled with coughing. And this is the, I'm going all the way to the most extreme example, because actually the work with an extreme example is not that different than working with somebody who is finding themselves with unchecked anxiety during much of the day. So, which is like the rest of us from this,

you know, this, the leveling up of our vigilance and a mistrust of so many systems and one another. So we're all walking around with a higher degree of, of anxiety. And so, all right, so true. Okay. So for example, with somebody like, like the long COVID folks, many of them have difficulty with good diaphragm excursion because of the coughing creates so much tension in the transversus abdominis, just from the chronic coughing, the diaphragm is not allowed to descend as well as it could, right? The diaphragm and the transversus abdominis live in the same fascial plane. And so there's this inverse relationship to the downward movement of diaphragm and then the circumferential expansion that should happen in the abdomen, the waist,

the low back, even the pelvic floor. So we get this rigidity within our connective tissue from the coughing. That is to say, like, you know, what might have happened in hospital or what other dysfunction might have happened just due to being stuck in a position for many months at a time or what have you. So those tensions can be addressed via pressure. And so, for example, with that client, I need to help him with the muscles of what I would call zone three muscles. Those are the stuff above the shoulder, the shoulders lift up to try to help bring more air into the upper lungs, because you're not able to get that descent of the diaphragm and drag air to the bottom of the lungs. Plus what's in the bottom of the lungs, all the sputum that hasn't been able to come out.

And so the body is having this limited range of actual perfusion. And what really needs to happen is a gentle way, not just with meds, a gentle way of getting fluids out of the end zone, out of these alveoli pockets or out of the scar pockets, um, that doesn't create, um, more tension upon, upon tension. So, um, we do that with doing very gentle rolling on the cordius ball and manipulating the spine and the ribs with certain breath patterns. It's very, very simple to do, but you need to do, uh, you need to have long duration of time. This is not just like a three minute exercise for, for these folks at the end of the spectrum for anxiety people, you might only need to do three minutes, but for somebody that's really having

challenges, um, both with pain, with structure and with excess fluids in their lungs need to do what i call time under intention get it time under tension i like it i like it you were in such a good flow i couldn't even stop it just came out how long how long i mean now travis is gonna talk because you yeah you gave him a minute to talk i'm so into this like how long would you be rolling on these balls to clear out the alveoli about 20 to 30 minutes yeah but it would be very very gentle um pressure with the gorgeous balls and we actually are doing double gorgeous balls so we're we're doing different positions on each hemisphere of the of the rib cage at a time but then also you'd want to clear the rampant tension in the scalenes, as well as the upper traps, levator scapula, all these, I would call these tertiary muscles,

or these are the kind of the emergency muscles of respiration to try to dismiss some of the unconscious bracing and stiffness that's happened, you know, over the months or years, or maybe just your whole lifetime. If you've had poor breath mechanics your whole lifetime, and that maybe rendered you more vulnerable to getting a severe case in the first place. You mentioned non-sleep deep rest earlier. And I feel like that term, I look at a stall. I was going to say something important. Oh, the non-sleep deep breath question. We're on the same page. I feel like non-sleep deep breath is getting more and more popular. I think I hear it most frequently from Andrew Huberman. Of course, his podcast is

getting very, very popular. So tell me more about that. Like in what ways are you incorporating non-sleep deep breath into your own life and the life of your friends and clients? OK, Travis, did you have another follow up question before? No, no, no. I'm just taking notes. I'm loving this. So yoga nidra is a progressive concentration based relaxation practice that happens typically in full stillness. So your body is reclined, supported so that you're not in pain. When people just lay flat down on the floor for many bodies, the pressure on the skull, the pressure on the sacrum, even just a reclined pressure can be extremely uncomfortable because the yoga nidra or non-sleep deep rest practices,

they need to be like 11 to 20 minutes to be most effective. That's what the research has shown. And, um, I mean, you can get deeply relaxed within, within three to five minutes, but for the compound effects of a, uh, uh, the yoga nidra to take effect and on safety rest to take effect, it needs to have a little bit of a long duration. So what these are, these are typically lead experiences where you can travel through different points along your body and concentrate on them in a very specific sequence. Now the specific sequence can change every time. It's not like every time you do these reclines, you have to go big toe, second toe, third toe. But that is an example of how you would travel through the body with this little local roaming concentration.

Okay. Let me see if I can make it even more simple than my long-winded answer. So one of the amazing things I heard, I guess it was like three years ago, when Huberman was talking about this reappropriation of the word yoga nidra and kind of neutering it to this non-sleep deep rest. My teacher used to call it conscious relaxation. So he would call it yoga nidra or conscious relaxation, although conscious relaxation happens in many other practices, but non-sleep deep rest is really referring to this typically full reclined position where you have this roaming concentration that has this incredible effect of removing the resting tone from your muscles and allowing you to, in the yoga nidra terms, really kind of be left for dead,

but aware. So you literally feel your body is as heavy as stone or as light as air. And it gives you this tremendous brain break and body break from sympathetic engagement. For me, it is absolutely the most ecstatic relaxation experience I can have is to either be led through a great yoga nidra or to lead myself through a great yoga nidra. But there are many bodies that stillness is threatening. And this is something that I want to address because this is something that I don't think most people realize. Many bodies are meditation resistant. When we typically think of meditation, we think of somebody sitting statue-like and frozen, and it's very, very hard for many bodies to be comfortable in stillness. And that can also carry over into a reclined position where you're still. What happens for many bodies, and this brings us back to the vagus nerve,

is that relaxation actually feels threatening. And this is from the brain. This is like, you're not doing this. Your brain starts to have involuntary contractions, fidgets. You want to do anything you can other than be still. And a lot of this, we look into the vagus nerve and we look at the work of Dr. Stephen Porges and polyvagal theory. Many of these anxieties, in fact, there's a phenomenon, it's called relaxation-induced anxiety. And some of the literature I've recently come across said that- Fantastic term for the record. Yes, relaxation induced anxiety, that up to 60% of people actually have this relaxation induced anxiety. So while I love to do yoga nidra, for many other people, this is like not the way and

that's why there are three other categories that are ideal for helping people have this very subtle movement meditation. And that movement meditation can be a top of balls or it could be using your breath in different novel, fun ways. Or it can be through extremely slow paced dynamic movement that also has this effect of decoupling autonomic tone or sympathetic tone and putting into parasympathetic state. So there really is something for everyone. And I really love the high anxiety people. Why? Because I am one of them, although I can be still, but if you're around my husband, he'll say, oh no, she can never sit still. I love that. Yeah, go ahead. I really, I really love that because I, the only way that I've ever been able to do really any of the like stillness meditation type things is when I go to that because I, the only way that I've ever been able to do, um, really any of the like stillness meditation type things is when I go to a Yen yoga class and

there's still movement involved. That's right. There's still some, but, uh, but taking that the way that I've been able to, uh, access slash like implement it in the longterm and the way that I enjoy it the most is very slow movement. Yes. How slow can I move? How slow can I do like a neck roll? And those pieces turn it into some sort of like thing where I'm actively doing something, but at the same time, my eyes are closed. I'm trying, I'm intentionally moving as slow as I possibly can. I'm still able to access all of the things that I want to

if I were to do the stillness part, but I don't have that like fidgety, like, is the clock about to go off? Have I hit 20 minutes yet? Can I get out of this madness? Because it's just, ah, I'm like stuck here. Meditation should really be an inclusive practice and you shouldn't feel like you're lesser than

because you can't be statue-like. So one of the, I mean, I get a lot of people with relaxation-induced anxiety across in this very studio that you're looking at right here. One of the exercises that is a big win for a lot of those people is something I call the hand dance meditation. And I actually have this on Instagram. It went viral. The hand dance meditation takes place across either two minutes, five minutes, even 20 minutes. I've done it where you start with just your hands on your lap and one fist is closed. One hand is open. You set a timer. And then over the course of that duration, whether

it's five minutes, 20 minutes, an hour, as the one hand opens, the other hand closes. And so you have something that you can concentrate on. It doesn't matter if you finish the actual rep, it's one rep, but it gives your brain something to do so that it's not preoccupied with what in Yiddish we call the spilkas, with the overflow of all that excess energy, it channels focus. And then it does inevitably lead to these states of tremendous concentration and then into meditative states. So I think there are ways to kind of like regress the meditation and the regress is just the wrong word for it. It's just going into a different column that allows for you to experience safe stillness and not have your body preoccupied by a desire to flee, right?

Because it's that sympathetic overdrive taking over. And again, I mentioned polyvagal theory earlier, but for many bodies were conditioned from an early age that the only safe place to be was running away from, getting away from. And so for bodies that have experienced adverse childhood experiences, we talk about adverse childhood experiences and trauma in the book. It's very helpful to know your's okay and i'm just going to work with that i'm going to go with that and give it something to do so that we can we can have a relationship together and um and not and not be in a state of judgment that i can't be and also finding ways that it just like fits into your life like totes i got a four four year old and a one year old and like not a lot of time to work and like not a lot of time to train, but I can some, most of the time, if you give me the option,

like, do you want to go walk one mile or do you want to sit down more and breathe? So if you can find ways to build this stuff and have the tools in your, in, in just in the tool bag to be able to go, well, I like walking, but I also need this down regulation thing going on. So how do I do it while I'm out for a walk? And how do I have, how do I have the tools to do breath holds while I'm walking extended exhales? So easy. You, you count yourself because you teach it. Most people don't have these tools. Yeah. So like if you wanted to work on extended exhalations, I love paced walking as a breath practice. So what I would do first is just figure out your breath threshold around your walk pace.

And so, for example, you might do six steps to inhale, four steps breath hold, eight steps exhale, four steps breath hold after exhale, and just work on, um, you know, work on, I would call this a four part. So it's like, uh, you know, it's, it's not, we're not like a box, more like a rectangle, but the rectangle is to, um, champion longer exhales and longer holds after exhale, because in general with pace of breath, um, we want to have longer exhales altogether than our inhale plus inhale hold. And so this can take place. I mean, I do this during hit also not, I mean, obviously the hit is like really a challenging place to do it, but to try to use my breath as

a buffer to, so that I can get, you know, just more work in. Because if I'm huffing and puffing, it's going to exhaust me metabolically quicker. So I just, I try to get those extended exhales typically in most of my exercise output. Can I ask you like a specific question? So let's say you have a high level athlete, like the highest, you know, like hopefully Olympic medalist and he or she is struggling to sleep at night and they're just, you know, they're high anxiety only at nighttime mainly. Like what would you suggest would be the best form of breathing or relaxation that would help them be able to shift to parasympathetic and go to sleep? I love this question. So I have two answers. One answer is, is just been scientifically proven by Dr. David Spiegel and Andrew Huberman at their lab in San Francisco or in Stanford. And then the other is actually what typically works for me. So number one, find what works for you and do that. And that's why

there are like two dozen breath practices in here. And hopefully one of them helps to just knock you off. But the one that they found is also in the book and it's about cyclic sighing. Now in the book, I highlight cyclic sighing, a cyclic sighing practice and I frame it for my daughter. So my daughter was in kindergarten when the pandemic hit. And within a few months, she started having panic attacks. And I could identify the panic attacks because I myself have panic attacks. But to see a five, six-year-old trying to gasp for air and tell me she's short of breath and to have her shoulders up in her ears and knowing that there's nothing wrong with her lungs historically, and there hasn't really been since, is just so frightening.

And so to try to ultimately find a tool that works for her. So in a panic attack, this doesn't necessarily work, but this does work over time. This cyclic sighing does work over time to reduce overall anxiety is what the study found, and as well as to lower respiration rate over the course of the day. So what cyclic sighing is, is taking through the nose an inhalation that fills your lungs. And then once you're full, you take an additional capper. You take a second sip of air into your lungs, and then you allow your exhale to escape either through your nose or your mouth. In the book, I call this the chocolate chip breath. So the way I created it for my daughter was I said, imagine you're smelling a plate of fresh, warm chocolate chip cookies and bring that scent in because you wouldn't do that

through your mouth, right? You wouldn't be like, I'm a list. You're eating them, right? So you're trying to bring that scent, that delicious scent and let it fill your body. Once you think you're full, take another little extra cheat sniff, fill yourself up. And then on exhale, let it out with a sound that you're feeling or let it out through your nose or mouth. And then you just keep cycling through the cyclic size. And so what research has found is the research of the neuroscientist, Dr. Jack Feldman, that we have this area of our brainstem. Not only we have an area of the brainstem that

governs our inhalate, our inhalation rhythm. We also have one that governs exhale rhythm and it's connected to, to the side reflex and also to it amplifies parasympathetic features. So if you have your athletes laying in bed, you don't have to go through the chocolate chip, but they might want to fill themselves with a soothing color. So they could, they could bring in another mindset around imagination because that some people are more artsy in that way and it will connect with them. Other people know, I just want to fill my lung. I want to feel my lungs fill and I want to feel it fill a second time and then let the exhale happen. So the cyclic sighing is very good for those people. When I have trouble breathing,

I like to do an exercise that's in the book called psychic alternate nostril breathing. And it's like the most batty title, but it's actually a straight translation from the Sanskrit, which is called Anulom Valom. And that's what you imagine is that you generate a breath through one nostril. Let's say I'm breathing in through the right nostril. And then I let that breath touch the left side of my brain. Then I migrate that energy to the right side of my brain. And on exhale, that breath trickles out through the left. And then I reverse it. You breathe in through the left nostril. It touches the right side. You imagine the energy of the breath migrating to the left side and exit out the right. And there's no manipulation here. I'm not using my fingers. I'm not trying to occlude inside my face, but I'm just imagining this kind of brain flossing.

And for some reason, the tick tock of that brain flossing ends up, you know, I guess it's maybe the equivalent of in the seventies, everyone's like, just count sheep. Like for me is my equivalent of counting sheep that helps me to drift off. But you have to use your finger to like, right. Like, no, but so that's, that would be true alternate nostril breathing where you include here, you're, you're already in bed, you're laying on your pillow and I don't care what position you're in, because you're trying to fall asleep, you find the position that you like to fall asleep. And right, you know, if I end up waking up during the night, I'll do either cyclic sighing, I'll do the psychic alternate nostril breathing. There's other practices that I've used that have been very helpful. But you know, they change over time also. So it's like,

you've got to figure out what works. then you've got to update as necessary. And there are many different ones. There's also another one in the book called Three-Step Breath that also builds on the psi reflex. That's another very, very helpful one for reducing anxiety and helping to move you towards sleep. Awesome. Thank you.

When is the official launch date of the book? February 28th. So I don't know when this podcast is. Are you going on tour? I am. I'm coming to, I'm going to Northern California. I'm going to Los Gatos,

Larkspur, Atlanta, Houston, Toronto, DC, Boston, New York, and potentially New Orleans.

And then also. I didn't hear Raleigh, Nash. I didn't hear, I didn't hear Raleigh, North Carolina. I know. Phil cheated.

Phil very cheated. I love. love here need to breathe yeah we don't need to breathe in north carolina no don't worry about us don't worry about us happy book uh we can we can bring you to my house we'll do it for the neighborhood get a bunch of people here are you in raleigh also yeah nice that gym that your your friend invited that gym I went to was nice. That gym that your friend invited me to to speak, it was nice. Oh, yeah, you already did that. It was last week, right? Yeah, it was good. It was really good.

Well, I got to see Doug in Nashville. Doug came and took one of the days of my role model course there last winter, which was so amazing to see him there. But I love the South. I'm originally from New Orleans. So it's really, really special to me to be able to hear your gorgeous accent. New Orleans girl, that's awesome.

That's right. Where can people find the book and find you and everything you have going on? The website is tuneupfitness.com. We also have a special Body by Breath website. I don't know when this is going to come out, but there are perks for people who pre-order like when is this going to come out? When do you want it to? That's the real answer. Oh yeah, sure. It, you know, people who

work for you tomorrow totally works. The, um, there are pre-order perks for people. Look at that. Jill Miller coming in here, calling the shots. Yes. Pre-order perks. I'm giving a free Vegas voyage class for people who pre-order and submit their receipt. And also one of those lucky people will win a seat in my next Body by Breath immersion happening at the end of April. Yeah, and then I'm touring my Tuchus off, moving all over the US and Canada.

And I'm so excited. And you can find me on Instagram at the Jill Miller, as well as my company at tune up fitness. Was that Yiddish? You're what? Oh, what did you say? Yes.

That's more Yiddish. That's Tush, Tush, Tush. Yeah. All right. Awesome. Smash,

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smash, smash, smash, smash, smash, smash, smash, smash, smash, smash, smash, smash, smash, smash, smash, smash, masterly.com or let's do Twitter at masterly. Look at that. Anybody who's still checking the Twitter handle over today.

It's fun. He likes the new Elon Twitter. Good job. I do like the new Elon Twitter. I like, I like, I like discussion cleaner, a little cleaner.

Yeah. Doug Larson. Right on. You can find my Instagram. Jill, as you said, we got to see each other in Nashville here just recently, which I really enjoyed.

Awesome seminar. And then this book is a monster, folks. I'm holding it up right now, but you can't see it, but a monster book in a good way. Very, very cool. So thank you again for coming on the show. Always a joy to hang out with you.

You bet. Thanks, guys. Going all the way back to the beginning when I was telling you about the little trick that I do with my kids to get them to fall asleep in the Vegas. Oh, yeah. When I am putting them to bed,

and I've thought this many times, the reason that nursery rhymes exists is so that you activate the Vegas nerve and put them in a parasympathetic state at the very like, uh, basic level nursery rhymes, calm kids down because it activates with the frequency of your voice. So I sit there at night and think about instead of like, uh, I'm not a singer, but I will sit there at night over and over and just, um, until they calm down. That is my vagus nerve, uh, story. And you are correct. You are absolutely correct with that assessment. And if people look into the vagus nerve chapter, they will see why that is true. Why that works. I home my kids to sleep

for four and a half straight years now. I've been sitting in a rocking chair. Also because it's regulated partly is it's regulating your nervous system and regulate with yours. So it's very, very good. Um, and, uh, in addition to the walking breathing, um, that I was talking about, It's like the perfect combination for me in that I do the active piece when I am walking and doing either step counts or breath holds or whatever it is. And then when I do the relaxation stillness piece is when I am doing that and putting my kids to bed. So there is no reason why anybody can not use the information in this podcast because everybody walks and everybody puts

their kids down to bed or whatever it is. And you find some time in a chair that you can just chill out. So I appreciate you being on the show. And I love the book. It's awesome. Anytime I get a book like that, I'm like, this is the only resource that matters. Nailed it. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner.

We are Barbell Shrugged, Barbell underscore Shrugged. Get over to RapidHehealthreport.com. We can see Dan Varner and Dr. Andy Galpin go through labs, lifestyle performance to optimize your health. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.