Barbell Shrugged - Don’t Be A Mouth-Breather. Breathe Better, Feel Better -- with Dr. Lance Einerson - Active Life Radio #18

Episode Date: November 22, 2019

Have you ever been called a mouth-breather? When was the last time you took an exhale that was longer than your inhale? Do you hold your breath everytime you lift heavy as a way to “stabilize”? When you woke up this morning, did you think about breathing before you actually took a breath? As a living human chances are you did not; this function comes automatically and for good reason.    In this episode, Dr. Lance Einerson is back to drop some breathwork knowledge bombs. We are talking about how your nervous system’s interpretation of your breath can lead to panic or relaxation, discussing the connection between poor breathing and chronic pain, plus Dr. Lance gives out his top 2 breathing tips to start addressing your chronic pain today!   Minutes: 5:34 – Why your pain alarm may be going off 10:40 – Breathing and chronic pain 19:15 – Developing an autonomic breathing pattern 27:12 – The N.E.R. System  36:45 – Intentional breathing 42:20 – Remote breathwork training    Please Support our Sponsors Organifi - Save 20% at http://organifi.com/shrugged   Connect with us: Work with an Active Life Coach like Dr. Lance: http://activeliferx.com/shrugged Find Dr. Lance @lance.einerson_dpt Find Dr. Sean @DrSeanPastuch ------------------------------------------------------------------ Show notes: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/alr-mouth ------------------------------------------------------------------ ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

What's up everybody welcome back to Active Life Radio on the Shrugged Collective Network. Today's guest on the show is Dr. Lance Einerson. He's one of our one-on-one coaches at Active Life. He's our breathwork specialist. He's our CNS, Central Nervous System Regulation Specialist. And on today's show, we're going to talk about how breathing and your nervous system are in tune. What does it actually mean and why is it important? I mean, we grew up breathing, right? What do I need a coach to teach me how to do it? I've been doing it since the moment I slid out of my mom's vagina. Do I really need a coach to teach me how to do it? So we're going to talk to Lance about that today. And before we get to Lance,

I want to remember to thank our incredible sponsors. So thank you to Organifi, G, excuse me, O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com. Every night before bed, I hit the gold drink. It's awesome. A little bit of hot water. I got one of those aero, I don't know what you call it, the spinny things that you push the button and it spins really fast and makes a little vortex in your cup and blends it up really nice. If you don't have one of those, a fork will do the job.

I'm a little bit bougie, but Organifi.com, that's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com. Head there, use the code shrugged at checkout, get yourself 20% off and enjoy yourself some turmeric tea, the gold juice right before bed. That's it. Let's get you to Dr. Lance right now. What's up, Lance? What's up, Sean? How are you doing? I'm doing great. I just got back from Austin.

I flew into town yesterday. Oh, nice. Yeah. I was away for a little weekend trip. Never been to Austin. It's on the list, though. It's a good spot. Good food away for a little weekend trip. Never been to Austin. It's on the list, though. It's a good spot. Good food.

A lot of good tacos. Yeah, it was interesting. Sounds good, man. It sounds good. You got me tacos. All right. So tell me, Lance, you're the guy on our team. And before I started understanding the value of breath, my big question to everybody me how to do it. So would you help us out? Teach me to understand why is it valuable? What is different about the way that you would coach somebody to breathe and the way that they're comfortable breathing right now?

Yeah. So our breathing, the reason that it's so important is that it acts as a gateway to our autonomic nervous system. And the autonomic nervous system is the part of your nervous system that typically happens automatically. I mean, it's in the name, right? And the thing about it is that it dictates a lot of the things about the way that we feel and the way that we perform, the way that we react to different situations. And because it's such an automatic process, generally speaking, it's really hard to affect those processes. But breathing and vision, those are the two ways that we can affect some of those things, you know, hormonally, chemically. There's a lot of different processes that are going on there. And since we can decide the way that we breathe and we can train the way that we breathe, that means we can manage our state of arousal in different situations.

So for example, if I have, if I'm competing in a sport, say, let's just say Olympic weightlifting, because there's not a lot of breathing involved there, right? It's just a, it's a couple attempts and then, and then you're done, but you need to manage your nervous system to make sure that you're in the optimal state before you get onto the platform so that you're in the right place mentally and emotionally so that you're able to accept those very large loads. Same thing for when you're in pain. If your nervous system thinks that you're being chased by a bear because you're breathing like you're being chased by a bear, that input from the injury that you have is not going to be interpreted very well.

And if it's not interpreted well, you're not going to be able to respond in the best way possible. So let's dive back into what you said a little bit because my interpretation of that is something I want to make sure was correct. What you're telling me is if I'm breathing as if I was being chased by a bear, essentially like if I'm in a little bit of a panic mode and my breathing is heavy and labored and probably through my mouth and high in my chest and all that kind of stuff, that's what I'm picturing. And then I get hurt that the likelihood that I experience

more pain is higher. Yes. Can you dive into that more? Yeah. So with pain, we have to remember really what, what pain is or, or to, to discuss what it is because we don't have pain receptors at, you know, different places in our body. You know, it's like, I do something to my knee. It's not like, Oh, there's pain happening at my knee. Your nervous system is just gathering data. It gathers data, comes back up into your head and in your brain, and you interpret that data as, okay, this thing's happening. We need to tell this person there's something is not right. Let's send some pain signals so that they stop. So that like, Hey, red flags, something's, something's going on. If you're in that panic state, those signals are going to be louder and louder and louder until you start to pay attention.

And a lot of times with our injuries, especially things that happen in the gym, because you're not out on the battlefield and you're not experiencing something that's life-threatening, we get really loud signals because we're breathing as if we're in those life threatening situations. We're leveraging resources that don't need to be leveraged to get us out of the quote unquote danger. Yeah. So essentially what you're saying there is when you're working out in the gym, you're simulating being chased by a bear so that in the future when you get chased by a bear, you're more likely to get away. Yeah. Right. I mean, that's the reason that we guys make no

mistake about it. The reason that we exercise is because we've adopted a sedentary lifestyle. If we didn't adopt sedentary lifestyles, exercise would be far less valuable. I mean, that's just that's the bottom line. So, OK okay so what you're describing is i'm in the middle of a workout and i'm feeling myself and my heartbeat is going high i'm doing fran for example and then i i don't know i bang my chin on the pull-up bar right for example um two things to that one you described that there's no pain receptors right there. It goes to the brain and comes back. And I want people to understand what that means. So to break that down simply, there are reflexes and then there's a pain response. And those two things are very different, right? If a doctor taps your kneecap, that doesn't go all the way to the brain.

It's a much quicker response. But if you bang your knee into something, often there's like that moment where you're like, does this hurt? And then your brain is like, fuck yeah, that hurts. Yes, exactly. You stub your toe and you're like, oh, God. So that's the difference. It goes to your brain and you're essentially making a decision. But I want to ask you something because I've had this experience myself and have you help us explain it. I've hurt myself in the middle of workouts. I've hurt myself in the middle of games. I've been running places and, you know, injured something or, you know, quote, injured something and it didn't hurt or I was able to push through the pain,

at least in part, maybe because of adrenaline. Why does that happen? Yeah. So that has to do with your state that you're in. The whole fight or flight thing comes into play there. Let me compare and contrast these. So you do the, let's just say you just smash your shin into something when you're just walking around and that it hurts. You go into a panicky state when that happens and it starts to hurt worse and worse. That's what we're talking about. That, that you're kind of like being chased by the bear when there's actually no bear stimulus or anything that is that validates that increased state of arousal. So that's where that things start to go off the rails there when you're actually doing something that is necessitating the bear response that that you're using those

resources those hormones everything gets pulled in that's when it becomes more advantageous because it's a preservation reflex essentially. Like, Hey, finish this thing, do it, get done. We'll, we'll burn the house down now so we can get out of here and rebuild it later. Yeah. So what you're describing then, and I think I did misunderstand this a little bit earlier is if I'm in the heat of the moment, I might be having the stimulus that as, as if I'm running from the bear.

But then if the pain happens, I'm going to be able to ignore it in a big way because I was already in the moment. My brain is like, no, no, no, no. You're running from a bear. The pain is not important. for example, and then end up in the heavy breathing mindset state of, oh, wow, this is the same response I would get if I was running from a bear, that that pain would intensify. Yep, that's it. Got it.

Got it. Thanks, Lance. That's it, man. Okay, so how much of this then is – you mentioned that breathing affects the autonomic nervous system, which for people who don't know is the part of the nervous system that's going to just act in response yeah it's it's on autopilot you're not controlling it so how do we control the way that we breathe in a situation like that to change the way that our nervous system functions to reduce pain and why

answer that first and then the follow-up question to that is going to be, why is that relevant to people who are not really that concerned about stubbing their toes? So let me make sure I understand this. We want to know how we change the way that we breathe to manage pain and how that applies to people that aren't worried about just like little things here and there that happen yeah like like if i'm walking around i'm not worried that i'm not going to spend time and effort and energy building a better breath work practice so that next time i stub my toe or bang my shin i don't have a high stress response got Gotcha. I'm only going to do it if there's a reward at the other side. Yeah, gotcha.

So it comes down to a couple of things. First of all, this is really, really useful for people that have chronic pain. So like a lot of back injury stuff, a lot of the people that I work with have had back injuries. They don't know how to brace very well. And since they don't know how to brace very well, they're predisposed to injury. But they also, their body doesn't know necessarily what's going on in that part of their body. So we're just going to talk about low back.

This is a good example for this. Diaphragm, main muscle of respiration, brings the low back. This is a good example for this diaphragm main muscle of respiration brings the air in. That's what it's for attaches to the spine. It touches most of your vital organs and it dictates a lot of what's happening with your pelvic floor. When can we just, let's take a second and describe where the diaphragm is for people okay yeah so so the diaphragm if you guys can picture like put your fingers underneath your ribs on either side if you were able to go in there and then press up you would most likely be pressing against your diaphragm it runs from your spine all the way to the back side of the front of your ribs

excuse me to the yeah the back side of the front of your ribs and all the way around the body. It's basically like the top of a, it's like a lid to a jar, right? Except it's, it, it moves. It's a muscle. If you've ever eaten skirt steak, you're eating diaphragm, cow diaphragm. Look, that's what it is. That's true. Go on. Yeah. So it's, it's like that umbrella that's what it is that's true go on that's true yeah so it's like that umbrella that's at the bottom of your ribs that your body uses that as essentially a proprioceptive super highway that gives you information of everything that's going on in that part of your body it it's monitoring organs it's monitoring digestion it's monitoring. Everything is going on there. And if you're not breathing well, because you're always in this lockdown state, trying to avoid back pain, your body's not going to know what's in what's going on there because it's not getting the proprioceptive feedback or the information from those muscles and from everything that's there to say, Hey, we're good. We're cool. Don't worry about it. We can move around.

This is something I don't think I ever understood. You're saying the way that the diaphragm functions is in part as a proprioceptive tool for the rest of the body to decide what's going on. So essentially if you're breathing improperly, you're not using your diaphragm appropriately. You're having shallow breathing and rapid breathing. Your body would then deduce, based on the way the diaphragm is moving, we are probably in a stress response situation. Is that right? Exactly.

That is fucking crazy. I didn't know that. That's right. That's right? That's right? right cool all right go i mean that's wild it's it makes a lot of sense but the only thing i ever understood the diaphragm to do is essentially as it widens and lowers it it allows for the lungs to fill with air i didn't understand that it also functioned as a proprioceptive tool. Carry on lanes. Yeah. Yeah.

So since it's the, such the strong source of proprioception, your body's going to be monitoring it really close. That's why your phrenic nerve, the nerve that goes from your brain down into the diaphragm to make it to move. It's, it's bi-directional. It's a two-lane highway

it not only receives information like hey contractually can pull air in but it's also sending all that information back up straight up into the brain it's straight there i remember c3 4-5 keeps the diaphragm alive exactly right yeah i remember in chiropractic school when we're going through cadavers i I remember being like, where's the diaphragm? Like, I mean, oh, I mean, where's the phrenic nerve? Because for those of you guys listening, largest nerve in the body is the sciatic nerve. It's about as wide as your thumb or a garden hose.

The next biggest nerve in the body, as far as I remember, is the phrenic nerve. And it's going to be like a shoelace. Yeah. Right? Something like that. After that, we're really, we're getting much smaller. But I had just finished slicing the phrenic nerve because I was a young student in chiropractic school,

didn't see it, didn't know what I was doing. And the proctor was like, oh, you sliced that like five minutes ago. I'm like, oh, thanks for the heads up. But it runs. It's like imagine it running from the base of your neck down to the top of your diaphragm it's a long nerve yeah it is it's important like not just for the breathing but because it relays so much information and if it's not getting that information what happens is something that's called smudging so think of like a charcoal

drawing you can imagine that your body has a map or your mind, brain, whatever, has a map of your body in a charcoal drawing. And when you experience pain, especially low back pain, because there's so much important stuff going on there, and you don't get that good information, it's like you just took your thumb and smudged that part of your body. Is that a real term? Or did you make that term up? Or is it a real of your body. Is that a real term or did you make that term up or is it a real term? No, that's a real thing. Too bad. Smudging. It was good. I know, right? Yeah. So it's, it's smudges that part of the body. And so your, your nervous system is asking questions. It's saying, what is going on here? I'm not getting the information I need. I don't know what's happening. This is dangerous. And your pain signals that you're getting, the little bit of data that's coming back from that part of your body, it's a mystery. It's having a hard time decoding it. And so you're going to get more and more of a pain response until you can re-establish

good breathing patterns and normal movement patterns in that area so that your nervous system can be like, oh, this is what's happening. I can correctly interpret this now. So Lance, have you ever seen somebody who was experiencing, for example, low back pain chronically? They've had low back pain for, let's call it 10 years. Have you ever seen that low back pain go away simply through the improvement of breathing practice? And when I say breathing practice, I mean relearning how to breathe so that it's intentional and then becomes autonomically done properly.

I've seen it be decreased by a good 80, 90%. That last little bit usually has to be accomplished by strengthening. So you have to, you set the breathing is the base, right? It's the, it's what starts the cascade of the healing process.

And a lot of times these people that have been, they're really, they've been locked down and they haven't been moving well for a long time. They, they, they're really weak as well. So we get really under control with a lot of the breathing stuff, which doesn't just mean we're laying on the floor breathing. It's breathing and moving around, doing some different things. And then we load it, we strengthen it. And then that's where things get a hundred percent.

I think nowadays when people think about breathing, they go right to Wim Hof. Right. I mean, he's, he's, he's done a great job of bringing awareness to people's need to have awareness of their breath. How is what you're describing different than a Wim Hof practice, for example? How is what you're describing going to be – without going too into depth of what Wim Hof is, the brief overview for people is – for those of you who are into Wim Hof breathing, I am not doing it a justice. Okay. The simple, what Wim Hof is, is essentially we're going to go through some rapid inhalation, exhalation, holds, and then repeat, right? And it's, it's, it's all going to be done laying on our back. And then there's some cold exposure involved as well. That to me, I've done it, is extremely valuable.

I've learned how to control different things in my life. But I don't believe it's a way to learn how to develop an autonomic breathing practice. Can you go into the difference there? Yeah. So with Wim Hof breathing, that's essentially what you would consider just exposure therapy in very brief terms. Since you're hyperventilating for a given time or amount of breaths, you're really ramping up your nervous system really, really high. You're dropping your CO2 levels really, really low.

And then you hold until that reverses. And that is essentially the opposite of what we're going to do if we want to be working on pain. Because what we want to do when we're working on pain is that we want to get your nervous system in sync with your environment. If you're laying on the floor trying to get pain under control, you don't want your nervous system to skyrocket. You want it to chill. And so what we would do there is be working on mechanics because breathing is the fundamental movement pattern of the body. Gets rid of that smudging of the area for the low back pain.

And then also we want to make sure that we keep your CO2 levels and your oxygen levels in check. So for most people, that means you're just going to be breathing through your nose a lot more. And when that happens, a lot of the tissues that may have been ischemic or that they didn't have, they weren't getting as much oxygen as they were, they would like. The blood flow is going to improve to them. Everything's going to be functioning better there because we're going to get not only the movement in check, but we're going to get the

chemistry in check as well. So what you're describing is that some of that chronic pain could be due to muscles that don't get enough oxygen. It could be. It could be. I don't like to necessarily say like, hey, those muscles aren't getting enough oxygen because first of all, I don't actually know that.

It could be. And then second of all, when you're breathing correctly and you're using your nose, you're getting nitric oxide, which is a vasodilator, makes the blood vessels bigger. It's going to improve the blood flow to everything else, but especially those things that might be locked down. So you're saying I don't get nitric oxide when I'm breathing through my mouth? Exactly.

Really? Exactly. Yep. There's zero through the mouth and there's, there's a plentiful amount through the nose. Yeah. So when you're breathing through your mouth, you have zero filtering. It's just, it is just an open hose and pond water essentially going in. When you're breathing through your nose, your nose has all of the plumbing to make sure that the air is optimal. It either warms or cools it. It humidifies it or dries it out a little bit. And the lining of your sinuses, that's the tissue in your body that creates the most nitric oxide of anything else in your body. Interesting. So night, so we're not getting nitric oxide from the environment. We're creating it. We're converting it when it's in our system. Yeah, we make it, we make it. Oh shit. Blood

vessels do it too, but not very much. Okay. So how much of the breathing is how do i word this how much of this do you believe is if i can control my breathing i'm in enough of a mentally present state to also take control over the pain that i'm in versus how much of it is because i've controlled my breathing my pain is reducing do you understand what i'm asking so how much of it is a mental game and how much of it is because i've controlled my breathing my pain is reducing do you understand what i'm asking so how much of it is a mental game and how much of it is a physical game is that yes exactly right yes because like to to gain control of your breathing i've noticed myself in times i was perfect example i was at uh michael and adi cashew's house this past weekend and we were playing a game and in the game i kept on making

mistakes and i recognize i'm making these mistakes because i'm not focusing and i stopped and i took a deep nasal breath and everybody laughed they laughed because it was like whoa like we know what that record we know what that means he's really trying to focus right now. But so that was a – I was mentally aware of the moment that I was in. I decided to take a deep breath that was going to be diaphragmatic through my nose to get my nervous system ready to fire the way I wanted it to, to flick a little wooden thing across a game board but um high stakes high stakes well when you're a competitive guy and you're getting beat those are high stakes so that to me would be the mental side right like okay wait a minute i have presence of mind to know this if i was in pain it could be hold on calm down take a, take a deep breath. Okay. Now I feel better, but do I feel better because I recognize that I was overreacting or do I feel better

because I took the deep breath or is it one in the same? It's a chicken or the egg conversation, really. I mean, it doesn't, I don't personally in terms of like of application of like helping people do this in the clinic or in the gym or whatever it, it doesn't really, I don't care. I don't care which one comes first because they, there's just so closely intertwined. If you have the presence of mind that that is that you're going to

intentionally change the way that you're breathing. Like the example that you gave, like, okay, focus. All right, now I'm going to crush these guys. Then it's starting between your ears. I still lost. Oh, well, should have done it earlier, I guess. Otherwise, though, when it's a trained response, you're getting your breathing back because

you've worked on it and you're in whether you're in the gym or you're out in the mountains i mean like where i live everybody's mountain athletes and that you're out there doing those things and it becomes an automatic thing of like this this is the way that I breathe now. Then your mental game is going to be far and above that of the other people that are mouth breathing out there the whole day when you're in competition. So they happen at the same time, but you can kind of tell which one, I guess, sort of comes first, depending on your situation. Calling somebody a mouth breather is actually one of my favorite ways to be derogatory at somebody i agree so um all right let's let's take the person who's listening to this who's dealing with let's just take it as low back pain let's help them they've had low back pain for five years, 10 years,

six months. It doesn't matter. It's, it's now a chronic thing. Okay. What can they do today that will allow that to start to reduce through only means of breath changing? Okay. So the two biggest things for this in terms of like the, the lowest hanging fruit for somebody who's in pain is first of all, start breathing through your nose more. 80% of your day, you should be breathing through your nose.

Well, you say breathe through their nose more. Does that mean that they are literally going to stop and take time to breathe through their nose? Just shut your mouth. That's it. Okay. So consciously breathe through your nose as often as you can during the day. Yeah. If you're not talking or eating or working at top end exertion, shut your mouth. That's it. Got it. Or kissing, I guess. And if you're fortunate, well, you definitely be breathing through your nose if you're kissing. Yeah. Anyway, so breathe through your nose more. That's it has the plumbing for it. And it's going to affect the way that the tissues that are irritated, the way that they that they feel, and the way that you respond neurologically to the stimulus that you are presented with. And then the second thing is to find the corners, essentially, of your symptoms. And so what I mean by that is find the edges of the movement

to where you start to get symptoms. So, for example, say somebody gets symptoms when they bend forward, like they're going to pick something up off the floor. Instead of just being like, okay, I'm going to just try and go through this. I'm just going to push through the movement. I know that I need to move because it's good to move. It's good to exercise. I'm just going to just ram through these symptoms, and hopefully I feel better on the other side. Not going to work.

Okay? just ram through these symptoms and hopefully I feel better on the other side. Not going to work. Okay. That's basically the definition of the bear that's not there. And your nervous system is freaking out. Instead, come to the edge of it. Come to the edge of like, that's okay. That's where it starts. That's where it starts right there. And then consciously breathe there through your nose, good, solid breaths that are down into your diaphragm that are low and that are wide. So not up in your chest and in your neck and then exhale, but exhale slower, you know, like twice as slow as, as you inhaled. And that's going to bring your nervous system down to where it's not so sensitive to that movement. And it might feel significantly better with two or three breaths. It might be just a little bit, everybody responds a little bit differently, but it's going to make a dent in that current map, the current

neurological map that your body has of that movement. Okay. So I heard breathe through your nose more. And when you get to the margins of your capacity, essentially, you know, when you're getting to the edges, you're going to bend down and pick something up. For example, get to right before you really start to feel your symptoms and go through some deep nasal breathing yep slower exhale than inhale though yep so so deep breath in let it out nice and slow and now they're letting it out through their mouth through the nose doesn't matter nose i want to do through your nose because when you exhale through your nose that's actually when the nitric oxide is produced so it the air is swirling around in there it produces the nitric nitric oxide and

then when you inhale on the next breath that's when it actually makes the entrance oh look at you look at it i mean you educate my you educate me hard right now okay so that's the second is there anything else that they should do honestly that is that's where you need to be. If you can do those two things, you can start making a huge difference in the way that you feel pain-wise. There are other things you can obviously do, but do those two things and be very intentional and just take action right now and you will see changes. How often should they do this? Because I'm picturing someone who's like, all right, sick. I'm just going to bend halfway down and breathe through my nose all day. I mean, we're talking to a lot of CrossFitters here. That's, that's what's going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So breathing through your nose, like I said, 80% of your day. That's it. Or at least 80%.

And then with the hinging or the bending forward example, do it when you start to feel uncomfortable. You know, you're like, I've been sitting for a little bit yesterday and I'm starting to feel it. Get up, five fine breaths, something like that, and stand back up, go back to work you do it once every couple hours if something's really bothering you if it's not really bothering you just do it a couple times a day got it so so here's here's what i want to do for you guys who are listening to this

because the way that lance described that it was very casual right i mean lance you've done this before you've seen it work. It's not a big deal. It's easy. People can do it. Everyone should do it today. Agreed? Yeah.

Okay. I understand that for some of you guys, that doesn't sound important enough, right? You're like, okay, well, it can't be that simple. It doesn't sound that important. So what I'm going to recommend to you is this. Let's come up with a system. Let's name it. You guys are going to go through the NER system. NER is how we're going to help you get out of low back pain through breath work alone.

The first phase of NER is the N. It's called nasal breathing. We want you to focus on nasal breathing for 80% of your day. If you're not sure how you're breathing, take your mind to it and breathe through your nose. That's the N portion of NER. The E phase of NER is going to be edges. We want you to move your body to the edges of where you feel discomfort and begin nasal breathing. That's the E phase. So when you get to the edges of where you feel discomfort, take three to five deep nasal breaths until your pain decreases. Then we're going to move ourselves to the R phase, which is going to be repeat. And we want you to repeat this three to five times a day, minimum three, maximum five.

This is what we're going to call N-E-R for pain relief. Does it sound important enough for you to do it? So Lance, what do you think of N-E-R? I think it's catchy. I think that's why you're the voice in the face of the company, right? Yeah, I guess so. But it's the truth, right? I mean, there's a lot of people who, and I understand this, guys.

You need something to have a name. You need something to be recognizable, to be important, whatever the case is, if you're going to do it. It needs to have studies. It needs to have backing. It needs to have legitimacy. So forget about just nasal breathing to get out of low back pain. Forget about just going to the edges of your discomfort and breathing through it and forget about doing it a few times a day. No, you're not going to do that. You're going to do our very special method

of NER. It's a process. It begins with nasal breathing for 80% of your day. Then it goes to E, which is going to be go to the edges of your discomfort and take three to five breaths through your nose. Then it's going to go to R, which is going to be repeat three to five times a day. That's what we call our NER system.

It's been known to be extremely effective at eliminating or reducing drastically low back pain through breathwork alone. Have at it. Love it. Love it. If there's another thing just to think about, since again, we're talking to a lot of CrossFitters

here, right? You breathe over 20,000 times a day. The most basic movement pattern of life. 20,000? 20,000. That's like twice as many steps as doctors recommend. Yeah, nuts. So if you're doing it 20,000 times a day

and you're not doing it to the best of your ability, to the potential of your breath, whether that's performance or that's to get out of pain, how much are you leaving on the table? If you squatted 20,000 times a day and you've just air squat 20,000 times a day, like you'd be dead. Yeah. I mean, like you wouldn't want to have anything out of sorts with that movement pattern. If you're doing it 20,000 times a day, don't discount your breathing. Don't sleep on it. So where does our breathing go wrong? I think this is something that would allow people to

get behind it because it's like, wait a minute. Born, breathing. Life, breathing. At what point did I start doing this thing that seems to be working because I'm alive. When did I start doing it so wrong? And if it was so bad for me, why, why would my body allow it to happen? I mean, Cocoa Puffs are bad for you, but your body allows you to keep eating those too, right? So are they, are Cocoa Puffs bad for you? Well, well i don't know maybe not for the soul i think they're probably bad um anyway so a lot of it comes down to the whole kind of like that conversation of reaction versus response a reaction is just something it's like that knee jerk boom like something happens and you just you go for it you fly off the fly off the handle if you're

angry or you know whatever it's it's these the handle if you're angry or whatever. It's these things that when there's not any intention that's built into the way that you're handling things. And that is really, really detrimental to the way that we breathe because we are being confronted with things that we have to deal with, in quotes there, all the time. Whether that's something that you see on social media that rubs you the wrong way, or a conversation that you have with your spouse or your kids or your boss or crappy traffic, whatever it is, you're having to confront these things all the time. And because your breath is that thing that's right there, so easily accessible to do good things. It's also really easily accessible to do things that are detrimental. So think about it of, of

any time that you get angry, how does your breathing change? It shifts up into your chest, up into your neck. Same thing when you're anxious. Um if we have those little micro-stimulus all day, every day, it's happening all the time because we're always being stimulated by something. We get stuck at the one end of that fight or flight spectrum all day. And it becomes a habit, becomes a pattern that we do over and over and over and over again. Cool thing is though, that's not the way that your body wants to function. It doesn't want to be, you know, having red flags all the time. So correcting it and getting out of it, it's actually pretty quick. It happens really fast.

When you say it happens pretty quick, I've had that happen in the time frame of getting off the couch and getting halfway up the flight of stairs when my daughter pissed me off. Yeah, it's true. Seriously. I mean, I take cold showers every day. And the reason I take cold showers every day is because I've been convinced that I should take cold showers every day. That said, one of the absolute benefits I've had from it is that I need to focus on my breath when I'm in there or it just continues to suck. Now, the response that you have or that I have when the cold water hits me is the exact same as the response that I have when my four-year-old daughter is supposed to be in bed and she refuses to go to sleep and she stands up and she screams mommy daddy whatever she's screaming because she wants us to come back up right because she's she doesn't have her special doll or whatever it is. And I'm like, fuck!

But that response happens inside of me, on the couch, downstairs. I will stand up in anger, move towards the stairs, and start working on my breath work before I get to the steps. So by the time I get into a room, it went from fuck to what's wrong, baby? And I literally do not have the stress, the anxiety, the amplitude when I get to her room that I had seven seconds earlier when I was downstairs on the couch.

So it does happen that fast. It's nuts. Your nervous system changes so quickly, especially when there's something there involved besides just your head. Because if you stay on the couch, like if you're just like, for whatever reason you have, your four year old has a tablet or something in,

in a room and she's looking at you like daddy, our daughter does not have a tabletyear-old has a tablet or something in her room. And she's looking and she's like, Daddy! Our daughter does not have a tablet in her room. Yeah, that's good. I'd probably have to openly mock you if you did. But you were sitting there and you were trying to have a conversation with her and you were just sitting on the couch. It would be a very different conversation than you getting up, than you moving. Breathing has to change because you're moving.

You're not sitting there anymore. And having that awareness of it, it changes everything. So when people are just like, oh, I'm in pain, I need to sit here. I need to not be moving. I need to not be doing X, Y, Z. Yeah. Well, your back hurts. You probably shouldn't be dead lifting 500 pounds, but you need to move. You need to change the way that you're breathing. You don't need to sit here and marinate in all of these pain signals, move around, breathe out of it, and you're going to feel better. Yeah. It's profound. It really is. How effective do you feel like you can be with someone doing this from a distance the reason i ask that is obviously we're a remote company you work with people online and i know

that there are people listening to this saying you know maybe i should give that a shot but the concern is when you say something like breathe deep you know so down and wide they're like what the fuck is? I don't know how to breathe down there. So they feel like they need someone to put their hands on them to teach them how to do that. How much of that can be done from a distance? And how much of it needs to be done in purpose? And I do not for a second, want you to hedge because of who you're talking to and where you're talking to. Yeah. So you can do all of it from a distance. Will it be faster in terms of you getting the movement pattern

if I'm sitting there with you, giving you tactile and verbal cues real time? Absolutely. But can you get the same benefits and the same effects working with somebody that's on the other side and the same effects working with somebody that's, you know, on the other side of the world? Like, yeah, I do it all the time. I mean, one of the like coolest examples of how this has changed somebody's life was

somebody that worked with him that lives in the UK. And, you know, we spoke on the, on the phone a few times as we worked together for six months. And other than that, everything else that we did was in True Coach, the program that we use to communicate with our clients. Everything else was in there. It's like, hey, here's these videos that we've made so that you can understand what it is. Here are your instructions.

I need you to do this, and I need you to be committed to learning from this process, lives are changed. That's awesome. How do you do that from a distance? I mean, you're going to tell me to breathe down and wide. How am I going to do that? use a lot, um, is a progression of the, that focuses on the movement of your breath and then progresses you. It does that from your, when you're laying down on your back and it progresses you through a, a glue bridge. And so if you're working with me and decide, okay, like this is

the path that we need to take, what's going to happen is you're going to get instructions of, Hey, you need to breathe in this position for this long. Here's a video. This is what it looks like. You need to do breathe like this in this position. Here's a video. This is what it looks like. This is what it should feel like. And this, these are the cues that you're going to be giving yourself by putting your hands on this part of your rib cage, that kind of thing. And I imagine you progress them from laying on their back to standing up to having a barbell on their hands, potentially to hang in from a pull up bar. Yes. Yeah. Yep. Soon as they're ready. Cool. And then how much of that do you expect to become autonomic? And how much of that do you expect that they're always going to have to consciously be thinking about during a workout, during an activity?

Ideally, everything becomes automatic, that you don't have to think about it anymore. The only caveat to that is that most people brace terribly when they're under a load that they're just like, and then, you know, that was like, they, they pull a bunch of air in and then like, they're almost crapping their pants when they're squatting.

And like, it's, it's not, it's not pretty. So relearning how to brace, there's a little bit of a, a learning curve there that people are going to have to remember that as they're like squatting heavy and stuff.

Other than that, it should become 100 automatic it took me uh like three and a half four months to to re-teach dylan cade if any of you guys know who he is he was a i think second place in the teen division 17 years old at the crossfit games uh we re-taught him how to brace through breathing and bracing intentionally. Stuff like nasal breathing only, farmer's carries. Stuff like breathing and controlling and then moving a weight very, very slowly over and over and over again through the patterns in which he had the least ability to brace.

Things like putting a weight belt on him and then putting pen caps inside the weight belt so he could feel himself breathing 360 degrees, all kinds of little tips and tricks that you probably would have done faster than me. But you got the job done, man. What are you going to do? Get the job done. Get the job done. That's right. All right.

Well, so if you guys are out there listening to this and you're like, you know what? I'm done dealing with my pain. I'm done having this annoying, low-grade, chronic, low back pain that everyone tells me comes with age, that doctors have told me, you know, you just have to stop lifting weights and going for runs and it would go away, that I think comes because I'm sitting in a chair at work. If you're finally ready to get rid of that crap, we want to help you. And maybe we set you up with Dr. Lance here. Maybe Lance becomes your guy. I'll be your guy. You have room for a few of them? Yeah. Yeah, man. I'll be your huckleberry. Perfect. All right, Lance. Lance, I mean, I think that there's a lot of credibility that you carry

in the way that you run your social media. So where can people find you on Instagram? It's Lance.Einerson. So that's E-I-N-E-R-S-O-N underscore DPT. All right. We'll make sure that gets into the show notes. Lance, it's been a pleasure, my man. And I look forward to having you on again soon. Love it.

Love doing these. Thanks. That's going to be a wrap for this episode of Active Life Radio on the Shrugged Collective Network. I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks. The people need to hear it. Value unshared is value wasted. And of course, if you're looking to get more from us, whether it's coaching courses, one-on-one coaching from one of our staff members to help you get out of pain without going to the doctor or missing the game, head to ActiveLifeRx.com slash shrugged. See you then. Turn pro.