Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - How to Transform Grief into Growth with Biet Simkin

Episode Date: April 3, 2024

This episode of the Language of Love is a special one! I’m thrilled to share with you the beautiful talk Biet Simkin gave at our Good Grief Day event. Biet is a spiritual teacher and musician whose life story is a profound testament to the resilience of the human spirit. She shares her journey of healing and takes us through her powerful breathwork practice (make sure you aren’t driving or operating heavy machinery when you do it!).  Biet opens her heart to us, sharing her personal narrative of navigating through the darkest valleys of loss and emerging into the light of purpose and spiritual awakening. She speaks candidly about her descent into depression and self-destructive behavior, a tumultuous period exacerbated by the vibrant yet chaotic New York City art scene. The story takes a heartbreaking turn when she recounts the unimaginable loss of her infant daughter to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). That tragedy was only compounded by the subsequent deaths of her father and the loss of her home. It's at her breaking point that Biet surrenders to a higher power, marking the beginning of her transformation. She leads us in a grief meditation and discusses her unique breathwork technique. I have personally experienced the benefits of breathwork and can't wait for you to try it. You will learn: Biet’s personal story of loss; her struggles with depression, substance abuse, and grief, and how it transformed her Biet's insights on grief and leading the audience through a grief meditation exercise Recommendations for practicing breathwork at home Personal stories of loss and healing shared by the audience I invite you to join us on this journey. Whether you're seeking solace, understanding, or a new perspective on your own path of healing, this episode is for you. Don't forget to visit my website for my grief course. Check out Biet Simkin's book, "Don't Just Sit There!: 44 Insights to Get Your Meditation Practice Off the Cushion and Into the Real World." It's amazing! For updates on Biet Simkin's latest projects and to connect with her, visit her website or reach out on LinkedIn.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the past 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Here on the Language of Love Conversations, I'm talking to some of the world's most influential and revolutionary experts, thought leaders, spiritual teachers, and celebrities about love, sex, and relationships from a mind, body, and spirit perspective. and that way my goal is to awaken your mind body and soul it's time to become fluent in the language of life next speaker is really amazing a beautiful soul and also just like claire intimately

understands loss has lost a child herself which she'll share with you i'm sure biet simpkin is a spiritual teacher, an amazing musician. I believe she'll probably be playing some of her music as part of her presentation. And she's often referred to as the David Bowie of meditation. She's too cool for school. She's much more hip than I will ever be. But she also has an amazing form of breath work that she has created that I'm really excited for her to introduce us to. So same sort format. She'll talk or take us through a process for about 45 minutes. And then there will be 15 minutes where you can ask questions at the mic there. All right. Without further ado, love that introduction. Come around that way. You could jump up from the ground. I believe you could

be at Simpkin, everybody. Oh, and her book is also a bestselling author. And this is a beautiful book. Very readable because the chapters are super short, which I really appreciated. Don't just sit there. It's a great. Welcome, welcome, welcome. So good to see so many beautiful faces. So many men at this event. It's like a lot of dudes. I'm joking, joking. It's okay to laugh at a grief event. In fact, if you laugh a lot during my talk, I won't mind so just like relax and make yourself at home I have a really fucked up tragic story and so I've had to laugh a ton I luckily was like I think I was funny before all of it happened but I'm much funnier now so if you guys are experiencing a lot of grief in your life just

get ready to get funnier it's definitely a side like a side effect you know it's definitely a side effect of pain. So my name is Biet Simkin. Laura did an amazing job of giving you guys a bit of an intro of what it is I do and who I am and this bestselling book here, which I will be gifting to people after my talk. But let me go back in time just a touch and talk about how I got here, how I got to the superpowers that I live inside of on a daily basis. So I was born in Queens, New York. Anyone from Queens? Nobody. Brooklyn. What's up? I may as well be from Brooklyn. They're the same, really. Anyone will tell you. Well, yeah, Brooklyn's way cooler. But I did end up living there for a decade. So I think I'm kind of whatever. So I was born in

Queens. My family had just immigrated from Russia and came here as a unit because my father had had a spiritual awakening in the woods of Russia and cured himself of tuberculosis and decided to become a healer shaman person and moved to America, which is a free land where he could expand and be free. And communist Russia, as many of you know, was not that in 1979. And so he turned to my mom and was like, hey, you know, how about we fuck and create a freedom child? And then we escape this godforsaken place and go start a new life in america and my mom was like okay and she took a few hours to decide but then she came to the conclusion that he was onto something and apparently they had sex which i had to hear about a lot because my dad was like a freudian analyst

in addition to being a shaman and so i had to hear about his sex life and orgasms way more than i would have enjoyed. Anyway, my dad was this kind of enlightened shaman, as you may. So it was like growing up with Eckhart Tolle in your kitchen, except Eckhart Tolle also drank vodka and spoke Russian and played the saxophone in his underwear. Anyone? Just me? Okay. So that's the guy who raised me. And my mom was this amazing wizard. She was like the matriarch of the family. She actually lived on planet earth, which my father did not. And when I was six years old, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died. She died six months later. I think that her death was the most, like it completely annihilated my life. And it took me a very long time to actually get

how painful losing my mom was because I'm a badass bitch. Anyone? I'm a strong, badass bitch. And what I did when my mom died was I put on a leather jacket and I told you all that I was fine. I'm fucking fine. And I was fine. And by fine, I mean I was super depressed. I was an artist. I was a poet and I took it upon myself from that moment to kind of just destroy my life systematically. I didn't know that then, but I was committed to hating myself, to hating God, to hating life, to hating everything. Anyone ever experienced that as a result? Yeah. It's just kind of like a fuck you, like you're going to take my fucking mom. I'm six. Okay. I'm not ready for that just yet. Not fair. Game over. And I thought I was doing like, I love how like

our minds work. We're like, I'll show you how I'll fuck up my whole life. I'm going to fuck it up so hard. Like as if the universe and God or whatever that is, cause I'm not religious is like sitting around being like, fuck, we lost one. You know, like I'm supposed to be like some art, like on the army of yes. So my mom died and again, it just made my life really depressing. But my dad was this awakened shaman. And so as soon as my mom died, I remember standing with him in the living room and turning to him and saying something like, she did this for us as a gift, like something super wise. And he was like, you are so wise. You are my daughter for a reason. Because my dad always said, you are a much higher teacher than me to have a father like me. It was like Star Wars

growing up in my house. And he was right. He was right. But it took a long fucking time. So I decided to, again, systematically destroy my life. I started by systematically destroying my life by getting assigned to Sony. Anyone? I'm a musician. So I did that. And sex, drugs, rock and roll. And the next thing I knew I was living that lifestyle. And, um, I became a DJ in the art scene in New York city and my life was going well, but I just want to point out that I was still very depressed and still very lost. And I love, love drugs and alcohol. And I thought again, like that my life was really sad because I grew up in poverty. And so I didn't have money. And I grew up with no mom, which was just too much for me to bear. And I felt like I had been given

the right to kind of, again, to just self-destruct. And so I got into heroin and cocaine. love anyone love those drugs big fan not a marijuana kind of girl like I just go for the kill you know like anything that brings me to like a near-death experience like I'm there for that and I felt like my mom was like really into health food I don't know if any of you can relate to this but my mom like ate alfalfa sprouts and like meditated and did yoga and she was like a Jacqueline aerobics instructor and she spoke six languages and she like made sure to like have all the, like the foods. And we, you know, she was like, whatever the equivalent of like doTERRA, she was like part of that organization in the eighties, you know? And so she died of pancreatic

cancer. And the way that I see it is, is like, I'm not going to fucking eat alfalfa sprouts. If you're going to come and kill me anyway, I'm going to do heroin because like the way I see it is like, if you're going to come and kill me at any minute, I don't want to live. I don't want to fully live. And so the universe and what I call God was like, that's not what we're doing here. I don't know if any of you have heard messages from whatever that is that's inside your heart or all around you, but it's knocking on your door and you know it. It's saying, maybe you shouldn't date that person. Or it's saying, maybe you shouldn't eat at 9 p.m. at night, like seven orders from DoorDash. Maybe you shouldn't fuck that guy. It's saying stuff like

that. It's saying, maybe you should make more money and actually figure out what the fuck you're doing on this planet. And you're like, if you're like me, you're like, go fuck yourself. I'm not doing what you tell me. I don't give a shit about your advice. My mom is dead. I'm poor. And I'm going to fucking stay miserable forever. You know why?

Because fuck you. You're the one who fucked this up. So I'm going to show you by destroying my life what a powerful force I am. And here's the truth. You are a powerful force. I am a powerful force because the minute that I actually turned it around, well, I'm a best-selling author. You know, I live life beyond my wildest dreams. Going back just a little bit though,

the universe was like, we're going to wake this bitch up because losing her mom just wasn't quite enough. She's just a self-pity little baby. So we're going to get her going. So that's when I had a near death experience at the age of 24. I had a seven pound tumor in my uterus and I was rushed to the hospital. My dad had saved this doctor's life and the doctor snuck me into, we were so poor. We didn't have like health insurance. Like we were living on the edge. Okay. But my dad was the shaman who like saved people's lives. So he knew an OBGYN and he was like, I sneak you into the back of the hospital. We get you fixed, you know? And he like snuck me in and carved out this tumor from my uterus, which he's like, anyone else would have given

new hysterectomy. You are so lucky your dad saved my life. He's like, the chances of you having kids after this, 5%. But I'm going to fucking try because your dad saved my life. So he carves this tumor out of my uterus. I come out. Him and my dad are sitting over me like two rabbis talking about the end of the world, which is like what old Jewish men do. And I was like, what's going on? He's like, oh yeah, you can have kids. Just go back to sleep. You're fine. I fixed you. Right. So then as I'm leaving the hospital, he's like, I just want to let you know that if you don't have a child within two years, like you'll never be able to have kids because this kind of tumor, it comes back. And I was 24 at the time. And he's like, this kind of tumor,

it comes back. And so like, I can't do anything at that point. I'm going to have to give you a hysterectomy because like I fucked up your uterus so hardcore getting this tumor out. There's no way that I'm going to be able to like fix it again. So just if you want a kid, have this kid within two years. Otherwise, it's not going to happen for you. Two years to the day, basically, I am sleeping with maybe the worst partner that you could possibly select as a paternal figure for a child. And of course, I get pregnant. And I come to this same OB-GYN and I was like, I think I'm pregnant. He's like, you're pregnant. Good news, because was that two year mark I was telling you about. And I'm like, holy fuck. Like I'm a junkie.

I'm on coke. I'm a DJ for a living. I'm poor as fuck. I'm like living my best life in the New York, like underground fucking chill out rock and roll scene. And this is not a good time for me to have a child. And I didn't have a choice. I was like, this is what's happening because I want to have children. And I knew somehow in the back of my mind, one day I'm going to have kids. So I had this baby. I cleaned up my act. And I just want to make a distinction for anyone who's sober in the rooms because I am sober today. I was not sober for the pregnancy of that child. I was dry-ish at best. I was not fully sober. But I did the best I could. And I had a healthy birth and a healthy baby. And she was born so perfect. I don't know if you guys know

about births, but they do like a little test. And she was like a 9.9. She was perfect. And then I was very proud of myself. And four months later, my daughter died of sudden infant death. But this is how the universe was like, we're not quite doing what we came here to do. You're going to have to pivot. And I was still very much a fuck you. So as soon as she died, I went straight to my heroin dealer and I got a lot of heroin and I did a lot of heroin and I continued to do heroin, but the universe was like, she's not listening. So then I swear to God, my house burnt down four months later, but it only burnt down halfway. So I lived in the half that hadn't burnt down doing heroin and cocaine every day. And then my best friend hung himself and took so much

Xanax or he tried to like Xanax himself to death like five times already, but this time he decided he would hang himself as well. So it worked this time. He was dead. And then my dad died of a heart attack. And that all happened within a year. And that was when I was 28 years old. I don't know how many of you study astrology, but that's Saturn's return. It's big, that Saturn. And just from a totally historical perspective, even if you don't believe in astrology, the planet Saturn, which exists, moves right back to where it was when you were born when you turned 28 and it lives there for two years. And so usually, and I work with private clients, usually between the ages of 28 and 30, some crazy shit will happen to you. It might be good shit, but it's a lot of shit

and some shit will happen. And for me, it was like baby died, dad died, house burned down, best friend hung himself. And I was like, fuck you. If it wasn't a fuck you before now, it was definitely a fuck you. And so I tried. I tried to hold on. Self-absorption to the lies, I tried to hold on, but I couldn't. After a year, I crawled into sobriety. I just crawled. I had nothing left. And even then, I didn't know what I was doing, but I just knew I couldn't do heroin anymore. I just couldn't live another day. I mean, I'm surprised I didn't die. To begin with, speedballing is not exactly the best thing you can do for your health. But as we know, many of us here, it doesn't matter. The universe will fucking kill you if it wants to kill you, right? My mom

killed her like that, killed my baby just like that. We don't even know. There was nothing wrong with her. She was perfectly healthy on her four month birthday. She was dead. Anyway, I returned to my father's work once I got sober. When I got sober, everything changed kind of immediately because there was this surrender that happened. It was like, I was like, I just am wrong. I'm a hundred percent wrong about everything. And I finally listened to that voice, the voice that had been knocking on my, this doesn't knock this microphone because it's like covered in a cushy pillow. Usually I knock on mics to make the sound of God knocking on my door. And I was like, fuck you. This is the first time I got on my knees and I said, what do you want? What do you want?

I'll do whatever you say. I'll do whatever, whatever you say. I don't care how weird it is. I don't care how lame it is. I give up. I surrender. And after four years, it takes a while people in case you're sitting here and being like, by the end of this event, I'm going to have all my shit figured out. Like you will have probably like a notebook filled with ideas. You'll have one or two aha moments, but you're going to have to do some work. You know, it took a lot of work for me to be the woman that I am sitting on this stage today. And it's going to take more work for me to be the woman that I'm going to be. And it's just every minute is an opportunity for me to face the light, take all my clothes off and be completely vulnerable with the divine

and make love to this life. And I get to do that today. And so after four years of praying, this voice came down and was like, you're a spiritual teacher. And I was like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, you've got to be kidding me. I'm like a brunette with bangs. I'm pretty sure a spiritual teacher is a dude over the age of 60 with a beard who sleeps with his followers. So I don't think you got the right girl, you know, and universe or God or whatever said to me, yeah, I'm not here to work out your branding. I'm just here to tell you your life's mission, you know? So I just followed like, as again, I was very surrendered and I pursued that And everything in my life changed. I met the man of my dreams. I have two very beautiful, healthy children today. I have a very thriving career. I get flown all over the world to speak. I also score my events with my own music. So everything, all my talents are being utilized by this divine power.

And I thank everyone. It's so funny. I meet mediums today and I'm just like, good luck, because the list of people they're going to have to contact is so fucking long. It's not like, oh, you have a dead baby. It's like, you have a dead baby. Oh, and a dead mom and a dead dad and a dead best friend. And like, wow, you've got a lot of dead people. you know, grandparents, all my grandparents died while I was growing up too. I love when people are like me and my grandma are hanging out. I'm like your grandma, my grandma, since I was a fucking baby, you know, anyone. So no, for me, the reason I'm mentioning this is that I believe that the loss that you've had, that whatever brought you to this event today or whatever grief you're going through, because it doesn't have to be a death to be grieved. There's so much terror in this world, so much pain, so much pain to go around. It could be your own diagnoses you've lived through. It could be your own financial hardships you've hit. It doesn't

matter. Universe gives us these shocks so that we can become superheroes, become the archetypical weaver of your own story. You came here with a purpose. I'm not special. Just because I happen to be like four feet above you on this stage right now means absolutely nothing. Just as easily that we could rotate, right? Like a Quaker church. Every single person in this room has a message, has a gift. And you know exactly how much of that gift you're giving to the world right now. I believe that if you're being given shocks, those shocks are here to awaken you to your life's purpose and to the silence and the willingness that it takes to actually become the full you. Make sense? All right. I'm not sure if I'm missing anything before I move into

the grief exercise. I don't think so. You got that I'm fabulous? I always skip that part. My husband's always in the back being like, she's awesome. She's skipping the part where she became this and that and got written up in Vogue. I'm like, all right, fine. I'll tell you. All right. So, you know, I say all of this tongue in cheek, but the truth is, is that like the work that I do connects me to these losses on a daily basis. So I want to start us off with a grief exercise. This is a grief meditation that I like to do about once a week or twice a week. but you can do it at, you know, however often you feel, because it's really like a 30 second meditation. And the reason it's a 30 second meditation is because mingling with your grief is quite painful. And I don't think you should be dipping into it for too extended a period of time to begin with. Although I do teach somatic practices, and I think Laura will be taking

us through some of those later today. And I think that somatic exercises are the absolute best way that you can move grief through your body and transform it into clarity and actions. Most of us have no idea how to move through loss. There's no roadmap to follow when you're trying to navigate grief. And I realized this when I lost my son three years ago. As a therapist who understood grief, a whole new level of pain opened up to me when I lost my 16-year-old son. And since then, I have been building resources that have allowed me to navigate through loss, not only in a healthy way,

but in a way that has transformed me for the better. We can move through the most terrible loss with grace. And that's why I have created the course, Good Grief, Healing from Loss with Love. You can find it on my website, drlauraberman.com, right there on the homepage, as well as free resources, letting you know how to support others who are going through loss. None of us has to do this alone.

So with grief, I just want you to close your eyes, take a deep breath in. So just visualize something that you're really, really sad about in terms of your life. I like to, in my own life today, think about my own daughters. One of them is five years old and the other is 10 months. I like to think of them as 95-year-old women dying on their deathbed. Or I think of myself on my own deathbed, leaving this planet, leaving everyone I love, leaving everything I know and my identity as my name. And touch, just touch stone with that pain. and if it's something else for you if you just recently lost someone you can just think of that

and as you're thinking about this i just want you to imagine a benevolent figure either jesus or buddha you can pick any deity that feels good to you holding you and wrapping their loving arms around you as you feel this grief. Taking a deep breath in. And release. And just allowing yourself to feel that grief. and at the same time being held by this benevolent power.

Slowly wiggling the fingers and toes, coming back. It's a super short exercise. I love this grief meditation because it just allows me to, I once heard a rabbi say, I let myself suffer the grief of humanity for 10 minutes a day. because if I don't, like at midnight, he would just do a 10 minute suffering, intentional suffering. He's like, because if I don't do those 10 minutes, it's going to come and bite me in the ass, like at 4 PM when I'm trying to like give a sermon or something, you

know? So I find that just exercising my grief, being connected to my grief and also being connected to like, yeah, so I touch stone with my own death, right? Or like, again, the death of my own children, even though I'm, God, please will not be here when that happens. I think I've had enough children dying and for one lifetime, I'm just good, good and done with that. So even that it's just so painful for anyone who's a mom in this room, like just thinking or a dad, like thinking of your own kid dying is so painful. And I feel like just touching, connecting to that humbles me and reminds me of my heart and connects me to other people. Okay. So Laura told you that I founded a breathwork system. So what does that mean?

I've taken ancient techniques and I've put them together and I've partnered them with my music. And I just want to warn everyone in this room, my breathwork is not a joke. I want you to be mindful of your neighbors. If you see anyone looking like they might fall over or faint, If anyone starts to shake or convulse, I just want you to like put a hand on them, you know, take care of each other. If you feel like you're going to die while doing my breath work, if you feel like, holy shit, I shouldn't have come to this event. If you feel, oh my God, I think I went a little too far with that one.

Oh, wow. Biet must be a cult leader. She's about to induct me where what's happening right now. I just want you to know I'm not a cult leader, not here to fuck with you in any way. This is a very, very loving space. And right on the other side of all those terrible fears that you might have while doing the guided by via breath work, you will feel amazing. Cool. Cool. Okay. And nobody's ever died at my events, but people have sometimes face planted into the floor or like fallen over or like people have gone literally unconscious for an extended period

of time and people are very concerned, but whenever they come back, they're like, oh my God, thank you. So I promise you it's all going to go super well. Okay. So let me teach you the breath work before we go into it because it is, and we're going to do the light version. The more intense version is standing or on the floor. So I'm not going to do that today. You're just going to do it seated and I'm going to do it with you. It's four breaths. The first three, they're always through the mouth. So it looks like this. Your hands are up and this again, just in case you fall over, but because you're seated, you're probably not going to fall anywhere, but here's your hands. And then you're doing three of those. Then on the fourth one, you're going to hold your

breath at the top, puff your belly out like you're pregnant, and then elongate the chin to look up at the ceiling above you. Then as you're holding your breath, you might rub your tummy and push the energy in that tummy up to the heart. And then when you hit, when you reach the heart, you're going to hit the heart right there in the heart center. Not too hard, not more than once or twice. And that's it. And as you hit the heart is when you exhale, right? So I'm going to show you the whole thing. Do not copy me because you might get really fucked up doing it. So it's like this. then two, and then there's three, right? And as you're doing that, you're really inhaling, you're really exhaling to getting as much air in you as possible. And on the fourth one,

you're going to hold the breath. So it's going to look like this. Hold the breath, belly out like you're pregnant, chin up, hold the breath, hold the breath, hold the breath, Hold the breath. And then you're going to rub the tummy and then hit the chest, exhale. And as you exhale, that's when you're going to feel the effects of the breath. Let me know if that all makes sense. And if you feel like you can follow along. Like three-ish, four, maybe. She's holding the breath for about four or five seconds, like once we're holding. I will guide you. So you don't need to count or think or anything. You just need to listen to me. I'll say, hit the chest and we'll all hit the chest together. I just also want to say my breath work is anti-breath. It is not

breath work. So for anyone who's like a big breath work instructor here, because I always love getting those lectures, breath work means breathing through your nose. We are actually doing something that is antithetical to breathing. We are touching and connecting with death. And I think everyone in this room can say that they've connected to death in some way or another. This breath work connects me to death so beautifully that I am no longer afraid of death because the ambrosia that I feel from doing this, I can only imagine what the ambrosia is from actual death. So this to me has given me a real access point to, to my own death. Okay. just to show you my fair size of cake getting ready

and everyone thinking of why you came here today i'll be the one what's that thing for you the one energy that you need so that you could really be in your life's purpose from this moment on more than ever before. And begin. Release. Even deeper.

Two. Release. Three. Release. Four. Hold at the top. Hold the breath. Belly out. Chin up. Pick the chest. Release.

As it rises up in my parade All right. And ask yourself these questions if you're not feeling it yet. Am I puffing my belly out as far as I can? Am I elongating my chin as far as I can? Am I breathing as deeply as I can? And if the answer is yes to all those questions,

you're going in the right direction. And if there's one more final step, Which is you need to really, really relax. Like jello. This isn't yoga. This isn't vinyasa. This is... Fuck all.

Just relax. You want that money? Relax. You want that sex? Do you? I want it. I want it all. I said that.

You know you want it. You know you do. Everyone wants everything. Round two. Making a prayer for you to have a completely new experience with breath work, with life,

with this moment like you've never had before. Arms out. Begin. Release. Two. Release. Three.

Release. Deepest yet, four. Belly out, chin up. Hit the chest, release. I will share this mask for you. Notice how you're feeling right now. Just to show you my face as it came Maybe I came here to actually change your life

Or maybe I just came here to get you really high before Anita spoke Who the fuck knows, but it's worth it I'll be the one you want The one you can't live without Remember yourself You'll finally see the truth Remember why you came here today As it shows your heart

Something is happening Something real And finally makes my heart This round heart Hands together Set an intention I want you to say to the universe Or whoever

That you're trying to communicate with today Please help me Please feel this breath through me, feel, speak through me, hear through me, be through me, next round, begin, release, even deeper two relax more three

release four hold at the top belly out chin up and hit the chest Remember yourself. Remember your soul. Get ready for the next round, remembering to relax more, to connect to what you've lost, and remember why you lost it, so you can become the full expression of you, the dance. Begin

Release Two Release Three Release Four, hold at the top Belly out, chin up Oh, all right

And hit the chest Raise your hand if you feel different Than you felt before we started A little bit If you're not feeling it It's just a matter of relaxation Your mind is a beast And it wants to fucking kill you

So if you are feeling it Just know You are at a battle with your mind And you just fucking won You just won Maybe it's one second Maybe it's two seconds But you became free

From that bitch That's killing you You're not good enough Maybe you should have done it differently One last round Hands together in prayer Begin Release, relax more

Inhale two Relax more like jello Release More, hold at the top Get the chest, release Oh, oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh, oh Closing the eyes.

We won't. Because the stars are free as ice. The stars are free as ice. It shows. Oh, we want to own the stars. Want to own the stars. We won't. Deep breath in, through the nose, and release.

Another deep breath in, and release. gently wiggling the fingers and toes returning to the beach welcome back for me i never come back the same so i'm excited to meet whoever came back to this room after doing my breath work. And we're going to open up for some questions. If you want to ask me about anything at all, I have no idea what's going to come out of my mouth. And that is the best part of being alive. I rarely repeat stuff. So I'm excited to, I'm excited to hear you. I'm excited to hear whoever talks when I speak. it's hopefully not me anyone i think you're supposed to come up to the mic too but raise

your hand and so was that you singing that was your music that was me and can we do you have like album like i can get no spotify apple okay youtube you name it well i just want to say thank you because you're amazing you're entertaining and it's my birthday and i was supposed to go get a massage with my sister and my mom today and then my friend stacy reached out to me and told me about this event and I lost my dad a few months ago. And so I thought this is like the better thing to do on my birthday. So, so far I'm very like surpassed my expectations. So thank you so much. And I really did feel different. Like I really did feel like lightheaded and different. And so thank you very, very much. So it's like, I couldn't think of a better way to

spend my birthday. Thank you. Happy birthday. I just want to say that was fucking awesome. I've done breath work before and that is, it does, I don't, I get nothing from it. That was amazing. So thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I just want to ask, I mean, I already knew how amazing you are and I was trying not to do it because I get, I mean, a lot of, I think what this form does is that it activates or changes your vagus nerve that for a lot of us, especially when we're struggling with grief, there's this feeling of overwhelm. And so, you know, in yoga, when you do, does anyone do yoga? You know, when you do the backwards thing and you feel it's kind of a similar, that's also stimulating your vagus nerve. So it really has physiologic effects,

which I think are so beautiful as well as spiritual and emotional ones. And I encourage everyone to just keep playing with it and to listen. You have a, on Spotify, she had, or probably on all platforms. You have a guided by Biette, I think is. Oh, you're talking about my meditation. Yeah. And also just for people who want to try it at home and yeah, what they can listen to and do. Yeah. I have courses online that you can do. I have new courses coming out soon. I have a book. I have free meditations on my website. There's also a, if you have Apple music, there's a 60 minute meditation by me on there. It's exclusive to Apple. And then there's also All My Music, which is on all the platforms as well.

And I'm just wondering if someone were to practice, we just did a few minutes here, but if we want to practice, if people want to practice this at home, because I do think this is like a really good example of a somatic experiencing you can do that'll move stuff. So what would you recommend? What's a good kind of beginner routine that they can try playing with this on ongoing. Yeah. I would just make sure you're somewhere safe so that you can't fall and hurt yourself because people have done that. And it's just really, you just want to make sure you're safe. And I would start with like three rounds. I also like to sometimes when I'm like in the middle of a busy day or something, hold onto a wall and just do one round here and

there just to kind of remind myself who I am, what I'm doing here. And we have, I think, I'm not sure what time it is, but I think we have a few minutes left. Does anyone else have any questions? Yes. All right. Come up. I'll stop talking because I was going to prompt you for some other stuff, but I'd rather answer there. I love you. Hi, Viet. That was really amazing. And when I decided to join this group, I just decided, thinking about it for four days, and then just signed up last night. My daughter here, I lost my son, her twin brother in January. So of fentanyl poisoning. And I was looking at all the people that were going to be here and I just was Googling them and looking at them. And when I came to yours, I was very intrigued. So I checked

out your Spotify, checked out so many things. That's why when I saw you, I'm like, oh my God, there you are. I was like, really? Like, oh, but got your book on Kindle. And normally I'm the kind of person that just runs through a book. Like I go stay up all night and just read it. And you said like you know better if you like don't do that with this book like stop after each chapter or whatever and like process so like I'm stopping at the Forrest Gump and I was out to lunch with my daughter and my older son yesterday and I was telling them like about you and I was like I was excited to see you today and looking at Forrest Gump in a whole new light and if you could just give me some you know I've seen the movie I'm going to revisit it that's why I stopped with

the book but if you could i know you you know you're saying that forrest gump is like the soul that we all want to get in touch with our soul if you just want to shed some light on that so like cliff note like what am i going to be looking for when i watch forrest gump again yeah it's not it's so great and i love you know it's not just forrest gump like you can do i do it like recently i was watching annie with my little girl i have a five-year-old and i was just thinking Annie is the soul. The archetypal story of the soul, Annie's not a person. The soul is always orphaned. Harry Potter is the soul. There's a lot of telltale signs that you're looking at the soul. They don't ever deviate from perfection. Horace Gump is always a good guy.

He's never not a good guy. Annie is always optimistic, always kind. Anyone in this room always optimistic and kind? Not me. Nobody. But your soul is, right? So when I look at my life today, do I meditate for 30 minutes every day? Yes, I do. Do I do breath work every day? Yes, I do. Do I pursue my life's work every day? Yes, I do. And so because I do those things, I stand a greater chance of having my soul run my life rather than me. And if I run my life, i'm gonna run it into like a heroin addiction you know which we've already seen right i'm gonna run it into many many different problems you know me and your son are alike the only difference is that has ended differently but i did i did fentanyl i crawled across the floor

and puked and i was like i'm gonna die who knows why the universe is like really who knows maybe just so that you and I could be in this room together right now. You're hilarious. And I appreciate you so much because laughter is such good medicine. But my quick question is just about the exercise because I loved that so much. And you talked about standing up and also laying on the floor. Do you do it the exact same way? And when you're standing, do you need to be up against the wall because you get very lightheaded? Yeah. Do you have a video or is it just exactly the same way. Yeah. You can find videos of me and Russell Brand doing it online. You can find my course, which has full length. Like you really want to, you really want to do it with me for a

while before you start doing it on your own. Cause there's so many dangers to it. So just like study, study, study, and then you'll get the hang of it. You'll figure out what it is. No laying down. Just it's on your knees is the exercise. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So such an honor to guide you guys today. And, you know, just so you know, awakening is, it's a free process on this planet, but the trick is that you can't actually do it unless you follow the path of someone who's done it before you. And whether that means pursuing whatever area of your life where you're like, I just, I think I'm missing one thing. If I could just get that one piece in place. so thank you for coming here today and for listening to the people who are here today because

who knows if we're going to give you that little that little shift so that you can be free and really have the experience of bliss in this life and yeah you'll still be flawed and yeah you'll still drop dead one day but the good news is is that today as opposed to when i was a kid and my mom was a health food addict and i was like i'm not gonna do that i'm not gonna be healthy Today, I live a radiant life filled with so much joy that I cry about how lucky and blessed I am every day. It hurts to be me today because it's so good. So that's all as a result of this work. So thank you for coming and doing it with me today. thank you so much biette that was amazing and check out our book don't just sit there got two

copies here you're gonna it's like the price is right you're gonna have to like run up holding your boobs to get them. Thank you, Biette. I went to the doctor, said I'm crazy for your love. Wrote me a prescription, but there's no cure for crime.