The Bossticks - How To Learn To Breathe Correctly Again & Drastically Improve Every Aspect Of Life With Breathwork Expert Josh Trent

Episode Date: December 23, 2021

#420: On today's episode we are joined by Josh Trent. Josh Trent is the Founder of Wellness Force Media, host of the Wellness Force Podcast and the creator of the BREATHE: Breath & Wellness Program. Josh has spent the past 18 years as a trainer, researcher, and facilitator discovering the physical and emotional intelligence for humans to thrive in our modern world. On today's episode Josh joins us to discuss how by learning to breathe correctly again, we can drastically improve every aspect of our life.  To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential  The Hot Mess Ice Roller is here to help you contour, tighten, and de-puff your facial skin and It's paired alongside the Ice Queen Facial Oil which is packed with anti-oxidants that penetrates quickly to help hydrate, firm, and reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, leaving skin soft and supple. To check them out visit www.shopskinnyconfidential.com now.  This episode is brought to you by Pill Club Life is stressful enough, access to healthcare shouldn't be! Luckily, getting birth control is one less thing you have to worry about. With The Pill Club, you'll never have to make a trip to the doctor or wait in line at the pharmacy ever again. Right now when you go the www.thepillclub.com/skinny The Pill Club is offering a $10 donation to Bedsider.org for every listener who becomes a patient. Your donation will help low-income individuals get access to birth control through bedsider.org This episode is brought to you by House Of Wise.  House of Wise launched last year in the pandemic by a single mom looking to help her friends drink less, sleep better, have better sex and make the most out of their workouts while juggling the demands of being a woman.  House of Wise is helping women take control of their sleep, sex, stress and strength through originally formulated and effective CBD products. Go to www.houseofwise.co and use promo code SKINNY to get 20% off your first SLEEP, SEX, or STRENGTH product.  Produced by Dear Media 

The following podcast is a dear media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you alone for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her.

The core difference between meditation and breath work is meditation is something that you train yourself to be still with over time. but breath is something that you actually have to cultivate. You have to cultivate your breath. So you have to consciously and unconsciously be in connection with breath. Think about this. Breath, it's the only voluntary and involuntary lever that we can pull for the autonomic nervous system. Autonomic meaning automatic, right? Like you don't digest your food.

You don't beat your own heart. You don't flow your own blood. Like your body does that. It's automatic. So breath is the only lever we can pull that can bring us back to this automatic. really the rest and digest part of the autonomic nervous system. Welcome back to the skinny confidential him and her show. That clip was from our guest of the show today, Josh Trent.

And on this episode, we are breathing. We're taking deep breaths. It's been a long year and Josh is here to coach us through it. For those of you that are new to the show, my name is Michael Bostic. And across from me, my wife, giving me dagger eyes because she wants to jump in and speak. Lauren Everett's Bostick. Yeah, whenever I want to speak, I just shoot like a very specific superpower out of my pupil. to Michael and it usually works. I usually disregard it, but this one was extra strong. Well,

that's because I'm really passionate about breathwork. It's really transformed my life. That in meditation, I use them as tools in my wellness toolbox all the time. And so it's important, I think, to share our own experience with breathwork before we go into this episode because this episode is so powerful and shows the importance of breath. And if I can give a little tip to the audience about how to implement 10 minutes into their day, I feel like that's valuable. This was one of the more eye-opening podcasts for me because of how much we take our breath for granted. And you're going to hear that in this episode. I think it's something that we just don't think about it. We're in Aitly, obviously, all breathing as human beings. And I don't think we

realize how many things are breath and the type of breathing we do affects. You know, everything from sleep to, you know, stress, to anxiety, to mindset and all these things that we can actually control through the power of breath. We, you know, we haven't. touched on breathwork a lot on the show. We had Wim Hof on the show one time, but since then haven't done a lot. So having Josh on and really diving into this subject, I think many are going to enjoy it. Before we get into it, I want to tell you how I breathe and then maybe Michael can tell you his routine. I do breathwork in two different ways. The first way is I turn on the juve and I stand in front it and I do a guided breathing 10 minute, super quick and easy. And I get the juve light. I usually

have naked and I do super deep breaths and breathe out and then hold and it works really well and then I do a freezing cold shower. The other way that I do it is just sometimes Michael and I will do it in bed. We'll lay there. We'll put an app on and for 10 minutes we'll breathe together. Both of those ways are totally transformative and it really, really changes the entire day. Yeah. And the biggest thing that I learned on this show is that we forget to breathe and how to breathe over time. And one of the examples Josh uses in this episode is how children breathe when they're first born and as they're in their adolescence and over time, they actually learn to breathe the wrong way from their parents, right? We all become these mouth breathers when really we're designed

to breathe through the nose and out through the mouth. And we're going to get into it on this show about how the breathing out of the mouth and nose really affects us. But it was an eye-opening conversation for sure. I learned that I may need to be taping my mouth at night, which we'll get into. You learned you might be a little bit of a mouth breather. I might be a mouth breather and I just ordered some mouth tape. The kind that has a little slit, like a little glory hole. in it. I'll think that's what a glory hole is, Lauren, but... It's a little hole that can fit stuff in it. Maybe using that term wrong. But anyways, I won't keep you guys too much longer on this intro. Who is Josh? Josh Trent is the founder of Wellness

Force Media and host of a top-ranked podcast called Wellness Force Radio. Josh has spent the past 18 years as a researcher, trainer, and facilitator discovering the physical and emotional intelligence for humans to thrive in our modern world. Obviously, a breathwork expert. He has a few courses online that Lauren and I are taking now. With that, Josh, welcome with the skinny confidential him and her show. This is the skinny confidential, him and her. Can you get me on the hair check? I don't have hair like Michael.

Your hair's pretty good. Is it solid? Okay. What do you mean? Your hair's great. Because you pull it back. Well, I pull it back, but he's got it back. He's been doing the same thing since like 1991.

He needs to evolve it. If it ain't broke, don't fix. Yeah, I just keep it pretty routine. Okay. All right. So let's place our knees at or below our hips. Go ahead and cross your legs, actually, on this one. Place your hands on your hips.

And close your eyes, I want you to imagine that there's a balloon behind your belly button. And every single time you breathe in through your nose, I want you to fill that balloon. And when you let it go through your mouth, I want you to empty the balloon without any cares, without any stress, without any worry and just total peace. So breathe in through your nose, fill the balloon. Exhale, no stress. We're just going to do that six times together. Inhale through your nose. Fill the balloon.

Exhale through your mouth. inhale nose scan your body for any tension breathe into that tension through your nose two more last one pull anything in that's not love and peace and let go of love and peace be that love and peace with an audible sound just let your eyes flutter open like shades and just be here and just return to your normal breathing place your feet flat on the ground place your hands on your stomach and take one more deep breath into your nose with gratitude exhale and just arrive wherever you are and so these circular breaths they just bring us back to the present moment which is something that has talked about but you actually have to do it and that's what makes the difference

every time we get in a fight I'm going to make you do that work and then you can talk to me or maybe you need to do the work both of us can do it together I've done that Why are people not breathing? What the hell is going on? We learn it from our parents. Everything in life is parentally modeled, right? Wow. Our parents fight, they learn it from their parents. Great philosopher Alan Watts says it's all wretch and no vomit.

Everyone is teaching their kids to raise their kids to raise their kids in the same way. So we all forget that we have a nose, essentially. We don't breathe through our nose. And when we watch our parents fight, we model them, especially, Like 0 through 7, our brains are really malleable. So we're learning everything from our mom and dad. So when they fight, they're not breathing. They're not doing that check in like you told Michael.

They're just reacting. So if we can like consciously use our breath, and you can teach this to kids too. I mean, I bought a book for my son that says, breathe through your belly. It's got all these animals on it and stuff. So at any age, at any age, you can learn this. But the reason why we don't breathe is because we learn it from our brain. parents, we also learn to cope. It's a coping mechanism. When we shut off our nose, we don't have to feel our stress. When we don't breathe through our nose, we disconnect ourselves from our body. We essentially

leave ourselves, which may seem safe, but it's actually the opposite of safety because we abandon ourselves and we don't breathe through our nose. Is it bad to fight in front of your kids? What do you think? No, because I think it's honest if you do it in a loving way. I think you can fight in a loving way. It's so silly for us to be like, oh, we're never going to fight. It's impossible because you really get to know people through conflict. Conflict is how I get to know someone, especially my partner. Like we fight, but then to the degree we come back around and even better if we're breathing, we have this piece in the program called relationship conflict breathing,

which might be perfect for any relationship, especially you mentioned it to Michael. So when we breathe and check in and ask permission, like if I get into. fight with my partner and I'm like, hey, can I take three breaths? Is that okay if I take three breaths? And then she says yes. And then there's less of an argument. There's not as much fighting. We should literally do that. My dad and my stepmom have a key. It's a fake key that they give each other when they're out and they're drinking and it's time to go home. They're not like partiers. But like if they're at a restaurant and let's say they get in a fight and they've had like a couple margaritas, they'll give each other the key. And that means like stop fighting. It's time to

home. I feel like you'd carry one of those big janitor racks with all the keys and like I'd have to decipher about which key was meant what. So I'm more down with the breath work. Yeah, we can do breath. That's like, that's a great tip. Yeah. What are some benefits of us getting into our breath, especially now with the state of the world? Yeah, it's cool. You said getting into our breath. Most of us have so much tension in our jaw and our neck and our shoulders that we really don't ever get into it. And we really don't use our belly. Right. Like most of us don't breathe through our belly because we're just used to tensioning our neck and rolling forward. Yeah. When you were telling me to breathe, I was thinking I was like, I had to like concentrate to breathe into my belly.

Yeah, because we just, if we don't train it, just like any muscle, right? Like I'm sure you guys have had a lot of fitness influencers and people that that are healthy on the show. So the one thing, my background is I was a trainer for 10 years. So I had like 10,000 hours of clients, lots of training experience. And we never got top breath. they never in NASM or all these fitness certifications they never taught people the breath and so it was just like such a profound moment for me like five, six years ago when I found the breath because I was like, this is exactly what all my clients and myself and everybody is missing because we're doing the workouts and we're like being healthy but we're not actually connected to ourselves. We're just like going to the gym and kind of taking a box. But when you breathe, you actually have to be present.

Like this is why in a lot of breath work like people can have catharsis. People can have emotional moments because for the first time, maybe they're even feeling their stress. But when I feel my stress with my partner, I can fight clean. I can fight loving, right? Because I'm connected to my breathing because I'm here. I'm with me. I'm not leaving my body. Is breath work something that like you can do for 10 minutes a day and like you're good and you're going to learn how to breathe?

Or is it something you have to be conscious of throughout the day? Is it like a workout where you can just get it in and move on? How does that work? It's a great question. I think the best way to do it is to start your day with it. Like I do it laying down in bed. I'll lay in bed and I'll do six circular breaths just like we did in the beginning of this podcast. And then that will clear out any kind of remnants or garbage. Any kind of like monkey mind thoughts that really don't serve me. And then when I get out of bed, I have a practice where I sit in front of the juve light naked. I breathe. I meditate. I set my intentions. But I do that for about seven minutes, seven to ten minutes. And that's really the best way to start. day because most people that can't meditate, they can really, really benefit from breathing. Because breathing does a lot of physiological things. Like you can sit and you can be there, but you might just be meditating and you might not be getting any benefits unless you're actually grounded in yourself.

And breath does that for you. So like three minutes in bed, seven minutes to start your day. And then yeah, if you want to go deeper, like absolutely, absolutely. You can go 21 minutes, 30 minutes. But you get all the benefits in like three minutes to start before you get out of bed. and then maybe seven to ten minutes before you meditate. It's so funny. Our juve right now is in storage because we just,

we talked about we just moved, so I got to get it out here. Yeah, we're both ex-cali. Yeah, big time. We both stand naked in front of the juve. So you're a fan of butthole sunning. I love signing my bow. I haven't done that in a while.

I do the naked juve though. But if you bend over in front of the juve and you sun your butthole for one minute, it gives you energy. This is true. That's a great clip right there. This is true. It's juve. That's what we're titling this episode,

Butthole energy. But what I was saying is that's the, I have trouble with meditation, but with the juve and doing breathwork, I was doing that like Wimhoff, like that one where it's like the, it's like three rounds. Sure, sure. And that, like, I was thinking about back to that time. Like, that was a period of time where like never felt better, right? Because I actually sat down, did the breath work, but I did it with the juve. I need to get that thing back. Yeah, the juve is. Because I struggle like sitting down to meditate. But that, like, when I had the activity of going and breathing, it was super helpful. And I love how you do that because it's passive multitasking. You're getting the breath work. And the juve. I'm all about combining things. Yeah. As you know, for the parents, we're all parents, people that are listening, if you want to be parents one day, you will find that multitasking becomes your friend. But that's what you're doing.

What I like is called passive multitasking because you're not focused on two different things. You're focused on your breath, but you're passively getting the juve, right? Exactly. So you're like, it's like people get mad when you say multitasking because it's like, they say you can't multitask your brain can't do that. but you can passively multitask. Yeah. What is the difference?

And I get really confused here and you're the perfect person to break this down. Between meditation and breath. You spoke a little bit, a little bit earlier, but I really want you to go into it. So meditation, the core difference between meditation and breath work is meditation is something that you train yourself to be still with over time, but breath is something that you actually have to cultivate. You have to cultivate your breath. So you have to consciously and unconsciously be in connection with breath.

Think about this. Breath, it's the only voluntary and involuntary lever that we can pull for the autonomic nervous system. Autonomic meaning automatic, right? Like you don't digest your food. You don't beat your own heart. You don't flow your own blood. Like your body does that. It's automatic.

So breath is the only lever we can pull that can bring us back to this automatic, really the rest and digest part of the autonomic nervous system. And that is the parasympathetic. So the core difference between meditation and breathing is meditation, anybody can meditate. Now, there's quality of meditation. But with breathwork, like you cultivate this skill over time and it gives you an even more powerful meditation. So think of it like breath could be a precursor to having an even better, more rich, quality, meditative time.

But the key difference is that one of them is active and one of them is not active at all. When you're meditating, the whole point is to let go. When you're breathing, the whole point is to pull that lever for yourself. So if you have a choice in the morning to do breathwork or meditation, you're always going towards breathwork. Well, I would do them both. So what would you do? But if somebody said, we only have three minutes, I would say 100% because of how spinning our minds are, because of really how accosted we are by fear, especially right now in the world, the best thing you could ever do is breathe consciously for three minutes. And specifically a box style breath.

And we could talk about that too. There's circular breathing. There's box breathing. I want to get into this with you because I think like starting layman's terms, people that are just like what is basics of breath work? Because I know there's all sorts of different types of breathwork, you know, like talk about Wim Hof, talk about box breathing, you're going to have a million others. But if you were just like, hey, someone who's never actually put in the time to do breathwork, where do they start and how do they like even think about it? I don't have a

lot of good things going for me. Maybe literally one to two things. And one of those things is I got a good head of hair and I pride myself on it. That is true. Your head of hair is impeccable. Pick, luscious, good hair. It's honestly, I get more questions about the hair than anything. Great hairline. You gave it to Zaza too. Thank you so much for that contribution. Thank God. I got one thing going for me. And that's why today I want to talk about K-18.

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better hair for you. I have seen him do this hair mask. It's kind of funny, but they sent it to us to try and he, like, loves it. He thinks that his hair can get even more luscious than it already is. So he's doing his hair mask. He sits in the shower and just sits there and meditates with this hair mask. gone. You remind me of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. The best part of K-18 is it works on all textures, all hair types. It's good for everybody as long as you want healthy, luscious, long,

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that happen with the subconscious mind in the morning. When we wake up, our brain has literally been washed, right? And I forget the chemical, but you can talk to Dr. Kirk Parsley. He's really good. He's a sleep scientist with Navy Special Warfare. Our brains washed. So when we wake up in the morning, we're fresh. And when we're fresh, like we can actually start to really truly visualize, use the law of attraction, if you like that term. I don't know if you guys like that term. But when we do that, all we have to do is inhale through our nose, exhale through our mouth with no pause. It's called a circle breath. The box breathing is really powerful too, but I find that if people haven't meditated or if people haven't done any kind of breathwork, box can be a little confusing.

Box meaning you inhale for four seconds, you hold for four seconds, you exhale for four seconds, and then you hold for four seconds. I mean, you're literally drawing a box. Circular is really cool, though, because we already did it. And everybody breathes circular anyways most of the time. So when we're breathing like three minutes in the morning, first thing, your brain's been washed, you've woken up, you're actually starting your day. It's the most potent time for you to breathe. And breathing like a circle is the best place to start. So if somebody wants to begin, learn to breathe properly like a circle.

That just means inhale, exhale, no pause. And visualize a circle, visualize that balloon behind your belly button that we were doing. And that's a beautiful skill set. Can you show us with your own breath so I can hear it, the difference between circle and box? Sure. So here's a circle. And I'll just draw it with my finger. Right.

So as I'm breathing with a circle, inhale, exhale, inhale through the nose. And you notice that I put my hand in my belly because I was breathing out instead of up. Okay. And that's one thing we want to really focus on too is like when you breathe, don't breathe up, breathe out. I learned this from Dr. Belisa Vranich. She wrote breathing for warriors. We are all in this life because of stress and because of that model from our parents. We become vertical breathers.

We breathe like this instead of breathing like this. If you look at any animal in Africa or just go out here in Austin, any animal that is running or is exercising, they breathe like a bellow. They breathe sideways. They breathe horizontally. They don't breathe vertically. But we breathe vertically because we get stressed and we're trying to like hold on to our stress. We're essentially like short breaths. Yeah, we're we're not too removed from like cave men and cave women, but we're in this modern world with all this technology and we just we just really forget to connect with that cave part of ourself, that Neanderthal part of ourselves. So doing that circular breathing is how we've been breathing for 250,000 years since our species came on

line. And so really honestly, breathing like a circle is a beautiful place to start. And then from there, then learn how to breathe like a box. So how do you breathe like a box? So breathe like a box, we can do it together. The reason I put my hands here is so people can do it with us and it really cues us to breathe horizontally. So imagine this right now, just let your shoulders fall and imagine that there is like an animal or an elephant like pushing down in your trap. So let your shoulders sink to the ground. Pull your neck back, almost like give yourself a double chin. because you want to have your spine, your head and your spine stacked on your waist. And when you breathe right now, make sure you're visualizing a box.

So we're going to inhale through our nose for four seconds. Hold. Exhale through your mouth for four seconds. Pull your abdomen towards your spine. Hold for four seconds. Inhale through your nose for four seconds. Hold. See if you can get a little more air in your belly.

Like suck in through your nose. Fill your belly. Exhale with an audible sound for four seconds. Hold for four seconds. And you can just return to your normal breathing. The box breath is powerful because it grounds you. The circular breath is powerful because it wakes you up or it pulls energy up to your crown chakra. And so the key difference is like one of them grounds you.

One of them makes you expansive. I like them both. But I think really the box breathing is the one that people should master. I swear to God in my life after just doing that little bit of breath. I feel serotonin rush through my system. You probably do. That's wild. So if you're waking up in the morning, you want to do the circle.

But say like you're trying to wind down at night, you want to do the box. You don't want to do the circle at night. Well, if you've had a day where you've been super heady and maybe you've had a lot of caffeine, that's another health hack, by the way. Do not have caffeine past 12. If you have a certain genotype, you can test for your genotype. Definitely do that. You can do it through 23 and me or strategy.

If you have sensitivity to caffeine, if you know you're a person that's kind of edgy at nights, you constantly feel that. Stop having coffee. But if you do find yourself caught in a caffeine cycle, do the box breathing. Do five to six rounds of box breathing. And then you can also do what's called warrior. breathing. Warrior breathing is just a quick inhale and exhale through the mouth. It super oxygenates your system. It fills your body with as much oxygen as possible. And then when you get to a place

where you're doing your breath holds, like maybe do 20 to 30 warrior breaths where it looks like this. So 20 to 30 times just like that. You saw I was breathing through my belly. My shoulder is not moving, right? So 20 to 30 times of your warrior breath, then do four to five cycles of that box breath that we did together. You are good because after that your body is very oxygenated. you'll have kind of a high feeling because you're experiencing like super oxygenation. And then this is the big training. If you want to get rid of your stress and this is what I tell all my students, make sure that you prime yourself with the warrior breath,

then do a circle or a box and then hold your breath. So on the exhale, go like this. So after you've done 20 to 30 breaths, you've done your circle or your box, hold for 30 to 60 seconds and see how much stress you have. Because the same way that we hold our breath when we've super oxygenated, it's the same way that we don't trust ourselves to be safe when everything's actually safe. So by doing these breath hold retentions after the box, after the circle, we can train ourselves to be calm in any situation, right? You might think this is crazy, but I have heard, actually maybe you won't think it's crazy.

I have heard through a lot of wellness experts that breathwork is actually helping people recover from COVID. Interesting. Because people are having. Like after they've had it. lung issues from COVID. And so to be able to work out your lungs after you have COVID is really good for you. Yeah, it's beautiful. I haven't read any research on that. And it's not medical advice, but I'm just going to say this. We have these intercostal muscles. We have our TVA, the transverse abdominis. Like when we train those muscles, specifically on the inhale and exhale, we're actually growing stronger. We've become a more strong breathing

apparatus. And so it makes sense. If you train your body physically, you're stronger in life. You can hold more things, you can lift more things. If you train your breathing muscles, then hell, yes, I would think absolutely. But also, you know, there's things to take in mind like sinus health, respiratory tract health, those things need to be put in there as well. And we have some modules in the program about that because I had chronic, I mean, you guys, I couldn't breathe for like 20 years. I was going to ask you like, one, you have a very calm demeanor. I wonder if that's, I probably could use a little bit of that from breathwork. But how did you discover all of this? I thought a lot of anxiety and depression for quite some time. My mom had manic bipolar. My dad left home when I was about

two months old. So I never really had that like headquarters of safety, which is now like, and I love my parents. Like, look, forgiveness is a gift that I give to me. So like I don't hold it against them because they were literally just doing the best they could. And that's real shit. So I want everybody to know that. So when I talk about my mom and dad, I'm respecting them at the same time. Now, they didn't have the tools to give me. So then I didn't have the tools to give to myself. So without those tools, I ended up ballooning to like 280 pounds. I was really big. And I was doing a lot of drugs and I was in a bad place. And so by about 21, I was like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do in this world, but I know it's not this. And I was like drinking at a party. You remember a beer pong or you'd play beer pong?

And I was drinking. I looked down. I had this belly hanging over. And I was like so sad, so depressed in my body and how I felt that I thought, I don't know if I want to be here anymore. Like not suicidal, but just like, this isn't life. And it was the first time I had ever had a connection with some higher power, some form of God. And I don't mean a bearded dude in the sky. I mean like the intelligence that runs and cares for all things. And I slammed the party cup down and I just like ran home drunk. Ran home drunk for three miles by San Diego State came into my place, typed in the computer, like how do I be healthy? And the next 18 months was like losing 100 pounds, gaining 60 pounds. and then becoming really like so frustrated with my lack of intelligence that I just sold everything

I owned and I moved to Hawaii. Wow. And in Hawaii, I found the ocean. I found the feminine energy of the ocean and I found fitness. And I was like, wow, you can you can be healthy and help other people do the same and get paid. That sounds pretty cool. And that lit me up, you know, but it wasn't until I left the fitness industry, went back to corporate America, committed spiritual suicide, that I really hit the bottom of the well.

I'll never forget this. I was in Carlsbad overlooking the golf course at the Omni. And I was just crying. I had broken up with a woman I thought I was going to be with. This is 2014. I had gotten fired from a corporate job because I wanted safety. I didn't believe in myself yet. I didn't think I could run wellness force and be a podcast host.

And I didn't really give myself the love that I didn't know how to give myself. And so I just was crying. I'm on my knees. And I just like, God, I don't know what you want me to do, but I'm not going back. I'm not going to work for someone else. I'm not going, I'm never going back. So if you want me to go back, just take me out. I don't want to live.

I don't want to be here anymore. And that was the moment where like things shifted. A couple months later, I did a breathwork session with Mark Devine from Unbeatable Mind. The Navy SEAL, the Navy SEAL commander Mark Devine. And that just cracked my heart wide open. And then from that place, I just became fully vested in physical and emotional intelligence. And that was like everything that I ever wanted, but I didn't know how to ask. access it. And so I've spent all the time since then interviewing all these people on my show so that I can

really gather that information, but most importantly, like, apply it and do it. What did that look like when you had your first experience with the Navy SEALs course with breath? Like, was it an epiphany right away or was it slow? Did you feel better right away? What were the benefits that you saw immediately? Well, I was laying on my back and crying. Yeah. I was like, I didn't know what catharsis was at the time. And we can dive into this because like there's, There's meditative breathing, which is phase two. There's the acute breathing, which is like phase one where it's like relationship we're going to fight. And then there's catharsis breathing.

So the three phases of breath work, I just jumped right into number two. I didn't even do the first one at all. And when I found the breath, it actually found me because I had had a long string of failures with women, with my own health, and really just with loving myself. and that's what started to come out when I was with Mark Devine in the Unbeautil Mine Retreat. And I look around and there's all these huge Navy SEAL guys. There's all these like special operations people. And they're crying too. And I'm like, huh, there's something to this breathwork.

There's got to be something here. There's got to be something here. And then that sparked me to journey to Thailand. And I spent 30 days in Thailand doing some pretty intensive breathwork with Soma, with Niroj. And then I learned from Gwen Payne, Breath is Prayer in Sedona. and then I also took some training in some sessions with Anahata Ananda in Sedona. And a lot of breathwork with Christian Minson in Costa Rica. So like, you know, saying it out loud, I've really pinpoint.

I've traveled the globe here. I've put in the work. I've traveled the globe like learning from the masters, Dan Brulay and Breath is Mastery at the treehouse, the Bel Air Treehouse in L.A. And just really piecing together like, what are all these esoteric arts actually going to do to help the average person? because it's one thing to go to a yoga studio and like wear the jewels and have the cape and do all these things. But for the everyday person, like we just need the fundamentals. And then from the fundamentals,

then we can get into the catharsis and then you can really have some pretty profound healing. I have such a good tip for drinking more water. You have to try the glass hydro jug. This is absolutely amazing and it's totally different than any water bottle that you've ever tried. I like the pink one. That's no surprise. First of all, it keeps my water freezing cold. It's huge, so I get all my water in. I just fill it up in the morning. I'll stuff mint in there, maybe some chlorophyll, I'll slice some cucumbers if I have time, ginger, sex up your water, lots of ice, and then you have this beautiful glass jug that you can just drink out of every single day. It has a silicone sleeve. So what I was finding annoying about a lot of water bottles is that they would slip

out of my hand. The one that I like has this sleeve and what it does is it adds insulation and protection. It's honestly picture perfect. It's so cute on Instagram. But the best part about it and why it's so different is that it has this lid. And there's no other lids like this lid. It's like almost even hard to explain. It includes this flip cap and it's like a sip spout. So I get to sip from the straw or remove the straw and pour it like normal. You kind of almost have to see it in person. I would definitely check out their website so you can see a visual. But this whole water bottle is like every water bottle you've ever had on steroids. And the craziest part is if I put it by my bed, I wake up with freezing cold water. You should know it holds half a gallon of water. It's a leak-proof

seal. So there's no water spilling in the bed. That was a huge problem for me. And it also has a wide mouth opening. So you can add your fruit, your ice, whatever. Of course, we have a discount code for you. You can go get your hydro drug at the hydrojug.com. Use discount code skinny to get 10% off your order today. We have all kinds of styles. I like the pink, like I said. Hydro drugs are game changers for anyone on the go. You are going to use code skinny at the hydrojug.com to get 10% off and start hydrating today. Cheers. If you could just like give us a Wikipedia list of benefits of breathing daily. Yes. Meaning like more energy, better sleep, whatever. The first and most powerful benefit is you can actually take physical and emotional stock of who and where you are.

In other words, if you breathe naked in front of a mirror, there's nowhere to hide. You know how you haven't been honoring yourself. You know if you're stressed. You know if there's changes you need to make. Breath is the ultimate equalizer when it comes to taking an emotional inventory. Like something that's written on my arm is, I can respirate, I can chegeere. And what that means in Italian is, if I can breathe, I can choose. I can choose to be loving.

I can choose to show up and be calm. I can choose to do the right thing, even if I have my ego telling me not to. So when you breathe properly on the daily, yes, I'll totally dig into the physiological benefits. But from an emotional intelligence standpoint, when you truly learn how to breathe, you start having more honesty with yourself. You're more honest with who you are. You're more honest about your physicality or a relationship change. Or all of a sudden, after three minutes of breath, you might be so calm that your body tells

you, hey, you weren't really nice to your kids yesterday, or you weren't really nice at work yesterday, or you start to have greater awareness of self. And that might be esoteric to some people. They're like, what are you talking about, dude, greater awareness of self? Truly, you get to take an inventory of who you are, of how you're being in the world. And so that's the greatest gift of breath. Now, physiologically, it increases nitric oxide when you do those breath hold retentions. Nitric oxide is really, really powerful for anti-aging. And it also cuts down when you learn how to properly breathe, your oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is like when you cut an apple in half and the apple gets brown. Same thing happens to us. That's what makes us age faster. So when we master breathing,

we start breathing more efficiently. We have less oxidative stress. So we literally have more longevity. What I've realized as I get older that the ability to stay calm in chaos is a superpower. You seem like someone who stays calm in chaos. Nope. You don't? Not all the time. I mean, I would say I would say I'm definitely in the Pareto principle, like 80, 20. Okay. Like 80% of my stress I can handle through only doing 20% of my time during the day consciously breathing. I can handle 80% more stress if I just take 20% of my time that I'm awake and just do my conscious breathing in that time.

But for most people, it's flipped the other way. They're not breathing. So they can't handle. They actually minus 80% of their stress capacity. They're less resilient to stress because they're not practicing their breath. And a great way to see if you're breathing properly is, like, you're perfect. See how you're just sitting there and your mouth is closed and you're breathing through your nose? Most people, and you're doing a great job too.

Most people, they breathe with their mouth open a tiny bit. And somebody with us right now, just check yourself. Do you feel tension in your jaw? Do you feel like you breathe primarily through your nose? Because if you don't, if you feel like your mouth is open and you feel like you're not breathing through your nose, all day long, you're tilting that lever we talked about in the autonomic nervous system. You're tilting it over to the sympathetic. But it's a tiny bit.

So you might not notice it. It's almost like water dropping on a rock. After 10 years of you breathing like that, eventually your nervous system is going to shut down. So it's a really beautiful way for you to just check in like, do I breathe through my nose? Do I breathe through my belly? Do I have tension in my jaw? Just ask yourself those three questions on the daily. You know, it's so funny.

you, like, so I've been trying to work out a little bit more. And when I'm doing it, I've been doing this, I haven't even told you this, Lauren, where when I'm doing the workouts, I'm trying to breathe in some of the workouts only through my nose, which I don't know if it's good all the time, because I found when I was in the gym, I was like, huffing and puffing through the mouth, right? And I was like, this can't be good. I wasn't getting as good of breath quality. And I think since I've done that one, you're way more connected to the workout, you're like, almost have to be. I don't how to explain it, but you can't like, I think when you're, when your mouth breathing, you can kind of like zone out, like you said, but when you're breathing through the nose, you have to be so

focused. And it's like a weird thing because it, in a lot of times, it feels really unnatural, even though it's the most natural thing. Check this out. We, I learned this from many different teachers. When we plug our nose, especially like, have you ever plugged, is it a boy or a girl that you, when you plugged your little girl's nose, watch, she'll start to choke. She'll literally start to choke because we come out of the womb with this innate intelligence that allows us to breathe normally and naturally through our nose. Now, why is that? You plug a baby's nose. I tried it on my son, by the way, just for like a second. Don't worry. I wasn't choking my son, y'all. But literally, I plugged his nose for a second. And he started to choke. He didn't know how to breathe.

So think about this, right? Whether you believe in God or not, there is an intelligence inside of all of us that is so much smarter than our intellect and that intelligence feeds our bodies all day long and it allows our bodies to do their thing naturally without us having to get in the way. So think about how many times you have not breathed through your nose when you're working out, when you're with your family, and think about how different, feel into how different it could be if you were to just train yourself on the regular to breathe like a circle, breathe in through your nose, breathe out through your mouth. That is the number one thing that doesn't require any kind of achievement.

It's just a practice that you can do and get better with over time. Wow, that's crazy. I've also heard, and listen, again, I'm not a doctor. I've heard and I've- You're not? Well, let me, give me a couple, maybe take some time. But I've heard that breathing through your nose is actually better for your immune system because your nose has the ability to regulate particles, viruses, viral infections,

better than your mouth. And so that if you're a nose breather, you actually have a better chance of staying healthier. Yeah, there's some really cool science about that. have these spherical cores, almost like a spiral inside of our nose. So it actually treats and conditions the air to be more effectively breathed. Which when you think about it, like obviously that's how we're designed to breathe. That's why it's there. Totally. We're literally designed to breathe through our nose. But like we've talked about, because of stress. And this isn't about shaming anyone because of parental examples. Like we just need to remember how to breathe. We literally,

we don't need to like learn how to breathe. It's funny with Cal's shirt, like unlearn. We have to, we have to unlearn our improper patterns of breathing so that we actually can just relax and let nature breathe us. And that's really what the art and the science of breath teach us. And there's one more thing with the nose that you're talking about. When you breathe in through your nose, you're getting a deeper charge of that nitric oxide. So if you cut the nose out of it, you don't get any benefits of nitric oxide at all, right? You're not doing any proper breathing. So and then the last thing I'll share is when we're not breathing through our nose and we're breathing through our mouth, we get really tight scalenes

and start a cladomastoid muscles and we start breathing in a forward flex position. So you ever see like older people where they have kind of the hump on their back? They are definitely chest breathers. They're upper cross breathers. They're not belly breathers. I wanted you to talk about this

because I think there's probably a lot of people that they take breath for granted, right? They're like, oh, I breathe all day long. Whatever. But when you start to think about all, when you start to talk about all these things like it's hurting your immune system, it's making you less healthy,

it's hunching you over, it's ruining your posture, it's making you more stress. It's all these things. and it's something, even though it's not, it's something got to work out. It's something as simple as breathing the right way and being conscious of that and you have the ability to kind of control that. Absolutely. And again, it's the only thing we can control when it comes to modulating our own stress. It's super hard for people to be like in traffic, triggered, in a fight triggered, hold their breath and be loving. It's almost impossible. How are you going to be loving and conscious and like a ninja, like an emotional ninja if you're holding your breath? But yet how many people can identify that when they get really triggered, it's probably the first thing that they do is they hold their breath. So a really, really good practice to like involve your

spouse, involve your family. I have a friend that he does breath work with his children. They're like three and four years old. He's like, what do we do when we get stressed? That's a great idea. We breathe dad and they practice breathing together. I like that. And then over time, especially with that belly breathe book I was mentioning to you, you know, have some visuals for your kids. Like over time, it's something that allows you guys to connect more with each other, but most importantly, it allows you be honest with yourself. It's really easy to lie when we hold their breath. It's really easy to be dishonest. I also think that it's a great tool for your kids to have as they get older and they're in stressful, chaos, whatever it is, situations. To be able to tap in right away to their breath is so powerful.

you were talking to Claire who was in here my girlfriend who was just on the podcast and she was saying that she puts tape over her mouth at night to breathe and you asked her if it was a certain tape is there a certain tape to use and do you like... To give context for people that didn't hear her she's saying she was doing that because she can't

she's not breathing through her nose anymore. Right. So that she's not. So just so people understand like if they haven't hurt. Two things. First, typically why people can't breathe is because they have one of the three or four types of sleep apnea, where they have a deviated septum or they have some kind of blockage from a lot of people have a lot of fungus infections actually. I had a lot of, I saw your eyes get really wide.

Like fungus, it's true though. How do you know if you have one? Well, there's different tests. There's different protocols for candida and whatnot. But most of us have fungal and gut infections. We just have them. It's just a part of being a human, especially with our environment and our world. Dr. Daryl's going to test us to get off your assets for that. But go on. Yeah. So, so, so, So if you have a body and you can't breathe your nose because of blockage, it's probably because you either need balloon sinuplasty, which I've had done, which is amazing, where they put a balloon up your sinuses and they crack all the small bones in your sinuses. It's awesome.

It's actually really beautiful. You have to wear a cast on your face after? No. I mean, it's a non. I actually, I did it in a hotel room with a doctor. It was kind of like an under the wire doctor. But I've also had one done medically as well, where you kind of bleed a little bit. So that's the first thing is like, yeah, but I think you're anesthetized.

I think you have some, I think they chill you out a little bit. But anyways, that's the number one thing. So she's wearing the tape because she's learning to retrain herself from the nose breathing. That's one thing. But also there could just be like a structural blockage. Somebody might want to breathe through their nose, but they can't because they have a fungal infection. They have something going on where they have a deviated septum. So one of them's learned behavior and the other one's like a physical structure that just needs attention. So would you recommend doing the tape breathing or do you not like that? I love it. Okay. It was there a brand that we can look at? What is the brand? You said it when you walked in. I think it's Somniva. And you said there's a hole in it.

There's a little tiny slit, like little tiny slit. But it just basically gently closes your mouth. But guys, you don't have to be fancy. You can literally just buy a piece of tape. Michael's not going to be able to fit in the little hole. What do you mean? My mouth is too big? The little glory hole.

It's going to be too small. Oh, yeah. It's not your mouth. Oh, you went that way with it. I was like, I was, I was just, I was focused on the breathwork. Okay. I would love for you to speak on breathing. This is weird in toddlers.

Like, how can you, how can you, you said to just teach them to breathe, but are there any like tactics that we can do for our kids to sit down besides the book? Yeah, I would say straight up the next time you guys have an argument and I'm sure you probably never, ever fight ever. But let's say that you do fight once. Like the next time you fight, if your kids are around, you actually go to them and be like, hey, mommy, daddy just had a fight. fight. Sometimes, sometimes people fight and that's okay as long as they come back around and do this.

And you sit them down and you go, hey, I love you. Everything's okay. Everything's safe. Let's do our blank breath. Name it something for your family. Let's do our family blank breath. Name your breath practice with your family. And then you just have them lay on the ground. Maybe you put like a little stuffed animal on their on their stomach or a little weight. This is what I have a lot of clients do that have reverse breathing patterns as well, which we can talk about after this. But like, Put something cool in their belly. Teach your kids to breathe their belly and tell them whenever you feel upset, what's your daughter's name? Zaza.

Zaza. Zaza, whenever you feel upset, whenever you feel angry, babe, whenever you feel like you want to punch something, I want you to come to mommy and we can breathe together. It's a great idea. You lay on the floor. We're going to get your favorite stuffed animal. We're going to put that on your belly. And I'm going to show you how to breathe your belly and watch how much better you feel. Amazing.

And she will. I'm going to do that. I have a weird tip that has been really life changing for me. and I would love to hear what you think about this. So I was going to sleep sometimes in a sports bra and like pajama pants, like men's pajama pants. And I started really getting in tune with my body through meditation and realized that that was cutting off my lymphatic system.

And I think a lot of women will go to sleep in a bra. So now I sleep 100% naked. And I notice, and you might think I'm nuts, that my breath is so much better. and I noticed men sleep in their boxers. It's blockage. Yeah. What do you think about that? I think we should sleep naked.

I don't see. I don't like underwear. I don't like boxers. I don't like any. I like to dress really comfortably. You know, I'm in like nice sweats and a nice shirt because it feels good. Even with the baby,

how they have to wear diapers. It's like, it's probably like, for sure. I look at it all the time when I put this on. I'm like, someone needs to invent something that's not so constricting. I know.

What would it be, though? Why don't you invent it? It would have to be called the breathable diaper. It would have to be something where like the shit wouldn't get on your bed. And if you're at breakfast, their shit wouldn't get in your clothes. So I don't know. We're going to have to meet with a baby specialist on that.

That would be a great invention. But what you're talking about is real because think about this. You ever reflect back to like early 1900s when women would wear fucking corsets? You remember that where they were like squish women and like, oh my God. They would try to train their waist smaller. Well, now it's a waste trainer. It's the same thing different year. Okay.

But absolutely, because you know what we did in the beginning of this podcast where we were breathing horizontally. You can't breathe horizontally if you have something crushing your ribs down. So the diaphragm is this dome-shaped muscle, but it's 360 degrees. People think of the diaphragm is just right here. We actually have four diaphragms, but the main diaphragm is where it goes right here from the sternum. It goes all the way back to the kidneys. So we have to be like free to move. So yeah, if you have like a sports bar, if you have something construed,

restricting the part of your ribs, which, by the way, that's where your intercostals live, those muscles that help you breathe. If you have somebody squishing those or something squishing those, it's going to be really hard for you to take a deep belly breath. And I would say over time that, I mean, I'm sure there's research on this. Like, yeah, it definitely would make your breathing altered if you have something squishing you. That is a great idea for you. I'm not joking to launch a breathable underwear and bra and diaper line. Like, I'm telling you, I've been looking on Amazon. I know this sounds weird with like to look for something that's easy to breathe with.

And then every time I get it, it's not. Anyway. I just don't think people realize how unconscious they are of breathing, like ourselves included, right? You just don't even, it's just one of those things you just don't think about. It's so natural, right? So you don't even think that you don't even think about doing it the right way or that you could be doing it the wrong way. Recently, Michael and I have been absolutely obsessed with this topic. You may know it.

And that is sleep. And the reason we're so into it right now is because we are getting woken up like two to three times a night with a new baby that wakes up. She's two, but she still wakes up. And we just got a new dog. It's been mayhem. So what we've done is we've really tried to have a toolbox when it comes to sleep. Deep sleep. Deep sleep. And that includes red light bulbs in the room. 528 HD frequency music. Just try it. We have our sound bowls. Our room is dim. There's barely any light. We have salt rock lamps and we're also using House of Wise sleep gummies. They are so legit. If you want to wind down at night and I just like read my Kindle and go

right to sleep, it is heaven. I like to take one around 9 p.m. because I like to be asleep by 10. So I'll take one. I'll drink some tea. I'll chill in my room. Like I said, I'll read my Kindle. I do not like reading on my phone. And then I will go off to Dreamland. How's the Why? launched last year in a pandemic by a single mom. We had her on the podcast. And she was noticing that a lot of women were drinking a lot and weren't getting sleep and weren't having great sex. So she solved that. Okay. She has a sleep, a sex, a strength, gummy. The gummies are so good, you guys. They taste absolutely delicious. They're sustainably sourced hemp from Colorado and they're 100% organic vegan and gluten-free. You got to try the sleep. Next, I would recommend the sex.

they're both so good. And as a partner, House of Wise, wants to give you all 20% off your first purchase. Simply go to houseofwise.co, not dot com. It's dot co. And use promo code skinny to redeem your discount. That is 20% off your first sleep, sex, stress, or strength product when you go to housewise.com and use the promo code skinny. Yeah, because again, like we, we react to each other instead of responding, responding takes breath. Oh. So if I I'm hanging with you guys and I'm responding to what you're saying. Like this is really cool because we're doing like a fun tennis match, you know. But a lot of times when you first meet people, there's kind of a dominance thing where they're

trying to like show you how cool they are or they're trying to wait until you're done talking so they can say who they know or whatever it is, especially in L.A. Not to demonize L.A., but like I noticed that when I go to L.A., it's like, oh, are you with John and Blank and Blank and blah? Are you doing this with that category? And so I think when we breathe, like I really, if I'm excited about something, I might just speak to you right away. But if I'm really being conscious and if I really want to give you my heart's greatest answer, I'm going to take a breath first. But in our culture, that's not

necessarily encouraged because we live in a culture where it's like, well, what next? What next? What next? Not to demonize Gary Vee either, but he doesn't breathe. You ever watch Gary Vee, he doesn't breathe at all. He needs breathwork. I bet you he would live longer if he breathed. Gary, Gary, you got to come with Josh and do breathwork on your podcast. Let's go, Gary. Gary, come on. We can hustle while we do breath work. Yeah.

We can do something audio while you're doing breathwork, so you can get something done. Well, and Gary represents a cool archetype, right? And it's the archetype of always doing, never being. So Gary's always doing, but he's not really being. And maybe he might argue and say that that's just his way of being, but he's an archetype for all of us to learn from, where, we become so conditioned that we have to like make more money do more things do more more more more that we become like a condition bundle of nerves and then that conditioning blocks our breathing

because we're constantly like what's the next thing what's the next conversation how many things can I stack in my calendar and it's really just a sickness it's a sickness where we become as joe dispensa talks about we become addicted to stress talks about this and breaking the habit of being yourself we become addicted to stress because it's all we know. And you ever hang out with people where it's like you feel like less energized? You feel like tired after you've hung out with them? 100%. It's because we have mirror neurons and I'm constantly mirroring like right now I'm mirroring you guys.

You guys are pretty calm too. But if you weren't and you were like, come on, Josh, what's the next answer? What's the next thing? I would, if I wasn't conscious, I could fall into that trap. So if you're ever hanging out with people and you feel more tired after you leave their presence, guaranteed they're not breathing properly either. And you felt kind of victim to their stress roller coaster that they love.

Holy shit, that was mind-blowing. That's so crazy what you just said. Yeah, it's funny thinking about Gary because I think he would probably argue that that's his oxygen and that makes him happy. And I think that's probably actually true to agree in his case. He's maybe wired a little differently the most.

But what you're saying is the majority of people aren't wired that way. I mean, they think they need to be and then they stop doing all these things and it just creates this downworld spot. spiral of chaos. Yeah, and there's always outliers in society. Again, like, I think he's doing a lot of good in the world. So I'm not anti. I think he's doing amazing. I think he is one of the good ones. I think he's really helping people. But I'm like, how long are you going to live, dude? You keep cranking that hard.

You know, same with David. Like David Goggins is another example where it's like, yeah, yeah, motherfucker, stay hard. I don't need to rest in recovery. Fuck that shit. And I'm like, you're going to die by the time you're 55, dude. Like, or earlier. Like that constant, like, sympathetic driven stress. And of course, this is a philosophical conversation too because these people might come back and say, well, this is what makes me happy. This is what fills me up. So because of that happiness, I'm going to live longer. And only time will tell. But I think if you look at the science and you really look at the people that are breathing properly, they live longer. You know, science shows that. My husband does run stressed. You do. I do breathe. I do breathe. You do breathe. You breathe great.

You, by the way, I breathe worse than you as I breathe out of my mouth when I sleep. But my husband does run stressed. Would you say that because he runs stressed, he needs more breath work? Or do we need the same amount of breath? I don't necessarily know if it's I run stressed. I'm more of like, I run more. He runs, I'll tell you what he runs. He runs, where's the saber tooth tiger at all times? Yeah, I run tight. I call it, I have a name for it. It's called M. U.S. made up stress. So he'll come in and I'll say, and I'll say MUS. Well, let me counter you here a little bit. That's cool. You can do a little couples therapy for us. I'm wired where I feel like, I, operate on a high frequency.

Not to say low, low frequency. You got what I'm saying. I'm using this from like an energetic level. Like I can, I'm one of those people that if I wake up in the morning, like I'm awake, I'm ready to go. I don't need to wind up. And I feel good.

I'm not like, oh my God, I feel great. I don't want to speak until 10. But she is different. She needs the wind up. She's a little bit slower. She's a little more like lower frequency. And again, I don't mean that, you know. Yeah, you don't mean vibe.

You just mean energy. Yeah, yeah. Just mean energy. And so I think she looks at it as like, well, that's a really stressful way to live. but I actually look at the way she is and like that stresses me out, right? So it's, I think people are also wired differently just on the way they're built. But I guess the question is if we are wired differently, does one of us need breath work more than the other?

Or is just the same blanket advice for everyone? No, there's never a blanket ever. I would say that if somebody has like physiological clues, like maybe their body's stacking weight or they need five cups of coffee in a day to maintain their level of, what does you call? call it M-U-S. So like there's there's certain clues that nature leaves us like maybe you can't sleep at night so you have to take sleeping pills. So nature is always going to give us direction. There's always going to be these biomarkers that we can use to bring us back to what's called homeostasis. Homeostasis is we're an organism, right? So any, any organism in the world has this balance point of homeostasis. It's when all the systems, your endocrine system, your immune system,

your respiratory system, everything's working well. Everything's in harmony. And so if something falls out of harmony, then I would say that is the perfect time to introduce either the box breathing or the circular breathing. So I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that you get up in the morning and you're ready to go. And I don't think it's a bad thing that she might need a little more time. They're both okay. The biggest report card is how you feel throughout the day. And I think if you just did check-ins on the sun, you know, the circadian rhythm in the world's a really big indicator of this as well. If you cannot sleep when your body is naturally attuned to the sun going down,

then yeah, you probably are over-caffinated, you probably are overstressed, you're probably addicted to stress. Well, let me ask you this. Speaking of the sleeping thing, and I don't want to throw you off because I want to sleep in that. But if you, like say that you have two people, they both get eight hours of sleep, but one person's breathing properly and they're sleeping, the other person is mouth breathing.

What does that do to the quality of each person's sleep? Even if it's the same amount of time. Yeah, it absolutely has a massive impact on sleep. sleep quality because sleep length is one thing. Like you could say I'm getting eight hours of sleep, but unless you have an aura ring or an eight sleep bed or some kind of HRV measurement, it's really challenging to know if you got quality. Like we have these four sleep cycles that we go through. Does the aura ring really work? I like the aura ring. I think the aura ring for me, like when I was holding a barbell, it would get kind of uncomfortable and I would take it off.

That's what guys you don't want to wear their wedding rings say. Exactly. That's exactly what guys Okay, but I'm not that guy. Okay. Because I love my lady. Okay. Yeah. I'm just saying that's what they say. Right.

You say, oh, the barbell heard her. I've never heard that before. I heard of one on housewives the other day that they have a knuckle that protrudes to the right slightly. Wow. And he got caught cheating like 10 times. And I was like, you know. It's terrible.

And that was my husband, I would pop that knuckle right back in with my fucking fist. Yeah, now that you mentioned my knuckle is a little. So the aura ring works, but it's uncomfortable. Yeah, but you could. You can also use your iPhone. There's an app you can get where you put your finger on the camera and it'll take your HR. HRV is like the biggest indicator that what Michael was talking about. So if you really want to know if you're sleeping quality versus sleeping length, check your HRV. Because when you check your HRV, then you'll know, you know it's like if you don't measure something, then it never really gets managed. And I wasn't the person that said. I think it was Stephen Covey, right? That said that. So if you if you manage your HRV and you manage your sleep, then Maybe you only need six hours of sleep. Okay, so this is my point is that you, like, I think people like high levels, like, I need my eight hours sleep. I need my this meal's day.

I need intermittent. But if you're not actually measuring that against the type of person you are, the type of quality you're getting all, the type of exercise, all of these things, then those numbers may not mean anything. Sure. Right. I guess what I'm saying, and this is not to be on my high horse, but I feel like I sometimes need less sleep, but I get good quality sleep when I breathe. and I haven't had issues where I'm running around on the day and not being able to get through the day. Yeah.

Right. So my point, long when an answer is, I don't feel that I'm actually stressed. I feel like I'm actually in a good place. Well, I went through half my life tired all the time, no matter how much sleep I got, and finally found out a year and a half ago that my thyroid was off. So I think that mixed with trying to do breath and meditation.

Sure. I try has been really helpful. You mentioned off air, I'm taking a plot twist. Ketamine. I love they were going from sleep to ketamine. No, it's good. This podcast, you never know where it's about. I love it.

Ketamine. Yeah. When did you start trying it? Is it something you would recommend? Give us the 4-1-1. When I was dating my goal, I would go and get my birth control. And it was such a to do. I had to park.

I had to stand in line. You never knew how long the line was going to be. I had to talk to the pharmacist. I would get it. It would take at least 45 minutes to an hour. It was a real bitch. And now they have a company that has solved this problem, and that is the pill club. They make access to affordable birth control, period care, and sexual wellness products simple and easy. You get an online subscription. So basically, you get your birth control prescribed online by a licensed medical provider and then delivered very discreetly, I should mention, to your door for free with the pill club.

This is like the best invention ever. I mean, I feel like every woman needs this. Life is already stressful enough, so access to healthcare should just be seamless and easy, in my opinion. You never have to make a trip to the doctor or wait in line. You don't have to do all the to-do. And like I said, it's in discrete packaging, which is so nice to just have it At your door, no one knows what you're getting. Super easy. Basically, the pill club wants to help take the work out of taking care of your reproductive health. I'm about this. I think you guys will love this. You should know the pill club carries over 120 FDA approved brands. Most brands of birth control are free with insurance or on Medi-Cal. Otherwise, prices start as low as $7 a month

without insurance. So you get your birth control delivered to your door for free, discrete packaging along with fun, self-care goodies and gifts. Right now when you go to the pill club.com slash Skinny. They're offering a $10 donation to bedsideer.org for every listener who becomes a patient. Your donation will help low-income individuals get access to birth control through bedsideer.org. That's the pill club.com slash skinny to get your first birth control care package and donate to help more women in need of affordable birth control. Remember, the pill club.com slash skinny. You must use the link to make a donation. You know, there's an on-ramp to breath where you do the acute style breathing.

the meditative breathing and then you do the catharsis breathing. So when it comes to any kind of ketamine or anthogens or plant medicine of any kind, we have to be really cautious in the same way that we would ramp up to breath, where we would do like an acute style breathwork, we would do the meditative breath work, then we would go to catharsis breathwork. You know, don't fly out to outer space if you haven't been trained to be an astronaut. And this isn't my quote.

This is Jordan Peterson's quote. Be careful of unearned wisdom. Because when you go to a space where you're exposing your psyche to a dimension that science has no idea in spirituality is just scratching the surface of figuring out where you actually go, what actually happens when you take entheogens, when you take psychedelics, you have to be really prepared. So if you haven't done the Pastaana meditation, float tanks, if you haven't done, like I did a vision quest this year, which was like 10 days in nature, four days with just water only. or 100 hours fasting. Like you have to prepare yourself to actually be in spaces from like a psychedelic or a ketamine perspective or an entheogen perspective where you trust yourself to be safe. And so what I see is a lot of people, they sprint from like this medicine ceremony to that

medicine ceremony, but they don't have breath as their anchor. They've never done any conscious breath practice. They haven't done any kind of loving kindness meditation, no introspection. and they heard it from their friend and they did it in Topanga. And it's like, that's not going to give you the type of spiritual maturity that you're really wanting. What's going to give you spiritual maturity is if you earn that wisdom. You have to earn that wisdom.

And so I'm not like against plant medicine. I'm very pro situational plant medicine or entheogens or ketamine. So I went to a place called field trip health. It was in Houston. And it was incredibly profound because I had never done ketamine at all. And it's actually where I got this Mala. And what happened for me was a level of gratitude for my son, for my woman, for my life that I can't actually put into words. But it brings up emotion in me like just talking about it because we're so petulant, myself included.

We want what we want. We want it now. It's someone else's problem. They did that to me. all of that melts away when you're in a ketamine journey. Because when you're in a ketamine journey, what's happening is your left and right brain hemispheres are being connected like we have when we're ages 0 through 7

when our brains are malleable. And so most kids are really grateful. And most adults that go into a ketamine journey, they strip away all of the conditioning. Think of it like we have 26 rivers that are all feeding into our soul. All of those rivers are flowing unconsciously. So we never really get to check on, hey, is that one actually good for me? Are those thoughts actually

good for me? Are those thoughts from capital T trauma or lower case T trauma? Is that what, is that what really guiding my behavior? When you do a ketamine journey and what I felt for myself was all of that shit melts away. There's nothing but you and gratitude. And also anything that's blocking the gratitude that's coming up too. So if there's anything in your life, maybe resentments, it's a massive emotional inventory of like who you're still angry at. who you have resentments towards. And for me, it was cleaning out a lot of resentment still towards my father and kind of anger that I didn't even know was there at God for like, God, why can't you fix my mom? What's going on with the world? Like, you know, because I'm a very deep guy. Like I,

I consider myself to be an HSP, like a highly sensitive person. And what I felt in ketamine was like a washing away of all the things that caused me the most pain and stress because I hold onto them myself. And so with ketamine, I was able to, like, release the grip that I had, my resentments, my lack of forgiveness. And all that was left was gratitude. How many times did you do it? One time, intramuscular, which is different than IV. Wait, what is that? Intramuscular is where they just stick it right in your belt. They'll just, and so hurt? You just got one shot? Well, it was two. There was the first, there was the first. And then it's really cool because you're with a trained facilitator. Okay. And that, I had a facility.

name Bobby that was really talented and she she actually worked with the maps organization. You guys know about maps? Sure. Okay. So Rick Doblin's company. And so what happened for me was I was able to check in with her. She actually just kind of let me go because I felt prepared. I mean, I've done a lot of work to get there. Like 12 ayahuasca ceremonies, multiple silo cylican journeys, lots of float tanks, lots of breath work. Like I trusted myself, especially after the Vision Quest this year. And so when I was done, really what I took away from it was, wow, there is a petulant child inside of me. And there is a petulant child inside of all of us where we want what we want and we want it

fucking now. And just when you think you don't have one inside you, watch when somebody takes away something that you want and that you really are going for it. Maybe it's a goal or maybe it's an expectation you had that means a lot to you. You'll know how spiritual you are. You know how much groundedness you have when you see the petulant child come online or not. And so if you can learn to parent the petulant child inside of you, like love that child, be with that child. There's a little girl and a little boy inside of you too, right? Just like there's a little girl that you're leading in the world. How many times has she shown you lessons about yourself just by parenting her? She's probably taught you so much just by her being.

And so that's what happens with a good entheogen or a plant medicine or a ketamine is you start to go back to these really, I guess you could say, choice points that you've chosen to be a petulant child in or a loving adult. What was your ayahuasca experience? Was it similar to ketamine? Nope. The ayahuasca was like the ultimate ass kicker. It was on my 12th journey down in Costa Rica. And it was a center that I actually don't recommend people go to. And I can't talk about it. But people know because they've, listen to my podcast or they can do. There are certain spaces when it comes to any psychedelic, but specifically, specifically ayahuasca, where it needs such a deep reference and there needs to be so much safety there and so much tradition that even energetically, if energies come in

or I don't know how woo-woo you guys want me to get here. Oh, I love woo-woo. So there can be entity attachments. And entity attachments are, we live in the 3D world, but we all know that there's way more than this, right? So wherever the way more is, there's energies and beings there. Some people call it the aetheric field. So in the atheric field, in the fourth and fifth dimension, there's a lot of different energies that live there. And there's also purgatory where souls that weren't able to pass on get stuck. And so what happens in ayahuasca ceremonies is if you're not being facilitated with dynamic traditional wisdom and really deep safety, entities can attach. And so I had an entity attach on my 12th ceremony. And in that ceremony, I didn't know it was going on. I had all these

OCD thoughts for like six months when I got home. It cracked my psyche wide open. It was terrible. But it happened for a good reason because looking back, I was able to ask those thoughts, what are you trying to teach me? What are you actually trying to teach me? What kind of thoughts? What do you mean OCD thoughts? They would be like looping thoughts, like things that weren't anywhere close to my way of being. Like I have to close the closet or like a thought. about something like your kid? It would be like really dark, pornographic thoughts that would come in. So intrusive thoughts?

Intrusive thoughts. I have that postpartum. Go on. Okay. So intrusive thoughts, but so much to the degree that I actually had to go to a medicine man, his name was Paul Chek, and he helped me clear the entity. Wow. That was like the really big eye opener for me that not only did it happen for me, because I'm not a victim. And I think like it took me about two years to heal from that.

that, honestly. It took me about two years before I finally let go and made peace with it. But I had to do a lot of work to like turn to the thoughts and ask the thoughts like, what are you actually here to teach me? Because if you're here just to bother me or if you're here just to try to like be in purgatory and meddle with people in the 3D world, then by the power of God invested in me, I ask you to leave. And I send you love for the journey. And so I would do that prayer and I would meet with those thoughts. And instead of me, this is the thing, this is the key point that I want every. to take home. And also, if you've ever had any psychic attacks, or you've been through this, don't try to fight your thoughts. If you try to fight your thoughts, you will lose. Because thoughts that are intrusive feed on your resistance. So if you try to fight your thoughts in any way, then they're just going to keep coming. The most powerful thing you can do is to take some deep breaths, I can't respiroresperate, I can't share yourself,

breathe through your belly, turn to the thoughts, either physically or metaphorically, and ask them with an open heart, what are you here to teach me? And listen, because there's probably some wisdom there. For me, it was about healing pornography, right?

For 20 years of my life, because of my lack of emotional intelligence, pornography was my anchor, it was where I would go. It's a part of my life that I can look back on and I can have respect and reverence for myself because it kept me alive. It kept me going, right? I didn't know how to feel at peace with myself. And this is like for a long time. So I think what was happening there for me was kind of a psychic

clean out of all the pornography that I had watched and like letting that go. But it happened in such a crazy way in such a traumatic way that I don't wish done on anyone. I don't wish that anyone. I don't wish that anyone goes down that road. It sounds like you almost use pornography to self-sooth. Of course. Like to, yeah. Like how an addict uses like a, a drink. Yeah. Yeah. And actually, I was like, when I, when I got home, I was like, should I talk about this? And then I heard my buddy Drew Manning share on his podcast about his pornography journey. And look, addiction is really just a separation from self. Right. So. Well, I noticed that that men especially feel a lot of shame to talk about that. And for,

me as a woman, I just look at it as any other addiction. I don't think one addiction. is worse or better. Do you know what I mean? I look at it very neutrally. Like it's just an addiction to something that self-sues. And I think a lot of men would be surprised that there are women that look at it like that. Because maybe that's not the same as maybe I'm not speaking on every woman. But for me, Lauren, I look at it like you were addicted to self-soothing no matter what that is.

Absolutely. Because any coping mechanism exists because I don't feel, we don't feel someone doesn't feel safe where they live. Right. Which is why I was so drawn to the breath because it was like the first time my life where I didn't have to go deep into a ceremony. I could actually just be the ceremony myself. And maybe you almost replaced, I think you can almost replace these bad. I don't want to say bad. Sure, sure. You can replace these addictions that aren't maybe healthy for you with something that is. Yes. Yeah. Because because the anchor that we're all looking for is peace. Right. We all just want to feel good. We want to feel peaceful in our bodies. We want to be able to sit with friends and like, not feel like we have to show off and just fucking be ourselves. And so what people are all searching for is like, how do I be myself? How do I be honest? Well, you have to go down the roads to figure out what's blocking you from that. Don't you feel that right now where we are in the world? Don't you feel that the world is

starting to turn a corner with that? For me, I feel more connected to nature, more connected to being a little bit slower like a sea turtle. Sea turtles or like the tortoise and the hair, I always think about that. Like, it gets where it's going in the right time and it's patient. It doesn't always have to be so quick. I feel like our world is changing right now with the energy that it needs. It needs a more slow-paced stillness, meditation, breathwork. People are more open to woo-w.

I put this in quotes because I don't think it's woo-woo. Me neither. Like, I noticed that. Do you feel that? I feel that because I vibrate with that. Yeah. But I don't know if it's hard to quantify what you're talking about because there's no like study that we could perform to prove your thesis. It just feels like.

But it does feel like it to me because we have these conversations and everyone with us here is into it. So if you're into this, then you're part of the solution. You're part of the frequency, the awakening, the thing that the world needs, which is actually a deep ass breath and a lot slower pace of life. And doing something that you care about. because really what blocks people from breath or from doing anything that's authentic to them is they get scared that they won't make enough money. I mean, look at my story. I didn't believe in myself for a long time.

And then finally, I was like, cool, I'm either going to die or I'm going to be myself. I think that's a great message to end it on. I mean, I think that's a very powerful message. You're a hundred percent powerful message. If we had talked about this six years ago, breathwork, grounding, but hole sending, plant medicine, people would think we're crazy, but people are more open-minded. They still might think we're crazy. But Josh, where can everyone find you, man?

Well, if you loved what we talked about, I would love to offer to your audience a gift if that's okay. And it's 25% off the breathe program. So all you have to do is put in code skinny. How does that sound? Sounds good. Let's put in the code skinny. And you get 21st off the program. It's breathwork.io.

And so that's where you guys can go. And if you don't want to do like the program right away, then go to wellnessforce.com for it slash m21. It's a guide that I built from almost 500 shows. And I was like, what are the people at the highest levels actually doing that matters? And what are like the fundamental practices that they're doing? I put those into a guide for people. And it's a great place to start. So if this resonated with you and you're wanting to start your breath practice,

you can just go to breathwork.io. And I'm going to give you 25% off the program. Use the code skinny at breathwork.io. It's my gift to you if you've struggled like I have with anxiety and depression. And you're looking for something that can really anchor. are you. So breathwork.io. And then if you want to have a guide that is free, that is absolutely free, it's a gift for you at wellnessforce.com forward slash m21. And that's six practices that I really distilled down from like 500 episodes. And I just thought, you know, from all the people that

are doing the biggest things in the world, what are their daily practices? And I put those into a guide that thousands and thousands of people have downloaded now. My Instagram handle is Josh Trent official. You can also follow the podcast at Wellness Force on Instagram. and the website is wellnessforce.com. Thanks, Josh. You're the best, man. Thank you. Thanks for having me. That was great.

That was awesome. As Josh said, he is giving away a few memberships to his program. Michael and I just signed up. We're so excited to try it. We've heard raid reviews. All you have to do to win is tell us your favorite part of this episode on my latest Instagram at Lauren Bostick. Make sure you guys have rated and reviewed the podcast, of course.

And definitely tell your friends about the podcast so we can go to See you next time.