The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Greg Payne on Healing Trauma with Breath Work and Brainspotting

Episode Date: September 29, 2024

Greg Payne on Healing Trauma with Breath Work and Brainspotting Awakened-roots.com About the Guest(s): Greg Payne is a trauma-trained life coach and breathwork practitioner with a rich background in brain spotting and Reiki healing. As a certified life coach and a Reiki Master Teacher in the Yasui Lineage for over 13 years, Greg combines ancient and modern healing techniques to foster deep healing within mind, body, and spirit. He draws upon his comprehensive training from the Catalyst Insight Collective (N-PESI) to work effectively with individuals and groups, focusing on brain spotting and deep trauma work. Operating through his practice, Awaken-Route, Greg is dedicated to guiding his clients towards holistic healing and personal growth. Episode Summary: Episode 2000: The Chris Voss Show welcomes Greg Payne, a seasoned life coach and breathwork practitioner, who sheds light on transformative healing techniques like brain spotting and Reiki. Hosted by Chris Voss, this episode delves into Greg's journey from professional athlete aspirations to becoming a healer focused on trauma recovery and emotional wellness. Engage with a session packed with insights on the benefits of breathwork, the nuances of Reiki healing, and the profound impact of brain spotting in treating deep-seated trauma. Greg Payne's diverse expertise addresses common modern-day struggles such as anxiety, depression, insomnia, and grief. He emphasizes the power of holistic practices to resolve trauma stored within the body, which traditional talk therapy may not effectively reach. The episode explores the importance of mindful breathing, visualization techniques, and the physiological connection to emotional well-being, making a compelling case for integrating these practices into everyday life. Key Takeaways: Understanding Brainspotting: Brainspotting is a psychotherapy method that uses visual fields to access and resolve trauma stored in the subcortical brain, offering relief from anxiety, panic attacks, and depression. Power of Reiki Healing: Reiki is a hands-on healing technique that channels universal healing energy through touch, providing mental and physical health benefits. Impact of Breathwork: Mindful breathwork can deeply affect the nervous system, promoting relaxation, reducing anxiety, and facilitating the release of stored emotional trauma. Healing Men’s Issues: Addressing men’s trauma specifically helps in enhancing their purpose, confidence, and overall mental health. Holistic Healing Approach: Combining breathwork, brainspotting, and Reiki offers a multi-faceted approach to healing that addresses both mental and physical aspects of trauma. Notable Quotes: "Brainspotting gives you the chance to see what is beneath your language center." "Reiki utilizes the hands to convey universal healing energy through touch." "By giving attention to the breath, you can move things that are stuck." "Men might suffer from feeling purposeless due to undealt-with trauma." "The breath reenergizes the nervous system and helps with physical body systems like digestion."

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

Chris Voss. Welcome. Then welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen. As always, for 60 years, 2,000 episodes, we bring you the Chris Voss Show. The most wonderful people, the smartest people, the brightest minds that can share with you their journeys, their cathartic moments, and improve the quality of your life. Because I've seen your life, and you need some work, people. I'm just being honest with you.

We all need some work in this town. So that's what it's all about. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, Chris Voss, one of the TikTok, and Chris Voss, Facebook.com. We have Greg Payne on the show with us today. He is a trauma trained life coach and breathwork practitioner with expertise in brain spotting. We're going to find out what that's all about. My understanding is brain spotting is where you go on X, which used to be Twitter, and you try and find people with brains. Anyway, we'll find out more.

This is probably not the right definition. Anyway, Greg is a certified life coach, a Reiki master teacher, and has been a Reiki master in the Yusui lineage for 13 years. I knew that. As an energy medicine practitioner, he combines ancient modern healing techniques to cultivate deep healing within the mind, body, and spirit. And with his practitioner experience,

he works with groups and individuals and does brain spotting as a certified practitioner and deep trauma work that gained from the Catalyst Insight Collective, NPSI. And he's cultivated a relationship with Cambo and served as a sacred frog medicine as well, or served it. Welcome to the show, Greg. How are you? Thanks. It's good to be Greg. How are you? Thanks. It's good to be here. I'm doing all right. It's a nice day here in Minnesota.

Minnesota. The Minnesota. The lakes, right? The lakes of Minnesota. Is that what they're known for? Little lakes everywhere. Yeah. Yeah.

Is there more lakes than there are land? There's more land. The lakes are like dotted here and there, and there are a lot of small ones. There's tons and tons of land. Yeah, maybe those lakes will get together and make some big lakes. So, Greg, give us your dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? It's awakened-roots.com.

And give us a 30,000 overview in your words of what you do. Generally, what I do in a nutshell, I help free people to heal their mind, body, and spirit. And I use different modalities, like you mentioned before. As a coach, I give people the clarity to match certain obstacles that they're facing. As a Reiki master, I can work to my hands-on healing Reiki practice to work off of physical mental health benefits as well. And with breathwork, I produce transformational change by sitting either one-on-one with my clients or by hosting events. So tell us a little bit about yourself.

What was your upbringing? What was your childhood? What influenced you? And how did you get into this? I was raised in Lawrence, Kansas. I was born and raised in the Kansas area. I stayed there for at least the first 30 years of my life. I was traditionally trained as a soccer player, bike racer.

I first dropped into this healing game with my pursuit of being a professional athlete. That fell through. I was trying to learn how to master my body and learn how to work with Reiki and other healing principles as well as a segue from my bike racing career choice. Did you BMX bicing, mountain bike racing, 10-speed racing? 10-speed. Yeah, it was road bike racing. We raced up to 100 miles at a time. Yeah, that's crazy.

That's a wild business. Yeah, a solid eight years of my life was dedicated to trying to get as fast as I could on that little 10-speed bike. Yeah, I mean, could their pants get any smaller and I could on that little 10-speed bike. Yeah. I mean, could their pants get any smaller and tighter? That's all I want to know. Nope. They get super thin, super small.

You can almost see through them. Yeah. It's like, you see the guys running those. I'm like, are those the same guys or girls that are at the gym wearing the yoga pants where I can see clean up to their clavicles? I don't even know what clavicle is. I don't even know what a clavicle is. I don't know what that means. Anyway, I tease the girls at the gym. So let's establish some foundation of definition so people don't know.

Let's say there's people in the audience that might know what the Reiki thing is. Am I pronouncing that right, too? It's pronounced Reiki. Reiki. See, that's why you're the professional. I'm not. So with Reiki, give us a ground floor definition of what that is and why is that so important and how does it make a difference? Reiki is a hands-on healing method.

It utilizes the hands to convey universal healing energy. It can be done either directly above someone or hands on the skin to send a really high quality level of healing touch through their body well i just usually let to pay somebody to beat me up as a boxer and then but i don't find there's much healing and it seems like there's more wounding so i'm not sure i'm doing it right but i don't think that's reiki yeah that's a little bit more aggressive than reiki reiki is very very, very gentle, very, very subtle. See, I always thought Reiki was a specialized new adoptive disruptive Reiki tool

that was developed by those infomercials in the 90s. I could be. You never know with all the spelling tricks that come up with Reiki. Yeah, there you go. Who's that guy, Pompeo? Pompey? Daniel Pompey. He was the guy who did all those infomercials back in the day.

It was funny. Now, you do another thing called brain spotting. I thought it was kind of interesting because I spend most of my time on social media trying to find brains, real brains. There are people using their brains, let's put it that way. What is brain spotting? Brain spotting is a mode of psychotherapy. It utilizes the approach of map that your brain is mapped to your visual field

and tries to find spots in your visual field called brain spots that are then accessed to dig into underlying activation triggers, response patterns that might be triggering people to have anxiety attacks depression panic attacks that kind of thing panic attacks always the things to take and avoid and why why is brain spotting important how does it help people with trauma how does it help disassociate them and things along those lines that's a good question and one reason that trauma is so difficult to deal with is because it can get stored beneath your cognitive mind, beneath your reasoning and your language centers. And brain spotting gives you the chance to see what is beneath your language center.

You access the subcortical mind where the mind holds its feelings and a lot more depth and adjusts what you can reach with more normal thinking processes and logic and narratives and so by using i think we talked about this in the green room you you use you know people focus on a spot or something like that and and it just helps disassociate the care and emotion to trauma yeah the practitioner will hold a metal pointer the pointer will be used to map across the visual field, and once we find an activating spot, we sustain attention on that spot with the pointer, and while this clinician holds the pointer, the client will feel the activation and allow it to resolve itself gently. That works better than the brain spotting process I've been using. Anytime I need some idiot to start using their brain and spot it i just slap them upside

the head and no don't do that folks that's against law that's assault that's violence don't do that it's just jokes people we do the jokes so but no i i see how that can kind of work you were mentioning that the visual you know we we tend to visually associate trauma and so by reprogramming that what would you call it a sort of a rip point or a connection point or i'm trying to think of something anthony robbins calls it yeah it's pretty interesting and so what what why did you what drew you to do this and what what i mean you kind of told me what you got into it but why why does it why do you really love it and enjoy it in in helping other people i've always been a big fan of brain science and neural linguistic programming like tony robbins talks about preaches pretty consistently i was actually started off a long time ago studying anthony

robbins's neurolinguistic programming i got really interested in brain spotting when i encountered somebody who showed me that by holding just a pointer in front of me, I could stare at it and feel a ton of activity in my body, a ton of activity in my mind, and I really feel like anxiety and panic disappear. I'm being pulled out of you while you're sitting in front of the pointer. Wow. That sounds like the time I took some medibles that were expired. I'm just kidding.

No, I can see how that makes a difference in how we connect things. I mean, what's the old line? I think there's a book about it. The body remembers. The body keeps the score. The body keeps the score. That's it.

The body keeps the score. And basically, you know, we store this stuff in our bodies. And, you know, some people are storing more in their bodies. Like I've got some cupcakes too that I've stored in my body along with the trauma. store this stuff in our bodies and and you know some people are storing more in their bodies like i've got some cupcakes too that i've stored in my body along with the trauma and i'm still trying to get the cupcakes out is there anything you can do about that no i'm just some breath work for

that maybe yeah now breath work in the same way your breath work facilitator is certified that is and how does how does that really help people i mean breath work is just something i try and do by staying alive every day i thought that was just me getting up in the morning yeah breathing breathing while staying alive is really one of the most fundamental foundational ways that breath is moving your energy and healing you keeping you up and sustained the notes that we use takes a little bit of a more intentional approach to giving attention to the breath, awareness of the breath and how you hold tension in your lungs,

your throat, your mouth, maybe in your jaw. By giving attention to your breath, you can get things moving that might be stuck. Like when you're having a breathwork session, you can experience all sorts of states of consciousness and even really serious, strong tingling sensations in your body

hands feet all that trauma like you mentioned stored in your body and it's pre-verbal so words don't get there the breath activates some of those primal really really old pre-verbal systems where trauma can be worked out and i imagine some people you know since, since the body keeps a score and it stores trauma inside of us, the breath can help release that maybe from the muscles or help. I mean, imagine it's kind of a little bit of meditation, right? Yeah, it's totally a meditation style. It actually takes its roots from pranayama yoga, which is thousands and thousands of years ago in India. Yeah.

Yeah. And tell us about that type of yoga and how is it different than other type of yogas and why do the other yogas suck no i'm just my opinion yoga is all one huge body of awareness and the breath work portion pranayama yoga is just the breath only and cultivates connection and awareness to the body through the breath instead of the stretches that everyone's thinking of when they think about yoga. It's the same ancient body of wisdom, just one specific offshoot of it or branch that I've chosen to give my attention to. And so, why did you feel that was the most important one? I discovered it on a fluke

one time I was visiting my hometown of kansas torrance kansas and there happened to be a huge mungus breathwork event taking place in one of the local holiday inns and i signed up on a lark and wound up having one of the most extreme the strongest healing experiences of my life i let go of trauma out of my physical body my my spine my my legs, my neck, my voice, all that stuff improved for the better that day. And I was kind of hooked on becoming a student of the breath ever since then. And breathing is so important. I mean, you know, just forgiving life in and of itself.

But some of the things that it does, I mean, it helps us process the sewer system of our body and, you know, keep all the fluids moving. But you need to, you know, keep all the fluids moving but you need to you know i remember i think it was tony robbins talked about how a certain breathing move where you breathe in through your nose a whole lot and then you hold it and then you slowly breathe out your mouth helps your lymph node systems or at least that's what he claimed yeah he's totally right about that that actually that breathing method is called circular breathing and it actually stems from the same ancient yoga practices from before yeah i don't know if

tony knew that or not but he was referencing the the old yoga from indian masters yeah but that's circular breathing yeah i even use it when i poo helps everything come out fine i don't know what that means folks i'm just yeah breathing smooths everything out yeah you just relax those muscles so you can i think I think there's breathing. I think Pete Itty uses breathing at his parties. Anyway, there are lots of muscle relaxation. So what else do we need to know about what you do and how you do it, how you coach with all that other stuff?

Yeah, that's a good question. When I work with clients one-on-one, I have them lay on their back. I teach them the breathwork practice and teach them a little bit more about the breath. I ask them to tune in on a specific goal or something that's bothering them. And the breathwork session is my guidance. They're breathing. They breathe typically a two-count inhale and a one-count exhale. And it has the effect of gradually bringing them into a meditative state of awareness.

And I can watch them and see maybe they have a catch on the inhale. Maybe they can't inhale all the way up into their upper chest and that's causing them to feel anxiety or anger or panic feelings we work on those for a little bit what do you find a lot of your clients suffer from the most and what sort of what type of clients do you work with i know we said individual groups but give us some more clarification on that. Yeah, I've worked with a variety of types of clients. Grief, romantic issues, issues with a panic or anxiety, job transitions, even just general boredom with life. These are all symptoms of a nervous system activation problems and the breath re-energizes the nervous system, re-energizes the lymph nodes, like you mentioned, and also the blood flow, physical body, digestion, all that gets involved.

Yeah, sometimes we're always looking for diversions, like food, TV, you know, bad habits, procrastinating. I'm just describing myself at this point. And so really, a lot of these things aren't healthy for us. You know, I mean, if you've got a nervous habit, you know, putting food in your pie hole is not a good idea and you know i mean i mean it's okay to eat but you know you you know some people are eating whole cakes i might be talking about myself again and you know some people go to drinking drugs something to take them away or to to distract them from how they're feeling. And so it sounds like it's a lot more maybe self-conscious, self-responsible,

self-actualized to instead face it and deal with it in your body and clean it out. That way you're not turning into heroin and cocaine like I am on Fridays or something. Yeah, all those diversions are indications that your system is holding a little bit more pain than you might want to admit to yourself. When I feel too much pain and watch too much TV, I would rather turn to breathwork to give me the chance to find out what's actually going on in my feeling world. losing my job afraid of relationship issue or anything that the snack break will not cover the tv break won't help you to connect with and just repeats the cycle if you indulge in some of these things i have a big fear my girlfriend won't leave me and i really need some peace and quiet and catch up on monowarm for three so my big fear is that she's never going to leave so clearly i need to do some work on something i don't know why is that never a problem in my life so this has been really insightful does does

anybody what other sort of things might people have out there in the ailments division that they can work with you on or that you can help with on or or i want to make sure we suss out all your different services you offer yeah they might be suffering from insomnia they might suffer the recent loss of a loved one they might have had some job change that gave them a loss in confidence giving attention to the breath can give you a chance to like not hold and stuff those feelings down not hold and stuff them in places that just fester and cause you to suffer extra. Breathwork lets your body remove and eject tension, stress, pain that could be nervous issues or anxiety issues or panic symptoms or fear that you can't explain. Breathwork gives your body the chance to understand why it's holding on and maybe choose to let

go gently and carefully and mindfully. It's so interesting how some of the simplest things, you know, sit down and breathe, take a gel pill, relax, focus on what's going on with your mind and body. Why don't people invest more in these sort of things? Is it a lack of knowledge or they think they don't have time or you think they, I don't know, they're just making excuses for themselves? What's the deal? Why aren't people fixing their trauma? Because I'm out dating and it's awful. Yeah, I want to say it's a combination of all of the above.

They might be unknowledgeable. This knowledge hasn't exactly spread across the main atmosphere of our culture. They might be avoiding it a little bit, but the problem with that is sometimes someone thinks they're avoiding a small challenge, and small at first, and if they avoid it 50 times in five months, it becomes a bigger one, and they keep giving it the same treatment,

that overlooking, neglecting, eating a sandwich to divert attention from those feelings. And they might just sit on traumas that build for like decades or life their whole life sometimes yeah i mean i mean in the dating field i run big dating groups for a dating meetup that we have where people meet in person for to to mingle and the amount of emotional damage and unresolved trauma that is out there in the marketplace is just astounding it's just it's just if i was a psychiatrist i just go to singles meetups all day

long yeah i might be speaking for myself here so i'm not out of turn but no it's it's i i've actually resolved my damage and i'm healed but what's interesting is when you do go through that process and and stuff you you see other people and you can identify their damage and what they're going through with their trauma and you don't want any part of it it's kind of like when you give up alcohol probably for aa i quit alcohol just just because i got tired of feeling shit at 54 but you know i imagine you, if you quit alcohol, you don't want to hang around with other people who are drinking alcohol. Yeah, totally.

Yeah. And so it's funny. You see people that have trauma, and, like, right away I'll see it, and I'll be like, oh, I don't want that near me. Why not? Because I put up with that for the first 50 years. I'm not doing any more of that. I don't care if it's on you or me.

I'm not doing it. Yeah. So there's that. Yeah, and who could blame you? Trauma is difficult to be around. It can cause you pain, cause mindless choices, reckless decisions, expensive ones maybe. Oh. Trauma is totally a burden.

Oh, yeah. I mean, it can cost you your life. I mean, and it's interesting how much it just really drags on your life, the quality of your life, and just can really affect everything. That's the thing about trauma. look back like you know over the last years of your life and you can see after a while the pattern of you just dragging your your issue unresolved issues through the sand or the dirt this whole time yeah i completely agree yeah it's it's definitely interesting it out there and more people need to take a look at what their childhood trauma is and whether it's big t trauma or little t trauma how it's how it's influenced them sounds like you do you talk about some men's issues too as well tell us a little bit about that yeah with men the men that i work with my goal is usually to get

them to step up feel secure understand their purpose understand their mission and maybe examine some of the causes of their frustration like in the case of men we do differ relatively often if you're carrying trauma we don't know about it no one tells us we're not aware we can play video games and get lost in social media we can eat too many pizzas on a friday night or sleep in until 1 p.m it's sad to watch so many men losing purpose not understanding why and carrying trauma for decades of times oh yeah i mean it's it's it it'll affect you it'll get to you so anything more we need to know before we go out on what people should do with you how can they onboard with you of course handshake with you find out if you're fit to their each other and working well

together tell us how that can all get laid out oh yeah the easiest method is that they reach out to me on my website what was I has a built-in feature lets people sign up for free for a 30-minute consult with me or my partner that website also has events that are very very affordable and we host a once a month online group breathwork session there There's always power in numbers. So the group breathwork sessions get a lot of energy moving and a lot of engagement that you might not find in a solo practice. We also have for those lucky enough to live in Minneapolis near us,

once a month live sessions, we have 20 to 20 people breathing all at once together. And that's also a powerful experience to talk about it together. Maybe the experience is intense or difficult or isolating, and joining up with a group at either the online session or in-person session gives some real transformational power. Oh, so you have both online and in-person then? Yeah, once a month each.

And then where are you located if people want to do the in-person thing? You're in minnesota right yeah we're located in eden prairie minnesota seven miles from minneapolis and st paul basically here's the twin cities area okay and yep minnesota they had i think i'm pretty sure it was minnesota they years ago when i was looking at getting huskies or wolves i found some husky wolf hybrids up in Minnesota. And they were black and they were more wolf than anything. And they were beautiful and scary as hell.

Wow, yeah, I bet so. I met some dog-sledding dogs in Alaska one time and they're scary. They look totally wild and feral and very, very sinewy and strong. Oh, yeah. My friend got a half-breed wolf, not from Minnesota, but someplace. And I remember going to his house one day, and that thing could blood-curling howl. And I go, your neighbors hate you.

And he goes, yeah. And I go, I think I'm just going to get huskies. I'm not going to do this half-wolf thing. Yeah, that's asking for a whole lot of wildness. Yeah. To get a wolf hybrid. Yeah. Although, I wolf hybrid. Yeah. Although it might be great, you know,

if when you want to, you know, you've got that rotten child who's in your neighborhood that you're just like, maybe that's time for this one to go. You can just throw him in the backyard and things take care of themselves or something. Don't do that, folks. That's just kidding.

I'm doing jokes. Don't write me. So, Greg, it's been wonderful to have you on the show thank you very much for coming on yeah it's been a pleasure i've been here thank you so much for having me chris thank you and thanks for us for tuning in for 20 years or 16 years it's almost 20 years in the former years and it'll be 20 in 2000 episodes go to goodreads.com for it says christmas linkedin.com for it says christmas christmas one the tiktok and the crazy place on the internet.

Be good to each other, stay safe, keep breathing, and we'll see you next time.