Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Therapeutic Breathwork: Unleash Your Power to Heal Yourself with Kate Horsman

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Kate Horsman is a breathwork expert who has been integral to Dr. Mindy's healing journey. Kate's trauma-focused breathwork approach aids in releasing stored traumas, which is particularly beneficial for women navigating perimenopause and menopause. In this episode, Kate and Dr. Mindy discuss the transformative impact of breathwork on healing, emphasizing cellular-level trauma release in contrast to other techniques. Kate shares her healing journey and the importance of relational healthcare in fostering deep healing spaces. The conversation delves into various breathwork practices, highlighting the role of breathwork in emotional detox and trauma processing for holistic healing experiences. To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://drmindypelz.com/ep229 Kate Horsman is a Nature-based Holistic Therapist and Breathwork Therapist. This field merges her education and work as a Professional Counsellor, Therapeutic Breathwork Facilitator and Mindfulness leader in Vancouver, BC Canada, the sacred and ancestral lands of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam Nations. Her education is dimensional, including multiple modalities to approach healing work. Her schooling has brought her to Professional Counselling (VCCT), Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Nutrition (CSNN), and Plant-based science (eCornell), melding the bridge betw Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.

on this episode of The Resetter Podcast, I have something really special for you. I have brought someone who is nearer and dear to my heart to the Resetter podcast to have an incredibly deep conversation. So this is Kate Horstman. She is my breath worker. If you've been listening to my podcast for some time, I have mentioned her several times. She has been a huge part of my healing journey, my peri-memial.

menopause, metapausal healing journey that I have been on for pretty much the last decade. And in the last year, I found Kate's work. And I really wanted to understand breathwork. And I know a lot of you have had those questions. A lot of you have reached out to me to ask me what breath work is. There's a lot of confusion about what type of breath work should we be doing. And so I wanted to bring Kate to the Resetter podcast to really just dive in, to her style of breath work. So if you've been listening to the different podcasts over the last

couple of weeks, Dr. Sarah Godfreyed in the last podcast before this one, talked about breathwork as a form of healing trauma. And that's exactly what Kate does, that her style of breath work is trauma work. And she is one of the most beautiful souls that you will ever meet. You just feel love in her presence. And she does what I would call a therapeutic breathwork where you inhale through the mouth and exhale out through the mouth. And as you'll hear in this podcast, it puts you into this very interesting place where your body talks to you and your body tells you the traumas that it has been holding on to. And sometimes that's like a memory that pops up. Sometimes that's a feeling. I share in this episode how I originally went to her to heal the trauma

of my near-death experience in my 30s and you'll hear what happened in my first breathwork session with her. But what I really wanted you all to hear is what's possible for your health. Whether you have an unresolved trauma that you know needs to be healed or you're stuck with your weight or perhaps you just feel like you lost. your vibrancy of life, or maybe you have a condition, like Sarah pointed out, an autoimmune condition that you know potentially has a root of trauma that is unhealed. This is the episode for you. I can't emphasize enough how I feel like every woman over 40 should get a session with Kate and really dive into what your body is telling you as you go through the menopausal experience

because there's an opportunity there to release what no longer serves you and to step into an incredibly beautiful, authentic version of yourself. And you'll hear Kate and I talk about that. So this is a heartfelt conversation. It is deep. Please listen all the way through. We go into the practical at the end. You'll hear Kate's journey. And I hope that this resonates with you and this touches your life. If this is a tool you need, I hope I brought you a resource that will move you along your healing path. So Kate Horsman, I love this woman. And what I maybe love the most about her is if you go to her Instagram, she calls herself a professional listener and a steward to the soul.

And that is exactly what you're about to hear and exactly who she is. So enjoy. Welcome to the Resetter podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Well, let me start off by welcoming you to my podcast. I feel like I've seen you so much on a screen and now I feel like I'm inviting you into my podcast home. So welcome.

I'm so happy you're here. I'm so pleased to be here. And it does feel like there's a bit of a different quality of like, oh, I get to come into your living space. So thanks for having me. It's funny, I was thinking today that one of the things I love about people that I've invited into my universe are people who have had their own struggle and found a really interesting solution and then decided to turn around and teach it to the world. And the phrase that I've heard a lot is from pain to purpose.

And I think it's a beautiful phrase. And I think you really, really typify that. So I would love to start this conversation with your journey. You can give us the Cliff Notes version, but your journey and how you even came to this place of diving into breathwork. One of the things that I find myself in now in my early 40s is how resonant some of the first, first places of purpose really came to me. When I was a child, I thought it was going to be a doctor. right? I was so so curious about about what was going on for people. I wanted to help people. There's also a lot of health and illness issues in the household. And so there's this way that I always wanted to be a helper. Things got really sidetracked for me as I put my energy, my focus into dance and ballet. And I was very high-level dancer, was training, you know, very young age, eight hours a day, Toronto, Winnipeg, I'm over here in Canada, then eventually

New York. So a lot of the focus of my life, I was really this artistic being and it was a beautiful place for me to be an expression, but at the same time, I was moving through a lot of my own internal pain. There was a lot going on for me. And I often come back to, and even more recently, thinking that I'm so grateful that I had dance because it was one of the places where I could be in my body with expression. It looked like something was actually hurting or harming me because this sport, this art was just pretty intense and life altering. But it actually saved me in a lot of ways. So there was a lot of stuff happening for me. There was a lot of trauma.

And I didn't have the, I didn't have a way of processing. it, of expressing it. And as we know, our brains are just so brilliant at finding strategies to support whatever feels like too much. And for me, pretty early on, this looked like changing the relationship to food and my body in order to find safety in myself. And so from a very young age, I actually developed an eating disorder and struggled with anorexia from ages 11, 12 to 20 something. It became very, very ingrained. So it's such a juxtaposition or maybe even paradox is a better word of how something that harmed me so much and almost cost me my life also, you know, saved me from it. It created a distance from which I could actually be in my body and the experience of my life.

So during this process, I definitely felt as though I had limited access to different types of care, holistic therapy, and really deep relational containers. I don't remember having someone close to me, you know, sit down and being like, what's it like to be you right now? Especially from like a helping context. I think I think people saw what I was becoming and there was something of like, oh, she's on this trajectory. She's on this path. And even in helping spaces, and this is something, again, that sort of like leaps forward into my work, it didn't feel like there was this humanity. It was like we were so focused on symptoms. And actually, when we look at eating disorders and some of the treatment there, it's really focused around symptom management and behaviors.

And I get why. It's an important part of it. And there's something so much, so much beyond that. So just bringing that humanity into it. And I actually didn't even know it was missing until, you know, later in life. And people would come into my world. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, that is how it's supposed to feel. That's how helping can look, can feel, can sense. So miraculously, through, you know, those really rather dark times, I pulled myself out. And I found a health and a safety in my body. but I also don't feel like I felt that freedom from my pain, my trauma, right?

I may have been in a body that was working better for me and I wasn't as interrupted by this illness, but I still had to look at what felt so, so painful that I had to try and disappear completely. Right? That's how much it hurt. The way I interpret that is like there was a health crisis going on. there was no support to give you a way out of the health crisis. And you found a place. And this is very, this is a lot of, a lot of people. I mean, there's a lot of versions of this story. I mean, I was this in my early, early 20s with chronic fatigue. And so when you found that way out,

that thread out, how old were you? 21, 22. Yeah, 21, 22. And I would, I would say that, you know, I was forced into this sort of initiation of surrendering to life or surrendering, you know, to not life. And I feel like I did that rather young, and I have had to continue doing that, facing that edge of surrender to see what is there for me, right? And so I pulled myself out enough to be a part of the world. And right away there, I was like, I have to do something with this. I have, like, if I can do this, anyone can do this.

Like, I kind of beat the odds. And so I plunged right into, in my training to be a counselor. So that was, like, more traditional route. And really, really enjoyed that. And I was like, oh, like, yeah, maybe I can do this. And then by the end of that, I was like, oh, wait a second. Like, I'm still, I'm still a really young person that's still hurting a lot. And so I pressed pause on that.

But in the meantime, I kept adding different dimensions to healing, to understanding myself, to modalities. Because I think, you know, I didn't know this at the time, but I was creating this framework in which there could be layers in this really holistic way of supporting a human being, right? that which I didn't have. Like I essentially think that I created the conditions for someone like me to come through. Right. That's such an interesting interpretation of the pain to purpose because I think a lot of practitioners that I've sat with would all say that there was a missing part to their journey back to a whole version of themselves.

And so they created that. and then they turned around and taught that. And what I want people listening to understand is that, you know, when I grew up, it was very much you had a problem. And so you went to the doctor, you were given a diagnosis and you were giving a treatment. It was very linear. And in today's world, I really feel like that linear path is no longer successful. And what is really appearing are is more of sort of a hybrid

of many different modalities that are able to create, like you said, a healing container for people. And that's what I heard and what you just said is like I needed to create a different version that had never been created before. And the freedom of that, if you're in a chronic situation, if you're in a moment where you just can't find the door out, when somebody has found the door out and then created a whole room for you to step into. So I just want to point that out because what I find is that a lot of my listeners, I found this when I was in practice, is they're still looking for that one thing and there is no one

thing. I almost feel like it's look for the person who has had your situation and pulled themselves out of it. That's who you go to. You know, Mindy, you're so right there. I think that we don't emphasize enough the healing power of relationship. Right? And so when we can be in relationship with another person, even if they haven't,

don't have that shared experience, which I do think is absolutely beneficial, especially with certain types of conversations, I do think that finding the person where you feel like you can just be in the room with and you can feel supported. And even like that, even that space or that silence can be filled. And it's not about all what I need to be different. Can you hold me here? Yeah. And can you see me? Can you see me? And I think that's what we're really missing in our healthcare system is we don't, we're not practitioners. I'm just going to put everybody in one big bucket

are not seeing the person in front of them. And especially if there's insurance involved and there's a system involved, then all of a sudden we've only seen, there's only a process. There's not a person. So, so yeah, I just want to point that out because it's really, I think, is where healthcare is going, is following somebody who had what you had, created a solution for themselves, and then turned around to lift other people up in it. It's going to be a relational health care,

not a systemized health care. And I think it's just, you just said it so beautifully. I didn't want to let it. Yeah, no, no. Thank you for highlighting that. I mean, going back to sort of that transition period from being someone that was still moving through their stuff to stepping and is still moving through their stuff as a human.

But helping other people with it, I felt so unseen in so many moments of my life. And again, there's this interesting, it kind of gives me chills, this considering like I attempted to unsee myself to just become almost invisible, right? And then to be more in my body, which is so much of my work now and helping people come into their bodies to be able to witness is, is just such a blessing. And if anyone leaves my space feeling more seen or more heard, then I have done my work, right?

Yes, you have. And many of people have done that, including myself, left your space and feeling exactly that. You know, one of my favorite parts about you, let me just say, and not you yourself. But when I went to your website to actually read the clinical you, I was like, wow, like, you're a mutt. Like, you have a lot of different, you have a lot of different pedigree going on here.

But let's dive specifically into breathwork. I want to point out a couple of things that took me a really long time to try to kind of understand this. And the first was Bruce Lipton's work and how your thoughts. become can cause an inflammatory response within the cell and i've brought him on this show we've chatted about that and that was very much like wait this this is so counterintuitive to what we're taught in a traditional health care system our thoughts are in creating cellular inflammation and then the second one you and i've talked about before which is the body keeps the score and that

that book i think changed so many lives but it really did an incredible job of explaining how our tissues hold on to these traumas. And so when I think about traumatic work, I almost think we have to bypass the brain and go straight to the body because the brain hasn't been able to figure it out. Amen. Amen. I think that there's this way that our brain can come in and start to reorganize it with us, but our body has to be a part of it. It remembers. It remembers so, so much. There's such a wisdom available there. Right. And I know that there's a lot right now where they're talking about they don't believe talk therapy works anymore. So, you know, and coming from a clinical background, have you noticed what's the difference from your shoes

being talking to somebody about their problem as opposed to letting the body talk about what's going on? And maybe for clarification, never worked in the clinical space, but definitely still as professional counselor, right? And which is just a much more, what we would call traditional, you know, Western talk therapy, right? Yeah. I sort of quote unquote traditional because what is more traditional, if we go back in time, we're some of these other practices that we're starting to get into now, our breath,

psychedelics, you know, energy medicine. These are, those are all very old and ancient and much more traditional than what we, you know, fit into the box of, yeah, our talk therapies now. But yeah, so sort of to mirror the same way that I was starting to notice that there was this gap in my own somatic world. I had not even connected with my body. I felt like there was this missing gap with clients that, of course, and you'll notice this, I will pause and be like, oh, yeah, what's happening there? Yeah, you say that all the time. Yeah, and that's like trying to sort of reorganize us back to like what our body has to say.

And so there are subtle ways that we can do that. But then there's, you know, much deeper and direct ways if we have the capacity to do that, like psychedelics, like breathwork, that put us in direct path with some of what's there, the material of our lives, the material of our traumas, what lives in our body and wants to be acknowledged, set free, break apart. Yeah, catalyzed. So with breathwork, what I have found, as I've shared, my journey with you and some of the ahas that I've had as my body has spoken is that there are a lot

of different types of breath work and it seems to be kind of confusing for people. It sure is. So can you talk? Yeah, can you talk a little bit? Like I would call the type of work you, the breath work that I've been doing with you, I just call it therapeutic breath work as opposed to I in the morning sometimes I'll pop on other ship app. Really like that app.

Or Wimhoff, I did Wim Hof for a while. Like those, even though those are both breath, they're vastly different. Are they not? They're totally different. And I think it's so important to say, and what can I say about this that is helpful for the listeners? You know, I think that there's breath exercises and then there's breath experiences. When you share with me, and both and both are so valuable. I, too.

I dip into something much more experiential that requires much more support. And then I also, in the morning, I'm like, oh, how can I fill these lungs? How can I increase the volume of my lungs so that I have the health benefits and the clarity and some of the instantaneous stuff that breath can give us? Right. So there is a purpose and a place for both, and there is a separation between them. So with this style of breathwork, and I think, again, in trying to create some of the thing that was unique and authentic and honest to me. I did want to incorporate some of the values

that I was coming in with in being able to hold the human experience. So some of those skills as in professional counseling, oh, if stuff comes up, I can process that with someone. We can talk about that together. There's a little bit more containment than some of these circumstances were just like, oh, we're opening up the field and there's so much coming through. And that can be really destabilizing for people. And so, yeah, so what we're doing in these moments where we're going towards this active breathing is we're actually beginning to stress the body out in a sense. So the breath isn't about resetting our nervous system, although we'll probably get there on the flip side of it. During, we're actually activating, right? We're probably getting into the sympathetic

state. So we're breathing so big and so large, we're kind of opening our body up. And that's sort of me sort of being a little bit artistic in those words. But we're, we're lessening or softening our default mode network. So the first 10 minutes, 15 minutes of breathing can often feel like a little bit of a struggle. Continuously breathing with a lot of energy. And that's where the brain is like, oh, I'm not quite used to this. Is this, are we sure? Are we sure? if we're supposed to be doing this, so there can be this little internal battle that's going on. And then once we get past that part, we drop into the body or the soul or the spirit or the energy field. There can be so many layers to that. So then, you know, a breathwork session can last

anywhere from, you know, 10 to 50 minutes, depending on where someone is at and what we're working through. And this is where, you know, we are participating. There's sort of four-levels. layers that I sort of see within this type of breathwork therapy. We're going towards surrender. We're creating the conditions to let surrender come through in a way that feels supportive and safe. That we are deepening the second is going through experience, that we are connected through our emotional experience, our embodied experience.

There have been very few moments in most people's lives where it's actually been okay or even not okay, but to go towards emotion, right? That these cries are, these whales are holy. Like whatever happens here, I can be in the experience of it. Yep, yeah. And then the third part of it is being able to be a bit exploratory about it. What is this? Can I connect with myself more deeply because of it?

You know, a lot of time people in, we're accessing somewhat of an altered state of consciousness, we have access to our intuition, to insight, to vision, to more sensation, to trust, to truth, all of these qualities that are just refining, you know, who we are. And then the fourth stage is reintegration. And this is often the place that people just kind of rush by with psychedelic work. We kind of hang out here a little bit longer, breathwork, not so much. But we've taken all of this medicine and we kind of are like, oh, I feel kind of born again. Wait, what happened? And if we've done our job, we're like pulling our medicine bag with us and bringing that out into our life. What is what is what did I find there? What did what was that like for

me? And how can I bring that into? Yeah, what is being asked of me? You know my interpretation of what you just said is it's very much like fasting. It's because you're going into a hypoxic state, right? When you're doing the breath work like you, let me not, you and I even talked about this last night. Like there was a little bit of concern for me of like, oh, I don't know if I'm really wanting my legs to be tingly today or my hands to be tingly. And yet my educated brain knows that that's a hypoxic state that I have put myself in.

And it's in the absence that we often find those answers, just like fasting. When you go into a fasted state, so many people, I always say people go there because they're like, I want to lose weight. And I always say, join us for losing weight. And then I hope you stay for transformation. I see. Yeah. Because the longer you stay with these fasting principles, the more you uncover about yourself

because it's in the absence of food that you can hear yourself. What I heard what you just said was it's in the absence of oxygen in some sense that that default network comes down and you start to, is that accurate? You can, you can, you could disagree with me. No, no, no, I think you're right. And like, I guess where I come in, I'm like, yeah. And there's like, I think it's absence of control. Oh, yes.

Well, they're both absence of control. Yeah. Okay, wait. Okay, wait. This is good. So I love you. So when there's absence of control, that's when you find the answers. That is the deep dive into mystery.

Yeah. Right. And that is that's. But why is that so hard? Why is that so hard to embrace? Yeah. I mean, for each of us, there's a different reason, right? But I think we're conditioned to hold on to control.

see it everywhere. We're also highly individualistic and we're like, oh, I got to keep myself safe. And then if we actually have been harmed, we're like, oh, no, actually, it's not safe to lose control, right? So it's like a thoughtfulness even in, yeah, why we want to hold on. There's probably very good reason why letting go of control feels so hard. So we have to honor that. And at the same time, again, if the conditions are right and the people are right and those forces can align, can we practice what it would be like to let go just a little bit more? Can we dance in the mystery of unknown? Because the known hasn't been working out for us too well, right? No, it hasn't. No. I really think of, there's a beautiful episode of, I'm not sure if you're

familiar with Michael Mead, who talks about myth. And I, I, I, I love bringing myth into conversation as well, because I think we ought to be a little bit esoteric and creative about these experiences. Again, it's not this linear. There's no binary. Like, let's bring a little bit of juice into it. And he talks about the story of like the caterpillar to butterfly. And I think our culture has sort of grabbed onto this effect that the butterfly or the caterpillar just grows wings. It goes through this process.

And it's, you know, in this state until it like, grows its wings and then it like expands it was this beautiful thing and it is but what we also forget is the caterpillar actually dissolves into utter goo it is these are these imagine themselves there is a complete disillusion of what was that allows it to step into what it has always meant to be right oh that is so good oh wow yep and i would say you know as scary as that sounds it's scary it's scary the the other thing this is where i thought you were going to go with the butterfly one is they always say that if you cut if you were to take a chrysalis and cut it open that the caterpillar would cannot emerge it has to it actually has to push itself out through

make that difficult moment so that it can turn in and it can't go into the butterfly without the difficult moment. That pressurization of like what would it take? Yeah. But I really love the other side of that I never thought about like you know, we always talk about the butterfly when it comes out. Now it's this beautiful butterfly. But I never thought about what happened to the caterpillar. Like it turned into goo. And you know, that has been my experience as I've been working on my own healing journey is that there is a you just, it's like a trail of goo that just keeps getting left behind me. And I'm like, well, I guess I don't need that anymore as I moved to my version of my butterfly. So I think that was so well said. But it's so brave, right? And I think we do need those reminders because when we

come up up against these edges of our life, we actually think something is so wrong with us. And this could be a moment of how right there is with us. And I don't want to diminish our pain. I know that one. But I also think. think that these are initiatory and moments. And we talked about this too, that are just so, so important to be thoughtful and cared for because if we go towards them in right relationship, whatever that is, with our healers, with our support group, with our community, we have the chance to see through what was always meant to be, right? It's not about fixing. It's about it's about remembering, like literally remembering, like our body back together.

Yeah. Yeah. And one of the experiences that I've had with breath work and just diving into, you know, my journey, my own emotional journey, has been that I spent most of my life avoiding the difficult, avoiding the trauma, thinking that that was going to help save me. And what I've actually learned in the last two years is it's actually going into it, like just go right into it. and whatever that trauma is, it dissolves.

And that really was a whole new experience for me because I was what I always say, I grew up in a lemonade family where everybody made lemonade out of whatever lemons. And what I've learned is sometimes if you take a bite of the lemon and you actually don't add any sugar to it and you just embrace the whole lemon

that there is a sweetness in that as well. And I think breathwork really, is that kind of experience because you don't know the traumas that are organizing your thoughts right now. And, you know, when I first came to you, one of the things that I thought was what my brain was curious about was a story and body keeps the score about a young couple that was in a car accident. And they survived. They witnessed some pretty horrific. It was a multi-car car accident, but they survived and they witnessed death.

And they could never sleep afterwards because they felt like if they just let go, that they were actually going to die. And, you know, for me, that I resonated with that from my near death experience. And so I thought, oh, my gosh, I wonder if something like my sleep pattern. I wonder if something like my inability to relax or sit on the couch is because of this near death trauma that I had in my 30s. And what shocked me, and I just want to bring this to light, because I thought this was so interesting, is do you remember that one of the breathwork sessions we did where I was like, I want to go back to that trauma and see what my body has in store for me?

And I literally went back into the anaphylactic experience. Yeah, I was so powerful. So powerful. But then, you know, it was interesting because then it just felt like I was freed from it. So talk a little bit about how does that happen? How does the body hold on to emotions? And when we use breathwork as a way to access it, it shocks me what the body does and what the body reveals to you. I'll try my best.

I mean, I think that there's still so much, again, leaning into this mystery and not to kind of cop out of the question. But there's still so much we don't really know and understand about this. And there's parts that we can, we can't, right? Our bodies are like these tension-filled bodies. Of course, on a cellular level, there's things that change. There's hormones that happen. There's our nervous systems impacting all of this, right? But we know there's no denying that there's so much life that is lived there.

And when we have the opportunity to go towards it bravely, like you said, and I think it's worth saying, maybe I'll just a little, you know, friendly, reminder for those working through trauma. If this is one of the places, find the containers that feel like they can hold it. Like they're large enough, connected enough to hold what's there. Because I think beauty of like knowing that there's so much work out there, psychedelics, breathwork-assisted therapy, we can sort of feel like, I can just, I can go to the workshop and it can happen. And it can. And again, making sure that you have the right people around you to work through that,

like, oh, Mindy was such a blessing to move into those spaces with you. And I'm so glad that we could do that in the way that really honored the way that's shown up for you for so long. Yeah. You know, what was interesting, I think I told you this, is that for years when I would tell the story about the jellyfish, my throat would contract. And after that session, like the hold, the tightness in my throat probably went down by like 75%. And I could actually tell the story. And as I started to tell the story, it was like it wasn't physically gripping me anymore. And one of the interesting things in a ha's I'm having about trauma right now is that trauma doesn't always show up like a depressed human.

Trauma can show up as weight loss resistance. trauma can show up as chronic pain. Trauma in the body can show up as an autoimmune condition. You know, trauma shows up as overwhelm and insomnia and anxiety and quick to react to stress. These are things that we haven't given enough value to. We sort of push them aside, medicate them, have a glass of wine, do things to kind of ignore them. Yeah. Yeah. To manage the symptom in the moment. But if the, you know, what I love about the body keeps the score idea is that if the body had a language, it would talk to you in symptoms. So when, and if the brain, you know, the brain's not meant to be in constant state of reaction. So at some point, the nervous system gets maxed and the body system gets maxed.

And then everything starts to fall apart. And what I have experienced in breath work is now you get to go in and heal whatever has tanked the body, has destroyed the body's ability to regulate itself. Part of that is allowing sometimes the impulse of the trauma or the memory to complete itself, right? Sometimes when they talk about trauma, it's like this unfinished impulse to be able to run away to say something, to have emotion, right? It deserves completion, and that is some of what we are doing when we're able to access, especially the emotional world of the body, because we, again, are moving further and further away from our bodies, therefore moving further and further away from our emotions. So if we allow this expression to come through, there is something that shifts in the body,

where it's like, you know, after a big cry and we do one of these. oh something just reset itself there. So on a deeper level, you know, these moments where you were experiencing and hopefully this feels okay to share, it's also not totally unique. You trusted what was happening with your body and you had movements. You were assisting in this process. You're like, oh, like trying to get free. right? And I've seen this before. I've seen people, you know, start to scream or start to sing or do a shape. And it's like, okay, we're not actually thinking those things through, right? Hopefully there's just enough, yeah, enough safety and the whole experience to allow that sort of completion. Like the body knows what to do. And in those moments, you were assisting yourself, which is to say that the medicine is within.

in you, which is the really fascinating thing about breathwork that I think makes it, you know, just very unique from other modalities. And I love other modalities. They've been so beneficial to me. And we're not outsourcing anything to anyone other than our own lungs. Oh my God. That's so beautiful. Which is ties really into, again, my prayer for both men and women is just understanding that you do have this healing power within you. And sometimes where you become so disconnected from it that you need an experience like breathwork or fasting. My biggest thing I love about fasting is when people are like, oh my God, I lost 30 pounds. You changed my life. And I'm like, oh, no, no, no. I didn't change your life. You changed your life. You stepped into a healing power

within your body that nobody taught you how to where where that lived. And I feel like that's the same analogy with breathwork that my experience with breathwork has been that you're stepping into a medicine that's within you, that you, you know, it's hard to find until you go into this breath pattern experience. Then it's like all of a sudden the medicine reveals itself. It's completely intrinsic and fascinating. You know, even thinking about the, it's the first thing, breath. First thing you do when you come into the world, well, probably like there's a few other things happening too, but like you take a breath and it's a last thing you meet when you leave the world. It is connected to you through all of that. And so, you know, again, I think some of the

emphasis on breath is healing is so powerful right now, whether we're talking about breath exercises or even, again, someone like James Nestor, who's a well-to-year-old. of information on like the science of breathing. It's like you're starting to actually trust that there's something extremely valuable about this set of lungs, right? And not just this set of lungs, your set of lungs, you know, there is, yeah, a wisdom and a power there that meets us each time we take a breath, right? And then I think if we were to look at it through, you know, a meditation standpoint,

you know, that's always been the thing. It's like with each in breath and with each out breath, we have a chance to be. begin again. And in this state, we're like, we're ramping it up exponentially. Yeah. But I also see it like it's a form of detox. It's like an emotional detox. So you're going into, yeah, this rapid breath and the emotions are coming out, which is why it's so beautiful to have someone like you assisting you through that experience. They're coming up and out. So it's, I also, and you know, the lungs are a detox organ. And so, but the type of, but the type of of breathing and I want to go into what a session looks like here in a moment. But the type of

breathing that we do with you, it feels like an emotional detox. It's like what needs to come up and out today so that my body can start to be more at peace and be more coherent. So I just want to like I really emphasize. And as scary as that sounds, it actually isn't scary when you're processing it. To me, it's more like, oh, I didn't know. that was there. And thank you, Body, for sharing with me what you've been storing. I'm now ready to acknowledge it and move from it. So talk a little bit about, like, how a session works, like what, I mean, and we should probably talk about the type of breath, what it feels like to go into this breath. Because my experience has been, well, A, you're such a loving human that it's, it's,

you create, even on Zoom, you create the most beautiful container. So, you know, everybody I've sent your way. I just am like, you're going to love her. You just, there's not a, there's not a judgmental bone that I have found in your body. And you really have done a phenomenal job as creating a container that allows these emotions to come up and out without judgment, which I think is really important. So talk a little bit about what a session looks like so people can kind of wrap their eye, their, their logical brains around that look like. Of course, again, my sessions may be a little bit different than other people's. For me, it begins with heart-centered conversation, right? We have to build the relationship of trust in order to go to the places that could be hard. And so this could look

different for everybody. Some people be like, I'm curious, but I'm not really ready. So, okay, well, let's just spend time there. And so we spend time there. We also spend, you know, as much, as much as we can on creating intention. But what I will say with this is this gives the mind a place of focus. Whether we get there or not isn't really the point, right? I think it helps to ground us and anchor us in moments where we feel the instability of what's coming up. And if we have our heart set on, oh, I've really, like, I've been going through this hard thing. And I want to get deeper or I want to connect with myself more beautiful.

that could be a long and continuous intention that we hold together. When we go into the active part of breathing, whether I have some people in person and a lot over Zoom, we're doing the whole experience laying down, hopefully in somewhere that feels really comfortable, safe. I always think that beauty is very important in our healing. So however you can create intentional space is important to me, it feels important to you.

And we do a little bit of grounding. And this just allows us to anchor into what feels alive in our body right now. Because we're going to go from like here, we've been working like all in this space of the mind and we're going to drop into the body pretty quick. So we just create a little bit of room for that. And then as we start to do the act of breathing, it's just two-phase breath. we're breathing deeply through our belly, then our chest, then we're exhaling. And we get into this rhythm, right? And this is, again, those first five to ten minutes can feel a little bit uncomfortable.

This is where we might have some agitation in the body or the mind doesn't want to go there or it's scared or it feels panicked because for some of us, we live up there and we think that, you know, something that's going to happen. And so again, with like a tune. awareness of like who's who's with you, you know, can hold you through that. I just want to point out that, you know, you're like when we're doing it, I've got my headset in. I'm lying down. My eyes are closed. You're guiding me through it. It's a journey. And yeah. So it's like, and you do such a good job of sort of setting up like it's not like you just rush into the breathwork, but it's almost like it's like a visualization. Like you're sort of guiding.

me into a visualization, and then you have incredible music. In fact, last night when I went to bed, I was like, I think I need that playlist. Oh, I'm sending it to you. That was, yeah, that was really good. And then the music kind of helps create, for me, it definitely gets me into that emotional place. And then you're starting the breath work. And it's a mouth, mouth breathing. Like you're not using your nose, which is how you get to this other state. It's not an inhale. exhale to the nose and that's right and and this is contrary to some of what we will hear about healthy breathing when we're breathing healthfully during the day obviously we want to use predominantly our nose right breathing through our mouth isn't long-term healthy move but in these

moments it it actually is right and James Sessor as well talks about this because people question like why would you do this if you're supposed to be breathing you know through your nose so so yes there is this way that I'm sort of accompanying you on a journey. Your body and your sensations and your emotions are going to guide us. And then wherever need be, if there's assistance, then, you know, there's a hand there ready to like, you know, catch you, catch whatever material is there. And yeah, the music is a part of it. It can be evocative to the emotions, allows us to drop in, you know, to something that, you know, could feel touched, right? we have these layers where our hearts have not been open.

And so we start to breathe. Essentially, it's a heart opening experience. And we're even breathing through that heart center, right? If we're talking about this from a chakra place, you know, in the belly and then in the heart, we're opening this up. And there's going to be some stuff. So having things like music or connection or, yeah, any supportive dialogue can sometimes just facilitate us and where we're going.

My experience is that we've done different versions of the breathwork sessions where I've set an intention because I love intentions. And then there's been a few where I'm like, I don't know, let's just breathe today. And then those always shock me because like memories come up that the brain had hidden from me. And there's been some pretty intense ones that was like, whoa, wow, I forgot about that. And then when it comes to the surface, it feels like there's like, wow, that happened at that age. And that must be why I now behave this way. Like it creates like an anchor back into the past to understand the behaviors and the way your mind is working in the present. And I'm not sure. I mean, I've done lots of psychedelic journeys and I haven't found it always to be that body experience. Whereas this feels. like, again, the body's like, hey, I got a memory for you. I feel like you should, you should maybe work this one out. Let's bring this one up. And it's, they, it doesn't feel scary to me.

I mean, I mean, partly because you're so loving, but also it feels like a release. It feels like, oh, wow, that was in my nervous system. That was there causing the depression and the anxiety and the lack of focus. Wow, well, let's unpack that and like get that out. And so I just, I just want to say that because it is, I don't know another vehicle that allows you to go into the storage bank of the body in that way. And I think if you're hearing this, it sounds scary, but it doesn't feel scary. For me, I don't know if the other clients you work with, you know, if they sort of have maybe over time, as they trust you more and more, they have that same sort of experience. But I know a lot of people have said to me like, breathwork sounds scary.

And I'm like, really? It sounds like freedom. Me too. It sounds like freedom. And also sometimes moving towards scary things is how we get more free. So it's again like goes back to that dissolving the dissolution of the caterpillar. It's like letting go can be just really terrifying. The beautiful thing is, is, you know, the risks are kind of minimal, especially if held appropriately. Yes. We can practice what's scary in a safe way, right? Yes. And then we can, we can pump, we can pump the brakes, or we can also press on the gasoline, right? And we have those choices with breathwork that, again, I think, make it a little bit unique to this process, whereas, you know, going and doing ayahuasca for everybody might not, you know, be the right thing. Oh, I can practice

what that would be like to sense into myself a little bit more. And if it feels too much, okay, I can pump the brakes. I can also process why that is. I can then pump the gas again and go towards it. It's scary and freedom and both belong. Yeah. And what I've noticed is that, you know, in those moments that those really vulnerable thoughts come up, my brain does have a moment where like, am I going to speak this? And I've said this to you before. Like, I'm not sure I'm going to say this. No, I'm going to say it. And then I say it. And then it just feels like relief. So, you know, for people listening, I also want to say that like the brake and the gas pedal is controlled by the breathwork. You can decide to slow down or speed up. And then you can enhance the experience or

you can slow the experience down. And then when the memory comes up or whatever shows up for you, you also have the choice at that moment if you're going to actually verbalize it or not. Absolutely. You remain in choice, which again, with other systems, you might not have that. So I've had people that have had sort of what I seem to be big experiences. And they just want to hold that for themselves. And we respect that and honor that. And I'll give you instructions. of what to walk away with and let's come back next time. So it can still be on your terms, right? I think because so much of the culture is in this overshare, and it's like beautiful. Like we want some vulnerability, but it's also like we don't have to share everything.

You get to have choice in this. That gets to be totally yours. And if you're getting stuck in something, cool, let's talk about it. Let's see what's there. So, yeah. What's the difference between an individual breathwork session and a group breath work session? So, you know, my inclination is always to kind of go into the individual space. It just, I feel like I've spent so much of my life in a more group public space. But then I had that experience in Abitha where I was in a group doing breath work and some profound healing happened for me there. So do you see any difference between?

the healing response if it's done on an individual level than a group level? You know, it's really hard to say because I've also had beautiful experiences in group and outside of group. And I think it's important to say that a lot of our healing work, it's so beautiful, especially, you know, some of the work you're doing, Mindy, is bringing people together. And so I think there's something really interesting there that as emotion comes up, it's like, oh, other people's emotions are coming up. And you're kind of like, everyone's kind of in an experience now. And so I think there's something. and I think there's something magical there. I am also really drawn to some of the deeper places.

And so I can't say for certain that the individual is more depth-oriented, but I do know that there's more capacity to hold what's there, and that feels important to me. Because again, in the sort of system where it's so easy for things to be overlooked or not attuned to, right? We're in these really open states, And we miss an opportunity to go towards someone to hold their hand or say, I'm right here with you. Yeah.

I don't want to miss that. So for me, it's an intuition thing and also just something that feels deeply resonant in my work. And for other people, it will be really different. I always think that if you're working through something that feels, yeah, important, make sure to give it the importance it needs, right? So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I can see a benefit for both. I mean, the experience in Abitha that was so profound for me is that when this emotion came up and out, these two women in the group just held me. And it was like a really another one of those moments of women healing women. And it just, it was like, again, I think this is so different than talk therapy. To me, talk therapy is like,

I have this thought, I have this problem, and then there's sort of a redefining of it. Well, how about you look at it this way? What if you look at it that way? And reframing, and you're really good. You got some good reframe. But you can't reframe everything, right? No. Right. And some things just need to come up and out and then they're done. And that has been my experience. I mean, the deep stuff, obviously, any big trauma you're going to have to keep coming back to to keep healing. think there's something unique about breathwork where it's like up and out here it is and and the body just shows it shows it reveals it to you so who do you think I mean the way I I use you is probably that sounds horrible you can use you can use me all you want Mindy

I just sort of like wait a second I don't I don't feel used by you at all thank you great Thank you. The way my experience of leaning into your presence and your wisdom, it is, it's very abstract. And sometimes I don't know what we're going to talk about. Sometimes I don't know what's going to show up. But then I've told you this before. Days afterwards, there's just so much clarity. And it's like, whoa, and I see my life differently. And I didn't even know that that was a possibility or that something was blocking me from reaching a happier, healthier, more vibrant state. So, and then sometimes, like, when I first came to you, I was like, I had this near death. We got to, we got to deal with this. What do you find people coming to you? Do they come with a condition? Do they come with a known trauma? Do they come with

curiosity? I'm sure it's all of that. But it just so if people are listening and they're like, this sounds interesting, I want them to sort of understand you don't really have to have a very specific thing to come to. And if you do have a deep trauma, I mean, personally, I just think you're the gal to go to, like, because of the container you've created. That's, that's, I've done my work then. Yeah. So I think it's important that people know that, you know, there's a variety of reasons why people might want to connect with this work, not least of which is a deeper connection with yourself, right? It can be, it can be a simple, and it, as profound as that, right?

We're so disconnected from our authenticity, our voice, our heart. Yeah. And so for a lot, especially, you know, this imagined demographic that you've been working with, this is like an interesting chapter in people's lives where they're going towards like a lot of feelings, a lot of emotions, a lot of changes. And so I think that that in and of itself is, cause for exploration in whichever avenue that you want to take it. It's like I want to know me more. I want to connect with what feels important to me. I think I generally hear quite often, I want to feel

more connected to my body. I want to feel connected to my emotions. I want to trust myself more. I feel like there's something bigger for me. I feel like I'm not, I'm just like, you know, a little bit removed from my life. Like those are some of the more general, you know, ideas. And then, and then for others, you know, if they're working, you know, with specific issues, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and we might be walking with like what the fear is there, what it would be like to let go a little bit more. So it does really run the range and there doesn't have to be a problem with you, right? And let's acknowledge that alone. It's like, again, we're, that's not even part of this framework. You have never been broken. But you don't need to identify

with like, oh, like, this just isn't right. It can be like, I want to know myself more. Hmm. Hmm. And that, you know, that's so beautifully said because it ties in, as you know, to my feeling about perimenopause and so many of the women that listen to this podcast are 40 and over. And one of the things that I've noticed as I've been teaching hormones to the world is that when we hit our 40s, as these hormones come down, as they're naturally supposed to do, so do our neurotransmitters. And so you've got like eight to 10 neurochemicals that are massively shifting. And my experience, now that I'm postmenopausal, 54, like if I go back and I look at my 40s all the way, you know, the last 14 years, As this, I call it the neurochemical armor, as the armor has been coming down, it's become harder and harder to hold back those traumas.

And it's not a conscious thing, but for me, it looks like, God, I have a lot of anger. Where did that anger come from? Like the rage in my early 40s that would come out, would shock me. And I'd be like, what is that? Or, you know, the inability to focus. You know, that's a very common perimenopausal symptom or anxiety or depression or insomnia. What I have found is that in all these perimenopausal symptoms, it is this armor coming down and giving me the gift of really understanding what my body, my soul, my mind is wanting to let go of and what is wanting to come forward. And so I just want to point that.

out because I think that breathwork has a lot of people intrigued. It's becoming very much a part of the cultural conversation. And it was actually Sarah Godfraid that really made me think about perimenopause recently as a version of trauma, that this neurochemical armor coming down is trauma and it reveals your trauma. So what tools do we have when that happens? And when we we look at the traditional health care system, it's very focused on, oh, you have depression, let's give you an antidepressant. Oh, maybe we need to do some patches. Maybe we need to do some creams and some trokeys. And my, as you know, one of my new feelings is like, no, let's get to know ourselves because that armor's coming down. And there's some shit in there that we haven't

dealt with, that we now have the opportunity to come into loving containers like yours and say, help me, guide me through this process so that when I go on, get into my 50s and 60s and 70s, I am the best version of myself. And that's really like how I see it and is the way I sort of have language to it. And I don't know if you've seen that with more perimenopausal and menopausal women. Yeah. And I mean, even noticing it in myself too, right? And I think that idea of like what we resist persists.

And at this moment or this timing is like, oh, we can't actually resist it any longer. And that's where this sort of, and again, that sort of phrase I've talked about, it's like an initiation into this next metamorphosis, this next realization of who we always were. Right. So I think it does and it can help with that. it leads us towards something, not away from something. And we know that, especially when it comes to our emotional world, yeah, if we kept pushing it down for a long time,

we might have to be with the expression of it for a while. How do we befriend our grief, our anger, our sadness, not because we're going to be swallowed by it, but because we're going to be liberated by it, by acknowledging its presence. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like when we use medication, and I'm not, I know a lot of women are getting

great results with their HRT and their bi-identicals, and some are getting even great results with their antidepressions. But when we're using that, we're also missing the opportunity and to heal and to step into the most authentic version of ourselves. And what I would love to see is every prescription that's written for HRT, so is a prescription written for breathwork. And could it be possible that here's something that's going to slow the exiting of these neurochemicals, but then here's a tool to work on rediscovering yourself and healing what you may have never had time to heal. That's like the vision that I have for peri menopause and menopause is that breathwork

becomes at it the core of the transformation that it takes from going from 40 to 54 where Yeah, yeah, beautifully said, and I really appreciate that it's not an either or, it's an and, right? That there's this way that, you know, we're kind of just done with these sort of one, one-time solutions. It's like, oh, let's, okay, you need this support. And this comes along with it. Let's see where this takes us now, right? Yeah, there's something really beautiful there. You know, I was recently teaching the polyvigal theory to a group. And I went, you know, for people,

I've talked about it on this podcast before, but, you know, at the base of the polyvigal theory is where our nervous system is the most relaxed, where it dips into fight or flight, and then it goes into relaxation. And one of the ways that you know you are in a state of a healthy nervous system where the nervous system is regulating itself well is curiosity. when a problem presents itself and you're curious about it as opposed to reacting to it, that's where you start to find that your nervous system is regulating itself, getting itself back into coherence. So I used the word curiosity and I was like, yes, I think that's the highest vibration we can

be at as we go through. I'm just going to keep it on the perimenopause phase. Like as we go through the changes in our hormones, how do we be curious about? this change that's happening in our body and what could possibly what good could come of it as opposed to villainizing it. And that's where I found breathwork to just be a tool. I'm not sure I would definitely not be in the mental state I am today without it. It's because I feel like my body got to have a say in this new version of me that's emerging. Thank you lungs. Thank you lungs. All right. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you every cell in my body.

So it's a true honor. It's just like fasting. You know, fasting is an honoring of the wisdom of the body. I feel like breathwork is an honoring that the body needs to release and it needs to let stuff out in order for it to keep moving to its highest place. So with that in mind, tell me if somebody's interested in connecting with you, if they want to try it, like I want people to understand you don't have to come with a clinical diagnosis. you can just be like, I heard this podcast. It was beautiful. I'm curious. I love it.

What does that look like? And how would they find? So, yeah, thank you. And thank you for curiosity. And that way that we actually drop into curiosity is through the experiencing of our emotions. And there's so many frameworks that actually sort of highlight that. So I love that that we landed there. It's like, oh, if I can be with my experience, I can be in curiosity. Yeah. Yeah, best way to connect with me. is through my website, Katehorstman.com. I'm on Instagram occasionally, and that's also a place, and that's at Kate Horsman, Hell.

Yeah. I'm going to call you an Instagram introvert. That's a good way of putting it. You're like there sometimes. Sometimes you're not. So it's beautiful. Well, I'm going to encourage everybody to reach out because, and we, you know, one of the reasons I want to do this podcast is because I really want to bring you to my reset academy

me and do some group work together so that we, because there's so many menopausal women in there that are on a healing path, I really, your wisdom, your experience is profound and I can't wait to do it in a group setting like that. So I do have one last question. I don't even know if I told you I was going to ask you this question. I'm excited, I think. And I'm curious what you're going to say. So it's a question I've been asking all year, and that is, what does health mean to you?

And do you have a health goal that you're working on right now? I imagine that this is an answer that will continue to change for me at this moment. Yeah. As it should. This moment of time, health means being in deepest connection to what it's like to be me, to authenticity. and what it's like to be a little more free. What's freedom for you? That connection, connection to self.

Being in connection with others. Being in trust, being in flexibility, being in emotions. Yeah. I love that. And do you have a health goal right now? I mean, it's hard to have a goal when you have that definition of health. to stay on this path. That might not be the exciting answer of like, oh, it's this thing and I'm working towards it every single day. But I am in it's ambiguous and it's a long-term commitment.

Yeah. And it's peace. That's what I also want to say is that what I'm noticing in my own healing and as I come back into coherence with myself, that I have these moments of like, oh, this feels so good. I can just be sitting in my office here and be like, oh, what is this feeling of peace inside me right now? I don't know how to describe that, but I never want to lose that. And I think that's the way I would interpret what you just said is that you have found a path of authenticity that puts you in a grounded, loving, connected place. And you will spend the rest of your life's trying to stay there and deepen it even more. That would be the interpretation. I think well said, right? Right. It's, there will be other parts that, you know, initiate me more

into life. And I'd like to stay in my skin a little bit longer and feel totally at home in it. So I just adore you. I just, I can't thank you enough for showing up the way you do. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for who you are. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.