This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - How To Breathe: Breathwork, Intuition and Flow State with Francesca Sipma | 267

Episode Date: January 1, 2025

Breathing—something we do every moment of every day—sounds simple, doesn’t it? Yet, the way we breathe can shape our mood, energy, focus, and even our sense of purpose. In today’s episode, we explore the transformative power of conscious, intentional breathing with Francesca Sipma, founder of Mastry and creator of HypnoBreathwork®, a revolutionary approach to accessing flow state and unlocking potential. Francesca is also the author of Unblock Your Purpose: Breathwork, Intuition, and Flow State. Francesca has worked with top-level executives, celebrities, and athletes, helping them uncover their purpose, break through mental blocks, and tap into the flow. Now, she’s bringing her expertise straight to your earbuds. What You’ll Learn in This Episode: The surprising science behind breathwork and why it’s more than just “inhale, exhale.” How intentional breathing can help you access your intuition and flow state. Practical tips and exercises you can use to shift your mood, increase clarity, and unlock creativity. Why so many of us hold our breath—literally and figuratively—and how to release that tension. The secret to life may very well be right under our noses. So let’s breathe. Connect with Francesca Sipma:  Website: http://www.FrancescaSipma.com  Mastry App: https://mastryexperience.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sipma Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/francescasipma TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@francescasipma YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@francescasipma3678 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francesca-sipma-28956613 Related Podcast Episodes: Abundance: Secrets to Prosperity and Ease with Cathy Heller | 260 Why We Brush Off The Idea Of Self-Care with Dr. Christine Coleman | 223 124 / Mind, Body, Soul… and Confidence with Meg Burton Tudman Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

I am Nicole Kalil, your host of the This Is Woman's Work podcast. And today we're going to talk about something you're doing right now, something you've been doing since birth, something you do about 20,000 times a day without even thinking about it, and that's breathing. Seems simple, right? Like, how can we possibly screw that up? And yet, every time someone says, just breathe, I feel an overwhelming urge to punch them. Not because it's bad advice, it's actually great advice, but because most of us, myself included, don't actually know how to use our breath. Sure, we're technically doing it, but we're definitely not doing it in a way that taps into its power.

You may have noticed that a lot of these how-to episodes that we're doing are focusing on things we assume we already know how to do, or things we don't even think about because they seem so automatic. But it's precisely because we're not paying attention that we're losing so much of their value and potential. And breathing is no exception. It's literally the first thing you ever did. And yet most of us are doing it so unconsciously that we're missing out on its benefits.

We're missing out on the calm, the clarity, connection, and possibly even a longer life. And friend, if we're going to get good at anything, I'd argue that breathing should be at the top of the list. So today, we're diving into how to breathe. Because as simple as it sounds, there's more to it than just inhale, exhale, repeat. Get ready to discover how conscious, intentional breathing can change not just your mood, but your life.

Our guest today is Francesca Sittma, a true powerhouse in the world of personal transformation. She's the author of Unblock Your Purpose and the founder and CEO of Mastery, where she created HypnoBreathWork, a revolutionary approach to unlocking potential and purpose. Francesca works with everyone from C-suite executives to world-renowned producers, celebrities, artists, and athletes, guiding them to break through moments through her courses,

training programs, and signature sessions. And she's here to teach us how to breathe. So Francesca, thank you for being here. And I know that you started out in the fast-paced world of advertising in New York, where I'd imagine it was a lot about deadlines and hustle and probably a lot of holding your breath. So now you've made breathing your life's work. I want to start by asking, what led to that shift? Yeah, great question. So, you know, I had reached sort of the peak of my goals in New York and I'm a pretty ambitious person. So being at the top agency,

working on big global brands and having the status and significance that I thought would make me happy was an interesting journey because when I got there to the top, I realized I wasn't happy at all. And I was constantly chasing the next thing. And it was always about another promotion and another account and another experience or travel or guy. And there was just never any satisfaction or gratitude or celebration. And that was what forced me on an inward journey to really discover what would light me up and who I wanted to become. And that's how I eventually found myself on a seven-day breathwork retreat and discovering the power of breath that completely changed my life. Okay.

Thank you for sharing that. it because I think sometimes things like breathing or intentional breathing can get dismissed or written off as like woo-woo or people are like, oh, it's great that you can breathe. You have so much time on your hands. So I just wanted to make sure to let people know that you know the busy, ambitious life that many of us are leading and still believe this to be invaluable and important. So let's talk about breathing. What did you learn that we just don't know or aren't thinking about when it comes to breathing? Yeah, I think I want to just start by saying that I use breathwork for peak performance and I use it for clarity and for higher cognition, decision-making, problem-solving, and getting into flow state.

So I just want to make that clear off the bat. But when I discovered breathwork, originally the form that I had learned was called holotropic breathwork. And that was more of an experiential therapy. And what that means is you're going deep into your subconscious and you're releasing suppressed emotions and you're accessing childhood memories. And it's a very intense and healing experience. subconscious and you're releasing suppressed emotions and you're accessing childhood memories. And it's a very intense and healing experience. But what I discovered was on the other side of this healing and reconciling relationships of my past and becoming more self-aware of the moments

that had sort of shaped my identity was that there was this extreme clarity and there was this intuition and there was this flow and there was this ease and grace and more femininity. And so, oh, I have full body chills, but it was basically like the more I healed and allowed myself to feel, the more in tuned I got with my most authentic self. And then I was sharper. I was smarter. I was making decisions faster and I was using all of that to scale what would become my coaching business. So I'm glad you made that clarification that this is breathing so that you can be your best self and bring your best self to whatever it is that matters most to you. So how do we use our breath to release suppressed emotions, to gain clarity? Somebody wants to practice and learn more about intentional breathing. Where would we start? So when I went to that first retreat, I actually

ended up being on a bit of a path to really explore breathwork, to research it, to study it. And then eventually I optimized it by creating a methodology that was more efficient, that was quite results driven and a lot shorter than the 60 and 90 minute sessions I did. And then I ended up creating a technology called mastery app. So now we blend the breath work with hypnosis and visioning, and we make it accessible to the masses. So if you're curious about starting to explore this work, I would recommend, you would recommend downloading the app. We have three-minute sessions where you can begin to practice the two-part inhale, one-part exhale, and we have vocal cues that will guide you and really hold your hand through the journey so that you can release anxiety that you need. So we have topics of parenting. We have topics of love. We have topics of, you know, corporate sessions.

And so whatever is sort of on your heart or on your mind or is triggering you or you're experiencing conflict within your life, you can explore those different themes and we'll have customized and specific sessions for you to experience. Okay. This might be a stupid question, so forgive me, but where does breath work and meditation collide and where is it different? Like I kind of see them as concentric circles where there's overlap, but they're not quite the same. So can you help us distinguish between the two? It's actually not a stupid question at

all. It's a brilliant question because a lot of people think that they're the same thing and they're really truly not the same thing. It's like comparing, you know, running and lifting weights. They're both good for you, but they're astronomically different. So meditation, I think is extremely hard for people. They're trying to quiet their mind. They're trying to still their thoughts, but their to-do list is running. They get very frustrated. They quit after one or two attempts. Breathwork is not that. Breathwork is extremely active. It is very physical. You will feel energy moving throughout your body.

You might start convulsing. You might be shaking. You might have vibrations in your hands and in your face. And that is stress energy that's wanting to release and stored emotions that's wanting to be cleared. So from a physical standpoint, it's completely different because you're moving and you're vibrating the entire time. And then once you sort of get past the physical sensations that are happening in your body, what begins to happen is you start getting really deep emotional insights. And when you have a coach or a session

that's guiding you through very specific cues and a journey, you'll be able to identify subconscious blocks, limiting beliefs, and then we'll also take you through visioning and visualization so that you can see the goal. You can see the 2025 roadmap. You can see what you look like on stage. You can see yourself showing up with confidence on the podcast. You can see yourself getting the promotion, whatever those goals look like. And then you feel the energy and the emotion as if you already have it. And now you're syncing up your brain and your heart and you're starting to expand that electromagnetic field and you magnetize the thing that you want to you. So it's very active. It's very physical and it can honestly be extremely intense,

which is very different from a meditation practice. Okay. So I'm glad I asked the question because that is wildly different. And obviously we're breathing 20,000 times a day. I can't imagine we are able to do intentional conscious active breathing in all of our breaths? Is this something we do once a day? Is it something we do before certain things or when we're feeling or experiencing certain things? How do we begin to create a practice around this? So we recommend the first 20 minutes of your day you dedicate to this practice. So 20 minutes every single morning. And the reason for that is we have so much conditioning and most of us are running on autopilot. And before you jump into the hustle and the grind and the old thought loops, you want to be clear. You want to start

your day in your highest energy and your highest vibration in your highest state. So you breathe out any blocks, you get clear on whether it's your to-do list, your goals for the day, the project, the presentation, the pitch, whatever that looks like, you step into that energy. And then in hypnobreath work specifically, our last vocal cue of every single session is what is your one next intuitive action step towards that goal or towards the best version of yourself. And now you have a clear roadmap. You have crystal clarity on the one thing you need to take action on. I think that was a really big missing piece when I was observing different modalities and personal development is great. You can have a cathartic experience and I can feel peaceful for 20 minutes as I'm sitting on this

floor in a beautiful studio, but how does it actually shape my life? How does it change who I want to become? How does it change who I want to become? How does it create the future that I truly desire? And that takes action. That takes execution. So we want to leverage that state that you're in. And then we want to take action from that place, whether it's send the email, have the conversation, have the courage to go buy that thing, invest in yourself, apologize to a loved one, send the letter. You want to take action as soon as you get out of your hypnobreathwork session. I can't even begin to express how much I love that because my work is in the space of confidence.

And ultimately I've identified five confidence builders, but the first and most important one is action. Action builds confidence. We can't think or hope or fingers and toes cross our way into it. And so I love this idea of really getting grounded and connected and active, but then getting clarity about what you're going to do with it or where you're going to get it into action with it in your day and takes us from autopilot, as you mentioned, into more focused action. Okay. You've mentioned flow state. What does that mean? What does it look and feel like?

So simply put, flow state is optimal consciousness. It's when you're performing at your best. It's when things are effortlessly flowing. There's intrinsic motivation, discipline meets surrender. And my favorite way of putting it, it's when productivity meets alignment. That's intrinsic motivation, discipline meets surrender. And my favorite way of putting it, it's when productivity meets alignment. That's really the sweet spot. And flow state is actually something that's not just for athletes and gurus and mystics, but you can actually hack it in 20 minutes on demand using breathwork. And the reason for that is we are

changing physiologically the composition of oxygen and carbon dioxide in our body. So that's quieting down your analytical mind and it's allowing you to stimulate different regions of the brain. And once we access the subconscious brain, that's the storehouse, honestly, for innovation, because that's where infinite intelligence lives. That's where all the research, all the podcasts, all the articles, all the books, the conversations with mentors, with investors, it all lives in your subconscious mind. So when you breathe on an intention and you're like, I want to know what my next workshop looks like, my next course, my roadmap, your brain will start to make new creative connections

and it'll be innovative. It'll collect your skills with your knowledge and infinite wisdom and intelligence, and it'll birth this new original idea that's unique to you. So there's been nothing I've created in my business, in my life, my websites, by my book, my app, my company that hasn't been birthed through flow state breathwork. Okay. In some people's minds, this could fall under the category of self-care. And I have a beef with self-care because I think it's been hijacked and like turned into this thing that you need to have a lot of time or money or influence in order to be able to do. But from what I'm hearing, this is something anyone can do. Walk us through that. Is there, do you need any sort of skill or resource or talent or ability to do this?

Or is this truly accessible to really everybody? I find you so funny. Thank you. I'm a little ridiculous. I just enjoy it so much. I just love people who are direct and candid. I just find it to be such a beautiful quality, honestly. Okay. Anybody can hack it, but there needs to be an openness to it. You know, like there needs to

be a little bit of a curiosity. If you're doing a one-on-one session with me, I don't care how skeptical you are. I'll probably break that down within five minutes. No problem. But if you're doing a group session or you're doing it on your own, I would encourage you to let the walls down a little bit so that you can have a deep experience and you're not wasting your time. I had a session with a high, it's called High Performance Lifestyle Summit. And they're elite athletes. They do Navy SEAL workouts. And then they come into my hypnobreath work session. And everyone was having massive breakthroughs. I mean, I'm talking about like 10 years of therapy in one session, just cathartic releases, bawling. And then there was one gentleman that was like, you know, he didn't want to share when we started. And he said,

I'm not comfortable. And I was like, okay, no problem, like not forcing anybody. And then after the session, he was like, yeah, I don't know. It was just physical for me. And he had the same air about him. And I was like, that's on you. You know, if you don't want to come in and get a good experience out of it, I'm not going to force you. So I would recommend everyone just have a little surrender when they're going into the practice, have an open mind. If you do that, that 20 minutes might just change your life. That's probably excellent advice for just about anything we want to do, right? That's new or exciting or different than what you're used to. If we go in with our arms crossed, probably not

going to get much out of it, right? Right. So what might be some of the resistance to being open and curious to something like this? Do you think it's fear of uncovering things that have been? Is it, I guess, what do you see is typical resistance? So there's definitely skepticism around it, which I get because, you know, breathing is our biological function and knowing that it has these really deep medicinal properties can be a stretch. Get that. But for a lot of people,

they realize that in order for you to access your highest clarity and the best version of yourself, you probably need to heal some elements of the past. There's probably emotions that have been stuck in your body that have been suppressed from relationships that have hurt you, from experiences that have wounded you, from experiences that have wounded you, from walls that have been put up through betrayal or pain or whatever those events looked like. And unfortunately, unless we release the emotion of those, they will live in your body and they will subconsciously affect the relationships that you attract, the decisions that you make, the career that you are afraid to

leave. And so sometimes we have to go into some deep emotions and some of our history to clear it out. And there's definitely fear around opening Pandora's box. And again, I understand that it can definitely be heavy. And that's why we've created a very meticulous journey in hypnobreath work, where there's an arc in our sessions. It's a little heavy towards the beginning and the middle, but then we always take people up. The emotions release. Now we see our highest self. We get that next vision and we take action from that place. Okay. I want to dive a little bit deeper into hypnobreath work. Yeah. I don't want our listeners to miss anything because I don't know the right best question to ask. So what do we need to know

about hypnobreath work? And assuming we come open and curious, what is the process? What does that arc look like? So the best way to kind of give a reference point to it, it's like, you know, breathwork has really become an umbrella term and there's a lot of different styles and a lot of techniques. It's basically like, you know, you can go to a generic cycling class or you can go to the very best soul cycle instructor and you're going to have very different experiences. So for us, what we saw in, you know, my research and studying breathwork is that people could have a very cathartic and transformative release from just breathing. You honestly don't need anything else.

You don't need a teacher. You don't need music. If you do two inhales, one exhale, and you just do that for 20 minutes on your living room floor, you will probably end up bawling and having some sort of insightful experience, truly. But what I found was there was this huge opportunity to help take people through the journey of what they were experiencing and what they wanted to change in their life. There was this massive gap that was missing between really understanding your experience and making that sustainable behavior change. So we added hypnosis or hypnotic suggestion to the breath work because people need focal cues. They need things to be able to concentrate their mind around and understand what was the root of that behavior. Where did it come from?

What's your relationship to money? How did your mom model self-love? You need very specific questions so that you can find solutions that are true and intuitive to you. So the hypnosis is really helping you reprogram and rewire the limiting beliefs and the unfulfilled values. And then the visioning was really inspired by Dr. Joe Dispenza, because I just love how he helps people tap into the emotional state of the future

that they want to create. But I found in his work, I had to unblock a lot of stuff before I could get into that state and it would actually really stick in my mind and my body. So breathwork to clear emotion, hypnosis to reprogram subconscious beliefs, and visioning to mentally rehearse your goals. And that's an extremely effective and efficient 22-minute modern practice. I mean, it sounds incredible. And it's really meshing some very important things and bringing them together. I mean, you said the word efficient early on, and that's what keeps popping into my head. And for most busy women, that's a pretty nice buzzword, right? Like we'll do just about anything that's more efficient. Now the word purpose gets thrown

around a lot too. I use it a lot in my work. And I think sometimes we sit around going like, what's my purpose? And it can feel really daunting. And I know hypnobreath work can help people discover their purpose, maybe uncover their purpose might be a better phrase, but how does it do that? So what ends up happening when you heal elements of the past is you start to get in touch with your most authentic self, your true desires, your true curiosities and skills and passions, things that have maybe been diluted by society or parents or just cultural conditioning. So once we kind of chip away at that and unearth some of those elements, you get this clarity of what truly lights you up. And then this really magical thing happens where you want to turn it outward. You've done this healing. You feel so

much freer. You feel so much more at peace. You have this new level of joy. And then you want to show other people how they can live with more freedom and abundance and prosperity. So breathwork helps you heal elements of the past, get connected with your curiosities, your passions, your gifts, and then find the intersections of how you can use those things to be of service to others. And to me, that's the key component to purpose is being of service and contributing to something greater than yourself. And that's how you'll have true fulfillment. Because most of us, and I'm sure you will relate to this and your listeners will relate to this, we can make the

money. We can reach the goals and have the achievements. And for most of us, it'll be extremely fleeting and we will want to find the next thing. But once you give and you see how the things that you just naturally love to do can help others. And you see the impact of that. That gives your life a completely new meaning and a lot more color. Okay. So I think we're all starting to see the power of breath work in this opportunity. I want to kind of flip the script a little bit. What are we losing or missing by walking around being unconscious about our breathing, shallow breathing,

holding our breath, all the things that I think we are probably doing more often than we're doing unconscious breathing. What are we losing? What are we missing? What are we risking? Efficiency. You're losing efficiency and you're also losing compassion and connection. So what I mean by that is, you know, a lot of times people tell me, Oh, Francesca, I don't have 20 minutes in the morning. I'm like, you don't have time to not do this because for me, dedicating that 20 minutes and making that my first daily habit optimizes the rest of my day. It takes me a quarter of the time to send an email, to make a decision, to put the pitch deck together and do all those things because I am crystal clear.

My decisions are rooted in that confidence. So it saves you so much time. But then a really amazing component that very much surprised me about breathwork is how much it can get you into the perspective of somebody else. And I think that that's incredibly important in today's day and age because we live in our own story. We live in our own worldview, our paradigm, our defense strategies. And so we're constantly thinking that we're in conflict with another person. But when you breathe, you see their point of view and you feel a lot more empathy and compassion for them. And it honestly resolves a lot of the friction and a lot of the tension.

And I find this with my partner all the time. This happened to me just two days ago. I'm like, I'm on this book tour. I'm so busy. You need to be more supportive. You need to be more patient. I've just traveled to seven cities in two weeks. And then I did breathwork and it was like, actually, you just put work before your relationship again. So you're giving less and you're expecting more. Clean it up. And I was like, shit. I'm wrong?

Are you kidding me? And I have those moments a lot, and especially as a leader as well. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Powerful example. So let's say all of the listeners are like, and myself, we commit to doing 22 minutes or 20 minutes of breath work first thing in the morning. Where else might it show up? I would imagine that there are days where you, you know, need to do something midday or in the evening or where you have conflict? How else does breathwork help us in the day-to-day and in the moments throughout our day?

I've seen that it's really impactful for parents. I've seen that parents can be not always very present with their kids or extremely impatient with their kids or also projecting their own achievement and need on their children. And so breathwork is a really quick way to see your children as their own individuals and allow them to be creatively expressed without projecting these expectations of maybe your unfulfilled wants and needs and goals. So that can immediately dissolve a lot of, again, friction, or if your kid, you feel like they're having an attitude problem, you'll kind of see your part in that and change up the dynamic. So parenting is a huge place. Health is also a really huge place because there's a lot of intuitive decisions you can make around movement, around food choices, around seeing the active and energized version of yourself that you want to be, and what are the decisions that you can make throughout the day to help bring that to a

reality. And then in the workplace, it's pretty massive, especially if you're an entrepreneur and you have your own company. That comes with a certain set of skills. And it also comes with a certain set of expectations. And we tend to want other people to work on our business with the same level of tenacity and grit and productivity that we do. And it can be very frustrating when they don't. So being able to see your employees for who they are and honoring the balance that they need and the other values that they have outside of the workplace, I think it will dissolve also a lot of tension and help you just be a better, well-rounded leader. Okay. So my last question is around best next steps. Like if you could create a set of action items for a step one, step two, step three, what would you tell us to do? Okay. So without sounding self-promotional.

Please, self-promote away. I created all of these things using breathwork and now they've all connected. So I would recommend buying the book Unblock Your Purpose on Amazon because that will give you context, that will give you science, and that will walk you through the process. And it also just really holds your hand through how to build up to a full hypnobreathwork session. I would download Mastery App, which is connected to the book because every chapter gives you a full hypnobreathwork session. I would download Mastery app, which is connected to the book because every chapter gives you a mini hypnobreathwork session so that you can start to drop in. And then I would start to use this as your daily practice to be clear. But I want to be clear in saying that unless you take the action right away, it's a

waste of your time. There's just no point. I mean, you'll feel calm and that's great. If that's the goal, you feel relaxed for a few hours, maybe that's all that you want to get out of it. But I feel like that would really be a shame because if you take the action every single day, your life will open up in magical ways. There'll be synchronicities, but you have to have that courage and that confidence and that conviction to take bold action. That's really the missing piece. And then if you want to go deeper, I have deeper experiences. I have a Bali retreat. I have a course and I have an in-person event. And we tend to really rock you in those, but you come out a completely up-leveled human. Okay, perfect. And when you were saying about action, I just want

to reiterate that this is that last question where we decide for ourselves, what is the next best highest action that we can take in that day? Correct? For me, the key phrase is intuitive action. So I'm assuming a lot of your audience is type A achievers. And if you are, then you know how to execute from a place of force and grind. And sometimes the action is actually not sending out 100 emails and just sending out two that are super thorough. And those ones were going to move the needle,

but your conditioning is like, oh, you know, quality over quantity. So intuitive action is really about hearing your inner voice and your inner knowing. And sometimes it might say, actually, girl, you need to book that vacation because you need to get back into alignment. And that recharge is going to give you more creativity for your next division. So it's intuitive action. Love it. And again, just so aligned with what I know to be true about confidence. So I would consider this hyper-efficient and like a one-two bonus, right? Great breath work and build your confidence at the same time. And if you want to take those steps, you can go to francescasipma.com. We'll put that and all the links to find and follow her on social

media in show notes. And of course, the book is Unblock Your Purpose. Francesca, thank you so much for being our guest today. Thank you so much for having me on your show. My pleasure. All right, as we wrap up today's episode, I'll leave you with this. The secret to life may very well be right under our noses. So let's breathe. It's where calm is created, clarity is found, and connection begins. And yet so many of us are rushing through life, holding our breath, missing out on the incredible power it holds to transform not just our mood, but our entire experience of living. Together now, let's pause, inhale deeply, and exhale with intention.

Consider this your invitation to breathe with purpose and embrace the life-changing potential of something so simple, yet so vital. Because breathing is most definitely woman's work.