MJ Renshaw: Breathe to Heal: Breathwork, Emotions & Real Connection with MJ | DSH #1518

Emotional connection with other people in order to survive.

Like, if you have a baby

and you don't pick up that baby and rock that baby and hug and kiss that baby, which you wouldn't think is a basic human need, that baby will die.

Wow.

And it's weird that we think that as you get older, that just goes away because it doesn't.

All right, guys, we got MJ here.

We are going to talk breath work and a bunch of fun spiritual stuff.

Thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, power of breath work.

Underrated tool, right?

Extremely

underrated.

I was just talking to you off camera about how I used to do it every day.

And when I have anxiety, sometimes I'll pull it out of the bag and instant relief.

The studies that we have on breath work for anxiety, depression, asthma, addiction, they're fascinating.

Yeah.

It's like off the charts successful.

And it's something that's, you can do it at any time.

You don't have to carry around all this biohacking tech or buy all these pills.

Like, I just love how simple it is and how it's a built-in mechanism.

So, you know, I love to use the example of supplements because some people think, oh, I want to relax.

So I'm going to take GABA or I'm going to take magnesium.

For some people, that's going to work really well, but not everyone needs it.

Breath work, because it's built in anatomically into our physiology.

There is no person on the planet who would breathe in a certain way, say in a parasympathetic style, who wouldn't feel more calm afterwards.

So it works on everyone.

Everyone.

Wow.

There isn't a person out there.

That's crazy.

You could rarely say that about any medicine, any supplements.

Yeah.

I mean, there's some things like, you know, if someone's got, if they're bipolar, there's certain breathworks they can't do, or if you're pregnant, like there's contraindications to some techniques.

But say we're just talking about a very simple technique, like inhale and then slowly exhaling.

Every single person can do that and it will extend their lifespan.

It will make sure that they feel more calm.

It can set you into a parasympathetic state.

So that's going to be your rest and digest.

You're digesting your food better.

You're getting better nutrients.

Your body's going into healing mode.

Like you're going to sleep better.

It's amazing.

That's fascinating.

So there's actual studies on the extended lifetime with breath work correlation?

I have not read a study that shows that breath work in particular is going to make you live longer.

However,

we know that if you don't breathe properly, properly, which 95% of people don't, they're mouth breathing or they're shallow breathing, that can create disease.

So we can infer that if you're not breathing correctly day to day, you're not going to live as long.

Yeah.

The ideal way to breathe, just for anyone listening and they want to know right now, you breathe through your nose six seconds in, six seconds out.

In and out of your nose.

So you never breathe out your mouth?

No, I try not to.

Wow.

I'm guilty of that.

You could have mouth tape.

That actually works.

Yes.

I used to do it at night, but I need to start again, I guess.

Yeah.

I know some people rip it off when they're sleeping, but you got to try because mouse breathing is one of those things where it's going to chronically dehydrate you.

It's going to put you into, you know, a sympathetic state.

It's going to ruin your oral microbiome, which we know can be linked to Alzheimer's, heart disease.

Yeah, there's old books on our breath work, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Breathe by James Nestor.

That's like the one that really brings that.

If you want to get into the asthma, you could read

Patrick McEwen's Oxygen Advantage.

He's got a bunch of books, but that, in my opinion, is his best one.

It's life-changing.

When I was a kid and someone had asthma, they were taught there was no cure.

You know, you'd be on inhaler your whole life.

So now there's some new stuff with breath work.

Yeah.

So he does something called breath holds.

So almost the opposite of breath work because you're not breathing, but it's still considered a breath work technique.

You hold on empty.

That's similar to the Wim Hoff method, right?

Yes.

For him, you're breathing in a certain style where you're going to put yourself into a sympathetic state it's very invigorating and then you do a hold i don't remember wim hoff if you hold like

on full or

i don't remember trying to think so you do the 30 breaths and then you hold after that yeah i think you hold i think you hold on full okay oh after the elax exhale yeah because you do 30 breaths and on the last one I think you hold on that one, right?

Okay.

I haven't done it in the first one.

Yeah, me neither.

But, but it doesn't, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter because both styles of breath holds are incredibly beneficial.

I always say if you want to, if you feel like you don't have a good, good lung capacity,

do both.

I always, I prefer holds on empty.

Just when I think about the anatomy and the physiology, it makes more sense to me because you are working with carbon dioxide at that point.

Most people have what's called a low carbon dioxide intolerance.

So they can't hold their breath for very long.

And that's going to trigger your amygdala and it's going to make you feel fearful all the time wow that happened to me at first when i started the wimp hoff i could only hold my breath for like 30 seconds i had to train my way up to three minutes yeah wow that's really great yeah but most people similar story they they start that thing and then most people can't even do a minute no i couldn't so i was doing something called a bolt score you're holding on empty and At that, at the time that I was doing it, I was marathon training.

So I was in like the best shape of my life.

I did my bolt score and it was extremely low.

And I was like, how does that make sense?

That I'm so physically fit.

I have good mitochondria.

I have a good VO2 output or a good VO2 max,

but I have a terrible score of like my breathing.

And I think what, you know, this is just my own personal theory.

I've never done a study on it, but I think what happens to some people is your body can get stuck in a trauma response and somatically you just breathe.

You hyperventilate almost all the time.

Wow, that's pretty scary.

Yeah, it is pretty scary.

It is pretty scary because what happens when you're hyperventilating is you're telling your body, you should feel anxious and stressed all the time.

And I think we get, I think a lot of people just get caught there.

Yeah.

And which I love breath work because you can use any of these techniques to be like, well, maybe that's me.

Maybe I have trauma and it's making me breathe a certain way all the time.

It's making me feel anxious all the time.

I've got, you know, tension in my fascia.

I feel uncomfortable.

I always feel, you know, I'm just not in the present moment.

Breath work could be the way out of that.

Yeah.

Which is so amazing.

Have you had a spiritual experience like that where it just felt like a lot of trauma was released?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I didn't cry for about a decade.

You know, my, my background is I had a horrible first 25 years of my life.

Like I was that's a long period of time.

I know.

But, you know, when I was four, an intruder came into my school when I was in kindergarten and I was sexually abused.

And then I know it sucks.

I was four.

And then when I was eight, my dad.

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I was like addicted to opiates.

He beat my mom all the time.

My brother and I saw, like, it was just a horrible, I had to call the cops on him and like put my own dad in prison.

Jeez.

And then

when I was nine was the first time I tried to kill myself.

Because like, why wouldn't you?

It was terrible.

And then I got a little bit older.

My mom got my, me and my brother away from my dad.

We moved to the country.

My brother died in a car accident.

Then my dad relapsed again and then he killed himself.

So it's been like shitty thing after shitty thing.

That was the first experience of my life.

And then I just shut down.

Like I think anyone who's listening who has had any, it doesn't even have to be that traumatic.

It could just be like you were bullied or you weren't invited to a birthday party, something, or your parent just didn't connect with you ever.

That's all trauma.

And I think I just emotionally shut down.

Like I didn't know how to feel anything.

And I did breath work and

I found myself accessing emotions like grief or sadness or anger that I had never let myself feel.

And you would would think that it would be bad or feel bad to feel those things, but it actually felt incredibly liberating.

Like I was like, this, there's, there's a freedom here because I'm feeling these things.

Like, say I'm feeling this grief for my brother that I lost or my dad, but underneath all that grief was actually love.

Like all the love that I wasn't allowing myself to feel because

We think that we can block out the bad emotions in life.

I don't ever want to feel stressed.

I don't ever want to feel angry or sad.

But when you block out bad emotions, you're actually also going to block out the good ones because you can't selectively block.

You're either going to be shut down or not.

And you have to stay open to all of life.

Wow, that's deep.

I never thought of emotions that way, but you're right.

Cause I went through a period too where I was on antidepressants and stuff.

And I wasn't just blocking out the negative.

I wasn't having

numb.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think

you cannot experience the like elation or the joy without also being completely raw to the like

sadness and the grief or the anger.

I think you just, if you want to be present in life and be in a relationship with reality, you just have to experience everything.

And, you know, I have my notes here that shows that if you don't let yourself feel, if you don't let yourself feel, you're setting yourself up to be more likely to get cancer,

chronic inflammation, 35 times more likely to die at a younger age.

Emotional suppression is statistically like smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Jeez.

It's that damaging.

It's horrible.

It's horrible for you.

But nobody's talking about it because everybody wants to take a cold plunge,

which is amazing too, right?

Cold plunges are amazing.

But at the end of the day, Harvard had the longest running study, 80 years, I think even longer now, the Grant study.

And it showed at the end of life, what was the most important thing in people's lives?

Relationships.

Exactly.

And what was the thing that caused people to live the longest?

Relationships.

Exactly.

And what do you need in order to have a relationship with someone?

Emotions.

Yes.

Yeah.

You have to be emotionally available.

If you have no emotional intelligence, say you don't know how to know what an emotion is and don't know how to express it in a healthy way or

be present with someone while they have an emotion.

You'll never have a deep relationship with anyone.

And that's, that hits deep for me because I neglected that for a majority of my life.

Me too.

I didn't know how to love.

Me too.

Yeah, it started with my parents, I think, because they never told me they loved me, even though they did, but I didn't know because I didn't hear it verbally.

And that's my love language.

Yeah.

And then that just kind of went on in my friendships too.

Yeah.

And dating.

So now with your friends, do you tell them you love them?

I do.

Good.

The first time I told them, it was so uncomfortable.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

But it's important, especially as like, you know, how old are you?

28.

You're 28.

So you're a young man.

Did you know that they did a study in 2024 on young men?

I think they were a little bit younger than you, 19 to 23.

Two-thirds of the men that they asked said, no one knows me.

Yeah.

That's the male loneliness.

I've been there.

Yeah, that's the male loneliness epidemic, right?

Like they don't, there's, we have statistically, men are young men.

predominantly white men are four times more likely to kill themselves.

Why?

That's crazy.

Emotional suppression.

they don't know how to feel the emotions that they have or connect with other people and it's no fault of their own it's because that you're raised in a society where at least when i was younger if my brother cried he was called gay yeah 100 like you're shamed you're shamed for having emotions not that being gay is shame just the put down that they use at the time but it is

you know a lot of them a lot of mostly men

aren't allowed to feel emotions.

That's still prevalent today.

I'd say it's even worse today because of social media now.

Absolutely.

Because you, you know, young people aren't connecting with real people as much.

And then, you know, looking at AI, it's only going to get potentially worse.

Oh, it's going to get worse.

There's going to be AI girlfriends.

Yes, there's.

There's going to be AI friends.

Yeah, there's already some existing.

Yeah.

And she does whatever you want her to do.

Yep.

And she'll never challenge you.

So people are probably going to live less if it goes down that route.

People already live less.

Right?

That's it.

Four times more likely to commit suicide.

Like if you look at, let's look at all the top ways people die in the U.S.

heart disease, cancer, accidents, which I looked, overdoses are considered accidents.

Suicide,

what do those all have in common?

You can get those diseases or get addicted to drugs because you're not processing trauma and you're suppressing your emotions.

Am I saying that every person who's ever had cancer, you know, it's from emotional suppression?

No, But we do have studies that show that you are more likely to get cancer if you don't process things like grief and anger.

Wow.

Well, each emotion is tied to an organ, right?

The Eastern

medicine.

Yeah, and traditional Chinese medicine, yes.

I'm going to be honest, I don't know anything about that.

I believe it, though.

Yeah.

I've done multiple tests on my body when I'm stressed and my liver is always messed up.

So you have anger.

I think I do, yeah.

What are you angry about?

I don't know.

I don't know, but I'm I'm always stressed.

I think stress and anger are probably similar.

And maybe stress kind of turns into anger sometimes.

Yes.

And I'm really hard on myself.

Yeah.

So when I'm angry, it's usually on myself.

Were your parents hard on you?

Yeah, but not physically.

Like they just had a lot of expectations.

Yeah.

Okay.

So you're a successful person, right?

Yeah.

When you reach a place of success that you wanted to reach, like a certain you know, KPI or figure amount of money, do you feel like, yes, I made it?

Or do you feel like on to the next thing, that was nothing

on to the next.

Yeah, I have that too.

And it's, I think it's just, I mean, a lot of it just comes down to parenting.

And again, no fault of their own because they're also raised in a society where we don't value emotional connection.

Right.

But that, that's like, it's really fucked up that successful people feel that way.

Yeah.

I just had on a guest and they were basically saying all successful people have trauma.

Yes.

That's why they're successful.

I was working with a therapist.

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It was just questioning me, being like, Well, why, why do you want this?

Why do you want to do this book?

It's just because my mom, I didn't feel like my mom and dad loved me.

So it's like, if I can publish a book, if I can,

you know, be, you know, make my business this big, then finally I'm going to be a success to them.

But it's not, that's not the way it's going to work, right?

So I had to re-engineer my entire life to figure out why am I doing this?

And it's, you know, now it's just that I just want to help people.

Yeah.

People pleasing is an interesting one.

I was guilty of that for many years, putting others before me, trying to fit in with people.

How did you stop doing that?

I just had to realize it wasn't helping me.

It took a while, though.

I still fall into it occasionally, you know?

I don't know what triggers that, but maybe trying to fit in growing up.

Yeah, I mean, the fear of being rejected is big.

Yeah.

That was a big one for me.

Fear of rejection, fear of public speaking.

There's actually a doctor, I don't remember who it was, but he was saying people pleasing in general, they see a strong correlation between people pleasing, and it was mostly women,

but a strong correlation between people pleasing and MS.

Really?

Holy crap.

I know.

I wonder what.

So this, I mean, all of what I'm talking about, these studies, they all fall under something called psychoneuroimmunology.

Very legit.

It's a branch of medicine.

And basically they're looking at how can our emotions, in terms of us feeling them or not feeling them or whatever, how do they affect your immune system?

Or how do they affect your

hormones?

You know, looking at how does it affect your physiology?

And like, this is relatively new.

All the big studies are like 2020, 2021, 2022.

Like it's a very new branch, but it's, and they're not huge studies yet, but they're all pointing towards the idea that we as humans, A, require emotional connection with other people in order to survive like if you have a baby

and you don't pick up that baby and rock that baby and hug and kiss that baby which you wouldn't think is a basic human need that baby will die wow and it's weird that we think that as you get older that just goes away because it doesn't

that is fascinating so it really needs that love and affection of the baby physical touch Physical touch, love, affection, connectedness with other people.

It's something that you require to live a healthy, happy life.

But we never ever think about it.

We always think, if I want to get into wellness, if I want to be healthier, I have to buy these products.

I have to wake up at 5 a.m.

You know, it becomes a to-do list of things to buy and things to do.

When really, you know, I always say to my clients, sometimes it's better to stay up late with friends.

eat pizza and laugh.

That's healthier than going to bed early, avoiding your friends and waking waking up at 5 a.m.

and going to the gym.

Do I have quantitative data on that?

No, just personal experience.

Like, I think fun, pleasure, friendship, hugging, all those things are

important for a long, healthy life.

There's something there for sure.

Cause when you do study the blue zones, all of them have community.

Yes.

They're not eating their meals alone watching Netflix.

Right.

They're eating at the table with a bunch of different people from all generations.

I love that approach because a lot of these biohackers and people in the wellness space, which is great, I'm part of the, they focus on the physical only.

Yes.

Never spiritual.

Yes.

And

it's been like a learning for me because I went through my own healing journey.

I had to heal my trauma.

I was infertile.

I had IBS.

I had all these chronic health symptoms.

And of course, at first, I bought an infrared sauna and then I bought a PVM ethma and then I was doing,

you know, all the weird freaky biohack stuff that you get into.

Like transfusion.

Exactly.

I had an ozone machine.

I was putting ozone in my butt two times a day.

Wow.

Did it help?

Yeah.

But what actually has helped me is like getting closer to nature and getting closer to the people in my life.

You've noticed the most significant changes.

By far.

That is fascinating.

Yeah.

Grounding just hits different when you've grounded some fresh grass.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not a grounding mat.

Like actually.

Yeah.

I tried the mat.

I didn't feel anything.

Because it's an immersive experience.

You have birds.

You know what I mean?

Like you're seeing like a cute animal.

Yeah.

Trees are, it's like we're, that's what we're built with.

We evolved with that.

I'm not against biohacking gear.

I have it all and I use it all, but it's a

poor replication of something in nature that you, you know, may or may not have access to, but hopefully you do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think community and purpose are really something people should look into on top of their biohacking things.

Purpose, big time.

Gabor Matei said, and I found this so interesting.

He's a Canadian doctor who works primarily with people with trauma and addiction.

Yeah, I've heard of him.

He's amazing.

But he was saying that, you know, a lot of us think of trauma as this event, but to live a life that is outside of your purpose or outside of the life that gives you purpose is traumatic.

Think about it day in, day out.

You're waking up and you're going to a job that you don't,

you don't feel anything about.

Yeah.

Like, that's traumatic.

100%.

That's your whole life too.

You're done at 60.

And then what?

Because you suppressed emotions the whole time?

You just die.

Like, you don't even get to like have fun.

Yeah, you can't speak your mind because your boss will fire you.

There's probably a ton of suppressed emotions.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's why something like this, where we're super passionate, working on our own schedules, like impacting people, like it feels amazing.

It feels really good.

It's the best feeling in the world.

Yeah.

No, I get messages daily now.

It's like, wow, this is an amazing life.

Even if I'm not making as much as like doctors or whatever, I would still probably do this.

Like, that's where I'm at.

I'd rather make less and be purposeful than that's the true meaning of success.

Right.

A lot of people think it's going to be something that you quantify.

Success is going to be when I hit this number.

But if you, you know, if your wife divorced you, your kids hate you, you know, you don't have your health.

What's the point of all the money?

No point.

There's no point.

Like, I would way rather, you know, I've built my life in a way where I'm a mom.

I have two kids.

I don't want to not ever see my kids because I'm working.

I work three mornings a week.

That's it.

Hard shut off, big boundaries.

And I want to be in my kids' lives.

So I got obsessed with Tim Ferriss, the four-hour workweek.

Great book.

Amazing book.

One of my first books I've ever read.

Me too.

It like changed my life because it made me think in a different way where it was like, I, I want to spend my time doing the things that I love.

I, I grew up competitively horseback riding.

What do I do now?

I go horseback riding.

Love it.

That's just what I want to do.

I don't, um, and I think, yeah, I think tech has been such a blessing in that regard.

And I, I hope that people come to realize that so many things can be systematized and so many things can be, um,

can be done in a way where you can have more freedom yeah yeah i used to be a workaholic i still am but like i used to work seven days a week 15 hours a day and thinking that was cool neglecting all my relationships my fiancé and friendships yeah and it it caught up to me my physical health was terrible mental health

like you have a fiance how are you gonna ever even be close to that person know them really yeah no i wasn't yeah we were just living in the same house without roommates yeah that's a common thing these days i know a lot of of people dealing with that.

Yeah.

I mean, I will say, like, I understand that some of it's not by choice.

People are stuck in a system where, you know, what does the system want you to do?

Be complacent, right?

Like, it wants you, it doesn't want you thinking,

it just wants you consuming and selling your body for labor, whatever that looks like.

And then you work as long as you can, and then hopefully you die so that they don't have to pay your pension,

right?

It's like a rat race.

Yeah.

And it's, it's bullshit.

Yeah.

I am glad we realized that because our parents really paved the way.

Yeah.

You know, they worked the nine to five and they really wanted me to go that, down that route, but it wasn't for me.

No, my mom, yeah.

It's, it's so, um, it's so hypocritical because my mom,

you know, she was a real estate agent, so entrepreneur.

But she like cried so hard when I dropped out of school to be an osteopath.

And I was like, but it's not my dream.

Like, I don't, it's not my dream.

She's happy now.

Yeah.

It paid off now, mom.

So you were pretty deep in college.

How many years in were you?

I was four months out from graduating.

Whoa.

Yeah.

You were a senior.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I was like, I didn't even have any exams left to do.

So you were pretty much done.

Yeah.

But this is the thing, like, and I think anybody can relate to this.

I've dropped out of college twice.

So I did an undergrad for philosophy.

I was, again, six months away from graduating.

I dropped out because I was like, I don't want to do this.

Because it seems more ridiculous to stop once you've graduated.

Yeah.

In my mind, I don't know why that made sense.

Well, you're so deep in at that point.

Yeah.

And I was like, I, and then, of course, once you're an osteopath, that's your career.

Like, that is your career.

And I,

when I was in school, you had to start working while you were in school.

And I was like, I do not like this.

I'm in an office all day.

People just come in and out and that's it.

And I was like, that's going to be my life for the next.

However,

yeah, like I don't,

I don't know.

I liked helping people.

And that's what got me to where I am today, where I was like, okay, how can I take all the things that I enjoy in life?

I love spirituality.

I love anatomy and physiology.

I love science.

I love reading the studies.

What do I love doing?

And how can I make that my career?

And

you could just build your own thing.

I love that you love science and spirituality simultaneously.

That's a rare combo to see and see in some ways.

It shouldn't be, though, because there's so much intersection.

Like we know

we have the science.

We have so much science on breath work.

That's a spiritual thing.

We have so much science on grounding.

That's a spiritual thing.

Right.

We have so much science on, you know, cold plunges, meditation, prayer.

Like we have the science behind all of these things that they are so important.

So they should just be under the same camp.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Please unite, guys.

I see the communities go at it in the comments.

Me too.

Me too.

And it's, it's ridiculous.

I think, you know, part of the problem that I think, and maybe I'll get hate on for this, but like science has become a religion.

People think because

there isn't a study on something that it doesn't exist.

And that's not true.

We only have studies on the things that we've studied.

But there's so much out there that we have never studied.

And we don't know whether it is or isn't.

And you have to stay in that unknown.

And

there's so much science that's come out as being false.

It's ever growing.

It's an ever-growing process of being curious about the world.

So to be a scientist, you have to be extremely open-minded.

And you have have to stay open-minded throughout your whole career.

And I see too many people get a little bit fundamentalist on,

you know, where science intersects with politics or where science intersects with their personal beliefs.

Science is just science.

And the studies are just the studies.

Hopefully you're going to have a good one and it's going to have a good amount of people and it's going to be verified and it's going to have good people funding it.

Right.

There's so many ways in which a scientific study can be

bad.

But I think, yeah, I don't think it's, it's,

I, I just feel sadness when I feel, see people arguing about it because a lot of the times they want the same thing.

That's true.

I'm a fan of it.

My, my issue when I see certain studies is who's funding it.

Yes, big time.

Because that's where I feel like there's some corruption.

So much corruption.

So, so much corruption.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, and we've even had people

do a study on, say, something, like some medicine that they don't want to go to market.

So they'll purposefully dose a super low dose and then come out and be like, well, it didn't work.

Yeah.

But nobody's like a lay person is not going to know the correct dose.

So you're going to read it and be like, oh, wow, that didn't work.

And then you're going to send it to all your family members on Facebook, right?

Yeah.

No one knows the correct dose.

Exactly.

Like there's so, there's so many ways in which it can

be corrupt.

Yeah.

And all you see is the headline.

Exactly.

I'd say 90% of people don't even read the article or whatever or the study.

They don't.

So like you could be touting something

as the end-all be-all, but in reality, it was done on five people, and those five people were probably men.

So,

right?

Like, we that happened with intermittent fasting and cool plunging.

Like, it came out as being like everyone needs to be doing this.

So, a lot of women started intermittent fasting and ruined their hormones.

Why?

Because the studies were done on men.

Wow.

And it's actually, if someone's in the reproductive age and they're a woman, they probably shouldn't be intermittent fasting.

Really?

Yeah, because we, our brains are different, right?

Like, we are because we our bodies are monthly trying to reproduce, it's a lot more sensitive to scarcity.

That's good to know because I was trying to peer pressure my fiancée into doing it with me, but I'll give her a reason and out now.

No, I think

men and women are both incredibly powerful and incredibly different.

For a reason.

Yes.

Yeah.

Very for like, I always think, you know, people hate on

thinking that men and women are different, but if they weren't, we wouldn't have trans people.

Right?

Yeah.

They're different.

They're, they're different and as they should be.

And it's, it's, it's beautiful.

Yeah.

I was trans in a past life.

I did some past life therapy.

Oh, yeah.

Have you ever done that?

No, not, not like good.

I did it with one woman and she said, I died in a fire.

That was a thought.

Do you have dreams of dying in a fire in your current life?

No.

Okay.

Because sometimes that's a sign of a past life.

I have, I have dreams of

whales and crabs killing me.

I was a pirate.

Or yeah, you might have drowned or you've been a pirate or something in a past life.

That's cool.

Okay, what else were you in the past life?

Uh, stressed-out businessman who died of a heart attack.

Wow.

Um, there was like five or ten she did.

I forget some of them, but the uh, trans one was interesting.

I was a trans twice, actually.

Wow, when were you trans?

Like, what?

Uh, one of them was in Egypt, ancient Egypt.

I have Syrian lineage.

Okay, I was a trans performer.

Wow.

Yeah.

And

do you connect with that

in this life?

So, like, a lot of my sole soul um mission is to empower women actually wow so I kind of do because like I'll post videos about like woman empowerment and it gets a ton of engagement and views makes me feel good I love that that's yeah it's interesting so I think so

you know interesting who knows it's all interesting stuff I know a lot of people probably watching this like well what's going on right now

we have a pirate and a trans person here um in their new bodies

I do feel like I have an old soul though yeah like I gravitate towards older people Interesting.

Yeah.

They have, I can't remember.

I think there was a whole documentary I watched on kids, and they think before the age of three, children can access their past lives.

That's the theory.

And there's children who can like play the piano or know that they were a World War II bomber with a plane.

Like you have to look it up.

It's fast.

They just said telepathy tapes or no, that's different, but also really cool with the autistic kids.

Telepathic.

But no, no, these kids remember their past lives.

They remember who they were.

They can point to themselves.

They can say the name of who they were.

Wow.

There's one boy in particular who knew he was like a World War II pilot.

He was obsessed with planes and his parents started exploring it and it turned wild.

Wow.

Even, you know, in my personal life, I was asking my daughter one time about her birth, which obviously she should not remember that.

But she was caught in the birth canal for like a while longer than she should have been.

And she looked at me.

She was really young at the time and she looked at me and she was like, my head like my head was like stuck and it was she was like pressing on her head and she knew

wow it was wild

and i was like how is she like i mean maybe if you're hyperskeptical she's probably heard me say the birth story but like to who i'm like i don't leave my house i only talk to my husband i'm not going to tell him my birth story even who's there

i want to watch that you want to watch birth no no no i want to watch that documentary about the kids yes

i don't remember i think it may have have been a podcast, but it was really, children are fascinating.

Yeah.

I mean, I had one guest, Matthias de Stefano.

I love him.

He remembers all his lives.

I was asking him about all sorts of stuff.

That was one of my favorite episodes.

I think if I were to guess, I don't think I'm from this planet.

I don't think that I've been reincarnated.

I don't think I've been here very long because when I walk around,

I feel like everything is really strange to me.

Really?

So you might be a starseed.

Maybe.

I think, you know, I don't know too much about it, but I'm always like, everything just seems so bizarre.

I don't understand why people are the way that they are or why they're doing what they're doing.

Or, and even as a kid, I used to ask my mom, like, why are we here?

What are we doing?

Like, all of this seems really strange.

And I, that feeling hasn't left me.

Like, I just still feel,

it just seems so weird to me.

Interesting.

It could be your first life on here.

Maybe.

Yeah.

Do you never get deja vu or anything?

I get it all the time.

I don't get it.

It's crazy.

Like, I get it probably almost every day.

Wow.

Yeah.

Like, I feel like I've been doing this task in another life or

some other point, alternate dimension.

I don't know.

Wow.

Wow.

Yeah, I wonder what causes that.

They'll have to give me some tips on being on earth because I am.

Yeah.

Apparently I've graduated.

I'm just here on a soul contract this life, but

who knows?

But yeah, over 500 lives, so I got some experience.

Yeah, I like the spiritual stuff.

Do you dabble in psychedelics or you stay all breath?

No, I have.

I haven't in a really long time because honestly, I went to breath work work and I was like, why?

Why do it?

But I haven't done ayahuasca.

I did acid and a macro dose and a micro dose psilocybin.

Like these were in my younger years when I was in my 20s.

I didn't really connect with psilocybin.

I loved LSD.

Really?

I really loved it.

It changed my life.

Wow.

It was like

I knew everything was connected, but then once I took acid, I like knew everything was really connected.

What were the big revelations there?

Like, what did you see connected, I guess?

Everything.

Like, I saw that every single,

every single part of my life happened for a reason.

And I'm someone with like a fucked up story, right?

Yeah.

So I saw that, like, there's no way that I could have gotten to where I am without all of that stuff happening.

And all of that stuff.

You know, because we think of like, I lost someone.

I lost my dad.

He committed suicide.

That's horrible.

But I don't know what the afterlife is.

Right.

no one does it might be something amazing yeah we don't even know if death is good or bad

so it just it just really opened up my mind to um my journey that you shouldn't take life too seriously and that people really matter like they the connections you make with people are not on accident

I do believe everything happens for a reason.

Everyone you meet,

every bad, every good thing.

Yeah.

And you won't, if you're not open to it, it won't happen for you.

But I really believe that like things are happening.

And once you understand that and start to read it, read the signs, life gets really fun and magical.

100%.

That was the biggest shift for me when I made that shift because I used to have a terrible victim mindset.

Like, I used to say, I have bad luck.

Why is this happening to me?

I have a lucky tattoo.

Oh, yeah.

I love it.

And yeah, now when bad stuff happens, or if I have a slow month of business, or I'm fighting with my fiancé, I'm like, this needs to happen.

Yeah.

There's like, there's something, there's a learning there, right?

Like, I, and i think when

you know obviously there's some things where it's like they're just they're just horrible and i wish that they hadn't happened or i wish that they wouldn't happen to anyone else however we can't control it so all all the choice you really have is what are you gonna do afterwards right so i could have gone the route where my dad you know he was a drug addict he i watched him you know abuse everybody in my family and i watched i watched him kill himself essentially and i could have chosen to let that be my story i could have chosen to let that you know give me all these sort of issues where I wouldn't connect with my husband or whatever.

I can choose all those different variations, but you do have a choice.

And I think a lot of people,

that's really triggering to hear, but you do have a choice whether you make your trauma your story or not.

You do, because they're doing studies on twins now and seeing how they change as they get older.

And it's fascinating.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And it's not to say that it doesn't take work, like you do have to like go through a healing process.

But for me, I wanted that stuff to help me impact the world more.

Because when you go through something that's really dark, the blessing that comes from that is like, I get messages all the time from people who have been sexually abused.

And I know exactly what they're talking about because it happened to me.

And I know how hard it is to go through the journey of healing from that.

So

that's a blessing, right?

How common is that these days?

I mean, I don't think the numbers are accurate because most people aren't being honest about it happening.

Because they're not reporting it, right?

Yes, especially men.

Oh, men.

Extremely more common in men than we think.

I think for women, the last time I looked, it was one in three.

Holy crap.

That's really high.

One in three women.

Yeah, but for men, we have no idea.

Just in conversation that I have with men, it's higher than I think we think.

Jeez.

That is nuts.

I did not know the numbers were that high.

Horrible.

Yeah.

I mean, a lot of it's happening as kids too which makes it double horrible right um but yeah it's it's like i look just at my father's life right i watched my dad struggle with drugs so much and he was an amazing person rugby player like he was so tender and sweet when he was sober and then you know i watched him just change and die and I always had this question like what was it like why because it seemed like he had a normal life his parents were together he had a really loving father like I was just like what was it and my mom I didn't find out till a few years ago that my dad was sexually abused when he was 15.

And I was like, oh,

of course.

Because

who is he going to talk to about that?

He was raised in the era where, like, you don't go to therapy, don't cry.

That's weak.

He's not going to talk to his friends about it because they don't talk about anything deep, right?

They talk about the Raiders.

Yeah.

So he never told anyone.

Never told anyone.

Jeez.

I know.

And this is happening all the time.

This is that story is common.

Like, look at the suicide rates of men.

It's insane.

And like, and are they all sexually abused?

No.

But do they all probably have trauma?

Yeah.

And then there's no place for them to talk about it.

What do you think the fix is for men to open up more?

That's a really good question in my book.

How to cry.

How to cry.

But I think that it, that is it, right?

Like, I think it is understanding that it's not bad to feel your emotions, right?

Like, so so I've got the thing in front of me.

It's good.

We know it's good for your body.

It's good for your wellness.

Like, it will help you live longer.

If you're on a longevity path or if you're on a success path,

you have to be emotionally intelligent.

It's immensely important.

It's going to be really hard to be a successful entrepreneur without it, right?

Because it's all connections.

So I think,

unless you want to lie for your entire life, which I think is not good.

Yeah.

No, that's good messaging because right now, because a a lot of people care about their health.

Yes.

You could kind of piggyback off that moment, you know?

That's my hope.

Yeah.

That's my hope.

But it, but it is, it's not even piggybacking.

It's just an aspect that we haven't thought about yet, where it's like, we used to think that our mental health was different than our physical health, right?

Those are two different things, but they're not.

Your brain and your body are one.

And if you have to take care of your mental health.

And What that looks like is understanding when you're having an emotion, expressing your emotion, having someone to tell about that emotion doesn't mean that when you're angry, you have to punch a hole in the wall.

No, that's not a healthy expression.

I mean, unless it's your own wall and you just want to pass it up later, do whatever you want to do.

But

when you have an emotion and you actually just tell someone, you name it, and you tell someone, that emotion reduces greatly.

It's fascinating.

Like, even if you're going to cry and you suppress it, your cortisol in your body increases.

Yeah.

If you allow yourself to cry, it decreases greatly because crying actually is a form of detoxing.

It detoxes cortisol.

That's why crying exists.

But we, we like mock each other for it.

And, you know, when I was a kid, I was sent to my room if I cried.

Wow.

As a, as a woman?

Yeah.

That's surprising.

Yeah.

I mean, a lot of women are ashamed for crying too.

Really?

You're too sensitive.

Think about why we've never had women, a woman president.

They're too emotional.

Yeah, there's studies on that.

They're too emotional, right?

Even though anger is an emotion.

A lot of guys can't control their anger.

Yeah.

But that they wouldn't call them too emotional.

Yeah, we would label it anger issues.

Yeah.

It's fine.

It's just a weird, there's so many weird paradoxes in the world of emotions.

But I think at the end of the day, like if I were to generalize, men aren't allowed to feel sadness and women aren't allowed to feel anger.

More.

Yeah, I could definitely see that.

But both are still shamed for both.

But it's causing disease and death.

Wow.

That's nuts.

Yeah.

I remember growing up, if you cried in front of your friends, they would rip you and your asshole apart.

Yeah, it's brutal.

And that trains you, right?

Yeah, it trains you.

That trains you.

I get messages from men all the time saying,

I haven't cried in this many years.

How do I even do it?

And that's why I wrote the book.

Like, I obviously love breath work.

And breath work has been a way for me to access my own physiology so that I can express my emotions.

Is it the only way?

No, there's tons of ways, right?

I think one thing that's made me cry is long distance running.

And there's tons of theories as to why.

Tears of joy.

Yeah.

Or even the exhaustion theory.

Like your brain gets so tired of blocking you from feeling things, then you just start to feel them.

Right.

But breath work, I mean, I get.

Yeah, we have hundreds of testimonials, thousands of testimonials of people saying, I did the breath work and I like let some stuff go that I've been holding on to for years.

Wow.

So they start bawling out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was so trained to not cry when my dad passed.

I was alone in my car.

I found out and tears were coming.

I'm like, why am I crying?

Like, and I was literally fighting tears.

When was that?

This was two years ago.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

Do you feel like you've gone into the grief?

Yeah, but not fully.

I'm definitely working, working and distracting myself.

Yeah.

So I still need to fully get through it.

Yeah.

I mean, I lost my dad.

I think it's been

about 10 years now, and I'm still processing it.

You want to hear something so interesting?

So I moved, I was downtown, really busy doing school, osteopathy, and then I moved to the country and I started living a life that was a lot slower and a lot more safe for my nervous system.

And everything started coming up.

And I was like, this is so interesting.

I'm like living the most calm, blissed out version of my life.

I'm on the lake, but all this stuff about my dad and my brother and, you know, past is coming up.

And I looked it up and it said that when your nervous system finally feels safe, it will start to process the trauma that's happened to you.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's fascinating.

I was having night terrors.

Like it lasted a year.

Holy crap.

But now

I feel so much more connected.

I don't want to say to my feelings.

I want to say I feel so much more connected to my heart.

Like I'm able to like

see people like I wasn't able to before or connect with a friend like I wasn't able to before.

I was almost pretending.

Yeah, I've been there where I'm faking emotions because I'm so numb and so disassociated from everything.

Yeah.

And I think that's, I think,

I think a lot of people feel that way.

Oh, yeah.

Now I can feel my real emotions.

We're talking like we're crazy right now, but yeah, I'll be watching a movie and I'll actually cry now just naturally, which before would never happen.

That's good.

That means you're going to live a long time.

Yeah.

Right?

Like, that's what that means.

Like, I have people message me saying, like, oh, I cry all the time.

Like, is that good?

Like, yes.

According to the science, that's amazing.

Really?

Yes.

Well, there's probably a limit to that, but.

Yeah.

I mean,

you don't want to get addicted to an emotion because that can happen.

Right.

Like, I always use my grandfather as the example because my grandmother left him for another man.

His personality changed after.

He was jilted, angry, and he became grumpy.

Yeah.

And then he held on to that story and that became his personality, right?

At first it was just an emotion and then it became a mood and then it became his personality and then he was grumpy until the day he died.

And that happens to people and it's, you know, emotions are a chemical process.

So we'll build the receptor for the emotion that you have.

The key is to feel an emotion and let it go.

You don't want to wallow in it.

Right.

Things are a little bit different and tricky for grief because grief, I think, exists your whole life.

However,

for most emotions,

you don't want to have them all the time.

You want to go back to your baseline, which is, I think,

joy, at least contentedness, love.

I think, you know, I have a theory that most, all humans are really, really good.

And that when we see humans experiencing or doing awful things, they've just been traumatized.

Agreed.

Yeah, love's a big one for me.

I think getting dogs helped me learn how to love also.

They just have unconditional love.

Yeah, they're so healing.

So pure.

I love them.

I want 10 dogs.

We got two now, so 20%.

Just eight more.

Yeah, eight more.

Would have cats too, but fiancé's allergic.

They're not as loving on average.

In a different way.

Yeah, they're more, they're more independent.

Yeah, they're more.

I'm a horse girl.

I love horses.

How are they?

Oh, my God.

They're the most healing animals.

Really?

So there's a saying that cats will look down on you, dogs will look up to you, but horses will look you in the eye.

They are mirrors to you.

There's such fascinating science on horses, too.

They can, from 20 meters away, they can sense your heartbeat.

Wow.

So they can know if you're stressed out.

Yeah.

They can, they'll smell people and they'll be able to smell your pheromones and know exactly the emotional state you're in.

And it's, it's, you know, I've been with horses my whole life.

I was a horse girl.

And they're such mirrors to, like, I competed show jumping.

And if I went into that arena and I was like stressed and my mind was all over the place, my horse felt that and I was going to get dumped off, right?

It was just dangerous when you're show jumping.

So it's like this level of mind and body control that you need in order to do that because there's an animal who's going to be a mirror to it.

It's, it's, it's a very cool sport, but horses just in general are so cool.

That's interesting.

Well, I know there's a horse therapy, right?

Yes.

That's a thing.

Yeah, it's definitely a thing.

How does that work have you done that i haven't done it just because i grew up with horses yeah you're probably already doing it low-key yeah

i want to try that one though i love animals so yeah they're animals are so healing i think

you know to bring it back to the conversation about connecting with other people there's a lot of people who don't want to connect to another person

that's fine connect to an animal yeah that's a good start right connect to a tree like we have studies on hugging a tree can help you calm down.

It can boost your immune system.

So it doesn't have to be another person if you're not comfortable with people.

I understand not everyone is going to want to like hug everybody, but you can hug a tree.

I got to try that one out.

Well, do you have workshops or events or anything?

Where can people get in touch with you?

Well, my book, coming out, how to cry.

If you want to learn about all the signs of, you know, emotional suppression or how to release your emotions and what it's going to do for your life, get on the wait list for my book, or it might already be published.

I'm not sure when this is being aired.

And then my Instagram is the best place.

It's at being method breathwork.

We've got a subscription to do breathwork.

I have a podcast that you can go.

We've got free breathworks on there if you just want to try it for free.

And we also certify people in breathwork.

So we're the most science-based-based breathwork certification that you can do.

So if you really want to nerd out on all the science and spirituality, it's all in there.

We talk structured water, we talk, you know, photons and mitochondria and all the different things.

I love it.

We'll link everything below.

Thanks for coming on, Emdra.

Yep.

Check her out, guys.

See you next time.