Hello, happiness seekers. Welcome to the Happiness Challenge podcast. I'm Klaudia Mitura, and I'm on a mission to explore the best happiness habits that science has to offer. Like so many others, the pandemic cut me off from my family and work. So I decided to use my training as a psychologist to discover what science can tell us about the art of happiness. What I found set me on a path to joy, and now I'm ready to share my journey with you. Each month, I'm publishing three linked episodes where I'm speaking to a leading expert, putting their tips to the test, and sharing my findings and feelings. From mindfulness to exercise and random acts of kindness, I'll be shining a light on the simple happiness habits that can bring more joy to our lives. So join me as I embark on my challenge, and together we can become more successful, resilient, happy. Hello, happiness seekers. Welcome to this month's Happiness challenge, where I'll be exploring how to brief our way to happiness. And helping me with this exciting topic of breathwork is author, coach, and breathwork teacher, Isabel Tew. Isabel is going to introduce us to the concept of breathwork and guide us some practical breath work methods that we can use day to day to influence our mood. So let's practice together of finding joy in every breath we take. Welcome, Isabel.

Oh, thank you. And I love that. Finding joy in every breath we take, isn't that such a good invitation?

I know it's a big challenge as well. So, Isabel, because I really think intuitively, we know that breath is a quite powerful tool in life. I'm sure we all been in situations when we said to ourselves and other people, it's okay. Just breathe. Breathe in, breathe out. But what is actually breath work? How would you describe it to someone unfamiliar with it?

Yeah, it's a good question because it's actually quite a big field. It's like, it's a little akin to the whole field of meditation or the whole field of yoga. It's connected to those things. But in essence, breath work is about using your breath, using the way you breathe to influence how you feel and whether that's to feel more relaxed, more excited, get ready for, like, a big event. And the ways we can breathe. I mean, we will get into many. Perhaps there are hundreds, but that's the essence of it. It is changing and using the way you breathe for a particular effect.

I love that. So really paying conscious attention of how we breathe and using that powerful breath to modulate mood. Love this. And, Isabel, we met at the fantastic breath work workshop, where you were one of the teachers and you introduced me to the field of breathwork. So thank you for that. And it was definitely a beginning for me in my journey. And I know that you have very interesting story of why you decided to dive into breath work. So tell us a little bit more. How did you get involved in breath work and what drew you to this practice particularly?

Yeah, I mean, the essence of where it started was with yoga, and the reason I started yoga was more around. I was managing anxiety. So that's been a challenge that has often shown up in my life. Bit of panic and anxiety, maybe mid level clinically at times. But if you look at the yogic approach to the whole path of yoga, just very briefly, it's not just movement. Yoga starts off with ethics, a sort of a foundation of, like, good thoughts and good actions. Then we get into the movement side of yoga and yogi is called that asana, but that's what you. That's this gymnastics, you see it at yoga studio. Great fun. And then the next level up, and this is before meditation, we've got what they call Pranayama. So yogas call it pranayama, but that is really breath work. It is using the breath to impact your nervous system and change how you feel. And all of that was done before you go into these higher states of meditation. And so I found breath work really, through that yoga approach. If I'd been prescribed yoga by the UK's NHS service, which is kind of interesting, and that was to help me with anxiety, I loved it so much. I did yoga teacher training, I learned about this whole system and I felt like, oh, this is interesting. Like the pranayama, the breathing side of yoga, you hear it a bit in the class. Like anyone here that's done a yoga class might have heard breathe in as you do one posture or take a deep breath, or your breath being an anchor into the presence, these are things we might hear. But then, as you start researching it, like I did, there is just so much more depth available when we look at how we breathe. Both. Yeah, how we breathe. It's amazing. There's so much in there.

And I love the fact that you stressing that idea of how we breathe, because one of the biggest eye opening aspects for me was that even though we breathe all the time, we actually don't know how to breathe well. And in a way, how that breath can really elevate our mood and impact our happiness. And as you said, you use the breath work to help you with that anxiety. And I definitely also use it quite a lot to calm myself down, and especially during night, I'm not a great sleeper, and breath is one of the things that really helped me. When we think about that breath work, can you explain maybe the different types of breath work methods that are available out there and their benefits?

Yeah, it's good because there's so many types. I mean, maybe let's start then at the ones that you were talking about, of things that might help you sleep or the day to day breathing. So there's sort of one field of breath work we could say is called functional breathing, which is about how your everyday breathing is more efficient and, like, helps your immune system and just helps you stay effective in making energy. We've got a few really influential authors that talk about this. We've got James Nestor, who wrote the famous book the New Science and lost Art, and another very famous author of Patrick McEwan from oxygen advantage. So they really stress this whole angle of breathing through the nose. It helps filter the air, it helps the immune system, it helps us stay hydrated, like all these general day to day, like. Yes, like two. No, it's like 20,000 breaths, somewhere between 18, 20,000 breaths a day. Like, if we breathe that through our nose, if we breathe it quite slowly, we're going to have a generally happy time in life. Okay, so that's sort of one school, and there's a little bit around the physiology and biochemistry. We could geek out on that later or another time if we want to. Now the next most extreme side. So that's kind of the. Yeah, the foundational side. If we go as far away from that as possible, we get to what you would have experienced also on the breath retreat, Claudia, which is a style of conscious, connected breathing. And this connects actually to quite a few different breath work schools. So people might have heard of holotropic breath work, transformational breath work. It relates a bit to the Wim Hof style of breathing as well. So there's quite a few related styles there. And this is where you're going to breathe a lot for maybe one, maybe 2 hours. You're breathing more air, you're breathing a bit faster, a bit deeper. And here is where you could go into, like, altered states of consciousness. Right. You can really quieten down the chatty default mode network of the mind. And maybe there are visions, maybe there's a new relationship with traumatic experiences. I mean, it's pretty. It can be pretty wacky. It can be also just nice and peaceful, but it's quite the extreme side of breath work pulls apart from that functional breathing I was talking about. Then there's one more kind of style of breathing, which also has many flavors. And this relates mostly to pranayama, and it relates a lot to the breath cards, which I've made, which is about, well, how can you first soothe your nervous system, like, consciously go, how do I feel right now? What would help me? Oh, I know. I'd like to feel a bit calmer. Okay. There is a whole bunch of techniques that you could do. Like, for example, like, we were chatting earlier, you could just start to slow down your exhale just a little bit. Not to a stressful level, but just slow it down. Just slow it down. And in the same field of, like, choosing how you want to feel, maybe you're waking up in the morning feeling a bit lethargic, feeling, oh, you know, just sometimes you have that heaviness in the morning. I mean, not every day, but sometimes it's that. Well, then, yeah, there are techniques that don't take 2 hours that will help elevate your energy levels and create a little bit of va va voom. Yeah, go get the day. And that can just be really, really helpful to have this sense of empowerment that you can practice how you breathe for ten minutes most days and be choosing what's going to help you. What do you need right now? Is it more connection? Is it more grounding? Is it more slowing down? Is it more speeding up energy? Is it patience? You kind of get to use these different techniques to help you experience what you want to experience.

Love that summary. And thank you so much for walking us through this kind of a spectrum, if you like, of different breathwork methods. I can really visualize that, and that's what I really love about your cards, because I can pull up different breathwork methods that are very quick, and I love the fact that you're categorizing them, as you said, by this idea of am I trying to get more energy? Am I trying to slow down? What am I trying to achieve? Thank you for those amazing, amazing cards. Now, you did mention some physiological benefits and things that we can gig out, and the scientist in me is absolutely wanting to know more about that specific element. So would you mind giving us a little bit more details around what physiological changes occur during breath work that may contribute to that feeling of happiness?

Sure. I mean, it does depend on which type of breath work like, we'll start, maybe just the brief around the nervous system, because that is one of the key parts where how we breathe connects to our experience of happiness. So, whilst the nervous system is complicated because it. Well, it's the messenger signals around our entire body. And most of the nervous system is about taking information from, like, the fleshy body in the outside world and taking it up to the brain. Something like 80% of our nervous system is that body to brain connection, whereas it's only about 20%. That's the brain telling the body what to do. So the nervous system is this, like, connective communication network. Right. And whilst complicated, the easiest and still very relevant way to think about it is splitting it basically into two. And probably lots of people have heard these two halves. You've got the rest and digest side that we call the parasympathetic. Yes. We've got the fight flight side. That's the sympathetic drive. Well, I'd see these as more, like, hot and cold taps. So the sympathetic side is the hot tap. It includes, like, anger. Yeah, or fighting, but it also has, like, lust and kind of, like, excitement to it. Yeah, there's a hotness to it. It's not like the anger's hot, but it's like, there's a heat to the sympathetic hot tap. And then on the parasympathetic side, it's the cool tap. And this can go from both, like, chill cool also to the, like, frozen cool. So, like, both the parasympathetic and the sympathetic. So both the cool and the hot side, they have their good sides and they have their bad sides. Like, too much in the wrong way also has its problems, but both of them have their benefits. Now, if we think about how the. Let's say the sympathetic side kind of works in our body, and that will connect that to breathing. Okay? So when that sympathetic sides up, what's going to happen is the pupils dilate, saliva gets inhibited because, like, we're not going to eat anything when we're kind of really. Wow. In lust or in fight, like, they don't really care what we're tasting. Heart's definitely going to be accelerating. We're going to have, like, adrenaline getting triggered. Like, our nervous system is going to trigger that. Stomach's going to pretty much shut down. We don't care about digesting. We've got other things. But what happens to our breathing is it also accelerates. It speeds up. We need the energy. So that's what breathing's for. The purpose of breathing is to create energy combined with the glucose. So that's kind of what's happening in the vava room. Hot side. Now, on the cool side, totally the opposite happens. You'd find that your pupils, they're going to constrict, that your saliva is going to start happening. You're not going to have adrenaline. Your stomach is going to start getting like, yeah, we're ready for food. You can get more aroused in that calm state, but your breathing is going to naturally slow down. And out of all of those systems, like, the only thing we really have much control over is choosing how we breathe. Like, it is pretty hard to consciously choose how much saliva you have on your mouth. It's hard, maybe not impossible, but it's difficult. Same with your eyes. Like, quite hard to just, like, go, I'd really like my pupils to constrict right now. Like, yeah, okay, great. Not really going to happen. And so that's where breath, like, all those systems will work together. And when one of them is happening, they kind of cascade the other ones to happen. But breathing is that amazing thing that we can consciously breathe as well as automatically breathe. And it's not the only system that can do that. I mean, you can consciously blink and unconsciously blink. You can consciously swallow and unconsciously swallow. But, yeah, the way we breathe is going to have the much bigger effect in helping tune which parts of those hot and cold taps are mostly on. So now we know that. How does the nervous system then play out in, like, our everyday experience of happiness and breathing? I don't know. Fairly classic example is you've been at work, you've been a bit stressed. You're definitely going to have a lot more hot tap on. Whether that's good stress or less good stress, actually, in a way, doesn't matter because you can't live with just the hot tap on. You run out. You run out of steam. It's exhausting. You need to find ways to turn on that cool tap and start easing things off. Well, how are you going to do that? There are lots of ways. You know, different people have their different methods, but certainly one of the easiest ways is to choose to slow and regulate your breathing to a comfortable but just slower pace. Meanwhile, you might be saying things on your mind like, yes, I can breathe myself to ease, or I breathe in happiness, for example. So you can use positive psychology with it, which I love to do. Are you going to be happier if you can, at the end of your day, help transition yourself from feeling a bit, like, stressed and overwhelmed into something that's more relaxed? Like, yes, that's definitely going to contribute to happiness. And then if we look at a completely different angle of happiness and the science connecting it to breath work. There's also this anger of overall nervous system regulation and about, like, how trauma lives in the body that's becoming quite a mainstream understanding. And particularly when we go into these big, like, that hottest style of breath work. I talked about that conscious connect to breathing, it gives us a really valuable opportunity to step in to the intensity of life, the opportunity to maybe uncomfortably experience a traumatic event. But now you're adding in the knowledge of, I am safe. Yes. This thing in my mind and in my body is happening. Yet when I first happened and it became that trauma response in my body, I didn't feel safe. But now I'm in this breath work session. It's not everyone re experiences trauma, but I have done before. And if you can re experience a traumatic event knowing that you're safe, it can hugely unwind this, like, coil, this knot that's happened in your nervous system that's just like getting in the way of everything you experienced. And so that can be hugely, hugely transformative when that sort of bunch of wound up, stuck energy is released.

Yeah, brilliant. And thank you, Isabel. I think this explanation about our nervous system and comparing it to cold and hot tap is, like, the best and the simplest I heard. So this is absolutely fantastic, and I think we can really visualize it. And as you said, we cannot have one or the other tap all the time on. We have to be switching, and we can do that consciously with the breath. It's also incredible to hear how powerful breath can be in even this more severe and more serious states, like releasing the trauma from the body. That is absolutely incredible. So I'm sure my listeners are already sold. This really sounds like breath work is really that free happiness. So if we now look at that practical level, day to day life, how can we be integrating breathwork into the daily routine? Any advice from your perspective? Because I definitely feel that the key challenge is that when life keeps me busy, I forget to pay conscious attention of how I breathe. So I go on to autopilot into more shallow breathing, more into maybe even breathing through my mouth. And as you said, it's almost like all the opposite of what we're trying to achieve with the breath work. So any advice, any tips of how can we really successfully implement breath work into our day to day life?

Yeah, it's definitely a journey how you implement it. And of course, everyone's going to have their preferences. Yeah. From my point of view, from teaching people and practicing it myself and things my teachers have said to me before, too, is some sort of daily practice is going to be really, really helpful. And it doesn't have to be long. Like, it could sometimes just be five minutes. But doing something every day is going to start in training a habit, a habit of breathing in a way that is, well, first a habit of getting curious about, wow. Yes, my breath is important to paying attention to it, but also then this active choice of, wow, how am I? And what would help me that's important to ask yourself regularly. Like, if someone really wanted to go on quite a healing journey with breath work, I'd probably be recommending to start with twice a day, ten minutes. Some people might just choose to start with once a day, that's okay. But like, from a recommendation, making a habit of twice a day, ten minutes, if you couldn't make ten minutes twice a day, five minutes, that's still really, really good. And celebrate it when you do that. And yes, you might choose different techniques, but it would probably be something first thing in the morning, first thing in the morning, and then either at lunchtime or in the evening. Do you want to get into different types of practices or. Yeah, maybe different types of practices here, things for the morning. So if someone's totally new, then I would always recommend that they start learning practices that are more of the calming nature. So in breath cards, there's a whole series of cards that's all about calming things. And that's just the perfect place to learn to, like, start to connect with your breath and to do so in the most sort of safe and nurturing way. So you could literally, with the card deck, pick any of the calming breaths. Maybe if you're so brand new, you might choose a foundational one. They've got like a level of experience on it. This could be something like humming is the beautiful Brahmari practice. Maybe you want to hum for a few minutes every morning or. Yeah, maybe you're going to breathe through alternate nostrils. I know you've done that one, Claudia, alternate nostril, Nadi, shodhana, as we call it in yoga. Like, the exact practice might not matter and it will probably keep changing over time. But if you're so new, then you just pick one of them, pick one of the calming breaths and just do that every morning and maybe every evening, too for start off with a month, see how you feel after a month. How's that? So that would be the kind of starting recommendation. And if someone really felt like, I want to do more, like I just, I'm in it, I want to fully experience breath work, then I'd be suggesting adding in a 20 minutes practice a day can be really good. I like to do a 20 minutes practice. I don't get it every day. Oh, well. But that would be nice to do. Two short ones. 510 minutes. 20 minutes. One, like, great. It depends. Are you also doing yoga? Are you also doing any other kind of exercise? Like, don't overwhelm your day? But yes, 20 minutes practice could be absolutely excellent. And then, yeah, for the conscious explorer, maybe that conscious connective breath I was talking about, a bit like holotropic. That could be more like a once a month thing. Definitely not every day. Definitely not. That could like, I don't know, that's a bit of a dangerous rocket at that point, but, yeah, like once a month you'd go to an event or you'd go and have a one on one experience with a facilitator. That could be a wonderful thing to do, but, you know, just not too fast.

Yes, absolutely. And fantastic. And I love the fact that you're giving us this different levels of starting small and then progressing slowly and building that habit. Sometimes when I don't have time to do ten minutes practice, 1 minute for me, and sometimes even in between very stressful meetings, 1 minute just for paying attention to the breath. And I really see that difference since we're talking about those practical methods. As you know, on my podcast, I like to test drive different happiness habits. So what specific dare or task could you prescribe me and my listeners to do and to really use a breath work as a tool of increasing happiness?

Yeah. Okay, so this is where I find two challenges for you. So the first challenge that I think every single person that's listening, they can do with us. It's using the intention breathe every morning, soon after waking up. Okay. If someone's already done an exercise around identifying what their personal values are, then, like, super, super helpful, you can bring that in. Otherwise you don't need to. You're just going to start off in the morning waking up, stay in bed or sit on the floor, however you like to do it. You don't have to sit in a particular position for it. You need about two or three minutes first just to notice what do you want to bring into your day? Right? So, like, this might be courage, or maybe it's patience, I don't know, but pick. And it would probably change every day. But you can see that if you were talking about your values, you could choose one of your personal values to, like, breathe it in. And the idea is, once you've chosen what it is you want to bring into the day and you're just going to sit there slowly breathing and feel like, and even say on your mind, I breathe in and you add in that quality. Let's say it's courage. I breathe in courage and I exhale courage to share. I breathe it in and I breathe it out to share. Maybe you do five or ten breaths like that, but you've got to do it slowly, saying it in your mind. If I'm looking at the breath card here of like, a few other examples. So I personally like doing something like, I breathe in love and I breathe out love to share, but maybe you want to breathe, encourage and exhale doubt like you totally can. You can be creative in what you are breathing in, but it's making your intention for the day and spending a few minutes breathing it in, either letting go what you don't need or sharing out what you plentifully got and just letting that prime your day. Yeah. So that's your first. Like, I think everyone can do that. What do you think?

Yes, I agree. I think that's fantastic. Especially that, you know what, the first thing when I wake up in the morning, my mind loves to grumble. So I know that stopping and actually pausing, it's amazing. And if we have an intention, it is very powerful, so. Okay, tick. Love that. What's your second one?

Now, this challenge takes about 2025 minutes. Okay. So this requires a bit more from someone, and sometimes people don't have that time or don't want to use that time. And this is a practice again for the mornings. And I'm going to give you a link on my website so people have a video for it and I've called it express morning Krius. And this is a sequence of movement and breathing practices that go first, like energizing, creating a bit of heat and excitement of oof. Yes, we're ready for the day. And then tails off into some calmer practices. It's all guided, but there are just also a few cautions for why people would practice, or maybe who shouldn't practice. It's all written on the site, but kind of as an essence you wouldn't want to do this morning KrIya practice if you might be pregnant or if you have seizures or really quite severe cardiovascular circulation problems. But for most people, it's absolutely excellent. And it's like one of my favorite things to do in the morning just to get things going. And it includes the intention breath near the end. So if you do that morning Korea practice then. You've also already done the intention breath practice with it.

Brilliant. I love it. I'm definitely going to try it starting from tomorrow. Since tomorrow is Saturday. Hey, I definitely can find extra time and to do a little bit of extra breathing. Fantastic. Isabelle, that is so excellent. So many useful informations that you have shared with me and my listeners. And my final question to you, which I always, always ask every single guest, what makes you happy?

What makes me happy? You know, Claudia, a lot of things help me be happy. It can't just be one for me. There's a sense of balance, of being around people, having my own time, being sociable, being very active. My body likes to be active. But one thing in particular that's like feeling very important at the moment is for me to spend time by the sea. Yes, I love to go quite cold swimming, like. Yeah, just swimming in the solent, swimming in lakes, Hampstead heath, like, wherever I can swim in natural, quite cold water. That just brings me into presence fast. And I think my breathing could start off fast and then I slow it down, like it all relates to it. But at the moment, that's the thing that's singing to me of like, yes, more swimming time is what helps me stay happy.

Thank you so much, Isabel. Where my listeners can find out more about you and specifically the cards. I know you're going to share the link to that morning practice, but overall, where can we find you?

Yes, yes. So you can always find me on my website, which is isabelle.com. and this connects to all the breathing practices. There's an online portal there that shows you the write up of the different practices, as well as there's a membership for anyone that really wants to be part of all the videos or enjoy all the videos. And maybe the other exciting thing definitely, that we were chatting about before is that breath cards is something that Claudia's got. The original, like the first version that I hand printed, and you've already got that. But the new news is, as of the 29 October this year, which is soon, soon approaching, breath cards comes out again in this new sort of fancy edition. So all the practices actually, we've spoken about, including that intention, breath breathing, slow, conscious, connective breathing, those cards are all there. And really they're there to help people remember to practice. I think that's something that you said. Sometimes I just forget. Well, that's why I have a card sitting on my table. Just to remind me, do the practice and you'll feel a bit happier.

Massive congratulations on those cards, by the way. I know how much work it goes into publishing something with a publisher so massive. Congrats. I am so excited of getting the second pack, the updated one because I truly do love them and as you said, they are fantastic. Reminder. Thank you Isabella again, thank you everyone for listening. I see you at the next episode where I'll be test driving some of the methods shared by Isabel and also sharing my thoughts and feelings about them. To keep in touch, please subscribe to my newsletter via LinkedIn. The happiness challenge. But in meantime, most importantly, as always, I dare you to be happy. Thank you so much.