[00:00:00] Nathan Maingard: Hello, and welcome to the We Are Already Free podcast. I'm your host, Nathan maingard. Just here to remind you and myself and all of us that We Are Already Free.

[00:00:14] Unfortunately, if you're like way too many of us, stress, tension, or even chronic pain can feel like a constant weight on your shoulders. Excuse the pun, I couldn't resist.

[00:00:26] You've tried everything. Meditation, massage, physio, exercise, stretching, and the list goes on. But something always seems off. The relief is temporary and the struggle just keeps coming back, leaving you feeling more stuck and hopeless every time the pain returns.

[00:00:45] If this is you. I feel you I've been there. I am there. And this episode is definitely for you because deep down, you know, and I know that there's gotta be more to life.

[00:00:55] You want to wake up feeling free, energized, and in flow with your body. A life where chronic stress or pain isn't holding you back anymore. Where you are realigned with your natural birthright of vibrant health and authentic expression.

[00:01:10] But here's the catch too often getting that just doesn't feel straightforward. It doesn't feel easy or obvious. You might wonder, is there a way to actually move through this, rather than just put up with it, just live with it.

[00:01:24] Well, today's guest Brooke Mcpoyle of musical breathwork believes the answer lies in something deeper. Combining years of breathwork expertise with a mastery of fascia release, she is helping people like you and me transform, not just how we feel physically, but how we experience life on a whole new level.

[00:01:44] And Brooke truly is qualified to speak about this. She has operated at the highest level of professional sports. The people she works with are athletes. These are people who need to see immediate results. And I promise you, listen all the way through this episode, you are going to get so much value and get so pumped. I'm still buzzing after this episode.

[00:02:04] So stay with us. You don't want to miss this one.

[00:02:06] I'm your host Nathan Maingard and welcome back to We Are Already Free, the podcast where Conscious misfits from the mainstream stop worrying how bad it all is out there, and instead get inspired and informed so they can focus on being the change and finding their tribe and living a beautiful life together.

[00:02:25] Speaker: When you hear the words, we are already free. What comes up for you? Acceptance change to shift in awareness. Human beings are so powerful, there's so much more. Everything is love behind it. Breaking the chains of your own minds, that which remains nature. Getting outta the matrix. We're sitting on the treasure and it's already unlocked.

[00:02:44] Speaker 5: We are already free. You're free. You are a walking map. Have always been free. You are always free. Already free. We are already free.

[00:02:52] Nathan Maingard: Before we dive in, I have something exciting to share with you. If you've been feeling disconnected from your true self, I've got an offer that might just be what you need. To celebrate the ongoing growth of already free academy and the upgrade of my coaching program, I'm offering three free root and rise sessions in exchange for feedback and testimonials. And there are only two left. This is a deep one-on-one exploration to uncover.

[00:03:18] What's really holding you back and how you can realign with your authentic self. Usually valued at $250, these sessions are available for free to the first three people who apply. If this feels like what you've been searching for, head over to the link in the show notes, or visit alreadyfree.me/rootrise to secure your session before they fill up. Now, please enjoy this heart- opening. Heartwarming delightful, body expansive conversation with Brooke Mcpoyle of Musicalbreathwork, where we explore how you can go from stress and chronic pain to joyful flow using the power of breath and fascia.

[00:03:53] you know, I'm interested initially in your own journey. 'cause that's always telling in terms of what is it that brought you to the place that you're in now.

[00:04:00] And I saw in your bio that you were a, you are a golfer, I dunno if you still are, but you were like playing division one golf, but then you somehow went from that to like breath work and fascia. And, and I'm curious, 'cause you've said that breath work is basically the most powerful tool for health and physical resilience.

[00:04:17] And I'm wondering how did that become that? So life-changing for you and your clients when you came from sort of like a high performing sports person?

[00:04:27] Brooke Mcpoyle: When I was 12, I had just the honor and the privilege of having like one of those public school teachers that are just truly gifted and he was a choir teacher that was most certainly meant to teach people how to sing.

[00:04:42] And at 12, I ended up with this robust opera training and I got introduced on a national level to, choir training. And me and group of 30 kids had the chance to go and sing in these stone churches. So from 11, 12 and 13, I was competing at a national level, like as a kid against high schoolers, in these stone cathedrals around America.

[00:05:09] And the experience of singing with a group of 12 year olds at this like high level with our voices is something that never left me. And I didn't realize at the time, but I was being trained in breath work in a very operatic style. And the difference between breath work as it's normally taught in singing is the exhale.

[00:05:32] So I'm very passionate about breath work, because I actually see a huge missing link in many of the modalities that are offered. And many people experience the breath as an expansion and a contraction. and what I teach people is a breakdown of the breath in four different routes. And this is how we're taught as singers.

[00:05:51] You start to control the airflow. And the airflow for a singer is all about. Compressed exhale. So when we're making a sound and we're holding that sound at a certain pressure, we're controlling the air pressure through the vocal cords. And the vocal cords are just these two little small skin flaps.

[00:06:08] They're very much like a drum and they vibrate. And the difference between hitting a note and missing a note is a millimeter on your vocal cord. So it's just a fraction that makes it hit or not hit. So even singers at a very high level training is required on a daily basis to control not only your airflow and the muscles that control your airflow, but also the vocal folds.

[00:06:32] and this was an obsession of mine. I think my first love was really singing. I would come home from school, climb a tree and sing songs to the wind, classic Pocahontas style. And, when I was trained, uh, 11, 12, 13, my voice got really big. And, which bothered the crap out of my little brother because now in order to practice I was 10 times louder.

[00:06:58] and then I gave up singing for a while. I fell in love with golf. My father was actually a pro golfer. And so he told me when I was 16 that I wasn't allowed to play golf 'cause golf was for men. And I think my dad was just inciting me. because I like had committed myself at that point to becoming an amazing golfer.

[00:07:18] I was like, oh, you say I can't do it. I'm gonna do it. Great then dad. but because my brother and I learned it from my father, he took us to a very elite level, very fast, and we got each other to train with. so instead of me and my brother, being mischievous, 16 year olds and running around and creating issues, my mom and my dad would just drop us off at the golf course for 12 hours or eight hours and pick us up at the end of the day.

[00:07:44] And we both got really good. and there was a, at the local university here in South Florida, there happened to be, in my opinion, the best golf coach that existed in the nation. Her name was Coach Joan Joyce. And, she is in four hall of frames for four different sports. And then she had a Guinness Book of World record, for the lowest number of putts. She turned,

[00:08:09] she learned how to play golf when she was 40 and turned pro at 42. And she was such a legend, for softball, for women's basketball and for women's professional volleyball that I was like, I just wanna play for this woman. Like, she understands athletics in such a deep way. I mean, she was a pro in four sports.

[00:08:27] So I went to that university and trained for so long and uh, I had all the shots in my bag. And, in your senior year of college is a really big deal. 'cause those are the scores that you take to sponsors to go and look for, professional sponsorship. And in the month that I graduated college, which is the most intense month for, D one athletics, I had four friends pass away.

[00:08:53] So I was taking a final, I was fly, go play a tournament, fly home, turn in a project, and then go to a funeral that afternoon. And after four weeks of that happening, I think my life just completely took a hard right turn. I went from only really caring about where this golf ball went to suffering from a little post-traumatic stress.

[00:09:14] Like if somebody would call me twice in a row, I would panic that someone died. and it was a bunch of my friends that passed away. Like, you're invincible at 21, you're not really conceptualizing death. but my first boyfriend passed away. Kids I grew up on the school bus with. Somebody that, was adjacent to me in a bunch of my middle school classes.

[00:09:33] So I got to like, sit with this desire of wanting to, play international golf and travel, and then simultaneously come home and, and just see the,the. Uh, what's the word I'm looking for? The temporalness of life. And when that happened, I, my nervous system was shot. I, I basically was playing my conference championship and all I was thinking about at that point, it was the best round of golf.

[00:10:04] I really played in a long time. Like it was my, uh, it was just, one of the most important rounds of my life. And I just remember being so grateful for my mom and my dad being there and for a beautiful day. And it still like, brings me tears. 'cause I remember being like shooken that day and being like, wow, I'm different.

[00:10:23] Like, I used to just care about what I scored and now I'm just so grateful for all these other things. And, I turned pro after I graduated. but I was a little, I was stuck in grief. I hadn't really processed or mourned like all my friends passing. And, I remember the real turning point for me with my game.

[00:10:41] I was playing a gambling match against this pro. And we had played, 48 holes in three days and I was dropping him off at the airport. 'cause adrenaline in golf is, is one of the most difficult things to handle. And pros we go, like, you would go out of your way to simulate pressure that you get in a tournament in order to practice for the adrenaline.

[00:11:05] So there was a lot of gambling that you do as a pro and even as a college player, even when you're not supposed to, in order to create more of an adrenaline dump. So if you're on the last hole and you have a, a a hundred bucks on the, on the line, which was a lot for a college kid, you could kind of get this extra dump of adrenaline and it would play with your swing.

[00:11:28] And I really struggled with, under pressure, how to control my adrenaline on the putting green. And, I failed a lot. I had all the shots in my bag. Really. My coach was just like, Brooke, you have everything it takes to be a pro. You just have to learn how to relax under pressure. And, I sucked at relaxing under pressure.

[00:11:47] I mean, my swing was there, my short game was there. And the two footers, I mean, the two footers would just get me, I I would play an amazing round and have all the right stats and then, miss six, three foot putts. And that's, you can't do that as a pro. so I ended, ended up leaving the sport 'cause I was like, maybe I just don't have what it takes.

[00:12:07] I have 10,000 hours in the game and, all the shots. But what, what separated me from the tour pack was, about six putts a round, you know, and that's in the highest level, the top 1% of the world. It's. It's 0.25 strokes around that separate the middle of the pack, LPGA from the top 10.

[00:12:28] so six, six shots around or five shots around missed on the putting green was, was enough for me to feel like I didn't have a chance to make it. after that I ended up marrying a doctor and divorcing a doctor. but that doctor was obsessed with the nervous system and I, I built a company around him.

[00:12:47] I have an international business degree and when I met him, his practice was suffering, but his, uh, content was so amazing, his understanding. He was a doctor driven to teach and, uh, I learned so much from him. I'm so grateful for that marriage and for that divorce. He has a lovely family on the west coast.

[00:13:04] He was, he was called to be a dad when I wasn't called to be a mom yet. So it was a graceful divorce. It was, uh, I think we both had a huge exchange for each other. So I still treasure that moment. I feel like it was very part of my path. But, he taught me about the nervous system. And when I ended up bonding my breath work with everything I learned from him during covid, I, I went back to playing the sport.

[00:13:29] I played better than I have in my whole life. all of a sudden I was able to break par. I was able to make puts under pressure and I was like, wow, if I had only practiced my breath under pressure during, college, I would have quelled the panic attacks that were coming that, that adrenaline dump.

[00:13:49] I had finally, as an adult learned how to woosah. I learned how to exhale properly and calm my nervous system when I was, playing under par and playing at my best level. And, through that process I just, I would love to teach kids how to do it and other athletes who are dealing with performance anxiety and how to breathe into performance anxiety.

[00:14:11] And, When I was 30, I ended up injuring my foot. I never stopped training hard from D one athletics. I was exposed to a lot of elite athletes and professional athletes. So I always took my training regimen really seriously and I hurt myself. I went to a doctor and they were like, don't worry, we'll just replace your knee.

[00:14:30] We'll replace your hip in a handful of years. Just take some cortisone shots and we will just replace your body parts. That's part of being an athlete. And, I wasn't, I'm not privy to surgery. I don't like the idea of people cutting my body open. I really wanna take care of my body well so that I can continue to train.

[00:14:50] And, instead of receiving that answer, I just took responsibility for my own research. And, I saw in naturopath Dr. Bernie, who I recommend a lot of my clients to, if they're having difficulty or they have some more serious issues. I basically point them in the direction to him. He's my, my favorite doctor, and he has such a holistic approach to things that, I just love his opinion and we grew up together.

[00:15:17] so it's nice, like, we were both the same age and we're both are still the same age and, we've kind of grown parallel in different avenues. And he's like, Brooke, you don't have a foot problem. You don't have a knee problem, you just have a fascia problem. And that's all it took for me to be pointed down a certain direction.

[00:15:36] And when my foot problem went away, , my hip healed up completely. And I was like, wow, this is interesting. I've had a hip problem since I was eight years old. I can't believe that, when I took care of my foot, my hip cleared. So I introduced my parents to it and I was like, Hey, just try this thing.

[00:15:51] They both had knee pain. Both of their knee pain went away. then I started introducing it to some friends and their low back pain went away. Their knee pain went away, and it gave me enough confidence to start introducing it to some clients during my breath work. I've been teaching breath work for, 10 years or so, and when I added my little fascia routine that I had been working on, the breath work became more powerful.

[00:16:18] The same sequence I had been teaching for a decade, all of a sudden was dropping a hundred percent of the class into theta. Whereas normally I would get 50% of people there and I could tell by the breath rate. I could tell towards the end of breath class that the business owners weren't quite there.

[00:16:36] They wouldn't quite drop in. but people who had, got off work early or had come early and stretched, they would drop into that space. But when I introduced the fascia work, all of a sudden a hundred percent of the breathwork clients could drop into this dream-like state. So I noticed that by adding a little bit of body movement, the fascia work is just, a very yin body movement that massages the fascia tissues on a very deep level from the ground up.

[00:17:06] But it almost became this access point for the nervous system to relax. So I started introducing my fascia and my breath work in tandem, and in doing so, everything kind of shifted. So I built an equation, based on what I was really seeing. With people's breath rate, heart rate, nervous system rate, and fascia tension level.

[00:17:29] And as I introduced this to more people and then certified some teachers, so teaching them both the fascia and the breath simultaneously, other things started happening to people. Their psychic abilities that they had as children started to turn back on. If they weren't dreaming for years, their dreams were changing.

[00:17:47] personally, my eyeball prescription, I used to be a negative two and a negative one with, stigmatism and one eye. And I have done over the last 15 years, so many eye exercises, so many experimental techniques to try to improve my prescription. 'cause as a golfer, you don't really wanna wear contacts.

[00:18:06] You don't really wanna wear glasses. They, they get in the way. so I've been trying to heal my eyes for years and kind of gave up. Like nothing really worked. And, two months ago I went and got my eyes checked. And my prescription has reduced by 50% in both eyes and my astigmatism is completely gone.

[00:18:25] So the fascia work to me is just starting to show how much is shifting. Some of my clients that are in their sixties are sending me pictures of what's happening to their skin all over their body. So like very fit Women in their sixties, they tend to become a little crepey with their skin. Because, they're just, they're aging a little bit and their body is still tight and their whole skin all over their body is changing even though they're only working their lower half.

[00:18:55] And it's because the fascia technique I built works with the hyaluronic acid within the body. So there's an eight step process that I bring people through. It's very simple and very uncomplicated, but it works with the fibrocytes of the body, and how our fibrocytes make hyaluronic acids. So in doing so, a lot of systems are healing within people.

[00:19:16] And honestly, Nathan, I feel like I stumbled upon the sequence by accident and I'm just so grateful that the angels kind of showed me. I think I just took a deep dive into the research and played around enough with a little bit from this that I liked a little bit of this that I liked. This seemed to work here.

[00:19:36] And between those eight steps, people are dropping out of the stress response and then seemingly removing and cleaning trauma out of the deep tissue. So I'm almost looking at the fascia at this point, like hair, and it's like if we can brush our hair, we don't have any knots in it, right? So if we brush the fascia of the body, the fascia won't hold any knots with it.

[00:20:02] And the people that I'm working with that are older, this takes a longer time to get to point A. The kids that I'm working with that are younger, the athletes are still having a lot of issues. Because their body is tight. They've had injury that they've trained over, but it seems like the body just can heal itself when these eight different things are honored.

[00:20:24] And, introducing it to people has been just a great joy. It seems like even my F minus students who only do the work two days a week are getting great results. So, when we're out of pain and we have a slow breath rate, it seems that the brain is operating way more functionally, that we're more calm, we're more peaceful, we're more joyous by accident.

[00:20:46] We are, um, tooled up for stress a little better. You know?

[00:20:51] Nathan Maingard: by accident. Sorry, I just love that so

[00:20:53] Brooke Mcpoyle: Yeah,

[00:20:54] Nathan Maingard: Accidentally joyful.

[00:20:56] Brooke Mcpoyle: yeah.

[00:20:58] Nathan Maingard: That's amazing.

[00:20:59] Brooke Mcpoyle: But it seems that way if we don't have to worry about wearing our knee brace. Like my videographer who has filmed my, my five films now, He, I gave him a tennis ball after I did it. And he know he's not my market client. He's not an athlete by any means, and his knee pain is completely gone.

[00:21:17] His knee brace that he wore it for 10 years, he doesn't have to wear anymore. And he gave me a discount the last time we filmed and he's like, Brooke, I just wanna say how grateful I am for just knowing your tennis ball trick. Like, it's such a joy to be able to show up on set and not have to worry about my knee pain. And I can stand there for seven hours and I don't have the same issues.

[00:21:36] And and little things like that make me feel like I'm very much on the right pace with people,

[00:21:41] Nathan Maingard: your story's incredible to me because like, hearing it all in, obviously it's a lifetime of a story, but hearing it all in sequence, it seems that you, the universe has put you exactly here. Or God or whatever your belief system is around that. But like, that very intentionally gave you exactly the medicines and the messages and the journeys and the experiences that you needed to put these different pieces together.

[00:22:03] Like, I'm sorry, but like breath work and fascia and golf and like, these, these seem things that seem quite unrelated in many ways. leading like singing opera at 11 years old and then, yeah, it's just like gave you all the pieces of that puzzle that, that only you could put together because of your life experience, uh, which I think is completely amazing.

[00:22:24] And so. Oh man. So I, I'm, I'm curious around the fascia, like what, when you say it's like hair, so, so I'll just give you a bit of context. I, have been a surfer since I was 16 years old and have had quite a few injuries over the years all related to surfing, unfortunately, or most related to surfing. And it reached a point where I started getting neck spasms, really bad neck spasms that kind of debilitated me.

[00:22:52] And for a long time they were coming like once or twice a month, and surfing was a pretty guaranteed way to trigger them because of the extent like when I'm surfing, I'm paddling and my neck extended up and it would just create too much tension and my neck would go into spasm. And I actually stopped surfing for a long time.

[00:23:07] And then in my own healing journey, I've, I've

[00:23:09] Brooke Mcpoyle: Hmm.

[00:23:10] Nathan Maingard: uh, the great experience of, of just, ice baths and breath work and plant medicines. And, and then a few years ago, got into kettlebell workouts, which I still love. It's like I've never really been one for gym, although I do enjoy it now after having worked with Kettlebells.

[00:23:24] And I just, become a lot stronger over the last few years, and yet I still have, chronic pain in my body. Like I, my neck almost never goes into spasm, but it still does sometimes and, so I'm still navigating these ways of feeling this, like, feeling like overall a very strong, healthy fit human while also wrestling with these aspects.

[00:23:45] And based on what you're saying and some of the experiences I've had, when I have done some kinds of fascia work, I found it to be very deep and very effective. Although it hasn't, like, I guess it hasn't got the knots out completely. And so I find that it, I get knotted up again pretty quickly. And even more recently, I just started surfing again and having like the best time.

[00:24:02] But also even while I'm surfing, I can feel the tension in my upper body of just like, whoa, this is intense, but I've got the capacity and strength now to keep going. But it's almost like you were saying, I've, I've trained over the, the injuries and so now I can maintain more than I could, but it's still there.

[00:24:16] So I'm really curious around like the fascia element. What, what, what makes the fascia different to musculature or how does it integrate into the rest of the system, and why is that such a key element to this? To really deep and sustainable healing of the sort that could be like, oh, I could throw away the knee brace if I had any issue, or like, I could not, I, I could let go of the worry of, oh, I'm gonna go into spasm if I do this, or, or even just know that I'm gonna live pain free, which I haven't experienced in many, many years.

[00:24:45] So, yeah. How does fascia play into that?

[00:24:48] Brooke Mcpoyle: So let me give you a little bit of rundown so you can kind of, uh. Feel it differently in the body. Up until 2018, doctors really looked at fascia and, and some doctors still do. they look at fascia as a saran wrap that wraps the muscle. And most of us have heard of a myo fascia massage. and myo fascia just means the muscle of the fascia around the muscle.

[00:25:12] Mayo meets muscle. And what they have found now is that the fascia is so much more than that. It not only wraps the muscle, but it wraps each individual muscle fiber, and then it goes past that as well. It actually goes inside of our cells through something called integrins and it wraps around the mitochondria.

[00:25:32] So the reason why people are loving cold plunge so much is because when you do cold plunge, you're activating. Your A TP burning, right? Your mitochondria are dividing, which increases your brown fat and your adipose tissue, right? That's actually all happening through the fascia. So the fascia is the system that is integrating so many of our other systems, not a single place in our body, does muscle attached to bone.

[00:26:00] Muscle attaches to fascia or through tendons in some spaces, which then attaches to bone. So fascia is the structure, it's the scaffolding structure that's holding our bones in place. It's holding our joints in place, it's holding our organs in place, and then it's wrapping through the muscle fibers. So before, when we've studied the biomechanics of the body, what we've done is kind of eliminate the fascia completely and looked at the muscles, and we've seen the muscles as contracting and expanding.

[00:26:30] But we forgot about this element of fascia, and that was kind of by accident. It wasn't until the 1960s that we really could even conceptualize in architecture how the, something like the fascia could work. 'cause it was this thin, stringy spiderweb that was kind of gluey and it's moving a fluid through it and around it.

[00:26:52] So as kids, the way that we experience our fascia is it glides. We can jump off of a 10 foot tree branch and land and we're like spring loaded. We're shock absorbing, right? And the reason why we have that ability is 'cause the fascia can actually change, which is confusing the hell out of doctors. But the fascia is piezoelectric, polymorphic, meta-phasic and viscoelastic, meaning it has these characteristics that don't make any sense.

[00:27:20] It's almost like a solid and almost like a liquid. And when it's healthy, it's like a honey. So as children, we experience this as like lots of flexibility and mobility in our joints. We can run and we're never tired. There's almost no loss of energy. We seldom hurt ourselves when we fall and as we injure ourselves, right?

[00:27:44] The fascia tears. So even if you look at like an old scar on your body, you can see like the scar doesn't look exactly like skin or dermis. It looks like it's almost glued together a little bit by a white tissue. That is the fascia. So the fascia is made of collagen, and collagen is a triple helix shape.

[00:28:04] So it's like these little nano tubules. Imagine like one straw, right? And this one straw by itself is pretty bendy, and pliable. But if we took 50 straws and wrapped them together, they would be pretty strong. And the fascia has places in our body where it's basically like one straw, where it's very malleable and bendable, and then places where it's like an industrial strength rubber band.

[00:28:29] Now the industrial strength rubber bands of the fascia, we call them major fascia bands. And there's nine of them through the body from our feet to our head. And then we have two running down our arms. We call them the superficial front line, and then the deep front line, then the superficial back line and the deep back line on our arms.

[00:28:49] But these major fascia bands, in my opinion, allow myself as a trainer and a coach to talk about the full body in a segment, which is like pretty exciting. 'cause there's 650 some odd muscles in the body. So as a coach, when you're telling somebody to do something, when you're speaking muscle language, half the people are like, wait, what?

[00:29:11] Where's the hamstring again? What's the upper quad? But when I could just talk about the front line of the body or the back line of the body, actually simplifies a lot. So I'm hoping to encourage other coaches and trainers to switch the language, because if we can all talk faster language to people, we can actually simplify very complex ideas.

[00:29:32] And this is how I teach people golf, actually. so I teach people golf through talking about the fascia bands and everything happens 10 times faster, which is amazing

[00:29:41] Nathan Maingard: just, before you continue, I just wanna ask about the fascia. So for example, 'cause like if I put my arm out to the side with my palm sort of facing out and then if I turn my head or, or pull like my neck down, I feel this sort of stretching and tightness along the top of my arm. Is that fascia?

[00:30:00] Brooke Mcpoyle: Yes. so that rubber band feeling that we can have at any point in our system when we hit our maximums, is what I like to call them, that is where strength is made. So there's something in kung fu and in ballet, about, and in gymnastics, about the language I would like to use is when we have Paso Electric control over the fascia.

[00:30:27] So we can, when we're working with the fascia more consciously and we're locking out our joints so that the fascia band works as one unit, that's how we create momentum through the body. So hockey players and golfers can tell you that like the force of momentum of your club head comes from the degree of separation from your shoulders to your hips.

[00:30:52] Baseball players as well can tell you that you have to press hard against the ground in order to create momentum. So in kung fu, if you wanna throw like a really strong round off, that's like high. What you wanna do is hit your maximum effort. So anybody can do this. If you kick right and you break your knee down and you kick out, the power is gonna come from when you come all the way straight.

[00:31:16] But if you can straighten your leg entirely and then fling your leg up from the joint while keeping your leg completely straight and you hit your complete expansion, you can throw your leg down with so much more power. And this is how ballerinas have been jumping 45 inches in the air. This is how NBA players jump 40 inches straight up in the air.

[00:31:40] it's through this fascia control. So learning how to reconnect the toes, to the pelvic floor, to the diaphragm, which is really breath training allows us to activate this current within the fascia.

[00:31:55] Nathan Maingard: You said there's nine like threads that run through the body and, and talking about that makes it a lot simpler and understandable for people.

[00:32:03] Brooke Mcpoyle: Yeah, so these rubber bands, unfortunately when we rip them or tear them as athletes, we sometimes have ripped and torn the deep fascia layers. So even though we may feel like we healed it up, we went and saw a fascia therapist, they might have released it on the superficial lines, but it might still be there closer to the bone.

[00:32:21] And when we have these deep adhesions. And an adhesion really, is just where the fascia is no longer moving fluid. So when you look at an ultrasound of the body where there's fascia, they call it densifications. In some of the research papers and in other research paper, they call it adhesions, which means the fascia has, has adhered together.

[00:32:44] It's glued together. So there's no more fluidity. At the, in the simplest form, fascia is meant to be fluid. When it's fluid we experience a lot of health. If We have fluid symmetry and balance on both sides of the body, we feel really good, really free with no joint pain. If we've developed a densification in the fascia fluid.

[00:33:09] so it's no longer moving. That's when over time that stagnation starts to kind of build and crinkle more. And then when that happens in these major bands, let's just say if you have something going on in your quad that's gonna pull on your hip tilt, right? And as the hip tilt comes down, the body needs balance.

[00:33:30] This brain has to be horizontal in order for it to function properly so the upper body will compensate. And the problem that I see in a, in a lot of the healing modalities is that we're focused on the pain spots. So we come in and, and we're dealing with shoulder issues, we're dealing with TMJ issues or tension headaches, and the therapist will hyper focus on the pain spot.

[00:33:52] And then those pain spots come back. And what I'm introducing to people is if we can brush the hair of these rubber bands out so that there's no tension, that we're encouraging the fascia to flow while we're training, we can eliminate these issues. Because it's just densification, just like knots in our hair.

[00:34:14] If we had knots in our hair, if we started to brush from the top down, we're gonna rip those knots, which has really been the philosophy in, in fascia therapy for the last hundred years. Most of what we've done is based on Dr. Ida Rolf, who in the late 18th century, early 19th century introduced Rolfing.

[00:34:33] Which is. to me, she took massage therapy into the healing arts. She was huge on physiology. She required her client, like her students, to read a whole bunch of stuff. Tom Myers was trained by her, and what they would do is find the spots that were stuck and then ripped them open so that there was flow again. And in my opinion, that that's great.

[00:34:58] Like flow is better than lack of flow. But as an athlete, I don't wanna have to recover from my recovery method. I don't wanna be bruised, I don't wanna have to wait to train. So the question I kept asking myself in my research was, how can we undo the knots without ripping any of the fascia fibers? And by asking that question, I think that I found myself down a little rabbit hole.

[00:35:22] And what I found is that by following a particular sequence, instead of treating the fascia adhesion with ripping or shearing, I was looking at the geometry of these. So I was spending a lot of time, looking at ultrasound footage, cadaver images, and just using my artistic mind going, okay, how do we un un-knot the spider web without ripping any of the fibers of the spider web.

[00:35:49] And I ended up developing a little bit of vocabulary around the feelings of adhesions. So when you come across identification in the body, I like to think that there's five different ways to feel them. The most intense ones are the electrical ones.

[00:36:03] That's when, in my opinion, the fascia has collapsed entirely, entirely around the nerve. And the nerve no longer is functioning. And what I've seen in myself and in clients is that when this electrical adhesion goes away, whatever neuropathy was happening lower in the body reverses. So there's a collapsing method within the fascia adhesion.

[00:36:27] the second highest priority adhesions are the ones that radiate. So. We go through a certain sequence to warm up this Piso electric charge. And then if you hit a spot where you actually feel your knee pain or you feel your ankle, or you feel your hip, that's what I like to call radiating. And these spots, every step we take are actually pulling your joints out of sequence, which to me, solves a problem.

[00:36:51] Like, why is it that when people get a knee replacement, one knee is in significantly worse shape than the other? and what I found on those people is that there's a cloister of adhesions on one side of the body. There's not balance of fluidity. There is huge 'tensifications' on one side, and then the other side is mostly flowing.

[00:37:11] the third most intense adhesion is a dull spot. And then the last two are tender and achy. So by developing a vocabulary around how this spiderweb can feel, we start to take care of the most intense ones because the confusing part about the fascia is that it's all interconnected. So if you just focus on pain spots, often the issue of the pain spot is a consequence of something else happening in the body.

[00:37:37] So this sequence keeps us a little more disciplined, moving through the knots with the intent of rebalancing the hips before we move through the upper body. and that's for about a hundred different reasons. I

[00:37:48] Nathan Maingard: well, so I'd love to, sorry, do you wanna finish your thought there? But I have another question for you related to, to that releasing.

[00:37:55] Brooke Mcpoyle: No, that's okay. Talk to

[00:37:56] Nathan Maingard: so I had a, for a time I worked with a, an amazing masseuse who, his thing, I don't know what it was exactly called, but it was around fascial release. The work he was doing was fascial, for example, like the last thing we would do every session was that he, he would have me lie on my back and he would actually push into my, my neck.

[00:38:14] And then he would sort of go from the one part down and ru like rub while pressing quite hard and have me turn the opposite way, like turn towards the left while he's pulling down and away. And it would be this, the process was quite painful a lot of the time and. It had a really positive effect. So I went for like 10 sessions and for quite a long time after I had more fluidity is the term I would now use.

[00:38:38] Having listened to you. I could, I was more fluid in my body, and as he expressed, he said, people will do yoga and have this momentary relief, but, but it doesn't stay because they're stuck, their fascia is stuck together like you've just expressed. And so I experienced it while working with him. But what happened, there's two things that I'm, I would like to hear your thoughts on.

[00:38:56] One was that often it was incredibly painful. And in the pain, like if he'd press press into like psoas or these different parts and then have me sort of turn away or do these different things, I would sometimes literally scream or cry and have a big emotional release. Like I would feel emotion and feel almost like the emotion was stuck in the fascia where I would need to sob or express rage or like really need to get something out.

[00:39:22] And then I would feel relief. And so that's the first part of the question is what's going on then? Does that happen in your work as well? And the second part of the question, which I can ask again if it's too many things at once, but is why didn't it last? Why did it come back? Why did my pain come back after a while of not working with him?

[00:39:38] And so, but yeah, anyway, those two questions,

[00:39:40] Brooke Mcpoyle: So I'm gonna answer your second one first. if you went to a dentist and you had perfectly clean teeth, would you leave the dentist and be like, I never have to brush my teeth again? Yeah, so, or like, if I brush my hair and I go to the hairdresser and my hair is perfect, would I ever say to myself, I never have to brush my hair again?

[00:40:03] Right. So, I always, I like to remind people of this, in 1938, the first nylon toothbrush was invented. Before 1938, right, so it's not even a hundred years. And almost everyone around the world has an understanding that brushing our teeth twice a day is very good for our health. But not 150 years ago was it normal and natural for people to lose their teeth?

[00:40:28] It was normal and natural. Oh, you're 40, it's normal to lose your teeth. So, uh, to me, fascia Health is a, it's a regular maintenance process. if we maintain good fascia health, we can just do it three days a week. But a lot of the times when I work with people, I'm like, this is a five day a week routine for the first six months or so, just to get yourself back to point A.

[00:40:52] When you're at point A, then it's just three days a week, you just do a maintenance routine. and the maintenance routine that I teach people is 20 minutes. So 20 minutes, five days a week, you can do it while you're doing other things. Like I roll my feet out when I'm making my coffee and brushing my teeth.

[00:41:08] When I make my mid morning calls. I do my calves before I go to bed. I do my upper legs, so it could be baked in while you watch your favorite show. So it's not a time consuming thing, but it is a regular maintenance thing. I actually just did an experiment. I was at, like 90% reduction in adhesions.

[00:41:26] I almost at, at the that point. I was during my sessions just looking for stuff in my lower legs As I was teaching. I was like, man, I have nothing left now. So I did three weeks of no fascia work and continued my normal training regimen. I trained gymnastics three days a week. I sprint a couple days a week. And I just wanted to see.

[00:41:46] Like if I do nothing, how long does it take for my knee pain to come back? And it took three weeks. So I think you, no matter where we are with our training level, this is just like brushing our teeth. Like if I didn't brush my teeth for three weeks, you can imagine I would be experiencing some really disgusting symptoms.

[00:42:04] Um, so the fascia to me is a, it's a regular process. and it's easy to be regular when you can do it yourself. So, the course that I sell is the price of one massage, and I teach people how to do it for themselves. And I've had a lot of clients that have spent $3,000 working with a massage therapist for extended sessions and ex, you know, systems of trying to pull their body back and they're like, wow, I could have just been at home with a tennis ball rolling around at night, fixing my whole body without need.

[00:42:36] So, the first question that you had about fascia release and trauma is, yes, there is a marriage between our emotional body and our fascia tissues. And, uh, what I like to remind people is that we all have trauma. Everything in nature has trauma. Things that have trauma, a lot of trauma are usually meant to be incredibly strong.

[00:43:00] So never be afraid of the trauma coming out of the body. What I always tell people is that we can be gentle and we can be kind to ourselves. So in the sequence that I teach, we only go to our 80% pain threshold. I never ever advise a hundred percent pain threshold when we're at a hundred percent pain or screaming or shouting.

[00:43:21] Usually the tissues around that adhesion are starting to tense. so if somebody starts to make a funny face, I know that they're pushing too hard. And the flow, the flow of the fascia is everything that I'm, the work that I'm doing. So when we respect that 80% paint threshold, along with the seven other rules, we're going to allow the fascia in time to open itself to the flow.

[00:43:46] So when people experience emotional processes, I remind them to breathe, just to breathe nice and slow and to respect the process. If we try to rip all of that stuff out of the system at once, it becomes violent and aggressive and it can tear some stuff and it can bruise some stuff and it can be painful.

[00:44:04] and for me, I feel like the gentle approach is the best approach. Like we have all of the tools that we need within ourselves, as long as we're gonna be gentle, if we're gonna be aggressive, it's nice to have someone hold space for you and you're probably gonna need to rest and recover after.

[00:44:20] But by breaking our health routine into small pieces that we can manage and chip away at. The, it's like if you get 3% better every day in six months, what you're dealing with now isn't even gonna feel the same. yeah. So I'm always encouraging people to handle the emotional body with tenderness, with gentleness, with the breath, and to just be respectful to allowing it to come out in time instead of trying to force it out in one session.

[00:44:50] Nathan Maingard: makes a lot of sense. And for anyone who's listening right now who maybe feels kind of overwhelmed, they're in a space of chronic pain or stress or just like the daily fricking society that we live in right now, do you have any single or, or a simple technique that could be like something that they could just practice today and maybe as a daily thing, just to kind of get a bit of calm and control there?

[00:45:12] Anything that you could offer for them in this moment?

[00:45:15] Brooke Mcpoyle: Absolutely. one of my favorite things ever to teach children, particularly how to do, is to hum. And when we're humming, we're accidentally breathing correctly, uh, because we're extending our exhale. So I say to hum until you're out of breath. But there is a, a few things that happen when we hum that people don't realize.

[00:45:34] And, uh, our vagus nerve, which is just the word for the major nerves that encase our parasympathetic nervous system, or the pleasure system, is what I like to call. If we're in a state of pleasure, we're not in stress. If we're in stress, we can't feel the pleasure. So as soon as we acknowledge that we're in a state of stress, our body is not digesting and we are not healing, and our immune system is turned off.

[00:45:58] So many people at, in my opinion, in America, are dealing with serious symptoms and diagnosises, which could be traced back to just an overactive stress response. And the thing about stress is we'll never stop it. It's. It's part of our biological makeup. It happens faster than we know it. Our nervous system's moving at 268 miles an hour.

[00:46:20] If an explosion went off, we're stressed. We don't even have to think about it. There's a biological override to adrenaline. So our job is to acknowledge when it's there and then to pull our self out of it as fast as possible. And to me it's four minutes of humming.

[00:46:36] If we can hum, particularly with our tongue, the back third of our tongue against the roof of our mouth. There is, in our mouth, the thing that separates the nasal cavity from the mouth cavity, is something called a hard palate and a soft palate. And the hard palate, our skull is made up of different plates. The hard palate is in, in it. There's a suture between two different skull plates.

[00:46:58] And anybody that wears a retainer understands this 'cause that retainer pushes on the insides of the teeth to push it out and it changes that suture. but if you just place your tongue. Like suction cupped against the roof of the mouth, and you hum. When your tongue is suction cupped, you're actually pulling down on the soft palate and you're increasing your airflow through the center of your head.

[00:47:21] So your nasal glands are actually being trained to pull down and open up wide. And then when we add humming, where toning your trachea, we're moving anything that's stuck in the lymph, the adenoids or the tonsils. We're creating cerebral fluid flow through the frontal lobe. So people that have foggy brain, it tends to go away.

[00:47:39] If there's any stagnation in the lymph nodes, those go away. and then we're extending the exhale. So the nervous system is being pulled back into a state of pleasure. So humming for four minutes while you're driving, while you're washing the dishes, while you're walking around, you can almost deaden the noise around you.

[00:47:57] So anytime you're just standing in a grocery store and the energy is starting to get rather uncomfortable, you can just breathe deeply into your belly. Lift the tongue on the top of your, your mouth and then hum for four minutes until you're out of air. And if you just play with the pitch a little bit, you can actually drone out any noise you're hearing.

[00:48:20] And I think it's a powerful, almost like creating your own cat purr, but it allows you to regulate yourself while you're amongst absolute chaos

[00:48:31] Nathan Maingard: a beautiful, beautiful invitation. And I also love the, one of the things I know about humming is that it in massively increases the nitric oxide production, uh, in our sinuses, which then we inhale that into our lungs and that goes into our bloodstream and has like all these incredibly positive benefits downstream, uh, which I love.

[00:48:50] I, I, nitric oxide, I think was named the molecule of the year in like 1994 or something like that. I don't remember the exact day. But because of how powerful it is and like to be able to 15 x your production just by humming, I mean that alone is a, is reason enough adding to everything you've just said, which is epic.

[00:49:06] So I love that. So simple. Thank you. That's fantastic.

[00:49:09] Brooke Mcpoyle: Yeah, it is simple, it's easy, it's underused, and wow, if we did that as kids, imagine if when a classroom was getting nuts, if a teacher was like, okay, we're all humming for four minutes.

[00:49:21] Nathan Maingard: I love that. Well, I'd love to hear, but you've, you've mentioned it obviously during the, what you've been sharing with us, but your work, the work that you do and the offerings you have, where would people, where would you direct someone now to kind of take the first step in learning more and, and learning more from you directly?

[00:49:38] Because obviously you have such a, a wealth of knowledge that can, uh, positively impact someone's life and wellbeing very quickly and simply by the sounds of it. So where would you direct someone?

[00:49:49] Brooke Mcpoyle: I am so excited. I just launched my website on Saturday, my new website, and I released more than 150 films. For my gamma seeker library. So it just depends on how people best learn. I have three different courses for people who just wanna start diving in. The brain and breath connection lecture that I offer is 30 bucks, and it is an outline of really my whole thesis. Of the equation that I built between the rhythm of our breath, how that affects our heart rate and our brainwaves, and our fascia tension, and how we can toggle switch by using either the breath rate or the fascia to change our overall awareness and consciousness level.

[00:50:31] so I love that it's the, it's like the cheapest offering I have, but I'm the most proud of it. Um, I really feel like for the proper note taker, I give away a lot of information in that 30, $30 course. But I have my Mighty Breath course. Which I teach my level one opera training to, athletes, and that's all built around a 10 minute sequence that trains your natural and automatic breath pattern.

[00:50:58] So instead of just doing a breath work thing that trips your brain out, what I teach you how to do is train the muscles that pump your lungs. So we clean your lungs, then we make the muscles that pump your lungs flexible, and then we make them strong and we teach a shape of the breath.

[00:51:13] And as that shape of the breath becomes established, there's a lot of things that turn online. The internal organs get massaged. We start to naturally drop our breath rate, which to me is the big changer. If we wanna change our brainwaves, if we wanna be the cool, calm, collected, stable, creative thinker under pressure.

[00:51:31] We need to be breathing instead of at 20 breaths a minute, we need to be breathing more like eight breaths a minute on a, on an average. And to do that, we just double your breath capacity. So if somebody's at seven cubic liters of air, I wanna get you to 14 cubic liters of air. And that's naturally gonna work itself out.

[00:51:50] So it's 10 minutes a day to do my mighty breath. And I have that all digitally laid out for someone. the fascia course that I have, it's the price of one massage. It's 210 minutes of information about caring for your fascia. And I have a test. If somebody was like, well I have no idea what my fascia tension is like. If they go to musical breathwork.com, there is a breath test and a fascia test. And I'll give you the results right there, for free, just to give you a calibration of like how I would grade you. and then for people who want to dive right into the experimentation that I'm doing with the brainwaves, 'cause to me the goal is to get to gamma.

[00:52:26] our brains have this. Significant capacity that we're barely tapping. And, the Gamma Seeker Library is there for those that want to experiment, wanna be in a community of people that are experimenting and sharing notes. And I have 60% more information about the breath and the fascia and brainwave meditations, on there.

[00:52:47] So I'm about to be releasing a record. I'm in the middle of the process of recording a lullaby album that has a new cymatic experiment based on live instruments that are tuned to 4 32. And then, a breath cuing that acts as a guided meditation, through through breath rate cuing. So you can just kind of plug that in and, breathe on the sound of this and exhale on the sound of this.

[00:53:12] And then we drop you slowly into one breath a minute. and that I'm, I'm very excited to do research on, I'm pitching a couple doctors this week on. Using their EEGs to, to show them if we include fascia tension and breath rate in the cymatic research. I truly believe that we're gonna have a breakthrough with brainwave technology.

[00:53:33] And, this is like really the crux of my work. The crux of my work is let's get to gamma, let's starts to maintain gamma. let's operate from gamma. The solutions are here, we just need to turn on this extra glip of our voltage. And I feel like the voltage will turn on naturally when the body can handle the voltage.

[00:53:53] and that electrical mechanism to me is with the breath and with the fascia. And when we start to control those spheres, I feel like the brain can optimize to a whole new level.

[00:54:05] Nathan Maingard: Wow, that's incredible. So where... is Gamma? 'cause I don't know much, I know the, the names of these different states, but like, where is Gamma on the, the frequencies and what is it, what does it feel like or what is a, what kind of state is a person in when they're in Gamma? What's happening? Like, how are they functioning in the world at that point?

[00:54:23] Brooke Mcpoyle: So mostly we are operating in beta. Like right now we're at 16 to 30 hertz. When we're stressed, we're at like 25 to 30 hertz. gamma is 31 to a hundred. And we experience it when we like bite into an apple for a half second, or when we have solved a problem, we're vexed by. And it's when our brain is operating like a symphony.

[00:54:46] So if you, if when you do this podcast, you know how you have the audio frequencies,

[00:54:51] Nathan Maingard: Yeah.

[00:54:51] Brooke Mcpoyle: , you know, all those squiggly lines. So imagine our brain can handle a hundred squiggly lines. But we're feeling stressed at 30 squiggly lines.

[00:55:03] Nathan Maingard: Hmm.

[00:55:04] Brooke Mcpoyle: But we have the ability to get to a hundred squiggly lines. So the monks that they flew over from Nepal and Tibet and some from France, they hooked them up on the EEG.

[00:55:14] And they're experiencing gamma for eight hours at a time

[00:55:18] Nathan Maingard: Whoa.

[00:55:19] Brooke Mcpoyle: moving around with no electrical impingement. So some people, like Dr. Joe Dispenza, he has these beautiful breathworks that he guides people down and people drop into what they think is gamma and, and they're probably in gamma, but their body is convulsing.

[00:55:33] There's almost like a seizure like experience. And I feel like it's because the body's not equipped to handle the voltage. So if we start looking at the body more like electricity, when we are going to bring the brain to 90 hertz, the radio tower, right? So the fascia, 'cause the brain is connected to the body through the nervous system, the nervous system is held in place by the fascia.

[00:55:58] Every cell of our body has a nerve to it. So when we turn the gear up on our brain, the rest of the symptoms are increasing. And many people in America that are trying to drop into gamma are using hyperventilating breath routines. So they're breathing at 50 breaths a minute, 60 breaths a minute, and they're turning the, the sympathetic drive on.

[00:56:21] So I feel like people that are reaching gamma for small clips of state, consciously, there's a disconnect with the voltage. And there's this thing very understudied, between theta brainwaves, which is four to seven. It's where we are as children. It's when we learn we're in theta, when we're building new neurons.

[00:56:40] We're in theta when we're in our imagination. And when I can drop people into theta, there's something called the theta gamma sink. And this to me, makes more sense if we wanna operate the brain at 90 hertz. The way that we do that isn't breathing 90 times a minute. I think it's by breathing four times a minute, three times a minute, two times a minute.

[00:57:02] And by having that slow, peaceful still space within the body and the body is free of electrical impingements, I think that's when we can resonate to this next level and hold the charge. And, and the reason why I feel it works that way is because of instruments. I play eight different instruments and, and on many instruments there's something called the harmonics.

[00:57:27] And the harmonics are when things are perfectly cut in half and you have a guitar behind you. So like, you know how the, the 12th fret harmonic, you can just slightly place your finger and it makes those pretty sounds.

[00:57:39] Nathan Maingard: Yeah.

[00:57:40] Brooke Mcpoyle: Um, so I think the body's the same way. I think that when we can perfectly harmonize our breath rate with our brainwave, with our fascia tension that we can just kind of slowly evolve into this next state.

[00:57:57] So I really see the body like an instrument, the fascia bands are strings, and the breath rate is how fast we're strumming those strings. And based on the tension, the fascia, our life will be muddy, dissonant sound, or it will be pure melody.

[00:58:14] Nathan Maingard: Oh man, I love, I've got goosebumps. That's so beautiful. I actually wrote a song years ago called, it's All Music. I, I was, I mean, I've been playing and writing songs since I was 14, although I've never trained sort of, um, yeah, whatever, like officially. But I, I, I've always song songwriting in particular, lyrics in particular have been just a great, one of the great loves of my life.

[00:58:35] And I was going through actually a really difficult time, um, some years ago really struggling with depression and just like struggling to feel like I wanted to be in life anymore. And somehow in amongst that, I was also thinking about this idea of music and resonance and how. The universe is this, like we've, at least science currently is saying, you know, what we call reality is molecules vibrating at different frequencies.

[00:59:03] And so when I was thinking about frequencies, I was like, well then, so that's what makes everything stable from moment to moment is that those frequencies are harmonizing. There's a, there's a harmonizing at some level of reality that creates what I call this life. The present moment.

[00:59:19] And if it's harmonizing, like all those terms that we're using, vibration, frequency, harmonizing. I'm like, that's what music is. And so this idea had popped into my head of like, it's all music. And so when I wrote this song in this very dark place, it was the song that was helping me to remember that, that, that the darkness was not the whole thing basically.

[00:59:38] And so the, the first verse, which I is possibly my favorite verse, it, it says that it's like all things resonate from the really small to the extra great. And you are such a melody that the heavens lean down just to sing it. To me it's all music. And, and so hearing you speak is really speaking to that same thing and, and to the fact that I can actually help the melody and help the harmony and the, the, the, the part of the refrain that only I can resonate in, that Nathan is here to resonate. Like I can help that. By loosening the knots, by brushing out the knots and by slowing down the, the frequency with which I'm breathing, with which I'm strumming that string, that is the being that I am. And by doing so, I can more fully express the notes that like I've been gifted to express. So I've, I deeply appreciate what you've just shared. It complete.

[01:00:36] I have still have goosebumps the entire time that I've been

[01:00:40] sharing and, and feeling what you've just shared. So thank you so much.

[01:00:44] Brooke Mcpoyle: Yeah. And I mean, how often do we need to tune the guitar? Basically every time we pick it up. Every other time. So your body's the same. So how many people think that they have pain, but it's just tension? It's just tension. It's just like a shallow breath rate in a tense body. If we make the body not tense, if we make the body fluid again, remember the body is just gases and liquids moving through tubes.

[01:01:09] So tension is just something if the gases or the fluids getting stuck in the tubes. So if we help those tubes flow once more, then we retune, naturally and automatically. I, I'm at a point now with my clients where I don't even feel like we have to do anything to the upper body. Once we get through the lower body, everything almost resets.

[01:01:30] The spine itself is so braided with fascia. Three major fascia bands just braiding it up and coiling it, and there's so much tension in people's glutes and in their hips that they think they have shoulder problems. But once the glutes are free, once the hips are free again, the shoulder just naturally opens up.

[01:01:48] It's almost like the lower body and the upper body are these mirrors of each other. And if you think of tuning an instrument, we don't tune both sides. We just tune one part of the neck. Unless you have one of those really cool strandberg when you're tuning the bottom, those very expensive guitars. But other than the strandberg, we just tune the pegs on the neck.

[01:02:07] And, and to me, I really see the, the pegs, the tuning pegs of our body are our feet. Because we walk on our feet, the foot has 26 bones on it. the whole leg only has four bones. So as we fix the feet, as we fix the lower body, the upper body almost shakes itself out naturally. And when we double the capacity of the breath, the brainwaves calm down.

[01:02:29] So it's almost like three spheres. And as a musician, if you could imagine your heart, the heart is like the kick drum of, of the layers, right? So imagine the first sphere is the kick drum of your heart. Then the second sphere is the breath rate, right? And the breath is this like overarching vocal within the sound layer, right?

[01:02:48] And then you have the brain. And the brain is like all of your sweet melodies on top. And to me, we're gonna be able to triple our brain's optimal power when we can harmonize our heart rate with our breath rate and then allow the brain to do its magic. So if we're at breathing at four breaths a minute and there's no tension in the body, what are we capable of creatively?

[01:03:15] What kind of choices are we making? That same trigger that can hit you, you can greet it with laughter by accident. Because there's no longer something existing in your body full of tension.so yeah, we are instruments. To me, if we can embrace that, we can have freedom, we can make the sweet songs that we're supposed to make through our life.

[01:03:38] Nathan Maingard: Yeah. I love that. And, and in terms of your offerings currently, does your, the one you mentioned, I think the, the one that costs the amount of like a massage, will that take someone through the process of like bringing the fascia or, or brushing out the fascia and is there breath involved in that? Is is like if, if someone could only do one right now, and I'm also thinking of myself here 'cause now I really want buy something that you do.

[01:04:02] 'cause I'm like totally in, you've sold me a hundred percent. Like which one

[01:04:07] Brooke Mcpoyle: Yeah.

[01:04:07] Nathan Maingard: be the one.

[01:04:09] Brooke Mcpoyle: I would actually suggest you to take the breath and fascia test first. because some people greet me and they already have a two and a half minute breath hold, but their fascia is awful. So start with fascia. But if somebody has, you know, they're practicing yin yoga, their mobility's pretty good.

[01:04:24] They have great toe dexterity, but their breath hold is less than 30 seconds 'cause they've been vaping for 10 years. Start with the breath. so that little test in my website will, within five minutes, you'll be able to, to gain a barometer of, of where best to start. People that do train both of them at the same time tend to create a lot of subtle, and powerful changes in their body.

[01:04:47] So there is an advantage of doing it, simultaneously, uh, because it, it tends to create massive movement of flow. 'cause when we're training the breath. We're moving a lot of the internal organ systems, like people that have digestive problems, they tend to go away 'cause we're creating so much internal organ massage.

[01:05:07] and then people that have fascia issues, it's like, man, you just want five days a week for a little while. Just get the body recalibrated. If you're feeling any electrical impingement, that's just your body saying this is really important to do. We never wanna take neuropathy lightly. Neuropathy to me is a huge, huge problem.

[01:05:25] If we have lower body atrophy. This is like

[01:05:27] Nathan Maingard: do you mean when you say that around electrical? Around electrical issues, like what would that feel like?

[01:05:34] Brooke Mcpoyle: I go deep into it on the course to like developing that, that little vocabulary. And it's just a way to feel the spider web of the fascia and not avoid the painful spots. So if we think of a spider web, if you had three giant knots within the spider web right? And we left them there for a while, these big knots would create opening on other parts of the fascia, which I call the tender achy spots, these tiny openings. Versus the big knots are the radiating electrical and dull spots. So if you warm up a section, right, and then you're like, well, this is really uncomfortable, I'm just gonna focus on this little tiny tender, achy spot over here.

[01:06:14] 'cause I wanna avoid this lightning bowl of activity,

[01:06:18] Nathan Maingard: hmm.

[01:06:19] Brooke Mcpoyle: gonna take a while to get better. So it's really, it's up to your discipline to follow the eight parts of sequence to take care of the highest priority spots. And, I walk you through that whole process, but really the fascia and the breath don't overlap too much.

[01:06:34] There's a little bit of sauce I give out in the gamma seekers for both, releasing facial fascia, tension for the breath and whatnot. But they both are, require their own scientific explanation. They require a little understanding of the physiology, which barely gives you an understanding of what to do with tension and how to help the body release the tension,

[01:06:56] Nathan Maingard: Hmm. Beautiful. Well, thank you. And you mentioned a, a moment ago you, you used the word freedom around being able to be free. So when you hear we are already free, what does that bring up for you?

[01:07:08] Brooke Mcpoyle: That the three spheres of the body, that the brain and the fascia and the heart and the breath they're operating together, and that there is this feeling of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm, in Webster's dictionary means possession by God. And I feel like when we are in our proper space, we are linked into this faucet of energy and it's that timeless awareness.

[01:07:34] It's that. You know, you kind of forget where you are, you're so present with the moment. And for some people that faucet stays in one spot and they just live their life and they're like, wow, this is so great. Why is everybody else struggling? And then for those of us that are creative, right? Sometimes that faucet moves around and you think you're under it, and then a year later you're like, well, what the hell?

[01:07:54] I thought I was like in my thing and now I have to move over here to find a thing. so to me, freedom is when we are connected to this infinite, abundant, eternal energy that fills us up from the inside out. And it kind of feels like we're unstoppable. Because whatever ambitious goal you pick, when if you have that enthusiasm within you, you can just continue to conquer.

[01:08:18] You can experience failure and still continue to climb the mountain with laughter. And for me, freedom is when we are embodying that enthusiastic energy because we are where we need to be.

[01:08:31] Nathan Maingard: Well, Brooke, this has been an absolute gift and a pleasure and just such an honor. I, I really deeply appreciate what you've brought to us today. And it feels to me like a missing piece in society and a piece that I have definitely been looking for. And so I'm really excited to have access to your work and to be able to share this information with my listeners.

[01:08:52] And yeah, just thank you so much. I really appreciate you and we'll, we'll obviously share this and share your links in the show notes, et cetera. But for now, just thank you for being here and thank you for your work. So appreciate you.

[01:09:03] Brooke Mcpoyle: My pleasure. It's an honor to be on. Thanks for bringing this to the other side of the globe. I appreciate it.

[01:09:10] Nathan Maingard:

[01:09:10] Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of We Are Already Free. I hope you found Brooke Mcpoyle's Musicalbreathwork wisdom as liberating as I have. From her powerful insights into breathwork and fascia to the practical steps she shared, today's conversation was all about helping you move from a state of stress and chronic pain into joyful flow. Let's go!

[01:09:32] Remember to check out more of Brooke's work on Instagram and her website linked in the show notes.

[01:09:38] Now that you've had a chance to dive deep into the power of breath and fascia with Brooke, you've probably started to realize just how much of your tension and stress could be affecting every part of your life and how much better things could be when you align your body's movement with your true self, with who you really are.

[01:09:55] But sometimes no matter how much we learn, how much we absorb or consume, the biggest shifts just don't happen until we take that next step.

[01:10:03] That's why I'm offering a limited opportunity to help you move through whatever's been holding you back from taking that next step with my root and rise sessions. These one-to-one sessions are designed to get to the root of your biggest challenge, whether it's physical, emotional, or spiritual, and give you the tools to rise into alignment with who you really are.

[01:10:22] Just like Laura, who felt blocked by fear, but walked away from our session surprised at what was actually possible in such a short time. Or Blissa, who gained clarity and inspiration on. On the next aligned steps for her career. These sessions are about more than just solving problems. There are about opening up to new possibilities and stepping fully into your authentic self.

[01:10:43] There are only two spots left at the time of recording. So if you're feeling stuck and ready for real embodied change, head to the link in the show notes or visit alreadyfree.me/rootrise to claim your spot before they're all gone.

[01:10:57] Finally, remember to share this episode with someone you love, who might benefit from Brooke's approach to holistic wellness and personal empowerment.

[01:11:05] It's wild to me, how many people have told me they listened to the podcast, but they haven't yet left a review or, they're like, this has been my favorite podcast. I love it. And they haven't yet taken action to share an episode or to comment on Spotify or leave a review. Be an action taker. Do one of those things. Because it helps the podcast to reach more people out there in the world. I need you as much as you need this podcast. So keep it going.

[01:11:26] Let's spread the word. As always until next time, dear listener, this is your host, Nathan maingard checking out. I loved being me with you today. What a pleasure. You're amazing. Thank you. And please remember, We Are Already Free.