Your Breath is the Best Medicine -Harness it’s Magic

Introduction and Guest Welcome 0:00

Hello, ladies. Welcome back to Mastering the Menopause Transition Summit. I am your host, doctor Sharon Stills, and I am excited for today's talk that we're going to have. It is the end of my day here. And we are going to talk about one of my favorite topics. You've heard me say it throughout the summit. That breath is the best medicine you have and we are going to dive deep. We're going to do some demonstrations, which I am super excited about, because it's a great way to wind down at the end of a long day.

So get comfy and get excited because this is going to be good. And I'm joined today with my special guest, Jane Hogan. She's known as the wellness engineer. She blends science and spirituality to help people release chronic pain using the mind, the body, and the breath. Yay! So they can become empowered creators of their own health. And she's the host of the Wellness by Design podcast, and her empowering message has been featured on numerous podcasts and summit. She's been published in Thrive Global and Elephant Journal Magazine, which I love.

Elephant Journal, that is super cool that you've been published there. So welcome to the summit, Jane. It's really exciting to have you here. Sharon. I am so happy to be part of this. And I just love what you're doing, what you're putting together in this summit. So special for us ladies that are at this beautiful stage in our lives and looking forward to this next chapter. So I'm just thrilled to be part of it. Right. Thank you. And Jane and I met because I was a guest on her summit. She put on an amazing summit herself, and so it's nice to flip it around and be interviewing you this time.

So I'll start where I always start to get to know you a little bit better. What's what's your story? How did you end up becoming the wellness engineer? I love that name. Well, you know, I was I was an actual engineer. I was a structural engineer. I designed like foundations and steel structures for buildings. That was what I was working at. And I always my little joke is I was a structural engineer until my own structure started to fail. So, exactly what I would make sure that steel and concrete didn't do is what happened to me start at the stress was too much.

I had a very stressful year, and then I started to get this joint pain and it would migrate all throughout my body and I went, I just turned 50 when this started, and within about three months I went from being a strong, healthy, vibrant woman to being barely able to walk, hardly able to turn door handles, couldn't squeeze like shampoo out of the bottle. I it was just awful. It was a terrible time, and I really didn't know. I knew that stress had to be part of it, but I didn't really know what was going on, and neither did my doctor.

And, so we, she made an appointment for me to see a rheumatologist. And I live in Newfoundland in Canada. It takes about six months to see a rheumatologist. So in the meantime, she said, you know, sometimes foods can cause joint pain. And I thought it was an absolutely ridiculous creature, but I was like, I would I just was ready to try anything. And so I did. I started with foods I cut out gluten, dairy and sugar. And within about five days I had so much less pain. So I went from being like, feeling like a victim, afraid for my future, like literally crying in pain, curled up to like, now there's something I can do.

And I felt like it's funny. It sounds funny, Sharon, to think about this now. But I remember when I was like at a rock bottom moment. This is even before I cut out the gluten, dairy and sugar. It's like I got this down lol. That said, you were going to figure this out. I mean, that's what engineers do, right? We're problem solvers.

Jane Hogan's Health Journey 4:08

You are going to figure this out. Your life was not meant for misery. You'll figure it out and you'll share it with people. I didn't know where that was going, but when I had when I started with food, it kind of it. So it let me see that there was something I can do. And then that led me to learning more about prioritizing sleep and what stress can do to the body. And then that led me to functional medicine. And I trained to be a functional medicine health coach, just really wanting to learn more about it.

And then I thought, you know what? I think I really do want to help people. And this maybe this is what that download was all about. So in 2019, I left my engineering career, started health coaching, and and that's what I've been doing ever since. I just love helping people see that. Actually, I think what I do now is I use I use the pain as a tool for transformation. So the pain is really a wake up call from our body telling us something's got to change. It wasn't just this one stressful year for that was like that.

What the camel, that or the straw that broke the camel's back. And so really, it was a lifetime of stress of being a perfectionist, people pleaser. Like I did engineering. My father wanted me to do it. You know, all of these other things in my life, I was I was a working mom. I had three beautiful, beautiful kids. But I was the president of the swim club and president of the chess club and, you know, did all of these things and, you know, why do we do this as women? Why do we think we have to do all these things to to prove that we are a good mother or good daughter, good sister, good friend?

All of these things really. After a while our body tells us no more, no more. And so I then I tried to be a yoga teacher as well and really discovered the power of the breath, the power of our thoughts, the power of our mind and and how really the mind creates the body. So there we go. It's kind of a long, long story. Try to compress it a little bit. But that's how I got to be the wellness engineer. It's a great story. I love it with such a powerful, inspiring outcome. And I think you brought up when you were talking about how the the gluten and the dairy and the sugar, and when you stop that, it just made me think about so many patients will say, well, I've been fine up to now, just like you were fine.

And so why should I stop eating it now? And you also said the solution. It's the straw that breaks the camel's back. And so sometimes when we keep pushing and pushing at things that we've been doing that we're able to get away with, all of a sudden we can't anymore. Because just as you said, the body is screaming or I like to say it's whispering, it's coming to us with these sacred messages. It will listen and it's saying, you've got to pay attention to me. So that's a very inspiring and very realistic story, and I love that it brought you to yoga and breathwork, which we're going to talk about tonight, because as a physician for over 21 years, I can tell you those are some of the most powerful medicines, the breath movement.

And so I'm glad that we're going to spend some time really diving deep, because a lot of times we we kind of just push it off to the side. No, no, give me the right vitamin or give me the right diet. Doesn't matter about breathing. And I'm like, yes, yes, yes it does. We're going to do that first and then we'll see what's left. As a natural ethic physician, I don't like to chase every single symptom. I like to think about the common denominator. And so when we we go to the breath and we get that handled, a lot of things don't need to be chased anymore because the symptoms will just fall away.

So I'm very excited for this conversation. And I think a great place to start is just to define what is breathwork for the ladies listening? Well, it sounds funny, right? Why should breath be work? Because breathe. Anyway. We were born breathing. We breathe all the time. We don't even have to think about it. We just breathe. But, a lot of us are breathing just functionally. And there's so much power in the breath. And really, I don't know if you know this, but yoga began as breathwork. It was not really all this movement.

It started as breathing the pranayama like these breathing techniques that have been around for thousands of years and have been so powerful. And the reason why they've endured is because they are so powerful. They really do work. But through our lives, we we stop breathing the way we were meant to breathe and in a way that really serves us well because of our lifestyle, where in this chronic state of stress. And so we can start to breathe this functionally. So we might be breathing more through our mouth rather than the nose, we're really should be breathing in and out through the nose.

It's like perfectly designed to prepare that breath for our body. And, so that's one of the things we can be doing wrong. And I, I'll go over the, the main ones and then we can talk about each one in detail if you want in. So another thing that happens, is shallow breathing. So instead of breathing into the belly we breathe more into the chest. And we were we we started off as belly breathers. Right. But when if you look at babies, it's their belly that moves up and down, not their chest. But if anyone just, you know, have one hand on a chest and one hand on the belly, and if I say take a take a big breath, notice, does the belly expand or does the chest rise?

And if you're anything like I was, it was the chest. I was breathing totally in my chest before, not in my belly. And that probably comes from posture, right? Sitting down so much, it's hard to get a good breath into the belly for sitting and not like up straight. If we're slumped over and just, you know, it becomes a habit, then and then we can also be breathing too quickly. And so it's, you know, just just too rapid. And so we're not getting it sounds kind of funny, but we don't get enough oxygen to ourselves if we're if we're breathing too quickly.

And, so those are kind of them, the main ones. Some people may also be, breathing like holding their breath. I mean, there's, there's breath holding practices which can be good, but when people are in pain, they might hold their breath too long and or just kind of get into not not a very good rhythm. So we want to breathe through the nose. We want to breathe low into the belly. We want to breathe, long. So I say low light and long or low? Long and light long. We want to have nice long breaths and light it.

Funny. Another funny thing is that many of us are breathing. We might be breathing too much, and that means we paradoxically, not getting enough oxygen to the cells because, we want more. We we we want to we want the carbon dioxide to build up a little bit more because the carbon dioxide, it's almost like, you probably know this better than I do. I just you know, I'm just an engineer, but that the oxygen, in order to shuttle the oxygen into the cells, we need carbon dioxide to do that. So if we're breathing too much, we have not a good ratio of carbon, not carbon dioxide and oxygen. So.

Sounds a little complicated.

What Breathwork Is and Why It Matters 11:54

We we solved that problem by teaching our body that we don't need to breathe as much as we think we do. So just like people overeat, there's a lot of they eat too much for their metabolic needs. Some of us, most of us are breathing too much for our metabolic needs. So I know someone listening. Probably everyone listening is saying, okay, so how do I know if I'm breathing too much? Is there? Can you take them through an exercise? Is there a counting that they can go through so they know that they're breathing appropriately and not over breathing?

Well, let's, I will go through some of that. But first of all, let's just, do a little really simple evaluation. It's called the bolt test. The body oxygen level test. So what we're at is it's super simple. Now, it's kind of, a little tricky to do it right the first time. It may take a little bit of practice. So what we want to do is just be breathing normally. So we just we're breathing normally and we just take a normal breath in and a normal breath out and then hold hold of breath. You may even want to plug your nose.

So it's not it's just a normal breath in. Normal breath out. Not like hold your breath. It's not that normal. Breath in normal exhale through the nose, plug the nose and we start to count. So you do you want to do it. Let's see what's happening. Not a big gulp is just normal breath in. So we're. It's not a test to determine how long we can hold our breath. It's a test to determine how long until we feel the need to breathe again. So we want to count until you get that first urge to breathe. You may feel it in your throat.

You may feel your diaphragm try to move down. It's going to be really, really subtle. Sharon. So and everyone that's watching is really subtle. You may not get it right. The first time, may take a little bit of practice. So let's just do it. So normal breath in normal breath out. Plug the nose one 1000 to 1003 1004 1005 1006 1007 1000 1009 okay okay. So so that was your first urge to breathe right now. Anything that's totally normal where you are, anything below 20 is considered dysfunctional. There you have.

It's not crazy. I was the same as you, Sharon, and I was even teaching breathwork. So, so what we want to do is train our body to get to, to be able to extend that. So, it's we'll do some other breathwork practices as well. But an easy way to train your body is just kind of do that little practice that we just did. Normal breath in normal breath out, plug the nose, and instead of taking a breath at your first urge to take a breath, you let yourself build up a little bit of of air hunger. Just do a moderate level level so that you can resume normal breathing right afterwards.

So you're not like, you don't want to like hold so long that you're like, you know, having a gas is just as long just a little bit of air hunger and then resume normal breathing right away. And this is just something you can teach your body. Just do it several times a day. You might do it when you're out for your walk, and you can actually train your body to go longer. I've done this Wim Hof, I've taken some Wim Hof trainings and they've had us breathe out to where, like you're getting into a psychedelic state, there have us exhales.

I don't know if was a minute or two minutes, but it was a, a long time. And so this is much gentler and kinder to get to. You said 20 is where we want to get to, where we want to be above 20. And ideally, like if you're if you're an athlete, athletes that say are, good at altitude training and all that because this can actually mimic altitude training like 40 is kind of where they want to get in. But let's just let's just aim to be above 20. So like this is just something that's going to take, you know, two, three, four weeks of practice, daily practice several times a day.

But you can teach your body like just like we can teach ourselves, hey, we don't need to eat as much as we think we do or hey, we don't need to breathe as much as we think we need as we think we need to. So we're just teaching the body, that's all. So I have a question. So so when we're teaching our body it's it's having an exhale that's longer. That's how we're slowing down and not over breathing. And that's a great way to slow down. But but initially what we're doing is just teaching our body because what drives the need for breath is the buildup of carbon dioxide in the blood.

That's what drives our need to take a breath. So what we want to do is teach the body to let that build up a little bit longer, and then we can more, we can get a better balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood. Right. Which is teaching the body. You can hang on a little bit longer. Just hang on a little bit longer. It doesn't. You know, we're not going to starve here, but just hang on a little bit longer and just teach the body to do that. So that's kind of the basics of of getting that oxygen, carbon dioxide level correct.

But we don't want to get obsessed about it, okay? We don't want anyone stressed about breathing. The whole thing about breathing is that we want it to be relaxing and and not cause stress, because if we're causing stress, we're doing the opposite of what we want to do. And other things, the other things to make to oh. I just wanted to point out that some signs that you may, be breathing more than your than your metabolic needs. Besides that, the test being low less than 20, you may also, sometimes, not like, have spontaneous size, like, you know, so that's a sign that your body is sort of like trying to catch up a little bit and then another thing is, maybe you sometimes get tingling in the extremities, right?

So in our fingers or in our toes, that can be signs of other things as well. But that's you know, obviously the body is going to prioritize the core and it's going to, you know, not send as much oxygen to the extremities when we want it, when we want to prioritize the core ourselves, I love it. Yeah. Okay. Where are we going next? Well, I want to talk about come back to the the, breathing low light and long and because I find that that's just easy to remember. Right. So we always want to breathe through our nose.

And that's because, even before the low light and long, we want to breathe through our nose most of the time, obviously, I'm talking now. I'm not breathing through my nose now. And so we can we don't want to get obsessed about it, but notice and you'll probably notice in other people it's the mouth open when you're not talking. Is your mouth open or is it closed? So awareness is the first part. So close mouth breathe through the nose. When we read through our nose, it's perfectly pressurized. It gets filtered, the air warms up, and we also get a buildup of nitrogen oxide, which opens up the airways, opens up, all the everything so that we can absorb the oxygen better.

So it's just better absorption. So breathing through the nose. So if you if you, during the day, just some awareness is good at nighttime, if you're snoring, if you wake up with a dry mouth, then chances are you're breathing through your mouth when you're asleep. Because how can you be aware when you're asleep? So one thing you can do is just get some tape and, tear this off ahead of time. But you can get some tape and just, this is this is a porous tape. So 3 a.m. makes one, a porous type of tape and just cut off like a postage stamp size and place it across your lips.

And it just, I mean, you're not going to tape up your whole mouth. It's just a little piece across the lips to remind the brain. Because part of the brain is always aware. Remind the brain during the night. Keep the mouth closed. Breathe through the nose. Is that what mouth taping is? Yeah. Can you show exactly where you like? Can you do it to yourself? Because I'm not quite there. Grab my scissors. So I've just got like a little postage stamp size. So. Just like that. So. And is it sticking down.

You're actually pressing it down above and below. Okay. And that's just to remind you to nose breathe. Yes. Yeah. It looks kind of barbaric but that seems kind of silly. But you know another thing great thing about doing this is that it's kind of like preparing your brain for sleep. So it's letting your brain know. Oh, time to sleep. All right, take those on. And, I don't do it every night now, but it's it's a great practice to do. Just, I'm not. I am a nose breather, so I'm. I'm lucky at at night. I don't have to do it.

But if anyone is, it's just it's a great place to start. So you don't have to, like, tape up the whole mouth and make it feel like it's, you know, crazy situation where you get, you know, getting dragged off or something. It's just a little reminder. If you had to breathe through your mouth, you still could. You could see that I could still get some air in the sides. Right. So it's just a great, great way to start super easy. So it's called 3 a.m. micro tape. So I'm curious I'm asking I'm asking too many question because I breathe through my nose.

I've been trained from years of yoga, so just if I breathe through my nose during the day, can I safely assume that I am a nose breather at night?

Testing Breath Patterns and Nose Breathing 22:08

Or is that not necessarily a carryover? Probably you are. Probably you are. Do you wake up with dry mouth in the morning? No. Okay, so that's a really good sign. If your mouth isn't dry in the morning, then chances are you're keeping your mouth closed at night. Okay. So if you I mean, if someone else is around and can tell you if you're snoring right, then that's probably that's a sign that you're breathing through your mouth at night. So. So you're good Sharon. So when for women. Sorry, I just had to ask people so for for women who snore if they mouth tape, will that correct the snoring.

It may. Now all the other things that we're talking about will help as well. So when you become when you are a habitual mouth breather, then part of the problem is that our airways actually gets smaller. Not crazy, but you the airways will get smaller. And so it's kind of like you use it or lose it with the nose and breathing. If you start to breathe through your mouth, your your the palate actually starts to drop down that the roof of the mouth. And so that airway through the nose gets smaller.

You can actually help make it bigger by reading through your nose more, right? That helps to open it up more. If people I do get hear this quite frequently that people say like I just can't breathe through my nose. Like I can't get a full enough breath through my nose. So here's a little thing you can do that. That little practice that we did of a normal breath in, normal breath out plug your nose. If you plug your nose and you do that and you nod your head, shake it back and forth, like putting a little bit of movement you can even do while you're walking.

While you're holding that breath until you get a moderate air hunger. It will help too, because that nitric oxide builds up. Then it will help to open up the airways. You can do it 2 or 3 times and if you need to. So if it doesn't totally clear the first time, do it 2 or 3 times and you'll notice that it will start to open up more. Great. Great tip okay. Let's keep moving okay. So the low light and long let's get to that. So low means deep into the belly. So I've got a great tip because in the beginning when people you say breathe into your belly I mean like that I can't I don't how I just couldn't like breathe into my belly.

I didn't know where to start. Start with the exhale. Start with the exhale. So exhale and bring your belly button back towards the spine. So exhale. Now when you go to inhale the belly push the belly out I mean you kind of need to exaggerate it in the beginning. So push the belly out as you breathe in. We're not like breathing into our belly. It's really at the lower part of the lungs. And the diaphragm moves down, which makes the belly push out. So, I find starting with the exhale really helps because then it gets you started.

Okay. Now I got a place for the air to go into the belly and they start to fill up. So of course, when we're breathing low into the belly, we, well, really into the lower part of the lungs. But think about the shape of the lungs. There's more. There's more lung tissue near the bottom. So there's more absorption. Also, the parasympathetic state of the nervous system that rest digest, repair. The non stress state is activated when we breathe into the lower part of the lungs. If you think about like if we had to run really fast we'd be like breathing up here. Right.

That activates the sympathetic state. The fight flight bite flight fear state. So we for breathing up here all the time then we're constantly keeping theirselves in that state. So breathing into the belly just starts to activate that parasympathetic state. The vagus nerve is all like down the air right. So it activates that. So low is what we want to do. Low long I say that in different order. So I'm not saying like low long, like, the, the long just means like make your start to lengthen out the breaths.

So you've done yoga share. And so, you know, they teach us that all the time. Right. In yoga start to, you know, count like try to lengthen it out. Maybe try to inhale for five and then hold it a little bit and then exhale slowly for five. Maybe you might want to play around with letting those exhales get a little bit longer. Like you said, when we exhale a little bit longer or longer than we are normally doing, then we are getting a better balance actually, of the carbon, the oxygen and carbon dioxide and the and the light just means just.

And we've you've probably been told this and I've been to like take a big breath into the belly. We don't want to do that. We want it to be light. So we want it to be long and we want it to be low, but we also want it to be light. So we don't want to take in these big amounts of air. We want to just to be smaller. So when if you think about kind of constricting your throat like a straw or and just make it like smaller so you're not like taking big amounts just slowly, like sipping slowly sipping the air in so you can make it low light and long.

I love that, I love that, yeah. And sipping is the word I, I always use because it is. You're just like sipping fine air instead of fine wine. It'll very good. You know, it's kind of again, sending the message to the body like there's enough air I don't need to, like, gulp it. I don't need to rush it. I, I can take my time if there's an infinite supply of air for me. Yes yes yes yes. So connecting breathwork and energy and healing and pain I'd love to hear you speak to that. Well I see the breath as spirit in the body.

We, you know, that's what we're doing while our spirit is in our body. We're breathing in between. Right. So to me, the breath represents a spirit in the body. And through the breath we can. Well, the breath connects the body, like, literally, we're, you know, filling our body. We're activating our body or resting our body. And it also, connects the mind because we have we think about this, we focus on it and it stills the mind. It's just I think of meditation as being really the easiest way to start is just start noticing the breath, noticing the breath and slowing it down.

And when our mind is focused on the breath, it's not wandering off on all the other thoughts that it does. Most of us have constantly thinking about the past or thinking about the future. And it's just go, go, go go, go with the breath we can get. Connect the mind and the body all together, focus and just sit still and come into the present moment, which is really all we have. It's a whole series of present moments, right? Just give our our brain a little bit of a break. Give the mind a break and just let it calm down and find that place of stillness.

I love that you said stills the mind because that's my last name now. Perfect, perfect, I always say. Still the mind heal. The body stills the mind. So. And yes and it's true. And just a friendly reminder to everyone that it's. It's a muscle, the mindful muscle. And so your mind will wander. I've been meditating for, my gosh, probably over 30 years now and my mind will still wander. And so it's it's the practice. It's the it's the art of gathering your thoughts and kindly and gently without beating yourself up and just bringing them back.

And sometimes your breath and your meditation, that's all it will be. Well, starting to breathe and then realizing you're thinking about what you're going to watch on Netflix tonight, and then reminding yourself to come back to the breath. And then you're thinking when you need to pick up at the grocery store replaying a conversation. And so it is. It is a practice. I just want everyone to remember that. So I hear it so commonly. I've tried it, I can't meditate, I'm no good at it. It doesn't work, I can't focus and I couldn't either.

It's something you commit to and give your intention and your love too, and your focus too. And it grows. Just like if you were growing a muscle at the gym and you said something so important there sharing to. And that's kindness. Like being kind to yourself and not beating yourself up over. And just like just being kind, like, how would you speak to a small child who was trying to do something, child learning to walk, for example? You wouldn't say, I dumb get up, you know,

Low, Light, and Long Breathing 31:28

or forget it, you'll you'll never get this right. We we would never say that to anyone who is learning something which they just keep at it. Don't get it, just keep at it. You get it. And some days are better than others. Just be kind and patient with yourself. Be kind and compassionate. I think that alone is huge because we generally that little voice in our head is not that kind. At least mine wasn't very kind and compassionate with myself. I've had to learn it. And it's been such a gift, actually, to become a person that can be loving and kind to myself and, it's really what we're meant to do.

We weren't meant to beat ourselves off, I don't think for. Yeah. And and compassionate to ourselves. I hear you, and I think while you were saying that, I kind of was thinking about that, saying that it's it's not the destination, it's the journey. And so when you are learning to walk or learning to be kind to yourself, to be in the moment and and be curious and be exploratory, knowing that it's a it's a journey and how you behave towards yourself on that journey is what's most important. Not when you arrive or how you arrive.

Or did you arrive first, or are you better than the other ones who arrived? And so when you just really bring it back to the present moment, the journey, the curiosity, the kindness, it just it just creates so much space in your in your body and your energy field and your mind and your soul. And that is medicine. Yes. So beautiful. And you don't we don't have to create a story about it, you know, like if we if we start saying, oh, what are we, that we're kind of making a story of. Well, I was in my meditation today, and I couldn't.

We just. We don't need to make a story. It's just a moment. Just a moment. The breath, the moment and the breath. Even if you if you set aside ten minutes. And I think this is how we we we begin. It's like we always want to focus on the negative. So if you had ten minutes of meditation and you had five seconds of just being really present and blissed out, then focus on that instead of what we tend to do is focus on, oh, I wasted ten minutes and I couldn't focus. Instead of really rising up that moment where you did and it was so beautiful and just inviting.

Maybe tomorrow I'll have seven seconds of that. Maybe I won't, but I'm going to enjoy the good that I got. And so shifting, it's I guess it's like the glass half full, glass half empty kind of deal. Right? What what are you going to focus on and how kind are you going to be to yourself? And I love what you said about the little child learning to walk. That's such a great analogy. And we all have these, these little girls inside us, some more damage than others. And we need to love them up. We need to parent and be kind to ourselves.

So maybe the next time you start to think something not so nice about yourself, you can just take a breath and you can remember this conversation and you can honor the little girl in you and shift what's going on. I actually named my little girls. I have a I have a name for my inner little girl. I have a name for my inner teenager. And so, I, I have a whole, a whole relationship going on with them when they need me. I've got my desk here. I keep this picture of little. And I look at her and I say, I've got you now.

I've got you, I love, I have my altar is in my bedroom, but on my altar I also have they've pictures and do the same things. So I love that you have it right there. I guess I could, I guess I could get one of the one of them. I have a pile of them on my altars. I should bring one in here. That's a great idea. Yeah. It's cute and I, I, I think another great idea is to just have the pictures of people who love you around you so that you remember. Well, how would they speak to me if you've got someone?

But you know what? In the end, and I learned this. So the one of the stressful things that happened before the IRA came along was that my mother had died suddenly, and I was very close to her. And so it was totally devastating for me. But in some ways, it was it was a big gift because I was like, well, she's not around to be my champion anymore. I have to be my own champion. And so in the beginning, I would actually, like, look in the mirror and I would speak to myself the way my mother would speak to me.

And I know it may not be easy for people if they didn't have that kind of relationship with their mother, so pick someone else that you've had a good relationship or someone that you wish would speak to you like that. And so in the beginning, I would I would just like, literally say the things that I knew. She would say, you're doing so well, you're going to you're going to be fine. And just like the I'm so proud of you like these kinds of things. And that was that was kind of the beginning of speaking kindly to myself was I imagine that I was my mother speaking to me.

But then after a while it was me speaking to me. And, and it's it's a really beautiful place when you can get there and really just really love yourself because really love comes from within us. It's even when we've got a relationship with other people that it an external, a relationship of love. It's still is just reflecting back the love that's already inside us. So this love really is in, within us. And I love that. I love what you were talking about, how you were talking to yourself as your mother and and if you lots of us listening have had trouble and relationships with parents.

So yes, you can find it anywhere. And it just made me think of I have a really good girlfriend in my life, and I was talking to her like a week ago about her and her boyfriend, and they have this beautiful relationship. And I said, don't forget, I am ordained as a reverend. So if you guys get married, I would love to marry you. And she wrote me back. We were texting and she said, there's no one else in the world if we get married that I would want to marry us. And I said, oh my God, that is the nicest thing someone has said to me today.

And she said, well, I'm just going to keep giving you that reminder. So every day she says that to me. I just want you to remember there's no one else who I would rather have marry us than you.

Breath, Energy, and Self-Compassion 38:18

And it's it. Just remind me what you're talking about so we can create that in our relationships with our friends and our sisters and our colleagues. And it's something that's available to us. And it it lights me up every day, she tells me. And then I go, that's a beautiful gift to give to me. It is. And you know what? If someone doesn't have, have a person already in their life maybe, like makeup, like a guardian angel, like, just make it up someone or whatever that's saying these kind things to you.

What? Like what would you want? And then. Because you know what? That's really you. That's really you. We are we are at we are at our core love. And so it gets blocked in other ways. But we can just let it out. And actually the, the heart focused breathing that I'm going to, talk about and we'll do it together. That really is just generating that love and feeling it and creating it ourselves. And if you're listening now, you could also find a love buddy, right? So you can invite a woman to watch this talk and commit to being loving accountability partners.

And you can build that into a relationship where you you commit to being supportive and loving and kind to each other, and it just changes you. It change. It ripples out. When we behave like this, it ripples out energetically and gives other people permission, and especially for us women for so long, women, we're like catty and nasty to each other and backstabbing and that is that is in the past. We are all about sisterhood and loving each other and supporting each other, and especially as we grow and age and step into our crone years and our wisdom, we really realize that supporting each other is a beautiful gift to give.

And when you give it, you receive it too. And and that feeling inside of of like fully just wanting the best for other people is really who you are any time any of us. And we've all had like, you know, moments of maybe jealousy or judgments or criticisms, that's not who we really are. And they don't feel good and they don't feel good because it's not who we really are. It's just that's a trigger to something that you need to explore a little bit in yourself. Like, why am I feeling that? So it's never about the other person.

It's about, something that, well, it's a beautiful gift, actually. Whenever we have these triggering moments, it's just things, anything that that, circumstances or even or people that trigger us or beautiful pathways, I kind of see them like, oh, it's a beautiful pathway that's showing me where I need to grow and create more freedom because feeling jealous or feeling judgmental or any of those things, then they don't feel free, right? They they feel nasty and hold us down. So we want to create more freedom.

And and whenever we get triggered, these situations or people are just showing us the pathway for more freedom. I love where our conversation is flowing to because I always use if I get jealous, I look at it as well, that must be something I want in my life. So what am I going to do to create that? And I honor the person, and I use them as a as a beacon of hope and light. And if they can have that, I can have that too. And so it's how we how we respond and how we interact with our emotions. So I love that you.

So you mentioned heart focused breathing. So I think it's time if you can tell us what that is. And I know I, I'm so excited because I know we're going to do a little demo and I've been waiting for that. Well, I love so many breathing techniques, but I love the heart focused breathing. First of all, I with my engineering background, I love science, I love things that are backed up by science. And there's so much science behind the benefits of this breathing people, their immune system functions better.

They health some health issues over like when they practices over time will improve. They have better test scores. People get along better. Like there's just so many good things about heart focused breathing. So the Heart Math Institute has done a lot of studying on this. So you can go look up in PubMed studies on heart focused breathing. Or sometimes it's called, heart resonance breathing. So what we're doing in this breath. Well the heart well you know about the chakras and the energy centers.

But I think we all know like this is who this is where we are. Like, this is what we touch, right? This is who we are. We don't say, I'm here. My feet right here. This is where we are. And it's a it's the most powerful. Well, we are energetic beings, right? I think science tells us this as well. We just we think of ourselves as physical, but we're really energetic beings that are just we're vibrating at a, at a, a frequency that makes us appear as physical. But, we are energetic being so that the heart, though, has the highest electromagnetic field in the body.

It can be measured outside of the body, like 12ft away with with the instruments that we have now, we kind of knows you can sense it, right when you walk into a room with someone and they're feeling joyful, like without even a word being spoken, we can sense that. Or if someone is, you know, not is the opposite of that. You can sense that too. We can perceive these fields, these this electromagnetic field, from our heart. At the heart it regulates everything is going on down below. It regulates everything that's going on above.

It communicates with the brain and tells the brain what to do and how to operate. This body. So it's just so powerful, this heart of ours. And, so this breathwork that I, that I want to show you now, this is heart focused or heart resonance breathing. We're going to slow down. We're going to focus on the heart. And I'm going to ask you to think of, something that brings you where you feel love, either in the past or in the future, or just make it up, and we're going to, like, really feel that feeling of love in our heart.

We're going to grow it. And, and then just kind of bathe in it for a while and when we do that, we are getting our heart is going into coherence. The heart and brain go into coherence with each other. The hemispheres of the brain go into coherence. We get ourselves in that beautiful parasympathetic state where healing happens, where everything just run so much better. And the more we can do that, we can only heal. I know I help a lot of people who are in pain and have inflammation, so that healing state only occurs when we're in that parasympathetic state.

So the more often we can get into it, the better. And it only takes like three minutes. I may go over a little bit, but you can learn to generate this yourself and do it in just three minutes. Like maybe while you're just like sitting in a standing in a line one day you can do it. Or you can just when you first wake up in the morning, do it or right before you eat is a great time because we're getting ourselves into that rest and digest state then. Right or before right before you go to sleep. So let's get into it now.

So I invite you, obviously if you're driving, don't do this. Would you quit though? I mean, you can do it with your eyes open, but I'd say in the beginning to practice that we want to do it with our eyes closed. So wherever you are now, just sit with your feet comfortably on the floor. Or maybe you're lying down. That's okay too. And just rest your hands in your lap. They can be palms up or palms down, whatever's comfortable for you. So just get comfortable and gently close down your eyes. Breathing in and out through the nose.

Notice your breath. And anytime your mind starts to wander. Just bring it back to my voice. And the instructions that I'm giving you. Breathing long breaths in and out through the nose. And now imagine as you're breathing that you're breathing into your heart. So the air goes in. Fills up your heart. And all the space around your heart. And exhale. Inhaling and filling up the heart. And the area around the heart. A few more breaths like that. Filling up the heart space swirling around the heart.

Heart-Focused Breathing Demo 48:18

And while you continue to breathe like that, I'd like you to think about a time when you felt love or joy. It could be a person or an event or a pet or a place. Bring this to your mind now. Notice what you're seeing. What colors do you see? What are you looking at? Notice if there's any sense. Do you feel anything? Maybe. Maybe there's a breeze on your face. What do you hear? See if you can make this picture bigger. It's a feeling of love, joy. And notice that you're feeling this feeling in your heart.

Such. From thinking about it to feeling it in your heart. Make it bigger now with the breath. As you inhale. Let it fill up the heart. On the next inhale. Let it double in size. Now let it completely fill your body. And let it get even bigger than the body. Let it get so big that it fills up the room. That you're in. And now pull it back. Let it all come back. Right into your heart again. This is for me. Just enjoy this beautiful feeling. A couple more breaths. And very gently and slowly. Begin to open your eyes.

Come back into this room. In this space. How do you feel, Sharon? Where are. And I was like, do I have to open my eyes? Oh, yeah, I'm interviewing her. I got to come back. I think if I was just attending the summit, I'd be out now. I'd be like, okay, I'll come back and listen to the rest of this later. I feel it's so beautiful because this was just generated by thought, you the power of your mind, the thoughts that range your physiology literally change your physiology, right? We created a feeling.

Feelings are vibrations in the body. Every single cell in our body. When we filled up our body with that vibration, every single cell in our body is listening, right? Every single cell in our body is getting the message. This is a good place to be and then creates new proteins, which are the expression of life, right? Cells create, new proteins are turning over all the time. They're creating a protein, the new expression of life that's bathed in love, bathed in love. And that's how we can heal. That's how we can create the version of the physical version of ourselves.

That's the best version of ourselves. So it's just it's a simple but powerful practice. I'm glad we did it at the end because I'm just all woo woo now. I'm like, I want to just go bathe in my love and grow some proteins. That was beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. What a what a lovely conversation. This was beautiful, I love it. I'm just beaming any any last. I mean, you've given us so much already. Is there any last words or parting thoughts you'd like to share with the with the audience?

I think I just like to say that, you know, as much as we talked about these other practices, like really paying attention to the breath, just any time you can just notice the breath and just slow down and and think, think about love and feel that love you are doing a tremendous, tremendous service to your physical body. You're honoring yourself. And so just that, that alone is huge. And if you can just remember to do that a few times a day, you will can change your life. You can literally change your life of that.

And bringing that, I always, I always hear myself saying, and those of you listening who heard me say it a lot, that these are the these are the real tools of healing and the supplements and the hormones which are very powerful and important, are our need to be layered on top of this. And so I also like to remind you that when you are taking your supplements or taking a healing shake or applying your hormones, that if you do it from this place so much that matters, it's not only what you're doing, it's who you are and the energy you're doing it in.

So if you you bring this heart centered practice that Jane just so lovingly shared with us, and you bring it to your to your vitamins, and you give gratitude and shine love for the physician who helped you prescribe it, and love to yourself for being on this path and finding someone to help you and love to the supplement company and the people who made it in love to the supplement itself, and what it's going to do for you that amplifies the effects of that supplement beyond the beyond. I remember being in Switzerland one time and being at one of my companies who makes but herbs and we went and visited the plant and where they prepared the herbs.

It was this big. I mean, we're in Switzerland, so it's the hills and it's gorgeous, but the plant itself, the factory was all white, all windows and all the workers were not allowed to speak. They were just meditating and beautiful. And so and the these herbs are quite powerful. And I know part of the power is just because they're prepared in this meditative state. And so you two can be doing this with your food, with your practices, whatever it is you're taking or ingesting. And this heart coherence just amplifies

Closing Thoughts and Free Gift 56:38

and makes it so much more powerful. So true of the food and the gratitude. I mean, gratitude is a is another emotion on the love side, right? And so when we feel gratitude for our food, for the people who prepared it, for the truckers who brought it to us, for the farmers who grew it, for all of that, then our food is more powerful, like you said. So yeah, just feeling gratitude. I think feeling gratitude for sharing your vehicle. I think it's going to run better. Right. You're putting that loving energy with me.

And we did a whole talk with Holly Fatone about gratitude. So if you haven't watched that one yet, we dive deep into gratitude because it is such another love healing frequency. And speaking of gratitude, I know you tell me you have a free gift to share with the audience that I'm grateful for. Do you just want to give us a quick peek or talk about just what it is? Yeah, so I've got a course I'd like to give to your audience. It's a five day breathing for healing core, so it's just like really short lesson, 30 minute lesson, and a little, guidance on different breathwork. So.

So we do one a day for five days and, it's just very simple. But we'll teach you the very basics of breathing. So I'd love to give gift that to your audience. Thank you. So just more of what we were doing here I love it. Well, thank you for for fantastic conversation. Thank you for being a part of the summit and for the work you do in the world. And I'm just so grateful that our paths crossed and we know each other now and can support each other. So thank you for being here. And thank you to everyone listening in.

You can go bliss off now. Take that hard energy with you. That's what I'm going to go do. Remember your breathing practices and we'll be back with another talk. So this was this was a good one. This was important when we're talking about mastering our menopausal transition. We didn't mention hormones today. And y'all know how much I love them. But this is this is the juice. This is the good stuff. So take it to heart. So it literally looks to be vexing by everyone. For now I.