Shownotes
Welcome to Episode 21 of mental wealth!
In this episode we're going to explore, sleep and breathing and all these things that we know we need to do. We don't necessarily do them well, and there's things that we can do differently to help ourselves. We delve into the therapeutic benefits of conscious breathing, exploring techniques to reduce stress, enhance relaxation, and promote overall wellness.
I am joined by a good friend of mine, Joel, and he is definitely got loads of brilliant things that he can share with you, which is why I wanted him to be part of this episode.
Check out Joels work:
https://sniffsighyawn.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Breathren.co.uk
https://x.com/SniffSighYawn?s=20
To find out more , or to get in touch:
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/2mindsuk
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/alison2minds/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/alisonblackler
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alison-blackler-1686a121/
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPWMpkuAeRq5qkgrxbZsx_g
Want to be a guest on the podcast?
https://2-minds.co.uk/mental-wealth-podcast-guest/
Transcripts
Transcript
::Welcome to mental wealth, the podcast to invest in your mind. Here I will help you make sense of your mind and behaviours, giving you the tools to have your best life. There is so much to share, so let's get into this episode and explore another great topic.
::Welcome to Episode 21, and in this episode we're going to explore, sleep and breathing and all these things that we know we need to do. We don't necessarily do them well, and there's definitely, definitely things that we can do differently to help ourselves and in this.
::Episode I am delighted to say that I am joined by a good friend of mine, Joel, and he is definitely got loads of brilliant things that he can share with you, which is why I wanted him to be part of this episode. So welcome Joel, please introduce you.
::Thank you. So I'm Joel Jelen, and many years ago I was very fortunate to appreciate the values of breathing properly, breathing optimally, breathing functionally so.
::You're thinking why?
::Am I saying that there must be a reason for that?
::Well, yes.
::And at the time.
::And good things come from uncomfortable situations. At the time, I was poorly for a few decades, actually, and.
::I didn't realise that what had happened to me was going to be the best thing that happened to me and would shape the rest of my life and it would be to help.
::Others more importantly.
::Help others become aware of how they will breathe and its impact on their health, their well-being, their mood, their relationships and their sleep.
::And I've literally, slowly, slowly.
::Trickled my way to getting a following.
::And I spent many years thinking about.
::The best book to write or the.
::1st of a few.
::And I came to the conclusion that.
::I thought I'd approach it from a kids angle so very young people if they appreciate how we breathe, they'll tell Mum and Dad. They'll tell people they look after them, they'll tell their teachers.
::They'll tell everybody.
::Because I've worked with young people before junior secondary school.
::And they are.
::The most fantastic, the most enthusiastic when it comes to knowledge and education. OK, later in teens, you get a bit more grumpy like I was. That's fair enough. There's loads of hormonal.
::Stuff going on.
::Which I also cover in breathing, but I mostly talk about initially the awareness of breathing and how important it is and how well it can make.
::You when you breathe.
::Lovely. I love the first bit that you said and something that I'm really passionate about talking about when there has been a challenge, something that hasn't been very easy, something that's been incredibly difficult and actually that's turned into something so.
::Magical in the end and and again. Similarly for me. And I think that's the first thing that I just wanna highlight is that, you know, anybody listening in when things are difficult, it can and usually means that something new and exciting is coming to hang in there. So that's the first thing which is slightly separate to the topic. But I think it's just.
::A great example of remembering that we can gain some great things and your life can have a different turn just because of something like that.
::When you are poorly, you have time to think. You have time to read and ponder, and you can be full of self pity. Humans are good at that and you know this better than anyone because you know all about the negativity bias that we have in our brains and you spend your life helping people understand the.
::Brain, I just wanted to look at things.
::From a mindfulness point of view, you appreciate that and say what's the best thing that can happen as a result of this, and did and started to read about lots of to do with holistic look at our lives. And I think that when we're poor.
::When we can sleep well and I know this from science now, having studied for many years, we give ourselves the best possible chance.
::Of being healthy through the day and recovering from conditions. So it was my ambition initially to work out how I could sleep best to repair myself and I started to see sleep as an event rather than ohh you get tired at the end of the day and you.
::Go to sleep.
::No. You actually spend an hour, maybe a bit more preparing for this event called sleep and what's involved in the preparation.
::It's not just in that moment, it's also what you've done during the day and bear that in mind if you're thinking about why you can't sleep well, because that's huge.
::I love that. I love the thought of it being an event, actually creating your mind and preparation to to see it as an actual thing. And I think for some people who do struggle with sleep and I do have some listeners who definitely identify themselves as poor sleepers.
::Thinking of it as that, preparing yourself for an event. I love that I never even thought that I talk a lot about sleep hygiene. You know, thinking about how are you going to?
::Have that really healthy preparation for sleep, but I never thought of actually seeing it as the preparation is part of the event and then the main event.
::You're gonna have a a decent night's sleep, so let's.
::Have a think.
::About what kind of things do you think people need to pay attention to, Joel, when we're talking about getting ready for this main event, which is now called sleep, cause the other thing I want to say is some people see sleep as a bit of a nuisance, don't they? It's a.
::Bit like oh.
::I'm so busy, I don't want to.
::I've got time to sleep because I'm too busy and I'm trying to pack too much in and actually it isn't healthy to see it like that. I know I fall into that trap myself sometimes. I'm like, I could just do without having to go to bed here because I've just got too many things I'm trying to achieve, and that's actually just rubbish, isn't it? Cause you're just not gonna be able to.
::Produce good stuff if you haven't had a good night's sleep.
::I asked people what's going on for you.
::If you feel like you don't need to sleep.
::And after sometimes it's 5 minutes, sometimes it's much longer. We get to the point where they admit that they're living in the fast lane, or, as I will put it, they're living in sympathetic nervous system mode.
::You know, some listeners may not know that you've got two types of mode you can listen and and operate in. You can listen in on the sympathetic and just live your life in sympathetic nervous mode. Or you can look at the parasympathetic.
::And you can.
::Have a balance between living in the two. You know the system will loves the balance of the two and people who I work with.
::It's often more prevalent in companies who are in.
::A big growth.
::Phase, and it's often the CEO who.
::Comes to see.
::Me after a workshop and says quietly.
::To me, I'd love to.
::To you, we talk about sleep. We talk about why they can't switch off.
::It's adrenaline based, but from my point of view, it's how they're breathing because.
::As soon as you.
::Relax and slow someone's breathing. It changes their brain, it changes their mindset afterwards. So the key thing is to establish a baseline for anybody who doesn't think sleep is a good idea.
::Or it's getting in the way.
::And see how they change.
::Which it's happened time and time again. But how you breathe is the baseline. So a lot of people come to me.
::With lots of different symptoms.
::To do with coarsely to do.
::With health, where they're not ill, but they're not well.
::And I say to them.
::Don't focus on the symptoms. Focus on establishing, as I call it, that baseline. Get your breathing right and watch all that stuff. All those symptoms fall away.
::Love it. So you mentioned.
::Go to, do right breathing. It'd be brilliant if you could share with people what you mean by right breathing.
::So I see breathing in terms of concept as being light, quiet, effortless through the nose, tummy based, rhythmic, gently paused on the exhale. So inhale, exhale, always make sure the exhale is.
::Longer than the inhale.
::Then a pause.
::And it's how we breathe until the comforts of modern life came along, until the pace of Western society came.
::And it's about.
::Breathing so softly, the person.
::Next to you can't hear you breathe.
::It's about breathing so softly and you can't hear yourself breathe.
::If you breathe like that.
::You won't have the mood.
::Swings that are associated with dysfunctional breathing. The tiredness.
::The feeling of being gassed, the lack of stamina when you partake in sport and when you do that event that we refer to as sleep.
::You won't struggle with sleep because there's not a huge difference between your breathing rate during the day.
::And at night.
::I love that. I think it's so important this conversation because so many people are hung up on that, they're bad sleepers or that they're not fit or they're not happy. All these things that they're sort of focused on and actually you're telling us today that the sort of gateway to having good sleep, having happiness, having good exercise or.
::Is to breathe properly or to to pay attention to your breathing. And I think you know, since I've known you, I know I've become more aware of my breathing.
::You you've you've shifted something in my own psyche and you know, obviously I'm fairly tuned into a lot of this stuff, but you've really shifted my attention since I've started talking to you because, yeah, I'm. I'm more aware of, you know, is my mouth open or what? What am I doing? What am I doing? A little bit more and.
::And I guess that's the first thing, isn't it? Is for people to start to just be aware of what kind of breathing they're doing so that they can then make that change.
::Yeah, it is very much so. So. So. Yeah. Thank you for the compliment, Allison. Yes, awareness is the number one thing. So once you have the awareness, you can start looking at all the different traits that you may have, which tell you that you're a dysfunctional breather and something that you can look at to change.
::And the changes are quite simple. It requires some commitment, but if you notice your mouth breathing, stop mouth breathing. If you can hear yourself breathe during rest.
::Something I talk about a lot because it's in my company name sniff. So you're if you're regularly sniffing sign and you're owning with big breaths, you're actually hyperventilating, you're over breathing. You take large breast prior to talking something. Lots of radio broadcasters, especially on breakfast shows, do take these huge breaths.
::Before they speak, that's hyperventilation. That's not good. That adds to.
::Your stress load during the.
::OK.
::Lots of upper chest and visible movement. Same thing should never be seen that you should always be invisible to the person opposite you.
::When you breathe.
::So powerful, isn't it? And one of the things I think is really important to remember or is almost a resource in itself is that, you know you to your brain and to your body, your breath.
::Is the ultimate and it's the thing that it's always known, always, you know, even all of us are more.
::Us the person that brought us into this life, we heard her breath first, didn't we? Before we lived, made our connection.
::With our own.
::And it for me that it feels like we're all walking around with this incredible resource and yet.
::What you're highlighting for us, Joel, is we don't use it to the best of our.
::Well, I I think that we've.
::Got to be kind to ourselves here and and say that as lay people as majority people, our lay people, when it comes to bringing education.
::If we look at.
::How we're nourished in terms.
::Of our education around health.
::Well, aside from the pharmaceutical stuff, when you get into.
::That I mean.
::What are we taught in terms of what to do? We're taught to watch our weight.
::Eat Whole Foods, go to the gym, exercise, sleep well. Except all these things. And this is the stuff of PT's. The stuff of yoga, the stuff of mindfulness and meditation, teachers, GP's, the NHS and the whole heuristic world. But the thing that's always been missing that.
:: Well, about it's about: :: ::They get up in the morning, they do the gym.
::They have their usually, for example, they go to work, they smash it, they love work, they smash it, they have their organic salad and chicken for lunch, carry on, smashing work.
::You may go swimming after work, followed by a very healthy meal, more organic salad, some organic fruit.
::They tell me about this beautiful piece of fish they made and they tell me about their sleep, which sometimes is good. Often it isn't, but they never tell me how they breathe.
::Until I ask them.
::And then the penny drops.
::And they realise why they.
::Need to come.
::And see me and the.
::Likes of people like me.
::So you can do all those things that you.
::Don't breathe properly.
::I'm not saying you're wasting your time, but.
::You will never.
::Achieve what you want to in terms of your, your overall life and terms of your health goals and gains until you agree correctly.
::I love that.
::And I think for this episode, for people listening in, you know.
::For me it's.
::That just start to be more aware of the things that we've talked about today. And if your sleep is affected, if you aren't got the energy that you want, if you don't feel like your fitness is going in the direction you want, then maybe there's a route here that you can explore.
::But for me it always I'm always saying what she wants. Small thing, you know, taking that awareness piece. Take on that idea that I'm just going to note.
::This what my breath is doing. Where is it? Am I high up in my chest? Am I down in my belly? Am I doing the big sighs and I yawning all the time? Whatever it is that you're doing for me, I'd love people to just pay attention to start with, and then they can start to realise that. Yeah, what you're saying is true. They we are doing these things.
::And then you can decide what you're gonna do about it.
::I think the.
::Easiest way to look at this in terms of the awareness that you need to have. It's gonna massively help your health is to maybe look at say 4 things you do during the day. Most people do during the day.
::Unless they're retired.
::Of course, when you retire, you never have a.
::Day off but.
::If you look at eating, if you look at at work, if you look at exercise, you look at relaxation those four areas. So when you eat a lot of people will.
::Hyperventilate when they eat.
::They're using technology for.
::Example. They're on their phone or they're walking.
::Along, so the rest and digest thing.
::Pay attention to that. Relax. Help your body get the nourishment from the food. It's eating. Yeah. Eat great food. Definitely. Stay away from highly processed food. We know it's bad for us. Your breathing rate increases, by the way, far more when you eat highly processed food.
::It increases with all food intake drink intake, but with alcohol and highly processed food.
::The rest of digest when you eat, relax.
::Breathe. Breathe from your tummy.
::Secondly, at work, if you weren't think about how you use technology if that's a.
::Thing for you.
::Make sure you don't mouth be when you use technology. Have that J shape posture when you sit up right in your chair. Make sure that your mouth close. Your tongue is on your palate, so tongue postures.
::Huge thing cause it stops your mouth breathing, OK?
::Verbally relaxation. If your posture is correct. If you're not mouth breathing, if you're breathing nicely from your tummy, through your nose when you're relaxed, you won't start to suckle with your sleep.
::And that fourth thing, exercise when you do exercise, if you're struggling with your sleep, don't try and smash the gym. Don't try and smash a flying cake around around the.
::Be gentle on yourself because your sweet dysfunction is telling you that you have a breathing dysfunction, and if you have a breathing dysfunction, be gentle on yourself. When it comes to exercise, because it will only add an accentuate your sleep issues. So this is about being more kind to yourself.
::It's about being more gentle with yourself. It's about observing some rules about posture to do the tongue to do it, tummy breathing, to do it, nose breathing, but being more gentle on yourself and mindful of what?
::You need to do.
::If you add those four things together.
::Your relaxation, your eating, your work, your exercise. Put those four things together in the way I've described.
::You then get a great equation for sleeping better.
::Such a great list of things to pay attention to, so thank you for summarising, for everyone, and just hopefully for people to feel enlightened, really, to think that maybe their problem that they think they've got their sleep their.
::Diet, whatever it is actually, isn't that.
::Or might not be as.
::Solid to that as as they think.
::Brilliant. Please tell everyone where they can find you, Jill. Because I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who've listened to this thinking. Wow, I need.
::To learn more about this.
::Look, they can find me in schools helping children and helping teachers understand how to breathe better. They can find me in the workplace. They can eat the find me in the High Street watching the world go by, having a coffee with a friend or a business colleague watching people's mouth breath as.
::They walk along.
::That's the kind of thing I do that's a little bit niche. That isn't it? They can find me online on social media. Joel Jelan sniffs eye your and I've always got something I like to think helpful to offer people, which has helped me over decades to become.
::A more relaxed person I was never a hyper individual, but I've become more relaxed. I've become more fulfilling. Everything I do and my sleep is really good because of how I observe my breathing and how I breathe during those four elements during the day to help.
::Brilliant and definitely if you are in this space where you're curious about this stuff when you do start looking into it, I can highlight it does start to really help you notice what you're doing, cause that's what I'm definitely doing. As I said before, since I've got to know you and freely being more aware of what I'm.
::Doing and thinking about my own position in my own breathing, etcetera. So if you are sitting there listening to this thinking, what we're doing, I've got my mouth open. I've got.
::I've stuffed my face with my dinner and.
::I've not really breathed while I was eating it, etcetera then hopefully this is a good space for you to pause and think about what's next for you.
::So thank you so much Joe for your time today for coming on and sharing your wisdom with everyone.
::And welcome. Thank you. I'll give you one final tip that seems to be many people's favourite tip of all the things I.
::Talk about so people know people joke cause I'm not a drinker. I love drinking sparkling water and people say you.
::Always drinking sparkling water. Why is?
::That so it gives me a chance to talk.
::About very quickly.
::The CO2 in sparkling water which makes it carbonated CO2 is not a waste gas only it's also an energy driver.
::And lots of people in sales, jobs, in jobs, in education, teachers, et cetera.
::Because they love drinking sparkling water, and they've said to me they've never understood why. Well.
::If you talk.
::A lot. You're blowing out lots of oxygen.
::And lots of CO2.
::It reduces your energy levels. The CO2 in sparkling water cuts the energy back.
::Wow, now I did not know that I would definitely need to.
::Get some sparkling water.
::Brilliant. Great little tip there to finish off this episode, so thanks again to Joel. I hope you've enjoyed it. Thank you so much for listening in. And next week we will be focusing on purpose and I have a special guest, Marcus Matthews. So I hope you can join us then.
::For listening and sharing in this episode of Mental Wealth, Remember You can subscribe wherever you get your podcast. My last question to you is what is the one small thing that you can take action on from this episode?
::Message me on Instagram or through our website with questions you'd like me to explore.
::We'll find the links in the show.
::Notes. I'll be back with more tools and tips to make sense of your mind in the next episode. In the meantime, be kind to yourself. Bye for now.
