The Language of Breath with Jesse Coomer

This week on The Less Stressed Life Podcast, I am joined by Jesse Coomer. Always a teacher, Jesse shares how life changing breathwork can be and breaks down easy and fun breathing techniques for adults and kids. He wants to share that our breathing is a language that we can use to speak to ourselves in a way that no other method allows. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Types of breathwork
• Conscious vs unconscious self
• Our addiction to dopamine 
• Cultivate your own healing
• Make better decisions
• How to get started?

---

---

ABOUT GUEST:
Jesse Coomer is a Human Performance Specialist, Breathworker, and renowned speaker in the field of Breathwork. He trains athletes, CEOs, first responders, military, and everyday people who seek to optimize their performance, reduce their anxiety levels, and live a healthier life.
Jesse's book:  A Practical Guide to Breathwork
Jesse's course: The Language of Breath

WHERE TO FIND:
Websites: https://www.jessecoomer.com/
Instagram: @jessecoomerbreath 
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MidwesternMethod
 
WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: https://www.christabiegler.com/links

WORK WITH CHRISTA:
Packages include:

• Labs
• 1:1 interpretation and personalized protocols 
• Support between appointments with weekly touchpoints
• Messaging and trainings to get the most out of working together

Past clients, if it's been more than a year since I've seen you, you're welcome to book a call! This is the last time until fall that I'm taking clients. If you want to maximize this season and bring your body into balance go to https://www.christabiegler.com/fss to book a call with me.

---

---

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Jesse Coomer: Simply having a dysfunctional breathing pattern in even when you're just sitting around, even when you're asleep, it can put you in a chronically high-stressed state. 

[00:00:09] Christa: Stress is the inflammation that robs us of life, energy, and happiness. Our typical solutions for gut health and hormone balance. Have let a lot of us down we're overmedicated and underserved at the less trust life.

[00:00:24] Christa: We are a community of health savvy women exploring solutions outside of our traditional Western medicine toolbox and training to raise the bar and change our stories. Each week, our hope is that you leave our sessions inspired to learn, grow, and share these stories to raise the bar in your life and home.

[00:00:52] Christa: Today on the Less stress life I have Jesse Kumer, who's a human performance specialist, breath worker, renowned speaker in the field of breath work. He trains athletes, CEOs, first responders, military, and everyday people who seek to optimize their performance, reduce anxiety levels, and live a healthier life.

[00:01:09] Christa: He also. Describes himself as a recovering English professor, so I'll be curious about the transition from one to the other. Welcome, Jesse. Hey, 

[00:01:17] Jesse Coomer: thank you so much for having me. Yes, I am recovering still. I did 11 years. I did 11 years as an English professor and it was great. But yeah, I'm just, uh, focusing on this now.

[00:01:30] Jesse Coomer: Yeah, and it's been a beautiful thing. Tell me 

[00:01:33] Christa: actually about the transition. Why? Why did you move toward breath work? Was this something you had found for yourself? 

[00:01:41] Jesse Coomer: It's interesting, so it really all ties in together with how I found breath work in the first place. So I have always been an extreme extrovert, so you'll time me wanting to chat while he is wanting to connect with other people.

[00:01:53] Jesse Coomer: But I've always actually, also, I've also always been, uh, someone who's suffered from extreme social anxiety. So, so it's this, this combination that growing up especially, you know, started to manifest in high school and my twenties. I tried to do everything I could to address that anxiety and of course, Not having any tools available.

[00:02:15] Jesse Coomer: I chose a lot of destructive paths and it was in the efforts of getting out of a lot of those destructive paths that I chose to go back to grad school. Hmm. And one thing I loved was, I always loved just literature. The philosophy of literature, the, a lot of the things that everyone's hearing this and is like, oh, okay, I have nothing in common with this person, but I've always really been fascinated by that.

[00:02:41] Jesse Coomer: And. I've always loved to write. And so one of the things that I have found in transformation, and this is something I do a lot in my retreats, I work with clients and, and just, just basically helping a person step into the person they wanna be, is that a lot of times we focus on what we don't want to be and we try and just to be that, not that.

[00:03:02] Jesse Coomer: Mm-hmm. You know, and so something that I. Kind of fortunately just intuitively went to, and I said, okay, I don't like where I am. I want to do something that I want to be, I wanna be proud of myself for accomplishing some kind of a goal. And so as I was leaving a life of, you know, drug addiction and, and a lot of negative ways of, of addressing anxiety at the same very, the, the very same time I, I leaned into the next big adventure.

[00:03:33] Jesse Coomer: So as to. What I say sometimes is, you know, there's a part of yourself that has to die, so a part of you can be born. And I allowed that to be born and I found out I just really like teaching things. It doesn't have to be English. And I tell you what, if you can actually like teaching grammar and essay writing, I mean, I just assume there's.

[00:03:54] Jesse Coomer: Pretty much nothing. I won't like to teach. So during that time, I was still addressing a lot of my anxiety and I, I started doing things to help that, you know, uh, exercise, trying to take better care of myself. Seeing, just obviously avoiding negative pathways of, of dealing with stress and anxiety. And it was during the time being a professor that I started to try to, to meditate.

[00:04:20] Jesse Coomer: And quickly found that I wasn't a very good meditator. I, I don't know, it's, most people are not. Yeah, right. And I would just sit down and I couldn't wait for it to be over. And, but I was really dedicated to, I really wanted to make this something that worked for me because I knew there was a lot of value in it.

[00:04:39] Jesse Coomer: And so from there I was starting to try to find ways to become a better meditator. And that led me to a lot of research that led me to actual breath work being the pathway that would work best for me. And from there, I became the breath worker English professor, which I actually was. I did both for a long time, for about six years.

[00:05:05] Jesse Coomer: I was the, the English professor who, okay, this weekend I'm, I'm going to lead a retreat and then I gotta come back late Sunday night so I can, you know, teach my, you know, research and rhetoric class on Monday morning. And it just kind of slowly grew into something that. Was, it was a real passion for me and I was even teaching it to my students, especially during the pandemic.

[00:05:30] Jesse Coomer: When we returned to the classroom, we still had masks and we still had an obviously enormous amount of anxiety and and stress. So when it was a nice day outside, I would say, Hey guys at, say, let's go outside. And let's do some breathing techniques. And of course we all got to see each other's faces. We're like, oh, okay.

[00:05:48] Jesse Coomer: I had a totally different, you remember? You remember that whenever you'd see, mm-hmm. You met a person, the only way you knew them was. With, with a mask, and then they remove and then it's like, oh, that was nothing like what I had pictured, but we, we got to know each other in a better way. And so ultimately in 2020, I also published my book on breath work called A Practical Guide to Breath Work.

[00:06:12] Jesse Coomer: And it was, A really big hit. And I was, um, really pleased. I was very pleased with that. And so, before you know it, I had a lot of requests and a lot of demands, and I was doing two full-time jobs and I said, oh my gosh, I can't do this forever. So I had to choose to move to the next thing. I, I believe, you know, I, while I do coach people, I can, I have a lot of clients.

[00:06:41] Jesse Coomer: I see myself still as an educator. You know, I think an educator's, the person who's incredibly curious and just, I can't help himself or herself. He's like, as well, Carl Sagan, he has the quote, you know, when you're in love, you wanna tell the world. I think that's a teacher, you know? It's like, oh my God, I love this thing.

[00:07:01] Jesse Coomer: I gotta tell people. Yeah. So, so it was a smooth transition. It's, I still feel like I'm Ed educator to at heart. 

[00:07:08] Christa: I think that was a good story for anyone seeking a transition. I mean, there's a lot of, we talk a lot about health in different capacity or more of a medical capacity here a lot. And there's a lot of people that have had a lot of burnout these past few years and they're looking and transitioning and whatever and, and what you just described is what a lot of us do.

[00:07:26] Christa: Even when I stopped doing what I was doing before, what I'm doing now, it just kind of the one edges out the other sometimes. Right. You just, you don't have to like stop one and start the other. You just dabble and then it starts to take over and then you're kind of tired and then you just decide to eliminate one.

[00:07:41] Christa: The end. Yeah. Yeah. When, when 

[00:07:43] Jesse Coomer: it outweighs the other in, there's a lot of advice out there to. Jump face first into this thing, right? It's like, man, if you got a passion, you know, just quit your job and do that. And I could never do that myself. And ultimately, you know, I didn't know why for the longest time.

[00:08:02] Jesse Coomer: And actually this is part of the subject of my next book, which is the Language of Breath and, and it's ultimately the philosophy that I have with breath work as a whole, is that your conscious thinking part of you is only a very small sliver. And when you go against the other part, which is that unconscious part of yourself, you're going to struggle in ways that it's gonna be so uncomfortable cuz you're really fighting yourself.

[00:08:30] Jesse Coomer: And what happens so often is that a person thinks, oh, I'm weak. Or I what? This other person just quit his job and then he did this other thing or whatever. And in reality, That other person had an unconscious belief that was like, yeah, of course I'm gonna do that. You know? So for myself, and when I train, uh, my clients, especially when it comes to behavioral changes, when it's like there's a behavior I don't like that I do, and I can't seem to stop doing it.

[00:08:58] Jesse Coomer: Hmm. We work, we obviously, we, you know, we're always working with our breath, but we're especially focusing on the fact that your unconscious self. Is, it has an opinion on what you do, and it's going to be uncomfortable and it's gonna make you very uncomfortable if it believes that your conscious actions are in conflict with what's best for you.

[00:09:22] Jesse Coomer: Hmm. And maybe I skipped ahead a little bit, but ultimately, okay. You know that I, I think that conflict, that inner conflict, Is at the crux of much of our suffering. Oh, absolutely. It's, it's at the, you know what I mean? And it's this, this thing that no one talks about, no one knows about. And you know, I had to be this many years old.

[00:09:43] Jesse Coomer: Mm-hmm. You know, it was one of those things that I just, it blew my mind. But we've known this. For decades, we've known there is a part of us that it builds patterns. It's, it's a very, it's very good at seeing patterns in your life. It will form a worldview, and it's always trying to help you to survive and thrive.

[00:10:05] Jesse Coomer: Within your environment and within your social structures, but it's not always right. Mm-hmm. It's just, it's, and it doesn't have to be right. The, the whole point is that it's keeping you from harm. And so we're always dealing with this aspect of ourself. And, and this is, this is ultimately the focus of my, my breath work philosophy.

[00:10:24] Jesse Coomer: The language of breath is, is kind of to stop, you know, torturing ourselves to start, you know, to form that better relationship within. Well, 

[00:10:35] Christa: and I, I wanna talk a lot about conscious and unconscious self, and the way you just kind of tease talking about that mm-hmm. Was, you know, different things land with different people.

[00:10:45] Christa: Yeah. And so, one of either, I can look at it as a challenge, a positive or a negative challenge is that I feel like right now I'm charged with, Helping people understand that they need breath work without them thinking that they need it. Right. Because I was a person who didn't think that I needed it.

[00:10:59] Christa: Mm-hmm. And then I experienced it. Mm-hmm. And then I was like, well this makes a big difference. Right. We can control our nervous system completely with this. Like we are, we can technically affect this. Now as an educator, as someone who is teaching, I know that you do teach breath work to kids. Yeah. I dunno if it's a middle school or just high school.

[00:11:17] Christa: So in the vein of this, before we jump back into some of the deeper stuff, If you're teaching middle school or high school kids, what do you jump in first? How do you get their attention to help them think, oh, maybe I'm kind of interested in this. Where would you start before you even get 

[00:11:32] Jesse Coomer: started? Yeah, that's a great question.

[00:11:34] Jesse Coomer: So typically I will teach high school, uh, is the youngest that, that I usually teach like in groups. And then beyond that, It would be okay, could you teach our family or could you teach, uh, you know, I have a son who, you know, I, I was just kind of hoping you would check out his breathing and make sure he mm-hmm.

[00:11:53] Jesse Coomer: You know, so, so ultimately it doesn't matter. So I've got a seven year old boy who I try to, you know, I'm like, okay, you probably won't thank me someday because well, that's, that's how we are, but, But ultimately I, you know, I want him to grow up and I want him to understand himself in a way that I didn't for the longest time.

[00:12:12] Jesse Coomer: There was nothing wrong with me, you know, it's just that I didn't understand what was going on, and so I'm made bad decisions. So, but the question is important because how do you get buy-in, right? And so for high schoolers, And just really for all humans, really, right? Uh, for all humans, you have to have the why.

[00:12:31] Jesse Coomer: You have to have a reason why you're going to at least give it a chance. And, and that as long as you have that, then, then ultimately there's a tradition of breath work that just says willingness is enough. Mm-hmm. And, and if you can get the willingness, I mean everything else will follow. Now how do you get willingness, especially with young people?

[00:12:50] Jesse Coomer: So with high school students, ideally you get to know the student as a person. We, we often want to have kind of a blanket thing. And that led to, I remember when I was in high school, you know, I was like, Hey, school's cool. You know, and it nothing's more of a turnoff than, than its like, okay, you're not even getting it right.

[00:13:10] Jesse Coomer: You know? So, so you want to kind of get to know the person. I would say if you have a high school student or a middle school student who's interested in sports, then you want to go with the sports route you, because every person understands what it's like to be breathless. So you say, okay, what if I told you.

[00:13:29] Jesse Coomer: That we could make it so that you can run faster and for longer or jump higher. No. You know, all these things. Would you be interested in something like that? Well, of course, you know, man, make me into Superman. I, let's, let's do this. And so a lot of times for my young people, I usually go with. Breath work that is more athletically based cause they see the function in it.

[00:13:55] Jesse Coomer: A lot of it's very difficult for an unformed brain to have the introspection to say, I think I'm dealing with something to have that metacognitive. Reflection is, that's not to say that it doesn't happen because I do have a lot of young people who have that emotional intelligence early on, but when it comes to the why, oftentimes a young person hasn't really had enough experiences to compare it with to say, you know what?

[00:14:24] Jesse Coomer: I think I'm dealing with. Social anxiety in an unhealthy way. Are there any alternatives? Now, having said that, I do a, uh, full workshop, uh, at some places where, especially the, the, the high schools that generally have me though, okay, for better or worse, are where the students are very motivated already. Um, and, and so I would love for it to be taught, I would say in.

[00:14:53] Jesse Coomer: Every part, so elementary, middle, and high school, you know, and, and expanding as you go. Hey, okay, so you've got a nervous system. I had, you know, you go to biology class and you kind of silo the information that you learn, sadly enough, and so, yeah, okay, there's this nervous system or whatever. I didn't remember really getting any applicable information when I was in school about, okay, how does this apply to me and how can I have.

[00:15:21] Jesse Coomer: And experience, how can I really experience this? And, and so explaining, okay, there's, there's two main branches to your autonomic nervous system. Okay? So you've got the active and you've got more relaxed, right? So, so we might call that the sympathetic dominant from, from my. Hey, if you're listening to a podcast, you're already a nerd, so, mm-hmm.

[00:15:40] Jesse Coomer: So you're our kind of people, right? So the sympathetic dominance side of the parasympathetic dominant side, okay? So you've got these, so once for activation to get you moving around and doing actions. The other one is to help you relax. To help you recover, to heal, and, and, and digest your food, and all of these things that we need to do on a regular basis.

[00:16:03] Jesse Coomer: So you have these two modes, if I would've known that. I think just knowing that early on, it's like, okay, there's two basic modes. Whenever you're in those two modes, your body expresses itself differently, right? So your blood pressure, your, uh, you know, your hormones, your ability to digest food, a lot of these things are gonna express themselves differently and.

[00:16:24] Jesse Coomer: Stress hormones can cause you to have, you know, poor night's sleep, extra anxiety, and in many cases acne. A lot of the things that we suffered from when we were younger. And so I would say if they already have an interest, go with it. Interest. But if they don't, I would say suit it for what they're going through at the time.

[00:16:46] Jesse Coomer: So, for instance, my son is learning, he's seven years old. And, you know, first, second, third grade humans are dealing with like, how do I, if I get upset, what am I supposed to do? Right? Am I supposed to, you know, it's just these simple things. Let's see. Uh, I could hit my, my friend, right? I could cry, I could run away.

[00:17:07] Jesse Coomer: I could. And, and so what I teach my son is a little technique. And again, this is for, for kiddos. Is called Darth Vader breathing. Now, you're familiar with this, right? But it's not sniff, sniff poop. A nice sniff deep breath. Ultimately a deep breath down into the tummy with your nose. And then you know how Darth Vader breathes on the exhales and, and it makes it kind of fun, right?

[00:17:31] Jesse Coomer: There needs to be an element of fun, especially when they're little and say, okay, when you get upset, I want you to breathe like Darth Vader, right? And my son. Now everybody's a little different, but my son finds that to be hilarious. And so he, you know, now does he always do it? Maybe, maybe not, right? But it's, it's something that helps him in those moments.

[00:17:54] Jesse Coomer: And then of course it diffuses the situation. The, you know, it's like he's being funny and, and people like, and so a lot of little other kids will do it too. So now you have a bunch of seven year olds who would've been fighting all breathing like Darth Vader together, you know? Mm-hmm. Much easier problem to deal with when they get into, obviously the big thing is it's like, Hey, wait a minute, uh, puberty is killing me.

[00:18:17] Jesse Coomer: Right? And so it's easier to say, Hey, listen, if you want to be a little bit more relaxed and more confident, you wanna be little more confident, okay. So you have an active state and a passive state. So what you wanna be is somewhere in between. Mm-hmm. You know, I, you know, I remember just like, man, I just wish I could relax, but I can't.

[00:18:39] Jesse Coomer: Okay. So, so then, you know, we might do like the physiological sigh or a, a sniff sniff poo type of a thing. So, so again, I wish I could. Give everyone an audio of that. So the name, I gave it the name, I, I, I actually, I like it. I like 

[00:18:54] Christa: all these names. Let's go through all your breath work 

[00:18:56] Jesse Coomer: names Jessie. Right. I love using like, things that kind of like exemplify it makes it simple.

[00:19:01] Jesse Coomer: I actually didn't give it the name Sniff Sniff Poo. I heard it from my other breath worker somewhere a long time ago. But, but I, that, that one's like, yeah, I'm using that one. Mm-hmm. Um, and, but Sniff Npu is, is your first inhale is about 75%. Through the nose, and then you, you fill up the rest of the way with the next sniff, and then you just relax.

[00:19:21] Jesse Coomer: The exhale with a p sound you, you're making a poo. It's lengthening the exhale as long as you can. So sniff, sniff. Right. And of course you probably, well you 

[00:19:31] Christa: really are saying poo, I always thought you said poof with an F on the end. But your mic is blocking it off, buddy. Yeah. Even funnier for 

[00:19:38] Jesse Coomer: kids.

[00:19:39] Jesse Coomer: Exactly. So I, I think the biggest thing is, So breath work, meditation, a lot of this stuff we have to think about our audience. And when it comes to breath work, there's a lot of garbage out there, so, so we have what I call at least the clickbait garbage, which is, Hey, you know, one simple trick and it'll fix you for life.

[00:19:59] Jesse Coomer: Or all these things where it's like, Hey, I don't have any stress anymore because I learned this simple technique. And there's no technique that will make life without stress because that is part of being a human. So when you read those headlines, just don't click. I mean there, that's all it is, is click bait.

[00:20:16] Jesse Coomer: And then there are in breath work. There's, there's some like schools where it just has to be one. This is our only way of doing it. And maybe the technique is fantastic cuz the only way, don't look at anywhere else. But ultimately, and this is where my whole philosophy comes from, is like, you've gotta think about.

[00:20:33] Jesse Coomer: It's ultimately a way of communicating within yourself, and that's the crux of it, because a part of you is trying to help you, but it's causing you discomfort. So this thing we call anxiety. Mm-hmm. And the stress response, right. That feeling that we all hate or love, I mean, adrenaline junkies are real. I mean, it is, it is a thing, you know, to be an adrenaline uh, addict, 

[00:20:59] Christa: you have your own definition for anxiety.

[00:21:02] Christa: I don't know if it's your definition. Sure. But I wrote it down Sure. From last time I heard you talk about it. Define, tell me how you define it. 

[00:21:08] Jesse Coomer: So, well, it's interesting. So, so anxiety, uh, you know, of course you could, the Danish philosophers, uh, SU Kard once said, right, there's the English professor in me, right?

[00:21:18] Jesse Coomer: So, so anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. And, and I always love that because it's, it, it's, you have optionality, but it's like, what do I do? What do I do? What do I do? Right now, the, the biological. Feeling of anxiety. It's interesting, so there's a part of your brain called the locus aurelius, and when you are in states where at least unconsciously the, the part of your unconscious, so, so when I say this, when I say unconscious, I don't mean you're asleep or passed out.

[00:21:47] Jesse Coomer: I mean right now, currently all of us are taking in about. 11,000 pieces of information per second, we can only consciously use and, and process about 40 to 50 pieces of information. The rest of that is processed by the, what we call what in some, some circles they call the adaptive unconscious. It's a part of ourselves.

[00:22:08] Jesse Coomer: It's everything from your limbic system, your, your, the subconscious area, right, your brainstem, all these things that, that are there. Behind the scenes, so to speak. Well, that is processing an enormous amount of information that you're not really aware of. We're, we're just not aware of this. But when it decides that, okay, based on the patterns of my life that I've seen in thus far in my life, I believe that this is going to be a potentially dangerous situation or that I need to activate myself in some way.

[00:22:39] Jesse Coomer: Okay? And you gotta remember all of this is very, Primal. We we're a hunter gatherer society for most of human history. We've only been. Modern, you know, for maybe 150 years. Well, that part of you is going to say, okay, so we need to activate and it will start activating your, your nervous system and your act.

[00:22:58] Jesse Coomer: Your, your, your sympathetic dominant side will become more active, so you'll start having more stress hormones. But what happens is interesting. It will give you dopamine and it's a reward chemical that, that typically we associate, you know, okay, I'm gonna pick up my phone and I'll get a dopamine hit, or whatever.

[00:23:15] Jesse Coomer: But that is a neurochemical. That is actually a, that it, it, that actually encourages you to action. That's your unconscious saying, go figure something out. Go find out what's going on over there. Go solve the mystery. That's why we love mysteries as humans. I mean, we just have to know. An unsolved mystery is just like, oh man, but what about this?

[00:23:35] Jesse Coomer: What about this? Right. We love that and it's built in. That is part of our organism. Well, what happens is, and this all controlled by a part of your brain called the Motivational Network, and it's actually the thing that decides what we worry about. We don't you ever notice that? We don't really get to decide that.

[00:23:53] Jesse Coomer: Not funny, but the part of you 

[00:23:54] Christa: does. Yeah. We think we're so in control. I just, I have to stop and underline a couple things that, that you're delving into. Um, oh yeah, because we've talked about 'em here and there on the podcast. And I just wanna make sure, I think I just wanna put these in bold. So we've got our conscious self, unconscious self, and our conscious self is maybe 5% of what actually happens.

[00:24:12] Christa: We think we're in control and our unconscious self is actually taking in, uh, to quote you, 11,000 pieces of information. It learns patterns quickly. It's. Automatically working on stuff in the background. It's like, oh, I just keep picking up my phone to check things. Right? It's learning this pattern really quickly and it's what is creating like the internal emotions that we don't even realize sometimes.

[00:24:34] Christa: Mm-hmm. Or we think is really normal. I used to think it was really normal to pit out every time I'd speak in front of people and I was like, oh, it's fine. You know, it's just how it is. But that was my unconscious self, just presenting how it really felt. Right. Yeah. So trying to help you. Yeah, trying to help.

[00:24:48] Christa: So anyway, back to you. What you were talking about is we don't get to decide the things that create 

[00:24:53] Jesse Coomer: worry in us, right? Yeah. And if this happens, like if you think about our ancestors, okay, so this is fantastic for our survival, for the vast majority of human history because okay, you're out in, you know, the on the hunt or out in the wilderness, and.

[00:25:09] Jesse Coomer: You know, there's so many pieces of information to process. The unconscious self can start to pick up patterns and suddenly I observe there's a predator or a prey or something like that and great, that's great. But you know, for us it's different. It'll be like three in the morning and you wake up in the middle of the night and the thing that didn't bother you at whenever you went to bed, Somehow you got to solve that mystery.

[00:25:32] Jesse Coomer: You've got to figure out what, so-and-so's gonna say the next day, I don't know what my boss is gonna say, but your motivational network says, I know what to do. I know what to do. Christus just needs a little bit more dopamine. Right? And then eventually you're like, there's nothing I can do. And then your unconscious is like, I know what to do, but it, it's always living in the present so it doesn't understand tomorrow, right?

[00:25:54] Jesse Coomer: It always says, you know what we'll do, we will release. A neurochemical called Nor Epinephrine, and it it'll be released globally within your brain from the Locus Aurelius, and what that does. Is heightened all of your senses. So you can see more sharply, you can, your sense of, uh, smell actually increases.

[00:26:13] Jesse Coomer: You can, you can smell more sharply hearing All your tactile senses are, are heightened, so you're more sensitive in every single way. And for our, for our ancestors, this is great, right? Because if we were hunting, if we're gathering, we want to see the predator before it sees us. We want to hear it before it hears us, smell it, before it smells us.

[00:26:33] Jesse Coomer: That was awesome then. But here we are in our bed at three in the morning, like just freaking out. Like it's like, oh my God. Everything's just kind of coming in. And that is ultimately, What we know as the modern condition of anxiety, it is a mismatch between our actual circumstances and our unconscious self trying to help us.

[00:26:56] Jesse Coomer: So we will have anxiety, which is ultimately the unconscious part of you trying to activate, because you gotta remember most of our. Human history, if you had a problem, if there was a physical action you could take to solve that problem, it's not that way anymore. And, and everything's more complex. And so we're actually experiencing what our organism is trying to do is help us, is trying to say, okay, fine.

[00:27:22] Jesse Coomer: Here we go. All you've got all the materials you need to, you know, Not get eaten by the jungle cat, but it's a different world. And so this mismatch, you know, I, I always say that we are a relationship within ourselves and we're a relationship with. The rest of the world outside of ourselves. Mm-hmm. And that's, that's a mismatch we have is those relationships.

[00:27:43] Jesse Coomer: There's a mismatch in it and it causes us anxiety. Mm-hmm. And it can lead to a lot of suffering. 

[00:27:49] Christa: Yeah. Okay. If we have an imbalance in our. Conscious self and unconscious self. Right. We can name them right? Or yours named Jesse. Yeah, 

[00:27:56] Jesse Coomer: yeah, yeah. What are they named? So the conscious self and the unconscious self.

[00:28:01] Jesse Coomer: Yeah. Ultimately the, there's, I thought you 

[00:28:03] Christa: gave them personas. 

[00:28:04] Jesse Coomer: That's what I meant, like, oh yeah. Oh yeah. There's, there's conscious Jesse and unconscious Jesse. I even, I have a, an exercise that I often will lead people in and is simply just close your eyes and then just picture a smiling you, smiling right back at yourself.

[00:28:21] Jesse Coomer: And it's saying, Hey, I'm just trying to help you. Right? I, Hey, I, I'm here. I'm here. I'm your, I'm your best friend. And you know, I've had best friends that will try to help me, and I'm like, I really wish you weren't trying to help me right now. It's, it's kinda making things worse. And we we're never not gonna have that relationship.

[00:28:40] Jesse Coomer: Right. So when we know everything about you, yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. And this is an interesting relationship, right? So you have a relationship with yourself and no one knows you better than yourself. And, and the unconscious you is where I. I mean, that's where your personality resides, that's where your sense of humor resides, all of the thing.

[00:28:58] Jesse Coomer: I mean, it's, it's really an interesting thing and, and it never turns off. The conscious you can turn off, but the unconscious, you will not turn off. Mm-hmm. That's why like for instance, that's why optical illusions some of them. Yeah. You know, the one where the, they have the two lines and then the ones, the arrows that are pointing out and the arrows are pointing in and you're like, I've seen this trick before.

[00:29:19] Jesse Coomer: So I know they're the same link, but it still looks like. One is longer than the other. That's because the unconscious you doesn't stop and you can't consciously tell it not to. It's why alarm clocks work. You know? It, it never goes to sleep. It's, it's always listening. It's always trying to help you, but it's not always right.

[00:29:39] Jesse Coomer: And so this is where breath work in play, because using our breath, We can actually communicate with that part of ourselves in a way that we could not otherwise, you can't consciously think, you know, I think we've all tried this, right? Relax, right? Just like think, relax, relax, relax, relax. That doesn't work.

[00:30:00] Jesse Coomer: So yeah, we can't. 

[00:30:03] Christa: Yeah, get into it. Well, I mean, it's funny though. We can think it into elevating, right? We can think it into elevating, but the reverse is 

[00:30:10] Jesse Coomer: different. Technically you can do both, but it's really hard to make that happen. You know, people that are champion meditators and things like that can accomplish that.

[00:30:20] Jesse Coomer: You know, after, you know, a decade not a champion meditator. Right? Now I'm not a champion meditator. Right? And the good news is, is that you don't have to have. Actually recently was shown in a research that breath offers more release and relief from anxiety and stress than meditation and mindfulness. So, so you don't have to, to do those things.

[00:30:43] Jesse Coomer: I still recommend doing them, but, but Breathwork offers us a way to speak to that part of ourselves in a really focused, uh, way that is, and, and, and then when you learn how that language works. You can actually start to hear, oh, okay. Message received. Oh wow. Okay. Uh, and, and you can really have an amazing relationship within yourself.

[00:31:06] Christa: It's reasonable to say that if we're feeling a little out of sorts, out of alignment, just kind of un, maybe unfulfilled is not the right word, but just kind of funky, right? Mm-hmm. That examining relationship with self is a reasonable place to start, because that's gonna mirror our relationship with the outside world.

[00:31:23] Christa: Absolutely. Before we get into, I wanna talk just through some different breathwork tools and I mean, you did, yeah. You already talked about Darth Vader and you talked about sniff sniff too. Yeah, I have a couple, I have a couple more questions about that before we do. You touched on this just a little bit, but can you talk a little bit more about our addiction to dopamine and how our brain is constantly looking for this hit?

[00:31:44] Christa: Because sometimes I don't know about you, but for me, I always like to understand self. And that's what we've been talking a lot all about. And so I feel like when we understand how our brain is wired to crave this, it's helpful in breaking the loop from the 

[00:31:56] Jesse Coomer: pattern. Absolutely. So something that, so we have a lot of senses that help us.

[00:32:03] Jesse Coomer: Orientate ourselves. So for instance, we have a sense of proprioception. So for those of you guys listening or watching, if you close your eyes, your body doesn't disappear, right? You know where you are. You can feel where you are. You can feel how you feel right there. You can see there's a lot of senses that will tell us.

[00:32:23] Jesse Coomer: Things. We don't have a way of understanding the quality of information that we're getting or the quality of nutrition that we're getting. Like you can't taste something if it tastes kind of earthy. You might say, oh, it probably has vitamins in it, but that's a guess, right? We don't have any sensors that are directly related to the quality of anything that comes into our minds or our bodies for the most part.

[00:32:46] Jesse Coomer: Especially when it comes to information and you have to understand information is something that we have so much more of now than we've ever had. It's been estimated that the average person living today ingests more information in one day than the average person did before 1850 for their entire lives.

[00:33:06] Jesse Coomer: I mean, just insane. Now dopamine is a neurochemical that has served our species very well, and it's the reason why we were able to circumnavigate the globe. It's what helps us to eliminate uncertainty that can cause us harm. It's the thing that, for instance, if, uh, like it's the thing at nighttime, I don't know if you're like me, but you lay down in bed and you're like, did I lock the doors?

[00:33:30] Jesse Coomer: Mm-hmm. And it won't let you go to sleep until. You know for sure because it's, it's there to help you eliminate uncertainties that might hurt you, and then it's also there to help you to discover new opportunities that could help you. So those are the two basic functions, right? And, and to explore your surroundings is to do that.

[00:33:51] Jesse Coomer: Cause well, maybe there's fertile, you know, hunting grounds over here, or maybe there's another tribe and we could find a partner that's outside of this tribe because man, they've all been taken, right? And so for the longest time, our dopamine systems. Were, they were not stimulated as hard because we had fewer uncertainties.

[00:34:10] Jesse Coomer: We still had a lot of uncertainty, but we didn't have as many Now because of the amount of information we receive, and we have no way of knowing if it's good or not right, is that we have no way of knowing is, is this quality information, is this true? Well, I have to do a lot of conscious thinking and figuring out to figure out if it's true, and that's just one piece of information.

[00:34:30] Jesse Coomer: And we get. Thousands of pieces of information every day now. So dopamine is, you'll find that the vast majority of us in the modern world are swimming in dopamine. We have more dopamine in our brains. And then in addition to that, we will, we'll do things like, and hey, I'm not bashing on coffee. I drink it every morning.

[00:34:48] Jesse Coomer: All right. But that makes us more sensitive to dopamine. Mm. Uh, that's already in our system. So, Dopamine feels good and it, it also has a very positive function when it's used appropriately, but we also have ways that dopaminergic urge that they've short circuited. The way these things are meant to work.

[00:35:09] Jesse Coomer: So we have in the modern, well humans have the two major drives. We have a reproductive drive in the dopaminergic drive. Hmm. And so we've figured out ways to make a shortcut so, so that you can get the satisfaction a lot faster. It used to be you had to work and toil and I mean, just all kinds of stuff in order to get satisfied.

[00:35:30] Jesse Coomer: But now I can just look here on my cell phone or you know, I can, there's so many ways. That you can satisfy that dopaminergic urge now the urge to check your phone, right. I think most people, whether you admit it or not, before you go to bed, right before we go to bed, we, we look at our phones and, and we exhaust ourselves looking, okay, check all my socials, check all my emails, or whatever.

[00:35:53] Jesse Coomer: And that's bec that's the same thing that our ancestors were doing. For their living situation. Okay, I'm gonna check to make sure there's no snakes or bears or things like that when I become unconscious. But now, instead of just looking around and saying, okay, it looks pretty safe. Now we have an infinite number of possible problems, and it's not even limited to our own surroundings.

[00:36:16] Jesse Coomer: I know what's going on across the world. I know about climate change. I know about all these things that there's really no way for me to ever, as an individual completely solve these things. But my dopamine is like, you need to solve those things. Your motivational network is saying, oh yeah, there's a problem.

[00:36:32] Jesse Coomer: Well, we better figure out the answer, and so we are. Quite literally swimming in dopamine most of the time. Yes, there are some people who have low amounts of dopamine, but the vast majority of us who have a healthy dopaminergic system probably could deal with unplugging a little bit. We could deal with taking some time out in nature and getting away from all of these information sources because it's those information sources that we say, okay, well I'm just gonna watch the next story on the news.

[00:37:03] Jesse Coomer: Mm-hmm. Because it might be something important that will be there for my survival or for me to, to thrive. What is the next bit of information? And there's always the next bit of information now, right? So yeah, the modern person, we have to have ways to break through that dopamine, what I call the dopamine feedback loop in my book, because.

[00:37:22] Jesse Coomer: What happens is you'll never, there's so many things you can never actually solve. So many uncertainties. You can never, you can never, you know, uncover so many places that are, at least now, there's not physical places maybe that are uncharted, but there's so many uncharted places, you know, metaphorically and maybe technologically that are uncharted that.

[00:37:46] Jesse Coomer: If you just constantly follow your dopamine, you'll never rest. You'll never have any real peace. So this is where our breathwork can be a huge, huge help just to break that cycle, to break through that dopamine feedback loop that we. As modern humans tend to suffer from. 

[00:38:05] Christa: Mm-hmm. Let's talk about some types of breath work.

[00:38:06] Christa: Let me start with one that you mentioned but we didn't talk more about. Yeah. You may have left us with question marks. You said, oh, sometimes with kids, if I want them, if I wanna pique their interest run faster or whatever. Mm-hmm. We'll do some athletically based BR breath work. Yeah. What does that look like, or how would you define that?

[00:38:21] Christa: What does that mean? 

[00:38:22] Jesse Coomer: So, yeah. So the three major, I guess, ghouls of breath work, the three major types. One would be functional breath work, and then another would be more of the autonomic nervous system regulation, physiological changes. And then the last one would be integrative breath work, like theta breathing, right?

[00:38:40] Jesse Coomer: And so what I would do with the athletes is go over a functional breathing, so the actual act of breathing. So the average athlete, they did some research on college athletes recently. And it came back that 90% of college athletes, and we're talking about healthy people mm-hmm. Uh, have dysfunctional breathing patterns.

[00:38:58] Jesse Coomer: Simply having a dysfunctional breathing pattern in, even when you're just sitting around, even when you're asleep, it can put you in a chronically high-stressed state. And so I cover a lot of, okay, this is how you're supposed to be breathing. And we, we undo a lot of. Dysfunction. And then in addition to that, we will do hypoxic training.

[00:39:18] Jesse Coomer: So when you are hypoxic, you are ha, you have low blood oxygen saturation. There are techniques that you can use that will allow you to do that intermittently. If you had low oxygen saturation, long term, that would be a bad thing. But whenever we do certain techniques, we can reduce your blood Oxygen saturation, low enough and short, just long enough.

[00:39:40] Jesse Coomer: That your body will produce E P O, which will then produce more red blood cells, which increases your oxygen carrying capacity. That's what athletes do when they do altitude training. And then we also want to address their CO2 tolerance. So CO2 being the molecule that. Whenever it is elevated or whenever there's a certain level of it, it causes you to have the urge to breathe.

[00:40:04] Jesse Coomer: It's incredible what we can do when we make friends with that and it's uncomfortable. No one likes it, but it's something that it can really opened up the range of. Of athletic performance in ways that very few other styles of breath will, can. So we work with those things. We wanna have functional breathing, we want to have a, a healthy CO2 tolerance, and we want to be able to carry as much oxygen in our blood as we can.

[00:40:30] Christa: This was helpful for you to talk about the schools of thought around this because, If I learned this, it wasn't, didn't stick for me before, but I had taken a class, a course in functional breath work from a physical therapist, and it was all about that, right? It was all about functional breath. Whereas, you know, I just finished the, that's how I met you is with the theta breath work certification that's integrative.

[00:40:52] Christa: Um, right. The third one is autonomic, you said, did I make right? Right. So tell us what that looks 

[00:40:59] Jesse Coomer: like. So, so every really, when it comes down to it, everything. Breath is going to have some kind of an influence on your autonomic nervous system. So every breath you take, whether you mean to do it or not, it's either influenced by or it's influencing your nervous system via that pathway.

[00:41:16] Jesse Coomer: Like for instance, when I train police officers, firefighters, EMTs, military, we focus a lot on autonomic nervous system because we understand that. Typically, there's a lot of research that shows when you are in a heightened state of, of sympathetic dominance, and this is when we, we might call it fight or flight.

[00:41:36] Jesse Coomer: And when you get even more stimulated, you would may maybe say, fight flight, freeze. Right? Well, we can't have people who are in charge of, you know, helping people in a burning house freezing or making dumb decisions because, and I will say dumb decisions because it's also shown that the more stressed that we become, the more heightened our anxiety is, whether it's whatever reason we tend to have.

[00:42:01] Jesse Coomer: Uh, lower amount of cognitive power. So, so our cognition reduces dramatically as we become more stressed. So with especially that group, and of course athletes are the same way. We're, we're, I mean, we're all the same way when, so I, when I train CEOs and all these things, they wanna make better decisions. So, okay, we have to make sure that we're not.

[00:42:20] Jesse Coomer: Heightened, yes, you wanna be activated. And of course, if you're an athlete or if you're running into save people you want, you're, you're not like you're gonna take a nap. But we wanna make sure to, to be really careful and so we can throttle that. So we're making good decisions because I mean, if you're the person in charge, you've gotta be performing in every way.

[00:42:40] Jesse Coomer: So when it comes to autonomic nervous system protocols in the language of breath, we do all three of these things, by the way, because all three of them are really interconnected. It, and, and so I, what I've done with the language of breath, I ultimately, I try to have like a, a unified theory of all breath work.

[00:42:55] Jesse Coomer: Just really try to bring it all together. But when we look at the autonomic nervous system, that's, Oftentimes, I like to call it the, the Rosetta Stone of Breath work and, and your nervous system. And it ultimately allows you to say, okay, these things in my physiology are manifesting in this way. Wow, I must really be activated.

[00:43:15] Jesse Coomer: Or I must, maybe I'm not so much. And so I train people, first of all with okay, simple things like heart rate or, you know, you know, okay, check to see where this is and okay, how does this feel? And then ultimately we graduate to really. Work with that sense of introception. And for those who, if you've not heard of that, that word before, the introception is our ability to, it's ultimately our sense of internal awareness.

[00:43:38] Jesse Coomer: And once you become really in tuned with that, then you're listening to your partner, right? That's that unconscious self. It's gonna manifest this way in sensations and changes in physiology and heart rate changes, breathing changes, all sorts of things. And the more you get in touch with that in a. Real educated ways.

[00:43:56] Jesse Coomer: Okay. I didn't know what this is. Why this is doing this, then you can really just, man, I've got a great relationship and oh, oh, uh oh. My unconscious is, it's, it's upset or it's, it's telling me this, but okay, my conscious self understands the situation and I, I'm gonna speak back to that. And so, so that way we're having that positive relationship within ourselves.

[00:44:17] Jesse Coomer: So we do that with autonomic nervous system protocols. We, we can do it with other things, but generally when you think breathing technique, You know, I like to say in the language breath, that's a phrase to speak to the unconscious self to say, okay, should we calm down? Should we activate? Should we stay in?

[00:44:35] Jesse Coomer: Kind of like a playful mode, where should we be? Yeah. 

[00:44:38] Christa: I have two more things that I think would be of service One. Is again, our brains just like to see proof, right? Yes. Probably part of the dopaminergic. Of course. Yeah. Urge here. So tell me one or two stories, or maybe even three, or tell me about some cool things that you've seen as a result of doing, or people doing breath work.

[00:45:01] Christa: Like what are some things that you're like, wow, that is so cool. I love my job. 

[00:45:05] Jesse Coomer: Yeah. Okay. So one of the things that I've seen, I was talking about first responders, so that this first thing that comes to mind, I do a retreat each year for first responders in the Midwest. It's called the Great Midwestern Reset this year it's in May of, so 2023, it's in May, and I go over all three of these things.

[00:45:25] Jesse Coomer: It's a deep dive in the language of breath and. I had an officer who, when we went through functional breathing, she, I got to her cause I check everybody out and she says she kind of with a, a scared look in her face. I don't think I can, I don't think I'm activating my diaphragm at all. I don't think I can.

[00:45:44] Jesse Coomer: Hmm. And sure enough, she was really struggling. That's a primary breathing muscle that is fundamental to proper breathing and to so much when it comes to how you're speaking to your unconscious. She was breathing heavily in her shoulders and her upper chest. And, you know, not to go on and on about that, but that's ultimately a way of sending a, a stress message.

[00:46:07] Jesse Coomer: Yeah. So if you're staying in that top part of your breath wave, that's generally gonna send the stress message. Now you gotta remember this woman was a police officer in a really, her beat for the longest years was in a, it is like very, very high. Violence area. She had been, I, I know she had multiple times where, you know, thank God she was wearing that, that vest.

[00:46:30] Jesse Coomer: Right? So this is a person who's had a lot of stress just on a regular daily basis. It's a person who is in a. Chronic state, right. Of stress and what they call hyper vigilance, especially in this field. And it had really had a huge effect on her natural breathing. Well, she was at this retreat because she, she's like, I, I've gotta have something I, something's gotta change.

[00:46:52] Jesse Coomer: I, you know, I, I know that I've got a lot of the symptoms of P T S D. I've got a lot of the symptoms of, you know, what they call hyper vigilance, which ultimately leads to so many negative consequences. And so, Gave her a smile and said, Hey, this is okay. I did her through some basic exercises to help reactivate those muscles.

[00:47:14] Jesse Coomer: Before she was done with the retreat, she was doing better, but she still had a long way to go. Yeah. Um, and so then later she checked back in with me, Hey, I think I've got this. This is going really well. And she said, you know what? I teach at. The police academy, and we need this. This has changed my life.

[00:47:32] Jesse Coomer: I'm, I'm sleeping better. My focus is better. I can tell like a noticeable change and I'm just really blown away at like how something as simple as just where my breath was. Like not even really powerful what we would like in the breath work world's like knife changing breath, but it was life changing breath work and it was simply functional breathing and a few breathing techniques that she could do functionally.

[00:47:56] Jesse Coomer: And actually now she was a spearhead at this police academy in Indiana and now she was like, we need to cert, we need to teach the next generation. And so I developed thanks to her. I developed a certification just for first responders, and she is going to be in the very first class. You know, this woman who could not, I mean, it was really not a thing to, I mean, she was not able to activate her diaphragm is now.

[00:48:25] Jesse Coomer: Not only living better herself, sleeping better, feeling better in every way, but now she's saying, I need to share this with the next generation so that people don't have to suffer the same way I did. So that to me was like, oh, you know, it's such an honor to work with people when not only did it change her life, but now she's trying to help change the lives of her profession.

[00:48:47] Jesse Coomer: You know, I've had people with. Phobias. I've worked with people with phobias a lot actually. I had a guy who had a phobia. He was a c e o of a, uh, online company, big, like, really big company, and he had started to develop a phobia of flying. And this is not good when you're a c e O of a company that has to, he has gotta fly all over the United States and all over the world.

[00:49:10] Jesse Coomer: And so he reached out to me and he didn't take it seriously as seriously as maybe he, he, he should have. At first, he's like, yeah, okay, yeah, we'll do this breathing technique and whatever. And didn't really, so why didn't he reach 

[00:49:21] Christa: out to you if he wasn't gonna take it seriously? I'm just asked this outta curiosity.

[00:49:24] Christa: Cause I've had people, I mean, this happens to me sometimes 

[00:49:27] Jesse Coomer: too, but Yeah. Well, and, and it's because I think all coaches go through this too, but. There is a certain degree of. It works when I'm with you, and then when I'm not with you, I just don't think about it anymore, and I go about my regular life and then I'll see you next week whenever it'll work again.

[00:49:44] Jesse Coomer: And then work human beings. We have to have a lot of compassion for ourselves because we're all liable to do this now and then. And it's something where it's like, okay, now you fixed me. Right? Or, you know, it's, it's this thing where maybe sometimes they're dependent on the coach to make sure I'm doing it right and by myself.

[00:50:03] Jesse Coomer: I don't necessarily feel comfortable doing it, or it's just a matter of fitting it into our lives. There's, you know, we've all got our hangups. Yeah, for sure. And I don't know what his hangup was necessarily, this has been quite a few years ago, but he was always beating himself up whenever we got on the next call, he's like, I didn't do my homework.

[00:50:21] Jesse Coomer: And I like, it's okay. But I mean, it is your practice. It's not me. Well, one time he got on a plane and he hadn't been doing his homework, and he started to notice, he felt the anxiety come up and he tried to do a technique that is good for going to sleep, which is the worst thing you can try to do when you're in a heightened state, like you're starting to hyperventilate.

[00:50:44] Jesse Coomer: Well, hey, let's, let's breathe in for four seconds, out for eight seconds. Let's try that, right? A 12 second breath. And so he just had the worst flight ever. And then he came back and he said, listen, we need to make this happen. So yeah, so then we really started working on it and eventually he was able to fly without hating life.

[00:51:06] Jesse Coomer: You know, I'm not gonna sit here and say, ah, he was miraculously cured, but he was able to fly without taking whatever drug that he had got prescribed. Uh, like, no, no, it's, uh, Xanax. He was able to not have to take that. Right? And so, So that was a huge win. Had a woman that had a phobia of driving on the highway especially, and she wanted to take her, her grandson to the zoo.

[00:51:28] Jesse Coomer: And so we slowly worked our way to helping her. We, we went through a lot of techniques, a lot of just grounding, a lot of getting to know your own self because what happens so often is that we won't be able to, we we're not a always able to listen to the language that our unconscious is saying. Until it's screaming at us, and then it's kind of.

[00:51:51] Jesse Coomer: Hard to go anywhere from there. So we really worked a lot on awareness and, and anyone who works with language of breath is working a lot with awareness. It's, and everyone, everyone wants to skip that part, right? We all wanna skip that cuz boring, you know, I just, you know, but that's the foundation of all positive changes, ultimately awareness.

[00:52:11] Jesse Coomer: But yeah, she was able to make it to the zoo with her grandson and she still doesn't like driving near semis. You know, that still gives her some, she's like, I still don't want, don't like doing that. I'm just gonna, if, if there's one on the road and it's gonna a little slower, I'll just go slow and not pass it.

[00:52:27] Jesse Coomer: But she wasn't able to drive on the highway and then now she's able to, it is like an hour drive on the highway. Yes. If there's a semi, she's just gonna go behind it. No big deal. I asked her, do you, do you wanna work on that? And she's like, you know what? I think I'm okay for now. I can 

[00:52:42] Christa: empathize with her.

[00:52:43] Christa: I was hit by a semi once, um, in high school. Totally should have died. And I had, I was like, Freaked out for like the moments passing a semi for years afterwards. So I'm sure there was a reason that she had that phobia, you know, 

[00:52:56] Jesse Coomer: and good for her for saying, you know what, I've found a place where I'm comfortable and I've, I'm gonna celebrate that victory.

[00:53:03] Jesse Coomer: And, you know, if she wants to work on that in the future, she can, but wow, what an accomplishment. Not being able to drive on the highway at all now, able to drive on the highway for an hour and yeah, go a little slower than the semi, but that's, it's not like she's just, you know, going 40 miles an hour on the shoulder.

[00:53:20] Jesse Coomer: She's doing just fine. And so, I always hate when people act like breath work is some kind of magic. You know, it's like, like a magical cure. You, you do need to do the work, and you do need to be aware of yourself and understand that parts of you are going to protest. Especially whenever it's behavior changes, they're gonna protest.

[00:53:42] Jesse Coomer: They're gonna say, this is not what we do. We can't do this. This is gonna hurt, this is gonna kill me, and it's gonna be uncomfortable. But when you're willing to do the work, breath work can do things that other things just can't do, and that's the beauty of it. 

[00:53:57] Christa: If I think this is the best place to end, which is people are always like, okay, cool.

[00:54:02] Christa: Jesse, you've shared some interesting things, but I'm not exactly sure how I wanna get started. Or what would you recommend to someone for just like exploring this a little bit? 

[00:54:11] Jesse Coomer: So there's a few things. Of course I would, I would recommend my book. It's a practical guide to breath work. I, I give you my full, my story.

[00:54:18] Jesse Coomer: I give you kind of like an explanation as far as what's going on with the nervous system. And then there's like 20 techniques, maybe more. I forget how many there, I mean there's a lot of tech. The second half of the book is techniques. So if you want to experiment with that, that's a great place to start.

[00:54:34] Jesse Coomer: I also have an online course and a miniature online course of the language of breath. So my full deep dive course is seven weeks. It's an hour a week. I mean, we're talking like you're gonna be a pro by the time you're done, but maybe you're like, you know, I just want to kind of dip my toes. I've got a one hour course, it's called the Foundations of the Language of Breath.

[00:54:56] Jesse Coomer: It's only 50 bucks, and it's on my website, jesse kumer.com, and you can find it there. Those are some resources that look, if you want to get past the clickbait, just one simple trick. You know the Google search, what's a, what's a breathing technique for this, right? If you want to actually. Make the, the changes that you really want to see and you wanna take it seriously.

[00:55:18] Jesse Coomer: Those are the resources that, that I highly, I, I worked very hard to, to produce, and the good news is I've got a lot of satisfied reviews. So those are the resources that I've got for you. And of course if you can attend a deep dive, like a retreat or something like that with a qualified breath worker, whether it's myself or not.

[00:55:38] Jesse Coomer: You know, those are great ways to get started. 

[00:55:41] Christa: Yeah, perfect. Well, I was gonna ask you where people can find you online, but it's jesse kumer.com, 

[00:55:44] Jesse Coomer: anywhere else, jesse kumer.com. You can also go to language of breath collective.com, and that is if, if you'd like to even train to become a breath worker. I, I have a class every year.

[00:55:56] Jesse Coomer: This class for 2023 is already full, but, uh, we'll be taking enrollments for 2024 in the near future. And then you can always find me on the old Instagram, Jesse Kumer breath is my handle. And uh, you can find out what kind of antics I'm up to. I warning there's dad jokes a lot of times out there and, but yeah, always, always a good place to find out what I'm up to.

[00:56:20] Jesse Coomer: Perfect. Thanks 

[00:56:22] Christa: so much for coming on 

[00:56:22] Jesse Coomer: today. It's been a pleasure. 

[00:56:24] Christa: Food sensitivities, low energy and skin issues can all be caused by inflammation. The root cause of inflammation is immune system imbalance. So how do you bring the immune system into balance to correct inflammatory symptoms like food sensitivities, low energy skin issues, and a cascade of other things?

[00:56:42] Christa: No one seems to have the answer to like being sick more often than you should be having consistently low vitamin D, b12, iron, salt, and or sugar cravings. Puffiness in your face or extremities needing a daily antihistamine losing hair, but your labs are normal. The answer to these things is immune resilience, and that's the overarching goal I have when working with one-on-one clients.

[00:57:06] Christa: So how could I help? Well, I found that you want the answer to everything, so I try to be as comprehensive as possible to be a one-stop shop. Now, that doesn't mean I'm going to focus on weight loss because I'm not, but I will focus on the subclinical things that are often preventing weight loss or causing resistance, just for example.

[00:57:23] Christa: But big picture, I love helping people with these nitty gritty, weird symptoms that are falling through the cracks everywhere else under that inflammatory umbrella. I wanna help you with as much as possible in the time we have together. So I try to include everything I need to do that, or I'm transparent about what I don't include.

[00:57:40] Christa: So what I usually include are a couple of labs, both gut and nutrient labs. You can always add on more if you want or if it's needed, but I try to keep it streamlined and efficient to start. I also include one-on-one interpretation and step-by-step personalized protocols. We will tell you exactly what to do and what you can expect for results and timelines and support between appointments.

[00:58:02] Christa: I have weekly office hours messaging and training so you can understand the basics and ask advanced questions in our face-to-face time. You're welcome to take as much or as little as you want. You can think of it like an all you can eat buffet, but you can graze here or there as needed as you need support between appointments.

[00:58:20] Christa: And if we don't hear from you, we'll even check in to make sure things are going okay and that things aren't falling through the cracks. If you're a past client and if you're needed anything, you're welcome to book a call too. If it's been more than a year since I've seen you, and if I need a context of anything that's going on with you right now, I am taking clients currently the last time until fall.

[00:58:41] Christa: So right now I'm accepting calls. We'll ship out our. Testing or your testing in May and really get started in June. So if you want to maximize this season and bring your body into balance, you can go to krista bigler.com or check the show notes and click on that program page to apply and book an intro call.

[00:58:58] Christa: Sharing and reviewing this podcast is the best way to help us succeed with our mission. To help integrate the best of East and West and empower you to raise the bar on your health story, just go to review this podcast.com/less stressed life. Dot. Review this podcast.com/less stressed life, and you'll be taken directly to a page where you can insert your review and hit post.