WEBVTT
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This program is designed to provide general information with regards
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to the subject matters covered. This information is given with
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the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station
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are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial,
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legal counseling, professional service, or any advice. You should seek
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the services of competent professionals before applying or trying any
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suggested ideas.
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At the end of the day, it's not about what
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you have or even what you've accomplished. It's about what
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you've done with those accomplishments. It's about who you've lifted up,
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who you've made better. It's about what you've given back.
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Denzel Washington, welcome to Inspire Vision. Our sole purpose is
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to elevate the lives of others and to inspire you
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to do the same.
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Elijah Who, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Hey,
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I'm really excited.
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You know, it's interesting, as I've interviewed a number of
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different people, I find it's fascinating that each individual has
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a slightly different approach to certain topics, which is going
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to be an interesting topic today. What I'd love for
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you to do is share with the audience, how do
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you get to this point in your life.
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What is your story?
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What is that background that brought you to where you
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are now and what you're doing for people?
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Well, first we'd have to identify what point in the
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story I'm at. So that's an interesting thought. I'm still
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here turning sixty one in December. I assume you're just
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talking about one's personal development and what they've done with
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their life. Is that what you mean?
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Yeah? Yeah, I mean what brought you to that point?
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Well, I would just say that I don't know if
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I'm unusual, but I mean when I talk to other people,
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maybe sounds unusual. But really, from the moment I got
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to this place, I was always sort of thinking about
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why I was here and what my what my purpose was.
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I didn't remember some of my first thoughts when I
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was three years old, just being like what am I
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doing here? So when you know, music was sort of
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my first gateway to inspiration and you know, a sense
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of connection to the universe. And I you know, I
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still play music all the time, but I was in
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the music business in my twenties. And I tell this
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story actually in my in my recent book. You know,
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I was playing in this piano bar I had piano
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teachers used to hit my hands with a ruler and
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so little bit of trauma there, like I want to
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express but got in trouble, you know, didn't practice, of course.
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But when I became a musician, I had this kind
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of this terror. When I was in front of people,
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I would close up, my hands would get cold. There
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was this massage place next door to where I was
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playing in this piano bar, and I made friends with
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the woman and then she was moving to California. I
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lived in Canada at the time, and she said, look, I,
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you know, put stuff in storage. I'll give you a massage.
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And I thought, you know, broke musicians. Sure, she well,
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why don't you try this breathwork thing that my husband does.
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And I said, it sounds like work, but okay. And
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that one experience I was in my mid twenties. It
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I mean, I can't even to this day, I kind
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of can't believe like that changed the trajectory of my
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life because I've been doing breath work for thirty five years.
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And they moved to San Francisco and I came out
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for training. I sort of fell in love with the
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Bay area, and then I I moved out here and
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my life of helping people with their you know, their
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path releasing trauma. Well, the thing about the plant the
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hands was that when I did the breath work I
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had the most craziest intense pain in my hands. But
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after that day, my creativity opened up and I was
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feeling much freer. So it was sort of a sign
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to me. And I think I've had this sort of
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dual path between which most people who help others do,
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like between my work on myself, you know, to try
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to make my own life better and helping people. But
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I've probably done breathwork with twenty thousand people. I've given
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more than fifteen thousand private sessions of just sometimes breathwork talking.
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I've traveled traveled the North America pretty much non stop
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till the pandemic, leading workshops and trainings and stuff. So yeah,
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that's it. I'll maybe mention one other thing, which is
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that in nineteen ninety nine I met this man named
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George Shu, Chinese man in San Francisco who I started
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to learn marshall internal martial arts from, and I went
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to him for good fifteen years, and then he took
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a group of people over to China and had some
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of the last great living masters of tai Chi and
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these forms, and I fell in love with China and
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I started going there. I went there twenty one times,
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started Mandarin, and really penetrated that world and that subject.
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So my work kind of has two parts. One is
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trauma release breath work, you know, connecting to who you are,
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and then using movement, which is really from all this
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internal martial arts from Taoism, and using that to help
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retrain habit patterns in the body mind to so people
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can fulfill their life purpose.
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Wow.
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You know, I certainly have heard a lot about breath work,
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and I assume that there's some meditation in that, But
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the body movement that's fascinating to me also, and I've
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not heard much about that.
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So hopefully we can spend a little bit of time.
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Talking about that. So let's talk about the breath work.
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You know, there's so many people that talk about breath
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work and particularly meditation, and you know, you have different types.
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What is it about the breath work that you promote
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and why is it different than others that people talk
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about in the meditative state.
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That's a good question. Let's just define a couple of
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things like what is breath work, yes and all, and
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also what is meditations because people think of that in
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different ways, But breath work it's kind of generic breath
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and work. But if you think about it, all of
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your internal organs, they're you're you're an animal, You're they're unconscious.
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You can't make your liver do something where the animal
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in us will just live no matter what they Those
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your organs just operate by themselves, but the lungs have
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this unique capability of being able to be operated manually
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or automatic. The choice to breathe is really what breath
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work is. It's that it's choose, it's conscious breathing. So
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if you think about breathing through the nose or breathing
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through the mouth, the left side, the right side, holding
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the breath, that's almost every breath work technique that that exists.
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And in some ways, breath work is probably older than meditations,
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probably the oldest practice on the planet. And I think
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its power is that if breath is life because you
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can't live without it, then what you're trying to access
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inside of oxygen. Oxygen isn't God, but you can't live
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without oxygen, but inside oxygen is the life force. Energy
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what they call chi or prana, and you're trying to
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extract the power of the universe that gives you life
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through a conscious breathing. And the metaphor to me is
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that you can be an animal and unconscious and just
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live your life and not think about it and you'll
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still be alive. Just go to your job and do
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your thing or whatever. But you have a podcast because
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people think about choosing a better life. So when you
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choose to breathe, it's like you're choosing to be more conscious.
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You're choosing to be more aware, and that in breath
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takes you on a journey back into your inner world,
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into your unconscious. So every breathwork technique has its different values.
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And the one that I do, figy e f fi Ji,
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comes from a style or a family of mouth breathing
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practices that go back five thousand years and it's basically
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consciously hyperventilating. And I can demonstrate if you want.
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Absolutely and for those that are listening with the ideal,
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they'll hear you. For those that are launching the video,
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they'll see you.
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Yeah. And we just only two months ago I put
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up a video, a three minute video that people can
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do with me guided of the practice. I've been very
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it's a very powerful, potentially dangerous practice if unguided, because
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we do it for an hour, so I've been reticent
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to there's reasons that it is one hour, but this
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three minute practice, anybody can do it. It's on my website.
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So I'm just going to turn on my original sound
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or you won't hear me breathing. But if your echo,
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you may want to mute yourself. Okay, So it goes
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like this. You're breathing in the center of the chest,
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mouth open about two fingers wide and all focused on
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the inhale, so inhale mouth and like this, and we
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breathe like that for one hour without stopping.
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Wow. Yeah, I shouldn't even imagine what that does to you.
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Well, the first few minutes are you know, it's a
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lot of sensation and you're laying on your back, so
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it's it's safe that way if you get dizzy or whatever.
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But you basically enter an altered state and all the
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material of your life that's been unresolved, which is basically
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what trauma is. It starts to the journey in that
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in breath starts to like take you toward that place
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and you start to release energy. It's very powerful. I'll
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add one last saying, just meditation. If you think of
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meditation the possunas watching the breath, like so you know,
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if you watch your breath, you don't identify with the
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mind going off or whatever. In that way, this is
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similar to a meditation practice because a lot of stuff
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comes up when you're breathing, and the idea is just
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keep breathing. And a lot of people who've done meditation
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why one student, a young man who said this was
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meditation on steroids, Because if you're just sitting watch your breath,
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you're doing nothing and it's not active. But when you
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breathe like that, so much flashes comes up when you're breathing.
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It's physical, mental, emotional, it's everything, and.
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It just naturally happens.
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Yeah, and I think that's the democracy of It's what
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I love about the practice, why it's stuck with me
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so long. You don't have to be intelligent or spiritual,
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or developed, or even healthy or young. If you just
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breathe within two minutes, then you know, people do my
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three minute thing on the site. You'll get the beginnings
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of the practice. You'll feel you'll feel both the exhilaration
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and the resistance, because you know, I said to an hour,
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and for thirty five years, I look at people's faces
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like yours, like an hour. Hell, I am I going
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to do for an hour, But believe it or not,
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you can and it takes you on quite a journey,
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you know.
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And so as you say, and I think this is
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important for the audience to hear and understand.
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This is not something.
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They do on their own for an hour because it
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could be potentially dangerous.
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Is that kind of what you're saying.
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Yeah, you know, yes, I am saying that. I'll say
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to two things. Hyper this is conscious hyperventilation. And I
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have I have doctors my family. I'm almost a pharmacist.
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I had a center in San Francisco next to the hospitals,
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and doctors would always talk to me about the negatives
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of hyperventilation. When somebody starts to hyperventilate, it's an involuntary,
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unconscious response to memory, like a trauma that's coming up
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and you start to do this thing. But this is
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a conscious choice. So that's very different. And the purpose
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of the facilitator, which is one thing that sets us
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apart from some of the other famous techniques or breath
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work is that the role of the facilitator is so
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important to give you safe passage because you're in an
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altered state and it's a lot of memory, and sometimes
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people get things come up and they don't know that
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it's not real, that it's just memory. So the facilitator's
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role is to make sure that you're safe and that
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you release it so that you feel exhilarated, so that
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you you know, you're not carrying around sort of your
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your energy stuck. So, yes, the facilitator is important. So
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so is it kind of and so is the waiver
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you have it? Yeah, yeah, I'll bet you have a
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guided meditation.
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So are you talking during that process or are you
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there observing and then when you see things start to
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come up then having some type of conversation with your client.
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It's completely I'm only speaking for myself because I've trained
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lots of facilitators. Everybody has their unique gift. If somebody
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is a body worker, they may have a real ability
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with touch during it. So but for me, there's no rules.
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I'm trying to I'm trying to be available to help
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that person, and there's everything that's I see is a
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guess in a way, because it's all happening in their
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inner life. But I mean, of course, if somebody's car eying,
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or when I first breathe the first time, my hands
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were all curled up in a ball like what, you