Jean Nichols leads a brief guided breathwork practice and explains different breathing techniques and visualizations, sharing how she uses five slow breaths to ground during a busy Sunday and how breath connects to bodily energy.
Jean Nichols is a certified breath worker and sound therapist. She invites everybody to join her in just taking a breath. On Sundays, she likes to have them unscheduled as much as possible. Here's how you feel now versus how maybe you felt calling in today.
There are several different breathing techniques that you can do to really activate your own energy. By intentionally breathing, we can slow down our heartbeat. We can create a stronger connection to the energy that's moving through our bodies. Sometimes when I'm working with breath, I use a visualization.
Hello, everybody. Happy Sunday. Hi, Michelle. How are you doing today? Hope you're having a great day. Where are you calling in from today or live streaming in from today? My name is Jean Nichols. I'm really happy to be here today with all of you, whether you're listening on replay or you are dialing in live. Hello, d Manly. How are you today? So, I am Jean Nichols. I'm coming into you from Minneapolis, Minnesota. I am going to simply invite everybody as you come in today to join me in just taking a breath.
One of the hats that I wear is a certified breath worker and sound therapist. So I do sound baths and breath work, meditations and meditation events, or just in general. And so I'm going to invite you to breathe with me for a second and then I'll explain why. So there are so many different techniques for breathing. We do it naturally, our body naturally does this. But what I'm gonna invite you to do is just take a long inhale through your nose, 3 seconds, and exhale long, 3 seconds out through your mouth.
Hi, Jules. Welcome. And I'm gonna start today by just taking a breath. So if you're willing to join me, please take a long, slow inhale through your nose. And then I invite you to exhale through your mouth. Eyes open, eyes closed. It doesn't matter. But here we go. We're going to do this for five breaths, and on the last one, see if you can go a little deeper. So if you joined me in taking five slow breaths, I'm going to invite you, if you're not driving a vehicle, to type in the chat, how you feel now versus how maybe you felt calling in today.
Now, I had you join me in that exercise because on Sundays, as I've mentioned before, I like to take Sundays, have them unscheduled as much as possible, and a little more relaxed, a little more free flowing. But today, that hasn't been my Sunday. m. until about 1130. I raced from that event to get to the salt caves in Minneapolis because I had a sound bath. And then I raced from there to try to get home in time to do this call with you. And once I'm done with this, I get to go out on a twelve mile training run for my marathons.
And then after that's complete, I'll have about an hour where I can sit before I have another sound bath to tonight. And so, as I was going through that today, it reminded me that how much of our day, especially in the summer, especially those of you in the midwest, where beautiful summer days are something that we want to maximize every minute with. And today, I felt so grateful and excited for each of these experiences. But I also recognize that I don't get much time to breathe when I'm so go, go.
And maybe you feel the same. Maybe you don't. But I find for me that when I can take a few seconds in my race of a day and take five, and I usually do five, if I can do more, I'll do more. But five is a really grounding number to me, and it feels like you get just past the point of getting that breath. Now, here's what's more fun. Major, come here. Hi. We get a special guest today on our Cadre call. This is major. Yay. So I'm out here taking a few quick breaths, but it's nice when we can take that pause.
And when I take five breaths, it's just enough that it allows me to feel my heart. The first couple, I find that I am pitter patter, pitter patter. By the third breath, I'm thinking, do I have time for this? By the fourth breath, I feel like I can have more expansion. And by the fifth breath, I find I can make it longer and make it more strong. And then at the end of it, I find that I can simply be. So today, I wanted to start with our breath. Because me, time isn't always something that's accessible.
Sometimes we have so much structure, so much busyness that happens throughout our days that we forget to pause and breathe. And that breath, in and of itself, can be an activation for us. If you. Thanks, Jules. If you take the time to breathe, there are several different breathing techniques that you can do to really activate your own energy. By intentionally breathing, we can slow down our heartbeat. We can slow down our racing minds. We can create a stronger connection to the energy that's moving through our bodies, physically, mentally.
When I find that, I'm super, you know, we run the gamut of emotions. They made the movies inside out for a reason, right? Because there's so many emotions we can feel in a day. We can have really big highs. We can have really big lows. We can feel sad. We can feel excited. We can feel angry. We can feel frustrated. We can feel joy. We can feel laughter. And if we pay attention to our breath in each of those different emotions, you'll see that there are patterns in how our breath support supports us.
If you watch a child when they cry so hard that all of a sudden they find that they're gasping for air. That actual gasping for breath is your body's own mechanism to try to help you find a way to calm down because you've been crying or that child has been crying so hard for so long that your breath, your body is actually naturally trying to help you find a calmer state. And that's when you get to the right. Now, there's a technique of breathing that I teach that I do sessions with, that you actually use that technique of breath for a pattern for a period of time.
And because what it does is it allows your body to process any trauma. And I use the word trauma lightly because trauma doesn't always have to be the big things it can be. Oh, I subbed my toe, and I just stepped on the cat, and maybe I broke a favorite dish because I fell into it. Right? So it's not the act itself. It's always what happens after or the experience through it. That is what we might hold on to energetically. And so breath can be used in a whole bunch of different ways. If you want to focus on breath, there's breath techniques where you only breathe in and out of your mouth.
And maybe when you do that, you have a visualization. And so sometimes when I'm working with breath, I don't only use the breath, I use a visualization. Another breath technique that I often teach is plugging one nostril. So, breathing in through your left nostril, plugging your left nostril, breathing out through your right nostril, it's an activation of energy. Energy flows in through the left side of our body and out the right side of our body. So if you're looking to activate more energy movement within your body, you can simply breathe in and out through one nostril.
You can breathe in through one, exhale out through the other, and then you can change that pattern. So when I use breath to try to help me get grounded, to help me maybe sometimes meditate, meditate. And I'm not always a great meditator, but there are times that I can feel an energy in my body that maybe isn't how I really want to feel. Anger, frustration, anxiety, grief. The list can go on. Of all the different types of emotions. And what I'll do sometimes with my breath is I'll sit on the ground or I'll stand on the grass, or I'll stand in my house, or I'll sit in a chair.
Doesn't matter where. It doesn't have to be perfect. And what I'll do is I'll visualize my breath going to different parts of my body. So maybe one breath I'll inhale up to. I think about the ground and my attachment or connection to the earth and the ground beneath me. Even if you're sitting in a building, in a sky rise, it doesn't matter. You can still envision the ground beneath you. And I'll envision pulling that breath up to maybe the base of my spine and see where that breath is needed in my legs.
And then I exhale it out. I might hold it and pause for a few seconds. The next time I breathe in, I'll pull that air and deeper. Maybe I'll pull it up to my belly button and see how I feel in that area in my organs, that area in my back, and then I'll exhale out. The next breath I'll inhale in, and maybe I pull it up to my heart and see what happens in my heart, what's happening in my spine, in the back of my body, and exhale out. And the next breath I'll do up to my throat, and I'll see if I have any tension in my throat.
What words am I not saying? What truth am I not speaking? What thoughts am I not acknowledging? And then I'll exhale out, and then I'll do the last breath up to the top of my head. So, in essence, I've done my whole body, and sometimes I use a color. Maybe I bring in the color green because I'm having a green day or a purple day or pink day. Using any kind of visualization with your breath at all actually helps your body connect to the breath and that visualization more. And what it does is it creates a pause in our thoughts.
So the idea of meditation isn't about not thinking, it's about how much space between the thinking and the overthinking the thought spirals can we create to really allow for more expansion in our mind and in our bodies and so on our me time today, I appreciate you experiencing and exploring this with me, but I find on the days that I'm spiraling and you don't have to spiral in thoughts, it could be spiral in energy, it could be spiral because your day is just so packed that you don't even have time to think about eating.
I find that if I can make space, even if it's five breaths that take roughly a minute, doing that at least once a day, doing that at least once, when I find I'm so heady or lost in the moment or anxious even if I did it one time that day or 15 times that day, taking that time to just simply breathe can oftentimes be the most important part of your day, because it's telling your mind, it's telling your body, it's telling your energy that it's okay to pause. It's okay. So I'm gonna go find wherever.
Reactions and comments are for members. Joining is free and takes a minute.
