Oh hello, welcome to Healthy Ish. Thanks for joining us on the daily podcast from Body and Soul. I'm your host, Felicity Harley. Now, if you're a regular listener of this podcast, you will know that I recently went to Eden Health Retreat in crumb And Valley in Queensland and it was amazing. I came across a guy there. His name is Rich Muha. Actually Eden refers to him as a joy someone who
is there throughout their guests entire stay. He is also a meditation and breathwork expert and he was pretty amazing. He is pretty amazing, and he joins me today to discuss the transformative power of breath work in managing your stressful day. Yes, listeners, I had to get him on the podcast to share his wisdom with you. Make sure you're listening to extra health Ish where he talks about
finding the right breathwork technique for you. Yes, that one you might have got from TikTok might actually be raising your stress levels rather than lowering them. Anyway, you can grab that episode where we get your podcasts. Rich, thank you for joining us on Healthy Today. Oh as much as I wish we were still at Eden, we are not.
Pleasure. Thanks for having.
Now I want to talk to you about well breath work to implement into our chaotic days. I mean, it really is the secret to finding calm in the chaos. Talk to us about how we can use breath to counteract stress.
The one of thinking about breath is it something that we've got at our disposal at really any moment of the day, a lot of it. In the times, I might try to schedule so much timicide the train, I need to go and do that for fifteen minutes, or
do that for twenty minutes to calm down. But now by virtue as simply how we're using the inhal and xt how I can really radically start to induce the state of arm is basically driving the sympathy which that flight flying and also the rest and digest that path sympathetic ape by virtue of the inhale and the exhale, by ship those energy elements into how much we bring into my inhale or how much we bring to my exhale can really just in a very fast period of
time have an immediate impact on the body. So we can really start to induce they can't. And if we want to do that we have longer exhalation and shorter inhalations, which is kind of the opposite to what we've often been told the past. Okay, it takes some deep breaths
you stress, deep breathed breathe. I was working with a lady recently and she was telling about her when the kids are watching that, and she's feeling that heightened the sticking and feeling the stress building and the kids going on his mum about to explow, and all of a sudden,
she just breathing. It's really and it sends you a way out of the edge versus what we should be doing is trying to soften the breath and have those deeper, longer, slower, gentler exiles, and that can really just the signals straight to the brain. We're okay because it's quite fast, and when we think about it, when we kind of heighten
our stress, our breath patent will emulate that. And when we look back to your biological evolution, no one has ever run from the line going no. It could be a really fast way to calibrate the nervous system.
I mean, it's when you were talking about it, I was just thinking like, this is almost like a magic pill. I mean, how has it taken so long to appreciate and understand that we can change our state with the simple breadth.
I think we've been spending like one hundred years looking for a magic pill. Yeah, but a lot of the science it's not in a lot of the studies. Breath. This stuff has been taught for thousands of years, and unfortunately, I think it's kind of been tainted in a lot of our conceptual frameworks with that that no called a spiritual element, which won't deter people from approaching it, and then before they've looked at it from or can you give me something from a medicine route that can calm me?
But after one hundred years of the Western model medicine, which I deep livery as well, and I study in that state. But yet by virtue of getting greater understanding of the nervous system, we've gone, oh wow, inhalation sympathetic, exhalation parasympathetic, And there in lies a really radical thing. But our challenge rop and calumns when we're in that heightened state to go, oh, hold on, I can do
something quickly rather than learning that carry us on. So it's very much in the essence of magic pill, because we can start to escalate downregulate just by virtue of doing that. But it's a mat of tune our awareness.
Yeah, so that's the question. How do we do that when we're all riled up, or we're you know, reading all the emails coming in, or our kids are nagging at us, and we're trying to get a door, and how can we get better at going okay, I just need to take a few breaths.
Initially, it's going to be one of those things you might start trying to tune into that where you're not in such a heightened state. So you might be going down the road and you're seeing a few cars piling up and rather than okay, this in the past might have irritated me, maybe if I just starting slowing my breath right down and some slightly longer exhalation starting to
bring some awarenes for that. So therefore we start practicing that for where we are in those highly escalated moments, we can go, ah, I know what to do now because they have been practicing. But it's pretty you know, we can't really consider that I'm going to be also, I know this now, and therefore when I am going nuclear. I can automatically stop and switch that. But it's not just state it. After a short period of time, the
brain goes, now, I've got something I can do. So it's really just tuning the awareness and just practice.
What sort of breath sequence do you do when you're in the midst of I mean, you're pretty chill that guy, so I'm not sure you actually get chaotic. But is there anything that as sequence that you go to that.
That Here's the funny thing there, because when we look at some of the scientific studies that there's a well known breadth of the mark call the physiological skye which Stanford was studying, which is saying that five minutes of this the equivalent of a twenty minute monthful his meditation and so on, And that's where you're basically taken in helm another little sit followed by a really soft, spiced, really long, gentle sigh, and for me, that works. I've
done this. I often when I'm working people is a pulse oximeter reading where I'm checking their heart rate, their block oxygen saturation. But for some people that's actually I found, oh my gosh, that's actually increasing their heart rate. That should be decreasing it. So this is where it gets
a little bit learning our own nervous systems. So I did have a situation the other day where I had a phone call, and it was a confronted, confrontational phone call, and I'm going, oh my god, I can feel my heart spiked right up. I remember that feeling, and by chance, I had my pulse oximeter plug it on my finger, and my heart rates spiked up to over eighty, which for me simulating a stressous bodies and sympathetic of ours
or there's a line just behind me, I'm thinking. And so by awareness to that, I just did two of those breath patterns of the.
So that's just one. So a breath in and then a sip and then a long out so.
Along there and followed by a little top up followed by a really soft and again with think two breaths. My heart rate dropped down to sixty. Wow, that's miraculous, straight into oh my god. And if I didn't let bring myself down, I know those tools I'm now doing in those one and that heightened state, But there's no line here I can downregulate, de escalate, so I don't continue to carry on and stresses. But for others, as I said, that might you know that breath might be
a bit of a spiker. Found there's the other ones or seven eight where you breathe in for four whole for seven out for eight, which is really just that longer, slower exhalation. That's also a nice one, and there there's a few different ones, but again it's really not because it's just if you've got a heart rate monitor, just to start going with like the infra four hole the seven out eight and does it work for you? Try
that physiological side? Does that work for you? Because depending on what's called someone's sensibity carbon dioxide that might influence doing a hold, might like that seventh holding for seven mone just a bit of a thing a panic as well. So despite knowing that these work for some people, they're not ideal. And this is the complicated of our individual
nervous systems. There's techniques. But even if you're just sitting there and those two feel like they're triggering, you just stop in and really just letting air softly fall out. Just longer exhalations, gentle inhalations, gentle exhalations that's slightly longer on the XR and that can work better than the
others for certain people. So there's no one specific answer that I can provide, and that's just through work with one hundreds of people and going no, that didn't work for them, that worked for that, which has been really interesting. She went side this is the breath everyone. Jambillings just like, yeah.
That's actually a really good point. I haven't really heard of that before. But I suppose you know how you've been working Eden for a while and no doubt, have come across many people's struggles. What have you learned? What has it kind of taught you being that amazing breath work guy at Eden.
Well, what's funny is what led me to breathwork was I've primarily been teaching meditation full time for seventy years that my businesses came down this route, and then I was working that state of finding some people still they're meditating good, good, but they're going out with or breath patterns, and I just start to identify this sort of blending mix that hold on. I'm teaching them how to chill,
but then they're going out breathing poorly. And then so that's in fresh response because how we're breathing does simulate stress in the modern world, and that's what led me to go deeper down these channels and working with the buying people having it's just really fascinate s what can set up our environment and even though there's sometimes no logic there, we're not feeling I didn't have a specific all this and that, but different nervous systems just remarkable.
The different currents are therefore the different outcomes. Despite everything on the outside lining up perfectly, the insides of out of alignment and therefore we're going to get physiological states
which reflect that. So it's been really beautiful just to work people from all walks of life and just to have them go, oh my god, like I didn't realize I've been My year leader has been jammed towards sympathetic quite flight response because we've normalized that, especially in the world we're living in, and by virtue of just some really beautiful practices are orientating around breath to be able
to pull that back to that parasympathetic state unsafe. So that's kind of the one thing that's really taught me is that a lot of our nervous systems don't feel safe, and despite the fact that we've got Okay, I'm sitting at here, and of course I feel safe. That slight pattern that we've always been living in, we're just been normalizing it and so by down regularly amount people go. I didn't know I could feel that way. I'm like God, and so that's been really beautiful to watch him with us.
Well, Rich, thank you for joining us on healthy Ish.
That's a pleaders. Thanks you for having me.
Hey, thanks for listening to this a chat with Hich. Hopefully he gave you some breathwork tools to implement into your day. And also if you do want to train out in person, you can find him at Eden. Oh such a magnificent place. Anyway, I won't give it any more plugs, but I love my time there. I will leave the link to well Eden and Rich in the
show notes. Anything else, head to Body and Soul dot com dot you follow us on socials, grab our print edition which is out in your local Sunday paper, and until tomorrow, we happy breathing and stay healthy ish