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Open Wounds. The NSFW podcast where we explore trauma of every shape and form. Join us as we hear from everyday people about their lives and learn from each other to move from surviving to thriving.
Candice (00:01)
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Open Wounds podcast. Today I have a guest with me. This is Leo. My apologies, Leo. I do not have your last name and it's not showing up on your bio. So what? Mars. like the planet. That's cool. Yeah, so Leo is a breath work coach. He does a lot of holistic teaching for, ⁓ you know,
Leo (00:14)
Mars, Leo Mars. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Candice (00:27)
figuring out how to exist as a human in this world we're surviving right now, especially with all the stuff that's happening. I know a lot of us are dealing with stress and anxiety and depression ⁓ from the constant bombardment that we feel happening in our lives. so, yeah, Leo, welcome and thank you so much for taking the time to be on. If you'd like to share a little bit about yourself with the guests, the listeners and.
and explain how you got into breath work and what led you there.
Leo (01:01)
Yeah, awesome. Well, it's great to be here, Candice. Thanks for having me on. So yeah, I would say, you I've been an entrepreneur my whole life and I'm a carpenter. So I've built venues and back in my 20s, it was nightclubs and restaurants. And I had a big experience with the breath in 2015 that kind of got into Kundalini that led me to opening essentially
what we think was the first kind of breathwork studio in the country, ⁓ kind of in the modern day. So ⁓ that connected me to the breath in a way that I never anticipated. ⁓ I was there most days and part of checking people in and breathed in most of those sessions, sometimes three, four times a day, ⁓ and really got connected to the breath in a big way.
I'm not only through my own practice, but just seeing how, people would come in with the weight of the world on their shoulders and then leave with a spark in their eye. And I know you'd mentioned you'd had some big experiences with, with breathing yourself.
Candice (02:10)
Yes, there's a local couple and I actually reached out to them to see if they'd want to come on and they were like, sure, but then we could never figure it out. They recently had like baby after baby. So I know their plates a little full to be doing podcasts, but they were hosting them monthly. ⁓ They were doing kind of like a.
a thing where you come and it's a very safe space that they've created and like an event center or someplace. And then they would coach you on cueing you on the breath. And then of course they would like play music and sounds and tuning forks and all kinds of cool stuff. And ⁓ I liked that as we were going through the hour and a half session or hour, sometimes ⁓ he would remind you to track with the breath so that you weren't like getting off sync and doing your own thing.
But it was really, really transformational for me. It was one of those things where after I did it, I wanted to like drag everyone I knew to come to experience it. I was like, you have to try this. I described it as like getting high without a substance. Like it really was like so uplifting to me. I felt connected. I felt relieved. And the difference I felt like
Leo (03:10)
Yeah.
Candice (03:27)
You know, I've done so much work in therapy and in journaling and in reading self-help books and all these things. ⁓ And I made progress, but this felt like very instantaneous. It felt very easy. I didn't have to talk about all my shit in order to get it out. It felt like it was just coming out and like some people were laughing. Some people were crying. Yeah, it was really intense, but really beautiful.
is the only way I can describe it. really think everyone should experience it at least once in their life.
Leo (03:58)
Mm.
Yeah, yeah. And that's that I've seen that over and over again. It's you know, and the range of experiences, they really can range quite a bit. ⁓ You know, the more you do it, the more you'll experience that range. ⁓ I've gone to places many times I've gone into the depths of my my kind of unconscious into, let's say, karmic gobbledygooks that I hadn't seen before that I didn't know was in there, where it's really kind of ⁓
challenging, you know, but the gen generally when we breathe rhythmically for, you know, a period of time, we're not only over counteracting the nervous system that the erratic kind of dysregulated nervous system, but you can also access these really, for lack of a better term, transcendent places. And there's some science that's beginning to indicate it looks like there is some endogenous DMT that can be released.
in the brain when we do this type of breathing.
Candice (05:08)
Yeah, I think Joe Dispenza maybe talks about that a little bit and he can often get so scientific that I get lost trying to follow what he's talking about. But I do think he's mentioned that.
Leo (05:15)
Yeah.
Candice (05:18)
And I do know when I was doing it, I was like, why don't you offer these every week? Why don't you offer them like three times a week? And they were just like, this is exhausting for us as the leaders to bring you guys through this and help you process this energy. They're like, we're feeling what you guys are feeling and we're helping you move it. And so they just couldn't, the bandwidth for them. So how were you able to have a studio where you guys were doing this all day, long day after day?
Leo (05:48)
Well, that's a good question. ⁓ I fell in love with the breath. ⁓ Just fell in love with it. ⁓ And for me, running the studio was the most kind of soul nourishing thing I've done yet. So I was getting a lot of, ⁓ not only like, on like kind of more of an ego level gratitude from people for holding that container.
But I was getting a lot of nourishment seeing how it would change people, how it would shift their state, how it would kind of offload some of the weight they'd been carrying. ⁓ The teachers were always different. So it was never more than one teacher on the same day. definitely, some of my closest friends are our breath work guides and worked at my studio. yeah, they would be pooped by the end of, if they did.
Two of them back to back, which is very rare, but they'd be pooped.
Candice (06:48)
Yeah, yeah,
it seems like, I just assumed like, it's kind of like yoga and the teacher's just wandering around making sure everybody's like doing okay. But, ⁓ you know, it is I think an energetic transformation happening. ⁓ You know, I think there's so much that can come up, like you said, when you're doing this work.
that they have to create a safe space and a container for the people practicing with them. ⁓ As far as like you said, how you fell in love with it, what were some of the major changes that you could identify once you started getting into it and you're like, my gosh, I don't experience this anymore or what was happening that kept you like, I need to open a studio. This is this powerful.
Leo (07:32)
Mmm.
Mm. Mm.
Well, you know, I would say the conviction and the sense of like, is really important. ⁓ A lot of that came through the process of of kind of like, you know, going to market, if you will, in the months that followed opening. You know, I knew that it was a powerful modality. ⁓ But to be honest, I didn't know quite how powerful it was. I knew, you know, I had an intuition like
and I'd had my own big experiences with the breath. To be honest, I kind of see two different sides of the street when it comes to what's kind of known as breath work. I call it active breathing because I don't like to call it work. And you kind of have this agony and ecstasy on either side of the street. So you'll have a lot of facilitators. I would say most of them are more on the agony side of the street. And I don't mean to shed any negative light on that at all.
Candice (08:23)
you
Leo (08:40)
That's ⁓ the dealing, getting through life challenges, processing stuck emotions, trauma, et cetera. And then that ecstasy side of the street is the bliss and the transcendence. And you can go to celestial transcendence bases. ⁓ Yeah, so that conviction grew over time. So this was, I had two brick and mortars ⁓ in Venice at this time, Venice, California. And so this was kind of like an add-on service to the community.
And that became clear and clear as we started to fill more and more of our classes that ⁓ this is really good work and it's very powerful work. But I do call it like there are these big experiences that, you know, even like I have family members, like my mom, who's like, yeah, I really need to do the breath work. I know I need to do it. And until you have one of those breakthrough moments like you had where it's like, my gosh, can you come back?
You do this more often. I feel amazing until you have an experience like that, which usually comes in like for most people it comes the first time, but but it usually happens within the first two or three times until you have that. It's like just sounds like work.
Candice (09:54)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I did notice something once I started getting into this I was like, ⁓ I didn't realize now that like once you start paying attention to how you're breathing Just on a day-to-day basis. I realized how much of my day was spent holding my breath
I was literally in such a tense hypervigilant state all day long that I was like clenched up in my breathing. And so just the awareness was a huge, huge change for me to be aware of how am I breathing in this moment. Let me think about how I'm breathing when I feel angry or stressed or, you know, nervous or whatever's coming up. Just check the breathing really quickly.
Leo (10:13)
Mm.
Mm.
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.
Candice (10:41)
That was crucial for me because...
I would catch myself, I'm holding my breath again. And so that alone was kind of like so foundational for me. And then I realized like, ⁓ I cannot mimic the experience that I have in that setting with the guide and all that happens in my home life very well. But I can take that rhythmic breathing and do it while I'm driving down the road, right? I can do it in little tiny spaces, like waiting
in line at the grocery store. It's not super obvious. You can kind of do like the there's like a three I forget what it's called. It's like where you breathe from your belly. You breathe from your chest. You breathe like one more time and then you let it all out. There was these little things that I picked up with the breathing where I'm like, I can do this any time.
It doesn't have to be this thing where I like make a session and I pay $60 and I lay down for an hour and a half and then I need like another 30 minutes to kind of come back to earth afterwards, right? It can just be something as simple as figuring out how to use it as a tool in your day-to-day life as well.
Leo (11:46)
Yeah. ⁓
Absolutely. And what you described with that double inhale, some people call that the physiological sigh or I don't know the double inhale. But that's actually the basis of probably of the breath work that you were doing. It's commonly known as holotropic breathing or turning towards wholeness. Yeah, the physiological sigh is something you see animals do it in nature after, let's say, Gazelle gets chased by a cheetah or something.
You'll see your dog, your cat do that. When you're tired, you'll just subconsciously. What's happening there is, and the reason why we just kind of do that naturally, we're almost like when you go to blow up a balloon, the first couple of blows, it's hard to blow up the balloon, but then it fills up. So we have all those millions of little alveoli, little air sacs in our lungs.
Candice (12:46)
to move the period.
Leo (12:55)
And essentially that's the same thing that's happening. We're kind of pre-inflating with that first one and then really maximizing the intake.
Candice (13:06)
Yeah, I think
Leo (13:07)
I
think they say that's one of the fastest ways to calm down and it activates the vagus nerve.
Candice (13:11)
you
Yes, which is so important because I think if so many of us, especially with complex PTSD, we're stuck in a place of like fight or flight, or either we're swinging from really high hyper vigilance. What I was finding is I was like hyper vigilant and then I would like crash to where I was like disassociating, right? So it was never like in a safe balanced space. It was always like, I'm really wigged out about everything or I'm just gonna like pretend like life isn't happening.
Leo (13:33)
Hmm.
Candice (13:45)
breath
was another way to bring me back into feeling safety and into the present moment. So can you talk about like what, you know, if somebody's dealing with anxiety or depression, how they could use this to help them when they're feeling that way.
Leo (13:50)
Hmm.
Absolutely. And if I'm completely honest, you know, I'm a wounded healer and the anxiety and depression that I've experienced is one of the reasons why I resonate with the breath so much. would say there's, there's, you know, I kind of see the breath having, there's kind of like three main uses for the breath. ⁓ one is to, live, to survive. That's done unconsciously. The other one is the breath work that we're talking about. Like I said, I,
call it active breathing. And that's where you, you know, you go and you do a session. And then the other one, the other one is, is breath awareness and that breath awareness. I just discovered the power of that about two years ago. You know, Eckhart toll says you can't take a conscious breath and think at the same time. He calls it conscious breathing. So he says conscious breathing stops your mind.
If look at like the meditation traditions, pretty much all of them reference breath awareness. The breath is only ever happening in our body in this moment. So it's kind of a doorway back to your Soma, to your body, to get in touch with your body. But it also is a doorway into the present moment. And, you know, we've all heard the spiritual kind of platitudes about, you know, the present moment power of now, but it's like, how do you do that? And
What are the benefits? Well, there are definitely benefits to when we're present in the moment, we're not in suffering. So we're not toiling. We're not in regret about the past or worried about the future. We're just where we are. We're with what is without the kind of mental resistance that with the judgment and the fear and kind of in our head more or less. So that's the breath awareness. And then with the breath work,
You know, the way I see it is that the like both of these, both of these practices are, kind of leading us back to the present moment in one way or another. The breath work, the laying down and, and the stuff that you're, you've explored, ⁓ that's kind of doing the heavy lifting of like, you know, it could be the day that we need to rinse off, or it could be that we're going through something really challenging in our lives or that we're just in a state of depression. Be honest, the depression.
And the times of my life, when I've experienced that, you you lay down and breathe rhythmically in any one of many formats, and you will feel lighter when you come out the other side of that. You know, you're, are regulating the nervous system and you're kind of rinsing off some of the stuff that is keeping you from being present. It's almost like a, a snowball going downhill, you know, it's like
The worse you feel, the worse you feel. And it's hard to do good things for yourself if you're low energy and depressed. that, that breath work will do the heavy lifting, which over time will actually, actually in my experience, lighten the load. Like it will actually help us process stuck emotions, traumatic experiences. And through that in combination with breath awareness, the breath awareness then becomes easier.
So you start spending more of your time in the present moment. There's less of a lift when you're, you know, to be present. Yeah, I would say those are the big, the big ones.
Candice (17:42)
Yeah, I think
what you touched on that I really wanted to explore, especially for those listeners that have complex PTSD, is the inherent feeling of unsafety just in existence. ironically, the last guest I have on, hasn't, you know, it will release right before your episode, she was, you know, working through a scenario with me. ⁓
as an example and I said, well, what it came down to is it did not feel safe for me to exist. My very existence felt like I was triggering some kind of, you know, my mom's rage or something, right? In this scenario. So going about living as a human, feeling that everything is unsafe, right? Like going to the store is unsafe, having a conversation was unsafe. The only time I didn't feel unsafe, quote unquote, or where I felt safety was to be alone.
in a room like with the door shut so nobody's coming in nobody can look in it was very isolating feeling right and so that that whole vagus nerve stimulation that whole breathing thing where it's telling your body and not from a place of like like that's the other thing so much of therapy is like you are safe and you're telling yourself you're safe and your body's going we are not safe we don't believe this
Leo (19:03)
Mm.
Ha ha!
Candice (19:07)
buying this, you can tell us and it does help. It helps like the mind chatter that the monkey mind like people talk about the cognitive behavior therapy is. But for the somatic like the body on a cellular level when it doesn't feel safe anywhere in any place at any time, being able to use the breath to tell your body, no, you are safe. You are safe right here right now was so huge for me and I was able to be like feel that.
for like and I had felt it in little glimpses here and there but it was very fleeting and as soon as I would have to go back to my regular drop like life
all of the stuff would regress back, right? And so the breath work I found was so impactful because it stayed with me and like those tools that I was picking up of like just being aware of how I'm breathing when I am feeling anxious or stressed out, I can check in with my breathing and it would shift me back into that place of safety, back into the place of safety.
was monumental for me because it was like trying to strive towards fixing something but there's like a giant wall in your way and you're like, know it's over there and I know it needs to be repaired but I can't get to it and for some reason the breathwork lifted that and made it to where I could tell my body you are safe, it's safe to exist, you know?
Leo (20:39)
⁓ Yep. Yeah. You know, there's that ⁓ quote from, I don't know who said it, but it's something like, can't think your way out of a thought prison. ⁓ You know, it doesn't matter what your perspective is, or if you're a spiritual being or an agnostic or an atheist, or if you favor this modality or that, when you lay down, it's a very mechanical act. You know, the breath is very agnostic.
Candice (20:50)
you
Leo (21:09)
And it's fundamental obviously to our existence. ⁓ Yeah, so I feel you 100%. I think I, and I've had, definitely have gone through a couple of big bouts of depression and gone through traumatic experiences. I don't know if you'd call my PTSD complex, but I was in an abusive relationship. ⁓ so I've dealt with some pretty scary stuff, but ⁓ you know,
When I was 29, I went and I did a 10 day Vipassana silent meditation retreat. And I mean, it was rough. I wasn't who I am and as hardcore disciplined, I wouldn't have made it through. But I knew I couldn't.
Candice (21:51)
no,
I did one and I quit. I have a whole episode on it that I couldn't... ⁓
Leo (21:55)
did you? What day? Okay. What? day?
Candice (21:59)
I was so, I did a 10 day Vipassana sit in Hawaii because that's where I live. I flew to Oahu. I wasn't, I mean, I had meditated, but I would like meditate while I was walking or meditate while I was on my bed or, and so the whole physical posture of sitting up with no back support on the ground, my sciatica just totally got inflamed and I was in excruciating pain. And of course they've told you, don't bring any medicine and don't bring, and they
Leo (22:24)
Mm.
Candice (22:29)
They wouldn't let us do yoga and there's all these things that normally when my back gets upset I'm like, okay, I'm go do some yoga stretches. It'll pull all those muscles out and detangle all the compression and I'll feel better.
Leo (22:37)
Mm-hmm.
Candice (22:42)
But it was like Vipassana takes away all your coping mechanisms and asks you to sit with what is right now the discomfort. And I was like, I can't do this. Like I couldn't do it. I so yeah, tell me how you got through that.
Leo (22:48)
Yes,
Oh my gosh, well, I feel you first of all. In fact, I went, I want to say it was day three, because I was also in a lot of pain in my knees. Day three, think, or day three, spoke to a counselor and I was like, I'm going to leave. And I don't know what they said, but I kind of realized like, I've got to sit through this. What day did you leave by the way?
Candice (23:15)
you
I
left on day six. I was like, I told them, said, listen, I know how to suffer. I've suffered my whole life. I'm good at suffering. Like if that's what this is about, I don't need this. Like if the whole point of the Vipassana is to teach me to suffer, I already know how to do that. Like not like in a rude way, but like I kind of was like, I don't get.
Leo (23:27)
⁓ wow!
Yeah. ⁓
Candice (23:52)
like his whole thing too was, ⁓ and I'm not trying to derail our whole conversation on to Vipassana, but when he has you do the body scan, you come upon pain or an uncomfortable feeling or somewhere in your body, and you're just supposed to neutrally observe it, right? Just be aware of it, it's there, okay.
And then, but what I wanted to do was to comfort myself, to internally say, you're going to be okay. We've got you. We'll get through this. You know, there was a nurturing part of me wanting to comfort this other part of me. And so I was kind of irritated by the fact that we were just supposed to be, it felt a little cold and callous to me. And it didn't feel like a lot of the self love, self reflection, self acceptance work I've done previous to come
to Vipassana it was kind of slamming up against that and so I was like well I could do that and no one would know that that's what I'm doing during these sessions but then I'm not really following the Vipassana method so then why what's the point right like ⁓ so yeah day six is when I left because I came forward on day four ⁓
and they were like, oh, we were in tents as well on the ground. It was very windy. So I would be woken up several times a night with the wind banging the tent into me. So I wasn't getting very good sleep as well. the fourth day I came, I said, I can't sleep and I'm hungry all the time and I'm in pain.
Leo (25:21)
Wow.
Mm-hmm.
Candice (25:30)
And they were like, well, we'll move you out of the tent and you can go on a bunk bed in one of the cabins and we'll give you an extra meal at dinner time. And it'll be secret and no one will know you get this extra meal. And so I tried on the fifth day. I was like, OK, I do feel better. I'm getting food and then I'm sleeping better. the pack pain having to sit.
in that position, I tell everybody now, if you're gonna go bring the chair, bring the back jack, bring the kneeling board, bring 100 cushions, fill an entire suitcase with pillows, because I think if I'd had those supplements, I probably could have made it through to day 10. But yeah, was day six. finally, I was just sitting and crying because I was in pain the whole time. I was just like, okay, well, I can cry. Like, I can do this.
Leo (26:09)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Candice (26:20)
But yeah, so your experience,
you've made it all the way through the 10 days.
Leo (26:25)
I made it through. But at you know, when we opened up and they said, Okay, guys, you can talk now. It's the end of the retreat. I have this really vivid memory where everyone's talking over by the kind of the meditation hall. I'm on the other side of this field walking. And I'm just thinking like, what the hell are they so happy about? Like, this was so terrible. It was 10 days of just torture. And, you know,
Candice (26:47)
Thank you.
Leo (26:52)
I'll get, guess, to the point that I was going to make with that. like, you know, when I got silent for the first time, I would say in my life, like that first, let's say 20 hours, where it's like, you know, I had a bunkmate and, we'd be walking by each other and just, you know, not saying anything. And when I was sitting with myself in silence in a social setting, all of a sudden I could hear
all of these voices in my head and they're like, you know, 32 sub personalities and they've all got something to say. And that was really, really challenging. And then also like there was an element of selfishness in many of these voices, you know, like we'd be in line at the food hall or in the bathroom and voices that are like, Hey, don't cut in front of me or get my food or whatever it was. So that was really challenging. But the whole reason I brought that up was, ⁓
You know, I think we, have this expectations and I would say even in like, you know, CBT and, and other forms of therapy, but particularly, think meditation, we expect, you know, us modern humans who are dealing with a very stressful world to sit down and meditate when we're in a dysregulated nervous system. It's like, let's regulate the nervous system and then enter.
this practice. So long.
Candice (28:23)
Yeah, I think that's phenomenal
that you hit on that because that's why the breath work I think worked for me. And I was able to do it and love it and want to go back to it over and over again because my nervous system felt like this is what we've needed all along. was like, it was almost like a sense of euphoria, like utopia, like, wow, this is what I think, you know, some part of me had been craving forever and we'd never gotten there. And so,
Leo (28:41)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Hmm
Candice (28:53)
to be able to feel regulated, to feel calm, to feel safe and grounded, then the breath work is easy, right? Like then sitting with your thoughts is easy. I did find, you know, the Vipassana to be so funny because we weren't regulating our nervous system, you know, it was like, yes, you're focusing on your breath and you're letting all the chatter come and all that stuff. And you aren't the one of the
the things I feel like I'm surprised sociologists haven't used Vipassana to watch human behavior and study us a little bit more because it was fascinating to see people not be able to communicate. And like you said, the personalities would come out and the pushy people would still be pushy. They just weren't using any words and the people who would get mad would still be mad. They just couldn't say anything about it. And so, yeah, I think that...
Leo (29:42)
Mm-hmm.
you
Candice (29:50)
It's meditation is a great tool, but I like you said, I find that if your nervous system is dysregulated, it's very, very difficult to meditate because you you're not able to to actually do the meditative work because your body's like, I don't feel safe here. I don't feel safe here. I want to move. want to go. need to do something. And everything is going to come up and come up and come up for you. Right. ⁓ So with the breath work.
When you were talking about the holotropic breath and there's other types of breath work at your studio, do you just focus on one type of breath work? Like what all do you offer?
Leo (30:31)
Well, I did have to close the studio during COVID. So that's just, yeah, just ⁓ for context. But I shifted into, I do, ⁓ I built an app. So I have a ⁓ breathwork app ⁓ in beta. It's live. Yeah, so we, at the studio, we did almost exclusively the three-part breath.
Candice (30:39)
Do you do virtual now?
⁓
Leo (30:59)
So these were 75 minute classes with about 20 minutes, 25 minutes of intro and outro, more or less. And that was really just kind of like, was the one when people have to leave their home and go to a location, they kind of want to get, give me something, give me an experience. we served the big one, which is that three part, 45, 50 minutes of three part breathing.
⁓ but in the app, I have a number of different types of sequences. I, in the app, I differentiate. like a daily breathing practice, like if you were to imagine, imagine like doing that holotropic breath every single day, like that's pretty intense. Yeah. So I have, I, I have, what are my app called flows, which are kind of the daily practice. ⁓ it's very easy to do. Anyone can do it. And there's a number of different lengths of time.
Candice (31:42)
That's it, a lot. Yeah. Yeah.
Leo (31:58)
depending on how much time you have. But that's more or less a connected breathing.
to holds on both the inhale and the exhale. And there are a number of rounds. that one of those rounds would be called a flow. ⁓ And that for me, I found to be probably even better than holotropic breathing for ⁓ kind of like daily nervous system regulation. And then I have the shift, call them shifts. ⁓ And they're all different types of sequences, but all very intelligently intentionally designed to
to basically to help produce or induce ⁓ different states. So like before bed, in the morning, energizing. ⁓ So there's a number of different types of sequences ⁓ that people can do.
Candice (32:54)
That's really smart because I remember now that you're bringing this up, when I very first, like I was in social work and they were like, we're going to try to teach you case managers how to de-stress so that you can deal with your 5,000 person caseload. But they would teach us like a body scan with like a breath.
Leo (33:11)
Haha
Candice (33:16)
attached to it and I was like all I want to do is fall asleep like it was so hard for me to not ⁓ sorry my cat is being really crazy because she wants in that room
⁓ It was so hard for me to not feel like tip over into that too relaxed where I'm falling asleep Right. So when I found this holotropic breath work session here I was like, ⁓ I'm able to now sometimes I would like low and and kind of doze off a little bit in those longer sessions But mostly I was awake for them and I didn't feel that need of like it wasn't tipping me into like I'm so calm I'm just gonna pass out. So I like that you create
these different types of breath because I do think that you know as you're starting to practice these and get into the groove of which ones work best for you people will find as they they experiment with them this one makes me feel really really relaxed but this one is energizing so is there a reason why certain breaths are energizing and why certain breaths are relaxing like what is what is activating within the body when we're doing these things
Leo (34:24)
my
gosh, that is, we could do a whole podcast just on that. Breath science is fascinating and also in some ways counterintuitive. ⁓ And it's also kind of emerging, if you can believe it. Like we've got such advanced science in all these other areas, but when it comes to the practice of active breathing, we don't have a lot of science. ⁓ You know, I'm...
Candice (34:27)
Okay.
Leo (34:52)
very experience driven. So first and foremost, I'm very tuned into what's my experience. And then I kind of, I gather the science and kind of cross reference it to my experience. ⁓ typically, so when we, for example, do a long exhale, so this is when you do the, when you do the double inhale exhale, for example.
If you can extend that exhale, what's happening is the diaphragm is pushing up against the heart, which is shrinking the diameter of the, basically the primary arteries in the heart, which tells the brain calm down. We don't need to pump. We're in a calm state. So this is why extending exhales will just naturally calm you down.
Generally, if you're extending your exhales, it's gonna calm you down. Typically, a faster breath is going to be more of an energizing breath. I think that some of that comes down to the actual, the level of ATP and mitochondria and how it's converting energy. ⁓ One of the...
I think probably one of the most, there's two kind of big things that I have come to believe about around active breathing. One is that it has less to do with the type of breath. The benefits, the greatest benefits have to do with rhythmic breathing. So whether it's three-part breath or it's connected breath or it's breath of fire or it's boxed breathing, it's creating basically a sine wave. And through that,
rhythm. think of it as like, if you think of like your dysregulated nervous system, that's like all stressed out, had to drive across town and got cut off and deals with bills and people and all the things. ⁓ When we have these experiences in life, as you were saying earlier, like we hold our breath, we breathe erratically, we breathe shallowly, we'll sometimes breathe through our mouth, which is very unhealthy. ⁓
And so when we breathe rhythmically, it kind of almost like an iron would like, you know, even out some fabric, that rhythm.
But the breath science, mean, that is, like I said, that is a whole beast in itself. There's a lot in there.
Candice (37:31)
Yeah, I think what you were saying about with the diaphragm and everything, I was talking to another friend of mine and she was saying, most of us are taught sit up straight and suck your stomach in and all these things, which.
Generally isn't good for breathing because if you're concerned about your stomach sticking out especially for women We're supposed to look like an hourglass or whatever the hell they sell us that we're supposed to look like right and so ⁓ If we're sucking our stomach in we're not allowing our lungs to fully expand Right or even back when they were wearing corsets. It was restricting our ability to fill our lungs completely, right?
And know they still stelps, spanks and all kinds of things that like squeeze you. And so I think that's one part of it is like, for a long time, we've gotten away from our natural state of taking full deep breaths, and we're not actually filling our lungs. We're taking like these very shallow, you know, breaths, which
I'm assuming that type of breathing is telling our body a message that is probably not safety and calm and relaxation, right?
Leo (38:48)
Absolutely. Yeah, and it's also just on the topic of like everyday breathing, it's really important to breathe through our nose. Are you familiar with nitric oxide?
Candice (39:01)
I believe I've heard of that before, yeah.
Leo (39:04)
Yeah. Yeah. So it's pretty fascinating and it's somewhat new science. I want to say it was the late nineties that, ⁓ two or three scientists won a Nobel prize for discovering the role of ⁓ nitric oxide in the human body. ⁓ it's, it's basically, it's, it's, ⁓ produced through breathing through our nose. So in the mucosal membrane of our nose, it's almost like fairy dust. It's
They say it's got like a two second half life and it's produced essentially on the inhale and that nitric oxide. These scientists had a harder time finding processes in the human body that were not co facilitated by nitric oxide than were so it's it's just like it's yes.
Candice (39:55)
wow, it's impacting everything.
Leo (40:00)
Yeah, so we want to breathe through our nose. In fact, I do the mouth taping. I've been doing that for about four years now at night. I'll put a little piece of 3M tape and you'll notice if you start like even if you're like, I'm not a mouth breather when I sleep. I breathe through my nose. Well, when you're sleeping and let's say your face is like this on your pillow, you naturally start breathing there. So you'll notice. Go ahead. Well, I was just going to finish that. You'll notice. ⁓
Candice (40:18)
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm... Go ahead. ⁓
Leo (40:28)
15 to 30 % improvement in your sleep just by taping that shot.
Candice (40:35)
That brings me to like people who have like a deviated septums or they have stuff going on with their nasal passages and their like noses are stuffed up all the time. How do you teach people like that to do this type of breath work when there's actually like an obstruction? Do they need to go to the doctor and get that taken care of first or what do you recommend for somebody who's dealing with that?
Leo (40:51)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, I've heard that come up. You know, I've I've never experienced something like that, so I can't speak from experience. But what I have heard from like James James Nestor, for example, who wrote this book, Breathe or Breath, I think it came out in 2021. But he says that the science indicates and clearly this is not some kind of like acute problem with with your nose. But what he says in general is that.
The nose is like a use it or lose it kind of a thing. So the more you use it, ⁓ the healthier it operates, more or less. So if your nose is generally kind of clogged or stuffy, if you do start breathing through the nose more often or mouth taping at night, ⁓ the science indicates that it will get easier, more or less.
Candice (41:47)
It's
almost like muscle. It needs to rebuild itself and become more active again because it's gotten lazy. That's interesting. I noticed... ⁓
Leo (41:53)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Candice (41:57)
There was one time I was in a yoga class and the teacher had us do this thing where we like closed one nostril and breathed out of one nostril at a time in a very rhythmic fashion. And I was like, this is really cool. I don't know what this is, but I love it. And she was the only person who ever did it and I've never heard of it again. Do you know what that type of breathing is where you breathe out of one nostril and then the other?
Leo (42:19)
Mmm.
Off the top of my head, I mean, certainly it's underneath the umbrella of pranayama or yogic breathing. ⁓ I do, but it's slipping my mind at this moment. But I know what you're talking about.
Candice (42:34)
So what would be the benefit
of alternating nostrils then like from one side or the other? Is it bringing oxygen to different parts of the brain or what is going on with that type of thing?
Leo (42:47)
Yeah, I think that's one of the primary ⁓ kind of hypothesis. I don't know of any science around that style of breathing, though I'm going to look into it now that you've brought it up. I have noticed some shifts. Like, yeah, it can be really powerful. But in general, like I lean into what I would call like transformative breathing. Like certainly breath awareness isn't
kind of in this category, but like, as far as active breathing or breath work goes, I'm into the transformative stuff. So like I rarely do, even though like you could say, if it shifts your state, it's transformative, like box breathing, for example, occasionally I'll do that. But I'm, I'm more into, you know, if I'm going to spend time out of my day, 10 minutes or 30 minutes or five minutes, I want to, I want to shift because like I'm,
Got a lot going on in my life. I don't have a lot of extra time.
Candice (43:44)
Yeah,
so your app sounds phenomenal for people who are trying to incorporate this into their daily practice where we can't all, I mean, in some places there is not a breath work center or someone hosting it that they could go to. So being able to have a tool like your app where they can download it and lock themselves in a closet or whatever and spend the time getting acquainted with this. ⁓
and figuring out which ones they like and which ones give them, you know, whatever it is that they're looking for. So when you were developing it, ⁓ were you very particular to be like, I'm gonna include this many styles or do I wanna create it to where I'm solving these many problems? Like how was your approach to creating the app and why you selected the ones you did to put it in, to put in there?
Leo (44:33)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, that's a great question. The breath is a bit of a Swiss army knife, right? It's pretty incredible what it can and can't do, or I should say what it can and can do. And it'll be being developed for decades to come. I first had the idea for the app.
in 2019, I was on tour with one of my teachers and I was in a meeting. It was like a breakfast meeting with this Stanford PhD who had been cherry picked by Bose to lead their sensor department. Super smart cookie. And she is developing a technology that basically takes biofeedback, turns it into sound in real time with infinite variability.
The possibilities for that with the breath are really incredible. I think it's probably five years out at least before we're, you know, we're using that kind of technology or developing that kind of technology. ⁓ but I really wanted two things. One, I wanted something like we always thought like, this is actually my second breath workout, by the way, I started building one in a three way partnership during COVID and
for various reasons, it just made sense for us to go do our own things.
But I always wanted something that, you know, two taps and you're breathing and you're not like, I feel like in app space, there's like too many options, particularly in like wellness apps. Like you open up any of these apps and it's like, my gosh, okay, so I've got to make this decision, that decision, you know. ⁓
Candice (46:22)
Yes.
I agree like Insight
Timer is a great app because so much of it's free but I'm like, oh wait, I came in here to look for Crystal Singing Bowls and now I'm like, maybe I would rather, you know what mean? You get like inundated with thousands and thousands of choices and you just, you spend more time scrolling through the app than the time you were gonna dedicate to the thing you were gonna do.
Leo (46:40)
Yeah, yes.
Yes.
Yes, and oftentimes when we go to reach for that, you know that piece of technology, it's like I just need fixed. Like whatever that is like I just need fixed. So yeah, so it's one of those things where it's like literally two taps in your breathing. So I wanted something first of all that had that feature. So you know you could get to know it. It could help you build something daily like with these flows for example. And then I wanted.
kind of ⁓ a base of sequences that could solve specific problems. And that's what I was talking about earlier. And those sequences are, in a way, they're very personal. They're sequences I've been doing for years and have been deep in the space for a long time. ⁓ I've kind of learned, as far as the timing, the
the number of breaths and the timing and then the holds on the top, the holds on the bottom. I kind of learned what's like accessible for the median, like most people. It's not like for the advanced, you know, athlete necessarily. ⁓ And so with the daily breathing, you're also building your VO2 max. So the way that those flows build as you progress, ⁓ you're actually, essentially you're improving your stress resilience or less.
Candice (48:17)
Yeah, that's really important because I know one of the times I was at the doctor, they were doing some kind of test on me and the lung capacity. They were like, yeah, your lungs aren't functioning at their full capacity and they could be functioning better. And I was like, well, I don't freaking know how to fix that. And so.
Leo (48:35)
Yeah
Candice (48:37)
That's pretty cool that the app is going to end on that point too. For example, there was a meditation or something and it was asking me to exhale for a count of eight. And when I first started doing it, I'm like, there's no more air to blow out. can't, at like five seconds, I couldn't keep going. And I was like, this is crazy. But the more I practice it and the more I did it, I built up to that capacity, right? So.
I think that's really cool that your app is going to be able to meet people where they're at and then as they grow and evolve with it, they're going to be able to use it as they've changed and shifted and they can do more and do things that they couldn't do when they first started practicing breath work.
Leo (49:19)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm, absolutely. Yeah, you're getting some, you know, some of the benefits that, for example, like jogging and, you working out, you know, when you're gasping for air, that's essentially, you know, your VO2 max kind of hitting its limit. So, yeah.
Candice (49:42)
Yeah. Well, we're almost out of time. Do you want to tell everyone where they can find you if they want to work with you, if they want to learn breath work from you, how they can get in touch and if you have a website or social media or any of that?
Leo (49:57)
Yeah,
yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So ⁓ the app is at the URL ether dot one. That's E T H R no second to eat dot one O N E and there's a I just went live with a free seven day trial. So people can get it in and check it out. See if it's for them. And then my personal website is kind of like as you probably saw Candice. I've got a lot a lot going on.
writing a book ⁓ and a number of other things that's at leomars with two Rs.com. ⁓ if that you know, we didn't talk about it much here, but ⁓ the book is called The New Creator, Rise of the Mindful Artist in the New Meaning Economy. And it really kind of integrates, you know, mental health and what we might call spirituality and purpose ⁓ into into kind of a perspective that's
considerate of our changing times, AI and technology. ⁓ And if people are interested, they can sign up to my email list on Saturdays. I send an email that's basically like snippets from the book before the book is published. that's it.
Candice (51:11)
⁓ okay, yeah. Well, it would be cool
to have you back on once the book is like available on Amazon or wherever for people to buy and we can...
Leo (51:18)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Candice (51:20)
talk about
the book because that sounds fascinating as well. I know a lot of people, especially people who grew up work like I did where we came out of this religious trauma, not only like, did we have an abusive, you know, family or whatever traumatic experience, but we're struggling with the religion we were raised in and the spirituality we were raised in no longer identify with that. And we're trying to find a new path forward. And so it feels like, well, this doesn't fit and I don't like this. And this reminds me of my
my other stuff and I don't want it and so I think that would be really cool to talk about that once your book comes out. ⁓ But yeah, and I will link everything that you talked about, your website and ⁓ your app link in the show notes for people if they want to click on that and...
Thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate talking with you. And this is fascinating. Like you said, there's so much to learn about it and so much I'm sure science will reveal to us in the years ahead that that breath work is capable of for us. So thank you again.
Leo (52:22)
Yeah, thanks for having me on, Candice. Your questions were great and I could talk forever with you. It was a pleasure.
Candice (52:28)
Yeah,
yeah, no worries. Thank you so much and thank you all for listening and have a great week. ⁓