How to Avoid Stress Buildup & Dysregulation in Kids & Ourselves

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Hi, everyone, welcome to the show. I’m Dr. Nicole. And today we’re talking all about how to create more space in your life to help you be more regulated so you can support your kids in being better regulated. And I don’t just mean physical space in your life, although that can certainly be part of it. We’re talking about the space we need in our minds, in our thoughts, in our feelings, in our bodies, in the environment around us, that allows us to be more reflective and responsive to the things that happen to us, as opposed to being reactive. We’re also going to explore some practical ways we can avoid the buildup of toxic stress, emotions and experiences over time, especially when we’re navigating particularly tough seasons with our kids. To help us with all of this I’ve invited my good friend, Jason Campbell back to the show.

 

The episode that Jason and I did together a year ago is the most downloaded and shared episode of the show to date, so of course, I had to have him back for another conversation today. For those of you who didn’t catch the previous episode, let me tell you a bit about Jason.

His journey into meditation, music and wellness began 44 years ago, at the age of 8, when his teacher told him to never listen to notes, but instead to listen to the space in between the notes. He’s been creating music ever since and has released over 100 albums and has been number one on multiple billboards and Amazon charts. Jason is also a seventh degree black belt and co founder of Zen Wellness. His unique perspective on health, wellness and spiritual growth comes from his lifelong study of both music and the ancient arts of Eastern Health, medicine, meditation and enlightenment. His music and teachings have opened meditation to thousands of people who have never meditated before, or who have tried meditation and failed in their effort to simply sit still and clear the mind. Jason often says “Be still for one song, five minutes per day, close your eyes and breathe with the bell. It can change your life.” On a personal note, Jason is the father of two young adult children and understands what it means to navigate the many challenges that come along with having kids and the extra needs they bring. Jason, welcome back to the show. It’s so great to have you with us again.

Jason Campbell 

Well, thank you for having me back. I can’t believe it’s been a year.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

I know, time flies. And for those of you who didn’t catch this episode a year ago, we actually re-aired it a couple of weeks ago in preparation for this sort of continuation episode. So you don’t have to go back to many episodes to find that, it might give you some helpful context. But Jason, for people who maybe have not encountered you before, I’d love for you to just briefly share a little bit of your story about how you came to be doing the work that you’re doing today.

Jason Campbell 

You said some of it in the intro. My introduction into meditation started at age eight, but we didn’t call it meditation, we just call it deep listening. And more specifically, I had an amazing piano teacher, and she said to me, “Never listen to the notes because idiots listen to notes. Masters listen to the space in between the notes.” When you focus on a note, your mind gets cluttered and you hear nothing. When you focus on space, or silence, or the gap, then your mind becomes clear and you hear everything. So my entry point was just playing one note, “Gung”, and we’d listen to that note dissolve into nothingness and continue to listen, “Gung”, and then we’d play another note. And it wasn’t until just under a decade or so later, when I was formally trained in meditation in an ashram, and we used to sit for hours back then, this was the 80s, a different time period, then I realized “Oh wait a minute, I’ve been doing this the entire time.” We didn’t use the word meditation, we used the word deep listening, but who cares what word you use? Because all you’re doing is going to the place where you are turning your incessant stream of thinking off. And there are many ways to do that, and I encounter so many people that come in our programs, “Oh, I’ve never meditated before and I’ve failed to meditate.” A lot of people feel they failed to meditate, which is a strange concept. I had one teacher who would say “No, there’s no such thing as good or bad zen, there’s only zen.” But really, it’s just not understanding the essence of what we’re doing. Because Okay, well, have you ever had your mind turn off and your thoughts turn off?, “Oh, I get that sometimes when I go on walks”, or “I get that when I give my dog belly rubs,” or “I get that when I do these different things”, well, then you’re doing a form of meditation to stop the incessant stream of thinking, or at least just have a little gap in the incessant stream of thinking. And then when they come into our training programs, we just build that muscle so that you can do it at will. But mostly, you’ve already had that experience.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

It’s so true. I think this idea of failing at meditation comes from a preconceived idea a lot of people have about what meditation is supposed to be: Set up my area, sit, I’m supposed to turn my thoughts off or be focused on the moment. The minute their brain goes to something, it’s, “Oh, I failed at this”, well, we all fail at doing that, that’s part of being human. The practice is bringing ourselves back to the present moment, and we do that all the time without realizing that that’s what we’re doing. And certainly without calling it meditation.

Jason Campbell 

There’s an old saying that says “Chain the monkey to the tree”, and the monkey is the monkey mind. And the monkey mind is the “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah”, that goes on. But you’re not your thoughts. And you’re not your monkey mind. What you are is that which observes the thoughts. So there’s the stream of thinking, and part of a muscle — and we’re going to tie this into parenting here in a moment, you will see the tie in, being able to watch your thoughts. It’s almost like watching clouds, or watching a stream flow, without falling into them. And so when we say chain the monkey to the tree, it just means the monkey mind, chain it to the tree. But we have to know that the monkey is a master locksmith, and no matter what you do, that monkey is going to escape, and it’s either going to be one second, five seconds, one hour, whatever the time is, it’s going to come out, and that’s okay. And so you come out, you come into your thoughts, you lose yourself, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you just come right back. And then maybe it’s one second later, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you come back. And that muscle, I call it a mastery muscle that you start to build, because you say, “Hey, I’m going to pursue mastery of my own mind and mastery of my own thoughts.” And it’s actually easier than you think. See, there’s this really strange thing in the wellness world, and it’s the word called “mindfulness”. Now, before I researched it, I used to think that the mindfulness word was done by an evil Taoist Master who wanted to confuse everybody and bring everyone farther away from the truth. Because let’s think about that for a moment: Who needs more stuff in your mind, mind-full? No, it’s the opposite. It’s mind-empty. And then it gets even worse when you say, “Work on mindfulness. Mindfulness is something I need to work on.” Well, that’s going to bring you farther away from what you’re looking for than anything else, because presence is not something that can be worked on, because when you think work on, that puts present into the future, that’s the monkey mind tricking you. You can only be present now. And so the only thing you can do is remember it. So it’s not about working on it because you already know it. And a little history on the word mindfulness, I think it was 1910 or so, a Buddhist scholar, TW Davis, translated the word Sati into the word mindfulness. Now, this was over 100 years ago, so I don’t think he meant anything wrong by it. But really, a better word or a better translation would be awareness. So I think it was an honest mistake, and then it kind of caught on, maybe in the 70s or so, or the 80s. And now people say, “Oh, I’m practicing mindfulness. I’m really working on my mindfulness”, I go, “No, you’ve been tricked. It’s actually the opposite. It’s be present, now.” That’s it. And it’s much simpler. That’s the good news. Working on mindfulness is difficult because you’ll never find it. It’s like a fish looking for water. You’ll never find it if you look for it.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah, and I think this idea of being able to be in the present moment, and having the space in our mind to be in the present moment, we don’t often think about how valuable and important that is, and actually what a problem it can be for us when we’re not doing that. I’m thinking about situations that people encounter, just day to day stuff with parenting or living our lives, at work, with our partners, whatever it may be, we don’t realize how often we are actually caught up in the “What’s coming next?”, or “What is in the future?”, when we’re going through those things. There’s no space, even, most of the time for us mentally to be present in the moment. We’re already running all the plays for what’s going to happen next, and what’s going to happen, what am I going to do about this, what if my kid says this, what if this happens, and sometimes it’s even the play by play of what’s going to happen five minutes from now, but sometimes, especially with our kids, we go way into the future. And instead of being able to really be in the moment for what it is and thinking about and handling what’s happening, we’re already playing out a scenario of them being 25 or 50 years old. And we don’t realize that our mind is so far into the future, that we’re reacting to what’s happening with our 2-year-old or our 13-year-old or our 20 year old now, not based on what’s actually happening right now in front of us, but based on all of this sort of monkey mind, future storytelling, I don’t think we realize we’re doing that. And I think that becomes really problematic.

Jason Campbell 

Boy, there’s a lot there. So it’s estimated we have, this is an old estimate, 50,000 to 80,000 thoughts a day. I wonder if that’s more with media, and phones, and all the turbidity that social media creates. But 99% of the same thoughts we had yesterday. So there’s a lot of skipped record action. Some of your listeners might have to Google what a skipped record is. Where you just repeat, and it repeats. And that becomes no longer helpful. It actually is the opposite, because it just clouds you and it clouds your thinking, and it doesn’t create space, especially if you’re in a situation with a challenging kid. Well, it’s going to feel like you don’t have any space. It’s just completely filled up, all day. And so the most important thing, I know it’s a cliche, this analogy, but it’s such a good analogy: On an airplane, you have to put the mask on yourself before you put the mask on your kid. Because if you are a turbid mess in between your ears, your ability to help your child becomes very limited. So the first thing is take care of your own internal business and create some space in your thoughts and just even some space in your body, that’s maybe another conversation as well. And then you can find yourself responding more than reacting to whatever is going on. And because react, react, react, it’s very hard to be on defense, on your heels with a difficult child. You gotta get on the balls of your feet. And so you’re not just reacting. And that comes from space.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

In our last conversation, we talked a lot about this idea of, we need to keep ourselves regulated, that becomes our primary focus, which is counterintuitive, right? We think we need to do something to our kids or for our kids, but we need to focus on ourselves. I like what you just said, mind our own internal business. We need to keep ourselves regulated in order to help them be regulated. And we briefly touched on this idea of creating more space, and this can go a lot of different directions. You just talked about even space in your body, certainly space in your thoughts. I think, in a lot of ways, modern life, the way that we’re currently living is so counterproductive in terms of how we create more space for ourselves. I’ve watched, even in the last 25 years of doing work with kids, with adults, with families, in just living life and having my own kids, I think we’re a lot more space deprived now in today’s current culture, you mentioned social media, and all that sort of 24/7 connected, fast paced, more and more input coming in, more and more stuff that we’re sort of expecting ourselves to do. And I think for all of us, kids and adults, we’ve created this chronic severe lack of space all the way around in our lives. I’m curious what you think about that?

Jason Campbell 

Well, I think it’s very true. I don’t remember who said this, but “Twitter makes you angry, Instagram makes you depressed.” There was some wisdom in that saying there. There’s an old saying, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” And we’re not meant to sit and scroll and get these images, these crazy images. It scrambles your brain. Personally, I’m not on social media, because I can’t do the same level of deep work that it requires while sitting and scrolling. I mean, if you need to be on it, great. And there’s a really good chance you’re listening to this on some type of social media or some type of platform. I learn things on it if I go to YouTube or something to look something up, of course, but really avoid the scroll because you don’t need it. And even when you go for a walk, okay, here’s a little challenge, and this used to be normal: Go for a walk without media, not even headphones, just go for a walk. And if you can go in the woods, or somewhere in nature, great, if you can’t, great. But let’s see what happens when you have your own thoughts and not someone else’s thoughts. Because a lot of the media and staying plugged in, it’s other people’s thoughts. And a lot of times, they’re not there for your benefit. So see what happens and even see if you have a moment of no thought and not thinking. There’s a little technique you can do, and boy, I’ve been teaching this for a quarter of a century, and it’s a meditation technique. And I’ll say, 20 years ago, when we would teach meditation, I’d say, “Okay, meditate 40 minutes in the morning and 40 minutes at night”, and everyone would say, “Uh, okay,” and they’d actually do it. Yeah, I’m gonna tell you that now, you’re just gonna nod your head, “Sure, I’ll get right on that.” Because media has sucked up the space and sucked up the time, and in some cases, it sucked up the soul. And so here’s a little technique, right now try it. We’ll do it five seconds: Ask yourself, “I wonder what my next thought will be.” And just wait a moment. And the analogy I like to make is the cat staring at the mouse hole. Just wait. At some point, a mouse or a thought is going to come running out. And when that does, don’t chase it, no, no, no, just come right back to the mouse hole and say, “I wonder what my next thought will be.” You can do that for 20 seconds. You can do that when you’re in the middle of something. And maybe if you’re in an intense conversation or in some intense thing with your kid and you just need a little bit of space, just wait and see if that drops the incessant stream of thinking or the reactiveness that happens, because you don’t wake up in the morning and say, “You know what? Today I’m going to be turbid, I’m going to have too many thoughts. I’m gonna lose my cool, oh, four times, I’m going to scream at my kid, I’m going to be really, really reactive, and I’m going to go to bed angry”, a little checklist, like my goal sheet. That’s usually not the plan. However, sometimes that does happen. And it’s a slippery slope. You can have the best intentions, everything. It’s hard. It’s sometimes almost an impossibility. It’s like trying to win a rigged carnival game. Sometimes dealing with a kid or getting a difficult kid to comply, it doesn’t matter. You’re not going to win that. And there’s an old saying, “Don’t play a game that you don’t want to win.” There’s so many variations on that. When you play stupid games, your reward is stupid prizes. So you can change the game. Now that can mean so many different things depending on your individual situation, but it starts in between your ears. And it starts with: Can you have just a dollop of space? There’s a Japanese word called Satori, and that roughly translates to mean “A glimpse of enlightenment.” What is a glimpse of enlightenment? Well, we can maybe have another one maybe next year, we can do another podcast on that, we’ll just turn this into an annual event. But an oversimplified way of looking at it is stop thinking. Just stop. For how long? Does that matter? By asking the question, you’re thinking. Just stop thinking, a split second or a day, what’s the difference? And the word Satori is that glimpse because a glimpse of enlightenment is forever enlightened. It’s like you can’t un-ring that bell once that happens, and then we can say, because I’ve had wellness centers, I’ve had martial arts centers for decades. And hey, we’re in a different time period, the kids are different now than they used to be, way, way different, the parents are different. Everything is completely, completely different. And it all starts with you, it all starts in between your ears. And that’s the most important thing. It’s even that vibrational frequency that you bring to the situation, it is very important.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

And I think this is so counterintuitive to people, because at least in our culture, there’s this sort of inherent messaging around, you think your way out of things, you think your way through things, you always have to be thinking one step ahead. We’re just trained to use our thoughts, our problem solving to constantly try to get through things. And so the idea that the way you might handle challenges with your kids or in whatever area of your life, is to actually slow down and pause and create this space, I think it is really counterintuitive. Because people think, “No, I need to be doing something.” If my child is throwing a temper tantrum, I need to do something about that, or if X, Y or Z situation is happening, I need to figure out right away as quickly as possible what to do about it. And what we’re suggesting, and what you’re talking about is, no, first we need to slow down and pause and take in and actually be present with what’s happening. And then out of that, we can evolve and figure out what to do. But this sort of racing to the doing before we’ve paused to actually take in what’s happening can get us into a lot of trouble.

Jason Campbell 

There’s a saying called the fog of war. And you can think of it is you’re in a snowstorm, you’re in a blizzard, you can’t see three feet in front of you. So then the question is, what do you do? You don’t know what’s in front of you. Maybe you’re at the edge of a cliff, or maybe the answer is three feet in front of you, but you don’t know. And so I say when there’s doubt, there is no doubt. Sometimes, if you’re in a thing, and there’s a temper tantrum going on and things are flying and screaming, well just scream louder, right? Scream your way out of it. Mhmm. There’s a good plan. And sometimes there’s no thinking to be done in that situation. Sometimes doing nothing and just waiting and letting it pass. Okay, for example, out here we get monsoons or we get these flash floods. Okay, so what do you do? Oh, usually you just do nothing. Unless you’re in the way. I’ve driven out of a flash flood before, I would Indiana Jones my way out of it. But aside from that, okay, when you have a storm, a big winter storm, okay, what do? Scream at the storm, get out and keep shoveling as the snow is coming? No. Sometimes you do nothing and you wait. And especially if you have the energy of a panic, “Oh, my God, it’s snowing!”, and you go out there and you panic and you’re trying to shovel and shovel it all away, no, don’t do that. A: It’s not helpful, but here’s the other thing. It’s actually harmful because who does it harm? You, because now you’re wasting energy. Here’s something I teach in my breathing classes, is think of your energy, energy in your body is currency. And one of the things we do with breathwork is we build up your bank account, we build up your energetic bank account. So if I say hey, don’t go waste your money. Well, that’s easy to understand. Everyone knows what that means. But it’s the same thing with energy, because, look, we all have a finite amount of energy for the day. And how are you going to focus it and how are you going to spend it? Sometimes you have to go the opposite. You just go inward, and you wait. Maybe your kid’s throwing a tantrum, maybe it’s an intense situation. But okay, if you’ve already had the experience, and you’re trying to get in there and yell and scream and stop and think your way through it, okay, maybe it worked out for you, maybe it didn’t. And if it didn’t work out, well, try it. Try a little bit of space and let’s see what happens and see how you feel, and also see how they react. I wish there was a magic pill potion, or lotion, or a silver bullet, or a one thing fits all. Boy, I would sell that immediately if that actually existed, but there’s not. It’s complicated. It’s multi-dimensional. Something works once and then later on it works. It’s like medication, how long does it work? until it doesn’t. But if you even just go into the situation with a clearer head, the situation will be better, whatever better means.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

And I think the energy around it is better not only for us, it gets us out of that franticness of “I need to immediately do something about this”. But it’s also better for our kids, when we come into it that energy of “My goal right now, the thing I’m focused on is just creating space, in this moment, for myself, for my child”, that actually takes the pressure off of them and creates space for them, as well, which is beneficial in so many ways. And this idea of this budget of energy, this amount of energy. It’s interesting. Many of you listening probably caught one or both of the episodes I did with Dr. Mona Delahooke, who writes and talks a lot about the neuroscience of behavior and parenting, and she talks about the research that’s been done on this concept of the body budget, which is what you’re talking about. And some of you have heard those episodes, this may be reminding you of that, that we do have a finite amount of energy, we have to be aware of how much energy is going out, how we’re expending that energy, how we’re creating energy for ourselves and for our kids too. So that idea of body budget, I think is really, really helpful. I want to think about this idea of chronic stress, challenge, difficulties building up over time, because I think for a lot of parents who are listening, and possibly even the professionals listening who have been doing work with kids with challenges for a long time, inherently there are going to be more difficult times or seasons, and it can be really difficult during challenging times or stretches of time to know how to protect our energy levels. Maybe we’re trying to do things in the moment to create space, but in the big picture, stuff can build up and we can really develop toxic burdens of stress, of difficult, uncomfortable feelings, even in our body, build up toxic levels of neurochemicals, of hormones, of stress chemicals. And I think that’s one of the things that I see when working with families: Parents need tools for learning how to discharge this energy, because the most extreme examples that come to mind are parents who come to me now with young adult kids, where they’ve been dealing with two decades of really intense stuff. And it has built up and built up and built up, and you can just see it in their bodies, you can hear it in their voices, there has been no outlet. They’ve had no tools for releasing any of this along the way. And that has significant mental and physical health consequences for the parents as well as the kids. And I think you have some really nice ways of thinking about how to do what you call purging of this stuff over time. And so I’d love for you to talk a bit about that. What does it mean? What do you mean by purging? What is that? How is that helpful?

Jason Campbell 

Well, the circumstances you talk about also accelerate the aging process, it does. So just think of it this way: Think of just never cleaning your kitchen. Go five years without cleaning your kitchen, see what your kitchen looks like. Or however much time. Your inner world does need to be cleaned; exercise and walking and movement is a great way of cleaning it. That’s the very basic way. We certainly don’t stop there. And I think there’s a bunch of ways, and probably the lowest hanging fruit, so the way that you can get the most benefit in the shortest amount of time, so here’s the drumroll, it’s actually not meditation. 25 years ago, I used to start by teaching meditation. Now everyone’s too stressed, they can’t handle it. If you’re not used to it, and I say, “Hey, sit and be still for five minutes.” Well, if you’re in a difficult situation, I work with a lot of entrepreneurs, parents and entrepreneurs, a lot of them have the same type of churn, you start getting stressed. “Oh, I could be doing something. What am I doing sitting here? How come I’m meditating?” And actually, the mind starts churning more. So we build into that. And where we start with is the breathing. We start with the breath work. And the breath work helps clean the kitchen out. Once you get a clean kitchen, it’s much easier to maintain a clean kitchen by doing a little bit, little bit, little bit each day. And so I like to say let’s pretend for a moment that you said “Okay, I only have 30 minutes a week for wellness.” Well, I’m going to question you about a few other things. I’m going to say, “Put down the social media”, that is one thing I’m going to say. But let’s just go with this for the analogy: You only have 30 minutes. Okay, fine. Well, are you better off doing 30 minutes on Sunday or 5 minutes a day for 6 of the 7 days? Well, you’re actually better with the 5 minutes a day. Why? Well, okay, let’s wait till Sunday and take seven showers. You’re better off with a shower a day. If you skip Sunday for a shower, fine, if you’re new to showers, I’ll work with you on that. So you’re better off with just five minutes. And there’s an old saying in meditation. The teacher says to the student, “Okay, you need to meditate 20 minutes today”, “I don’t have 20 minutes!”, “Okay, do 10 minutes,” “I don’t have 10 minutes” “Do 5 minutes.” “| don’t have 5 minutes.” “Do 2 minutes.” “I don’t have 2 minutes”, “Okay, you need 2 hours, then.” If you don’t have 2 minutes to meditate, you need 2 hours to meditate, because you are a turbid shitshow.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

And it’s this idea of more consistently needing to purge or release from this, right? Because the longer we let it build up, and then we say, “Oh, now I’m, at a boiling point, now I’m going to do something about it”, it’s actually more effective to release this pent-up stress energy and emotion along the way. You introduced me to this idea of using the word purge in relation to this, and it makes good sense because it’s a very visceral word, right? And it’s this idea of actually getting that out of us, and I think that a lot of people go their whole lives without realizing that you can do that. Maybe they think “Yeah, energy”, maybe they have an experience during a really intense period, like running it off or boxing or something like that to get rid of it. But we need some practical things that we can do on a very regular basis in our life to give us this release. And you have a specific type of breathing that you do around this, right?

Jason Campbell 

Yeah, can we do a little three-minute breathing exercise of purging? So here’s what we’re gonna do: The first thing is it’s three minutes. I have a little three minute soundtrack. I write all my own music for all the breathwork training, and here’s what we’re going to do: It’s very simple. Ultimately, I like to use the analogy of wringing out a dishrag. We have to squeeze it and wring it out and get everything out. And so the very basics of breathwork here is: Breathe in through your nose, and then when you’re purging, breathe out through your mouth. And there’s a whole longer explanation, but just for right now, just in through your nose, and breathe out through your mouth. When you breathe in through your nose, take your tongue and stick it straight up in the roof of your mouth. And then when you breathe out, drop your tongue like that. Okay, so that’s the first part of it. Second part is I’ll lead you with the bells, we’re just going to listen to the bells and breathe in and out with the bell. So the best you can. This is a little tricky, but put your awareness in your lower abdomen And just think like a balloon. That’s it, a balloon fills up and a balloon drops, a balloon fills up and a balloon drops. And here’s what’s going to happen in the next three minutes: You’re going to do this for a minute or so or 2 seconds, 10 seconds, whatever the word is, your mind is going to be right in your center. And then it’s going to leave, you’re going to have another thought, you’re going to think about something. And the mastery is right when you catch yourself, bring it back. See, the monkey escaped from the tree because it’s a master locksmith. So chain the monkey to the tree, your mind goes out and then you just bring it back. And in the next three minutes if you have to bring it back 100 times, that’s wonderful. Why? Because you built the muscle of bringing it back. When people say “Oh, I want to be more centered”, well, the only way you can be centered is to be thrown off center, because if you’re never thrown off center, the center doesn’t exist. So you get thrown off center, you come back to the center. Being thrown off makes the center actually exist. And so here’s what we’re going to do. Okay, the bell is going to start here in a moment. Is the volume okay? Can you hear that, Nicole? So the clock’s already started this is just three minutes here. So challenge yourself, three minutes, follow along. And this is better if your eyes are closed unless you’re driving, of course. So let your shoulders drop, wiggle your toes, and put your mind into your lower abdomen. So here we go: Breathe in for one bell. Inhale. Exhale. In. Exhale. In. Release. Okay, now breathe in. A little longer in the exhale, breathe out. In, release. Okay, now we’re going to go longer, inhale. Exhale, keep breathing out, in, release, keep breathing out. Okay, now, hold the outbreath. Don’t breathe in yet. And here we go. Breathe in. Exhale, keep breathing out. Hold just eight seconds. Keep your mind on your lower abdomen. Inhale, exhale, eight seconds. Okay, now hold, don’t breathe in. Last breath, here we go. Big breath in. Exhale. Okay, and open your eyes. So you just invested three minutes into the most precious thing you can invest in, and that’s you. And you took mind, and you put it right in your center. And sure, it escaped many times, we know that. And that’s okay, but three minutes of, that just purging and breathing out for longer than you breathe in is a form of medicine. It’s a very, very old form of medicine, certainly predates our modern Western medicine, our modern healthcare system. I don’t know it’s healthcare, maybe sick care, maybe sick monetization, we make a lot of money off of sick people. It’s maybe what our system is right now. But that’s a little exercise you can do. If you can do it for one minute, do one breath. Breathe in, and then breathe out for 12 seconds and then hold the out breath for 10 seconds. And then maybe that’s enough, maybe that’s enough for the day. But mastering your breath is mastering your emotions, and emotional mastery, what it’s not is saying “Oh, I’m never going to be angry. I’m never going to feel grief, I’m never going to feel any of these things.” Well, good luck with that. And sometimes, you know this better than I do, what’s the word we call for that? Oppression? Illusion.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Oppression, right? Denial.

Jason Campbell 

I’m going to go Eastern here, the different energies, the emotion is just energy. And the different energies hang out in different organs. Anger hangs out in your liver, and shock hangs out in your heart, and worry hangs out in your stomach and spleen. And fear hangs out in your kidneys, and grief hangs out in your lungs. I mean, they figured this out thousands of years ago. So instead of saying “I am angry”, you can say, “Hey, I have anger type energy running through me.” And just that creates the little bit of space between you and the emotion. Because when it’s raining, you’re not saying “I am raining.” Right? It’s raining. Okay, and guess what? It’ll pass. We know that. And same with anger, it’ll pass. We know that. And that little breathing technique can help purge all the emotions and all the stress, especially anger. There’s some old things, I don’t know if mom ever said earlier, “Mind your business”, right? Mom told you that? Mom was right. Mom said, “Next time you get angry, take 10 deep breaths.” Mom was profoundly right if she told you that.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

And I think what’s interesting is people just think of, “Oh, deep breathing”, but there’s different types of breathing and this, what you’re showing us here and just brought us through this, this purging kind of breathing, a deep inhale, but then slowing down and extending the exhale and holding it, that’s a particularly good type of breathing for releasing and cleansing and clearing. I have found that to be very, very true, just even for myself, in using these kinds of techniques, that you feel different after different ones, and you can apply them in different situations. And so if you go back to the previous episode that we did and people listened to, the five minute breathing exercise, that was more for the focus of regulation and just settling yourself, whereas this is really good for people to just latch on to for: Okay, those times when I do feel the intensity building, or I’m having trouble letting go of something, or I’m finding myself just stuck or in an intense space, physically, emotionally, whatever, to be able to use this to literally purge and move through that and to try to avoid the build up. I think that it’s just such a simple but powerful technique.

Jason Campbell 

The flyover is when you’re purging, breathe out longer than you’re breathing in, and then even hold emptiness. We just talk about space or emptiness. And so you hold it, where if we want to get technical, we can call it intermittent hypoxia, where you’re breathing, bringing your blood oxygen level down, and then popping it back up, and then bringing it down. That’s wonderful, wonderful for clearing and purging and wringing out the dishrag and starting to clean the kitchen. Another little side benefit, it’s very good for your immune system. But that’s a different type of breathing than if you’re going to fill up the bank account. The energy bank account, maybe we do that another time, okay, but first you purge. If you have a cup that’s halfway filled with water and you say, “Oh, I want to fill the water up, but there’s dirt in the water.” Well, if you pour more water in there, you’re just going to get more dirty water. Let’s clean it out first. Maybe we got to empty it and clean. So we always want to purge before we fill.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah, and this is such an effective tool for doing that. And it’s something that we all have the time and the skill to do. You don’t need training, you don’t need a bunch of time. Just doing what you just took us through in the three minutes can accomplish that. And so I hope that all of you listening will really try that and work with that and see how that can support you in your lives, with your kids. And otherwise. Jason, I know we need to wrap up here, but I want to make sure that people know where they can find out more about you and find your music.

Jason Campbell 

zenpiano.com. I have a lot of my information on there. And if you want information on some of the breathwork and some of the breath courses and stuff, just shoot us out an email, because most of these courses are invite only. I don’t have a big web presence on it. But you can find me on Spotify and all the major ones– Apple Music, and everywhere. I do a new album on the fourth Friday of every month. So just look for that.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah, and you’ve got lots of different types of music, too, that resonate with different people, that can help people create space just even in their everyday lives by having it on in the background. I mean, I love to do that with your Zen Piano, and there’s something for everyone there. So definitely check out Jason’s music. Jason, always a pleasure to have you here. Thank you for stopping by again, thank you for taking us through that. I know that people will find it very, very helpful. So I appreciate you. Thank you.

Jason Campbell 

Well, hey, thank you so much for having me Nicole.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

And thanks as always, to all of you for being here and for listening. We’ll catch you back here next time.