Learn to Breathe With Me
tldr: Join me in a 10-week Heart Rate Variability training program. Breathing is crucial for learning how to control and optimize heart rate variability (HRV) and to cultivate a state of calm and focus. It teaches us to work more intentionally with our parasympathetic nervous system, which is otherwise on autopilot. Click here to sign up!
First, I want to say that BOOST Your Practice will be back in January! It is one of our most popular programs AND the best way to start the new year. We will help you make teams if you don’t have them. But you are also encouraged to build your own four-person team and sign up together.
Who needs resolutions when you have a community committed to practice?
Here is last year’s info link, we’ll share the plan and invitation for 2024 soon!
Here is what this note is really about:
I am looking for people to join me in a 10-week training program. (BOOST is a 4-week program.) It will include our time doing BOOST, but it will start before and end after BOOST. You do not have to do BOOST to join this program. But they do go well together.
I am not teaching this breathing program. I just really want to learn it. And I know I will need you to help me stick to it.
I want us to help each other to learn to activate our parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). PNS is our "rest and digest" system, and it plays a crucial role in promoting relaxation and recovery in the body. It is the counterbalance to the sympathetic nervous system (SNS). Which controls our "fight or flight" response.
There are a lot of great tools to help us deal with the stress of our culture. These include meditation, mindfulness, breathing techniques, somatic practices. They help us with anxiety, depression, over-stress, over-stimulation, hyper-productivity and dopamine addiction.
Our culture is NOT designed for the way our animal bodies are made to live. We are not meant to be stressed all the time. The sympathetic system is supposed to come onboard when it is going to save our life. Cortisol overwhelm is not supposed to be a way of life.
Most of the current tools to help us deal with stress are techniques that start with the mind first. You meditate, breathe and even move, but the aim often is to change the content of our thoughts.
The promise of “Heart, Breath, Mind” by Dr. Leah Lagos, is that we can learn to shift our physiology FIRST. And that this shift will change our state and the content of our mind.
Tim Ferriss says it best here, in a four minute video.
It really is about “Heart Rate Variability” Training. HRV is a measure of the variation in time between consecutive heartbeats. It is a top indicator of the body's resilience and ability to handle stress.
The program we are doing together is outlined in the book by Dr. Lagos. We will embark on a 10-week protocol. It focuses on heart rate variability (HRV), biofeedback and specific breathing techniques. By training to increase HRV through controlled breathing and biofeedback, we can learn to:
Activate our body's natural relaxation response
Improve our focus
Show up better for ourselves, our work and the people that matter in our lives.
We are talking about TWO 20-minute training sessions every day for 10-weeks. This Joining includes purchasing the book, an app, and a tool for “biofeedback.” So that we can be scientific about our progress.
This is not a small commitment.
I have a commitment to being present with my family, a desire for leisure, a beautiful but very FULL work life that often includes travel, and hosting intensive overnight retreats. This has not been easy for me in the past. I have not been able to complete the training. And I don't expect it will be easy now. I don't expect it will be easy for you either. But this time we'll have each other. And the promised reward is significant enough for us to get after it.
By joining me, you will:
Join a WhatsApp Accountability & Support group.
Check-in every single practice (twice per day for 10-weeks) in a shared spreadsheet where we can all see how we are each keeping up.
A weekly one-hour call for reflection on our learning, and tips on how to make it work.
The goal is for each of us to conquer stress, build resilience and pursue our dreams from our peak state.
The cost is $99.00. This is certainly meant to support my work. But it is also a way for you to have more skin in the game. It becomes harder to quit when we know we've paid for something.
We will start on Sunday, December 10, right as I return from our honeymoon. And we will conclude 10-weeks later, on Sunday, February 18, 2024.
We will track and conduct a rigorous assessment to determine whether this program delivers what it promises to deliver.
Here is an easy visual. Imagine what it would be like to train your HRV into balance?:
My Personal Sleep and Readiness Score on an Average Day
Sleep and Readiness Score on a Sick Day
