Campbell Will - Teaching the Art and Science of Breath

My guest on today's episode is Campbell Will. Campbell is a physiotherapist who specializes in teaching the art and science of breath. 

He is extremely knowledgeable. I learned so much during this interview. Breathing seems so fundamental and natural. It's surprising to learn that most of us aren't using our breath correctly to support optimal body performance. Did you know that even things like posture and weight loss can be influenced by proper breathing? 

Tune in now to learn from Campbell and check out his website to learn more: 
https://www.breathbodytherapy.com/

You can also follow him on Instagram @breathbodytherapy

Please like and subscribe here and also visit my links page to see all of the other places we can connect https://www.joyfulicity.com/links

Transcript

Laura Wakefield: 0:08

Welcome to the door Felicity podcast. I'm your host, Laura Wakefield, and I'm privileged today to have as my guest Campbell Will. Campbell is a physical therapist who specializes in teaching the Art and Science of Breath work. And I was really excited when I connected with him on Instagram. Because breathwork is talked about a lot now. Like, it seems to be something that is reaching sort of mainstream attention. Which seems funny to me, because breathing is the oldest thing in the world. I mean, it's the most natural thing in the world, right? So why do we need people teaching us how to do it?

Campbell Will: 0:45

It's a really good question, you know, and it's the question that I'm pretty much get almost every day, is this idea that, well, I'm already breathing, what do I need to know, right? To learn? And it's an interesting question to kind of ask ourselves, and I usually thought by asking people, well, who taught you how to breathe? And often people go nobody, right? But someone told us to eat and to drive and to talk and the right and to communicate, but no one really taught us this fundamental aspect that really drives so many other systems in our body. And it's a question that I've kind of just continue to ask myself over the last decade, really, of, you know, what is good breathing? And what is not so good breathing? And how can we teach people to lean into the former and minimize the latter? And I'm sure we'll talk about a lot of the reasons why today.

Laura Wakefield: 1:32

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I did have a question about that. First of all, let me ask you this. And it kind of goes with that. Why does this matter? Like, I mean, if we're automatically breathing, and it's fundamentally basically keeping us alive? I'm 55 years old, somehow, I'm still breathing. Why does this matter to learn proper breathing technique? How are we managing to do it wrong when it's such a natural process?

Campbell Will: 1:59

Yeah, great question. And so to me, there's kind of two aspects of this, we can think about breathing as a tool to restore optimal health, in light of dysfunction, you know, so my background I work in, I worked in ICUs, and neurosurgery wards and medical wards. And my role there as a respiratory physical therapist, was, how do I get people back to baseline, but beyond that, we can then start to look at the breath as a tool for optimization. And I always like to use the example here, as a physical therapist, people are working all the time. But that doesn't mean that they can't be taught how to walk better, right? Because they're working on leaving them knee pain or back pain. And you might say, Well, I'm walking, and I've worked my whole life. But what if the way I'm walking is actually creating an imbalance in my body that's causing me pain, or it's limiting my range of motion or my ability to exercise or play with my kids. And so we we don't say, well, everyone's walking, let's not address her, we see that actually, there is an imbalance there, that we can maybe apply some tools to rectify that imbalance. And maybe we'll see an improvement in the symptoms that you're presenting with. And so I like to look at breathing through the exact same lens. Then the tricky part, and kind of coming back to your question, none of my clients ever come to me saying, I've got a problem with my breathing, they come to me with anxiety, or you know, and ability to tolerate stress or poor sleep or energy that's all over the place, chronic fatigue. And my job is to help them understand the link between how they're breathing and the symptoms that they're presenting with. And that's the hard part because it rarely does breathing show up as dysfunctional breathing. In some circumstances it does. But more often than not, it will present in a different system. The most common thing that I see is anxiety, we just look at rates of anxiety, they're up 30%. Since COVID, they've only been rising in the last decade. You know, right, the latest poll that went out is 50% of 18 to 26 year olds, identify with having anxiety, right, half the population. That's crazy. In my mind,

Laura Wakefield: 4:00

that's young people.

Campbell Will: 4:01

And that's young people, right? Now, prevalence. And so we then look at, well, what are the current management strategies for anxiety, and a lot of them don't have great outcomes, right? It's maybe pharmaceuticals, it might be talk therapy, neither of those things are addressing one of the root causes of anxiety, which is a physiological disruption. You know, we call it stress physiology for a reason. But here we are using tools that are addressing the mental state or the emotional state, and we're not doing anything about the underlying physiology. And so that one of the big reasons I look to breathing and say they cannot move one, we restore it to its optimal state, right, so that it is serving all of their functions in the body. And breathing doesn't just do breathing in relates to the cardiovascular system and our posture and our mood and emotion than our attention and our learning. But then secondly, if I'm doing those things, well, how do I start to use my breathe as a tool to gain that next step? You know the peak performance, if you will?

Laura Wakefield: 5:00

Well, that makes total sense to me, because I've always known that my physical and emotional state can affect my breathing. You know, if I'm nervous, I either stop breathing, or I breathe very shallow. So I've always known that it can go that way. But I haven't always been aware that maybe the way I'm breathing could actually be affecting those things and causing them in the first place.

Campbell Will: 5:23

Yes, so this is a blind directional pathway. Right? Most people have identified Yes, when I'm upset, I breathe this way. You know, the most common one I asked people was like, how do you breathe and you're frustrated, and everyone goes, Yeah, heavy sigh that happens there. And you didn't, you weren't doing breath work, you know, you didn't try to breathe that way. That was a reflection of your physical and mental and emotional state, right. But if I asked you to breathe like you're frustrated, but long enough, you'll start to feel frustrated. And there's really good evidence to show this relationship between respiratory pattern and emotional state. When you're excited, you breathe a very particular way. And that's different to when you feel tired, or energized, or calm or stressed. And so if we can kind of cultivate that self awareness of what are my respiratory pattern, you know, you learn how you breathe, when you're very calm, then you can use that pattern of breath when you're not feeling well, to introduce to your nervous system. No, we want to feel calm, because breathing is one of the most kind of influential aspects of our autonomic nervous system. So if you breathe quickly, right now, if fasten your bridge fast in and out through your mouth, you'll start to feel a bit anxious, your blood pressure will go up, your heart rate will go up, you'll start to sweat, you know, there's a predictable response because your nervous system, right, it's reading your breath is something stressful is happening, because we're breathing quickly. But this is happening 22 to 25,000 times a day, these huddle fluctuations that most of us aren't paying attention to. And the question that I always posed to people is, you know, how much of your anxiety is actually coming from the way you're breathing, rather than the job or the relationship or the stressful thing that's happening. Of course, those things are triggers. And they can be stimuli. But often what they do is they cause you to change how you breathe. And it's that disruption of your breathing and your physiology, that then you perceive as I feel anxious. And that's a really empowering piece of information, right? If I'm the one that's creating my anxiety, than there's something I can do about it, you know, it's not coming from outside me, it's actually coming from inside of me. And I've got the tool to kind of bring myself back into balance and perhaps alleviate some of what I'm feeling.

Laura Wakefield: 7:36

Even if your circumstances didn't change, just by breathing differently, you can at least affect it. I mean, you're not going to solve whatever underlying problem by your breath work, but you can at least affect your physiology. Can you explain just briefly, what the autonomic nervous system is? You mentioned that and how it's all tied to the breath. What exactly is that inside of our bodies?

Campbell Will: 8:00

Yeah. So to me, you know, the way I love to describe it, the autonomic nervous system is kind of like the operating system of the body. Right? It decides, you know, should I be tired? Should I be stressed? Should I be happy, should I be sad, should I be tense, relaxed, you know, and so on. And so the autonomic nervous system being the operating system, we can then kind of think about breathing as kind of the remote control to that operating system. But the autonomic nervous system, if we kind of zoom back a little bit, so we have the nervous system, the central nervous system, which is the brain and the spinal cord, right, and then we have the peripheral nervous system, which all of the the nerves all out throughout the body. So a lot of people have heard the vagus nerve, for example, you know, these are aspects of the peripheral nervous system. Now, the peripheral nervous system, we can kind of, it's almost like these kind of sub steps for these little kind of branching aspects. The peripheral has the autonomic nervous system, which as the name kind of implies automatic, and also the kind of somatic or conscious part of the nervous system. So I can decide to reach over and pick up my water bottle, like that's a conscious part of my nervous system. And that's me deciding to move my arm and pick up the bottle, right? The autonomic nervous system is much more the stuff going on in the background. I can't decide my heart rate to just speed up right now. I can't decide my digestion to slow down, I can't decide to start sweating, right? These things are under control of the autonomic nervous system. So the things that are really keeping me alive moment to moment, regulated by this autonomic side of the nervous system. The part of this that's really important is my autonomic nervous system is influenced by breathing. And so I can kind of influence Am I in a more sterile continue this distinction, but the autonomic nervous system has this sympathetic which most people have heard of the fight or flight system, right? And then decide is the parasympathetic, the so called rest and digest? And so the way that I'm breathing and it's not just breathing, it's also the posture that I'm holding and what's happening in my head and what's happening in environment my nervous system is making a decision. What's the appropriate state for me to be in right now. And if there's a tiger chasing me, he is the kind of evolutionary example the appropriate state is to be in a fight or flight response run away, right? Then the blood flow out. So my muscles shut down digestion, was my immune system, don't worry about inflammation. There's that survival situation happening right now. Right? So my autonomic nervous system is kind of always working in the background is like, what's the appropriate state for us to be in? Based on all the information at hand? And all the information at hand includes how am I holding my body? How am I breathing? What's the internal narrative or story that I'm telling what's happening outside of me? What can I hear, see smell right through my five senses. And then the nervous system says, okay, based on all this information, this is the appropriate state, I shouldn't be stressed, or I should be calm, or I shouldn't be tired. That allows the nervous system to then dedicate on kind of preference, what should I be spending my energy on. And if I'm running from a tiger, digesting the food doesn't matter, you could get there. I don't get a way. Tomorrow, there is no tomorrow. Let's spend all of our energy right now on adrenaline, cortisol and moving our legs.

Laura Wakefield: 11:14

And you see people have superhuman strength, sometimes in those because everything else shuts off.

Campbell Will: 11:19

And the part of this that if we zoom from being chased by a tiger, which hopefully anyone listening to this hasn't been chased by a tiger recently. But the nervous system responds very generically, you know, I open up my laptop. And there's a deadline that I missed. And my boss is sending me a strongly worded email that I have the exact same autonomic response that says this is stressful, right, which means shut down digestion, or down the immune system to manage the inflammation, cortisol, adrenaline, blood flow out to my muscles, right? Because I need to deal with this threatening or stress situation, right? The problem that a lot of people face today is we're bombarded by stressful situations. The kids aren't ready for school, there's traffic, I haven't got my job done, the finances, the food that I'm eating the sunlight, you know, like, all of those things are bombarding my nervous system. And we hear a lot of people talk about being stuck in the fight or flight response. Yeah, and that means I am kind of preferencing surviving rather than thriving, right, I'm not going to repair the cells and manage the inflammation and heal, because my body thinks it's a more important, it's more important now to survive than it is to, you know, heal and repair and regenerate and grow.

Laura Wakefield: 12:30

That only get so far off track. Because, yes, our lives are stressful, but they're not always stressful, it seems like we almost some of this almost becomes a habitual body response, once we've been stressed for so long. We just don't know how not to be anymore.

Campbell Will: 12:47

Yes, that's a perfect way to describe it, you know, I like to use the analogy of like, a gearbox, you know, if I've been driving around in this stressful state for a really long time, that state becomes very familiar. Yeah. And the opposing side, right relaxation, or calm, or, you know, just being bored as an example, like, a lot of people are bored, because we can just pull out our phone, right. So I get used to the constant stimulus, the to do list, it never goes away all of the responsibilities. And what happens is my nervous system, and my body right loves nothing more than familiarity. Because that's it's a lot easier to continue doing what I'm doing, than it is to navigate this unknown terrain over here, where there's uncertainty, and there's unfamiliarity. And so a lot of people feel themselves kind of almost pulled back into that state of stress, right, because my navigation items, like, I'm just gonna keep doing what I know. I don't know what the what that relaxation thing over there is, like, let's just go back to a never ending, never ending to do list. Because we've become really familiar with that level of stress, and really the level of stress hormones that are in my body as well. And the body wants to just perpetuate what it knows.

Laura Wakefield: 13:58

That makes sense. My daughter and I were watching movie last night, and we were joking around that. We no longer know how to watch a movie without also checking our phone and without also doing this other stuff. So we took our phones and we stuck them across the room. And it took a minute. Yeah,

Campbell Will: 14:13

right. You find, like, drawn to it a little bit. Yeah, to

Laura Wakefield: 14:17

it to even just kind of settle into that situation. And we should want that, hey, I get to relax now. But we aren't accustomed to that. We don't know. This feels unnatural. Now to us.

Campbell Will: 14:32

It's really fascinating thing. You know, I think phones are a big part of the problem for people because when my nervous system really gets to kind of switch off, you know, if you Let's go back, not so far. You know, how long has an iPhone been around 1015 years, maybe a little bit longer, you know, but prior to smartphone is, you know, what do people do when they sit on the train or the bus, you know, they daydream or they talk or they communicate? Or maybe they're sitting in a park just looking at the trees or the clouds but now we're so prone to Just like this moment of stillness and silence, I'm going to pull out my phone and check in to her and we'll get my email inbox. Well, I can't help but distract myself with stimulus. And that keeps my nervous system kind of in the onstage, right, I'm kind of revving the engine all the time. Because I've kind of forgotten and lost the ability to be a little bit bored, you know, to sit with myself, and allow myself just a bit of time and space. You know, and it's really interesting, like, as I say this, I want to make it very clear that I'm not immune to this at all. Yeah, we all do it all myself kind of pulling my phone on going one that was really like unconscious, I didn't decide that I want to be on my phone, there was this unconscious little driver of like, I guess I'm getting a little bit bored. my nervous system goes, Let's fill that void. So

Laura Wakefield: 15:45

you're already doing three other things. You know, seriously, like, sometimes I'm like, When did it get this bad that I can't even just sit and watch a TV show, without also doing, you know, a couple of other things at the same time. And no wonder, I'm feeling the effects of stress on the body, mind and soul. When I'm literally not ever shutting off, you know? So tell me. So. If there's, if there's a correct way to breathe that we'll get to in a minute. There's any there's incorrect ways. And I referenced a couple that I know I do. I'll breathe too shallow. And I'll stop. What are some of the breath? Mistakes that are super common that most of us are doing all the time without realizing we're doing it?

Campbell Will: 16:31

Yes. So by far the most common that I see on a daily basis, day to day basis kind of clinically, is where in my body? am I breathing? Right? And so if we think of very simple, am I breathing kind of up? You know, the chest, the shoulders, the collarbones kind of lifting up as I inhale and dropping down? Or am I breathing out? Right, the lower part of the ribcage, we hear of belly breathing, but really am I breathing up remember eating out? We do not want to be breathing up, right? And we can kind of talk of this flow on effect.

Laura Wakefield: 17:02

Now I'm trying to think which way I'm doing it undoubtedly the wrong way.

Campbell Will: 17:06

And, and we can kind of, you know, say, Well, why do people breathe like that. And it can be from numerous things, you know, it can be from sitting on a desk job, if you've ever hurt you back, if you've ever been pregnant and given birth, right? Like these, just a few simple examples of why might I be breathing into this upper part of my chest. And it can be a lung thing, right? Let's use the example of pregnancy. You know, as you grow a baby, your diaphragm just got pushed out of the way you couldn't breathe down and expand your ribcage because there was a growing baby in there. And so you learned, right, my body said, alright, well, I can't do that for the next 10 months, I'm gonna breathe up here where I've got a little bit of room left. But then baby comes and maybe you know, particularly when there's a C section right? Now there's a bit more trauma down in that space. So maybe I keep breathing up here. And then maybe you use combined or five years, and I've learned like, that's just my breathing pattern now, right. And because people tend to overlook and say, Well, you know, nothing ever happened to my breathing, they fail to recognize that actually, that change in my breathing pattern is 100% going to influence the state of my nervous system. But also you know how well my body is able to take oxygen and deliver it to my cells. And so when we breathe up here, there's just less opportunity for us to get oxygen into the cells to where we actually need it. And where we produce energy. When we breathe down low, we use the diaphragm, we spread the ribcage out, we've got a lot more surface area, there's a lot more blood flow. And so we're just improving our ability to actually utilize oxygen. And oxygen is really the thing that keeps us alive, you know, at a cellular level, without oxygen, there's not a lot we can do. You know, that's the thing that fuels the engine, right? It's pretty critical. You break down, even repair cells and you know, mobilize everything, right, there's relying on this relationship that we can produce energy with oxygen. And so number one that I can commonly see this kind of vertical breathing up into my chest or up into my shoulders. The second thing is, am I breathing with my nose or my mouth, mouth breathing? Not good. Right? This thing is designed for communicating and for eating right and for expressing ourselves emotionally. It is not designed to really it is a backup system. Right? I can breathe with it. But when we look at you know the nose and the intricate kind of anatomy that exists there, like this is 100% designed for us to breathe, it humidifies the air it cleans the air warm the air slows it down and deposits it into the right part of my lungs. And it produces this really interesting molecule called nitric oxide, which is just produced in the sinuses and not produced in the mouth. And that molecule is antiviral. It's antibacterial, it's antifungal. And so this beautiful kind of design of the human body right out of the air comes in, we clean it we kill anything that's in the air that shouldn't be coming into our body. We prepare the air so my body can do as much as it can within the moment I opened my mouth That just goes out the window, we don't have that same process happening, they need to be able to breathe with my mouth. If I'm running up a hill, for example, I'm gonna find a lot easier, I can just move more air. But when I'm sitting on the couch watching a movie, you know, or I'm doing the grocery shopping, or I'm driving the car, I should 100% be breathing entirely through my nose. But we've seen more and more, it's very common that people start to habitually breathe through their mouth when they don't need to be.

Laura Wakefield: 20:28

I think so many of us, myself included, have almost chronic sinus problems now. And I think a lot of it's inflammation, just generalized body inflammation, pollutants in the air around us, you know, so but I've struggled with breathing through my nose for many, many, many years. So what do you do? Like, I guess you have to start with solving whatever's going on. That's, that's making it difficult to breathe through your nose. Right?

Campbell Will: 20:54

Exactly. But there's also you know, the, the old kind of you don't use it, you lose it, so to speak, that the more you don't breathe with your nose, the harder it gets to breathe with your nose, right. And what happens a lot of the time is people, they hear this information, they say mouth breathing, bad nose, breathing, good, I'm gonna try and breathe and my nose. And they find it really tricky. Like, as you've probably experienced, it does feel a little bit harder than breathing with my mouth. But for a lot of people they go, that feels a bit uncomfortable, it feels maybe a bit claustrophobic. It feels like I'm not getting enough air. And they go back to mouth breathing, right? Because the time that they've perhaps spent mouth breathing has made nasal breathing just a little bit trickier. And it's going to take a little bit of adaptation before that becomes comfortable again. So the first thing I would say to people is, it's not an overnight fix, you know, you can't just decide I'm gonna go back to nasal breathing, and it's going to be okay, tomorrow, it will take a little bit of time, you know, and there's kind of other things that we need to address in terms of your tolerance to carbon dioxide, it's more of a chemistry relationship. But that's the thing that makes me feel like I need to breathe. So often, when people close their mouth and start breathing through their nose, they feel like they're not getting enough air. But that's just, there's actually a little bit more carbon dioxide in my body now in my brain is kind of responding and going more theory to, you know, and we won't go down the depths of respiratory physiology today. But that's a very, you know, adaptable response, I just need to expose myself to a little bit more carbon dioxide in my brain becomes a little bit less sensitive, and nasal breathing gets easier and easier and easier.

Laura Wakefield: 22:26

So it is reversible. It's because like it resonated with me about the, the pregnancies I don't know, if you know that I have nine children. I've had a lot of pregnancies. And undoubtedly, that makes sense as to why I really created that. And it's reversible, right? Like, you know, the coaching and help that I need, I can, I can improve this.

Campbell Will: 22:49

Yes. And and it's really important for people to remember that because, you know, sometimes I'm working with people that have been breathing dysfunctionally for 40 5060 years, you know, and we see really amazing result, because the rule that I kind of stand by that I share with everyone is your body never loses the ability to adapt, you just need to change the stimulus, you know, and understand, well, what are the stepping stones that I can, you know, take to get back to perhaps breathing a little bit more functionally or optimally, but you've not worked the ability to grow it up, you know. And so as an example, your diaphragm, right will have kind of learned to be a little bit tight, right, because of the numerous pregnancies and then what happens afterwards and alone breathing pattern. But if you get in there and start stretching a diaphragm, right, you create a little bit more space. It's, you know, there's this beautiful grace of the human body that's like, oh, yeah, right, we do have a little bit of movement down there. That's right, I can bring this muscle. So there's this kind of, in a knowing for lack of a better term, that let's say, you've been breathing, you know, incorrectly for 30 years, it's not going to take you 30 years to recorrect it, you know, I need to address the mechanics of how I'm breathing, or I need to maybe address my physiology, how my brain is responding to my breathing. And then there's some tools that I can use around kind of like managing my nervous system state. And those things over time. You know, it's impossible that you don't adapt, because your entire nervous system is always adapting, right? It doesn't just choose something to adapt to, and not to others. It's just an adaptation machine. And so by you kind of changing the inputs of now I agree this way, and I moved this way, like my nervous system stopped to learn that the same way that it learns to read differently during pregnancy.

Laura Wakefield: 24:36

I love that because we all kind of know that and understand that about other muscles in our body that if we go to the gym, start working out at first it will be hard, but then we'll gain strength and they'll it will improve. We don't think about that. With things like our diaphragm that are basically interested. We don't even think about our diaphragm. How often do we even think about it unless we're nine months pregnant? Then we're very aware of it but you know, It's just not something that I think, as people most of us are giving enough credit to. So if I, if I go through the process and the hard work, and I get this better, what kind of benefits will I have in my life? Like, why is this worth it to me to go through that

Campbell Will: 25:16

difficulty? Yeah, I mean, such a good question. If we, if we just look at it purely, you know, physiologically, and let's answer this question a couple of different ways. But just physiologically, let's say All we did was we moved you from mouth breathing to nose breathing. That is, we've shown in and numerous studies that 18% More oxygen uptake and yourselves, right, that just means 18%, more energy, right. And I don't mean energy to run up a hill, I mean energy to repair cells and manage inflammation and the amount of response from 18%, more oxygen uptake of the cell through nasal breathing versus mouth breathing, right. But it also comes back to the you know, this, what I like to term self regulation by restoring my breathing, right and doing its hard work and moving my diaphragm and establishing a little bit more control. I now sit in the driver's seat, right? I can change my breathing to make me feel more alert, or make me feel more calm, right? If I'm laying in bed in mind, and I'm feeling like, why is my mind racing, I need to go to sleep, I can use my breath to tell my nervous system, it's time to go to sleep. You know, if I wake up in the morning, and I'm feeling really groggy, but I've got to go and jump on a podcast, right, I can breathe in a way that's going to stimulate and give me a little bit more energy. And so when that when we explain it that way of like, Would it be useful to you to have a little bit more influence over how you feel at any given moment, right, you need to feel more alert, you can feel more alert, you need to feel more calm, you can feel more calm. And so that tool of learning how to drive, you know, this vehicle that we're all inhabiting, through control of my breath, I think is a big kind of like benefit that people are seeking. Rather than, you know, let's go back to those same two examples. I can't sleep I'm feeling wound up at the end of the day, most people I need a glass of wine, right to wind down, kind of I mean, I'm not anti. And or in the morning, I have to get up and I need to drink a coffee, you know, so we're relying on these external inputs to change how I feel. And there's nothing I love coffee, and I love wine.

Laura Wakefield: 27:21

Right, but it's not good to need them. Exactly. enjoying them and needing them.

Campbell Will: 27:26

And it's really interesting, you know, what happens if you're on a coffee in the morning, whatever, one and then you realize, oh, you know, that's a crush, like, I don't have that it really changes my response. Now I'm really grouchy, or now I'm really fatigued, or whatever it might be. And so understanding like, oh, there's an internal tool that I can use, that never runs out, you know, that doesn't require any, that's free. That's with me all the time. And so that kind of understanding of being able to be a little bit more in control of your experience is a huge benefit.

Laura Wakefield: 27:59

I've done some pretty extreme hiking in my day, often at high altitude. And when you get up around 1415 16,000 feet, you really understand what not enough oxygen will do to you. I mean, your your brain can't there was a time when I was having such low oxygen that I literally couldn't communicate with my own legs easily to do what I wanted them to do. It was that bad. And just everything slows down shuts down. And I don't know why I've never put that connection together until this moment, when you said, Could you use an extra 18% Oxygen? And then I remembered that feeling of not having enough and realizing that I probably don't have enough now either not at that same extreme. But what would 18% More feel like? Yeah,

Campbell Will: 28:49

and that's it's really great. You know, like, when people that haven't experienced altitude, what you just described feel, you know, it's a little bit kind of like, well, I don't know, what did it feel like? I've experienced that I know exactly what you're talking about. Right? And so you kind of take that and you extrapolate it kind of back to like day to day. And there's a kind of theory that's being put out there at the moment that the absence of oxygen is the presence of disease, right? In terms of things like metabolic disease. And if we look at cells, and how do they turn into Kansas, you know, there's a pretty strong evidence to say, lack of oxygen, right? We're not getting oxygen, then the cell still is requiring energy. So it goes into this kind of backup energy production, which produces lactic acid and metabolic waste and that buildup of waste that then perhaps starts to influence disease. And so when we say like, 18%, more oxygen, most people kind of think of like, Oh, it's just like more air that's coming in. They really kind of know what's going on with this cells, what's going on at the mitochondria of the 30 trillion cells in your body that are literally keeping you alive. You know? That's where we're really thinking of, and I optimize my breathing I optimize my ability to deliver oxygen Due to all of the mitochondrial, right and to remove waste, and that this relationship of, you know, respiratory physiology, it's that it's the chemistry that's kind of changing based on my breathing.

Laura Wakefield: 30:10

I love that. That's something really that I'm thinking about in a new way, after talking with you that it's, you know, yes, we're breathing well enough that we're waking up in the morning, and we're still alive today. And we're doing okay, but are we really thriving, and how much longer might we live? If we're treating the cells and these organs in our bodies and giving them all the nourishment that they need? Like, we might actually live longer.

Campbell Will: 30:38

There's a there's a beautiful kind of, I guess, idea in the old kind of yogic texts, like from the Santiago tradition that instead of you know how long we live, we will have a number of breaths, what say you learn to breathe 20 times a minute, and I breathe eight times a minute, right, I'm just gonna use my breaths off a lot slower. And that's going to take me a lot longer. And it's really interesting. And this is a big, kind of bugaboo for me, because I'm so immersed in it. But if you go back to a lot of those old yogic texts, and traditional Chinese medicine and stuff, it's been around for quite a while, they talked about a breathing rate of six to eight breaths per minute has been ideal, right? If you go back, you know, a few 100 years and you look at medical textbooks, we start to see them talking about kind of eight to 12 breaths a minute, when I went through university, we talked about 12 to 16, breaths a minute, if you're going to a medical clinic today, normal breathing is 16 to 20 breaths a minute. And that just bothers me like, what we're doing is we're just moving the goalposts. And that allows us to not identify that there's a problem, right? You breathing 20 times a minute, versus breathing 10 times a minute completely changes your blood pressure, how hard and fast your heart is beating the state of your nervous system, whether you're burning through glucose, or fats preferentially, like the list really goes on. So I think we're at a big disservice to people by saying 18 times a minute, oh, that's normal. It's not, you know, it's really isn't it? It's just that we've allowed ourselves to just say, Oh, it's not that important, you know, what's what it's what happens if we just tack on a couple of extra breaths per minute? We'll just call

Laura Wakefield: 32:11

this breathing. Right?

Campbell Will: 32:12

Yeah. It's just breathing. Right? You know, it's just the thing that keeps us alive, raised a very similar thing. You know, when we look at something like blood sugar, you know, there's this cut off that above this number, you have diabetes below, you don't, right. And a lot of people, they go to the doctor, and they're very close to that number. And they say, you're still in the normal range. Right? Right. But you might just just just under clinical diagnosis of diabetes, but you go, that's normal, we're not gonna do anything about it. We're gonna wait until you have a disease before we manage it. The diamond measures their respiratory rate and says you're breathing 19 times a minute, that's within normal limits. But that doesn't guarantee also has anxiety, or has a very low tolerance to stress, or shall we say, normal limit? And we just let it slide?

Laura Wakefield: 33:00

Well, that's, that's interesting. So I saw on your website and or not your website, I think it was when I was talking with you before that. You incorporate the breath, work into meditation. Talk to me about that. Because I know that sometimes we tried to use it during meditation, we tried to slow down our breathing, but But what else do we do? Like how else does it apply to meditation because I love meditation is something that I'm really trying to learn to get better at. But it's not easy to learn?

Campbell Will: 33:34

No. And this is why I think you know, so this kind of comes back right to what we were talking about earlier, you're sitting on the couch, watching a movie and wanting to use your phone, you know, is we've become very accustomed to a certain state of our nervous system, you go from that level of activity that you're used to, and then you sit on a cushion and be quiet and be still what happens, your mind goes blue, right? Like you've never been busier in your mind, then that moment, because we've gotten rid of a lot of the stimulus that's usually keeping me you know, entertained, or just kind of like, active that way. And so if I just sit and I let my breathing happen, I'm kind of, you know, almost fighting against my nervous system. But if I can use my breath to kind of bring my nervous system down, you know, into a state that's a little bit more calm, or that's a little bit slower. I'm often going to find this stillness and the silence of meditation, a little bit more comfortable, right? Instead of me, holding my mind in submission and saying, We're gonna sit here and be quiet, don't think of anything.

Laura Wakefield: 34:36

It means you're thinking of everything.

Campbell Will: 34:39

And that it's like, what can I do with my breathing and focus on my breathing? Right? There's the meditative aspect is singular point of focus. So I'm very present with my breath. But I'm breathing in a way that creates a predictable response in my nervous system, you know, and that can be one of two things I can breathe rhythmically. So if I breathe in, for example, for four seconds and out for four Oh seconds and I maintain this very consistent rhythmical breath, that is setting up, you know, something for my nervous system to follow. You know, here comes, the breath arrives and then breath. Oh, yeah, there it goes again. And then here it comes. And so there is the point of my focus, which, for a lot of meditative practices, you know, it's noticed the breath coming in, and notice the breath going out, when you get distracted, come back to the breath. But if I just tweaked my breathing a little bit, you know, and I go slightly slower than I'm used to, that creates a shift in the state of my nervous system. And it makes it a lot easier for me to focus. Now let's say, I'm very distracted, if I start to lengthen my exhale, so I'm breathing in for and maybe now I'm breathing out for six, that longer exhale, is linked to the parasympathetic part of the nervous system, right. So that's going to allow me to kind of swing a little bit further into that state of rest of illness, you know. And so my breath becomes a little bit of a router, you know, and saying, oh, we need to kind of slow down a little bit more, because my mind is still kind of trying to take me off that way. And then the final kind of way I tend to use it and teach is that rather than going from right, let's say, I've got to do you meditate in the morning, or in the evening, Laura, usually in the morning, in the morning. So let's say you've woke up, you've checked your inbox, you've got ready for the day, there's just the level of mental activity, the to do list is building up the commitments for the day, and then you stop and you try and be still. And so what a lot of people often experiences kind of overflow, you know, I've stopped my body down and be still, but my mind is kind of continuing with the momentum of the morning that was picked up. And so what I'll tend to do is breathe, use breathing in a little bit more of an active kind of dynamic way. So take a few really nice big breaths, and then do some breath holds, and then big breath. And then I stopped, and I sit and it quiet. And it's the breathing is kind of interrupted the pattern of my mind and of my to do list, and then I can sit and I'm much more, you know, it's like a little stepping stone to the meditative state, what might usually take me 10 minutes to get there, you know, where it's like, oh, here it is, this is meditation, it might only take me a minute, because I've kind of hijacked my state by using breathing to, I like to use the example, you know, you shake the snowglobe. And then you let it all settle back down. And that's exactly what kind of happens, this relationship between our physiology and our psychology. So we kind of shake our physiology by breathing last, and then holding the breath and doing something a little bit more, you know, active or dynamic. And then we let it rest and fall down into stillness. And I personally find that, oh, here I am, you know that the activity in my mind has already stopped, right? I'm very present with my body. And now I can, you know, sit in my meditative state for a little bit longer.

Laura Wakefield: 37:45

Yeah, that's interesting, because it seems like I mean, your, your sympathetic, and parasympathetic nervous systems don't really, actually know what's going on. So they're just completely responding to whatever stimulus you're sending to them. If it's Tiger, or if it's rest, they can't actually see that. So, you know, you know, we can understand my stimuli, teaching, you know, and this is

Campbell Will: 38:11

where it really becomes interesting. So what my nervous system is perceiving is external and internal. You know, if I curl my shoulders and I drop my chin down on my chest, and I curl into a ball, my nervous system is deceiving vulnerable, BIA, right? There might be nothing in my environment and suggest that but my posture says, are we protecting ourselves from an income? You know, what's going on? They messed up. Right? I can say that we're the only species in the world that can give ourselves worry or anxiety today, if there's something we have to do, you know, like, I have to do this presentation, or I have to speak to my boss, or I'm gonna have that difficult conversation, my partner, I can give myself worry and stress and anxiety and change my physiology right now, just by thinking about it. Right? So when we think of my nervous system, like you said, it's just responding to everything. A lot of the times we're very unconscious of what signals Am I sending? You know, we look around and we think environment, you know, is it the job? Is it the traffic, is it but what about my posture? What about my breathing? What about my story that I'm telling, so a lot of people will breathe shallow or fast, and they'll hold tension in their body, and then they'll tell stories, right? And that is as important in terms of what my nervous system is responding to, to all the stuff out there. And so, you know, there's this idea of, I like, I like the term self awareness, right? Am I aware of what my posture is doing to how I feel right now? Am I aware of what my breathing is doing to my nervous system right now, my internal narrative, you know, because those things I can change, I can't change that. I don't like my boss so that my kids are being difficult today or that the traffic is bad on the way to the airport, like those things are just out of my control. But when I'm sitting in the car tensing my jaw on my shoulders right by my ears. That is something I can do about that. Right. And that's where this kind of self awareness and to me, when you're aware of your breathing, you have a lot more aware of your body, you become a lot more aware of the story that you're telling, because your breathing is only ever happening right now, you can't breathe in the past, you can't breathe. And so when you kind of like you develop this ability to become present with your breath, you'll notice my breathing feels shallow, or I'm holding my breath, I'm not breathing at all. And then what do I want to do about that, you know, oh, I'm reading again, or I'm going to slow my breath down, or I'm going to take a nice, slow, deep breath. And those things immediately impact the information that my nervous system is responding to.

Laura Wakefield: 40:46

Well, so a couple of years, a few years back, I started in my 50s, taking ballroom dance lessons. And it's the funnest thing in the world. However, the first time that they talked me into doing a competition, you know, here I am, 53 getting up to do a dance competition. And the minute you get there, you just, I mean, it's like a tiger is chasing you, you know, you feel that, although there really isn't one. But even when we need that parasympathetic, being able to learn to control it, that's what one of my dance teachers would always look at me, because I would stop breathing, we would start to do the competition. And I would literally stop breathing, but you have to these dances are several minutes long, you can't not breathe that long, right? You have to breathe. So she'd be like, breathe, breathe, breathe, you know, and, and so I think sometimes, you know, that nervous system doesn't understand levels, either, that I'm perceiving the situation as equally dangerous to that tiger chasing me, and I'm not actually going to die, there's nothing really awful. And truly calming it down is going to benefit me more than having it ramped up so that I can think clearly and do what I need to do.

Campbell Will: 41:58

Exactly. And a lot of times, you know, we've learned, you know, and I'm going to take a guess, here, and you can kind of confirm or deny that for a lot of people. It wasn't just the ballroom dancing, you probably learned a lot earlier in life. When something super stressful happening, we hold our breath, because that's what you did. However long ago, you know, someone was yelling at me, and I held my breath and tried to feel small. That is the learned behavior. So the next time I feel like I'm in a similar situation, my nervous system goes, what did we do last time, hold the breath. You know, and so people, they forget that it's like, it's a protective mechanism in a way and it's a learned behavior. You didn't decide, here comes the dance. I'm gonna hold my breath. Now, right now, this is really scary. What do we do in scary situations? Stop breathing. And, again, why does that happen? You know, it's one less thing that you need to be paying attention to. So you're now more present? Where is the threat coming from like, stop breathing, stop moving, like, where is it? And so this kind of inbuilt mechanism that unless we become aware of it, it will continue to change the way that I'm feeling and change the level of my energy and what's happening in my mind. And something else you said that I want to kind of come back to that. This isn't to say that parasympathetic, good, sympathetic, bad, you know, levels, we need to have access to the sympathetic nervous system, you know, because that's how I get up in the morning. And that's how I get hard stuff done. And that's how I complete deadlines. But it's like, do I want to overshoot that mark, and go into complete full blown panic and anxiety, when maybe that's not the appropriate response. And if I don't control my breathing, that's often what will happen is I'll drive myself there. Because it's like this kind of upward spiral, you know, I feel a bit stressed and anxious, which makes me breathe a little bit faster and shallower. That faster and shallow breathing accelerates my heart rate, and makes me feel more stressed and anxious, which makes me really thought that shallow, you know, and then all of a sudden, it's like, I feel panicked. And so having that self awareness of I'm feeling stressed and anxious. Let me make sure I don't let my breathing get too far away from me shallow in front, right? I'm gonna breeze smooth and steady and slow. And yes, it is still stressful, because I'm about to dance in front of 50 people, but let my breathing kind of just tap the brake a little bit and say nervous system, this is where we want to stay. You don't want to be in a completely parasympathetic state in that environment, you know, because you

Laura Wakefield: 44:25

need some of that fuel to do it, you know, the horizon,

Campbell Will: 44:29

to know that the stakes are high and to focus on it and to pay attention and give it your best, right? And so it's like me having a little bit more of a way to regulate and say this is the right level of autonomic arousal, right? This is the right amount of my sympathetic nervous system versus overshooting the law. Because earlier in life, you know, I learned this pattern or I love this behavior when something scary happens or when something fearful is happening. And so then I can choose now this feels about the right level for me to perform, right or to do whatever task It might be for each individual. Yeah, and

Laura Wakefield: 45:03

I think we don't even realize we're doing it, I think the stopping the breathing until we're ready to pass out practically. And then we notice, oh my goodness, you know, I need to, I need to breathe. But I think sometimes when we see people that seem so calm in a setting like that, I used to be heavily involved in theater. And people would always tell me, you don't even seem nervous, this comes so easily to you. And I would laugh, I just had done it for long enough that I had learned how to keep breathing. Well, on stage, I was just as nervous as, as they were, that's an you want to be that actually fuels you, it actually is the hype that you need. But you have to keep breathing. And that's when all of those outward appearance things start to show to other people that you're nervous when the sweat and the you know, you're fainting away and all of that, but it doesn't mean that you're not nervous anymore, not excited or not dialed in, it's just that you're controlling it a little bit.

Campbell Will: 46:00

Yeah, and I think it's the same thing. You know, people often think courage means you're not fearful. But when I think courage is you act while you're scared, you know, you are fearful. But you do it anyway. Because you've got the tools. And exactly as we're describing, it's not that all of a sudden, I'm not nervous anymore. It's just that I've learned to stay composed. While I'm nervous, right? I've learned to stay in the driver's seat, even though it is terrifying. Like, I teach workshops, and sometimes big workshops. And I've been doing it for a year now. And I remember the first workshop I did, right, it's just my stomach turning and sweating. And I wrote out every word I was gonna say that day. And now I can present in front of 70 people and I don't need to it doesn't mean I don't get nervous. I've just I've learnt to regulate how I feel. And okay, I'm getting a little bit beyond you know, my mind's racing. Oh, wait, let me come back to my breathing. Let me just turn down the volume a little bit cool. I'm back. Yes, this isn't that big. I'll be okay. Here's why I've done this before. You know, it's that little like, I love the idea of like a volume dial, it's like, got up a little bit too high, I'm just going to turn it down a little bit. Or vice versa, you know, actually, I'm feeling like, I'm not giving this enough attention. This is important. I'm going to turn the volume up, right, I needed to be more dialed in. Because right now I'm feeling kind of lethargic. And it's not, you know, so it's not always too nervous, too anxious need to calm down sometimes, like, I'm not, it is really important, I need to kind of turn up, you know, and that comes back to the same tool. It's like, how do I use my breath to influence my nervous system to get to the appropriate state for the situation that I'm in? Well, and I

Laura Wakefield: 47:33

imagine like with you, you know, the first time that's pretty funny, actually, that you're thinking, I'm here in this workshop to teach people how to manage anxiety, but I'm feeling anxiety. I imagine as you go along and do that, that you start to trust the process more that I've managed this many, many times before, I know that this will work. So that can lead from ever spiraling in the first place.

Campbell Will: 47:55

Yeah, and this is it's such a, you know, this is not necessarily to do with breathwork. But I think it's a really important lesson. It's something that I've kind of learned and taught myself that the way that I like to teach around the nervous system, but also the brain is it's a prediction machine, right? It really wants to predict what's going to happen. And what it uses to predict is previous data or previous information. So the fact that I've taught 20 workshops, and they've all gone okay, now I start to predict this one will go okay, as well. But that first workshop have nothing in the background is data. So my brain FedEx worst possible outcome, you're going to forget what to say everyone's gonna laugh, you know? Because that's a predictive mechanism that says, let's prepare for the worst, and hope it doesn't happen. You know, we do have a negative bias in our brain that says, What is the worst? You know, if we think evolutionarily, the tweet breaks, we want to assume it's a tiger and be wrong, rather be like, it was probably just it gets me, right. We're designed to predict that what could go wrong, what my name is what could happen. But when I started to stack up a little bit of evidence, now I've done X amount of workshops. So now I've had X amount of conversations, or I've gone and done the ballroom dancing a few times, my brain is going to predict based on Well, the last one, I was really nervous, but it actually went fine. And I had a great time that is going to influence how you feel about the next one. And we're using these examples of you know, teaching a workshop or doing ballroom dancing, but it's true of anything, right? The more evidence that I can provide myself by doing this thing, and we can all attest to this, I don't even need to say most people made me feel this everyone does this, like think of the last time you had to do something difficult and how much worse it was gonna be in your head. Right? We build it up, it's all gonna go return and you get to the other side. That wasn't so bad. You know? You wanted everyone right on the other side of that challenge did it goes badly as you thought and everyone says no, I thought he's gonna get it actually went fine. You know? So we know we do this. And so we can start to use that as when I start to predict that everything's gonna go wrong. is just to go, wait, I always do this. And it's always okay. Let me just use that information now, right to predict that this will probably be okay as well, I don't need to go into worst case or what could go wrong, I'm just going to stick with, it always works out in the end. So this will be no different.

Laura Wakefield: 50:16

Well, and one thing that has helped me to is just to reframe my thinking about those feelings, whether they're good or bad, because like when you start to feel all that anxiousness and all that, you know, the stomach and the sweat and the nerves, you think that's, that's bad, but it's actually the exact same thing you feel right before you get on a roller coaster. Or if you go to a scary movie, and you paid money to do that on purpose, because reframed that in our mind is excitement. This in our mind is anxiety. And I imagine learning to control the breath gives you the presence of mind to redirect those thoughts rather, from good or bad to just this is my task at hand. This is what I'm doing now. So we don't have to go there.

Campbell Will: 50:59

Exactly. You know, there really isn't if we just looked snapshot physiology of some of its excited, and some of its anxious and scared. We can't really tell them into PA. Gov the way we tell them apart is you want to be here or you don't you know, right? And so, like you're saying is I can actually start to work with Yes, I'm feeling these things, am I labeling them as bad anxious things are going to go wrong. Or perhaps I can label them as this is me preparing it means a lot of focus. And start to instead of saying, I'm not going to feel these things impossible, I'm going to change what I labeled and how I feel about the sensations in my body. Because like you said, you know, your heart's pounding before you get on the roller coaster, your heart's pounding before you do this scary thing. You know, so you can label heart pounding, it means something is bad, or heart pounding, I'm really excited. Yeah,

Laura Wakefield: 51:49

heart pounding means that I'm about to have to give my all to something or to dive into something, you know, just changing that. So I saw I looked at all of your pages and everything. And I saw that you do physical therapy, you do teaching the breath work to individuals, right. But you also teach other people to become breathwork practitioners? Did I get that? Right?

Campbell Will: 52:10

You did. So kind of, uh, you know, I found just over the years that there was a bit of a missing a bit a bit of a hole in, you know, if you go whether it's to a physical therapist, or to a health coach, or to, you know, any health practitioner, there's a lack, like you pointed to right at the start of this conversation, there's a lack of understanding of well, what is good breathing? And how do I restore it? And how do I optimize it? And so I found that rather than me just working with individuals, what if I can equip, you know, health professionals to have this same lens that they can look through and be able to assess and be able to treat breathing in so over the last kind of four years, I've really been just kind of refining and working with groups of small health professionals, that they're not wanting to, you know, put down the stack that they're whatever profession and just do breath work, it's like, how do I integrate breathing into all of the other skills that I have. And that's where I see breath is most effective, it's a complementary tool, you know, if you like, all the stuff we spoke about today, if you can learn to kind of get the nervous system, you know, on board or into a different state, then all of the other things, you know, the exercise, the diet, the communication, all those things just work a little bit better, because my nervous system is in the appropriate state, my breathing is delivering oxygen to my cells and removing waste my point that all of these things kind of fit like pieces of a puzzle. And when we have all those pieces, I think that's where we get transformation, or we get healing, or we get progress. So I've kind of really, you know, focus my time and effort on creating what I wish I had five or six years ago. World of like, what I look for, how do I help it? Where are the things that I can address and move the needle? Most?

Laura Wakefield: 53:47

Absolutely. So I have a final question for you. But before I asked you that, tell everybody if they want to work with you or learn more about this work, where can they find you? Where can they go? To look you up?

Campbell Will: 54:02

Yeah, awesome. Everywhere, I'm at breast body therapy. So whether it's Facebook, Instagram, my website, my email is Campbell at breath body therapy. So if you just search breath, body therapy, you'll find me a month active on Instagram, that's where I like to just share as much of the educational content as I can. For those that maybe are health professionals that are interested in, you know, developing their ability to use breath, we run cohorts, three, sometimes four times a year. So the next one is in October. And to anyone else, that's kind of like, you know, I say this, when I have conversations that a lot of times people will have heard this conversation they go, that's all good and well, but for me, you know, we think we are excluded from this information for some reason, oh, I'm sure that works for some people that my anxiety or my panic or my sleep issues, they got restored by breathing, you know, and so I would just encourage you, if that's popping into your head as you listen to this conversation Mission, just kind of approach it with curiosity. In my experience over the last decade, there is no disease or dysfunction that isn't worsened by poor breathing, nor improved by good breathing. And so I'm not here standing and saying breathing fixes everything. I'm not that naive, nor is it that simple. But if I can cut them fix my breathing, does it then give me more energy? Or does it allow me to be less anxious, and then that opens up the door to the next tool that might help you along the way. And I think for a lot of people, it's like, it's almost like this domino, you know, we push this first domino over each other, they start breathing in a way that supports my body and supports my nervous system, then maybe I found sleeping better. And now that I'm sleeping better, I've got a little bit more energy to exercise. And now I'm exercising, I'm feeling a little bit more confident. So I approached, you know, it's really interesting catalyst for a lot of other changes that down the line you going wait, did that all come back from changing how I breathe, you know. And so the last thing I would leave people with is we don't try and get better at breathing, you get better at breathing. We try to get better at breathing to really allow the body to do what the body knows how to do, right, as we support it, and moving into the appropriate state for healing or for recovery, a whole grows. But a lot of that comes back to what is my breathing, telling my body and my nervous system?

Laura Wakefield: 56:22

Absolutely. And I've been, from what I've been hearing you say it can affect things that we never thought it, it could like insomnia, even maybe weight loss may be, you know, like, we all know, certain things, maybe anxiety, we've all heard that, that breathing can help with that. But I don't know that I would have ever thought breathing could help me lose weight or breathing could help me, you know, to sleep better? Or some of these things that seem to have no relation?

Campbell Will: 56:47

Yeah, it's to our breath. Exactly. And it's still surprises me today, Laura, you know, I work with people that their digestive issues go away. And they didn't come to me to say use breathing to fix my digestive issue, they also, but we uncovered you know, actually, the state that you're in while you eat right causes you to be bloated and to have pain and to react to food. And it's not the necessarily a sensitivity to a certain type of food, it's more the state that you're in because your breathing kept you in a sympathetic nervous system, meaning there's no blood flow in your digestive system, there's no digestive enzymes. And so yeah, the way that you breathe will shift you into a digestive state. And that might clear up a lot of these digestive issues that you've been trying to solve for a long time. And, you know, I see it a lot with chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. Yeah. And so again, people think what, how does that relate to breathing. But if we zoom in and understand how your cells create energy, and if they're not getting oxygen, what happens to the accumulated waste, you know, it all starts to make a little bit more sense. And it, you know, there's, there's layers and of depths that we can go into here. But those that are listening is just kind of, again, come back to curiosity, what if, you know, my digestive issues could be helped by me actually correcting our breathing? What if there's long term and Vanya was actually to do with the state that my nervous systems in and I've forgotten how to find the off switch, which I can practice through breathing? But what if the pain that I'm in, you know, my pain threshold or perception changes based on the state of my nervous system? You know, I'm more sensitive to pain, when I'm in that state of stress and anxiety, because it's protective? And so all of these things that, if you're thinking, Yeah, but how can it really help with this? I would love to have a conversation with you know, send me a message on Instagram and say, This is my problem. How does breathing relate to this? You know, and approach it with a bit of resistance, say, he's not gonna be able to answer this, but I love how, like far reaching these things can be. And a lot of the times it's when people go, You know what, I've tried everything, why not give this a go? That they then find the thing? You know, that's like, oh,

Laura Wakefield: 58:52

here, it isn't. Isn't that funny, too, that we tend to start with the most complicated solutions, rather than just give a try to the ones that seem too simple? Yeah. Before we figure out that, that really was the answer. And I will say this, so I originally connected with you on Instagram, and you gave out so much great information on Instagram. So if people just go follow you there, they'll really get a sense of who you are and what you're doing and how knowledgeable you are about this.

Campbell Will: 59:26

Yeah. And I tried to, you know, that's where I just funnel most of my content into because I think that's, you can learn a lot, right of like, oh, well, let me try that, you know, one minute practice. And that's where people go, you know, well, actually, I do feel a little bit different. What could be the next thing that I try? What if I do that one minute practice for five minutes? So what if I do it three times a day, you know, and that's where you start to build always this cumulative effect, that then starts to really change how you feel.

Laura Wakefield: 59:52

Absolutely. Well, my last question for you. The underlying theme of this podcast is seeking greater peace and joy in life. And so there's a little A bit of a softball pitch question. But how does breathwork lead people toward greater joy in their life?

Campbell Will: 1:00:08

I think breath allows us to be more present with, you know, the moments that can often get lost in the noise and the stimulus and the To Do lists. And if I can, you know, bring myself back to this present, present moment and appreciate, you know, the joy and the peace and the beauty of whatever is happening right now around me, you know, and that's not to say that we just pretend everything's good. But often there are these little moments, you know, that can be a moment of bliss, or joy or presence, if we actually have the ability to sit and be with it, you know, but if my mind is always racing, and my body's always tense, it's very hard to appreciate those moments, because I'm just kind of being bounced around like a bit of a pinball. And so breath gives us that opportunity to, you know, be a little bit more present with each breath. And in that be a little bit more present with each book.

Laura Wakefield: 1:01:00

I totally agree with you, I say that often, the joy is all around you all the time. It's just so often, we simply don't notice it. We just blow right past it and learning how to control your breath. Sounds like it just brings you down into a center.

Campbell Will: 1:01:17

Yeah, and notice those things that we're often failing to recognize or failing to notice, you know, because we are always rushing over there always is nothing to do. And through the breath, you know, that's with us. 20. You know, we breathe 25,000 times everyday, like, how many breaths today? Did I notice? Right? And was I grateful for? Yeah, most zero, you know, oh, I noticed that one breath, which was a sigh of frustration. Right? But what if, you know, I often pose this to people, maybe tomorrow, you can try and be present and aware of 1% of the breaths you take in a day? Just 1% Right? That's probably 200 breaths, you know? Yeah. But imagine if 200 times you just pause and you felt gratitude for this arriving inhale. And as you exhale, you felt your body relaxed, and then you've moved on, you forgot about it, you know. And then 10 minutes later, an hour later, you go, Oh, here's a moment. And you really felt the breath. Right as it enters your body as it does 10s of 1000s of rounds. But you were sat within your present, you are grateful of it. I think you'll be very surprised at what happens at the end of the day. Because, you know, like you said, how many moments of joy that were all around me that I missed? Yeah. But the thing like well, I had that really beautiful moment where I stopped and I paused and I felt the wind and I took that breath. And then I kind of moved on. And those things build up,

Laura Wakefield: 1:02:33

get low visit is amazing. And again, like you said, it's not that you just walk around with rose colored glasses and ignore the fact that there's, of course, there's problems. But that's all the more reason to return all the joy that you can. It doesn't make the problems go away. But it sure makes that moment more of a moment of bliss.

Campbell Will: 1:02:57

That couldn't agree more.

Laura Wakefield: 1:02:58

Thank you so much for being my guest today. Campbell, this has been a great conversation. And I would encourage everybody to go follow you on Instagram and learn from you and just look up all the different ways that you might be able to help them.

Campbell Will: 1:03:12

Well, thank you. It's been a pleasure to come in and dive into a conversation that I think is you know, I love to talk about it sounds like you do as well as say I appreciate the time. Absolutely. Have a wonderful

Laura Wakefield: 1:03:23

day everybody. Thank you for joining me today on the joy Felicity podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and share and come follow me on all major social media sites at Joy Felicity or on my website, Joy felicity.com. You can follow the link in the description for this episode to all of the places that we can connect. Have a great day everybody and remember, dare to dream. Plan to play live to learn