3. Breathwork for Anxious Humans with Acupuncturist Cayly Christensen

If you're like 99.99% of the people I know (including myself), meditation doesn't come naturally or easily for you.

And yet…Meditation seems to be the magic wand that everyone is waving around. ⠀

• Can't sleep? Meditate.
• Not motivated? Feeling lost? Meditate.
• Depressed? Anxious? Meditate.

But...Every time you sit down to meditate, your monkey brain clicks on, the thoughts race, you feel bored, the list of things you *should* be doing instead starts firing.⠀

It's just so uncomfortable. And boring. And potentially even triggering. And you're left thinking…"When does the goddamn peace and enlightenment come in? Am I doing this wrong? I am so bad at this." 

Dear One, I *hear* you. 

You're not doing it wrong. But you are viewing meditation through a one-size fits all model. 

Here's the thing. Anyone CAN meditate. However, the access point to meditation can look different for everyone. Join my fellow acupuncturist Cayly Christensen and I as we talk about giving yourself permission to approach meditation in a way that feels good to you and what that can look like.

HERE’S A PEEK AT WHAT WE’LL CONNECT OVER IN THIS EPISODE

• What anxiety is and why sitting meditation can be a triggering tool for some humans
• How hypervigilance can be a learned behavior from childhood even if you didn’t have a particularly traumatic early life
• Giving yourself permission to use the tools that work for you and asking your body what it is craving in the moment rather than doing what everyone else is doing

Cayly Christensen’s Website // Instagram

Breathwork teachers that get Cayly's stamp of approval: 

• Jennifer Patterson @corpusritual
• Annalise Sullivan @spiritedroots
• Amy Kuretsky @amykuretsky

Kat HoSoo Lee is an Emotional Alchemy Coach, Spiritual Business Mentor and host of The Emotional Alchemy Podcast.

She loves playing in the space where science and spirituality converge because this is where we get to experience emotional alchemy. In her work, she educates space-holders about somatic physiology and environmental biology so they can deepen their practices of listening and presence which ultimately helps them expand their capacity to hold space for others.

As a Spiritual Business Mentor, she guides soulful entrepreneurs to approach their business as a spiritual practice. The work bridges the emotional landscape with practical tools which allow them to cultivate businesses that are rooted in conscious values, relational marketing and purposeful service.

• Youtube
• Instagram

Chapters

• 2:00 The trouble with a one-size fits all model around meditation
• 2:40 Invitation to Patreon. Supporting the podcast can be as little as $3/month.
• 4:38 Introduction to Cayly Christensen
• 7:18 Kat to Cayly: “What led you into breathwork?” Where does anxiety come from?
• 9:45 In the 90’s nobody was talking about anxiety
• 11:50 The body holds anxiety
• 13:36 Meditation doesn’t work for everyone. In fact, for some humans, sitting meditation can be a trigger for panic attacks.
• 15:45 If the body doesn’t have an opportunity to discharge energy, it feels like putting a lid on a pot of boiling water
• 16:30 There is nothing wrong with you if you need to access meditation through other means than just sitting
• 18:00 The access point to meditation for Cayly was through movement
• 23:00 Shifting energy from anxiety to excitement is easier than shifting energy from anxiety to zen
• 23:45 Anxiety is not pathological
• 24:55 Stress cycle video on Youtube
• 25:50 Our bodies don’t feel safe to shift into parasympathetic because it is so unfamiliar for many of us because we live in a sympathetic dominant world
• 26:20 The problem with sitting meditation for anxious humans is that we are not allowing ourselves to complete the stress cycle
• 28:14 Breathwork can invoke an emotional release
• 31:40 Threats are not always life-or-death
• 32:25 Inner Child work
• 33:30 Cayly talks about how hypervigilance developed for her in childhood
• 36:10 Kat to Cayly: “Do you have a clear memory of when you were able to sink into presence?”
• 38:20 Give yourself the permission to use what tools works for you
• 38:45 Anything can be meditation - even lifting heavy objects!
• 40:50 There is no one-size-fits-all in health, wellness and healing
• 41:35 For Kat, meditation began with roller derby
• 43:35 The tools that you’re using will likely change over time
• 44:30 The missing piece to meditation comes before the meditation. Which is to ask yourself “What does my body need right now?”
• 53:15 Cayly shares what a breathwork session with her looks like
• 1:05:05 If you found the conversation to be valuable, screenshot, share and tag me on Instagram. And be sure to subscribe on iTunes if you don’t want to miss any episodes.