The Benefits of Breathwork with Samantha Skelly

george grombacher 0:01
Samantha Skelly is the founder and creator of pause breathwork. She’s an award winning speaker, author, entrepreneur and podcaster. Welcome to the show, Samantha.

Samantha Skelly 0:10
Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

george grombacher 0:12
I’m really excited to have you on tell us about your personal lives, more about your work and why you do what you do.

Samantha Skelly 0:19
So I love to have fun. I love to create things. And growing up as a dancer and a child actress, I’ve always been in, I’ve been in love with creativity and performance, and specifically the intersection of both of those things. And so I I’ve really, you know, chased those things my whole life, and then I found the beautiful world of business, and I’m like, Oh my gosh, a place where I can just, like, pour my creativity into I can help a ton of people, and I can have fun and still, like, honor the part of me that loves to perform. Like, what a great thing. And so about 15 years ago, I was in Bali, and I found breath work, and I breath work changed my life in so many ways. It helped me realize that we are all our own drug, and we have the capacity to heal our nervous systems, to feel alive, feel inspired, feel excited. And it brought me to this place of just extreme joy and alignment. And I never thought that I would start a breath work company, but eight years after just being a student of breath work, I just thought, wow, the world needs to breathe like we need to breathe. We need to breathe more. We need to realize that we are our own drug. We need to realize that we have the ability to regulate our nervous system through our breath and and so I started pause in 2017 and we’re now one of the largest breath work companies worldwide, and I’ve trained 1000s of people and our method, the main thing that we do is we train people to become breath work facilitators, and then we also have a breath work app.

george grombacher 2:00
What a crazy life we’re living. I

Samantha Skelly 2:01
know it’s wild, right? It’s a wild I sell oxygen. It’s great.

george grombacher 2:07
And so I work with money, and just because people deal with money every day doesn’t mean they have any idea how to effectively use it. I breathe every day. Samantha, but that probably doesn’t mean that I know anything about the potential of harnessing my breath. Yeah,

Samantha Skelly 2:29
yeah. So oftentimes we’re all just breathing to survive, and what we teach at pause breath work is, how do we actually breathe to thrive? How do we use our breath to heal our trauma, clear our pain, clear our suffering, tap into these beautiful energies that we all desire to be in, right? It’s like, why do people want to make a lot of money? They want to make a lot of money because they want to feel free. They want to feel peaceful, right? Well, what if we could use breath in order to activate those energies. Every single emotional state is connected to a breath pattern, right? How do we breathe when we’re anxious, it’s like, all up in our chest and it’s quick and it’s rapid and it’s irregular, right? Like, right? How do we breathe when we’re on vacation, we’re super relaxed, like, well, we can change the mechanics of the breath in order to manipulate our energetic state to actually begin to feel these things that we desire to feel right. And so the breath allows us, there’s, there’s breathing, like I said, breathing to survive, which is just, you know, not really paying attention to it, but then realizing that we could actually intentionally, consciously breathe in order to bring ourselves into deeper states of joy, peace, love, liberation, connection, and that’s what so many of us have forgotten over the years.

george grombacher 3:53
I think everybody who’s listening will certainly identify with what you just said, that that quick, shallow breathing of when I’m super stressed, or I’m pissed, or when I’m on the beach and I’m just staring at the ocean, I don’t breathe like that at all. Totally.

Samantha Skelly 4:07
Right? Yeah. And so we can actually change the way that we feel. Oftentimes, we live in a world where it’s like, let me change the external so that I can feel better, right? That’s kind of how we’re all designed, right? Let me change this. But with breath work, it’s like the complete opposite of like, let me change my internal environment. Let me change the energy that’s existing within my body so that my reality looks different, right? All our whole life is just a hologram, right? It’s a hologram of our beliefs. It’s a hologram of our energy. It’s a hologram of our identities. And so when we can change the inside, it gives us a completely new reality, right? Oftentimes, people are like, I want to make crap load of money because I want to feel free. Well, what if you could feel free first and then go make a crap load of money? Because I will feel that. Will be amazing as. Well, but don’t do it in order to feel free. That’s how we get trapped in or caught in this destination addiction, right? If I need more, I need more. I need more more. I need a bigger bank account. I need to buy more Bitcoin. I need a bigger house. I need big more and more and more and more and more. It’s like, well, growth, for the sake of growth, is cancer. So why don’t we figure out, what is that enough place? And let’s get there and so, so that we’re not operating from this place of lack and limitation every single day.

george grombacher 5:31
Destination, addiction, for sake of growth, is cancer. These are, these are powerful, powerful terms, sayings, combination of words that I really like a lot, and I think a lot about how it’s like, once I achieve this thing, then I’m going to start feeling a certain way. But it’s just so backwards, so backwards. And we have access to, or it’s we all have access to, the ability to to use breath as a tool that will get us to the frame of mind or the feeling at both that will then that position us to get whatever actual thing that we think that we want. Yeah,

Samantha Skelly 6:10
yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And so it’s like when we think about when we think about it, right? What are those things that we want in our life? We want a really beautiful relationship, right? We want a we want a lot of money, we want a great job, we want to be able to travel. We want to be so what is the feeling that those things bring to us? Or what do we think is, what do we think it’s going to bring to us? Because it doesn’t always. It doesn’t always right when we enter into the relationship, it doesn’t always. It’s not always full of like joy and bliss and amazing, like there’s also but what do we think the feeling is going to be, and how can we focus energetically on feeling that feeling first, through focus, through breath, work, through visualization. And how can we flood our bodies full of that’s that felt sense of freedom, that felt sense of peace, that felt sense of just like goodness. And then we’re operating not from a place of lack, of, how do I, how do I perform to get that feeling, but we’re operating from a place of abundance. And then the things that we do choose to chase in life is not coming from this place of deficit. It’s coming from a place of overflow. And that’s a completely different way of living

george grombacher 7:22
that is that is totally different. I wrote down having versus possessing, because I think, I think that that’s what you said. And yeah, we all have these ideas of, once I get that thing, that relationship, that car, the job, the money, then I gonna, then gonna feel a certain way. Or, I think that we all can, can relate and experience, but it’s going back that we’re sort of twisting it around. Why not start feeling that way? And isn’t we’re essentially chasing that feeling because that’s why we do everything. Is how we feel about it?

Samantha Skelly 7:57
Yeah. I mean, we’re motivated by emotion, so if we can just reverse engineer it, then we can feel that way first. Doesn’t mean we’re not going to have ambitions and chase things, but we’re going to do it, and it’s going to feel better. It’s going to feel more alive, it’s going to feel more exciting. It’s going to feel more connected. You know, if I’m already feeling whole, aligned, free, peace, full of love. I’m still going to have the energy to build businesses and make money and drive nice cars, but I’m not going to be doing it because I don’t think I’m good enough. I’m going to be doing it because I’m like, Man, life is so great, and these things exist. Why not me? And so the energy behind it, it’s going to be, it’s going to be so much different.

george grombacher 8:40
So it’s more of a it’s more of fundamentally, it’s not, I’m not pursuing these things because I’m deficient or in a position of lack. That’s that’s maybe my current state. But the potential is that by going through this and understanding how my breathing breath work, can alter my feelings, my state, I do that, and then I’m still pursuing those things that I want, but it’s for different reasons. It’s not exactly trying to fill some hole that’s inside of myself Exactly,

Samantha Skelly 9:14
exactly you got it. And when we do that, then we radiate a different energy. There’s an aliveness, there’s a magnetism. And in my experience, money is attracted to joy. Money is attracted to energy, right? It’s like in my business, the happier I am, the more playful I am, the more joyful I am. Things just work out. You know, things are just working out. But if I’m, like, stressing out, or I’m in scarcity, or I’m in self doubt or whatever it is, like, everything kind of contracts. So how do we intentionally get ourselves into these energies? Well, breath, work and focus, and really asking ourselves, like, how do I want to feel? And claiming that in the morning, when I wake. Up in the morning, I set the energy for my day. I’m like, How do I want to feel today? Maybe it’s joyful, maybe it’s connected, maybe it’s present, maybe it’s loving, maybe it’s confidence, whatever it is. And how can I use my breath and how can I breathe in? So say it’s confidence, right? Two breaths in, one out, like breathing in that feeling of confidence. We all we all know it. We’ve all felt that once in our life, hopefully, and then we’re breathing out anything that’s not aligned with that feeling of confidence. And so we’re setting the energy for the day, and we’re allowing ourselves to sink into that feeling first thing in the morning.

george grombacher 10:40
So I want to talk a lot about how to actually do it and that thing, but I also just wanted to really circle back on how true it is that I don’t think that any of us are attractive to anything else, be it a romantic partner, success, money, when because we can all see somebody or know somebody who is not attractive because they’ve got a crappy attitude, or they feel like they’re deficient or not enough, whatever, totally so that makes all the sense in the world. And why wouldn’t money and success be any different? So So I totally agree with that. So, okay, so, so let me ask the the question I should have asked before, which is, how does it How does it work?

Unknown Speaker 11:28
How does it work? How do I do it?

george grombacher 11:31
Tell me how to do it. So, so

Samantha Skelly 11:33
there’s different breath patterns for different outcomes, right? So, if you want to feel energized, that’s a different breath pattern than if you want to feel grounded and relaxed. And so let’s start. I’ll give you both. So the breath pattern, if you’re feeling sluggish, if you’re feeling like, oh, I need another cup of coffee or whatever, I love doing this breath pattern, it’s called the triactive breath. So take your left hand, place it on your belly, and your right hand on your chest, and we breathe into the belly through the mouth, first up into the chest, out through the mouth. So it sounds like this,

making sure that that exhale is longer than the inhale. So when that exhale is longer than the inhale, we’re stimulating our parasympathetic nervous system, which is our rest and digest. We’re adding more energy into our body, and we’re just feeling the sense of just aliveness, if we want to feel relaxed. So if you have anxiety, probably don’t do that one because it might make you feel more anxious, because it’s more energizing, right? If you have anxiety, the best one to do is in through the nose, all the way up, and just let the exhale fall out of your mouth. Don’t force it like the first one, and just allow that exhale again to be longer than the inhale, that will allow your body to down regulate and let your system know that you’re safe and you’re not going to be attacked and you’re not everything’s okay. And so those are two different types of breaths to really depending on the outcome. Breath work has this interesting point around eight minutes, where zero to eight, you’re kind of in your conscious mind, you still sort of know what’s going on. But if you pass that eight, eight minute mark, the because what we’re doing is we’re stimulating the amygdala, which is the Center for our emotional control and our survival strategies. It sort of mitigates our survival strategies and allows us to go into sort of an altered state of consciousness. That’s when we can really do some of like that, deep healing on our body, releasing trauma, letting go of stories, letting go of identities, and we can really shift our perception of reality. And so for people who are experienced breath workers, definitely try more than eight minutes and just see how that feels. If you’re just starting out, start under eight minutes.

george grombacher 14:05
Got it and so I’ll just use language, different tactics, different techniques. Yeah, you mentioned so it’s, it’s, it’s probably breaths coming from your belly, your chest, breathing in, breathing out, the the, like, when and how, how long I’m holding it. So, it’s, it’s, so it’s probably a lot, yeah,

Samantha Skelly 14:30
yeah. And it’s all, it all comes back to, like, what’s the outcome? Okay, right? What’s the outcome? Do you want to go on? Do you just want to relax? Okay, well, just do some deep breathing for under eight minutes. Do you want to go on a journey where you’re healing some deeper wounds? Lie down and do it a little longer? So the way that we’ve set up the breath work app, the pause app, is anywhere from three minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes, 25 minutes, 45 minutes. So depending on what it is that you want, there’s. Different tracks for every experience, but it’s really about asking yourself, How do I want to feel the end of this and then choosing the breath pattern, whether it’s an energizing one or a grounding one,

george grombacher 15:10
strikes me that you maybe chose a field that apps are perfectly designed for. So I don’t necessarily need to know how to do this. I just need to be able

Speaker 1 15:19
to follow along exactly. You can just press play, and I got you which is, which is awesome.

george grombacher 15:27
And certainly I’ll learn how to do it on my own, but unless I’m without my phone, but then I’ll certainly learn how to do it. So that’s, that’s that that’s a pretty incredible thing. How many different, different journeys, for lack of a better term, do to have a do use or incorporate

Samantha Skelly 15:45
on the app? There’s, there’s hundreds of different tracks on the app, but there’s a lot of things that influence the breath experience, right? So the breath pattern has an impact on the on the outcome, right? On the journey the duration, right? If we’re breathing for three minutes, it’s gonna be going to be very different than if we’re breathing for three hours, right? My very first breath work session, I was in Bali, and I had no idea what breath work was. I just like, walked into this class, and it was a three hour breath work class, and I was like, What just happened to me? I was like, so blown out of my body, but it was a divinely happened, because I probably wouldn’t be here right now if that didn’t happen. So duration and then music, right there’s a huge difference between, like, really soft meditative music and like, tribal beats that’s going to have an impact on the journey as well. The energy in the space is going to have an impact on the journey. The intention going into the breath work session is going to have an impact on the journey. So just depending on what you’re what you want, what you’re after, and the outcome, there’s so many different ways that you can do

george grombacher 16:58
it. Do most people breathe enough? Do we have enough oxygen in our bodies? Is that knowable?

Samantha Skelly 17:04
No, yeah, our, like, lung capacity is directly related to so many health concerns, primarily longevity, right? And so we’re using like 12% of our lung capacity on any you know we’re so we’re such shallow breathers, no one really takes deep breaths, right? I do it all day long. And sometimes when I’m in public and I’m like, Ah, people are like, what’s wrong? You know? Because sometimes we are only taking deep breaths when we’re like, stressed out. But the more that we can increase our lung capacity, it has such incredible health benefits. And I mean, there’s emotional health benefits, obviously, and there’s, you know, calming down our nervous system, releasing stress, releasing fear, all of that kind of stuff. But then there’s very clear physical benefits to doing breath work as well. A lot of, you know, a lot of breath work is done with, you know, Navy Seals and things like that, to help calm down their nervous system so they have, like precision in their performance. And a lot of other sports use breath work a lot for performance. But then there’s, you know, emotional reasons to do it, physical reasons to do it as well. It’s just, it’s a beautiful practice, and we just don’t breathe enough.

george grombacher 18:13
Is it possible to trace it back? Like, what’s the earliest uses of breath work? Probably really, really, really, a long time ago.

Samantha Skelly 18:19
Yeah. So it’s an ancient, ancient, ancient modality from the east. There’s a practice called tummo, which the Tibetan Buddhist created, and it was all like belly breathing, like, and a lot, a lot of breath work was used to stay warm, actually, which is, you know, Breath of Fire, all that kind of stuff, where that came from is, like, to keep the body warm, and then they began to realize, like, oh, wait a second, this has emotional benefits. It has spiritual benefits. A lot of religions use it to connect deeper to God, right? When we’re when we’re out of our sort of monkey mind, and out of our mental, mental mind, we have a deeper connection. To call it God, universe, source, however you whatever, whatever you call that, it helps us connect a lot deeper. And so a lot, a lot of times, it’s, it was used in, you know, spiritual practices and things like that. In the east, in the ancient times, there’s breath work is getting popular. Again. It’s, it’s, I mean, I live in Southern California, so, like, all like, this spiritual, you know, people live here, and so breath work is super popular here. People in like, maybe, like Kansas, maybe not so much. But it’s, it’s, it’s having its wave back. You know, it’s like, 25 years ago, yoga was like the biggest thing ever, right? Everyone started doing yoga. Breath work is beginning to have a little bit more of that momentum. So, yeah,

george grombacher 19:44
I think it’s a really, really interesting thing. And we, I think for better, have been really interested in human optimization, and how can I get more done? And probably a byproduct of that is more people are interested. It in breath work, and that’s not necessarily the right reason, not that there’s a wrong reason to get into breath work, but certainly probably introducing it to more people. And people like Wim Hof and and everything he’s doing is probably making its way into more mainstream, people outside of of the epicenters of of wellness, things like that. So I definitely agree with what you’re saying. And I know that’s something that I’ve used, and use it on a daily basis, just deep breaths and stuff like that. But what I wanted to what was important about that, from my perspective, is just that I experience almost a sense of being high when I do some of Wim Hoss breathing. So it’s pretty wild. And I do it for for athletic competition. Because if I wake up and I do very early, and then I’m going to do some kind of competition later in the day, if I don’t do the breath work, then I’m just, I don’t perform as well as I want. Yeah,

Samantha Skelly 20:54
getting high off your own supply. George, that’s what it says was happening. You know, it’s like, it’s natural DMT, that’s why you feel that high, you know, in the body, it’s like releasing chemicals in the brain, which is, it’s shifting our perspective, because that high feeling, well, if we think about it, it’s like when we take when we drink alcohol, when we do drugs or whatever. It has the same impact of it’s quieting down that survival strategy, right? If the survival strategy is like, don’t talk to that girl, right? You have some tequilas, and it’s like, definitely go talk to that girl, right? So it has that same impact, right? By mitigating the response of the amygdala, which allows us to actually just feel out out of our ego, right? When we’re out of our ego, we’re connecting D words to our hearts, to our souls. And that’s that’s that natural good feeling, and we can use the breath to tap into that, you know.

george grombacher 21:50
So what you’re saying is, the next time I’m nervous about approaching stranger in a bar, I should just do some really, really deep breathing right in front

Samantha Skelly 21:58
of them. Make sure you walk right up to them and just start breathing right in front of them, okay? And then talk to them, yeah, exactly. That’s exactly. Let me know how it goes. Okay? I want that loop to be closed door. That’ll be an

george grombacher 22:12
essential follow up, for sure.

Unknown Speaker 22:13
Exactly

george grombacher 22:15
they got kidding aside, talked about just everything that we’re talking about when we’re taking a break to do breath work, if it’s two minutes, three minutes, 10 minutes, five hours, we’re taking a break. And what a wonderful gift that is, aside from the benefits that we’re going to be receiving from the actual breath work, yeah, just, just the pause, yeah.

Samantha Skelly 22:36
You know, it’s funny. I before I became an entrepreneur, I worked a lot in restaurants, and I was never a smoker, but I was so annoyed when people were allowed to have smoke breaks, right? They would go outside, they would really, obviously, they were puffing them on a cigarette, but they were breathing for 15 minutes, and they were out there in the sunshine, and there I was just, I couldn’t have a smoke break because I wasn’t a smoker. And so I’m like, I said to my manager, I’m like, I want to have a 15 minute break where I just go outside and breathe. And they’re like, Well, what do you mean? And I’m like, well, they’re allowed to. And they’re like, you’re just gonna do nothing for 15 minutes and get paid for I’m like, they are,

Speaker 1 23:17
yes, they let me. Like, I would go on these like, breath breaks, and I would go,

Samantha Skelly 23:22
just sit and take 15 minutes and breathe, and it would be a good time.

george grombacher 23:27
Yeah, I think I’ve certainly had those thoughts as well, and I’ve been on both sides of that equation, as the smoker and and and and the non smoker. But that’s neither here nor there, but it certainly makes sense. Well, Samantha, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you and tell us? Where we can find the pause app as well? Definitely.

Samantha Skelly 23:47
So the best place to get involved in all things pause is on my instagram at Samantha Skelly. From there, you can find the whole pause world the app if you just search pause breath work in the app stores, whether you’re on iOS or Android. It’s a little orange icon. There’s a free 14 day trial, so you can check it out. And, yeah, come on by. Come to Instagram. Let me know you heard me on on the show. I’d love to meet you Excellent.

george grombacher 24:10
Well, if you enjoyed this bunches, I did show Samantha your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas. Go to you can find Samantha on Instagram at Samantha Skelly, s, a m, a m, T, H, A, S, K, E, L, L, y, and then find the pause, breath, work app in iTunes or the the two app stores that that we use. No, I just had a blank on it’s not gonna, it’s not gonna just find its way back into my brain. It’s, it’s an orange app, and take advantage of that 14 day promo. Check it all out and let Sam Samantha know that that you heard about her on the lifeblood podcast. Thanks again, Samantha. Thank

Samantha Skelly 24:51
you so much for having me. This

george grombacher 24:52
was so fun till next time. Remember, do your part by doing your best. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.