Patrick Obolgogiani (00:08)
Alice, Jarrod welcome. You've both had quite interesting journeys from either architecture or being a lawyer into breath work. I'd love to hear what inspired you to take that leap and was there maybe a defining moment that made that kind of real for you that, that is what I want to do. mean, we can start with you, Alice.

Alice Dommert (00:30)
Sure, yeah, I was a young architect, married to an architect with architecture babies and suddenly realized after 9-11 when I was a mom and trying to get business that I had run out of tools. And so at that point I took a mindfulness class and that eventually led me to breath work and the realization that I did have a tool that was with me all the time that I could use.

that would really make a difference mainly in my inner world but then in that the way that I interacted and saw the outer world.

Patrick Obolgogiani (01:00)
Hmm. What, if I, if I may go a bit deeper there, like what did that, the lack of tools, how did it was representing itself? it anxiety? Like what was the inner world look like before you started utilizing breathwork?

Alice Dommert (01:11)
Yeah.

It's not a very story I'm proud of, my children were yelling and I got a new slip cover for my couch and I covered it. my son came downstairs the next morning and was just trying to rip it apart because he wanted his old couch. And I started yelling at him and he looked at me like I was crazy.

when a three year old is looking at you like, what is wrong with you? Why are you yelling at me over a couch? I sort of, that was the moment that I caught myself of just, wasn't being the parent, I wasn't being the partner, I really wasn't being the person that I wanted to be. And so that was really time for me to sort of step back and say what matters and realize that, you know, I kind of crossed a personal line of how, what my behavior was. It took me a little while before the information

mindfulness crossed my desk and then you we talk about mindfulness and meditation but meditation is a focus on the breath. That's really the first step. think your breath becomes the anchor and you start to realize that when you put attention on that breath slows down.

And so really is a breathing practice in the sense of what happens for you. So yeah, that was really the moment that look on my son's face. I don't think I'll ever forget that of a three-year-old looking at you like, you're crazy. What's wrong with you, lady?

Patrick Obolgogiani (02:25)
Thank you, Alice So appreciate you sharing that. I can only imagine. And also I think we've all had those micro moments when we've not been the person we want to be, especially with our children when they sometimes get the best of us. But it's a good moment to reflect on. What about you, Jarrod? You also had an interesting journey from legal side towards breath work. would that look like?

Jarrod Matteson (02:47)
All right. Yeah. So I was a, I was a lawyer for just about 20 years. I practice commercial real estate law. I was at a couple of different firms, but live in the kind of big law life. And, uh, but even before that, really for more like 25 years, I've had some kind of mindfulness or meditation or some practice and I've tried all kinds of different tools over the years.

Way back in the late 90s, I started with Zen meditation. And so I always had this thing that I kept going back to. And that ebbed and flowed. My legal career became very all-consuming, taking a lot of time. But it's something, these different tools and practices are things that I kept going back to.

And so in some ways I view it's from the outside, it might look like I made a sudden big shift, right? I had a 20 year legal career that I left almost a year ago and started this breath work company and joining Alice in her corporate wellness company. But in a lot of ways it was more like coming home. I've been doing this on the side.

even longer. And so it was more of a just listening to myself and in alignment with what I really wanted to do, what I found my purpose to be in life and how I can help people better. I think I helped a lot of people as a lawyer, but I think I can help more people in a more meaningful way through breath work. So that's the short version of my story.

Patrick Obolgogiani (04:21)
from previous discussions, I know you also had like me, past experience of knowing what it's like when it's difficult to breathe, right? As a kid.

Jarrod Matteson (04:30)
Yeah, for sure. I had sport induced asthma as a kid and I got diagnosed with that, I think in high school. And so I had an inhaler and did all that. it first, my first asthma attack was when I was a little bit younger. I was maybe 10 or 12 playing basketball and I just had, it was maybe the level of

intensity of that game just like went up a notch or something. I kind of hit a new level of competition among my peers, but something just happened and I just felt this tightness in my chest and it was kind of scary and I could quickly spiraled out and started hyperventilating. And that did not feel good. And it got to the point where I was really like huffing and puffing as I was going up and down the court and it got to the point where I...

Like this is not good. I had to kind of sit down. They called time out and it was this whole big, big episode. And I was in like full panic mode. It wasn't great. And so I remember though, so my, think it was my dad or a coach or somebody brought over a brown paper bag that I started breathing into. And I've since done a little research about that. That's not the safest thing to do.

But there's something about like recycling the carbon dioxide that's actually helping. cause when you're hyperventilating, you're over breathing. And so I'm losing too much CO2. so that's causing me to shift into this sort of sympathetic state. but, but what I remember is that I could see the bag inflating and deflating and that just helped me. Settle my mind a bit. It helped me start to calm down. And so slowly I kind of regained my breath.

And so it's not, that wasn't this like, okay, now I'm going to be a breath work guy, you know, from that moment. But that's in retrospect, it's, it really taught me that you have, each of us has a fair amount of control over our physical, mental and emotional state through our breath. And it was that visualization of the bag that really helped me understand that on some level.

Patrick Obolgogiani (06:35)
I'm curious because you mentioned it's not the thing you do now. Obviously we're not giving medical advice here, but if someone close to you was having that kind of hyperventilation attack, what would you tell them to do? Just curious.

Jarrod Matteson (06:50)
Yeah, I would. It's so what the bag was doing was helping me slow down my breath. And so like I was saying, if you're hyperventilating or over breathing and so you're getting rid of too much carbon dioxide. And so I would encourage a deeper breath in through the nose if you could, if it's at a point where it's too much and you, you can't do that in through the mouth is, it's fine to help things kind of settle. But

get to a point where you're doing a deeper, nice deep diaphragmatic belly breath, and then really slow extend the exhale as best you can. And that might be difficult at first, but to keep with that and try to get to the point where your exhales are maybe like double the length of your inhales. And that's going to really settle things and allow that carbon dioxide to get back into your system.

Patrick Obolgogiani (07:42)
What do we talk about something you both work on, which is helping people in their workplace to actually feel, feel better. it's something actually my first company, this was like 15 years ago, I had a kind of a little startup where we're trying to help people at their workplace specifically with these 15 minute, almost like brain movements breaks in the afternoon to avoid that fatigue and stress and so forth that you experience. And something I found at least

back then is that the people that were already feeling great, they were the ones showing up to those things. And the ones who actually would want to have there who might be like, you know, fatigued or whatever, whatever else, they were not really coming in. were kind of, that's something I'm interested in. I guess I'm curious to hear maybe first from you, Alice, because you're, you know, coming from the architecture background. How do you think about designing the programs you do with Jarrod when it comes to the corporate, corporate environment?

Alice Dommert (08:39)
Yeah, that's such a great question. whenever Jarrod was talking about exercise induced asthma, was thinking about work induced panic. fact, we don't have brown paper bags in the office. One of the things that we did was we actually created a 15 minute program, but we call it a Fix instead of a break.

Patrick Obolgogiani (08:46)
You

Alice Dommert (08:58)
So we kind of even start at that level and that's become one of our most popular programs because if you are offering, it's always about, know, in business we're talking about, do you focus on the pain or do you focus on kind of the aspiration? So even at that first level, we're saying like, this is something that you can come and in 15 minutes we'll give you a tool.

Most of our work is based in positive psychology and again, it's giving people that here's a solution and here's a prevention. And the great thing about breath work and when we talk about breath work, we talk about three pathways. We talk about tools, which is like in the moment.

With breath work, people can immediately feel, even when you do three breaths, just inhale, exhale, they can immediately feel it. So you don't have to spend a whole lot of time on the evidence about what's happening. They already sort of feel that calming and they already start to see, these tools work. And then that's what builds their curiosity. We all are programmed that way. Like we have to have a success and usually a quick success. And then we'll say like, what's behind this? And we'll want to learn a little bit more.

So right now, that's one of the things that's really unique about us is we're really taking that immediate tool and really giving it to people. People sometimes have a pushback about yoga or mindfulness, because it seems like it's just gonna take too long before I can actually get results. So the breath work fixes that we do are really something that people can feel it in the moment and really get an impact.

Patrick Obolgogiani (10:21)
Yeah, it's really well said. Anything you want to add about the way you think about designing them, Jarrod?

Jarrod Matteson (10:27)
Yeah, I mean, I let Alice design my program for the most part since she was the architect. Yeah, no, I agree. I think our tools practices journey's framework is helpful because it can, generally speaking, if we're designing a program, particularly in the corporate context, most people aren't familiar with breath work. It might be new to them.

Patrick Obolgogiani (10:31)
Nice. ⁓

Jarrod Matteson (10:48)
They might have heard about it or they're curious and so it's an opportunity to kind of share something. So the tools are very accessible. Like Alice was saying, you get this immediate effect. You don't have to wait 10 years of daily meditation to sort of feel the benefits. It's quite immediate. But what we try to then tease out is that, okay, you can actually combine these tools together.

do them on a regular basis, 10 minutes every morning or 10 minutes at night or whatever it is, and create what we're calling a practice around it. And then you don't need to grab the tool as much, and you're building this longer term resilience through breath work.

Patrick Obolgogiani (11:24)
Yeah. And what does it look like in terms of, mentioned the word resilience, which I imagine is one of the benefits of both having the tools and having the practice. What does it look like if you look at the companies you work with most, like longest now, how do you know it's working and what are they telling you kind of before and after?

Alice Dommert (11:48)
Yeah, I would say that, you know, the companies who have invested in both wellness and in their culture, and they really are interwoven these days. What they found was the companies that had programs like that, that were constantly talking and supporting those kinds of programs when COVID hit, they did not have as much burnout in their organizations. And they also had retention and they have been able to continue to have that consistency, especially that some of the law

firms we work with and in the legal industry, retention right now and losing associates and partners is a really big deal. So when people feel cared about and when they feel like they're in a safe context where the company is genuinely looking at them as human beings, not just human capital, but human beings with character strengths and creativity and innovation, when people feel supported in that way, the companies and sometimes it's not things that you can measure. It's not the exact

ROI or the savings on your health insurance. But they're, you know, they really are able to retain that top talent, especially in the US right now. We're really in a crunch about, you know, that top talent is really going to make a difference over the next five to ten years.

Jarrod Matteson (13:00)
I'd add to that, like Alice was saying, you can't measure the ROI through health care costs, but companies do measure that retention, right? And companies definitely know the cost it takes to onboard a new person. So if you have a lot of turnover, that's not great for the bottom line, right? That's going to affect your overall profitability.

So there are these different kind of metrics that companies can look to to see if something like culture building is helping their company.

Patrick Obolgogiani (13:35)
Maybe peel back in practice. mentioned the fix could be that or something else inside these programs. But I think for a lot of listeners, they would prefer to have like a practical tool. Is this something we could give them in a very short time span? What does a breathing exercise look like where in a short amount of time you get immediate benefits for someone that is potentially stressed and not yet on the burnout side, but could use a bit of help.

Jarrod Matteson (14:00)
I nominate Alice to lead us through a three breaths exercise. It's something that we often do at the beginning of our programs and it's something that Alice has pioneered years ago and she's quite good at it.

Patrick Obolgogiani (14:03)
Hahaha.

Alice Dommert (14:14)
All right, so this is so complicated. You have to count to three and you have to breathe, which most people, sometimes people look at us like, I'm already breathing. And I think this is one of the big mysteries is that we are automatically breathing without thinking. But when we take, and I always think about, it's like walking up to a friend and putting your hand, like holding their hand when we kind of connect with our breath. first it's just sitting up nice and tall. It's just giving that space in our bodies.

Maybe roll the shoulders up and back. Maybe give a little wiggle. Sometimes we get so stuck in our spaces. And then just it's a long deep inhale in through the nose. And then opening the mouth and just a nice slow exhale.

Another inhale in through the nose and feeling the whole sort of belly expand. Your whole rib cage is a barrel. Your whole torso is a barrel. And then just exhale again, opening the mouth. More air can kind of come out. I'll feel a little bit of grounding in the exhale. And then the third one, again, long deep inhale. Maybe make this one a little bit bigger. Inhale.

Open the mouth and exhale and maybe you make a little sigh on this one.

Yeah, sometimes it's nice. And then just a little shake. You know, so often, and I think we were talking earlier about resilience.

We think about resilience in sort of a physical, like do you have muscles? But our nervous system is really the most important tool to build resilience. And when we're building resilience through breath work, through the full capacity of a full inhale and a full exhale, as Jarrah said, breathing more efficiently, so not having this shallow, narrow breathing or more breaths per minute, that is actually building up really the integrity of our whole life force body system.

And that's really the kind of resilience that we're talking about resilience of the nervous system because it's just dictator of so many things. So how that how do you guys feel?

Jarrod Matteson (16:10)
Good, relaxed. Something like what's interesting about that for me is that it's super simple. It's not really a technique. You're just bringing awareness to the breath. You're then manipulating it in a particular way and we're slowing down our breath with that one typically. And so by just slowing down and taking fewer breaths per minute, we're gonna naturally shift very easily into a parasympathetic state.

Patrick Obolgogiani (16:11)
Yeah.

Jarrod Matteson (16:36)
I feel relaxed.

Patrick Obolgogiani (16:37)
Also something I found interesting is that the other recently on actually a previous episode with our scientific advisor, John Dickinson, and he was talking about the breathing pattern disorders where people are not utilizing mechanically the body in the right way to breathe properly. And what he mentioned was like, you know, a good breath, just scientifically is one where the rib cage expands in all directions. So I think your description of the barrel actually is very kind of visually useful where it kind of connects, you know,

Jarrod Matteson (16:38)
How about you, Patrick?

Patrick Obolgogiani (17:06)
think about the right muscles doing the work. And it might be quite useful for lot of people who don't even know how to breathe in the kind of, quote unquote, right way.

Jarrod Matteson (17:17)
Yeah, I'd add to that too. When we get to our practices pathway, one of the components that we like to add in is combining breath with movement. So I'm very much into Qigong right now, but things like Qigong or yoga or different movement practices, or even while you're working out breathing in an intentional way. But a lot of that Qigong and yoga stuff is really about stretching.

your intercostal muscles, the muscles in your ribs to really allow more expansion in your ribs and give your diaphragm in your room to kind of go contract downward, give your lungs area to expand into. And so it's great for a mind body connection, those kind of movement practices, but also that practical, like stretching the muscles to give yourself more area to breathe into.

really be helpful.

Patrick Obolgogiani (18:11)
thing you mentioned I think earlier, Alisa, was the creativity component. And I was curious, like, if you've looked into, how does breathing relate to creativity if it does? And then just if you have any, if you looked into it, it's like physiologically, why would that happen? Like, why would the creativity be better with having connection with your breathing?

Alice Dommert (18:31)
So yeah, as an architect and sort of coming from a creative background, you know, I remember back in architecture school and it was like, how do you get ideas? And sometimes when we're trying to solve a problem or be innovative, we're pushing, we're pushing, pushing. What I've noticed is the more of my practices that I have in the morning and the more breath work I do, whether it's chanting or jumping on my trampoline or yoga, when you're doing breath work, it's a soft focus.

And there's all sorts of research that shows when we have soft focus, it's sort of like why you get the great ideas in the shower. It's because the mind is sort of holding that idea, whatever is evolving, very gently. And with the breath work, my experience is that it's giving it more space. And it's almost like a landing pad. Those are usually when the ideas have a great space to land and they just kind of pop in.

And so sometimes we have this illusion that like, why would I spend 20 minutes doing chanting in the morning as breath work practice? That's kind of my favorite breath work practice. Over and over again, when I spend that 20 minutes, when I do sit down at my desk, I've kind of worked through, that's how the beginning of that talk should go. And so I think it's one of the things we don't talk enough about.

about how do we have enough time and it's a win-win because we're getting the breath work in, we're building our nervous system, we're setting up, we're getting, you know, whatever your device is and I can't wait to start, you know, you're seeing that it's making a positive impact and you're getting those ideas and you're creating that space for that to kind of come through for you.

So yeah, that's what's really, and we see that in our journeys. So the journeys is the third piece of the pathway. And so sometimes people, when they're doing that more deep inner work, that self discovery, sometimes they're working through some processing of some past experience, some type of healing, but sometimes they're also like, oh, I got the answer. I got that, oh, that thing that's been churning. I mean, it's one of the reasons why people go to Burning Man. They want these extraordinary experiences that are out of the ordinary so that they can come up with these creative

new innovative ideas.

Patrick Obolgogiani (20:32)
What do we talk about leaders? It's, I know some of us have, you know, been leaders for others, it's someone you kind of work with day in, day out, but obviously a leader, especially a manager, you're working with human beings has a big impact on everyone's lives. and particularly in the workplace can almost define what it is like to be there. I'm curious, like how, how do you work with leaders and are there any like differentiation in tooling or?

the type of work you do with people that then are supposedly leading other people or they're kind of having the same tools as everyone else.

Alice Dommert (21:07)
Give thoughts on that, Jarrod. Yeah.

Jarrod Matteson (21:08)
You want me to do that one? Sure.

So I'd say the tool. So in general, the entire tool kit is the same for everybody. But which tool you choose to use in any particular moment is going to be different person to person. And that's true for a leader of a business. We like to use the phrase everyday leaders because we think that there's everyone is a leader in

in their own world and responsible for their role in their company, their workplace, if we're talking about sort of corporate context. So I wouldn't necessarily say that, here's the tools for leaders, here's the tools for everybody else. it's a very, breath work in general is a very individualized modality. And so you have to experience, play with the tools.

and see what works for you. We have a tool that we call power down breath. It's just inhale for a count of four through the nose and a longer exhale out through the mouth, similar to what I was saying you should do if you're having an asthma attack. But that is, generally speaking, that shifts you to the parasympathetic nervous system state. But for some people, that's a long exhale and they can't quite do it. So it actually increases

your anxiety and tension. And so it has the opposite effect. And so you have to kind of play around with different tools. There are suggestions about different tools for different circumstances, but you have to kind of customize to see what works, what works for you. The other thing I would say when you were asking that question, I was thinking of a Star Wars and governor Tarkin, like the original Star Wars and how Princess Leia was like saying how he was like gripping the star systems too quickly in his fist and they're slipping through. And so

the other thing I'll say about leadership is it's, very much about, sort of stepping back in my opinion. And a lot of breath work is about some of the things that we talked about, during the journey session was trusting and allowing. And so I, in my opinion, a strong leader is one who trusts their team and allows them to do their thing. Then the more that a leader is trying to control.

the situation, the worst it's going to be for the team overall. And so breath work just really taking a step back really can teach each individual these principles of trusting and allowing by trusting in yourself and your own inner wisdom can really enhance your ability to trust other people. And I think that would make a powerful leader leading a team that really trusts in that way.

Patrick Obolgogiani (23:38)
Yeah. You kind of, well, a couple of things I wanted to comment on earlier, the personalization aspect, something as you know, we're hopefully be able to do what Alveus is to calibrate the exercises based on the lung capacity that we can hear in the device. That's something that hopefully can be useful. As you mentioned with box breathing, doing five, five, five, five, five can be way too much to be calming for people. So having, let's say two and a half might be the ideal for someone, and someone else, might be six, know, six, six, six, six. So.

Hopefully isn't that something we can build in. And the second thing I just wanted to follow up on, mentioned the almost like embodiment as something I can personally say, you know, for years, I think I was a little bit more in my head and it was difficult to kind of fully feel my emotions would be embodied in them. And it's something I've managed to improve a lot, but like I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. And there's a lot of people out there who for various reasons are way more in their head, particularly in the kind of corporate.

I guess I'm curious to hear like, what are your thoughts on like, why is that happening? Is it more recent than the case already for a long time? And then on the back of that, what can you do about it? How can you get more into your body as well for any human really? It can be far the one.

Alice Dommert (24:53)
Yeah, I think that as Jarrod was saying, it's so individual. And we have a program called Burnout to Balance. And we really look at how are you reacting? What's your coping style? And so we really are trying to help people recognize that some people when they don't get what they want, when they're having stress, they might be very reactive.

And so they're going to want something a little bit different. Some people are just going to put the smile on and some people are going to try to like physically, I mentally like figure it out. So part of our awareness and helping people recognize is that yes, there's a lot of people who are thinking I'm just going to push harder. Jarrod can talk a little bit more about, know, if I push harder and I keep thinking and pushing and pushing, that's going to be the solution. And a lot of times even those folks, and I think Jarrod and I have already been in that, we're thinking that like, well, if I'm just working out enough.

that you can still be kind of physically fit. But it's what's the telltale sign and that's what I'm so excited about about what you guys are working on is nervous system has a whole different life.

The nervous system is really what's regulating our overall whole health. And so when we can get that data, we can start to see that sometimes the pushing is not really the tool. It's like when you look at heart rate zones, you know, the great thing about many of the wearable devices now is it will tell you like, you spent too much time, you were pushing too hard. And it's kind of a great aha to be, wow, I could have today, the best thing for my overall health would have just been to do this mid-range.

of breath work and that's going to get me back to a better recovery. That's really the key. So not only is it in the head because the head will tell us all the time to go harder, to push harder, to think harder.

Patrick Obolgogiani (26:32)
Yeah.

Jarrod Matteson (26:36)
Yeah, I'll just say across a lot of the framework that I have personally followed and that we sort of subtly incorporate into our businesses is the idea that we have these three centers of intelligence. so there's the thinking mind, a thinking center. We have an emotional intelligence in our heart center and we have a physical intelligence in our body center.

And we see that kind of framing across all kinds of traditions for thousands of years. I, so I don't know, I'd be curious, I don't know the answer, whether we are more in our heads these days versus in the past. I suspect we probably are. Probably something to do with just the growth of technology and how everything is sort of visual on our phones and everything and all that.

Alice Dommert (27:11)
Mm-hmm.

Jarrod Matteson (27:24)
A lot of the work that I've done on myself has been about trying to get those three centers of intelligence to flow together more readily and sort of align. there's constant communication among them. We all know when if something suddenly, an emotional event happens, it's

pretty shortly thereafter, there's a story happening in your head and you're gonna feel like some physical tension perhaps or something. They all play into each other and they can really spiral out of control or they can kind of give positive like biofeedback to each other. so seeing how those all interact in real time can be very helpful and the breath can help you do that in my opinion or the breath is the thing that's kind of bringing you inward.

And you can see that the breath has an impact on your physical state. Your breath has an impact on your mental activity and it has an impact on your emotional reactivity as well. And so it's this thing that can kind of allow those three centers to align and kind of communicate more efficiently.

Patrick Obolgogiani (28:28)
Yeah, I've actually, as I'm dug in more and more into this world of breathing, it's kind of, as we talked about nervous system quite a few times and come to realize, like, it does seem to me like there might be others, but the two key systems inside human beings, physiologically speaking, seem to be the nervous system. And downstream of that is a lot of things that happen, like, whether it's like disorders and otherwise. And the other one is metabolic system.

downstream on that you have diabetes, obesity, also like Alzheimer's potentially and many other things. So it does seem like these two systems are like pivotal. And I don't think anyone's really established the link between the two. And I asked a couple of scientists recently about, have we looked into it? And not much apparently. So anyway, that's the, as a side note, it would be interesting to see, understand how does the nervous system regulate the metabolic and vice versa? How do we eat in the nervous system? But the question I wanted to ask you, because we've talked about this nervous system, but

Everyone kind of understands the word is parasympathetic and sympathetic, but probably not fully. I'm sure if either one of you have looked into the scientific thing, but at least in a high level, could you explain like what is it and how does physiologically breathing affect the nervous system? Maybe Alice you can start.

Alice Dommert (29:40)
Yeah, so there's something called the vagus nerve, which starts basically at the back of your throat and it goes all the way down your spine. And it actually is connected into all of your major organs. And so what they found in research around mindfulness, which I find so interesting, is that you can measure vagal tone.

And so when they did an eight week mindfulness course and they measured people's vagal tones beginning at the end, they actually had increased vagal tone. It's like building a muscle. And that came from mindfulness, but this is the key. In mindfulness, the directions are put your attention onto your breath. So people were actually doing a breath work practice because the minute that you put your attention on your breath, your breath slows down.

And so we've been able to sort it and now there's more research that's starting to support that vagal tone.

And the vagus nerve is in that vagal tone is when we're in that parasympathetic. That's the rest and digest. That's when your body is doing not only the physical repair but sleep is so critical because sleep is actually taking all the mental things that we're learning and processing and it's almost like a library where you've got a stack of books at the end of the day and your sleep is the process of putting all those books back where they need to go in the particular sections and sorting them to where they're not just all clogged up at the book return.

the front of the library from overnight. So we really need that parasympathetic nervous system and that time in order for our bodies to do the work that they miraculously do. No medications, no drugs are going to give us the power of what sleep and a balanced nervous system can do. They're just brilliantly, brilliantly designed.

Jarrod Matteson (31:20)
Yeah, I'll just add what I find helpful. mean, everyone is, most people are familiar with the fight or flight mode, right? And that's when we're, that's the sympathetic nervous system state. So we are more alert. We are more tense and it's just something that's like from an evolution perspective is deeply ingrained in our nervous system that we.

our nervous systems have these built-in mechanisms to protect us, right? So way back when, if we're being chased by a lion or whatever it is, like we need to allocate our limited energetic resources to fleeing that danger, right? So more blood is going into our muscles and moving away from our digestive system and making us more alert and more responsive.

And then on the other side, the parasympathetic is that rest and digest system. And so when we're safe, it's our chance to, okay, now our body again knows to reallocate our limited energetic resources to actually digesting and putting the books back on the shelves like Alice was mentioning. And so what happened, we naturally throughout the day are...

sort of cycling between these two. And you can kind of monitor that by, you can kind of tell which nostril is your dominant nostril at any given moment. And that's going to tell you if you're sort of in a parasympathetic state or sympathetic state. But it's naturally cycling back and forth. But just bringing it back to like a corporate and work environment.

we tend to be on all the time. And so we're, most people are in that sympathetic fight or flight nervous system state more often than really they should be, or more often than is sort of natural for our nervous system. And so that's where breath work can help bring us back to that rest and digest in an intentional way.

through breathwork tools and just back to the resilience and what a breathwork practice will do is building resilience. It helps your body kind of find that balance of just naturally flowing back and forth between the two. And then you're just more sort of nimble from a nervous system perspective.

Patrick Obolgogiani (33:36)
How much do you kind of talk about or work with people around the way they breathe outside their practice of breathing? Like when it comes to how they just breathe day in, day out.

Alice Dommert (33:49)
Yeah, the great part about it is that it's sort of like training at the gym and building muscles because you want to go hike the Grand Canyon.

And so it's the kind of thing where when you're putting that time in the practice and then you're realizing like, oh, I can play pickleball for two and a half hours and I wasn't even winded and everybody else was sweating and dying or, you know, I could lift my garage door. I could get the whatever I could pick my kids up. So people start the beautiful thing is when you're putting that little bit of intentional thinking practice, then you're able to sort of see in your life how just many things you just and your capacity and,

as Jarrod was talking, know, the thing that we're not very good at really knowing the impact of our sleep. Like we can know that we wake up, but it's the same thing with our breath and like what our heart rate's doing. It's not until we get tools and you you and I have talked about some of the tools that we're currently using, but when I have those tools and I see real data, I can't argue that, you know, I read a thing the other day about a guy who was in court, a lawyer, and suddenly his data started showing that he was at like 155 heartbeats.

heart rate. And so when we have those tools we can start to see like wow I do I am feeling better but also I've got the data and I still realize yesterday when I did that thing I'm not gonna do that thing anymore because that thing really messed me up and I do want to hike the Grand Canyon.

So it really gives us, it's like having a ways, I always say like any sort of tools that we have that can give us real reflective, like you are making progress because in order for us to continue the breath work practice or continue these tools, we need several kinds of data. I wanna feel good, I can pick up my kid and hike and get out of the woods when they decide they can't walk anymore. I've had quite a few of those where you think you're gonna go on a hike and you get halfway and you're like,

around and now the three-year-old doesn't want to walk anymore and you get back and your back doesn't hurt the next day and you're just like wow now I can I can feel the impact and those are the things that keep us true to the practices because we've got that real experience we've got the data and that's exciting because you also start to realize you know the age game is a game and you can win it.

Patrick Obolgogiani (35:48)
You

Alice Dommert (36:09)
You know, many of things today are telling us that we're going to get old and we're going to have all these things happen as if it is just going to happen because of the ticks on the clock.

That's absolutely just, it's a great marketing tool because then we think, my gosh, I might need that. And when we come back to what the power of the breath can do, there's a lot of American football players right now who are jumping into really teaching breath work because they will say that they could watch another player whenever they were on the field and they could see how that guy was breathing and know that they were going to crush him.

It's fascinating to see it popping up in some of the younger football players and really performance athletes who are saying, I got a secret tool and it's breath work.

Patrick Obolgogiani (36:44)
Hehehe.

Yeah, no, but it's a point that actually the practice can make you aware of things you may be doing, not ideally, and the rest of the day, and just become more aware of, but it's not so like, then as you mentioned, like you kind of become more used to using the right muscles. You train the muscles that are active, activating when you're doing it. So I think it makes a lot of sense, to do that. One area that maybe at workplace that we haven't talked about, but is of course links.

from the side is the emotional side and emotional regulation. guess that's, you know, it seems like, like it affects the nervous system, but also vice versa. And we shouldn't kind of, of course resist the emotions, but at the same time, we don't probably don't want to act out everything that's kind of happening inside. So how do you think about the emotional side when it comes to the work you do with corporate, corporate customers and how can breath work maybe help people?

not just regulate but really maybe accept the emotions they are having.

Jarrod Matteson (37:57)
It's a good segue into our journey's pathway, perhaps, which I'm actually talking to a company right now about potentially doing a journey together. So I'd say that emotional aspect, if we're talking about those three centers of intelligence, the emotional one is probably the, for a lot of people in the corporate world, the biggest hurdle to get over, the biggest one to sort of accept.

But that's where the breath work and a breath work journey can be very helpful to We can talk about the details of what that looks like, but basically you're really tapping into your body and you're accessing that Emotions that are buried in there often through physical sensation So those can be a nice doorway to allow them to fully express themselves

And of course we have to sort of function in the work environment. just because we're feeling rage at work doesn't mean we should express that rage at work. Because we live in a society and we have to function with other people. But if we don't later process that rage and we're just holding it in, it doesn't go away. just shows up as physical tension.

chronic thing and you're constantly repressing rage that might lead to different illnesses or whatever. Like we're holding on to this energy. So having regular, what we're calling journeys where we're intentionally going into our body, breathing in a particular way to kind of access this deeper wisdom within us, this subconscious material that we're suppressing.

because we're trying to function in a work environment and allowing them to just fully express themselves in a safe environment, in a safe container. So a lot of what we do in our journey pathways, our roles as the facilitators are to create that container to allow that emotional energy to sort of come out in a safe way. And in...

sort of an appropriate environment, I guess, because we often don't have those opportunities to do that. And so by creating that space, again, trusting that what your body is holding onto and is ready to release is allowing that to unfold. And once things sort of fully express themselves in that way, now we can process them. Now our emotional center can be more aligned with our

mental and physical center and things can just flow more easily.

Patrick Obolgogiani (40:31)
Hmm. What does it look like in practice if a company takes the journey? Because I can imagine like with a lot of companies, it can be something where you need some level of trust, let's say in a management team or whatever else where to actually express those level, that level of emotions in being kind of together with other people. Is it like having a room somewhere and go there, people lie down, can just talk through roughly what it looks like in practice.

Alice Dommert (40:58)
Yeah.

you know, there's a variety of different levels and yes, it does need to have a high level of trust. I mean, there are lots of folks who are like, I'm not going to feel safe and this is where the culture of the organization can really make a big difference. I mean, we've had companies and we've rolled out the same exact program across five locations of a company and some of it, sometimes it sticks and sometimes it doesn't. So you really do have to have that internal sense of trust. And when you, when you, when we create what we call a safe container and a brave container, sometimes it's

that people feel like they can express some sort of emotion, but sometimes it's not a big visible thing. It's just that they actually give themselves space and time to feel that. So in the journeys, we know people have eye masks, they're on their own mat, we've got the music that it's at a certain volume, and then people have the choice of what they want to express or not. It's really set up with agreements to where it's a non-judgmental environment, and we're agreeing on how we're going to

to relate to each other, but it gives some sort of a more physical space to where you can move around your body, you can move to the music. And sometimes we just need other methods versus talking. Talk therapy is great or having hard conversations is great, but sometimes it's just like an animal and an animal is in distress and it gets chased. you've ever, they shake it off. They physically cut, they don't have to go and talk about it and reprocess it.

And so at some level we can use that as a tool. I'm not saying that therapy is not something that's really valuable for a lot of people, but in that environment sometimes it's just that an intensity of energy around an experience has just gotten stuck in our bodies because we're adults and we walk around very serious and we don't do the things that even we did as a child to sort of those experiences just sometimes you call it metabolize or process or whatever they are. So for a lot of

companies. The other thing that I just love about group work and creating a safe container and that really, you we take that very seriously is how deeply connected people get because so often they see how similar they are. And also they learn that maybe that guy at work who's been kind of a little bit out of whack, he might share that his brother just passed away.

And so it starts to build our empathy and compassion for others when we see a little bit behind kind of what we're just seeing in the work environment. And that compassion for others builds compassion for self. And that shows up at a leader who says, hey, you know what? I'm not as prepared for this meeting as I would have liked to have been. My child was sick last night. I'm really open to your ideas. And the leader can tolerate that level of vulnerability without feeling like I'm weak.

And so it's this very interesting, beautiful ripple effect of how we come together, realize, you know, all of us are wanting love. We're wanting attention. We're wanting to make a difference. We're wanting to be part of something bigger than us and contribute to making the world a better place for ourselves and our children and grandchildren.

And so people leave those experiences and many, times they say, feel just this really sense of hope. I'm now connected with people and that connection really feels good.

Patrick Obolgogiani (44:14)
Yeah, definitely. can imagine. Well, you were very kind, Jarrod, to offer to do a session with me. I believe it was pretty similar format, right? That we did. And I think, as I think I mentioned to you, like I've done something similar before, but what was interesting is how you incorporated the music in a way that is kind of helping you kind of guide the journey, both when comes to the rhythm and the emotional side, kind of almost expressing that.

journey you're taking together and also sometimes inspiring like the way you do the breathing can be inspired by and informed by the music which is really interesting and in terms of my own experience

It was super interesting how there was a point where kind of you notice you start drifting in and out, of as in being present and sometimes not as present, you're kind of forgetting about the exercise, but then at some point you just get into the groove, not sure exactly when that happened during that hour session, probably in the first 10, 15 minutes, and then it becomes automatic and then you just kind of are with the rhythm. And then at some point you start losing, the body becomes like just...

tingling all over, you don't really feel the same way as you typically do. At some point there was this very beautiful music that then somehow triggered this emotion of grief. I couldn't take apart where it came from yet, even after now few weeks after the session, but it was so powerful and clear and it kind of all the way to my face.

like in the muscles and everywhere. luckily I managed to stay with it and let it go slowly. But it was, felt, was actually a kind of positive thing. was like beautiful, like a nice feeling of sorrow instead of this thingy when I resist. And then afterwards I felt like super present for a quite a long time, particularly that evening when I went driving and on the radio for a while, you know, to just have something background, background noise. I just didn't want to have any radio. I wanted to be there.

when I'm driving or whatever else by the beach for a little bit. yeah, very beautiful experience. Thank you again for sharing that with me. My question is, how much do we know about what's happening there? Because it is pretty powerful and I'm sure I've heard for other people can be even more powerful when it comes to getting to like completely altered status of consciousness. How much do we know about what's happening inside ourselves to trigger those kind of emotions or experiences?

Jarrod Matteson (46:43)
Sure. Well, thanks for sharing that. It can be quite powerful, quite personal. So I'm glad it was impactful for you. There's one of the things that's happening. So we know a little bit. I'll just step back for a second. What to me is totally fascinating is there's a lot of interest over the last...

few years in psychedelics. And so there's quite a bit of research being done. And it's all great. And it's excellent research. There's a lot of powerful plant allies out there in the world that can help us. But surprisingly, there's less research about breathwork, and this kind of breathwork in particular. But the research that is out there is showing that

similar processes are happening, within us, when we're on a psychedelic or when we're doing this kind of, breath work. And so high level what's happening is we have, what's called the default mode network, where, which is the part of us, the sort of ego or personality part of us that's kind of in charge, kind of running our day and trying to control the situation.

And so it's just shown there's a study recently that I was just reading about that in particular was looking at this kind of conscious connected breathing. I think I was studying both conscious connected breathing with and without music, if I'm remembering correctly. But this conscious connected breath, meaning generally speaking, you're inhaling and exhaling without a pause in between.

deep breathing, what we like to say, we're moving a lot of coupled with this particular music arc is something that actually turns off the default mode network. so it's allowing, it's kind of having your personality or your ego take a little break and it's allowing some subconscious material to come out. It's the same kind of

state you can get into with certain kinds of meditation. And so that's all happening through really just to bring it kind of full circle to my basketball story earlier, we're like intentionally hyperventilating in this kind of controlled way through a journey breathwork session. And that's reducing the CO2 in our system, which is changing the blood.

Alkalinity, is then the that's the chemical process that's happening to turn off that default mode network. I can share the this recent paper with you is quite interesting. You can put it in the Juneau's or whatever, but that that's fundamentally what's happening is that default mode network is sort of turning off and it's allowing this other. Deeper intelligence is subconscious material to to surface.

Patrick Obolgogiani (49:13)
Yeah, definitely.

It's super interesting,

Wonderful. As we start coming to a close here, I'm curious, what do you think are the biggest misconceptions that people have around, whether it's just wellbeing at work, breath work, you can choose whichever area you want to tackle, but maybe Alice, what's a misconception that you'd love people to be a bit more educated about?

Alice Dommert (49:53)
Yeah, I'd really love for people to know that the ROI in investing in breathwork is extraordinary. And you don't have to have particular pants or shoes or a racket or even a device yet. It's free.

It's available all the time. And there are so many techniques, as Jarrod said, so many people think about it as calming, but when we need energy, so often we're just getting depleted when we need energy, there are tools that can quickly build energy way better than a Mountain Dew. Just one of the sodas around here that people go to. just the brilliance and availability of the breath.

as a massively important tool for health purpose and joy, all the things.

Jarrod Matteson (50:37)
Yeah, I'd say, yeah, it's just to add to that similar message. It's super powerful. It's accessible. It's easy to learn. And it's something our bodies already do. We know how to breathe. So just adding in a little awareness to the breathing process and a little intention around it is quite powerful. So for me, sort of fundamentally,

The beautiful thing about it is this idea of autonomy and self-empowerment. We give up so much of our autonomy to things out in the world, but we have so much strength and wisdom within us that the breath can help us access and with very simple tools. So to me, that's the beauty of it is the more we can actually connect with the breath.

more we can kind of reclaim this like inherent autonomy we have. And so when we do that, we learn a lot about ourselves, a lot about how we operate in the world and how we want to show up in the world. So it's incredibly empowering.

Patrick Obolgogiani (51:40)
They always say that if exercise was a pill, it would be like the most powerful medicine ever created. I feel like if breath work is a pill, it would be for different purpose, but equally powerful for different things. But it's, yeah, different than ingesting just something. Where can people learn more about the work you do for corporates?

Jarrod Matteson (51:52)
Yeah, for sure.

You want to talk about Prasada a little bit, Alice?

Alice Dommert (52:02)
So in our corporate work, we're at Prasada. It's www.prasada.com whole being w-h-o-l-e-b-e-i-n-g. So that can share all the different programs that we have and how we can help with executive leaders, everyday leaders, and all the people who are going to work every day and trying to make the world a better place.

Jarrod Matteson (52:23)
The way we help individuals is through the Infinite Center. We are currently building out our webpage for that, but you can find us on Instagram or Facebook at The Infinite Center Official. And so for both, one easy way for people to access our work is every third Wednesday of the month we do what's called a Breathwork Hour. And so we just have, it's free, people can join, it's on Zoom.

It's 7.30 PM Eastern time in the US, third Wednesday every month. And we share tools and usually two or three tools each month. And it's a great way for people to just start getting their feet wet with breath work.

Patrick Obolgogiani (53:01)
Sounds like it's suitable even for the Europeans here. If we close with a last takeaway and last tool for the audience, we've already done quite a few. So we've had the four in, eight out type of calming breathing. We've talked about a couple others, but what's the one that you want to leave people with? Maybe we start with you, Alice. You mentioned that it doesn't have to be always relaxation. Is there one that you have in mind that will be helpful people to actually energize themselves?

Alice Dommert (53:26)
Yeah, so Breath of Fire is one that's kind of fun. And it literally is like, know how when you blow out a candle, you're blowing out through your mouth, but you're doing it with your nose. So it's like.

And so it's just, I'll lead you in about 20 of those. Sometimes I call it a little breath snack. That's my version of it. The idea is that you're focusing on the exhale, sort of blowing out through your nose, kind of pulling the belly in. And that's really kind of building our energy. So it sounds like this. You can hear me. So we'll just do that. I'll count to 20 and then I'll end this. All right, here we go.

All right, that was close to 20. Long deep inhale and through the nose.

Jarrod Matteson (54:06)
I think I hit about 30.

Alice Dommert (54:10)
And open the mouth and exhale.

great part about breath work is sometimes you don't have to be so precise as long as you're kind of got the gist of it, it works.

Patrick Obolgogiani (54:25)
And it's that kind of energizing, right, for the body.

Alice Dommert (54:27)
Yeah,

might feel like a little bit a little bit buzzy, but a little bit of little bit of pep.

Jarrod Matteson (54:34)
So that one shifts you into that sympathetic. So I think a good one is, so we did kind of the extremes. So we just did breath of fire. That's energizing, helps you focus, puts you into the sympathetic nervous system state. The three breaths and the power down are about shifting into the parasympathetic. So another one that is very easy that we like to share is what we call, it goes by different names that we call it ocean breath.

Patrick Obolgogiani (54:34)
What about you, Jarrod? What's your favorite?

Jarrod Matteson (54:59)
And so that's going to help either if you're overly agitated, it can help. And so you're in a sympathetic mode and you don't want to be, it can help pull you down, but it can also give you a little burst of energy. If you're feeling a little sluggish and kind of pull you up. And so it's kind of this more of a balancing, breath. And so it's, it's great. Anytime, anytime you just like, need some breath work and I don't know what to you. You can always just, do ocean breath.

So it's very easy, it's gonna be in and out through the nose, and it's gonna be in for a count of four and out for a count of four. And if you can, the ideal way to do it is to sort of breathe in through your nose, but into the back of your throat. And so you can think of it as fogging up a mirror, you have to kind of like make a ha sound in the back of your throat.

And so you can do that on the inhale and exhale, kind of trigger the same spot. And you can also do it through your nose.

I don't know if you can hear me, if you're, you almost sound like a little Darth Vader sound in the back of your throat, or it can sound like an ocean wave, which is why we call it. So two Star Wars references in one podcast episode. That's pretty good. But it's, it sounds like an ocean wave as well. So you want to try to get that, that sound. So we can do a couple rounds together. So just relax. You can even close your eyes.

Patrick Obolgogiani (56:03)
Yeah.

Nice, good work.

Jarrod Matteson (56:23)
And then in through the nose for a count of four. So inhale, one, two, three, four, and exhale through the nose, four, three, two, one. Inhale, one, two, three, four, and exhale, four, three, two, one. Inhale, one, two, three,

four, exhale, four, three, two, one. Do one more, inhale, one, two, three, four, exhale, four, three, two, one. And then just drop the counting, natural breath in and out through the nose, shake it off, open the eyes, come back to the space.

So again, it's more balancing. it will give you a little bit of energy if you need it, but it also can calm you down. It is a lower respiratory rate. And so it does have that sort of calming effect. But it's not as extreme as that in for four, out for eight. So it's not quite as calm.

Patrick Obolgogiani (57:23)
Is that also called coherence

Jarrod Matteson (57:25)
Yeah, same idea. And it's really that you want to get into, Alastair, you'll remember the heart math part of it, or like the heart coherence and that respiratory rate. But that's the idea.

Alice Dommert (57:37)
Yeah.

Patrick Obolgogiani (57:38)
Before we close, can't leave this without asking you, Jarrod, you mentioned the nostril thing. I've never heard of that. Can you actually like tell whether somebody's in it, like which part of the nervous system is based on the nostril?

Jarrod Matteson (57:45)
Yes.

Yeah, so if you just kind of put your finger below your nose and just exhale through your nose.

One side is likely more dominant than the other.

Or like a stronger sensation. This is something you can kind of test throughout the day and you'll notice that it does change. And so if you're, if it's your left nostril, that means you're more in a parasympathetic state and your right nostril sympathetic state. So just something that kind of tests throughout the day and you'll see that one and assuming you're not, you don't have a cold or something and you're not like stuffed up or whatever. But, I did it when I first learned about that, I did it I found that I'm, I'm in the.

sympathetic state more often than I want to be. And so through breath work, can actually, it's something you can kind of use as a little assessment as you build the breath work practice to see, well, how often am I kind of balanced or am I sort of overly in the sympathetic mode or overly in the parasympathetic

Patrick Obolgogiani (58:49)
It's wonderful. And again, something hopefully we can, at least our purpose was to have something called Nervous System Index. People can see based on things like inhalation, exhalation ratio, whether which state they're in. But that is a nice hack as well for people that don't want to have another device. Awesome. Hey, thank you so much both. And not just for being here, but also for the work you do. I think I really believe that the, type of help can really help people a lot, but also in corporate environments to make the culture.

Alice Dommert (58:57)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick Obolgogiani (59:18)
and that people have in what place they spend a big part of their waking hours in better and more compassionate and kinder. So thank you. Thank you for the work you do and thank you for being here.

Jarrod Matteson (59:29)
Thanks for having us. Thank you. We're excited about your work. Looking forward to seeing what you guys create. Thanks for having us.