Patrick Obolgogiani (00:08)
I know you started your career actually in more high-performance corporate and startup environments, including Silicon Valley, before now moving more recently to Breathwork. Just curious to hear what was the journey like and what pushed you to do this quite large shift.

Johanna Lehmann (00:24)
Yeah, sure. So first of all, super cool to talk today, to be here on your podcast. Yes, so after having been in San Francisco, Silicon Valley and Asia for about 10 to 12 years, I noticed that ⁓ there’s quite ⁓ a ceiling I found for myself, but also for quite a lot of other executives or founders where quite often you think it’s like the financial limitations, for instance, of a startup or

of a project, but I noticed that quite often it’s also, and I noticed that a bit more for also other female executives or founders, that you just feel like you can’t continue with that same level of energy anymore. You just feel burned out. And so before making that experience myself, I was always already quite interested in just that field of like kind of let’s call it holistic health or just another

Yeah, another field of health. And I found that I was at that time already in parallel to my activities, doing a lot of yoga and these type of kind of activities that are supposed to calm you down. But nonetheless, I never really found anything that really allowed me to completely calm down and to not sit there when trying to meditate and feel quite, quite stressed about it. So

So basically, after 10 years in a lot of different executives positions, I just felt it was the time to start my own thing, which I then did, which also challenged me on that journey because I noticed ⁓ like one or two years into it that I just developed a lot of, yeah, now looking back, I would call it just ⁓ symptoms of chronic stress, which started from not being able to fall asleep easily to…

a lot of allergies to severe eczema, ⁓ but also mentally to just not being able to connect with what I really want or being able to feel completely calm and relaxed. yeah, that was the start into a bigger journey, which continued then over the next 10 years.

Patrick Obolgogiani (02:27)
Amazing. And obviously now maybe you can describe what you do today and for whom.

Johanna Lehmann (02:33)
Yeah, so basically we started out actually during Corona because at that time I had already started to dive more into, how can you help people shift within a short amount of time into a measurable states of restoration and recovery? And so that was the perfect time because there’s a lot of sports you can do online, but I think, or like

different type of sessions, but I think breath work is like super, super good for that because you just need a good headset and then you can be in your own space and you can have a really good workout for the soul or like for the, yeah, I call it like a gym for the soul. And so that’s when, yeah, it really took off and we started out initially starting a lot with kind of more long form content, which is also what brought me into the whole field of

breath work because I just felt like, wow, it’s like incredible what happens to your state of mind and to your body if you dive into these type of altered states of consciousness. ⁓ Moving more into things like how can you change your state within 10 to 15 minutes, ⁓ which is now the main focus.

Patrick Obolgogiani (03:47)
Amazing. Tiger and Turtle, right? Is the name of the company. Can you talk about the name? Like what inspired you?

Johanna Lehmann (03:56)
Yeah, of course. So my main idea was always to take this super old practice basically and take it out of this. still, think in a lot of countries, still feeling a bit esoteric, but it’s the most scientifically proven, holistic practices and the one which is super simple changes your state within a matter of seconds.

And so tiger and turtle basically is the state of your nervous system where like the tiger I see as kind of the activity, the stress, which like in a way can be also positive for you stress, but where you are active going about like speaking on stage, doing your thing. And then the turtle is the state more of the parathympathetic nervous system or the kind of rest and digest state. so tiger and turtle is the

the flow state in a sense, so where your brain or your mind is kind of aware and active, but you still are in a state of calmness and you can follow your path in a focused way. And I basically noticed not only with myself, but with thousands of people over the years that I think especially high performing execs or startup founders, they tend to perform

often in the tiger state for most of the time, and then asking themselves, like, why can’t I not sleep at night, or why can’t I calm down, or do I have all those maybe symptoms which are not like a disease, but there’s something going on? And so, like, how can I then basically learn to tap or bring myself back into a state of calmness? And so,

Yeah, so with the whole idea behind it is really to teach people that you can become the own CEO of your nervous system so that you can really choose like a gear of, now I need a tiger activity because I need to be on stage. But also when I get home at night, want to be with family or friends, I can consciously calm myself down. Because I also truly believe that I’m often asked, like, should I do this type of technique? Or there’s a lot of really well-known breathing techniques now.

out and about to whatever, prepare for ice bars and stuff. But I feel like quite often depending on where you are in your life or what use case you want to step into, it’s super important to use different techniques. so, yeah, most importantly is not to just follow one technique, but to learn the different, it’s basically like gears really to switch between different states of the nervous system and that you can learn quite well.

Patrick Obolgogiani (06:32)
Nice. And what about like you mentioned that as know, Malat founders are in this go mode continuously, but how do you see that? What’s the diagnostic tool that you use? Is it like you watch their breathing with them? And like, what’s the main diagnostic tool when you meet them for the first time?

Johanna Lehmann (06:48)
Yeah, yeah, perfect. So basically, I mean, there’s like a lot of different layers you can look into. One is like the physical layer. So you can totally see that those type of people, we do, for instance, if we measure how often they are breathing per minute, they tend to have like maybe a higher breathing rate. For women, for instance, it’s even like as women have also smaller lungs, they tend to breathe already slightly higher. And so

For women, it’s interesting to see, and we can dive into that a bit more, it’s because they have smaller lungs and they’re breathing already at kind of the base, respiration rate is already one to two breaths per minute higher. They have additional shifts during this menstrual cycle, which can then bring them into states of stress. like the respiration rate is one, the CO2 tolerance. So for instance, how long you’re able to exhale is another one.

But also the simplest one would be if you just either make a video of yourself or stand in front of the mirror and see what parts of your body basically are breathing. So are you breathing into the chest or breathing into the belly? So what muscles are basically involved? That’s a really, really good indicator. And then I think one which is

Now also in high performance sports getting quite popular is basically how are you breathing? So are you using your nose or are you using your mouse? And then for instance, it’s always this topic I get a lot from, for instance, like somebody snoring at night or mouse breathing during the day. So that is already if you’re breathing a lot through your mouse. That will also increase your breathing rate slightly. It’s not the most.

efficient way to breeze like in a day to day state. So you can all of these different factors will give you a pretty good indication. And you can you can do it yourself to see, okay, what’s the baseline? And then to see and, and truly, it is the thing that, for instance, people who are really fit, or very vital, they tend to have a really like,

almost like you don’t see their breathing. They are breathing, one of my teachers used to say, breathe as if you’re unimpressed. it’s not this big, noticeable breathing. then often, if you see very sick people, for instance, they have a very intense, visible breathing. So the way you’re breathing really is like a remote control you have to.

change a lot with your mental and physical state, it also already is already as a base will tell a lot about where you are maybe in a state of your nervous system.

Patrick Obolgogiani (09:26)
Let’s imagine that you have someone walk in the door in an online meeting that fits that description. they’re doing chest breathing. And you can see there, there’s a kind of background chronic stress. maybe they’ll tell you that they’ve had trouble sleeping last few weeks. And it’s been tough. But they’re still in this sympathetic drive. What would be the protocol you would build them? And I’m curious to hear how much of that is like, when this, then do that, versus every morning.

you do something, where every evening you do something, can you just talk to the protocol you would build for them?

Johanna Lehmann (09:58)
Yeah, I mean, first of all, I think it’s it’s very different for for everyone. I think there’s a lot of protocols you can follow right now. And I believe now after many years, you would just stick to something which you can build into your routine and which is just short enough that it gives you a memorable change right away. But it also has some element of like you need to feel some positive stimuli right away. So it needs to be fun or needs to calm you down. So

Having said that, I think it’s a lot of trial and error for everyone. So I basically quite often give people a lot of different exercises to just try out after they have done the basics. And depending on that, yeah, someone needs maybe a bit more to get started with. But if you say, for instance, someone who has a trouble falling asleep, it’s usually like something you can do preventively so that you already build in tiny, mini breaks.

into a day where you have real breaks of nervous system reset instead of like more cortisol, more adrenaline. So that already the base stress during your day is like less stress peaks that you don’t go to bed with like already super stressed like during the day. And then there’s more, which is kind of like the emergency breaks that before you go to sleep that you can

use, for instance, four minutes of using mostly it can be like a few very long exhalations that right away because the relaxation is always in the exhalation. So it’s actually quite simple that right away the nervous system comes down. And then it’s a question like mostly if people tried that for a few minutes, they would see right away, OK.

with a long exhalation, feel I start to yawn right away, or I feel like I’m getting more settled or tired. So that works within seconds. So I usually first have them try out different things, and then some might work better, others less. Because, for instance, if you take, let’s say, there’s an exercise which is quite well known, the box breathing, there’s a lot of great research also by Stanford University and the Huberman Labs about it.

Someone, for instance, who has a quite a high base breathing rate or like low CO2 tolerance might feel quite stressed by breathing into the count of four, holding to the count of four and going about this box. So it’s always like starting to build it up quite slow, maybe with shorter like two in, two hold, two out and then build it up. basically do the minimum investment of time.

Try it out so that you really in a matter of a few minutes feel like a change right away and then rather do five minutes a day, but daily instead of one deep session a week, which completely blows your mind, but it will not have like a a mental impact on the rest of the week.

Patrick Obolgogiani (12:52)
Yeah, that makes a of sense. Hopefully with Alveus One we can actually personalize the exercises to each individual with calibration, understanding the baseline so we can, as you mentioned, understand whether it’s, you know, maybe it’s like, you know, 1.3 for you and then for someone else maybe 6.5 per side for the box breathing exercise. And I spoke to someone, a breath coach who works with people with anxiety issues or challenges and she mentioned like some people who have literally

Tough time, even one second, breath hold can be too much. So it needs to be careful on what you recommend.

Johanna Lehmann (13:29)
Yes, absolutely. that, for instance, can also change for people during a normal week or during the type of day. So I think it’s super, super valuable to have a tool or to know for yourself that depending on your base state of the nervous system, you can adapt different breathing techniques. Yeah, super helpful.

Patrick Obolgogiani (13:48)
Yeah, I’m curious, once you start working with someone, I know you have multiple sessions with them. What’s been something that people typically are surprised once they get into this flow and they start changing their habits around breathing?

Johanna Lehmann (14:02)
Yeah, so I think one thing they are quite surprised about is that how, how if you take, like, usually, I think what’s the nice thing to do, it’s 10, 12 minutes every morning, how the whole like, day shifts, if you just invest these 12 minutes, for instance, in the morning, because if you are, so if you and how fast you shift from the state of, for instance, you go into the session feeling

And I see that a lot also with corporate teams when they come into the room, like they feel like skeptical or like somebody comes in super stressed. You see it in their face. You see it in the way they’re breathing and how within a few minutes you can completely reset your nervous system. And you can measure that on your loop band or whatever you use. I’m not referring to any device here. I think that’s always, I mean, you can.

you can change your diet, you can do different types of sports, but there’s actually no activity other than I know of that helps you to impact your mental and physical state so fast than breathing. Because you do it 20,000, 23,000 times a day, there’s no other activity which you can also, from a nervous system perspective, consciously influence.

So it’s just, think if you change one thing, like look definitely at your breathing because it’s just the, if you change that, you will have so much impact on other areas of your life. So I think a thing I hear a lot is, I came because I wanted to learn to, for instance, improve my sleeping. But then I had all these other nice side effects because…

by, for instance, slowing down your breath, you not only then potentially activate again, like that melatonin starts to be produced, but you also slow down your heart rate, like your thoughts become more quiet, you feel more safe, you feel more connected. So there’s so many different systems in the body that are affected from like the heart rate to the nervous system, the hormones. It’s like this whole hormonal cocktail you are.

basically releasing into your system, that you have so many other potential side effects that, yeah, you come with one thing and you experience quite a lot of different things. So I think that’s what I hear the most.

Patrick Obolgogiani (16:23)
Hmm. Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I would imagine that least some of these type A personalities that have this constant drive, they also know that at least partially it’s been what’s got them where they are. And I’m curious whether they have this fear of if they slow down or if they activate the parasympathetic too much in the day, they’re going to lose their edge and lose the drive they have that really got them where they got to.

and basically become, let’s call it, less successful, whatever that means for them. is that something that comes up? And if yes, how do you deal with that with them?

Johanna Lehmann (17:02)
I think it doesn’t come up that often because science is now showing also in such a clear way that how important recovery is for like you look at the sports world and you see like top athletes are sleeping from nine hours onwards a night, right? So there’s so many and also now that you see them mouse taping and using a lot of breathing techniques. And then so first of all, like recovery is like, if you want to perform long term, like recovery is

non-negotiable, think, like you just need to build it in a smart way into your day. And then if you look into the whole field of like breath biohacking, think it’s the fastest hack you can. it, because it is so fast, you don’t need, that’s why I think it’s so appealing to a lot because you don’t need to go one and a half hours to like a vinyasa yoga class, but you, you have, you take a break. Uh, you

breathe in a certain way for three minutes and you can go into a meeting feeling kind of structured, feeling energized again. I think that’s why it’s actually, I mean, that’s why it’s so interesting. You don’t need to sit there, meditate for two hours in the morning, but you can use like 10 minutes. So yeah, so maybe people are rather skeptical in the beginning about like, okay, what are really the benefits? But then there’s now so many studies also here in the Netherlands which show like,

for so many different applications, but also after 9-11, for instance, in the US when they did all those studies with like coherent breathing, how it measurably helped people with like depression and other PTSD. So the science is there, it works so fast. So it’s usually once people know the science and they stick to it. I think that’s the only thing what then is sometimes hard because it’s not this pill you…

You just have it one time and then it’s like more like a supplement. You want to do it every day, similar as the omega-3 or whatever. And then you will constantly feel the benefits of it.

Patrick Obolgogiani (19:00)
think we might have discussed coherent braiding in one of the episodes a little bit, but would you mind just elaborating what that looks like and what’s the benefits that’s been proven on in the research?

Johanna Lehmann (19:10)
Yeah, of course. So basically, I mean, if you take a standard man or a woman, they breathe like man about like 14 or 12 to 14 breaths a minute. Women often like one to two more. then depending on whether they’re a cycle, even higher. But then Dr. Gerber on Brown, they showed that if you breathe in a rate of five to six breaths per minute, that is actually the most

healthy way to breathe in a sense of creating harmony for the heart and the different systems in the body to work together. So if you would breathe 10 to 15 minutes in this coherent way, meaning in 5 and 1 out 5 and 1 half, which then is quite slow. So you won’t have that during a normal day. But this also causes the least amount of oxidative stress for your system. So it’s a great way of

breathing for instance like to come quiet at night or also I see it working really well for people for instance who are trying to recover from diseases or who are in like anything from chemotherapy to healing journeys that this is also like a way of breathing similar to for instance long exhalations which puts the body in a state of

recovery. So this is where the immune system can heal, like where the body really can recover. And it became so much interest because it’s one of the different techniques that basically there was a lot of research been done on. there’s many others where there was also research like physiological psi or 478 or whatnot. But it’s just a very healthy way to breathe and

Interestingly, if you look at different religions in the world, like if you look at the way they are breathing when they are, for instance, singing or praying, you tend to notice that they come into a similar rhythm of coherent breathing, basically five to six in and out. And that then also calms them down. if you look into different

areas of life like religion, praying, singing, you find basically forms of coherent breathing being done without people even noticing.

Patrick Obolgogiani (21:29)
Interesting. Yeah, I think for me, at least this is probably one of the ones that I use most or like just come back to almost like throughout the day. And something I’ve noticed is made better is like, as you mentioned, making sure like that the entire body expands in all directions or so. So you kind of.

Yes, that’s the rhythm and the length, but also the way you breathe really matters. Doing through the nose and then almost visualizing this soft curvature on all sides, including the top and the bottom, meaning there’s no breaks outside. I’m not sure if you have any other tips of what are typical, I don’t want to call them mistakes, but things that get in the way of doing it correctly that you see with people you work with when it comes to coherent breathing.

Johanna Lehmann (22:14)
Yeah, I mean, I think coherent breathing is almost like an advanced practice in the sense because I think there’s so many things even like during the day we could do to bring our breathing a bit, a bit back into into, yeah, balance. Because for instance, if you are someone who is on calls like a lot, who’s a lot of Zoom calls, speaking a lot in meetings, like this already also dysregulates your breathing in a way, right? Because now we are on a podcast, like we’re both talking a lot.

So basically we’re mouth breathing, like doing a lot of inhales and exhales. And so then we come quite high into like a sympathetic state of nervous system. So then even more important afterwards is maybe to take just two minutes to, if you feel very like stressed before you go into the next meeting to actively calm the breath down again. ⁓ If it comes to the coherent breathing, what I see a lot

particularly in women, is that they find it super hard to do belly breath because ultimately as women, like we are taught, okay, you need to look like super slim. we just naturally like quite a lot of women pull the belly in so we don’t want to show it. like coherent breathing is also like, as you described, it’s like a wave. So you notice like the belly, the chest rising slightly, you have to hold expansion. And then

Yeah, you inhale and then exhale again. So I think to actively do that is quite challenging initially for people. And then also to just notice, okay, there’s this big breathing muscle, the diaphragm, and to start activating that. It’s also, feels like people feel like, it’s quite work initially. So that’s why I always usually advise like to start, really might not need to be even like five and a half, but you build it up slowly that.

You don’t get stressed by trying to breathe in a certain way and you can then, as the breathing naturally becomes slower, adapt it or extend it over time. Yeah.

Patrick Obolgogiani (24:10)
You’ve kind of referred to the peculiarities of women versus men. Can you speak more about what are other differences you have almost every time when it comes to the protocol or the diagnosis when it comes to genders?

Johanna Lehmann (24:26)
Yeah, good one. Because I think breathing, lot of technique, or in medicine in general, a lot of medicine was tested just on men, right? So women have always been kind of like the little sister of the man, but it’s like we have completely different bodies. And so the most overlooked aspect, what I see, is how also breathing changes through the cycle of women. So for instance, a lot of women who see

a high impact of their performance or the way they feel through their cycle or the hormonal changes is they don’t know, or quite often we don’t notice that actually as part of the cycle where in the second half they feel more aggravated or more stressed or just life becomes too much easier than before and also in sports performance you see it. So I noticed

for instance, now training for a race, I noticed the first half, I’m much better performing than the second half. And that you can see that for women in the second half, the breathing rate also increases. So some women almost like switch into kind of like almost chronic hyperventilation. And so we can try to adapt a lot, like take a lot of supplements. But ultimately, if we become aware that for like almost like two weeks, a lot of women

shift into that state of just a higher base stress, it’s super important to know that then there’s also techniques you can use to just actively lower this stress again. So to then actively focus on more long exhalations or breathing sessions was a high part of recovery.

So for instance, there’s a lot of interest in hyperventilation techniques, which then prepare you for ice baths, for instance. And I noticed quite often that people then do these techniques, they hyperventilate, they hold their breath. And often they might not even need that ice baths because you don’t wanna always get into those high stress stimuli breath work. And so also quite often I noticed for women, then they feel more

anxious even afterwards. So what I learned over the years is like, quite often we don’t need like even more nervous system, push like more tiger, tiger, tiger. It’s as helpful to maybe do conscious connected breathing, or as we call like, intermittent hypoxic training, where you combine conscious connected breathing with breath holds, it’s super helpful to do. But it does not, you need, you don’t need to push the body always like to

to the max because breath work, different forms of breath work really can be like a resilience training like sauna or ice baths, but focus more on the then on the turtle techniques to really bring the nervous system more into state of yeah, parasympathetic or rest and digest activities.

Patrick Obolgogiani (27:16)
Yeah, so there’s a slight nuance of the cycling effect compared to men who don’t maybe have that same rhythm. I’m curious, like, I’m not sure if you’ve ever looked into it, but I remember reading some time ago around the impact of cortisol with pregnant women on their children, like before birth, like during the pregnancy, and specifically even like epigenetic impact of particularly in like things like warzone on the newborn.

I’m just curious if you’ve ever looked into it and whether breath work could actually support and keep the cortisol levels more normal. you ever?

Johanna Lehmann (27:52)
Yeah, mean, it is interesting too. So I haven’t seen like a study specifically to see how breathing impacts like the baby and the mother one. But what there’s interesting studies on is, for instance, that if the mom and like you have a newborn, for instance, how the breathing you display automatically impacts like the baby because

just your breathing will have an impact not only on the baby, but also, for instance, the people around you. So there’s now new research showing how also there’s an effect of the way you breathe has an effect on someone else. And I’ve seen it so many times with pregnant moms that, for instance, when they calm down to do recovery sessions during pregnancy,

how then they will notice, like, they feel more aware, for instance, what the baby is doing in the belly, or they just feel more calm, they can prepare better or feel more safe about or good about the birth. So, clearly, it shows that, yeah, definitely you can have an impact on how much cortisol is released through different breathing techniques.

I always recommend to do lots of breathing techniques, ⁓ for instance, during a pregnancy, to consciously get yourself back into these states of calmness. You don’t want to do breath holds and stuff, but the parathympathetic turtle states are usually a wonderful technique to use.

Patrick Obolgogiani (29:24)
I can imagine the tiger comes out anyway.

Johanna Lehmann (29:28)
Yes, yes, yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Patrick Obolgogiani (29:31)
We kind of touched on it a little bit, but if you could think about all those things you mentioned about someone coming in and you notice those bad habits, basically, that then impact their health and well-being, both physically and also mentally, if you could just choose one, what’s the most common you see, particularly for these executives? What would you want to change in their behavior?

Johanna Lehmann (29:56)
You mean just from a breathing perspective specifically? Yeah. So like what I like, it’s one, what I like to recommend is to focus because you can do all those like crazy blowout sessions where you feel like, like this was amazing. Yeah, that’s great. But I usually give people like to remember is like LSD. So you can basically the functional way of breathing and that is light. So breathing.

Patrick Obolgogiani (29:59)
One breathing and one non breathing.

Johanna Lehmann (30:24)
through the nose, always like that’s such a no brainer, but people really don’t focus on it. As a base breathing, focus through the nose, like it filters the air. Now we saw it a lot in Holland here when people like to work out in the snow, like you want to breathe through the nose, it filters the incoming air. Try to focus on nasal breathing, light breathing through the nose. You see it in newborns actually, because like if you see a newborn, they breathe so…

gentle, so sweet, like as if they are unimpressed. And then you put someone like a grownup of like whatever, 40 years next to that, and you see them breathing through their mouths, like up into their chest. So one thing you can have like a huge effect with is the L from the LSD. Then also comes the slow breathing and the deep breathing. But I think nasal breathing in general has like so many

awesome effects because there’s more than 25 functions your nose as like an air conditioning system in your face can do which the mouse cannot do. So noses for breathing, mouses for eating. I think that’s a big one which a lot of people like don’t do because if you consider you’re in your bed maybe also eight, nine hours a day, a lot of people tend to mouse breeze at night snoring whatnot. So

to start looking into how to breathe through your nose to have a more balanced life. It will automatically slow down your breathing as you breathe through your nose, make you more calm, but also help you with sports performance, for instance, to train. So nose breathing is a big one. And then I don’t want to add in a second one, but I think the easiest hack is to just.

Focus on the long exhales. So not the big inhalations, but whenever you’re stressed, the relaxation is in the exhalation. Just do like one long exhalation. And that’s already hard for a lot of people. Long exhales, they will slow you down in seconds. You can measure it like in real time. If you put in an oximeter that your breathing slows down, the heart rate goes down.

Patrick Obolgogiani (32:25)
I kind of go without knowing the other two. So we have light.

Johanna Lehmann (32:28)
Is it silent? So light, slow for the slow breathing. That’s where like for me always the turtle come in. If you, for instance, I’m not sure if you know how many times a minute a turtle is breathing. Any idea?

Patrick Obolgogiani (32:43)
Maybe five.

Johanna Lehmann (32:45)
Yeah, so quite good already. So often like two to three times a minute. If you look at the lifespan, it’s one of the animals, the longest living animals. So there is a measurable or direct correlation between how often you’re breathing, how long you’re living or how high the oxidative stress. So that’s why slow breathing really is a big And then coherent breathing is an example for that, for instance. And then the last one is like the deep breathing.

That’s what we, think, briefly touched upon initially is like the focus on the belly. Why is that? Because you can basically imagine your lung like upside down trees. So like the biggest part of the gas exchange happens in the lower part of the lungs. And as you tend to breathe just up in your chest, which a lot of us do, you are just not efficiently breathing. I mean, you are breathing, but it’s not functional for maybe what you want to achieve. So.

That’s like the training to activate the belly or the diaphragm. So that are the three ones I like to give to people if they just change one thing, they just remember that. then it’s, yeah, it’s trial and error to just, I think, become aware of it. It’s already like huge.

Patrick Obolgogiani (34:00)
Yeah, yeah, that’s a good, abbreviation. The one thing I will mention, I think you kind of said it yourself, but I remember a couple of people have told me this, they’ve had people that have done years of yoga come in and then basically do what you mentioned, like belly breathing, and basically only using their abdomen to move their breathing like that, instead of using the diaphragm and the intercostal muscles like in the entire

torso area, which is something that course can create problems as well if you’re not actually breathing with the whole body. And it’s just an interesting nuance. Like I can imagine that if you only do yoga and you never actually even, I’m sure even within yoga, there’s different schools of thought, but you can kind of misunderstand what belly breathing means quite easily.

Johanna Lehmann (34:48)
Yeah, totally. So that’s like something to practice, to relearn because we forget about it. And with I think also the society we live in, first of all, also the way we sit. So it just automatically supports the breathing with secondary breathing muscles. But I think also, which is maybe not touched upon so often, but also the way we deal with all types of things that are

coming at us, like all the emotions we have to, we feel it and we have to kind of metabolize them. I think it’s also over life is like we take in a lot, we swallow it down, but there’s like a lot what we hold onto. So that’s why also I think once people start to, to readily breathe, to breathe slower, like quite often, like emotions can bubble up because every emotion often is also related to a specific breathing pattern. So yeah, so we often.

have to relearn breathing and then notice like while being in this process, it’s also a great way to metabolize like a lot of things we also suppress. so help breathing can also help with that, but that’s a whole other big topic.

Patrick Obolgogiani (35:50)
Indeed. We’re getting to the tail end here. But one thing I wanted to ask before we start closing is you mentioned the race you’re doing, the IREX race, which is very tough. So good luck with that. That was a nice week, right? I’m curious, like, we’ve talked a lot about different things that will help anyway, athletes and people that want to be athletic. But is there something specific you’re doing, like when it comes to the training? specifically, I’m curious about the recovery.

After we’ve done an hour of practice, how do you get back to the baseline as quickly as possible and efficiently as possible? Any tips and tricks on breathing for people that are athletic?

Johanna Lehmann (36:25)
Yeah, I think for instance, like in the the rock specifically, because it combines running with strength training. What I see a lot is like, for instance, if you do all those sled pushes, if you because you have to create a lot of momentum for a lot of weight in a short amount of time. to with all strength exercises is not about high rocks, but also weightlifting to always like as you exhale.

to push up, for instance, or push up the barbell. So as you want to create strength, that out with the exhale. And then for the cardio part is to stay in rhythmic breathing patterns. Try to train your body to stay in the lower gears of breathing, or the nasal forms of breathing, in and out through the nose. And then when it gets tougher, in through the nose, out through the

mouse to also try to train that. you’re basically your body switches into stress modes later on in a sense. So what I noticed was running for instance, to do rhythmic breathing in two, three, out two, three helps a lot with staying in that running rhythm. And then with strength training, like using the exhale to push weight for instance. then for yeah,

recoveries to just as your breath helps with that in in races for instance in this specific race as you use the running almost as like a recovery phase before you go into the next station so that you consciously try to slow the breathing down again to get also into a lower heart rate again to get from a heart rate zone four or maybe even five back into

in through the nose out to consciously focus on breathing again so that you can then with recovered strength in a sense go into the next station.

Patrick Obolgogiani (38:23)
Amazing. Yeah, it’s good work out trips. Brilliant. Thank you so much. Any particular playlists you want to point people to if they want to learn more about the work you do and maybe you can touch?

Johanna Lehmann (38:33)
Yeah, sure. So I’m super happy to check out www.tiger-turtle.com. also launched, so far in Germany, a book, a breathwork last year. We’re also working on bringing that out in the American-speaking or English-speaking world. So yeah, Tiger and Turtle is always a great place, or to connect on Instagram at life of tiger turtles. So that’s more for like…

tips and tricks and just say hi when being Amsterdam or at the HiRox next week.

Patrick Obolgogiani (39:08)
It does seem like Amsterdam is, at least within Europe, like a bit of a breathing capital. There’s a lot of things coming from there. yeah, just. ⁓

Johanna Lehmann (39:18)
Yeah, for sure. Like we have Wim Hof here, right? Who’s like, who has been big in the French and the breathing scene. So always a good, good place to visit.

Patrick Obolgogiani (39:28)
Thank you, Johanna,

Johanna Lehmann (39:31)
Thank

you so much, Patrick. Good to talk.