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Unlock The SECRET to Better Health through Breathwork with Stefanie Broes - E81
57 Plays2 months ago
If you’re plagued by poor sleep, lingering stress, or nagging fatigue, it might be your breathing - not your workload or diet -that’s holding you back.
Most of us breathe high in our chest, race through shallow breaths, or default to mouth breathing, never realizing how much it drains our energy and resilience. From chronic congestion and stress-induced tension to "inefficient" breathing patterns reinforced by our daily posture, it's easy to slip into habits that sabotage health without knowing it.
Learn how to breathe properly in this episode, as we unpack the science behind functional breathing, simple daily adjustments, and routines that can unlock better sleep, sharper focus, and real relaxation.
Stefanie Broes is the co-founder of moonbird, the world’s first handheld breathing coach that helps people manage stress, anxiety, and sleep problems through the power of slow breathing. With a PhD in pharmaceutical sciences and a background in health tech, Stefanie combines science and design to make breathwork accessible, evidence-based, and beautifully simple. Before starting moonbird, she worked in other startups and discovered firsthand how breathing could transform her own sleep and wellbeing. Today, she’s on a mission to help millions reconnect with their breath—one breath at a time.
“If that hurts, it's a sign that you're having lots of tension in your body and you literally [are] just not relaxed enough in order to breathe really efficiently.” - Stefanie Broes
In this episode you will learn:
- Why breathing through your nose is more efficient than through your mouth.
- Simple ways to check and improve your breathing pattern and posture during daily life.
- How breathwork can shift your body between stress and calm states.
- The science behind slow breathing and its benefits for sleep, stress, and recovery.
- The role of breathwork tools, like Moonbird, in making breath practice easier and more consistent.
- How breathwork can help both adults and kids relax, and why starting young matters.
Resources
- Connect with Stefanie Broes on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stefaniebroes
- Check out Moonbird for updates and insights: https://www.moonbird.life/
This podcast was produced by the team at Zapods Podcast Agency:
Find the products, practices, and routines discussed on the Alively website:
Recommended
Transcript
The Science of Breathing: Nose vs. Mouth
00:00:00
Speaker
When we breathe through our nose, you get the release of a gas, which is nitric oxide. It's released in the vasal bed in our nose. The nitric oxide follows the oxygen deep into the lungs and there the blood vessels widen. And so you get more passage of blood in the lungs and so more gas exchange. So when we breathe in through the nose, actually breathing becomes much more efficient than breathing in through the mouth.
Meet Stephanie: Entrepreneur and Breathwork Advocate
00:00:28
Speaker
This is the Home of Healthspan podcast, where we profile health and wellness role models, sharing their stories and the tools, practices, and routines they use to live a lively life.
00:00:42
Speaker
Stephanie, welcome to the HOMA Healthspan. I am particularly excited to go into a deep dive on breathing and breath work. It's something I've been working on as a swimmer. I have kind of damaged lungs, I think, from the chlorine and have been doing work and and gotten my respiratory rate down by more than one per minute. But I'm sure there's much more to learn and looking forward to learning from you about it. But before we do, how would you describe yourself?
00:01:09
Speaker
I would just describe myself as I'm a lively mompreneur, recently a mompreneur, um trying to juggle entrepreneurship with having a young baby at home, and which is, in in a sense, it's like having two babies, right? So yes, joining that club.
00:01:28
Speaker
Yeah, there are there are a lot of lessons that carry over one to the other. When I did a similar thing, I had a child maybe two years into starting my first company and did a lot of writing because it was just, wow, I'd get a lesson here and apply it here and apply it. It was actually found the whole process helpful personally. Yeah, yeah. It shifts your priorities a little bit. like You have to balance stuff more and that in itself is a great lesson.
00:01:52
Speaker
Yeah. The, the old adage, if you need something done, give it to a busy person. and so if you do a doubly busy person, you make sure you get the things you need done. yeah So on that, um, what is it? You say you're a mompreneur.
00:02:07
Speaker
What is the entrepreneurship? So can you, you talk a little bit about the, your business?
Understanding Dysfunctional Breathing
00:02:13
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So five years ago, i started a company called Moonbird.
00:02:18
Speaker
um It's a company um active in ah the health space. And we are focused on making breathwork accessible and cool. And we develop tools, physical tools, actually, that enable people to really tap into the powerful benefits of breathwork.
00:02:35
Speaker
I started that business together with my brother, who is my co-founder. And we've been doing it for five years. We come from Europe, but we're now really focused on and the US market as well. So trying to make it an international business.
00:02:49
Speaker
So I'd like to, if we can, start from the problem. So at one level, breath is life, right? that It is the definite. When you stop breathing, you stop living, right? It is the the give and take with a lot of meditation. You're you're following your breath.
00:03:07
Speaker
Why is it that it takes work to do something that should be the most core, most natural? Because i hear about people breathe wrong and and I'll give, there are different ways to do this. But an example for me, i was a mouth breather for probably most my life. And I didn't know that was an issue. I thought that was normal. And then I would watch TV shows and they say, oh yeah, those mouth breathers. I'm huh?
00:03:31
Speaker
How else are you supposed to breathe? Because my nose was always so congested. yeah And as a swimmer, you can't do anything but breathe from your mouth. And so i guess I just developed that as a habit.
00:03:42
Speaker
And it was only i went to a like an executive coaching thing with Andrew Huberman and some others like, oh, no, like even when you're working out, you want to your mouth closed, you want to breathe through your nose. And so that was maybe 2019. completely changed But what is it that makes this thing that should be so natural to us?
00:04:02
Speaker
So unnatural. Well, it's not that I wouldn't call it like unnatural because we we all do it our whole lives long. Right. And usually, and most people don't think too much about it. So it's not that we're, we're not doing it. We are doing it and it feels natural, but it's just that we have like, or a lot of people have actually shifted to dysfunctional breathing patterns, right? which can be indeed either through the mouth or like their posture not being well or high in the chest, for instance, because people have a lot of stress and so on.
00:04:35
Speaker
And so there is an art in doing it right or trying to do it right. And so you can learn that practice. And that's what what breathwork
Benefits of Nose Breathing and Nitric Oxide
00:04:44
Speaker
is all about. It's like intentionally changing one of your breathing characteristics to shift to more functional breathing patterns.
00:04:52
Speaker
And you can do that throughout the day to make sure that you just breathe properly. Or you can do that in specific instances for specific reasons, which can be like trauma release or emotional release or boost your immune system or make sure that you shift into like a deep relaxation mode and whatever. But it's like we all do it, but there are like a lot of good reasons why we should shift our focus more to our breathing to make it more functional and better.
00:05:21
Speaker
Well, yeah, so there are there are many directions to go there. And maybe the best place to start is proper breathing technique. And is there a single proper of where your shoulders are, where your posture is, the diaphragmatic?
00:05:36
Speaker
What is the ideal kind of breathing pattern? I've heard six breaths per minute, things like this. So indeed, there are a couple characteristics that make up the breath and we can just like quickly go over all of them. Okay. So it starts indeed with like we have, you mentioned it already, like mouth breathing is not really good for us. There is a reason biologically and evolutionary why we have two separate cavities in our head, right? So noses are for breathing and mouths are for eating. um And so we should try to breathe as much as possible through our nose. That's the first thing.
00:06:11
Speaker
and And is that for, because it can filter, it kind of protects us because of how the nose is designed? When you say we have two, what what is the reason for the nose versus the mouth? Yeah, so as you rightfully point out, like humidifying, clearing the air from bacteria and small particles and so on. But also when we breathe through our nose, you get the release of a gas, which is only released when we breathe through our nose, which is nitric oxide. It's released in the in the vasal bed in our nose. And that gas actually passes along with the air that we breathe into the lungs.
00:06:44
Speaker
And it's actually a very famous gas. It's won the Nobel Prize because it's so important in our whole body, actually, because it causes vasodilatation. So it widens the blood vessels.
00:06:56
Speaker
ah It does it actually in a um a pharmaceutical or in a medicine called Viagra. And so there in a specific body part, it also widens the blood vessels, causing that body part to fill with blood. And so same happens when we breathe in through our nose.
00:07:12
Speaker
The nitric oxide follows the oxygen deep into the lungs and there the blood vessels widen. And so you get more passage of blood in the lungs and so more gas exchange. So when we breathe in through the nose, actually breathing becomes much more efficient than breathing in through the mouth.
00:07:30
Speaker
Okay. So that sounds like a great first step. So yeah working on breathing through the nose. um You know, I've heard people talk about mouth taping. I've tried it in the past for sleeping. And, but then more recently I've heard people say, do that during the day first, get used to it, just kind of training yourself during the day. So do you have any tips for people that are trying to transition to say, hey I want to be more conscious and hopefully get to unconsciously breathing through my nose as a default?
00:07:59
Speaker
Yeah. So first of all, I think it's important that you feel that your nose is a bit open because otherwise it can give you like this feeling of your suffocating. So try to get used to it throughout the day. That's a great practice. And you can watch some YouTube videos, how you can unclog your nose as well. There are like some tips centric and tricks on how to do that.
00:08:16
Speaker
Yeah. You blow out and pinch and that was my, yeah. The, the James Nestor book. I learned that. was like, oh man, this is transformative for me. Yeah, exactly. And so then indeed practice it like for a couple of hours until you feel really comfortable with it. And then you can start practicing or doing it when you're, when you're sleeping. There are also some mouth tapes that like they make your mouth like smaller, but they still have like a small opening for when you feel really like trapped or whatever. Okay. So just play around with it and and do what feels comfortable for you. And then hopefully automatically you'll shift to more efficient nose breathing over time without the need having the need to tape your mouth.
Techniques for Diaphragmatic Breathing
00:08:56
Speaker
Okay. So the first step kind of going to the nose is the second, the diaphragmatic part. Is it body posture? What what is kind of level two if you once you start working through the nose breathing?
00:09:06
Speaker
Yeah, I'd say that level two indeed is diaphragmatic breathing. And that's because the diaphragm is a muscle that separates your lungs from your belly. um And it's the most important breathing muscle, but people often don't engage it or use it as much as they should because they're breathing high in the chest. And so the diaphragm is like an umbrella. Once you breathe in, the umbrella opens and it sucks air like deep into the lower parts of the lungs where the alveoli are. And so exactly again, where the gas exchange happens. And so that's important. So you really want to draw in that air into the lower parts of the lungs. And how do you do that? Because I think that may nose versus mouth. It's pretty obvious. You can feel it kind of one way or the other.
00:09:51
Speaker
i think for someone not as a tune, like my mother was a singer and she would talk about, oh, you sing from your diaphragm. And and like as a kid, it never made sense and didn't click. how How do you know if you're doing that? Like, what are the things you can do?
00:10:07
Speaker
Well, there's a very easy check. So you can put one hand on your chest and one on your belly and just like check in with yourself while you're breathing and see what hand moves the most while you're breathing.
00:10:20
Speaker
And it can be that it's the hand on the chest that moves the most and you're breathing higher up in the chest. or your belly expands more with each inhale and exhale.
00:10:30
Speaker
And so once, while you're doing that, you can also try to shift to more diaphragmatic breathing while making sure that once you breathe in your belly expands more. And when you breathe out, your belly contracts again. And so that's a very easy practice to shift to more diaphragmatic or belly breathing.
00:10:50
Speaker
And if it's not, is it a muscle that you kind of work on over time to to strengthen and and get used to that? Yeah, absolutely. There's also a very interesting tech that you can do. That's like you you just take your fingers and you put them around your ribs, you curl them around your lower ribs. and you see if you can like really curl your hands under your ribs. And if that hurts, it's often because your diaphrag diaphragm is under a lot of stress and it's like contracted all the time, which is a sign of you having stress really being put on your diaphragm, not being able to really maximally use that muscle as well. So if that hurts and you can't really wrap your fingers around your lower ribs, It's a sign of, you know, you're having like lots of tension in your body and you literally don't have the good posture or you're just not relaxed enough in order to breathe really efficiently.
Posture and Breathing: What's the Connection?
00:11:45
Speaker
And on the, but so is that the third thing now thinking of posture and where our shoulders are and back and
00:11:50
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So then we move on to posture and, uh, something that you, and that I've always remembered is a friend of mine is a psychologist. And she told me like, when I see, uh, clients or patients entering the room, she says, I can just see on their posture, how like stressed they are. And if stress is like a factor aggravating, whatever is going on in their lives. And that's often when the the length of their ear to their shoulders is like very short.
00:12:16
Speaker
Because then people are like hunched and yeah they're just very tense. So try to keep that in mind as well. And if you notice like this distance getting shorter, just relax your shoulders, point your shoulder blades towards each other, trying to do that like as an exercise, and just then lower everything and make sure that your lungs have the space to breathe and to expand.
00:12:41
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, this seems like one of those things that... businesses and people working from home, et cetera, would be well equipped to incorporate into the workday is say, hey, every 90 minutes, if we're sitting there, we're hunched on that computer, probably bad posture, it's going to have long-term effects. So if every 90 minutes we could stand up, just take a couple breaths, try to get back in that zone because over time we'll creep out of it.
00:13:07
Speaker
But if you had those periodic check-ins just to to come back to yourself, Exactly, exactly. And it's also normal to realize why we shift into that dysfunctional breathing state, right? Because we're sitting at our laptop for more than eight hours a day. So it's not like I don't understand the reason for it. But it's it's it's as you said, like just with a couple of like intentional checks, we can shift back into that more functional state.
00:13:31
Speaker
Yeah. So, i mean, a couple checks a day where you you could just stand up or even sitting down, I guess, and and you transfer, make sure you're going through your nose, feel on your stomach, make sure you're breathing through your stomach, the diaphragm pulling in and out, and then where your shoulders are.
00:13:49
Speaker
And then lastly, there is the breathing rate as well, breathing and volume. So you want to check in with yourself as well and just notice how your breathing rate is. And you shouldn't like, you can draw like waves up and down each time you inhale and exhale and just count the tops per minute to see if like you're your number is in the average range. It should be in between like 12 to 15 breaths per minute. um And you can, after a while, you'll start to notice like, what is your average breeding rate? You don't have to like draw the waves anymore. um And then you can notice whenever it's like higher than that average number or lower, meaning that you might be stressed or you might be really relaxed.
Personal Insights on Breathing and Health
00:14:28
Speaker
That was a wake up call for me. i wear whoop and it measures my breath rate at night. And it was high 16, sometimes over 17. And I remember listening to Dr. Andy Galpin was saying, oh, this is we care more about this and HRV in terms of recovery.
00:14:44
Speaker
And if we're over 12, 13, we're really concerned. on your recovery. said, Whoa, I'm never with anywhere close to that. And so then I found research on the the damage chlorine and things can do to swimmers lungs, that how much time I'm around chemicals that had been breathing in all through my childhood. And so I got one of these things I heard on Tim Ferriss boss that was like, almost like weights for your lungs. So I put it in my mouth and I'm breathing to try to work on that.
00:15:13
Speaker
Like airway resistance. Yeah. Yeah. And they're different plugs. So you can kind of go up and wait or, you know, the resistance that you have and it's brought it down to kind of 14, 15. So I've taken down one, one and a half breaths per minute, which you think, oh no, you can't really do anything about it. No, you can't. You can go work these things. Yeah, exactly. And so while you're doing breathing techniques, indeed, you lower your, you intentionally lower your breathing rate during an exercise. But the idea is that once you start practicing it over time, it will also like change your baseline breathing rate or your baseline HRV, and you'll improve
Breathwork Techniques and Nervous System Effects
00:15:49
Speaker
those metrics. Indeed.
00:15:51
Speaker
I think what also gets exciting, so there's one kind of table stakes, like you need to set these up, but thinking of the Wim Hof and and others, what you can do with breath work. So there I think there's studies on breath work to boost the immune system. There's breath work to heat your body before you go in a cold. And these Buddhist monks, they could melt the snow around them based on breath work that they would do and heat up their body. um So what what are all these things you can do with breathwork that just seem to transform your body and mind?
00:16:22
Speaker
Yeah. So, well, there are basically two types of breathwork, if I can just make it really easy. So there's the one that accelerates you, and that's the one where you speed up your breathing rate.
00:16:33
Speaker
And then on the contrary, you have the one where you slow your breathing down. and that's what we also do and focus on with Moonbird. So in the first case, when you speed up your breathing rate, what you'll do is you'll activate your sympathetic nervous system.
00:16:48
Speaker
And that's like the part of the autonomic nervous system that, um, re elicits your fight, flight, freeze mode, where a lot of people have probably already heard of.
00:16:59
Speaker
And so what that does is that you actually intentionally, and for a short period of time, you'll shift into a stress mode. you lower your carbon dioxide balance because you're breathing much more faster. And that changes the acidity the acidity of your blood as well.
00:17:17
Speaker
And it's because of that, that it influences your pain receptors. So that's why people, when they elevate their breathing rate, carbon dioxide goes lower, blood becomes more acidic, and they just feel they they feel pain differently. That's why they can sit in those ice baths so long.
00:17:34
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Which one does for the immune system? Because there's one that kind of can help boost the immune system too, right? Which which side of it is it? So that's really ah accelerating your breathing rate. That's shifting in in that stress response for a short minute, a moment of time to make sure that you really boost your immune system. It's like, it's like training your nervous system. You can compare it to that, which is very different from like slow paced breathing exercises where you activate the other part of the autonomic nervous system, the parasympathetic part.
00:18:07
Speaker
And that really is the brake paddle. It's like, rest and digest, you lower the stress response and you shift into this recovery mode, actually. And so I sometimes call the breath like the remote control of the nervous system, because by changing how you breathe, you can really shift into that stress response, which for short moments in time can be very good and beneficial for you. Or you can shift into that recovery state, recharging, calming your body down, making it easier for you to fall asleep and so on. And just by changing your breathing rate, you can shift between these two modes, which is beautiful, right?
00:18:44
Speaker
Yeah. And could you give an example of each? So if for one that maybe before a competition or before an ice bath or something that you're trying to accelerate, what what would an example exercise be for that?
00:18:58
Speaker
So it's often what they call conscious connected breath work, which is you leave no pauses in between the breathing cycles. So exactly, you you breathe in fast and you breathe out fast. It could either be through the mouth or the nose, the breathing out. That's less important. so But you're breathing in through the nose.
00:19:21
Speaker
And so you already notice it. What this does is really, it's like a controlled form of hyperventilation, right? That's exactly what it is. And so what what will happen is the same thing. You'll get that carbon dioxide released and you get this dizziness and light in your head and so on. Yeah. You can even get the tingling in your fingers and so on. And so all of that is because like all these, yeah, these physiological things happening in your body.
00:19:44
Speaker
And so again, for a short moment in time, it's not something that you should practice all the time. For a short moment of time, it can be very beneficial and trigger like a lot of good things in your body. How long do you do it? You do it for a minute or or how long would you do an exercise like that to get going?
00:19:59
Speaker
I'd say it depends a lot on what you want to do. If you want to just wake up in the morning, you can do it for a couple of minutes, a couple of rounds of cycles. If you want to do like the more intentional, because if you practice this for a very long time, you also get, you shift blood in in certain circuits in your brain. And so you get more um blood flowing to the emotional parts of the brain, which is why people, if they practice it for a very long time, they get this release of emotions, trauma, and all of these things that are triggered. And so if you want to practice it really in a therapeutic context, then you practice it for, I'd say like 45 minutes.
00:20:35
Speaker
That's like the somatic therapy. Exactly. Exactly. That's super intense. It's super It's beautiful, but it's really intense. And so I would always and advise to do that, like guided by a breathwork coach or a supervisor that can help you integrate whatever happens and and comes up.
00:20:53
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, we we had ah a somatic expert on the show. I did a couple sessions and man, it it is intense. I mean, so much comes up physically and you can't even control it. It's wild.
Activating Relaxation through Slow Breathing
00:21:04
Speaker
That's why it's used now in in the therapeutic context as well. You do not need any medication for that. It's literally just breathing. Yeah. Wow. Okay. And how about on the the break side of things? So more what Moonbird does to kind of do the the down regulation?
00:21:19
Speaker
Yeah. So indeed down-regulating the nervous system by down-regulating the breath as well. So instead of breathing around 12 to 15 breaths per minute, you're going to like halve it by three times. So you're going to shift towards six, five breaths per minute.
00:21:36
Speaker
And then there are like lots of small variations, but the science actually says it doesn't really matter too much, whether it's like five or six breaths per minute or box breathing or four, seven, eight breathing.
00:21:48
Speaker
The most important thing is that you're practicing regularly and like daily. So just consistent practice makes you calm down, not only during the exercises, but you also have spillover effects outside the exercise.
00:22:01
Speaker
And so that can be just like a simple five seconds in five seconds out. Or if you like, you can do five seconds in, you pause for five, five seconds out, you pause for five, so which is the box breathing exercise. So you've got like subtle variations, but the most important thing is consistency.
00:22:18
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, for me, they're, they're kind of three to most moments that I have in my day to do these. So For me, kind of after my morning meetings, before I might go into client calls and everything, I have a reminder to do a couple of minutes of 4-7-8 breathing to just change from the do-do-do to like now can I be present for a conversation.
00:22:39
Speaker
Then at the end of my day, so put work to one side and then sit down with my daughter for dinner. make that transition. i'm just clearing my head of there's work time. Now let me, you know, I'm new. And then before bed or as I lie in bed, i do typically just five or six breaths of, um, seven in hold for 28, 14 out.
00:23:01
Speaker
fourteen hour 28. Yeah. And I mean, it, and it's not full, I'm sure it's not full seconds, right? That's like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, one, two, three, four, that count.
00:23:17
Speaker
But man, I used to have pretty high sleep latency and now it's, three minutes, right? I do the breath work and I'm out. It just puts me right to bed. I couldn't agree more. That's really also what started this journey for me is I had pretty bad sleeping issues and I, um, read about breath work and I read about how important and how evidence-based it actually is. Um, so I started practicing with it and for me, it also was like magic, um, to fall back asleep. I also do a pretty slow breathing exercise. So seven seconds in seven seconds out,
00:23:52
Speaker
um pretty deep, pretty slow. And that also works really, really well for me. So I can echo, i can definitely echo what you just said.
Breathwork: Ancient Practice Meets Modern Science
00:24:00
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, and I'd love to talk about that a bit. You talked about the evidence-based and your own problems and journey.
00:24:07
Speaker
I mean, to me, breath works is this fascinating thing because it's, thousands of years old in terms of what people figured out that you can do all these things with breath work.
00:24:18
Speaker
And I think it was thought of as woo-woo for a while, but now the science is understanding, oh no, here's why it does this within the nervous system and everything. So It's not that all of a sudden now it's true. It was always true. We just didn't understand why. Now we're starting to understand why. yeah So can you talk a little bit about the history? I mean, I think people like yoga was ah initially, I believe less about postures and more about breathing. yeah. and and yeah So can can you talk a little bit about the history and how the science is now catching up to that?
00:24:51
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So it's true. It's a very ancient practice. It exists for thousands of years. And it comes from the yogic traditions where they pranayama is like an essential part of yoga.
00:25:03
Speaker
It still is, I'd say. And pranayama really literally means prana is the energy of life and yama means to regulate. So it really means regulating the energy of life.
00:25:16
Speaker
And that's still what, what, what for me, what breathwork stands for. And so It started in Indian traditions, I'd say, but you can also find it back in Chinese and Japanese traditions where you have Qigong or Qi, which is really the the subtle energy of living things, um which I find like a very beautiful way of describing the breath, a subtle energy that animates living things.
00:25:45
Speaker
And um so that has been true for thousands of years. And I have the same feeling like I still feel that some people have a bit of resistance when it comes to breath work, where meditation is already, you know, it's accepted. But slowly, and since the 60s, 70s, there is more and more evidence really demonstrating the impact of of breath work. And I feel even when you talk to like clinicians in the field, it's not contested anymore. It's just not so widely adopted yet as meditation, but slow breathing is is very well recognized in the clinical world. And, you know, if that is what it takes in the West, if we need to first be scientifically convinced before we adopt it, then, you know, I'm fine with it. But I think it's beautiful that those two worlds now are coming together and we're, we we knew already that it was working. Now we can also show it, we can demonstrate it.
00:26:36
Speaker
I guess another area is the, is it holiotropic breathing where like psychedelics are are getting a lot more attention and credibility, but a lot of the same benefits, a lot of the same effects. yeah I believe you're able to get with breath work. It can make similar changes in the mind. Is that right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so the interesting is that um in the Western world, both actually, both fields emerged at the same time. So in the 60s, 70s, I think it's because of the hippies a little bit, you know, people found LSD, they found holotropic breathwork, they started practicing it and so on. And then it came a bit of a like disregarded space, both of them, both LSD and so on, wasn't used for therapeutic settings anymore, ketamine, all of these drugs. And now we're picking them up again and we're we're We're interested in these spaces again, and we're going to we're seeing that, okay, they have side effects if you use them for recreative stuff. But if you use them in the right setting, in the right context, it's still super beneficial for people because of all those effects that you can you can get by using drugs, but you can also get them just by breathing, which is this emotional release, that trauma um that comes up. um You can even see colors, you can start to hallucinate and so on. It's like, it's really
Moonbird's Mission: Making Breathwork Accessible
00:27:52
Speaker
impactful. It's really special.
00:27:53
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the breath is it's really special in general. It's an example with a lively, you know, we we help people identify what's the thing they need to work on health wise. And so and then what is the minimum enjoyable action?
00:28:09
Speaker
they will do and stick with to actually change it. And so whether it's your resting heart rate or your HRV or your amount of deep sleep or the sleep latency, there's certain supplements you can take, there's certain products you can buy and everything, but we see almost just as good effects with people just doing free breath work, right? Just like, Hey, let's try something. And before bed, they do that. And wow, sleep latency went from 32 minutes to 18 minutes. or That's a huge transformation in the amount of time you're laying. Uh, or my HRV actually went up 5% within the first week, just doing this, uh, light breath work. And so I guess that's probably a big part of the mission behind what you're doing with Moonbird
00:28:51
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So you can practice breathwork on your own. It's free, it's accessible, it's scientifically endorsed, you know, it's there. But we as humans, we often need like a little bit of support when we want to practice stuff. It's why we go to the gym. It's, you know, it's why we have a dietitian or whatever. And so it's the same with breathwork. At least that's how I experienced it when I was super convinced of the effect. I still struggle to implement these techniques on my own.
00:29:15
Speaker
ah Most of the time, because I was still so stressed, I couldn't rest my mind on these exercises. My worries, my ah re remuneration in my head just kept on taking control over me being focused on these exercises. And so that's why we developed like a tool, which is called the Moonbird device. It's like this avocado shaped product that you hold in your hand. And the product basically expands and contracts in the palm of your hand.
00:29:42
Speaker
And it gives you, it gives you a rhythm that you need to match with your breathing. And so it takes a whole thinking and cognition part ah out of breathing exercises because you're resting your attention on the device and you're just mimicking this movement with your breath.
00:29:56
Speaker
So it makes it super intuitive and super organic. You do not have to count cheap anymore. You don't have to open up on your phone to meditate or whatever. You just hold this in your hand. it expands your breathing. It contracts your breath out.
00:30:09
Speaker
And do you find people use it most kind of at bedtime as they're going down or they keep it during the day to to downregulate or they may start getting too tense? Or how is this best used? So it's specifically designed that you can just take it with you wherever you want to use it. And we see that the the usage differs a lot on why people want to use it.
00:30:29
Speaker
Some people have anxiety, panic attacks when they go to the supermarket. They have this in their pocket. People with a fear of flying, they take it on the on the airplane with them. And same for sleeping. If you have sleeping issues, like mine is on my nightstand, I just grab it whenever I want to go to sleep and then I breathe with it.
00:30:44
Speaker
um And so for the people that are a bit more interested in like the science behind it, there's also like a sensor incorporated in the device. So while you're doing the exercises and it's optional, if you want, you can connect it with an app and you can get your biofeedback. And so you can check your heart rate and heart rate variability and see how it changes while you're doing exercises. So you can see really that direct impact of slow breathing exercises, lowering heart rate, increasing HRV.
00:31:11
Speaker
And how long is a typical session using it to to get into that state? if You can choose, um I'd say like a small practice better than no practice. But on average, we would recommend to do it at least like eight minutes on a daily consistent basis. Yeah.
00:31:29
Speaker
In one session, eight minutes? Yeah. is Okay. Yeah. yeah Because I wasn't sure if like to get back in that spot, doing four two minute sessions might actually be better for you because it it gets you kind of back to it. I didn't know.
00:31:41
Speaker
Well, I think it's really up to the person. Like if you find that that works best for you and that's what keeps you going, then go, go for that. Right. Um, whatever, whatever floats your boat, but just consistent daily practice is like what I would recommend.
00:31:54
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's very much aligned with our whole approach of yeah the minimum enjoyable action for you. So whatever you will do is the most effective. Exactly. Otherwise, you won't keep up with it. And then it's then it's worse.
00:32:05
Speaker
Well, this has been incredibly informative and helpful for me. So one, thank you for your years of research and and work in this space. And two, thank you for coming and sharing all that with me and our listeners today, Stephanie.
00:32:19
Speaker
No, thank you so much for inviting me. There's just one more thing that I'd love to add as well is that, you know, we launched this product on the market and we saw that lots of people were using the device themselves, but their kids were actually super interested in breathwork as
Final Thoughts on Breathwork's Potential
00:32:32
Speaker
well. And so I really want to mention that because that's like close to my heart, especially now that I became a mom, we developed this specific like mini moon bird. We call them our moon buddies and they're specifically designed for children. So they don't have like the biofeedback component. It's way easier to use. But they have this belly as well that increases and decreases and children hold this in their hand and breathe with it. And it's it's a great screen-free way to help kids relax. which is something that's super necessary in today's world because, you know, kids have screens everywhere and it's so easy to just put them in front of a YouTube video, but we all know it's not good for their brains and their development.
00:33:11
Speaker
So MoonBuddy is like a great way to help children also self-regulate, self-soothe, learn how to use their breath. And if we teach them young, they'll be able to use that throughout the rest of their lives.
00:33:24
Speaker
Yeah. For my nine-year-old, I need to get one of those immediately. Let me ship you one. Thank you. Thank you. And speaking of that, I understand there might be affiliate code or like discount link um that we're going to share on the show notes. where If you want to learn more, where should they go?
00:33:42
Speaker
you can go to our website, moonbird.life or our Instagram page, moonbird.life. Yeah. Wonderful. Well, thank you again, Stephanie. It is once the most natural, but we've gotten away from it and we can come back to this beautiful natural practice and the work that you're doing and continue to do um can help for generations. So thank you.
00:34:06
Speaker
And all our listeners, thank you for joining and enjoy a lively day. Yeah. Keep breathing. Thank you for joining us on today's episode of the Home of Healthspan podcast. And remember, you can always find the products, practices, and routines mentioned by today's guests, as well as many other Healthspan role models on Alively.com.
00:34:24
Speaker
Enjoy a lively day.