The Coach U Podcast

This podcast is about being curious and learning from others. Tune in for insightful conversations with some of the brightest professionals in their field. It's my hope that you walk away from this podcast with something learned that can help you evolve in your life. Along with great conversations, I will be releasing episodes about life. We all deal with a lot and we don't often talk about things that need to be talked about. I am hoping through my explanation of experiences, you can relate. My goal is to connect with other human beings so they know they are not alone in this thing called life. I will always encourage people to create a better environment for themselves and to constantly come back to U. That's where your superpowers are. U just have to learn how to use them :) Remember, always Own U, Love U and Be U. My name is Coach U, and I welcome U to our podcast!

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The Coach U Podcast

Mastering Breath Work: Techniques for Pain Relief and Peak Performance with Ken O'Shea of Refuge Reset

October 10, 2024 • Coach U

Join Coach U and exercise physiologist Ken O’Shea in uncovering the profound impact of breath work on both athletic performance and mental health. Delve into breathing techniques that enhance endurance, reduce stress, and promote well-being. Explore the strategic application of nasal breathing in sports performance, pain management, and how self-massage aids in muscle recovery. With insights into stress management, discover how exercise acts as a natural antidepressant and the importance of evaluating breathing patterns under stress. This in-depth discussion also highlights Ken’s workshops and an upcoming app focused on breathing and mobility. Perfect for athletes or anyone seeking improved health and relaxation.

00:00 Mastering Breath Work: Techniques for Pain Relief and Peak Performance with Ken O'Shea of Refuge Reset
00:14 Introduction and Guest Welcome
02:43 Kenny O'Shea's Background and Work
04:02 Quickfire Questions: TV Shows and Music
06:44 The Science of Breath Work
12:03 Breath Work Techniques for Performance
16:00 Breathing and Endurance in Sports
26:01 Breath Work and Pain Management
43:26 Effective Self-Massage Techniques
44:11 Understanding Fascia and Fluid Dynamics
44:43 The Role of Muscle Contraction in Fluid Movement
45:36 Maintaining Muscle Length Through Training
46:22 Breathing and Its Impact on Performance
47:29 Key Muscles Involved in Breathing
49:40 The Connection Between Breath Work and Body Work
51:58 Building Awareness and Proprioception
54:18 Listening to Your Body During Training
55:27 Testing and Retesting for Optimal Performance
01:00:31 Managing Stress and Anxiety Through Breathing
01:10:02 Workshops and Resources for Breath Work
01:14:21 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

For more information on Ken's workshops, free classes, or personal consultations, you can visit Refuge Reset www.refugereset.com or reach out via email at ken@refugereset.com.
INSTAGRAM @refuge_reset

0:00

Hey everybody. This is the coach U podcast, and I'm your host coach. U, this podcast is about being curious, learning from others and using what we've learned to evolve every single day. Hey, what's up, everyone. In today's episode, we're being joined by Ken O'Shea. Who's a longtime friend of mine and we played soccer and baseball together, growing up and he turned exercise physiologists. He works on the human body, whether it be breath, work. Bodywork through soft tissue, manipulation so you might be thinking, why am I having an exercise physiologist onto the episode? Well, if you're an athlete and you play a lot of sports, you definitely want to tune into this episode to see how you can get a leg up on your competition. By just improving your breeding mechanics and how you're doing it. But that's not it. Even if you don't play sports, you can absolutely pick up something from this episode because everybody breathes. A lot. 18 to 20,000 breaths a day. In fact, can you imagine if you can improve those breaths, just how much they can improve your overall wellbeing. after having our conversation and learning what the breath does and just how much it impacts everything, including pain receptors. It really opened up my eyes to understanding how much more conscious I needed to be about my breath work. One huge thing is mental health. We all know how important it is. On a daily basis, it can be really stressful, especially if you have kids and a job and all these other responsibilities, sometimes being able to take a step back and taking a breath in the proper manner. Could help you. Reduce stress, improve your mental performance and your focus, and also just make you feel better overall. As an athlete, I can tell you, I've tried these different tactics and it's difficult to get them down right away. But as soon as you start to practice them, just like with anything else in the performance world. You will get them down. It just takes time. It takes a little bit of dedication, but the cool thing is in this episode, Ken's going to break all that down for you. And all you have to do is follow along and take notes if you like this episode and you know, other people would pick up something valuable from this, please give it a share and make sure other people know about this as well as we grow the Coach U podcast. Thanks everyone. Hope you enjoy this episode with Ken O'Shea.

Coach U: 2:10

Hey, what's up everybody. Welcome to the coach you podcast. I'm your host coach U today. We're being joined by an old friend, Kenny O'Shea, who I went to high school with. We played soccer together, travel soccer, and we played baseball together. Kenny, thanks so much for joining man. Good to see you.

Kenny O'shea: 2:25

Yeah. Nice to see you too, man. Thanks so much for having me.

Coach U: 2:27

Absolutely. After I saw that what you're doing and in the performance world, it's so different than what I'm used to. And I wanted to pick your brain on it, but before we dive into that, let's get everybody a little idea of who you are. Please introduce yourself and let them know what you do and who you work with.

Kenny O'shea: 2:43

Cool. Yeah. So my name is Ken O'Shea or Kenny O'Shea. I work with a lot of different types of clients, whether that be people who are struggling with pain, stress, and anxiety, or people who are looking for ways to kind of upgrade their performance a little bit because they're dealing with one of those things or just because they need a little extra support to get to that next level, you know, just that little 1 percent of change to try to keep As competitive as possible. My client range honestly is all over the place. As far as age goes my youngest client now is a year and a half. My oldest client is 93. So it's not like it's a one size fit all type of A bag that I do. And I really try to adjust, you know what we're working on together with the client based on what their goals are, you know and what, what they're dealing with. So that's kind of where I, I come from. I do a lot of different things with clients, whether that be body work, breath work applied neurology and just general coaching and, and movement. I don't do as much movement as I used to just because I don't have the facility anymore. But that's kind of where I got my start was in movement and personal training and exercise science. And now I've learned how to kind of pair those things with the body, work with the breath work so I can give people homework to do at home so that they have exercises and movements to help reinforce the things that we're working on when we're in session. Yeah. So that's kind of how I round it all together.

Coach U: 3:56

Before we jump into the science and the nitty gritty, let's talk about you as a person. I want to ask some quick questions. So first of all, what's your favorite TV show?

Kenny O'shea: 4:05

Oh man, I've been thinking about this Shameless. Shameless is by far one of, I think is one of the funniest shows, you know, of all time as, and each time you watch it, you're just like, this couldn't get any crazier,

Coach U: 4:16

So shameless. What about your favorite band or musician?

Kenny O'shea: 4:19

Oh man, that's hard because, you know, Just like the work that I do, I have so many different genres that I'll follow and go into you know, I think that's part of my personalities that I kind of pull from many different sources. I think if you had, if I had to, if I had to go see one band and I can only pick one band, I think I'd go with the red hot chili peppers. I think that they are just. They've been around for so long. They've done so many different types of music. They've, you know, really evolved over the years and, you know, each time they come out with a new album, it's just great. So yeah, I'd say that's probably my favorite band. But you know, that's just one type of music. You know, I love everything from old school, R and B to reggae to classic rock to, you know, then I do classical when I'm working and studying and things like that. So it's, I'm. I'm all over the map. I always am.

Coach U: 5:02

So you're in the performance world. What's your favorite thing about being in the performance world and helping those who are looking to whether it be sport or just overall perform better as a human? What do you love most about it?

Kenny O'shea: 5:15

just that, helping, you know, I think that's my favorite part, and the problem solving for me, that's, that's what kind of gets me excited is that someone comes in with X, Y, and Z, and I have to figure out how they're either all connected or not. And what are the, what is the simplest thing that I could get them to start to do? That is really going to start to move the needle for them. You know, so for me the human body is amazingly complex and because it's amazingly complex, it's always a very unique puzzle to try to solve. And that's probably my favorite part is that I get to help people by trying to, you know, work through all this different testing and techniques and things like that to see what is the best thing for this person. And so, and each day is different, You know, you think that. Someone comes in, you've seen them several times and you think, Oh, okay. Yeah. We're just going to do X, Y, and Z. And they come in and you're doing your evaluation and stuff. And you're like, Oh, this person is something's totally different. And now I got to go a completely different route than I had planned for today. And, you know, so kind of being able to be nimble and the problem solve like that, I think is my favorite part. And that no two people are the same and that the human body itself is so complex that I'll never learn it all. So there's just an endless opportunity to continue to grow and to learn when it comes to really studying the human body. So,

Coach U: 6:28

Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that, man. It's, it's crazy. The same client will come in and it's energy depending on how they're feeling. It could have been, they didn't sleep well. They have stressors going on in their life. So all those things are super effective and it'd be the same person. But yeah, being nimble, being able to adjust, I definitely can relate to that. let's, let's talk about the importance of breath work and maybe a couple of different examples of things that you can do throughout the day, you know, maybe to help yourself with your breathing.

Kenny O'shea: 6:54

So the easiest way to kind of dive into this is to realize that your breathing helps determine your nervous system state. So one of the easiest ways to start to figure out where you are is to start to examine your breath, So there's basically now depending on who you follow if you go all the way down polyvagal theory and other things like that You know, there's more levels to this but just for simplicity sake we're gonna say that there's basically two main halves of the nervous system There's the parasympathetic side, which is like the rest and digest relaxation, And then we have the sympathetic side, which is more alert fight or flight, You know, that kind of stage, And so depending, and this is the cool part about breathing because breathing is one of those things that happens automatically. So outside of our consciousness, but it's also one of the very few things that we have conscious control over to change. And so just by changing the way you breathe, you can change the state that you're in. So I always tell people the ratio in which you breathe determines your state. So if you are, your inhale is more closely tied to your sympathetic state and your exhale is more closely tied to your parasympathetic state. So exhale relaxation, inhale alertness, and you know, kind of energy, So if I want to shift from one side to the other, so let's say that you know, I'm gearing up for a game or, you know, I'm feeling a little low energy. Can I start to influence the way I'm feeling by just changing the way I breathe and emphasizing my inhale? Yeah, I can do like a four second inhale and a two second exhale, And all breath. All the different breath styles work on this continuum, So like I would say that Wim Hof, is more closely towards the sympathetic side because it's a big inhale and then a let go, You know, so you're kind of really emphasizing more of the inhale and the exhale is just kind of a let go process versus something like, you know, take go breathing or very slow, deep exhales, elongated exhales. Would be very much more relaxing, So if I'm before a game and I want to be nice and alert and I'm feeling a little low, I might do a four second inhale. And a two second exhale. And I might repeat that several times until I can feel that change in my body. And then vice versa, after I've finished some kind of match and I'm now I'm gearing down to recover and to relax, can I do something that brings me back into more of a relaxed state? Absolutely. So then I would switch my emphasis to the exhale and I would make my exhale at least two times as long as my inhale. Technically, it needs to be at least one and a half, but that's usually harder math for people. So I just tell people two times as much, You know, cause that's a little bit easier. So a four second inhale would have to have at least an eight second exhale to really start to move the needle. And so that's just an easy way to start to learn how to, and then if you have that framework of your mind of how those two things are tied together, you can literally go through any style of breath work. Okay. And see which one of those, whether it be the inhale or the exhale, they're emphasizing and know what kind of effect it's pretty much going to have on your body overall. And so like, that's kind of how I generally explain breath work and how to start to move your energy state and then also how it can affect your performance.

Coach U: 9:54

Let's say somebody is in a more sympathetic state and you want to get to that more parasympathetic state. And then vice versa. What's a simple, Quick, easy to go to, practice that somebody could do.

Kenny O'shea: 10:04

If we're just talking breath and we're not talking anything else, one of my favorite quick in the moment techniques first of all, breathing through your nose is going to help to put you a little bit more biased towards parasympathetic versus breathing through your mouth, which is definitely very much a sympathetic activity. So just being aware. Of where you're breathing and changing that can dial you in one way or the other. So definitely mouth breathing is more that sympathetic fight or flight state. The nose breathing, nasal breathing can be a little bit more biased towards that parasympathetic state. One of my favorite kind of in the moment techniques to teach people is a technique that Andrew Huberman really made popular and you might've heard it already. And it's that physiological sigh. So it's a double inhale. So,

Coach U: 10:44

hmm. Heh heh heh

Kenny O'shea: 10:45

and then another one. And then an exhale, You do that two to five times and you will feel a shift in your body towards relaxation. There's just no way not to. And I always tell people, like if you spend enough time around small children or you've had spent enough time around small children, when they get really upset, And they're crying and they're, they're upset. And then they start to calm down. You hear them inhale and then they do and then they exhale, You know, so like they, they know how to regulate themselves in that sense, You know, they know how to come back out of that state and it's almost like as adults, we forgot that we had access to that thing and how to move it forward into the rest of our life. And so that's one of my favorite ways to kind of like go from super pumped to more relaxed. And then if you're a little under, you're just, a little low, A little too relaxed, And you want to go the other way. I really liked that four second inhale and a two second exhale either through the mouth or through the nose. And you will kind of bias yourself towards getting ready and kind of pumped, For, you know, like that kind of pregame pump, like let's do this, you know? And like, that's an easy way that doesn't take too much thought or equipment or laying down or anything like that. You can do that in the moment. And it's a really quick, easy way to shift your nervous system state.

Coach U: 11:58

So on the surface level, that's an easy way to kind of get into it, but let's dive a little deeper. So let's talk about the, the techniques between breathing and increased endurance and how that can affect performance.

Kenny O'shea: 12:11

Yeah So we got to do a little science here. And so hopefully we

Coach U: 12:14

We love science

Kenny O'shea: 12:15

here with this,

Coach U: 12:15

That's okay. We'll, we'll be

Kenny O'shea: 12:17

but so we have to understand carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide is typically what we're breathing off when we exhale. Now, the crazy thing about the human body is that the signal to breathe is not a low level of oxygen. It is a high level of carbon dioxide in the body, So it's when carbon dioxide reaches a certain level that tells us that we need to breathe. Either faster or deeper or both, So when we start exercising the carbon dioxide, our muscles are working, they start to produce more carbon dioxide and thus our breathing rate usually picks up, And so that's, that's usually a pretty good thing, The problem is let's say we're running cause that's the easy example, And we are competing in some kind of event or race or something like that. And we have a lot of distance to travel, If we're mouth breathing, we are blowing off because when you breathe through your nose, there's less volume of air that I can actually get in and get out versus when you're breathing through your mouth, there's much more air movement that can happen. So if we're running and we start breathing through our mouth, we are blowing off so much carbon dioxide that Our red blood cells, actually, even though they have the oxygen molecules attached to them, will not let go of that oxygen to your muscle tissue. So, you will fatigue and you will eventually have to stop, And so, the greatest endurance you will ever have, that will allow you to go the longest and the furthest, is nasal breathing, because nasal breathing, Keeps you working at a level that allows this oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange to happen so that your tissues are actually getting the oxygen that they need to keep producing energy and muscular power. And so when we start breathing through that, that mouth, we're blowing off all that carbon dioxide in our bloodstream and the oxygen molecules aren't letting go of the sorry, the red blood cells aren't letting go of the oxygen molecules. And our tissues start to fatigue and they switch energy systems. And, you know, when you switch energy systems from aerobic to anaerobic, there's only so much time you can spend there. And then eventually you have to stop because the workload is too great. And so one of the things that I usually have to do with people in the beginning is actually get them to slow down, to maintain a pace that they can do at nasal breathing, whatever that might be. And then after a little training with the nasal breathing, they're actually able to go back to their normal kind of breathing. Game or event speed, but they're able to have much greater endurance and their level of like, like fatigue or muscle pain or anything like that, you know, in those longer, like marathon and things and stuff like that is much, much reduced, Versus where they used to be when they were mouth breathing and then, you know, they're struggling and just kind of dragging themselves across the finish line. Versus like, Oh no, I actually felt like, you know, I didn't have any of the back pain or my hips didn't start to bother me, you know, 10, 15, 20 miles into the race. They just are able to compete for much longer at a much higher level. And so I think that that's one of the biggest things to understand about breathwork. Is that just, if you want the best endurance, then you're going to be breathing through your nose in and out at a pace that you can comfortably work at. And you will be able to go much longer and much farther than you think you can, and especially much longer and much further than you think you can breathe into your mouth. I mean, even, you know, growing up playing soccer, you know, and things like that, I used to love it when I used to hear people start breathing their mouth. Like I knew I was like, Oh, you're, you're screwed. You know, I was like, I, I have run you down. We're only it's only the first half of the game. And I was like, you're just going to be a floppy mess for the second half. And that's great for me. You know, and sure enough, that's how it always, always turned out. And so I knew early on that that was kind of like a thing. And I could always tell with my own running too, that, you know, like. If I could maintain kind of that nasal breathing or at least nose in mouth out to some degree, I could keep going for a little bit longer, but nose in nose out was definitely the best. So yeah.

Coach U: 16:00

So obviously you have soccer, for instance, is a lot of stop and go, whereas like, let's say you're running a marathon, you're trying to keep up roughly the same pace, That's the goal is to keep your pace up. So. Can you talk about how it can affect that in terms of like a basketball player, a soccer player, a baseball player who like it's, it's the up, up, up spike, and then come back down, up, up, up spike, come back down.

Kenny O'shea: 16:21

Yeah. I mean, when you eventually, if you're at a certain power output or speed, you're, you are working so hard that you're going to end up usually breathing through your mouth a little bit. If you can maintain the nasal breathing, like throughout a soccer game, throughout a basketball game, First of all, your endurance is going to be off the charts. And you're going to be able to just run circles around people, Because you've conditioned yourself to be able to do that. But most of the time, what happens is that we go from periods of predominant nasal breathing, and then we have to do some kind of sprint to catch you know, an attacking player or the ball or something like that. And so we start to breathe a little bit, maybe through our mouth, but then the soonest we can switch back to nasal breathing. The better off we're going to be long term because again, you want, you need that concentration of carbon dioxide in the body to really let go of the red blood cells. And in addition to, something that I didn't mention that we probably should is that if we're mouth breathing, what we're actually doing to the arteries in our body is we're constricting them, And so over time, you not only are you getting less oxygen to the to the tissues because the red blood cells aren't letting go of them, but now you're getting less red blood cells actually to the tissues to even be able to offload the oxygen because there's a reduced amount of flow in and around the body. And this is a global, this happens all over the body, Versus nasal breathing, the more carbon dioxide that's present, the more dilated all those blood vessels are going to be, which means much more red blood cells. Can get through to those different muscles and to those little small capillaries and parts of the body. We see a lot of pain clients who are often breathing very shallow and through their mouth. And we know that that is contributing to some degree to their experience. And just by getting them to switch a little bit and change their breathing up, a lot of times we can get them to start to feel a little bit better because we sense lack of oxygen in the body as pain. So if your tissues aren't getting the oxygen that they need, we sense that as pain, You know, so that's, that's a big deal. When you're talking about both performance and the pain world, We need to be able to kind of keep that in the back of our mind.

Coach U: 18:15

This is super simplifying. Based on what you're saying, but when we're breathing through our mouth, it's almost as though we are tricking ourselves. We think we're getting a lot more oxygen and we're getting that in our systems, but in reality, What we're doing is we're depleting ourselves of that potential red blood cell count or red blood cell releasing oxygen within, but we're blocking it from happening because we're breathing through the mouth, even though that we think that we're getting more oxygen.

Kenny O'shea: 18:40

You got it. Yep, absolutely. You're moving more air when you're breathing through your mouth. So more air is coming into your lungs and more air is going out. But that doesn't mean that the, the oxygen and the nutrients, the red blood cells and everything are actually making it to your tissues so that's the difference, and that's the hard part for people in the beginning to kind of understand is that, yeah, but when I'm breathing through my mouth, there's so much more air. And it's like, yeah, I'm not disagreeing with you. You can move more air in and out of your lungs through your mouth, but when we're talking about performance, we need that those molecules to get to our tissues, and that doesn't happen as well when we're breathing through our mouth, and that's why, because when you're running and you're working really hard, usually it's not, it's, you know, Your lungs and your legs usually are the first things to give out, It's like I can't keep going because I can't breathe fast enough or my lungs fatigue, Because I'm breathing, even though I'm breathing really hard, there's not any, there's not any actual oxygen making it to my, my legs, You know? And so like, that's usually what we see. Is that we have some kind of give out in the system and it's usually the lungs or the legs, Either just your diaphragm, which is a muscle, can't keep up with the actual breathing, Because it's again, you're trying to ask it to do something endurance, but it's just, there's no oxygen. There's no there's minimal oxygen and minimal circulation going to it and same with the legs, There's minimal oxygen and minimal circulation getting to them because of the way we're breathing, and that's why it's so cool that we have conscious control over breathing because. Once we're aware of it, then we can switch how we're doing it. And yeah, we do have to slow down a little bit when it comes from a performance standpoint in the beginning In order to speed up later, And that's that's the hard part So for some people too in the beginning when we talk about this is that it's like hey But I run this pace or you know all this stuff It's like I get that but if you slow down now and you can do that exact same thing But breathing through your nose You're gonna have many more levels that you can get through if you have to start breathing through your mouth We're sprinting, And we're going back and forth, Just on the field, just back and forth and back and forth. If you have to start breathing through your mouth before I do, you're going to fatigue first. So I'm going to get, I'm going to look like I'm faster and I'm going to look like I can keep going for longer. Because I'm still breathing through my nose typically. So that's just another way to kind of think about it. So, and just being able to, and you know, I do like people to have flexibility, So you should be able to switch into, you know, kind of a higher intensity, but then you should be able to come back out and regain and regain control of your breathing. In and out through that nose. So there, and when we talk about, you know, those sports that are change of speed, soccer basketball, baseball, where you're going from, you know, maybe even standing still almost, or, you know, walking, or just kind of in a ready position to a full on, very much excited motion, or a full on sprint, then yeah, we might breathe through our mouth real fast to get that play over, but then we need to go back to that nasal breathing, And get the body and everything back under control. And that's going to allow us to stay focused and to stay alert, But not be fatigued.

Coach U: 21:29

So the principle then, because I know everyone's different and you know, everything's within context when you're dealing with a patient. But as a principle, it feels like nasal breathing kind of makes more sense, especially performance. And it seems like kind of for everybody. But you can treat it like an interval. It sounds like, like, just like when you would do interval runs or, you know, like with weights, like I'm going to lift at 80 percent one RM and then I can get to that one arm if I want to, but then I can come back down and stay under that 100. And so I kind of, that's what I'm thinking about when it comes to the breath work. It's like, all do what you can to practice your, your endurance at the level you can with the nasal breathing. And then eventually over time, you can start picking up that maybe the pace, or maybe you're going for a little longer or whatever the case may be to improve it.

Kenny O'shea: 22:14

Yeah, absolutely. You're trying to maintain the nasal breathing for as long as you can, and then to train it, you're going to push it just, just like we do with strength training, we push just a little past where are normal. is So we cause a little bit of adaptation in the muscle. We cause a little bit of change micro tears, maybe in the musculature itself so that they grow back stronger, so we cause a little extra fatigue, you know, and we have to go a little slower maybe, or can't, you know, go our same space, space, speed, excuse me, at the when we're breathing through our nose at first, but then eventually we'll be able to kind of maintain it for much longer and we want to have that flexibility to go back and forth between those two symptoms. But again, if I can do sprints. With nasal breathing the whole time, I'm going to be able to go for much longer than someone who has, as soon as they start sprinting is breathing through their mouth, it's just a matter of time before they kind of, you know, fatigue out. It's not something that everybody really thinks about but it influences all of our athletic activity.

Coach U: 23:10

When I first started working with performance training, maybe four years ago with athletes, like I was doing a lot of breath work at the beginning and at the end and just, I was diving into it trying to figure out like how it could help them. But the, and I understood, I understood the science, but this is a way better breakdown of it for me to understand. Like, okay, now I understand why it is so important because it's, It is affecting from the ground up, whereas I think this, you know, a lot of times we, we think we're just gonna, we're athletes, we could just hop in. you know, anywhere I can, I can produce and perform well. But if you're building your performance from the ground up with your, with your breathing, it seems as though you could be a step ahead of other athletes.

Kenny O'shea: 23:49

Absolutely. The ability to recover faster too just because you gave a maximal effort, how fast can you recover? to give another maximal effort, You know, can you, in a timeout, can you take your heart rate from 150 beats per minute back down to a hundred, by breathing through your nose, by elongating your exhale, by settling yourself down. And then, you know, if you do that periodically throughout the game, you know, it's not so much this linear kind of like instance, you know, growth where my heart rate is just growing, growing, growing. Instead I have these intermittents where I'm able to lower my heart rate drastically. And then it builds back up and it's able to rest and rest and rest versus just this. It's always high because I'm always giving it to the signal through the way that I'm breathing to always just kind of stay at this upper echelon throughout the game and then you fatigue,

Coach U: 24:33

How much are you paying attention to heart rate and the variability of it while you're in, in the, the intervals of breath work? Like are you trying to tell your clients or your patients, Hey, stay at a certain heart rate during this breath work? Or is it more of like, okay. Hey, you just need to pay attention be conscious about the nasal breathing. And then once you lose it, you know, kind of slow down a little bit. Like what's your method there?

Kenny O'shea: 24:54

More the latter, You know, like can we, do we know that we can have a change on the heart rate just by a change we're breathing? Absolutely. But it's not necessarily something where we're focusing on as far as when we're in a breathing practice itself is usually a by product of the way that we're breathing that causes the change there, So it's not usually a main parameter that we're working on. Unless I'm doing something like what we would call autogenic training with the client, which is where we're trying to give them a better connection from their brain to their heart, So almost like we're trying to build the same conscious control over our heart rate that we have over our breathing over time, so that just like I said, during stoppage of play during a time out during something like that. Their heart rate really can drop because they've trained it over time, And they know how to kind of get it back down to as low as possible so that they can recover and that they're ready for the next bout of intense competition. So

Coach U: 25:46

almost seems like it's a byproduct of proper breath work as opposed to it being the focus.

Kenny O'shea: 25:53

It exactly. Yeah. It's definitely a by product. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just physiology, You know, you change the way you breathe everything. Every system in the body has to adapt to it. Yeah, absolutely.

Coach U: 26:01

Talk to me about pain and what your thoughts are about pain and how you deal with how people deal with it. How does the breathwork help with pain?

Kenny O'shea: 26:10

Well, I mean, we've already talked about kind of the physiology of it, You know, when we're not getting oxygen to the tissues, we have pain, So if we're breathing in a way that is limiting the circulation in our body, which is usually mouth breathing, which is usually shallow, and the reason you breathe shallow, And the reason you breathe through your mouth usually when you're in a lot of pain or in chronic pain is because you're trying to hold all of this tension in your body to stabilize everything because you feel like one wrong move and boom, here comes that like, wow, pain that just knocks you out, And just knocks you on your back, just flat, And so that's what we, that's the adaptation that we see over time is that people start to breathe it. Not as deeply as they start to breathe faster. And then that limits the amount of oxygen that's getting into those areas, which is preventing, or at least, Reducing the body's ability to heal those areas, If you don't have circulation, then no nutrients can get in and it's really difficult for things to get out. So then on top of this, you have a buildup usually in the lymphatic system, which is our main drainage pathway for swelling and, you know, part of our immune system and all this stuff that's supposed to go in and help repair tissues, You know, and so. And so when our breathing is reduced, our lymphatic system's ability to actually clear some of these products is also reduced because we need two things for good lymphatic circulation. We need good circulation in and we need good drainage out. And the diaphragm is a huge pump for the lymphatic system. So if you're breathing shallow, you're not getting this full relaxation and this full inhale, full contraction. So you're not getting the pumping action all over the body. You're not getting the massaging of the internal organs. So we can see a lot of pain tied to the way we're breathing. And we know that we can have a big impact just by changing the way that people are breathing. Now that's just. That's kind of just the overview with breathing and, and circulation and lymphatics a little bit. But the way that I typically talk about pain is kind of like this, like and this was from I got this from Z health from Dr. Eric Cobb. It's a great brain based training system. If you ever want to check it out or if anybody's interested in that that's where I learned most of the kind of the the neurology stuff and how to move that into performance setting and for pain management and stuff like that. But they like to use this idea of like a bucket. And everybody the bucket can only get so full and then if you're filling it with water, then it starts to overflow and spill out everywhere, And so depending on what's going on in our life, All those things get thrown in the bucket. Just like you were saying, you know, like when you're stressed, when you're all these things, it kind of pushes the level of the bucket up, up, up higher and higher. And then when the water starts to spill out, that's when we start to have all of these symptoms. And so that's like our, our, we call it like literally a threat bucket. And as long as the water stays in the bucket, we're fine. But once one more thing, one more drop gets out of the bucket, we're fine. Then, boom, the water starts spilling out and we start to have all these symptoms that can look super related, you know, like, oh, you know, like I was training, I was doing a bunch of deadlifts and now my back hurts or it can be completely unrelated, You know, where it's like, dude, I haven't done anything in forever and now my neck is just like locked and seized or my jaw, You know, something like this where it seems so unrelated or I'm dizzy, you know, like all these things that can seem so unrelated but when we think about it from your nervous system, only having. X amount of capacity to adapt to before it starts to whisper at you, like, Hey, this doesn't feel so good. Here's some pain. And remember, one of the things they talk about there too, is that pain is an action signal. It's trying to get you to do something different, So pain is like you have pain in your back. Trying to get you to lay down and slow down maybe a little bit, or to move differently, At least to move differently, so we try to think about pain kind of more as an action signal that our body's trying to tell us to do something differently, and that's the hard part, you know, but, and pain is, a very unique experience to everybody you know it's, it's different for everybody. People experience different levels, even though they have the same, maybe necessarily medical diagnosis, And so it's very individual and how they're experiencing it. And that's why I like this idea of the bucket and just having a general capacity. And once that capacity is overflowing, that's when we start to have all these different symptoms, you know, and it's, Not just, it's the way we're training, the way we're not training our job, our, you know, at home life, our you know, financial situation, all these social and, and socioeconomic, and then also you know, individual lifestyles go into how this bucket gets filled, filled up. And so what we try to do when we talk about from a performance setting is like, what are the things that we can do to kind of drain the bucket a little bit, can we give the brain better information? through breathing about what's going on inside our body. Can we move the body a little differently, maybe build its proprioception, which is kind of the body's ability to recognize where it is in space and time relative. To its other parts. So how far apart my hands are, even though my eyes are closed or how close I am to the wall behind me, even though I can see in the camera, but I can't really see it I have a general idea of that or another example of that. It's just like you can get up in the middle of the night and walk to the bathroom without ever turning the lights on. And the reason you could do that is because you have a general map of where you are relative to all the other stuff in your room on the way to the bathroom, and that's generally what we think about proprioceptive. And when we have pain, there's actually a change

Coach U: 31:33

Kenny O'shea: 31:33

in our brain in that map area of our brain of how clear that map is. And so that's why we get people who are scared to move, because their brain doesn't have as clear of a picture of what's going on in that part of the body. And when the brain doesn't have a good picture of what's happening inside the body, It will either reduce your overall movement, so it will limit how far you can move or how much weight you can move or how fast you can run or jump, Or how you can jump, Or it'll send you pain to get you to like, cause it's not sure about what's going to happen there, and that might be just something as simple as like a cramp or it might be something more intense, like, you know, like almost like a radiation pain down the leg or down around a nerve, And so it's very much individual, but also. A very unique system, and so I think that's, that's how people experience pain, at least in my, that's my experience, the way that I like to explain it to people. And the way that the breathing affects this, you know and we talked about the proprioception, but breathing

Coach U: 32:26

then.

Kenny O'shea: 32:27

also affects this from the tissue standpoint, as far as like getting the nutrients there.

Coach U: 32:31

is.

Kenny O'shea: 32:32

then breathing is a huge signal for the nervous system, so if you get into the bottom of your squat, for instance, and you're,

Coach U: 32:37

that. Sitting

Kenny O'shea: 32:39

your body that this is maybe.

Coach U: 32:41

you

Kenny O'shea: 32:41

Not as safe as you think it is, versus if you're able to nicely slow down your breathing, to have ownership of what we call ownership of your breathing down at the bottom of squat at the top of squat. So can you breathe the exact same way at the top of the squat as you can at the bottom of the squat? If not, that is something that needs to be worked on because that's a sport specific, style of, of of using breathing to make changes in the body. And you'll see that a lot when it comes to breathing. It's just, someone can breathe, Standing, sitting, laying down, but then you put them in their sport specific stance and they can't breathe as well. Well, that's a problem, Cause then you're not able to access and move along this nervous system, continue of relaxation and excitement. And so a lot of times that's one of the first places I'll start with somebody is just like, okay, you're having problems in this position. Okay, cool. Get in that. Can you get in that position without any pain? Yeah. Okay, cool. Awesome. Can you breathe here? No. Okay. We're going to work on this, and we want you to be able to breathe efficiently utilizing the diaphragm, getting that 360 degree expansion all the way around the body. Okay. Getting the ribs to move the way they're supposed to as best we can in those different positions. And we can see that once we do that, then people are able not only to do the movement much more efficiently and there's a better quality of the movement, but a lot of times they can add more resistance as well, they're stronger. because they can breathe in those positions.

Coach U: 33:56

You said breathe 360 and all through the body. I've heard so many different ways of how you're supposed to breathe and you know, you've heard the diaphragmatic breathing. No, you should breathe to the chest first. No, you should breathe to your side of your rib cage. No, you should breathe down to your toes first. Let's break it down. What are we, what are we

Kenny O'shea: 34:11

If you were to come on a retreat with us or do a workshop with us, this is something that we teach at pretty much every workshop, because just like you're saying, it's basically. Probably one of the most important things about breathing is how do you, how are you supposed to breathe? What is a good breath? What does it look like? And so a good breath is like I said, 360 degrees of expansion all the way around the body. when the diaphragm is domed up, so it looks like a parachute, that's its most relaxed state. And then when it comes down and flattens out, that's when we're inhaling and that's when it's contracted, And that movement of the diaphragm down causes the ribs to expand in 360 degrees. and then to elevate a little bit. So we have from, so from the side to side, we have a lateral expansion this way. So that's the, one of the movements. And then you also have, if I can't show you on the front to back, I was almost going to grab a skeleton, but you have this, what we call, so that's what we would call in the breath world, That's what we call almost like a bucket handle movement of the ribcage. And that predominantly happens here in the lower part of the ribs. So you have mostly that happening in the lower part of the ribs, but that's in the back too. So in the back, as these go up, you know, you're going to see this movement, but you're going to see it in the back and the front. And most people have like zero awareness of their back. It's very interesting. They can't see it in the mirror. And so they don't, they have zero awareness of it. And so then. In the upper ribs, you still have some bucket handle, but it's very much reduced. And what you have there instead, if this is the front of my body and this is the back of my body, when you inhale, you have this motion happening, which is what we call more of a pump arm, like, like like your old school pump in a well, And so as you inhale, the front goes up and the back goes down. And as you exhale, the front goes down and the back comes up. And you still have a little bit of bucket there and you have a little bit of pump handle happening at the bottom of the rib cage. They're definitely kind of divided and in the middle, they're kind of even. So in the middle of the rib cage, they're more even, but at the top, you have more pump handle at the bottom. You have more bucket handle movement, but they're supposed to work in succession. So it's not like one of these things is happening. And then the other, they're supposed to happen. Sorry. They're not supposed to work in succession. They're all supposed to happen relatively together, So you inhale, you get the bottom of the rib cage to move, and then the upper rib cage moves, but they're happening relatively. Simultaneously. At the same time. And then one of the other things we have to talk about is that most people, most people and of course this is all through your nose, So that's proper breathing. So it was breathing in and out through your nose, getting this 360 degree expansion, really trying to fill. This back part of our body, We actually have much more space behind your lungs than we do in front, You have your heart, your sternum, all these ribs, in the front, but there's actually a lot more space in the human body in the back of the body. So that's another thing to think about is that the lungs are going to expand a little bit further to the back than they are to the front which is something most people just, you know, it's beyond their awareness now because they just haven't studied it.

Coach U: 37:00

Mid back thoracic like between the shoulder blades is kind of like in that whole rib

Kenny O'shea: 37:05

Yeah, exactly. Yep. Exactly. You got it. One of the other things we want to talk about is that these muscles here in the neck should remain relaxed when we're taking a proper breath, okay, if they should remain relaxed pretty much the whole time or as long as possible, you might get a little bit if you're really getting as big of an inhale as possible, it shouldn't, you shouldn't feel any contraction in those till at least the very, very end, like the last second of your inhale almost or the last couple of seconds of your inhale. Okay. Because all these muscles here in the neck are what we call accessory breathing muscles. So they are supposed to help the diaphragm when we're working at a very high level, Which is why you see people who are out of breath and they're, they're when they're out of breath, they're breathing like this. And you have all this up and down movement of the ribcage. That's because they're using all these accessory muscles, And so if someone comes in and I'm just watching them breathe and all I see when I'm talking to them and they're just, They're not even moving, They're just talking to me, tell me about what's going on with their body. And all I see is this up and down motion of their entire rib cage. I'm like, okay, yeah, we definitely have some work to do here with the breath work, because you're not even really utilizing the diaphragm to its full capabilities. You're really just using the secondary muscles or those accessory muscles. one of the last things that has a very big influence on our breathing is our overall tongue position. So your tongue position helps to maintain the pressure in the skull, but also helps to open up the throat itself, And so if your tongue is in a bad position, it can definitely change how open the airways are. In the body. And so your tongue is supposed to be kind of, there's little ridges behind your teeth, so it's supposed to be kind of pretty much suction cup to the roof of your mouth and touching those little areas. And I used to describe this by doing the crazy eyes, which is basically a big smile. You get your eyes as wide as you can, and then you swallow, and that helps you get your tongue in a really good position. I recently came across a different way to do it, which is like, you basically make this clicking sound, And you basically do that a couple times, and then before you go to actually make the sound, Notice the position your tongue is in, and that is exactly the position that we want the tongue to be in when we're doing a really good breath. So what we would do is we would basically practice all those things individually, and then we'd combine them all together for a little while and let people really experience what it is to breathe properly. And then one of the other things that I should mention about a proper breath is that most people, because they're not really breathing deeply, they're they go to inhale, But because they've never fully exhaled. They only have about this distance. So if I, if I'm here and I go to exhale and again, when you exhale, a diaphragm moves up, So if I only partially exhale, well, then I only have this much range to inhale, Versus if I'm getting a full exhale. That allows me to actually get a full inhale. And so that's usually one of the things that we have to work on. People is actually getting them to exhale first, and then we can get into really good inhales, but that's, that's usually part of the problem. And then there's just not as much strength in the diaphragm. I think as you know, we used to, we don't, we're not as active as we used to. We don't train the same way. We're not just laboring all day. Like a couple hundred years ago would have been and so we just don't, it's just different now. And so we have to kind of think about this intelligently and train the body a little differently because of that. So yeah, so it should be 360. It should come kind of, you know you should, and like, can you even, like a lot of the things that I spend a lot of time teaching people is like, do you feel your diaphragm moving? Are you aware of it? Can you feel it moving up and down? Because a lot of people don't have any awareness whatsoever. And so, you know, sometimes I'll like wrap some bands around them so they can feel some, and resistance is a huge way to get people to become more aware of this parts of our body, You know, so the resistance wrapping something around the lower rib cage, they can really start to feel that bucket handle movement and that expansion 360, you know, so like getting a band and wrapping it all the way around the body so that they can really feel that. 360 expansion, And then you know, putting, you know, their hands on different parts of their body, putting their hands on their necks very gently so that they can start to really feel these things out for themselves. Because ultimately it's their awareness that's going to help all these things click. I could tell them a million times, but until they really feel it. That's when, when they really feel it, That's when they have these aha moments in, in their mind and in their body. And they actually gain more control over the body a little bit there.

Coach U: 41:29

Like with strength work and with speed work and power work, there's adaptations that take place at a certain amount of inputs. I know it's different with everybody, but how long do adaptations take normally when it comes to breathwork?

Kenny O'shea: 41:42

Oh, I mean, it could happen really fast. You know, this is something we probably should have talked about in pain that I, I didn't mention, but or maybe we're still in pain. I forget, but When you breathe, the average person breathes between 18, 000 times per day. If you did 18, 000 to 22, 000 squats or deadlifts improperly, how would your body feel? And like, that's something that really helps to put it in perspective for people. It's like, okay, cool. And I would say that 18, 000 to 22, 000, even though that's the average, That's roughly you know, 18 to 20 breaths per minute. I think that's really fast. I think that we feel our best. When we can definitely get below that 15, maybe even below that 12, you know, like eight to 12 range. That's when you feel very relaxed, very focused, very almost like that general, like what, what some people would term as that flow state, Where they're. They're very focused. They're very awake, but they're also very relaxed, And so they're able to kind of move through their day in a very different way. And again, this is all your nervous system is just picking up on all these signals, Of how, what input are you giving it, What input are you giving it? And if you're breathing really fast and have several breaths per minute, you're going to bias it more towards that stress state, As soon as you start to slow down and reduce the number of breaths you're taking per minute, you're You're really biasing yourself more towards that parasympathetic state, And so understanding again, that initial relationship of where am I and what do I do to move the needle in one direction or the other,

Coach U: 43:08

Let's talk about self, self massage. How somebody can use self massage for both pain relief and also for their performance or an athlete may want to use some kind of self massage for their performance.

Kenny O'shea: 43:21

Yeah, I mean, you know, from a pain relief standpoint, I think we've all been sore after a workout, And we know that we can get on, you know, a roller or a ball or something like that and massage it a little bit. I would say that most people move a little too much when they're doing it, especially if you're really trying to get deeper into those tissues, you know, they need to sit.

Coach U: 43:39

Hmm.

Kenny O'shea: 43:48

make it twice as long so that they are giving the signal to their body. Like, yes, there's pressure on this point. Yes, I want this point to relax and eventually allowing it to as time goes in and to, to release a little bit. And, you know, yeah. You know, depending on how deep you want to go, You're, you're, you're not really like, you're not squishing or, it's

Coach U: 44:07

Breaking down tissue.

Kenny O'shea: 44:09

Yeah. You're not bringing, yeah, exactly. What you're really doing at a really fundamental level, Is you're allowing things to finally glide on each other. And so usually what happens is that things get stuck together. There's not as much fluid maybe in there, And so they're not gliding as well, And just like if you have two pieces of glass and you stick one on top of the other, they'll stick, they won't move, You add just a little bit of water in between those two and now it'll glide in any direction that you want, no problem, And so I think that a lot of times what we're doing to some degree is, you know, adding a little compression. Moving a little bit, which is kind of pumping some of the fluids in there a little bit. And I always tend to tell people, it's like, if you can, and if you can stay relaxed, if you can add the movement in there a little bit, that'll really help to kind of almost give it more of like that pin and stretch feeling where you're pinning the muscle and then you're going through its range of motion and you're stretching a little bit and that's causing pumping, you know, all muscular contraction is causing pumping the fluids in the human body, Your, your, your blood doesn't get back to your heart. Really without the pumping mechanism of your body, Of all of your muscle contraction. Same with the limb system. We need that muscle contraction to pump all that stuff back up. So the same principle applies here when we were talking about the fascia is that we get a little bit, maybe more fluid back in that area, but what we're really doing more than anything else is we're increasing those gliding factors, And sometimes it's just literally one gliding the other. Sometimes it's like more of like a telescope action that's allowing, that's being allowed to happen. And it just depends on where you are and in the body and whatnot.

Coach U: 45:32

How does it stick?

Kenny O'shea: 45:33

I think that's by changing your movement or or by training it You know, so like you, you lengthen the, you're able to get more out of the hamstrings, And then you train them to maintain that, So let's say you released your hamstrings and then you're doing like single leg RDLs or something like that where they're elongating, And now you're training them in that elongated position to maintain That that length relationship. And I think that's, that's the part. That's why sometimes foam rolling and, you know, self myofascial release get a little bit of a bad rap. It's like, Oh, you could roll forever and it'll just go back. And it's like, yeah, it, the way you move will dictate how your tissues are. So you have to, on top of that. train the body in order to maintain those, those adaptations that you've just caused. And it doesn't happen overnight, It's, it's just like everything else in muscle growth. It takes time for these adaptations to take in the body. But it definitely can make a big difference overall. And then also from that standpoint of self massage, Massaging the areas that control your breathing can drastically influence your, your ability to breathe the comfort of your breathing and the depth of your breathing. Which we've already spent a lot of time talking about how deep you can breathe, how slow, how fast you can breathe, can have all these effects on your circulation, on your pain, on all these things. So one of the courses, one of the things that I teach at all my workshops, and I actually have a video course of it too, is just mobility. For breathing and massage for breathing, Like how do we massage all these different parts so that we're not just using these muscles anymore. They're not tense and stuck here. And so we can actually utilize the diaphragm because we're not necessarily stuck with this tension in this habit of how we've been breathing in the past. And so I think that that in and of itself is a really powerful way that athletes can start to apply principles that they've used on their quads, on their calves and things like that, but also to their breathing to help with their performance, but also again, we've shown that breathing and pain are So intertwined.

Coach U: 47:20

So what is it really just finding the places that aren't gliding well, the time, the tender points, or are there specific places where you're like, these are the places that need to be hit

Kenny O'shea: 47:29

If we're talking about breathing, there's definitely specific muscles that are involved, The diaphragm is a huge one, releasing it around the rib cage releasing the QL, the psoas, because they share fascia, the intercostals in between the ribs, the lats. Any muscle that attaches on the ribs is going to influence breathing to some degree, So you have scalenes, you have the SCM, the sternocleidomastoid, Which is more clavicle, but some people talk about the clavicle as being rib zero, So it still has an influence on the overall rib cage. And The SEM is still a accessory breathing muscle because it helps to elevate the rib cage, And so, yeah, so that all those anterior neck muscles the pecs, the lats, the pec minor, pec major even the rhomboids, And some of the muscles around the scapula, the shoulder blade, The levator scapula, You know, so this guy, against trying to, to get that chest up. So we usually use that muscle to help us a little bit there when we're really fatigued or as a bad habit. So those would be the ones that I really focus on. And then also. In order to have good breathing, we have to have good rib cage mobility. So if you have all these muscles that attach on the rib cage and they're all super tight, are you going to be able to turn, rotate, side bend, side bend and rotate? No, probably not. So releasing those can just give the rib cage more freedom, which will allow the diaphragm to move more, which will allow the lungs to inflate more, which will allow you to breathe deeper. So all of those kind of play into it. If the rectus abdominis is super tight and you're like this, can you, can you breathe? Well, probably, probably not. Because you can't ever expand. You're probably really good at exhaling, but probably really bad at inhaling, We breathe ourselves into the, into our postures. So you see all these people who are always like this, Their ribs are all externally rotated and flared. And so they're super biased on their inhale, They're very much more biased towards their inhale. And they did really good at inhaling, not really great at exhaling. You know, and vice versa, the people that are a little more slumped, They're usually a little bit better at exhaling and can't really get a deep breath, You know? And so that's usually what, what we What we see with people posture wise too,

Coach U: 49:20

Have you run into people being ticklish when it comes to soft tissue work and does that represent itself as like, A another form of protection. Whereas some people may feel a lot of tension, but some people might like start getting really laughy. And I've, I've given some tough tissue work you start seeing people go like, ah, I can't handle it. They're starting to laugh. So what does that represent?

Kenny O'shea: 49:38

Well, that's so funny, You know, so this, and this is the interesting thing between breath work and body work, They're very, they're similar in this regard. And so when we teach a breath workshop, we have people sometimes who have these huge emotional releases and that can be something like, crying and, you know, almost hysterically crying for some people. Or that could be hysterically laughing. And usually those are the two ends of the spectrum, And like, those are the two ends of the spectrum, And then same with bodywork, You know, you can touch an area of someone's body and they can immediately break down or they can start laughing uncontrollably, And they're like, sorry, I don't know what's happening. But I just, you know, and it's just like they can't control it, But at the same time, like what is a tickle? Like what is, what is it? You know, it's actually, it's, it's an annoyance to the body, The buyer doesn't really actually enjoy it. You know, it, we laugh, But it's actually sent along more of that pain pathway, that nociceptive pathway no, she nociception pathway of the body. And so it's actually a little bit of an irritant, You know to the system itself, but we've learned that, that it's not like as big of a pain, You know, it's not like, you know, Instant like, Oh, boom. And then that caused, you know, then, and again, pain, this is where we get so deep, Nociception is the transmission of a signal to the brain. Pain is the interpretation of that signal in the brain, So that's why pain is such an individual experience because it's all about how the brain is processing the information coming in and so that's why tickle and You know pressure are so close on that pathway because they're both being sent pretty much at the same pathway But it's the interpretation in our brain that makes it slightly different, But it's still kind of an irritant, You pull away, Someone tickles you. You don't just sit there and let them keep it. You pull away. You naturally tense up, You know, you, you, and that's the same thing that happens with pain, You know, so they're, they're very much, it's one of the, the cool, interesting things about the combination of breath work and body work, The clients who breathe better are much easier to work on than the clients who don't breathe better from a body work standpoint. You know, because they're able to relax when you're doing different things, you know, and they're able to take the pressure or to take the position much better than someone who is, you know, very tense when they're doing it. You know, and they're, they're able to let go of things a little bit faster. So, you know, Just part of teaching someone some good breath work can really have a profound effect on how they accept the body work And One of the things I think that's really underrated when it comes to this is that you're building awareness proprioception, again, interoception, that sense inside of where things are in the body and proprioception where things are relative to other parts of your body and think objects while you're doing it. And I think that that is a huge, huge part of it that's highly underrated because proprioception, again, when we have a good, clear map in our brain of where our body is in space relative to ourself and other things, We move better, We have less pain. Our performance is typically better, If you can move well, see well, and balance well, That's going to be your highest level of performance, And moving well is about knowing where you are in space, Balance is about knowing you know, where you're how your eyes, your inner ear and your feet are reacting to the ground into your environment, You know and seeing well is so much more than just light coming into the eyes, Can you track an object? Can you, you know, switch from something close to something far away real fast, you know, There's so much more levels to it. And so I think that, you know, The soft tissue work is a way to build that proprioception and interoception. And that is like the foundation, I think, of, of, of movement, of, of quality athleticism, You know, if you, that's like the bottom of the pyramid, the proprioception, And then interoception. And then you have like, the next run would be like that vestibular system, how well you balance. And then the top kind of ruling as king would be your vision, Because if you think about it, your eyes are literally extensions of your brain that migrated out of your brain so that they can get more information about the body. Your eyes are extensions of your brain that migrated out of your brain to get more information about your body, Or about your environment. they kind of rule as king and I see breathing as the thing that connects them all, I think that that breathing is the thing that connects all and that's a lot of That again, comes from a lot of the Z health training, like that's how they see the body as a pyramid and the proprioception is the base, then those two different levels and breathing kind of encompasses all those things. And so I've kind of taken that framework forward with me until a lot of these different areas of not only pain management and, and stress management and anxiety management, but performance.

Coach U: 54:04

When it comes to, you know, soreness and if there is a lot of tenderness and soreness when you need to back off, is there a, is there a limit? what's the protocol there?

Kenny O'shea: 54:12

There's my answer. And then there's the other, the kind of general answer, Okay. So the general answer being that. You know, you got to listen, got to learn to listen to your body, pushing past things and and gritting through things again is not the way that the body likes to respond over time, You can do it for a short period, You can grind for a little bit, but eventually that's not gonna be able to last very long. So I think, you know, letting that kind of general sensation be your guide, Is, is, you know, like, okay, cool. Yeah, I can do this a little bit. Okay. Yeah. I'm a little sore. Okay. This is feeling like a little bit too much and I can't relax, Okay. Maybe I'm going to move on and come back to this, or I'm going to switch tools. I'm going to go to something softer. Or vice versa, you know, I don't really feel like this is doing anything. I'm gonna go to a harder tool. I find that people have like. They use one tool and one tool only like a foam roller or a lacrosse ball I think that you should have a like in an ideal world Everybody would have a basket of tools and they would just pick out, you know Depending on what's going on with their body the different tools and try different ones one of the things that I like to teach people a lot of the times is that I like to teach them how to start to have that conversation. And this can be applied to soft tissue work. This can be applied to training. This can be applied to any drill, any exercise, any thing you're doing with your body. And what you do is you test something beforehand. You do your intervention or your drill and then you retest, If you're not testing your guessing, So could you for example, lean forward and try and touch your toes and then see how far you get and then do around the squats And then retest, Now, if you got better, Meaning that you're actually able to go down further, And it felt easier to go down and it felt easier to come back up or one of those, That would mean that squatting is really good. Yeah, your body is really liking the input that you're giving it to it, Because again, the brain allows better movement when it has a better idea of what's going on and it's getting better inputs. Yeah. When the brain is not sure what's going on, it'll either lock, reduce movements, or it'll send you pain to get you to stop, And vice versa. Let's say you're doing squats and you went to reach down and try to touch toes and all of a sudden you couldn't go like half as far, That would tell you that there's something going, either the resistance is too high, your movement's not something's not, your nervous system's just not ready for that load today, and you would have to reduce that load, Now you could take this one step further, You know, forward bend, squat, it got better. Cool. Add a little weight. Forward bend, squat, retest. It got better. Go again, Add a little bit more resistance, You learn to have this communication with your body. And then as soon as you get to the point where, oh, hold on, that's not better anymore. Cool. Done. Squatting for the day. Move on to the next activity, You know, and so it's learning, learning to have a conversation with your nervous system, with your body, And I think that's what this idea of testing, doing an exercise or a drill and then retesting, Now you can also like it could be a movement. It could be a range of motion. It could be a movement. It can be an exercise. You can test anything. You test your balance, your vision, The test isn't as important as doing something before trying your implementation, whichever that is, you know, whether that be a sprint or a squat or, you know, tennis serve, you know, whatever it is. And then retesting after and say, was that good information for my brain? Did my nervous system open up my body because I gave a good information or did it reduce my movement or send me like, Oh, no, actually, that's really stiff. Now that almost hurts a little bit to rotate like that or whatever. And that's kind of telling yourself that like, oh, that's not quite exactly And if you had no change, say you did your forward bends, you squatted, you got no change after you retested that just means that there wasn't a big enough input for your brain to even register what you're trying to do, Because the brain is, to make change in the brain, it is, Costly. And so if you don't give it a big enough stimulus, you aren't creating enough Not creating a big enough input to create change. And the brain will just be like, Oh, I, I don't really care about that because you know, I don't want to spend all this energy to create this change inside the body. So you have to make sure. So if you're not getting a change, typically typically means that the difficulty of the movement, the exercise Whatever it is that you're doing isn't isn't high enough. And so you can keep either raising the resistance up the reps, Something like that to make it more challenging and then retest and see how that's going for your body. One of the most mind blowing things that I ever learned about the human body is that you can have a conversation with it and that it is not taught to athletes throughout their career, Like it's, you know, I've worked with, You know, you know, youth athletes all the way to professional athletes. And this is something that always blows their mind. It's like, well, how do I know if this is going to work? Did you test it? You know, do you have to train both sides of your body the same way? Maybe. Maybe not, And the only way to know that is to test, So I have clients who do certain movements on one side of their body and do something completely different on the other side of their body because they don't need the same input on both sides, Because of the sport they play or the the job they have, whatever it is, And so the only way to know that, though, is to have some kind of reliable communication with the nervous system, which is the brain, the body and everything it controls, so that you can, you know, differentiate what are the really good things for my body and what are The less ideal inputs for my body.

Coach U: 59:24

Yeah, I think it gets overlooked because the sexy thing is lifting weights and being in the gym and sweating and, you know, being sore and leaving super gassed. And you don't realize, I mean, that was what we grew up with. And I think over the past 20 years, it's very much evolved and understanding more of the science Let's, let's finish up with stress, stress and anxiety because I do want to, I know, especially now, I feel like I couldn't imagine being a kid now and, and going through, Life with the amount of information that's in their faces and the expectations. I think everything's so sped up, even myself, like during COVID, I was chilling. I was chilling. And obviously I know it was a tough time for many reasons, but for me, my personal experience was like, I was like, wow, I, I can like sit back. I can breathe. I can take care of myself. I can read, I can do the things that I want to, you get thrown back into the world. And it's like, just. Boom, you're back in it. Now stress is there. So anxiety goes up, stress is up. Those can lead to pain. Those can lead to injuries. Those can lead to breakdowns, mental breakdowns. So when it comes to breathing, how can this help us with our stress and anxiety?

Kenny O'shea: 1:00:31

Obviously the way we breathe, we, we've talked about it I think pretty extensively the way we breathe influences our nervous system state. So if you're giving this signal, Constantly by breathing through your mouth, taking a short, shallow breaths. You are constantly telling your body to be in this ancient, stressed out, very alert and a hyper alert state. So we know that that breathing has an influence on this stuff, we know that whether we move or don't move, it's going to have an influence on how our mental health overall, You know, we know that exercise is probably one of the most underrated natural antidepressants ever, You know, like by far, if you look at studies, Studies that use pills to help people with their mental health and and pharmacology to help people with their mental health when compared to compared to groups that just implement exercise, the rates are either very similar or usually the exercise group is even higher, You know when you combine both, yes, you definitely get a positive effect for a lot of people. And, you know, some people need the pharmacology support because their system is just, you know, been through so much, You know and, but the goal is with or at least my goal When I think about that, you know, and everybody's very individual. So this isn't across the board. But I think the goal is if you do need an intervention like that, that's cool and you should use it, but the goal should be probably eventually to not have to use it forever. Just like we put a cast on to help a bone heal, but then we eventually take the cast off so that it can get loaded and get used and we can, you know, kind of move through life and it can adapt. If you're stressed and anxious, we know that your breathing rate has changed, your depth of has changed to gotten more shallow and the crazy part about this, and this is the, this is the hamster wheel that I think is so easy to get stuck on for people is that by doing that. Over time, what happens is that we talked about how carbon dioxide is the main signal to the brain that it's time to change the way we're breathing, So the problem is, is that by breathing rapid and shallow over time, the threshold where we get that signal lowers. And so now it takes less input. to get to that threshold. So then we start breathing shallower and faster because we've already hit that threshold. Well, that starts to produce more symptoms of anxiety, more unpleasant symptoms, I should say, It doesn't necessarily have to be anxiety or stress, but like it's usually more unpleasant symptoms. Which then feeds the anxiety and stress which then changes the breathing which then causes more symptoms and then you're just on this never ending hamster wheel of your Your stress and anxious your breathing changes which causes more symptoms which makes you more stressed and anxious which changes your breathing Let's go, you know and then and so one of the goals that I do with a lot of people that have you know Panic attacks anxiety stress things like that is that we have to slowly increase their tolerance to co2 You And that can be done in a multitude of ways, but that is a huge game changer for a lot of these people and, you know, learning to control their training so that they can do it. Nasal breathing over time is going to help to regulate their CO2 levels and raise that threshold. You know, things like making sure they're breathing through their nose at night and not through their mouth. So they're not blowing off all this carbon dioxide, That's another thing we see a lot with pain patients too, is that, you know, they have sleep apnea, And so they're for eight hours a night, They are not getting good circulation around their body because they're blowing off too much carbon dioxide. this cascade of events and breathing seems to be one of the things, again, that we have conscious control over that we can Work and train that will help to alleviate some of these symptoms. And again, exercise is one of the most underrated antidepressants out there, Well, now what if you combined movement exercise, With proper breathing? Well, of course, that's going to make you feel much better. Of course, that's going to slowly raise your CO2 tolerance, which is going to give you more resiliency to stress coming in your body, because you're going to have more capacity to adapt, I think that's what happens to people who are chronically stressed and anxious is that. That CO2 window gets reduced and their capacity to handle more and more just gets minimally reduced. And again, that, that same idea of that threat bucket. It's just too full, And we got to find a way to empty it and breathing properly. Exercising is just like emptying the bucket, I try to do all of this because this is all interconnected in my mind, You know, I try to teach all of this because they are so interconnected in the way that they, they function and help people. And change the way that people are feeling you know, so I think that that's kind of what I see kind of as the stress anxiety component. And yeah, to be a kid now and to do the harder things in life, which is, you know, to be disciplined about, you know, what you're consuming, how much of it you're consuming, you know and to, you know, try to use your body effectively, And, and not to, you know, and there's the other end of the spectrum, is overtraining. You know, which is just the far end of the spectrum. But to be conscious about the way that you are training to to make yourself better and not a hundred percent better today, but, you know, one, 2 percent better each day. It's very challenging. It's challenging for adults to do, you know? So the idea that kids are going to be able to do it without guidance and support is, you know, it's, it's very special individual in my mind. You can do that. And yeah, there is just a lot of, a lot of distractions out there, And for adults, for kids, for everybody, And there's so many things trying to grab your attention and it's hard to, at times, you know, distance yourself from those things that you have, you know, all those things, all that information that we're consuming, Whether it be, you know, actual, you know, bad news about what's going on in the world, whether it be, you know, just, you know, Information overload, is is a thing, You know, we can only process so much in one day, And so if we get hit with more and more information constantly, it's going to keep us in this kind of hyper aroused state. And then, you know, sleep is such a huge component of everything we've talked about today that we haven't really talked about, You know, like proper sleep influences our stress levels, influences our mental health, Influences our food choices, all of these things, You know,

Coach U: 1:06:29

Pain receptors

Kenny O'shea: 1:06:30

people who, Pain recept all of it, You know, so getting good quality sleep, which means, you know, having discipline with your you know, your light environments, you know, that'd be not using your phone super late at night, super close to bed, You know, not having all these super bright lights on that are telling your body that it's new, You know, like those are all little things, you know, how you time your food before bed and all like there's so many factors that go into it. But this is, you know, sleep, I think is one of those other huge components. And the problem is, is that When you're really stressed and anxious, it's hard to get really good sleep, So it's always, it's this con, that's what I mean by this

Coach U: 1:07:02

the hamster wheel. Yep.

Kenny O'shea: 1:07:03

can get on. It's a hamster wheel and it's, it's, I understand it's incredibly challenging to get off, you know, and it's, it's takes time and effort to break that cycle, but it's doable, You know, it's doable by implant implementing systematic change. And deliberate change, And it doesn't. And you know, with my clients, I always try to tell them, especially the super anxious and stressed ones. I was like, okay, I've taught you 10 things, What's the thing that you are gravitating towards the most now? You know, like, Oh, I like this particular breathing style. It's like, cool, let's do that. Okay. I want you to do it for, you know, once a day for five minutes. Okay, cool. You did that. Great. Oh, you couldn't do once a minute for five. Okay. I want you to do it for one minute. Okay. Once a day, And like how easy sometimes you have to make things so easy for people to build the habit that they can actually feel like they're winning, You know, rather than adding one more thing that they have to do on top of the million other things that they think that they might need to do, You know, so it's like, how can we make it so easy? That it would almost be impossible to not complete or to, to fail at. You know, and I think that's how you start to build the habits to create the kind of changes that we're talking about here. And I think that that's where most people struggle the most and myself included, You know, like most people, like, you know, it's like, okay, I'm going to start doing, you know, this, this, and this, and I'm gonna do it really hard for, you know, like a week, a month. And then they fall off. And it's like, no, no, it would be much better to, you know, Go slow, To slow down our pace so we can breathe through the nose, And build over time, Rather than trying to make, you know, massive change all at once. It's not that it's impossible. It's just much more challenging to sustain over the long term, You know, and I think that's, that's what we're talking about. We come to mental health is that we're going to have ups and downs in lives. We're going to have stressors that come into our life. And, you know, it's about giving ourselves the best shot at having the capacity to, you know, Handle those stressors, but then also recover from them. And, you know, and I think that recovery is getting bigger when we talk about from an athletic standpoint, you know, like five years ago, there was no, there was no thought of like, how do you properly recover from a workout? How do you, you know, That wasn't the thing. And now we're starting to definitely take. A professional approach, not only to our training, but to our recovery. And I think that's where breath work and all these other things can really come into play is like they help us recover so that we can perform the next time at a very high level but it takes time, This is not a one day process. You know, this can be, you know, months to years, you know, And that's the hard part for people to jump on.

Coach U: 1:09:36

Yeah. No, I think making it that lifelong journey instead of it being like I'm going to get here by. You know, October and it's like, all that's cool. You can have those mini goals, but like make it a lifelong thing. You're just going to show up for yourself and you know, do what you need to, to take care of yourself. So I love that. This has been a beautiful conversation. I love everything that you've touched on. I want you to let people know about the workshops and who's it for and you know, why, why you would recommend them to come, I want people to learn more about this stuff. So what are the workshops like and who are they for?

Kenny O'shea: 1:10:06

yeah, so I mean the workshops can so there's a couple things going on now with my business now So pretty soon it hasn't launched yet. We've had some back and forth with the Apple and things like that. So I have an app coming out pretty soon that will Showcase all the breathing mobility that we kind of talked about A little bit today some of the soft tissue work to help with breathing and things like that. I really focused the app on breathing. The workshops are anything from specific Wim Hof workshops, which are great for you know, whether that be you know, just wanting to learn more about breath work, wanting to have some kind of experience with breath work. Great for pain management for a lot of people. Also great for just kind of overall mental health benefits. Cause when you combine it with the ice, there's all kinds of endorphins and things like that, that can release that can really Pull someone out of a place to help them start to be able to implement some of these things, And kind of get them from that stuck point to moving a little bit better. When we do a retreat, we basically go through several different styles of breathing and we're going to spend an entire day just going through those different styles of breathing in just a single day event and same, you know, the only people that I would maybe recommend that this isn't for necessarily. Unfortunately, people who are pregnant aren't really supposed to be doing the Wim Hof method because we don't want to reduce oxygen to a baby for any reason. And so we don't recommend it for that. And there are certain type of epileptics who aren't recommended for intense breathing, It's because it can trigger a seizure. And so those are pretty much the only people who I'd say it's not for other than that, you know, it's basically for anybody who wants to either have an experience with their body and their breath Who wants to learn a little bit more about how they can apply this to their performance or to manage their pain, stress, and anxiety. And then, so that's kind of the workshops. And then we have retreats that we do throughout the year. So our next one, the only one I have scheduled now, and I'm hoping to do one in the fall, but I have the winter one scheduled already. So we do a event up at a mansion and like South Lake Tahoe. And we you know, teach you all the breath work. We jump in the Lake in the middle of January, You know, and we just teach you how to be able to. Not only physically do all these things, but mentally do hard things. You know, cause it, it could be a big mental challenge to go in. And if you're from California, you know what that is like to get to go into Tahoe during the summer is not super warm. So Tahoe during the winter is a, is a little different, you know? So yeah, so like we do different workshops and events like that. Beyond that you know, I have so that's kind of like. The main bulk of the refugee set, which is my business. And then I also do like one on one stuff with clients, whether that be, you know, at my office, at my clinic where I work hands on with them, or I do virtual stuff with them online teaching them breathwork, teaching them some of those self myofascial release teaching, you know, the mobility and things like that from afar and the applied neurology. I do do a free class online on Sundays. Where it's a, to you know, really expose this information to people, you know, and we've basically gone through, so I started it, I think last a little over a year ago, and I basically went through all the soft tissue releases, I know, both with a tool and with your own hands. I went through all the mobility that I know joint by joint in the body. I went through my buddy, Chuck teaches all the breathing, And then we just got through all the vestibular stuff. So, you know, teaching people how to train their vestibular system to increase their balance and their performance and, you know, If you feel off balance, your pain levels are usually pretty high, So yeah, we got the workshops. So sometimes they're day events, sometimes a couple hours, sometimes they're all day. Sometimes we can do entire weekends with retreats. We have the online class, we have in person clinic stuff and then online virtual stuff too.

Coach U: 1:13:34

Can people reach out to you?

Kenny O'shea: 1:13:35

Yeah, so you can go to the website. So www. refugereset. com. So refugereset. com or just Ken at refuge reset. So R E F U G E and then reset. R E S E T dot com. You send me an email. Free class is on meetup. So if you search Breathwork, either Bay Area or Breathwork, Sacramento, you'll find the meetup group. And in there you'll find the link, not only to Chuck's free class. He does two a week, one Sunday mornings at 11 and Mondays at night at 9 PM, I think. And then I do my class usually Sundays at about 10, 15. It's just usually about a half hour where I'm teaching. And then I spend, you know, 10, 15 minutes usually at the end answering questions for people and things like that. So, yeah, those are usually where you can find and connect. That's, that's it. Yeah,

Coach U: 1:14:22

Awesome. Ken, this has been super fun. Thank you so much for taking the time and to talk about all this stuff. I've learned a lot. I'm going to have to take a lot of notes when I read it, this bad boy,

Kenny O'shea: 1:14:32

yeah. I hope it wasn't too much, you know, some, I do have a tendency to go a little into the woods at times, but I, I do my best to make it simple. Because. You know, simplicity is how you learn, You know, you can't learn complex things until you understand simple things. And, you know, I'm all about first principles or the mechanisms, You know, so if you understand the principles and the mechanisms of what's going on, then you can make these adaptations however you want, You know, and so I think that's the key. So hopefully I was able to impart some of that to you and to whoever's listening. And yes, thank you so much for having me. It's always, I mean, you can tell that I love talking about this stuff. I could talk about it for hours on end. that I will spend the rest of my life you know, learning more and educating myself more and that the human body itself is something so complex that I will never, ever learn it all. And that's why, you know, it's so important to have people. You know, like yourself, like other professionals that, you know, you can talk with and, and, and refer to, to help, you know, people on their journey, because it's not a one size fits all for everybody. And everybody offers something a little special and a little different. And, you know, giving people the opportunity to experience other people's special sauce is really important too.

Coach U: 1:15:39

I agree, man. I agree. I'm going to make sure all of the show notes has your information and contacts. I would love for people to be able to hop into those the, the free classes. Cause I think it's amazing that you're doing that and that you're offering this information. I appreciate you man. Thank you so much and we will talk

Kenny O'shea: 1:15:54

Of course. Thank you.