212 Just Breathe | Simple Breath Work Practices To Use In Therapy Episode By Chris McDonald

Chris McDonald: Therapists, have you considered integrating yoga into your clinical sessions but aren't sure how? In this episode, discover simple trauma informed breathing techniques to help clients regulate their nervous systems, Reduce anxiety and reconnect with their body. Learn why breath work is such a helpful practice to use with clients, insights you might not have considered, as well as some basic safety considerations.

I will teach you four simple practices that you get to experience and use with clients or for your own self care. Breathe in and breathe out and join us on this fascinating journey into the power of our breath. On today's episode, Of yoga in the Therapy room. Podcast, stay tuned. Welcome to Yoga in the Therapy Room, the Non-traditional Therapist Guide to Integrating Yoga into your therapy practice.

I'm Chris McDonald, licensed therapist and registered yoga teacher. This podcast is here to empower therapists like you with the knowledge and confidence to bring yoga into their practice safely and ethically. So whether you're here to expand your skills, enhance your self-care, or both. You're in the right place.

Join me on this journey to help you be one step closer to bringing yoga into your therapy room.

Welcome to the Yoga in the Therapy Room podcast, the nontraditional therapist guide to integrating yoga into your therapy practice. I'm Chris McDonald, and I'm here for you today for a solo episode. I'm so excited you've joined me. And today we're going to uncover one of the most foundational and accessible ways to bring yoga into your therapy room.

And that is through Breathwork. Breathwork is one of the simplest, most effective tools you can offer your clients. It can help with racing thoughts, soothe heightened emotions, and create moments of calm, even in the most overwhelming situations. It can also bring energy to the body. when clients are feeling more depressed.

In this episode, Just Breathe, simple breathwork practices to use in therapy. We'll explore some practices that go beyond four square breathing that most people are familiar with and learn how breathwork can enhance your sessions and empower your clients, key considerations to ensure every practice is safe and trauma sensitive, and several easy impactful breath techniques that you can start using right away.

So take a deep breath. And let's go deep on how you can use the breath to bring more peace and presence into your therapy room. I want to start with my journey with breathwork. When I was first trained in therapy, I had learned the basics of CBT, REBT, more of the thought based counseling theories, and Basically how to help clients through using problem solving those kinds of techniques.

So very much not bringing the body into therapy. So that's, that's been a newer experience for me because that's not how I was trained. And I'm sure many of you have felt the same. So when I first got introduced to Pranayama, that was many, many years ago when I was in the school system and I learned at a retreat that I went to for teachers because I was considered an educator and got to go to some of these retreats and I really was loving the feeling after because I've always struggled with anxiety and always been interested in trying to find ways to better management.

So once I learned this practice, I started to practice more on my own and started to integrate it with students at school because what I found is many students needed something more besides brief solutions, which we often do in the school system, or a CBT approach. And once I started to offer some breathwork practices, I was amazed at the results.

It was just amazing to see how much this tool could help with managing anxiety because in the school system we see a lot with around academic counseling with test anxiety, fears about coming to school, those kinds of things, but it really made a huge difference. And what I loved about it was it was so easy to teach.

Most students were pretty open to it, and they were able to take it with them. So this was a tool they could access outside of our time together, which was beneficial when we have as school counselors. I know I used to have up to a thousand students on my caseload in elementary school, and. Usually most school counselors have maybe 500, maybe less if you're lucky, so it is really helpful to have these accessible practices, especially if it's easier to teach some of these kids, these practices, and this is for adults to not just kids, but that's how I started with it, and that is still a foundational approach that I use with clients to this day.

Sometimes I'll start with grounding with new clients, but often integrating it with some pranayama practices. And remember pranayama breath work is one of the eight limbs of yoga. So know that this is still bringing yoga in the therapy room, even if it's not an asana, because yoga is more than just poses.

I think we have to remind ourselves of that. And it really does help with the nervous system regulation, whether clients need more energizing, or if they need more grounding, if they're more in that hyper arousal. in the window of tolerance. And the hypoarousal means that they need more energizing.

They're more in that shutdown mode. Sometimes we need just balancing in the middle to get back into the window of tolerance. And a lot of these practices can bring that for you and for your clients. I find that clients like it the most, even more so than some of the movement practices and meditation, which is really surprising to me because I thought that some of the meditation visualizations are things I do that they would really like that more, but they don't.

And that's okay. We can individualize this. So to see. You know, what would be best for each client? And that's what I try to do with my approach. And when I teach it to clients, one thing I want to remind you of as well, listener, is that this is a preventative practice in our culture. I know I live in the United States.

I know this podcast goes around the world, but here I'm sure many other places, most people learn the band aid approach that, Oh, I'm anxious. I feel, I feel it in my belly or my chest. I feel tension, feel that fight or flight response. My heart's racing. My breath is shallow. Let me do some breath work to calm myself.

Great! That is such a great coping skill to use, but guess what? That's not preventative. Preventative processes and strategies are often not always used, right? We always wait till something goes wrong and then I gotta go to the doctor. I like to teach it from a preventative approach, and you can do this with your clients as well, and really encourage them to think about When is a time they can practice at home?

And here's the challenge, not when they're anxious. Now this is going to take some reinforcement because it goes against everything we're taught that I'm anxious, let me do something about it. But here's how you can frame it. With anxiety, the more that we can use these breathwork practices to build that inner resilience, that inner resource, The more we are opening our window of tolerance.

And again, that's something you can teach clients what that means. That means we're less reactive to stress. It takes a lot more to throw us over the edge. And daily breathwork practices, the body gets more used to it. And it's like, Oh, I know how to do this. It's like a muscle with exercise. The more we exercise it, the stronger it gets.

And with our bodies, the same thing. The more we can practice. These preventative breathwork practices daily, even more not anxious, the more it's going to help and be more effective when the anxiety does come. So it's both. So we practice regularly, but also when we get anxious. And that's when you can ask them about How do you know when you're anxious?

Where do you feel in your body? What are some of the thoughts? So looking at thoughts, behaviors, the emotion that comes up, is it mixed with anything else? You know, getting in more of that clarity. So knowing that they can use both preventative and during is so impactful for their nervous system. So there's, if they start in the morning, as an example, they are setting themselves up for a calmer day.

It can help with creating a consistent routine, which so many clients benefit from, especially those that are neurodiverse. ADHD is huge. If we can get more structure that is so helpful for overall mental health, well being, but anxiety too, if we have those consistent daily patterns, that can also bring some calm in the nervous system, some centeredness.

I know what to expect. So each morning I get up, I do what I need to do to wash my face, get ready for the day, whatever the routine is, and then I do my breath work. And you can talk about some of those ways to stay consistent as part of therapy too. And of course, this is with informed consent. If they want to do this, it's always their option.

If they don't want to, that's okay too. But this is just an option. You can let them know this is a best practice and can show the most benefit. Will all your clients do it? Probably not. So you're going to have to reinforce. One thing I've learned over the years is I will always ask if they're struggling after we do breathwork and they start the homework to check back with them.

And if they say that a few weeks later they come down the road, it's just the anxiety is not getting better. The first question I ask is, are you using your breathwork? Chances are they're not doing it preventative. They're only doing it when They get anxious, which is great. That, that means that it shows resourcefulness that they're using it.

But again, this has to be a message that's consistent for you with them too. So as reminders, and that can be part of the discussion, how could you remind yourself and what's the way it's always hard to create these habits, right? For all of us and just letting them know that. It's never an easy process, right, to do something new and just to do the best you can to get it started and finding what works.

So that's my first experience I wanted to share with making it a preventative practice, if possible, as well as a coping tool. And I think clients love this because they want tools, they want hands on things. Coming to therapy can be helpful, but I know most of the people I see have been to talk therapists who don't give these tools.

And that's some of the first words they say is, I want some things that I can use. So this helps empower them to let them know that, yes, there are some ways that I can help myself and better manage my anxiety so it doesn't manage me. But just some cautions, just make sure that you can get some more training and breathwork, cause of course, this is just a podcast episode, it's not a training in itself.

So the first thing you got to make sure to protect yourself to is put in your informed consent the potential benefits and risks we always have to put that and Some of the risks could be dizziness, lightheadedness. I've had some clients that they experience that. It's usually not dangerous, but it's important to stop if they're really experiencing and have a difficult time.

Many times that could be that they're over breathing, they're trying too hard, they're pushing. their breath. So one of the cautions is never to force breath. As an example, if somebody's inhaling, then exhaling, but at the end of the exhale, they're gasping for air. That puts the nervous system into fight or flight, more of the sympathetic.

That's not the intention of these practices. So it's important to have these discussions before you do any breath work with clients so they understand, and of course, inform consent to all the potential risks and benefits. But let them know the good things too. We're going to get to those in a And hopefully you are, you are assessing the health, potential health issues with your client.

I know it's harder if you have more of a big caseload like in the school system, but just do your best. And you may have to even inquire with students if you work in the school system. So some health issues that it could make breathwork challenging would be asthma, or if somebody's a heavy smoker, they may not have the lung capacity.

So really just be inquiring with them, or if you already know that they have these conditions, just see if it's okay with them to practice, if they feel comfortable, because they may not. I've had some people with asthma or smokers, and you know, we just really pay close attention and monitor to make sure of that they're not forcing their breath or causing coughing or other issues.

You can also ask them to check with their doctor to make sure it's okay for their own individual needs. But just keep in mind that we have to individualize And these breathing practices are not for everyone. Some people are gonna love them, some hate breathwork, period. So if, let's say you ask a client, Hey, do you want to try some breathwork practices?

And they're a flat out no, then we have to go with that. They have that autonomy to say no, that they have a voice in their healthcare. So that's okay, so you can try something else and give different options. But knowing that we all are so different in how our body responds, so you're going to just be really paying attention to notice body language.

If they look like they're really struggling, it increases anxiety or a trauma response. Maybe they're sweating or their face is turning red or they're gasping for air, immediately stop so you can check in on them and make sure they're okay. So it's really just about taking care of them and their, their health and, and not just their emotional health, their physical health.

If they're having a negative response, you know, just let them know that. You will take it one step at a time with them, but also to let them know that it's important that they share with you if they're having a difficult time, because some clients, especially if they're people pleasers, may not speak up.

So that might be something to address. 1 thing to remember is that for hyper arousal, if your clients are feeling more anxious or have anger response. irritability, the longer exhale than an inhale can help for the calming effect. So that helps to calm the stress response and turns on that relaxation response in the brain, which is that parasympathetic nervous system.

Now, I know a lot of people teach the box breathing. I don't teach that anymore for a number of reasons. I'm not going to get too far into that. But from my experience and my training and what I've seen with clients that either doing, and we're going to get into this in a moment, where we can inhale, let's say, count of five, exhale for a count of five, and see how that settles their nervous system, because I really do try to look at the research, what helps, what works, and trying not to trigger them into the sympathetic response.

And 4, 7, 8, I don't recommend. Some therapists use that with clients. I don't anymore. It is not accessible for everyone. And it can increase stress response for some people. I know for me, personally, I can't exhale for a count of 8 very well. It can put me in that forcing breath out, which isn't helpful. and holding for seven, it's not always accessible for everyone.

It can cause more sympathetic response. So I believe in a more gentle response to Pranayama. But if you're using that and it works great, good for you. But just for me, it's just not, I don't think it's helpful. To me, it's better to start slower with the nervous system, especially with trauma, and to make sure you build gradually.

So you don't want to just jump in quickly and Going fast and having clients practice for an hour, that would not be good for their nervous system. More like, if this is good for you for homework, how about for three minutes? Or this number of breaths, so just a short amount. Really, really taking your time, if all this makes sense to you.

There are so many benefits for your body, for your mind, for your emotions, if you want to teach breath work. It can decrease anxiety, help you manage stress better, like I mentioned with the stress response. It can really help bring you back down to that homeostasis, that window of tolerance, just building that resiliency in the nervous system.

So clients will be less reactive to stress and they can better respond instead of react. It also helps with creating that mind body awareness because you're having clients really tune in and notice What's happening in their body, really listening for breath, feeling the breath. That can be a new experience for many clients.

They've never had that opportunity, many of them. Research shows it helps the immune system to get stronger, to fight off infection, lower blood pressure. Those consistent practices are so powerful, as well as promoting more restful sleep. And sleep can be so hard for people with trauma or high anxiety, even depression.

We know that's a symptom of depression too, is sleep issues. And I often will turn to pranayama as well as some other things to help with sleep. I'm not going to get into what the practices are just yet, but we're going to do some practices today that also may be beneficial for you if you need those before sleep or your clients.

And if you use more of the trauma informed cues with breathwork, it can really help them to connect in a safe way. So they can build that tolerance for more difficult emotions, building space so they don't get overwhelmed as you guide them through any trauma that they may be working for. And I know I mentioned a little bit about the breath work with even inhale and exhale lengths like a count of five, but what research shows it promotes autonomic nervous system balance, fostering that sense of safety and trauma.

So this is the beautiful thing. There's so much research out there and in our ethics codes, we're supposed to use research based interventions. This is one of the most researched and yoga overall. Asanas are also research based. So just keep that in mind. Are you a therapist interested in bringing yoga into your therapy room, but are unsure how?

Are you ready to take the next step and bring the benefits of yoga into your therapy sessions? Imagine feeling confident in using yoga as a therapeutic tool and knowing the when and how to bring yoga into sessions safely and ethically. My yoga basics course for therapists is here. This eight part online training covers everything from nervous system regulation to understanding how to guide clients with yoga effectively and through a trauma informed yoga lens.

You'll have scripts for all yoga practices taught and to enable. Individual consults with me to support you on your journey. The next course starts November 21st, so don't miss out. Get ready to build your confidence today. Go to hcpodcast. org forward slash yoga basics. That's hcpodcast. org forward slash yoga basics.

The first practice that I'm going to share with you is very simple and that is just bringing awareness to breath. This is often the easiest place to start with breath work if you've never taught breath work before. It's the least risky as well and if you want to just bring this into your therapy room, great!

It's a good place to start. So awareness, how do we do this? So let's try it. So, find yourself a comfortable spot. If you're driving, just pause and get to a pulled over, pull, pull your car over and get to a safe position and take a moment to just notice the breath. Maybe you notice the rise and fall of your chest.

Rising on the inhale, falling on the exhale. Just notice that for a few breaths. Now turn your awareness to your belly, if that feels right for you. Again, feeling the rise on the inhale, the fall on the exhale. And notice for a couple breaths, knowing that your breathing pace may be different from mine. And by the way, we're just inhaling through the nose and out through the nose.

Good. Now see if you can tune in and notice the sound of your breathing. If this feels like too much, you can just skip this part. You have to be in a quiet space to really listen. Now see if you can notice the feel of the breath as you inhale through your nose. And exhale, and any of these awareness practices, just know that we're not rushing through this, we're just allowing the space and time to bring awareness, allowing your breathing to be as it naturally is without changing anything.

See what sensations you notice as you breathe in and out through your nose. Does the air feel warm, cool as it comes out, or something else? Or maybe if you're congested, you notice some congestion in one of your nostrils. Bring that curiosity in with the awareness. And when you're finished, if your eyes are closed, just open your eyes, looking around the room, bringing yourself back.

Check in with yourself, noticing how you feel. How did that awareness settle in your nervous system? And by the way, these are all trauma informed cues to ask people to go at their own pace, do what's right for them, take your time. So kind of bringing ease with the cues. So awareness can be enough, right?

We can just use that. But if you want to move on to some simple breath, I often use this with brain spotting after somebody is processing and to kind of bring them back into the present moment. So we're going to inhale through the nose. And extend the exhale longer than the inhale. We're not going to use counting, keeping it very, very simple.

So when you're ready, take an inhale through your nose, breathing in, and then exhale longer than the inhale, coming out. Inhale, and when you're ready, exhale longer than the inhale. And try that a couple more times at your own pace. Knowing your breathing pace may be different than mine. Taking your time with this

and then letting that breath go, coming back to natural pace of your breath, how do you feel? Notice any differences and if you don't, that's okay too. If you have clients who are very analytical and struggle with these breath practices and they may say, how do I know if my exhale's longer than my inhale?

Just do your best. I can tell them that. If they want to use counting, you could shift them to counting if that feels better for them. Just do it, experiment, see what works. Every client will be different. Another practice, I love to do this one, especially if you have people whose shoulders rise up to their ears when they're anxious or if they come into their office and you can just see the tension in their shoulders as they've risen up.

You can also use a few shoulder rolls if you're comfortable teaching any movement, just rolling the shoulders gently. Try that now. Just bringing the shoulders up and back, feeling the shoulder blades down the back body. You can always start with that. And coming back to that awareness, noticing how your shoulders are feeling right now.

Are they heavy? Are they light? What is there? Are they tense, tingly, anything else coming up? For this haa breath we're going to be inhaling the shoulders up as you inhale through the nose and then we're going to drop the shoulders and exhale through the mouth with a haa sound. So when you're ready exhaling and it can be a little forceful or it could be a little lighter.

You decide. You have control over the force and you have control over your body. And the choices you make. So let's try that again. So inhale, bring your shoulders up to your ears, and taking your time, and exhale up. And one more time, inhaling, shoulders to ears, and exhale, letting that go. And just again, allowing the breath back to its regular pace.

How did that feel? You can use more body movements with this, but I'm not teaching that today. So we're just going to do a very seated exercise that's more accessible to everyone listening. And, as always, these practices are so helpful for therapist self care as well, because we need these practices so much with all the difficult work that we do and how much space we have to offer other people.

And one more I wanted to teach you today is called the Cyclic Sigh or the Double Inhale. And this is a very accessible one as well. It's on YouTube as well, if you want to have another video to access if you're not able to see this. And I think sometimes that can be helpful if you need someone to follow along with, but I'm going to do my best here just with the audio.

So this involves two sharp inhales of the breath. So double inhale. So nice and slow. Inhale, pause. And then inhale, and then a nice smooth exhale, exhale. We're doing this through the nose to start, and then we'll end with an exhale through the mouth. So what this does, and research has shown, that this is, if done for five minutes, it's the quickest way to reduce stress and reduce anxiety.

The longer exhalation activates the parasympathetic nervous system, promoting relaxation, slowing the heart rate, And it's been confirmed in so much research as being very effective in reducing both acute stress and long term and the effects of long term chronic stress. So this is definitely one to look into if you haven't heard this before or practiced it yourself.

Oh, and by the way, I recommend embodying these practices before you teach clients. So don't just do this one time with me, make sure you're practicing this at home for a while until you really feel comfortable in your body doing these practices. So let's try the cyclic sigh, and you can also teach this to clients as taking small sips of air with a double inhale.

So take the first sip in, imagine breathing in halfway, and another sip to the top, and then exhale. Long exhale through the nose, and try that again. Take a sip of air, halfway, inhale again, and exhale through the nose smoothly. Prolonged exhale. Inhale, sip. Another sip at the, all the way to the top. You might feel your shoulders rise as you do that.

And exhale. And let's try it with the exhale through the mouth this time and see if that feels different for you. So first inhale, inhale again, and through the mouth this time.

And again, the intention is the longer exhale, through the mouth or the nose. But start, I think, I believe the research was through the nose and then they ended with some with the mouth. I could be wrong. Just see how it works for you and your clients. And one more time we'll exhale through the mouth. So inhale, inhale, and exhale.

And then letting that breath go. And again, for this one, it's not going to be as forceful as the ha breath. You can if you want, but it's, that's not the intention with this to, I feel like the ha breath can release some more tension in the body. For me, it helps with anger when I've taught clients that.

This one's a little softer. Think of the soft inhale. We don't have to do it really rough because you think about your breath. We want to be careful on how we're inhaling and exhaling. We don't want to necessarily make it really abrupt because that can just be activating in the nervous system. Slow, steady, and smooth.

Just keep that in mind as a mantra for your breathwork and your clients. And I just wanted to share a bonus of something I recently learned. I haven't taught clients this yet, but I'm really curious to learn more. Some of you may be trained in heart math. That's something I've learned about. I've, I've actually had several guests on my podcast recommend this and I'm curious to learn more.

or coherence breathing. So what it involves is a five count inhale, so counting into five, and then a five count exhale, so the equal breaths. So there's no four in the middle for the hold or four in between. So it's just five and five, which I like the simplicity of that. But at the same time, that you're doing the breath, you're breathing in and out of your heart, so putting your focus there and just imagining that you're bringing genuineness, sense of care, warmth, appreciation, or gratitude as you do this.

So it's part of heart math's resonance frequency breathing, which involves breathing rhythmically with that. So thinking that five seconds in, five seconds out, while focusing on those positive emotions. And it helps with that nervous system balance, used for stress reduction, and emotional self regulation.

I'm going to put in the show notes a link to some studies on this. And this could be further learning for you. So this might be something to try if you don't feel like you have enough training with this, which I don't yet because I'm just learning about this as well. I want to look more into it and practice and embody these practices for yourself as well.

But I think that could be very beneficial to Try the equal breath, see what works, and then maybe another day, try the extended exhale to see what works. And you can also bring this curiosity of mind to your clients. Let them know that sometimes we got to try different things to see what works. It doesn't mean anything's wrong with them.

It just means that everyone's nervous system is a little bit different. So we have to put in. different ways of approaching this with different people. So that brings us to the close of another episode. How are you feeling after doing some breath work? So your homework is to continue practicing. Maybe pick one of these that you want to continue with, maybe research a little more, learn more about it, really embody these practices, and then give it a go with a client.

But I want to thank you again for being here and tune in again next Wednesday when another episode drops. If you haven't joined my Facebook group, I invite you to come with us and join the journey in the Bringing Yoga Into The Therapy Room Facebook group. This group is for non traditional therapists who are interested in bringing yoga practices into the therapy room.

This is a supportive space where you can connect with other like minded people and get access to exclusive content including somatic mindfulness and yoga practices that you can use with clients or in session and you'll have access to. Monthly Q and A's, lives with other guests in the new year, as well as yoga challenges and so much more.

Don't miss it. Join us at hcpodcast. org forward slash yoga and therapy group. That's hcpodcast. org forward slash yoga and therapy group. And again, this will be in the show notes in case you are not at home and able to access this. And once again, this is Chris McDonald sending each one of you much light and love.

Thanks for listening to today's episode. The information in this podcast is for general informational and educational purposes only. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are giving legal, medical, psychological, or any other kind of professional advice. We are not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast.

Yoga is not recommended for everyone and is not safe under certain medical conditions. with your doctor to see if it's safe for you. If you need a professional, please find the right one for you. The yoga in the therapy room podcast is proudly part of the site craft network.