Episode 55: Reset your nervous system with breathwork
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So before I launch into this interview today with Victoria, I just want to let you know that there’s a couple of places that the recording cuts out. The internet connection wasn’t real solid. And I actually lost a lot of some really good content. But I tried to fill in the holes. So you may notice, like, all of a sudden, it sounds like I’ve recorded separately because I did. So just stick with it. This interview is fabulous.
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Victoria Starr is a breathwork practitioner. And having been very exposed to lots of different styles of breathing, I’ve taught yoga for 20 years, I had no idea what I was missing. And I first found her last fall. And I share my experiences in this interview. But Victoria teaches a three-part conscious-connected breathing pattern. She calls it the reset breathwork.
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It is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. It takes you to an altered state of consciousness. In fact, I think it does actually release DMT in the brain. It is as or more intense than any drug experience I’ve ever had. And the impact and the benefits to the nervous system, not just of the experience itself, but the shift that I was able to make emotionally, where
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I didn’t even realize what had happened to me. And I was just walking around wondering why I felt so positive. Like waking up in a good mood isn’t really like my normal state. And it wasn’t until this conversation with Victoria three weeks later that I realized that I had experienced a very deep shift emotionally as a result of my last breath work session with her. And so we talk about all of this in the episode.
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So again, it’s a little rough in places, but stick with it. And then at the end, just when you think it’s over, because we keep getting cut off, we go through how you can find her and click the link in the show notes to get to her schedule or to her website. And then there’s one more question after that. So stick with it because it’s worth it. So thank you, Victoria, for coming on the show. I’m so grateful to have you here. If...
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If you could, could you tell the listeners a little bit about who you are and what you do? Absolutely. My name is Victoria Starr and I am a certified master breathwork facilitator. I have been facilitating breathwork for the past two, little over two years now, and I’ve actually been implementing breathwork into my practice, into my daily life since
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2020 before the pandemic. I now am living full time in my van, traveling across the country and internationally into Mexico, offering breath work to van life festivals, to RV festivals. I facilitate virtually and in person one on one. So it is.
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been my passion, my calling, and my greatest catalyst to growth and transformation. So my mission is to share it with as many people as I can. So I’d like to just start out by saying my experience. So somebody turned me on to your breath work. And I have taught yoga for 20 years, and I have been exposed to a lot of breathing techniques, or so I thought.
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And your class, which I participated in virtually, also had no frame of reference that that would work. And it absolutely was phenomenal to have a virtual experience. It felt like I was in the same room with you. You were able to guide and suggest and support me and the other members on the call. But your class, given all of my experience,
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was like nothing I’ve ever encountered. You know, I likened my experience in your class to something very primal. It activated something primal in me, almost like breastfeeding or having sex or something where I had to use my thoughts to direct my body to get going. Like this is what we’re doing, follow the directions. And yes, it sounds a little weird and I’m not sure what I’m doing and whatever, but we’re going to do it anyway.
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But then once we get going and I’ve participated twice now, I just get out of the way and my body takes over. I lose time in your class. You know, it feels hard and weird. The first, you know, you do it to music. So maybe the first song or two, like I feel like I have to continue to participate as a choice, but because I’m interested and I wanna do it. But then once I get into it,
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It just takes over my body. And I feel like I just get out of the way and something magical, something primal, something healing just happens. So if you could, can you give us an overview, me an overview of what breath work is? Because evidently it’s not what I thought it was. And maybe narrow down the specific type of breath work you do as it relates to breath work as a whole.
06:19
Oh my gosh, thank you for this reflection. First of all, Colleen, like that is such a gift to hear how and where your mind and then your body took over to receive that feedback and to hear that it’s primal and that there were so many vibrations that were happening in and within you. So thank you for that. But the type of breathwork that I facilitate is known as
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the reset breath work and it’s a three-part conscious connected breathing pattern, all done in and out through the mouth. And it is scientifically proven Colleen to reset the nervous system and to bring about an elevated state of being within your body. So that’s what you experience. So for anybody that likes the nerdy part of it, there is what’s known as the sacral pump within your body and it actually starts at the root of your spine.
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And through this breathing practice, it pumps fluid up to the pineal gland in the brain, and it actually brings about that elevated state of being. It brings about that change in the nervous system where we can tap into our parasympathetic nervous system, our rest and digest, and our sense of peace and calm within our body. So with this breathing practice,
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we can really truly shift old patterns and old limiting beliefs in our brain to a elevated and state of being and to release those limiting beliefs and those limiting self doubts that we have created within our lifetime to keep us safe. So through this breathing practice that you attended with me,
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That’s basically what we did. Like it was the intention, the last session that you were in with me, the intention was, is that we’re all interconnected and that we can create this energy in this space to be all that we’re meant to be really truly Colleen. So I’m getting chills right now. Because if you would have asked me what I got out of that,
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class, I would have said a mind blowing experience. I would have said something bigger than me. I was I felt connected. But like, how did it affect my life? I don’t know that I would have been able to, to say much certainly not right after the class. But what was this three weeks ago that you and I had our last session, something very profound has shifted in me.
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And I have noticed that my default is, I’m in, I’m living in a state of gratitude. And I noticed this two areas. First of all, I would say that I can kind of suffer from rusting bitch face, except also my mouth moves. And I, so I just kind of get negative and critical as my default state. You know what I mean? I have to try in stressful situations, not to be a bitch. And.
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I noticed I did some travel. We were in Yosemite and then I was in an airport and you know how fun those are not. And I noticed that, oh my God, I had this beautiful, like I got this beautiful chair when my flight was delayed and I had a phone charger and I had my granola and I had this, like I was noticing all the things I had and reasons to be grateful. And it’s like something has shifted in my nervous system. And another...
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Another area that I have kind of struggled ongoing is I’ve been working on my marriage in terms of, am I going to stay? Am I going to go? And I’ve done a lot of work cognitively noticing the beliefs that I’ve had and realizing my beliefs are the problem, not my husband, and really taking radical ownership for that. And I have not had to work on... I have not had to try to be nice.
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or try to redirect my thoughts. I’m just showing up in situations noticing, oh my God, he brought flowers or he worked so hard or like all the ways that I have wanted to feel that I’ve been trying to force myself into feeling in the last three weeks. I mean, I’m getting chills. Like could something have been unblocked for me? What draws me into breath work is
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that it aligns with my approach with emotional sobriety in that I teach that the body is the subconscious. Our body is what reminds us of our beliefs by giving us feeling, and then, you know, it’s kind of the bumper rails that we don’t go beyond. Our body holds the past, and we keep that memory to protect us in the future. And my focus as a coach is to teach people to work
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with their emotions using their thoughts to bringing to bringing subconscious beliefs into consciousness so that they can clear them. But as you can imagine, that’s fucking exhausting. It is. And it seems like breath work takes the thought work out of the equation, and maybe allows the body to purge what it needs to let go of without having to create a story about letting go.
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and maybe bypass some of that mental process and just go directly into our body. Do you have any insight into this? How is that even possible? I do, I have so much coming through to me right now, Colleen. First of all, I wanna celebrate you for working on your marriage and reflecting back to your listeners knowing that...
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you are taking mad ownership for your responsibility in your marriage and how you are showing up because we tend to as humans blame everything on everybody else and we don’t take our own responsibility and the part that we play. So I’m really, really celebrating you for that. And I just want to know that I hear you, I see you and just sending you so much love for that. There is so much. I have chills that
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you brought that in here. So with our session, calling in the three weeks ago, calling in that we’re all interconnected and really reflecting back on the abundance that we do have with you being in the airport and seeing, you know, all the things that you were grateful for. And also knowing that through broth work, like it’s been around for thousands, thousands of years.
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you being a yoga instructor, you understand that. But also with the type of breath work that I facilitate, it really is an opportunity to come home to yourself. And like you said, the first few songs are generally the hardest. And that’s because our ego mind likes to keep us safe. And that’s okay. But it is doesn’t like to get into the unfamiliar.
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and the unknown and that’s where the ego keeps us safe. But knowing through, like I’m just gonna reflect back that Dr. Joe Dispenza, like he’s really big into this that our thoughts are created by past emotions. And that’s how the ego keeps us in the safety box of like the emotion created the thought, right? And then the thought is what keeps us safe and keeps us in.
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Most generally as humans, unfortunately, we live in that negative pattern, but we can create through the power of our breath, this elevated state of being and with the affirmations and the breathwork that I call in with the music that I call in, because each breathwork practice is completely different, that we have the opportunity to shift our thoughts and shift our emotion.
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into that higher state of being. So with the playlist that I create Colleen, like it really takes you on a journey of your sympathetic nervous system. So your fight or flight so that you can release those limiting beliefs and release that self doubt and then brings you into a peak state so that you can learn to trust yourself so that you can learn that our relationship with ourself is the most important relationship that we have.
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And coming home to ourself is a true reflection of really energetically sharing our, our energy, our love and our gifts. So that’s all brought about through breathwork and how I facilitate. I mean, that, I mean, I giving myself my own chills right now. Well, and it’s interesting because I have no cognitive memory of your playlist. I have no.
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cognitive memory of the affirmations. If you would have asked me if we did them, I would have been like, yeah, I believe you had to say some things here or there. But it was kind of, I don’t want to say out of body, it was a complete in body out of mind experience. And I didn’t log a lot of it. I just let it happen. And so, you know, I followed Joe
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I definitely understand that our emotions are creating our thoughts. And I believe that emotions are the energetic manifestation of our thoughts. I just really would not have said prior to this conversation right now that you could possibly bypass a lot of that mental processing.
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that I think is important in a lot of ways when you’re going about your daily life, you know, maybe I’ve done a lot of work. So maybe I was ready to let some shit go. And my body just did it. It was, it’s almost like taking a dump or something. I mean, like, where did all that angst go of, of, and I don’t, I can’t even articulate necessarily what my problems were anymore because they’re just not there. And I think
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Wow, that is why I wanted to have you on. And that was before I just made this huge connection, because I want people to understand that there are options and that there is no one path to healing. Like I wouldn’t say, well, just do breath work and then you’ll be fine or just do thought work. But marrying these modalities and staying open, and I want to say for my listeners,
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This is a weird class. Like you’re like, what are we doing? It’s intense. You say that the the process, the breath work, it elevates your state of being. Can you talk about what that is? I mean, what does it mean to have an elevated state of being? And what does that have to do with the nervous system? Oh my gosh. I’m going to say Colleen that
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an elevated state of being is really different for everyone. Each breathwork experience. So I, like I said, I’ve been doing breathwork for over three, three and a half years now. And every time I do breathwork is vastly different. And it’s so just to share a little bit of my story is I have been in.
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an emotionally abusive relationship that I left a year and a half ago. And being in this pattern of relationships, starting from a caregiver, my parent, all the way through to a 12 and a half year marriage that, that was very constricting. That was very manipulative and breathwork has been the biggest gift in my life to
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heal and to move through those relationships, those patterns that were not serving me. And what I witnessed within myself is, Colleen, I saw my soul literally trapped behind iron bars in this concrete barricade and this entrapment of basically keeping myself safe, but it came to...
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And this happened through a breathwork session where I saw my soul trapped behind these bars. And then through time and through experiences of these breathwork sessions, I have been able to peel back the layers and to be able to choose me, to be able to come home to me and say, I choose me first, I choose not to live in that pattern anymore. I choose to live in a higher vibration in an elevated state of being.
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in an opportunity to recognize when things, challenges, obstacles come into my life because they will, they will. I mean, this is our human body in this earthly plane. And to know that I can come home to my breath, but yet I also am able to move through the challenges as they arrive. It’s when we take the...
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emotions and when we take the challenges and sweep them under the rug and they get stuck there and they get trapped there and basically scientifically it has been shown that these these traumas get stuck in our body so by doing breath work and creating that elevated state of being as what I call it is sometimes it can be simply the calm that you feel the gratitude that you feel the
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where sometimes I’ve had people go on a freaking trip to the 7D and not know what happened to them. So like there isn’t one way of the elevated state of being. It just creates a whole lot of opportunity to shed the layers of the onion, what I like to call it, of the past, to shed those layers of the onion that don’t serve us and to really recreate
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patterns and opportunities and tools and gifts to live a life that we desire. Yeah. So, so I’d like to, to add on to that and get your reflection. The elevated state of being to me, based on what you’re saying is where you’re not blocked and weighed down by stuck.
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emotions because one thing that I say without really having a scientific explanation, but it’s a metaphor that works, I guess is how I would describe it, is that emotions are really heavy and they weigh us down. And I think they do that physically. They also do us mentally myopically where, you know, when we’ve got this cloud of emotions, we can only see things from a very limited perspective. So to me, correct me where or add on.
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an elevated state of being which sounds so attractive, but what the hell is it? To me, it is not being weighed down by emotions and what comes with the emotions are those tropes, those stories that are keeping us stuck in that prison. Does that sound okay? Yeah, absolutely. Colleen, like that definitely is a different way, different perspective of putting that elevated state of being.
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Breathwork gives us the opportunity to be present because as you know, like our emotions are from the past and those emotions can create our reality of the future, right? There’s so much that we live in the past or live in the future that we don’t give ourselves the time to be here and be now, to be present, to be with the abundance, to be with the gratitude.
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And for me, like that feels in my system, the word that I can bring forth is the elevated state of being. By coming back to our breath, that gives us the opportunity to be fully present, to be fully present with the goosebumps that you’re feeling on your arms, to being present of the abundance that you have, the gifts that you have in this moment.
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the flowers that you receive and the gratitude that you receive, that is fully coming home to the here and now and being present. And in my world, that’s what I call and that’s what I can put words to as that elevated state of being is all the feelings and all the emotions. The emotions can be good or bad. There’s no right or wrong with those. And I be a full water sign. Like I tend to...
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witness my emotions as the waves in the ocean and so riding the waves, riding the oceans because our humanness, we’re going to have the good and we’re going to have the bad. But witnessing like I am not my thoughts, I am not my emotions and this emotion that is present instead of sweeping it under the rug, instead of hiding it and running away from it, I have the ability to be with that emotion to witness it and say, I see you.
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and know that you can come home to your breath and that you can move through that emotion to the other side, to that higher state of being. Does that bring more clarity to my verbalization of that elevated state of being? Yeah, ironically, I’m gonna use the word disconnect and I don’t like it, but it is disconnecting our identity from our emotions so that we can experience them like waves, but they move.
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through us and we don’t get stuck. So it allows us, the elevated state of being is where you are not your emotions. You are experiencing your emotions. Exactly, you are not your thoughts. Yep, exactly, yeah. It’s fully being present and our humanity and our humanness is really hard. I’m not gonna lie, it’s really freaking hard.
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But when we’re experiencing stuff, challenges, obstacles, that we have this beautiful gift of our breath. So Victoria, one of the things that I wanted to have you on here is to expose you and what you’re doing with breath work as an option to my people who I love. And I want them to experience the same options
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to experience this as I have. Can you talk about where people can find you, what you offer, how somebody could work with you, maybe just try it one time like I did last fall or what your programs are like? Yes, thank you for asking, Colleen. So I do breathwork sessions. I hold breathwork sessions twice a month for a group session. Those dates are on my website.
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And I also offer, if you desire, after experiencing that group session, I offer a one month private coaching trial to see how breath work can be integrated into your life and how we can work together and how I can hold space for you in the safety and the support of everything being in that container of a one-on-one. So knowing that the virtual sessions, the group sessions that are twice a month, those
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our the intentions are pretty um I don’t want to say generic but they’re broad whereas the private coaching container is more um based on your specific needs and desires. So you can find me on Instagram at Victoria Lee Starr with two r’s and you can find me on Facebook same name Victoria Lee Starr and my website’s Victoria Lee Starr.
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Okay. And I will put links in the show notes, but just to be clear, the experience I had with you was one of your group and you do that twice a month. So it was a group assessment. And I think I paid like $25 or something like that. Very, very reasonable and affordable. People could do that and then perhaps look at a private coaching package, but they can experience what I experienced with a drop in.
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in one of your group sessions, correct? Absolutely. Yep. Like I said, the dates are on my website. Um, they’re on my Instagram. Um, they’re always, uh, 7 PM Eastern Standard Time and 4 PM Pacific Standard Time, um, on Wednesdays. So now I have another question and maybe I’ll put it back earlier. And that is, so I.
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I did your class, I think last fall, let’s go with November, and then I did it again in May. So I had two experiences six months apart, and I am even more interested now. What would you say would be the benefit of doing this on a regular basis? You know, here I am popping around saying, obviously something happened, something shifted for me, and I’m interested to do it again. But my first instinct would just be kind of to do it as needed,
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you know, I’m not gonna take my car in unless there’s a flat. And then of course the guy at the shop says, well, you need to come in on a regular basis because if you don’t, you know, your oil is gonna run out and you don’t have any windshield wiper fluid. You have to maintain your breath work. So when you look at breath work that you do as a practice, what are your recommendations for best practices? So great question again, Colleen.
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Let’s just go back to my example of me where I had trauma that resided within my body and it was actually inner child work that I wanted to work on and I really wanted to stop the limiting beliefs, stop the self-doubt, knowing that I can create self-trust and self-love within myself but I didn’t know how to do it. I didn’t have the tools within me and being in this narcissistic abusive relationship.
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from a child to a marriage and a relationship. Like I knew there was a lot of things that needed within me to be healed and to be moved through. So knowing that for myself, it was a deep desire to keep showing up for me, to keep showing up for me, to keep choosing me, to keep having the support. So whether you are working through
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You know, currently I have honestly Colleen, a client that is training for a marathon in December and we integrate breathwork into her sessions because we, through our patterning, through our upbringing, like we have created safety, but it’s also limiting beliefs within our system. So through breathwork, whether you do it twice a month,
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privately with me or weekly with me, we can keep tapping into peeling back the layers of the onion and knowing that we can repattern those limiting beliefs. So if you have a specific thing that is something resonating with you that you want to heal and move through, that’s where Breathwork Weekly can come into. But it’s also like sometimes like you said like we don’t remember what
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trauma happened to us as a younger person that we can keep healing and keep reparenting that inner child with us. And that’s where our conversation got cut off and we no longer were able to continue. She was just saying that doing breath work doesn’t have to be a long-term commitment. It can be one and done here and there. And there is also great value.
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in regular maintenance for people who are working through something, feel like you’re on a journey. And that is how I am using the breathwork. I actually, because I had such a powerful experience with Victoria, I booked with her again for a one-on-one session. And then I’m going to take it from there. I didn’t buy a huge package. Her rates are very reasonable, by the way. But
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The reason I want to work with her one on one is as she spoke to you in the interview that it’s important to integrate your experience. So this session that I had with her today, this interview, allowed me to realize that I really got something out of that breath work session. Whereas if I hadn’t followed up with her and hadn’t had this conversation for our podcast, I might have never attributed.
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the shifts that I have seen recently, and they are big. I feel like I’m a different person, like I’ve taken happy medicine or something. And I know things like that don’t last. I mean, it’s not the first time I’ve woken up in a good mood. It just startles me. You know, every day I’m waking up with gratitude. And I’m really motivated to see if breath work helps me maintain that elevated sense of consciousness.
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And so I’m going to follow up and do another one-on-one session with her. And I’m also going to hire her to do a breathwork session with our group the next chapter. So if you are in the next chapter, look for the emails. I haven’t scheduled it with her, but as soon as I have a date on the calendar, I will let you know. And that will be my gift to you. So you don’t have to go find her on your own. You can just come to one of our group calls and we will do it together.
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So that’s it for today. Thanks for sticking with this. I know it was a little bit rough in areas, but I do think this conversation was valuable, because hopefully it will move you into action to get on Victoria’s email list. She does not spam you. I think I get one or two emails a month from her telling me about her group program. And I like it, because I get an email from her. I actually took action last month. I was like, yeah, I can go to that. I’m.
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you know, that’s a good time for me. I was gonna be home alone. I’m like, I’ll do a breath work session. So being on our email list is definitely worth it. So I will put that in the show notes so that you can experience this powerful, powerful form of self-care for yourself. Thanks for listening. If you liked what you heard, please take the time to rate and review the show so that other people can find it. I really appreciate it.
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And check out the show notes for any resources I’ve mentioned, including links to follow me on Instagram and join my private Facebook group where I connect with my tribe every day. I love it in there and we have so much fun. And finally, if you’re ready to redefine sobriety so that you can feel excited about quitting drinking, follow the link to my 10 Days to Spontaneous Sobriety Course.
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where I will help you eliminate, eradicate, obliterate, cancel your desire to drink. Because looking and feeling your best is addictive too. I’ll see you soon.