Breathwork Magic
Welcome to Breathwork Magic, a podcast dedicated to exploring the life-changing power of Breathwork. Discover how conscious breathing can unlock inner peace, resilience, and clarity as we dive into inspiring stories and practical insights. Whether you’re new to Breathwork or looking to deepen your practice, each episode offers wisdom to help you connect more fully with yourself and the world around you. Everything starts and ends with the breath.
Breathwork Magic
From Reaction to Response: Reclaiming Your Nervous System Through Breathwork
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What if learning to control your breath could help you create space between an impulse and the decision you make next?
In this episode of Breathwork Magic, Amanda Russo sits down with former pastor, recovery mentor, nervous system regulation coach, and Sacred Grit podcast host Jason Lyle for an honest conversation about breathwork, nervous system regulation, addiction, spirituality, and what it means to reclaim control over your choices.
Jason shares his deeply personal journey from adoption and early experiences with shame to becoming a pastor while privately struggling with patterns of sexual addiction and infidelity. After reaching a point where he felt like nothing he had tried could help him change, an introduction to nervous system regulation opened the door to something different. Through cold water immersion, Tummo breathwork, yoga, and meditation, Jason began understanding his behavior not only through his mind, but through his body.
Together, Amanda and Jason explore the connection between the breath, the nervous system, and our ability to respond rather than immediately react. Jason breaks down the science behind nervous system dysregulation in simple terms and explains how practices like Tummo breathing can help widen the space between thought and action. They also discuss the psychological sigh and how something as accessible as stepping back and taking a conscious breath can create an opportunity to respond differently in moments of anger or overwhelm.
Jason also shares why the practice itself is only part of the equation. Breathwork, meditation, yoga, and cold immersion may create powerful shifts, but lasting transformation comes from how we integrate those experiences into everyday life. He introduces the idea of “preloaded decisions” deciding who you want to be before you’re faced with the moment that tests that decision and shares how breathwork has helped him become more aware of his choices in real time.
The conversation also explores parts work and Internal Family Systems, how unresolved experiences can influence our behaviors years later, and why some of the habits we judge most harshly may have originally developed as attempts to protect or soothe parts of ourselves. Jason shares how learning to understand those parts changed the way he viewed his own past and helped him approach healing from an entirely different perspective.
Amanda and Jason also dive into masculinity, spirituality, faith, and why practices like breathwork and yoga can offer men a different way to connect with emotions they may have spent years avoiding or suppressing.
Whether you’ve been practicing breathwork for years or still find the whole thing a little “woo-woo,” this conversation is an invitation to get curious about what can happen when you stop trying to think your way through everything and begin listening to what your breath and body have to say.
Sometimes creating a different life begins in the space between the impulse and the action.
As long as you have your breath, you have options. 💜
Welcome To Breathwork Magic
SPEAKER_01Welcome to Breathwoke Magic, the podcast that explores the life-changing power of your breath. Breathwoke isn't just a practice, it's a gateway to healing, transformation, and shifting to a new mindset by letting go of the past and embracing the possibilities of the present moment. I'm Amanda Russo, your host, a certified breathwork facilitator, level 2 Reiki practitioner, and creative the Mandos Mindset podcast. On my own journey, Bloodwork has been a powerful tool for releasing what no longer serves me and shifting my perspective to step into my fullest and greatest potential. Each week, I'm joined by inspiring guests, Blackwork facilitators, healers, and wellness enthusiasts who share how this practice has helped them and their clients heal, grow, and embrace lasting change. So take a deep breath in and out. Settle in and let's explore the magic of your breath together. The transformation starts now.
A New Release Rhythm
SPEAKER_01Going forward, Breathwork Magic will be finding a more consistent rhythm with new episodes releasing every other Friday. Just like we talk about in Breathwork, finding a rhythm that's sustainable is what allows us to keep going. I'm really excited for this next chapter, and I'm so grateful that you're here. Now let's dive into today's episode.
Meet Jason Lyall
SPEAKER_01Welcome to Breathwork Magic, where we explore the life-changing power of your breath. I'm your host, Amanda Vusso, aka the Breathing Goddess, and I am here today with Jason Lyall, and he is a former pastor, recovery mentor, and host of the Sacred Grit Podcast. And I am so excited to speak with him. Thanks for joining me, Jason.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate you having me on.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. So I'd love to know when you discovered the power of our breath.
Adoption, Shame, And Collapse
SPEAKER_00Um, for me, it was a bit of a story. So I was adopted at, I mean, I was put up for adoption at birth. I was taken from my biological brother and immediately put into uh foster care. And when I was two weeks old, I was adopted by my parents who raised me. Had a great leave it to beaver home life. I mean, there's nothing I could say to complain about my home life. It was amazing. And um, but when I got to adolescence, I started experiencing a lot of unwanted behavior, specifically around sex and girls and pornography. I was introduced to pornography at a very young age. And but I also had this other track that I tend to run down my entire life, and that was spirituality. Like I always kind of had a curiosity, that's a good word, around spirituality. I read the Bible through the first time when I was nine years old. I grew up Southern Baptist, so that was the platform that I had. But I also had this other life that was going on in the background, which was sexual promiscuity. Well, that followed me around and I became a pastor. I got married when I was young, I was 19. And looking back on that, I think that I thought that would fix me, you know, and the problems that were following me. And I became a pastor when I was 33. Once again, I look back on those and I think that I don't think I know that I remember thinking specifically that if I serve God, then the God will take this away from me. Kind of a transactional thing. Then that didn't happen. And so in 2017, I lost my job as a pastor for having an affair, and that was one of several that I had had. That's just the first one that actually came out. And then in 2021, I had another affair after losing my job as pastor and lost my job at where I was working at the time because of the affair. And my kids at the time, they were adults, but they found out. And me being adopted is not an excuse by any stretch of the imagination, but just makes relational, makes relationships feel a little different, then I think, than some other people might feel around familial relationships. And so when my children found out, like I say, they were adult children, when they found out it was kind of a hard time. And I was just planning my own suicide. I uh was I had the whole plan and knew what I was gonna do. And I just felt like that. That's the only word I know how to use, and that I just could not get better, no matter what I did. Well, in between losing that second job and this point in time where I had was planning my suicide, I worked with a wilderness therapy program. And in that wilderness therapy program, I made a met a man named Rob Jitt. And Rob was the chief clinical officer at that time of the organization that I worked for. And I came in off-shift one night as a wilderness therapy guide. I had been in the woods for seven days straight and uh hiking and camping. And I came out, and of course, all I wanted to do was get a hot shower and something to eat. But he was doing a training and he introduced us to nervous system regulation. And when he introduced us to nervous system regulation, he started talking about the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala and how the prefrontal cortex loses communication with the amygdala. Um and you start making decisions based off of a fight or flight response. And he started talking about the kids that we work with and how their behavior was erratic and it didn't make sense. And he would say, Well, the reason why it doesn't make sense is they don't have access to rational thought when they get triggered. And he says, Is anybody in here adopted? And I said, Oh, yeah, I'm adopted. And he's well, if I tell you that I love you and I want what's best for you, what's the first words that come to your mind? And I said, Bullshit. And he said, Yeah, exactly. He said, Because those words, I love you and I want what's best for you, are prefaced by the idea that anybody would love you. And anybody, he said, so you trigger prefrontal cortex goes offline. He said, Now it may be true, it may not be true, but your initial response is a survival response. And so laying there in my bed on a random Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon planning my suicide, I decided to reach
Nervous System Training Begins
SPEAKER_00out to him. And Rob introduced me to cold water immersion, to tumo breath work, and he started explaining the science behind how the breath is the bridge between cognitive thought and um, I guess we'll just call it spagal emotion. So he started explaining to me how the brain has neurons and the body has neurons, and in order to tie those together, the bridge is the breath. And that started my journey. And I've been doing it every day since. That was 2021. So for five years, I do tumo breath work every day. And I've adopted some others. I love box breathing, alternate nostril breathing. I mean, there's all manner of things that I do, but the tumo seems to give me the most benefit. And so I started teaching it, excuse me, to other men and using it specifically for men who are struggling with addiction, anger, depression, anxiety, you name it. And I have seen unbelievable results with yoga, breath work, meditation, cold water immersion. But the breath work seems to be the one that most guys really gravitate toward because it gives us a sense of control when working with the brain.
SPEAKER_01Now, you said tumo breath work.
How Tummo Creates Self-Control
SPEAKER_01Is that like inner fire breathing?
SPEAKER_00It is inner fire breathing. It's been made popular by Wim Hoff. So Wim Hoff took Tumo breath work and made it mainline. But I mean, it is as old as yoga is. You know, tumo's been around for a while. It's not breath of fire. Some people get it confused for breath of fire. Tumo is 30 deep breaths, as deep as you can take them. So you're charging your body up with all this oxygen. And then after breath number 30 or 40, you let all the breath out and then you hold. And the way that I use that process is when I let all that breath out and I hold, in the beginning, I enter this state of complete peace because you know, I'm charged up with oxygen and my body gets still. But after a while, my amygdala starts to fire, saying, Hey, we've got to breathe. But with my prefrontal cortex, I can start having a conversation with myself. You know, no, we don't have to breathe just yet. We just took 30 deep breaths. We have plenty of oxygen, and then that amygdala will try to fire again. And what I'm doing is I'm negotiating between my prefrontal cortex and my amygdala through an inner dialogue, which is something that we've lost the capacity to do as humans. Our inner dialogue is more like rumination. Or I think we call it, oh man, what is I just read this the other day of affective inertia. And so we start having that, I start having this inner dialogue during this hold. And I'm literally negotiating with my breath. And the longer that I negotiate, of course, eventually I have to breathe, right? The amygdala wins, it will every time I take this huge breath, hold for 15 seconds, that's rewarding my nervous system. It's teaching my nervous system that it can trust my rational decision-making process that I will breathe and I start to gain control over my impulses. Because although breath is an impulse to breathe through a process that I mean, this is a lot of size, but through a process called myelination, our addictive patterns begin to feel automatic, even though they don't go into our autonomic nervous system where breath lives. But these through myelination, they start feeling because neurons that fire together wire together. And so every time I wire that neural pathway in yogic tradition, it's called sanskaras. Every time I do that, I create the shorter distance between thought and action until the two almost run along the same line. But when I start to do tumo breath work, I start to break that myelination and I start to create capacity for myself to see my thought before I act on it. And I start to widen my window for the tolerance of discomfort, and I find myself in control over my impulse. Does that make sense? It's a lot in there.
SPEAKER_01I think so. No, you you said you did, and backtracking a chad.
Cold Immersion As Regulation Practice
SPEAKER_01You said you did a cold emotion before you did this, Breath Woke.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I do cold water reversion every morning. It's the same exact, it's the same exact mechanism. There's a cold plunge out here on my back porch, and I get up in the morning and my partner, she laughs at me. I go pee and go straight to the cold plunge. It's 45 degrees, and I get in it every single morning. But when I get in, I set off that same alarm, right? Because cold water sets off our fight or flight response because our body knows we can't live in 45 degree water forever, that we'll die. And so I set off that response, and then but I stay. And while I stay, use my breath once again, calm myself or bring that prefrontal cortex back online, and I start to learn what it feels like to get dysregulated, but then regulate myself under my own fruition.
SPEAKER_01When you did the cold emotion the first time, did you do breath work right after it?
SPEAKER_00The first time I ever did cold water emotion. So, me, like most men, the cold water feels um a little bit more masculine. You know, it feels but men need to do something with their pain. Sometimes for men, talking just isn't enough. Like we need to attack it. And so the cold water feels like that. Cold water feels like it gives us control. But the next morning, I got up and went on my front porch, and yes, ma'am, I did what little bit of yoga I knew at the time, which wasn't much. I had been a CrossFit athlete, but so I knew a little bit. And then after that, I did three rounds of Wim Hof, breath work, two more breath work, and then after that, I meditated and that started my journey.
SPEAKER_01Now, I'm
Breathwork Science Made Simple
SPEAKER_01so curious. Before this situation happened, did you meditate at all? Were you spiritual like that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I had started to dabble a little bit in meditation and I had heard of Wim Hall. Uh, hadn't done any of the cold water immersion, and I hadn't done any of the breath work. Oh, well, I'm not taking that back. I may have tried the breath work a time or two, but I didn't understand the science. I didn't have awareness around exactly what was going on inside of my brain. And I've done my 200-hour yoga training now. I've done some meditation training. I've taken classes through Wim Hoff's method. And just I've read extensively books like Widening the Window, Dopamine Nation, Do Hard Things, all these books that explain the neuroscience behind what is happening when we're doing breath work. I think so many people think that breath work is a magic pill, and in some ways it is a magic pill, but we have to know the intention behind why we're doing it. So why am I breathing in this manner? And what am I accomplishing when I breathe in this manner? Sometimes breathing is just breathing. You know, it's the the Bible calls it theos pneumas, the breath of God. The yogis call it prana, the divine energy that binds all things together. Um, we know that breath is the bridge between death and life, and so it's extremely important. But when we're using the breath work for healing, maybe for seeking um direction for our lives, we need to know our intention behind doing that. And that's the beauty of the science.
SPEAKER_01I gotcha. Well, I get that. Can you explain the science a little? Maybe like if you were speaking to an eight-year-old.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Well, basically, when if I was speaking to an eight-year-old, I would say, you know, do you ever find yourself getting mad for no reason? And they might say, Yeah, I do find myself getting mad for no reason. And I would say, well, the reason why you get mad for no reason and you can't calm yourself back down is because you think you're in danger. And they might say, Well, I don't think I'm in danger. I say, Well, you don't think you're in danger, but your body thinks you're in danger. And if your body thinks you're in danger, it takes over your mind and you start having these behaviors. And one might say, Well, I don't know what you mean. And I might say, Well, you ever find yourself screaming at your mom and telling your mom you hate her when really you're sitting there going, why am I saying this to my mom? And they might say, Yeah, that happens. And I would say, well, that's because you don't have access to your rational thought when you're upset like that. The breath work, when we learn how to use breath work, we learn how to bring the rational thoughts around our actions into the irrational feelings that we have in our body. So when we're angry, when we're sleepy, when we're aroused, when we're hungry, and when we get ready to react to those feelings of stimulation that come up from our body, if we have pre-wired decisions about how we're going to do that, whether that's pornography and masturbation, or whether that's alcohol, or whether that's Oreo cookies, those are preloaded decisions that we have started to make, how we will deal with that stimulus. But through breath work, we start to connect the body to the mind, and we learn how to access our rational thought. And we can go, oh, wait a minute. I don't want pornography, I want intimacy. Let me have a conversation with my wife. Wait a minute, I don't want to be angry. I just want to be heard. Let me advocate for myself. Oh, wait a minute, I don't want Oreo cookies. I'm just hungry. I want a salad or a sandwich or you know, whatever the case may be. But the breath work ties the logic and the emotion to one another in a nice little bow.
SPEAKER_01I really liked that explanation. Thank you. Thank you. Sure. I understood a lot of what you were referencing, but I think sometimes even the words and the language can be a little confusing, you know.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I think the simplistic of like being mad for no reason is really like even the five-year-old might be able to relate to that, you
The Psychological Sigh For Anger
SPEAKER_01know?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think with anybody, when people ask me about nervous system dysregulation, I always say the same thing. If you ever have a time to where your insides just don't match your outsides, in other words, you're doing something that you really wish you weren't doing, that is a dysregulated nervous system. And when the nervous system is dysregulated, the way we regulate it is through the breath. We might use a psychological sigh, we might use a box breathing, we might use um a huge deep breath that a hold for five seconds and then let it all out real slow. There's a lot of different ways to hit the reset button on the nervous system. The best one by far is through the breath.
SPEAKER_01I completely agree. I like how you mentioned the sigh. I know that's not necessarily quote unquote breath work, but I talk about that a lot, even to my clients that I work with one-on-one. You can sigh anywhere. You might not be taking certain big deep breaths depending on if you're driving on the highway, depending on where you are, you can let out that sigh of at least almost no matter where you are.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and it gives you an immediate real nervous system reset. It gives you this split moment to be able to, my guys, every one of them, I teach that when they're dysregulated, put your hands on your head and take a step back and take a deep breath.
SPEAKER_01And just on the head. Hands on right, hands on the head.
SPEAKER_00Show a surrender. I think that when we put our hands on our head and we take a step back, we're showing surrender and retreat. And that somehow in our body, it gives our body space. And then that huge sigh, that huge breath with the sigh, really just brings the prefrontal cortex online and we go, oh, okay. I have zero reason to be all jacked up right now. And it works, man. It works so well, especially guys with anger. You know, man, so many men are angry uh for no reason. It's like men have learned how to control women and children with their anger. If I get loud enough, big enough, and scare them enough, they'll do what I want them to do. And most guys I know that do that, they're I do not want to be that way. I want to be loving and caring and compassionate, and I want to make sure that my kids are not scared of me and my wife knows I love her. But when I get dysregulated, I scream and I throw things. And so they use the psychological sigh, hands on the head, take a step back, deep breath, and sigh it out, and it is amazing what it'll do. But once again, we're talking about extremely complex systems here. You know that if you're a breath work coach, it's like I think a lot of times folks come to me and they're, you know, it's like, oh, well, if I do some cold water, some yoga, some breath work, some meditation, I'll feel better. I mean, kind of, but if your intention is to just kind of get this quick fix, it's not gonna work. You might feel better for a day or two, but the inertia's coming, and when it does, you have to know how to work through that because breath work as much about doing the breath work as it is about integrating it into our everyday life.
SPEAKER_01I completely agree. You can do breath work and be on the yoga map, but what's happening outside
Turning Practice Into Daily Life
SPEAKER_01of that or after that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It's just like if the you know, uh theology. I still have two seminary degrees, and theology is nothing but philosophy if it's not applied to our everyday life. And breath work is the same way. It's like I can do breath work every single day. Bay of my life. But if I don't stop and go, well, how do I use this to be a better human? The etheral part of spirituality is people tend to live in three states of their life. They either live in their mind, the body, or they're trying to live in their soul. If we're always in our mind, we're Dr. Spock. If we're always in our body, we're an emotional wreck. If we're always trying to be in our soul, we're monastic, you know, sitting around all the time. But when we get the three to move with each other, so the spirit, the body, and the mind, they all get in sync and they all come together. And I think that's what breath work does. It connects the body to the mind to spirit, and we're able to see clearly. And that's how we start to apply spirituality to our lives and not just make it some out there kind of philosophical idea. I get what you mean.
SPEAKER_01No, I'm curious what other types of breath work you've done.
SPEAKER_00I have done, of course, all the ones you get in the yoga class: breath of fire, breath of joy, box breathing. Um golly, what's the other one? Oh man, it's the big one where you just you're doing like you're hyperventilating. What is the name of that one? It got really big here a while back. You know, people get around and kind of start getting uh a bit of a psychedelic trip out of it. I can't remember the name of it, but a conscious connected bathwork? Maybe, but there's like a word everybody's using for it. They would do the you know, the tribal drums. And but I mean, I've done mulabunda breath, what you know, it's like all of these different ideas around moving energy in the body. I just learned a new one about moving your sexual energy and your root chakra, you know, just breathing into the bottom parts of your body where where your sexual energy lives to charge that area of your body. And it's a beautiful practice. It is a beautiful, beautiful practice. But I think that if we think through with breath work, what is really bothering us? And all of these things that we have come up with, these methods of breath work, sometimes it's just about taking the time to move the breath to that space, right? So even if I'm having pain in my body somewhere, if I'm breathing in and out intentionally, I can move that energy that the breath creates into that space of my body and bring healing to that part of my body. I can bring relief. It's just like yoga. You say, breathe into the tension. We're moving that breath into the tension to get that tension to release. So I think like shaping the breath and moving the breath and knowing how to use your breath to regulate yourself, it's a beautiful thing. But as far as breath types, I stick to tumo. That's what I do every single day. It just seems to be best for my regulation, and then use the others as needed, as they say. Excuse me.
SPEAKER_01I gotcha. I gotcha. No, I'm cute. Who you would recommend breath work for?
SPEAKER_00Anybody. I don't know of anybody that wouldn't benefit from breath work. I mean, there's it's good for addiction, depression, anxiety, anger, stress management. There's nothing that it's not it's good for everything. And I didn't there's a book out that's been out for a while, and I think the name of the book is just simply breathe or breath, one of the two. And he goes through all these different modalities of breath work, and he kind of breaks down the science behind breathing, you know, breathing in through the nose, bringing in through the mouth, breathing out through the mouth, bringing up the nose. And he really unpacks exactly the impact that unpacks the impact that breath has on our everyday life. And so I think, you know, one thing that I have noticed is in yoga we use ujay breath, right? The ocean breath. We're kind of closing off the back of the throat. Ever since I've started doing breath work, I pay more attention to all of my breathing. I'll find myself riding down the road and just paying attention to the fact that I'm breathing. Or I might be sitting watching TV and just then I'll realize I'm ujae breathing. It's just very interesting to be in command of your breath that way. And when you get in command of your breath that way, it teaches you how to get in command of the rest of your life. And I think that's important for any human being.
SPEAKER_01I agree. It definitely does help get control of the rest of your life. I completely agree. I'm curious, and I'm not sure if you remember how much you remember, but how life changed for you before and after you did this cold emotion and then started down the journey of breathwork.
SPEAKER_00That's a great question. And Amanda, I unpack all this. I just released a book called Sacred Grit, The Pastor's Journey of Faith
Faith Shift And Immediate Change
SPEAKER_00Collapse and Reclaiming the Nervous System. And it's uh it's pretty amazing, actually, because I have a degree from Oxford University. I have a degree from Yorans Baptist Theological Seminary. I have been to NA meetings, AA meetings, SA meetings. I've had hours of therapy trying to get answers, I would say, to the majority of the time trying to get answers to this problem. And when I started doing breathwork and cold water immersion, it was as if every bit of that information that I was holding in my brain downloaded itself into my body. And it was as if everything made sense on an intuitive level. It changed me immediately. It was not as if it was a long, a prolonged process. It was immediate. Um, I started doing parts work with Richard Schwartz or with his interfamily systems process. I started processing through the childhood trauma. I started having conversations with in myself about the protector and all these different parts of me that had spent all those years just being pushed down and repressed. And I come to realize that me trying to have sex with different women was not me trying to hurt myself or hurt anybody. It was actually me trying to love myself because I didn't know how to do it properly. I was trying to soothe something inside of me with something outside of me because I didn't know how to soothe the inside of me properly. And once I learned how to soothe the inside of me properly, I no longer needed the thing from the outside of me to soothe me. And so it was a major change. I mean, it was a huge shift in the way I saw the world and my theology and the way I see God and the way I see all things. It was a massive shift. And I've seen other men experience the same thing. There is a time of integration. You know, most guys do some cold water immersion, some breath work, and they're like, holy shit, I feel amazing. And they do, but then if we don't integrate that work into our everyday life, it won't hold forever. It's it can't just be one or the other, it has to be all of it.
SPEAKER_01Completely agree. I am curious what integration looked like for you. Because I feel like that looks different for everybody. Sorry, go ahead.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it does. Yeah, yeah. That was interfamily systems for
Preloaded Decisions And Integration
SPEAKER_00me. That was preloaded decisions. I talk a lot about preloaded decisions with the men that I coach. That's deciding who I'm gonna be, and before I ever have to make the decision, that way the decision is already made. So if I excuse me, if I take the time to know the man that I want to be, to search that out, to look deep inside of myself and say, who do I want to be? Who's the man that I want to project to the world, that the man that's inside of me, and I decide to be that man, then when the decision comes to be made, when time comes for a decision to be made, I don't really have a decision to make. I've already made it because I've said who I want to be. And breath work gives me the ability to do that because that space between thought and action has widened. Prior to breath work, but my space between thought and action was, I mean, it was nothing. It was like I had a thought, I acted on it immediately. But breath work and the integration of preloaded decisions and interfamily systems parts work created the ability to integrate the two.
SPEAKER_01Can you explain a little bit about what POTS work is? I've heard of it vaguely.
SPEAKER_00So Richard Schwartz, and I'm not I'm certainly no expert,
Parts Work And Inner Family Systems
SPEAKER_00but he would say that when we have trauma, there's parts of us that get stuck there. And so let's say you're five years old and your uncle does some terrible things to you. There's part of your psychology that gets stuck there at five years old. It can't move because it's trying to process that trauma. But what begins to happen is it'll start building protectors. And for a lot of women and men, that protector will be sexual promiscuity because they through promiscuity they can control the sex, it's not just happening to them, they are allowing it to happen. So that that protector that they build might be a 13, 14, 15-year-old. And so that protector starts having these promiscuous behaviors, but that protector is not trying to hurt you, it's actually trying to soothe the five-year-old that was traumatized by the uncle. Well, the protector might continue to, you know, get in trouble. Well, then you'll produce another part to hide the protector. So that might be the dutiful housewife. You might get married and have a beautiful family, but somewhere back in there, every now and then, you need to go and make sure that you're soothing that five-year-old that got hurt by the uncle. So the idea around parts work is you go in and give each part a voice. You give the dutiful housewife a voice, you give the promiscuous 14, 15-year-old a voice, and you give the abused five-year-old a voice. And that's what I had to do. I had to give the two-week old Jason a voice. I had to give the eight-year-old Jason a voice. I had to give the 13-year-old Jason a voice. The 19, I had to go back and give all of those parts of me a voice. And then I could integrate that parts work into my everyday life because I have an understanding of why I'm doing the things that I'm doing. That's very trying to boil down a very complex system in just a few sentences, but I think that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01No, yeah, that does. That makes a lot, a lot of sense. And the inner family systems, how does that tie into the parts work?
SPEAKER_00That's it. I mean, it's all inner family systems is just what Richard Schwartz calls it. Yeah. That there's this family living inside of you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Does it usually show up as sexual promiscuity?
SPEAKER_00No, I mean it can show up. That's just the one I use because that's the one I was I was struggle with. So I have a friend of mine, and uh he was in foster care, and the way that his parents would punish him was they wouldn't allow him to eat. And so if he got in trouble, he was punished with food. And so now he has an eating disorder because somewhere around 13 or 14 years old when he got, or 15 years old, when he got his own job, got his own money, he decided nobody will ever withhold food from me again. And so he just eats and eats. He has a protector. That protector is the 15-year-old who got a job at McDonald's and started making his own money, and now he can provide his own food. Well, he starts getting large and having trouble with his health, so he had to per he had to produce an identity to help with that. So he produced the superhero, the guy that can do anything. I can conquer anything, I can run marathons. So all of these different pieces are interacting with one another. And we did the same thing with drug addiction. We just there's part with people who have complex trauma. That's really what I'm talking about. Complex trauma, the unwiring of that complex trauma is not just a cognitive exercise, it is also an exercise in the body about believing the different things that we believed about our inner workings.
SPEAKER_01That makes sense. Now, transitioning back to the breath work, I'm curious what you notice shift in your life the most after you integrated it.
SPEAKER_00It's definitely just the ability to see my decisions before I ever make them. I mean, the decision-making process, the dial turned down to two instead of 10. You know, um, before it was nothing for me to have an impulsive decision, whether that was anger or sex, whatever, didn't matter what it was. And with the breath work, that that dial just turned down. And now I can see my decisions in real time. Most people are seeing their decisions in retrospect. You know, they look back and go, God, why did I do that? I wish I would have done that. I I can't believe I keep doing that. I don't want to do that, but I don't really do that anymore. Matter of fact, I'm sitting here thinking about I don't do that ever. Like I'm in command of my decisions, and that's a beautiful place to be.
SPEAKER_01So so many people aren't.
SPEAKER_00So many people aren't.
SPEAKER_01Do you teach breath work? This type of breathwork? Yeah. What does that look like for your clients?
Coaching Men With Data And Rituals
SPEAKER_00Uh, I'm a nervous system regulation coach, and so I have a course on school, S-K-O-O-L. I don't know if you've heard of school, but it's a new platform. And I have a nervous system regulation 101 course on there that people can go take. And once they do, I teach them how to integrate. The the breath work and the cold water's relatively easy. It's just about a commitment to the process, the integration of it a little bit more difficult. Um, but yeah, for my clients, that means we just start making preloaded decisions. They kind of tell me their goals, what they're trying to accomplish, and then I help them make decisions around those and we collect data. They have morning and evening check-in forms that they fill out. I collect that data, I summarize it for them every Monday morning, send them an email with a summary of their data, and then we check in once a week and we redirect. We ask ourselves, okay, where am I right where I want to be? Where am I off? And we start creating them ways to make the decision toward the man that they want to be.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Is it only menu with?
SPEAKER_00For the most part, I mean, you know, I am one, so I kind of understand the inner workings of a man. I do have two female clients, one that just called for a one-off call and one that just signed up for my school course yesterday. So we'll see. Sometimes women don't take as much to this type of work because it is very masculine. It is about moving toward your pain and, you know, processing it through your body. Men are probably a good bit more visceral than women. Um, we feel things, I think, a little bit deeper. I think women, through the process of evolution, have learned how to disconnect from their bodies somewhat. Men feel anger, we feel emotion, we feel sadness. And so I think the reason why it works so well with men is because it is a lot about connecting to your feelings. And men generally don't do that. It's like we women can talk about their feelings and uh process their feelings out, and that's a beautiful gift, but most men don't really do that very well. But when I start showing them how to do something with their how to move their feelings, they understand that language.
SPEAKER_01Now, are you doing breath work with them? Are you guiding them in breath work?
SPEAKER_00I do when we're on retreats. I do men's retreats. I do about three or four a year, I do a couple's retreat every year, and then I do hiking trips for men. So yeah, when we're off on retreat, I do, but I mean, all of them have a recording of me leading the breath work, and they have videos they can reference. And so for the most part, they do it on their own.
SPEAKER_01I gotcha. I gotcha. Wow, I think that's awesome. You know, I I agree about men not really feeling the things. You know, I'm not a man, so I can only say that so much from just seeing, but even like I offer a lot of group events, and a lot a lot more often it's women that's attending. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think men just need masculine space. You know, the spiritual space for so long has been feminine,
Masculinity, Purpose, And Presence
SPEAKER_00and it needs a masculine presence. Yoga presence, yoga was created by men, that's why they're warrior poses. Um, but somewhere along the way, men stopped using it, and we got to bring it back. That's a big part of life.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I don't know why men men. Do you know that? I'm just curious, but why that phased out?
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, most of your desert religions, which is Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, are highly patriarchal because they started in the desert, and so the men were the sole providers, and they kind of moved more toward a patriarchal view of, and then of course, Christianity doesn't help with that with Eve being the one who ate the fruit and all that manner of nonsense. But I think in an Eastern religion and Hinduism and some of the more Nordic religions, when we think about the Vikings and the Highlanders, we have a mutual respect for females. Now, not so much anymore in the East. They've kind of adopted a lot of the same Western ideas. But if we study back the history, the male and the female energy are equal. And it takes male and female energy to create life. And if either one dominates, the life is not the way that it's meant to be. I mean, even raising children. If you have an absent father or absent mother, the child's going to suffer. So both energies is what it takes. So for the feminine side of spirituality has suffered because men have taken over most of your spiritual outlets, whether that be church or whatever the case may be. So I think, but we're starting to suffer for it now, right? Because men are just dysfunctional. The suicide rate of men over 40 is just crazy. So I think we're starting to now look and go, okay, well, maybe we need to think about our feelings at least. But I think men, you know, the number one thing I hear is I just want to find myself. I just want to know what my purpose is. And, you know, I tell them all, you don't have to go looking for yourself. You are yourself. You're right there. You just have to accept yourself, and your purpose is to have food, water, shelter, and stored energy. That is your purpose. And to be a kind, compassionate, loving human being. Other than that, quit looking because it's right here in front of you all the time.
SPEAKER_01I like that. You know, I think so many of us, men and women, are looking for that and searching for that. And almost like it's we're gonna find it in a box.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, it's right here, right now. It's already here. Well, I had to go anywhere looking for it. We already got it. If you don't like what you see, then change it. So I tell my guys all the time if you look inside yourself, you don't like what you then change it. You're the only person that can. Don't wait on some other magical moment to start abricadabber your Harry Potter ass and turn you into something that you wish you were. Make the decisions that you want to make and be the man that you want to be. That's really what this is all about. And breath work offers us that opportunity if we're willing to take it.
SPEAKER_01That's true. No, I'm so curious. And it just came to my head as you said, if we're willing to take it. Was there any part of you before you did it, did this breath work for the first time in the cold emotion that was leaning towards not?
SPEAKER_00No, I was desperate. I mean, I I here, I am an extremely cerebral person. I am I've always been intelligent. My mom taught me how to read when I was three, so I have to understand things. And the day that Rob Jinn explained to me the science behind the way the breath connected the body, I was all the way in. It's like, oh shit, that makes more sense than anything I've ever tried to learn before in my life. And so, yeah, no, I was in all the way. I had to be, you know, I I was I was cut at the end there.
SPEAKER_01I get it. I was just curious. Sometimes people are with with the the tone breath work doing it for the first time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I get it a hundred percent.
SPEAKER_01No, I I'm curious if anybody listening to us they haven't experienced any sort of breath work and maybe they're skeptical for whatever reason. What would you say to them?
SPEAKER_00Try it. If they'll send me an email at jason.lyle at the sacredgrit.com,
Skeptics, Yoga Stigma, And Control
SPEAKER_00I'll send them a recording. They can follow the recording. I'll send it to them absolutely free. Give it a try. Take you. Minutes do three rounds of breath work, and if it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for you. But I would say try it because I was a mainline evangelical southern Baptist. I was all the way in, so all this was woo-woo to me. I didn't believe any of it, but it changed my life. You can give it a try. That's what I would say.
SPEAKER_01It was all woo-woo to you before.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Really?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. Yeah. We were prayer, Bible study, and church. That's what we were about. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And now, in in church, do they not believe really in Bethlehem? In delving into this?
SPEAKER_00No. The church I grew up in would say yoga was Satan worship.
SPEAKER_01Why, though?
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, you know, you could track that back to all manner of things, but Christianity, mainline evangelical Christianity, for the most part, really likes control. And so if you convince everybody that you have cord to mark it on God, you can control them. And then you just call everything else sin or Satan. We were also told Catholics were going to hell and Mormons were going to hell. And everybody who wasn't a Jesus-believing Baptist was going to die and go to hell. So if you think of it from that perspective, you know, I still get emails from time to time from when I was a pastor from people that I used to pastor, and they'll say, you know, you're you're worshiping demons, or you're putting your body in the posture of demons. And it's just it's an ingrained thing. It's giving them a sense of superiority, and so they kind of like it, but it doesn't make it true.
SPEAKER_01I guess that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I've always been a little curious about that because I know a lot of different religions, different churches have their kind of feelings about some of the yoga, the breath work, the yeah, interesting. That it is. Wow, Jason. Well, thank you. I learned so much myself.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me on.
SPEAKER_01I
Final Thoughts And Listener Support
SPEAKER_01really enjoyed this. Any final words? Anything else you want to share with the listeners?
SPEAKER_00Anyone can look me up at thesacredgrit.com. I would love to have a conversation. Uh, my book is out on Amazon, Sacred Grit. It can be found on Amazon. If you want to have a copy, I'd love for you to have one.
SPEAKER_01I will link that in the show notes as well. And if anybody wants to get in touch with you, is your website the best place to do so?
SPEAKER_00It is, yep. Or they just email me jason.lyle at thesacredgrit.com.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I will put all of that in the show notes as well. Thank you so much again, Jason. I really appreciate you.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01And thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of Breathwork Magic. Thank you for tuning in to Breathwork Magic. I hope today's episode inspired you to connect more deeply with your breath and embrace the transformation that it can bring. Remember, as long as you have your breath, you have options. You're not stuck. You can make a change, you can make a shift. Each inhale is a new beginner, and every exhale is a chance to let go of what no longer serves you. If you enjoyed the episode, it would mean the world to me. If you shared this with a friend, left a rating or review, your support helps more people discover the magic of breathwork and the incredible transformations it offers. If you're ready to take the next step, I encourage you and I invite you to join me every Monday evening virtually for a Mindful Mindset Monday, a virtual pay what you can breath work session, where you can reset, recharge, and refocus. All of the information is in the show notes. Until next time, keep breathing, keep shifting, and keep embracing the magic with inside of you. I'm proud of you, I'm rooting for you, and you got this.
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