Breathe with Brenda Winkle: Harnessing the Power of Breath for Healing and Joy!

Hello Beautiful souls! How often do you stop and really breathe? Do you ever wonder how such a simple act can be so powerful in healing and self-care? We're incredibly excited to welcome Brenda Winkle, a certified advanced trauma-informed breathwork facilitator and energy healer, to our show. Brenda's journey from a stress-filled life to a fulfilling one, through breathwork and setting boundaries is nothing short of inspiring. She provides a fresh perspective on how we can all tap into the transformative powers of breathwork to heal trauma, regulate our nervous systems, and lead a life filled with joy and positivity.

Brenda is not only a healer but an insightful teacher who beautifully articulates the science behind breathwork. She enlightens us on how this transformative practice can stimulate the vagus nerve, promoting overall well-being. Her passion for teaching children and parents alike about energy and healing modalities is a testament to her commitment to spreading well-being and self-love. Brenda challenges the comfort of the "comfort zone," encouraging us to expand our horizons and follow our true desires.

In this enriching episode, Brenda doesn't just guide us through theory; she also takes us through a simple box breath exercise, emphasizing the need for practical and accessible tools in our journey towards self-love and healing. We also explore the concept of living for ourselves and not worrying about others' opinions - a crucial step towards self-love. Brenda's insights on self-leadership, the power of mindset, and embracing growth are just the kick-start you need to embark on your own healing journey. So, tune in, take a deep breath and let Brenda guide you towards a life filled with positivity, love, and fulfillment.

How to get in touch with Brenda:

www.brendawinkle.com

Brenda's Podcast:

https://open.spotify.com/show/30LNo2bJ6hhTsXyn1XnnGI?si=QU-cuz4YS-aiXn5s9JJIBg

brenda@brendawinkle.com

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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brenda.winkle111

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendawinkle/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brendawinkle111

Free Gifts

• Breathwork to Strengthen and Trust Intuition - 4 part video series and PDF guide
• Feel Better Fast Cheatsheet and worksheet 
• Feel Better Fast Meditation
• Plant-Based Food and Boundary Help

How to get in touch with me:

enlightenandelevatewithkelly@gmail.com

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To book a distance Reiki session with me click the link below:

https://alignelevatewithkelly.as.me/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

Hello beautiful souls, Thank you so much for being here. I'm so excited about this episode. My guest is going to talk about what happens when we don't do the self-care and when we don't put ourselves first and we ignore signals that are coming from our body. Life is so busy for so many of us and often we don't put ourselves first. Often we don't take the time for the self-care that we need. In that is different for everybody what you need to feel good, and she talks about the importance of breathwork and the importance also of regulating your nervous system. The nervous system plays a role in everything we do. The three main parts of your nervous system are your brain, your spinal cord and your nerves. This helps you move, think and feel, and even things you might not think about, like digestion. She discusses being fully present and really feeling what you're going through, even the toughest emotions, so that they can shift and turn into something different. Hope you get lots of good tools and information from this beautiful healer. Enjoy this episode.

Speaker 1: 1:15

Hello everybody, Welcome to another episode of Enlighten and Elevate. I am so thrilled to welcome our guest today. Her name is Brenda Winkle. She is a certified advanced trauma-informed breathwork facilitator, trained in subtle energetics. She's an intuitive empath and a highly trained energy healer, and also the host and creator of the yes Filled Life podcast. Welcome, Brenda.

Speaker 2: 1:40

Hi Kelly, Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:44

Oh, I'm thrilled to have you. I was reading through all of your stuff and your mission is to help people feel better. How beautiful is that? Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get into this work? How did you decide to start your podcast?

Speaker 2: 1:58

Oh, I love this. Many times in our minds we think that there's a straight line, that here's where I started and here's where it ended up. My line was like zigzags and circles and all different kinds of directions. I started out as a music educator and I spent 26 years in the music classroom. I was starting to feel the effects of working too much. I don't mean necessarily just burnout, although that was part of it but I was having physical symptoms and major illnesses as a result of working 70 hours a week. I started at a couple of different businesses and I was working full-time running businesses and still not slowing down at all. Then I had a major health crisis. It literally brought me to my knees in 2019. I'd been working in the field of energy work for about four years.

Speaker 2: 2:54

By that point, it was August of 2019. I knew that I had to make a big change and I had no idea how I was going to do that. Then the pandemic hit. I was so relieved to be able to take a break from the rat race that I had created in my life with all of the jobs and all of the external obligations, that, while most people were sad not to go out in the pandemic. I was resting for the first time in a really long time.

Speaker 2: 3:29

I decided that I needed to create a more permanent change and I started to find a way to do the work full-time that I am doing now. First of all, I have a change of environment. I moved from Boise, idaho, to Portland, oregon, in 2021. Then everything started to unfold, where I began to feel better because I was in a different environment and nothing was wrong in Boise. It's not that Boise was the problem. I was the problem. I needed a different environment. Then, in August of 2022, I realized all I could think about was working with people in my business. I felt guilty because I was also being paid to be a full-time teacher. I recognized that I was in a moment of conflict and decided to really follow my integrity. I resigned from teaching in August of 2022. I've been full-time working with people, working with clients, since then. It's been everything I dreamed of and more. Oh, that's amazing.

Speaker 2: 4:35

Tell us about the work you do with your clients. Like you mentioned, I'm a breathwork facilitator and an energy healer. I love to help people bridge the gap between their lives that happen out quote, in the world and their inner lives and embracing the womb, so to speak. I do a pretty good job of bridging that gap because I did spend so many years in a really structured kind of field that I know how to language things in a way that feels accessible. I really help people with three things. I help them set better boundaries. I help them discern what's theirs and what's not. I help people heal their nervous systems.

Speaker 1: 5:19

Oh my god. Those are all three critical things for feeling your best and being able to move forward in a positive way in your life. Boundaries are something that I think we all struggle with at times, but learning tools from somebody like you, that would be huge. I just love all of that.

Speaker 2: 5:40

We know what they say. They say that we teach what we most needed to know, and that's absolutely true for me. The things that I teach are the things that I most needed to know along my healing journey.

Speaker 1: 5:53

Yeah, sometimes you have to live something to really get it why it's needed to set a boundary. Or some people, I think they don't even have an awareness that there's a boundary issue. That's just how they've been existing, that's how they live, that's all they know. They don't have any awareness until they probably meet someone like you. Do you have a facility or do you do it through Zoom? How do you do your sections and how do you meet with people?

Speaker 2: 6:15

I work with people in two ways. Most of my work is remote and I have been remote since 2016,. Which is fun now that the rest of the world is also remote.

Speaker 1: 6:25

I feel like I'm at the game.

Speaker 2: 6:27

That's right, I was ahead of the game. I do most of my work remotely, but then I offer in-person retreats. I offer retreats twice a year, usually in the fall and the spring, somewhere between August and April, although give or take a week or two on each side. That's the in-person work, Although I can be persuaded to come to events and offer live breathwork and live healing. And I definitely do speaking events. In fact I'm speaking at a couple of conferences next week. It's a variety, but typically my one-on-one clients are mostly remote.

Speaker 1: 7:03

How do you work with people to heal their nervous system? I love this question.

Speaker 2: 7:08

So our nervous systems, we all have them. We're basically one nervous system and our nervous system has a couple of roles. The most important is to keep us alive, and I say that and it sounds like I'm being a little bit of a jokester when I say that, but every system in our nervous system, every way that it functions, is to keep us alive. So when we are under stress, our nervous system will cut down on some of the normal functions in our body to be able to take energy to the parts of our body that are experiencing stress. When we're talking about nervous system healing, it's going to really vary depending on what the person comes in with, but there are some things that really help everyone.

Speaker 2: 7:56

Breathwork is one of those things. One can regulate their nervous system with breathwork and I'm a trauma informed breathwork facilitator, which means that I come in with the idea that we've all experienced trauma. I'm coming in with the assumption that you already have trauma in your body and I'm going to be watching for cues to never take you outside of your window of tolerance, because if we come out of our window of tolerance then that might re-traumatize someone, and so I'm very cautious to take you to the edge of the window of your tolerance and then really stay in that window carefully. And breathwork does such a beautiful job because we don't have to think about anything. The breath does the work in clearing the trauma and the second motionality, and I'm also a somatic coach.

Speaker 2: 8:45

If someone feels like they need additional pinpoint coaching in addition to the breathwork, we can talk about what they might be experiencing and then go to a specific body part and oftentimes there'll be an emotion. That's there only. Sometimes it feels like a color or a shape or a texture or an age, or sometimes it just feels like pain in your hip and then it'll be dive deeper. We realize, oh, it's this underlying emotion. So primarily, breathwork and somatic coaching are ways that I help people with their nervous systems and then with other modalities like Reiki and Theta Healing, they're also very supportive.

Speaker 1: 9:29

Let's talk a little bit more about somatic. Is that with movement? It makes sense to me incorporating the breath and movement for energy and how that is regulating and clearing your system.

Speaker 2: 9:41

Yeah, anytime we talk about somatic, it's based on the root word soma, which is a Greek word for body. There's tons of somatic modalities like yoga, for instance, is a somatic modality. Dance could be considered a somatic healing modality. When I'm talking about somatic coaching, it might include movement or it might include presencing awareness on a specific part of the body to help presence. What's coming up for a certain person in a certain way. It's really interesting. For example, I'll tell a story on myself, if that's okay, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 10:21

Yes, please my dad has been experiencing some health problems and I'm really committed to doing the work that I ask my clients to do and feeling things completely. So I got a backache. One day when I was visiting my dad, I called another somatic coach and I was like I have this backache and I don't typically have a backache, like my back does not feel bad. So I know there's something else here and I just wonder if you could witness me and help me clear this. The backache was masking sadness and grief and when I really felt the backache and allowed myself to really be present with, the backache changed and I realized that the backache was masking the sadness and grief and when I allowed myself to really feel the sadness and grief, the backache went away. And then the interesting thing about emotions is that we know that even the toughest emotions last about 90 seconds. If we can let them flow for that 90 second, they shift and they turn into something different.

Speaker 1: 11:31

They ease, Wow, that's pretty powerful. Cool, yeah, yeah. And I think a lot of people realize that any kind of emotion that you're holding on to or you're not confronting or working through is getting trapped in your body and your cells and it manifests its way in different forms. I really believe that in the future that Western medicine and Eastern medicine are going to come together and there's going to be more talk about the energetic ties to what is underlying why people are going in with a certain pain or some sort of health issue, whatever is coming up. I really believe that's where things are going to be headed, because there is such a direct correlation between the two.

Speaker 1: 12:17

When you go into a typical Western setting, the model is what it is and there's nothing wrong with it. There's definitely a place for it. Not throwing shade at the Western medicine model. They're not considering the energetic body, your energetic systems and how they are working, because it affects all the other ones that are in line you have a bucket in your throat and it affects what's above your throat and in your heart.

Speaker 1: 12:39

So it's really interesting to talk about this with you and I love that you're helping people. Did you start your podcast after you started working with clients or was it before?

Speaker 2: 12:51

It was after. So I started the podcast in April of 2022 and it was called Waves of Joy podcast for the first I don't know seven or eight months of the podcast. I'll tell you why I feel like joy is the emotion that unlocks everything. When we can access joy, we can begin to manifest the lives that we dream of, because when we're in joy, we're feeling really good and joy is accessible to all of us if we choose to feel it and choose to see it.

Speaker 2: 13:22

And then I realized that I still believed all of that and that joy actually created the yes filled life, and what I mean by yes is that feeling when something goes really well and you're like yes that's the kind of life that I think should be accessible to all of us, and so my commitment is to help people, whether they listen to the podcast and they get inspired by somebody that's talking on the podcast or working with me one-on-one or in my group, yes Academy just knowing that it's possible for every single one of us.

Speaker 1: 13:58

A yes filled life. What you're saying yes to through your actions, your words. Let's talk about that.

Speaker 2: 14:04

I love that you have that in here. I was a people pleaser. I didn't aspire to be a people pleaser. That wasn't a goal of mine. It was a byproduct of two things. We know that there are actually four responses to trauma Flight, flight, freeze and fawn. Fawning is people pleasing. One of my childhood responses to stress and trauma was to fawn. And then I'm also highly sensitive, open, intuitive. So between the two, I could walk into a room, find the most dysregulated system in the room, and I've made it my personal mission to make that person feel better, not because it was necessarily altruistic, but because it made me feel better. I felt safer in my own system when the people around me were regulated. I fell into some people pleasing behaviors because it made me feel so much better to have people around me happy and as people pleasers, a lot of times we're saying yes to things we don't want to say yes to. We're saying yes because it makes other people happy or because it may be it's quote easier than saying no. But is it really easier?

Speaker 2: 15:22

I don't think it is. In the long run, the yes filled life. When we're talking about the yes is saying no to the good. So you can say yes to the great, because we all have so many opportunities that come to us if we say yes to every single no-transcript.

Speaker 1: 15:44

That's absolutely true.

Speaker 2: 15:46

Yeah. So some discernment is really important, like for you, what lights you up, what brings you the most joy.

Speaker 1: 15:54

Actually, I really love podcasting. I love talking about these spiritual conversations and hearing more delities. I actually just became a Reiki master, so I'm super excited.

Speaker 1: 16:05

I love that I love Reiki and that really lights me up, telling people how they can connect with spirit and their intuition and it doesn't matter whether you're a man or woman or whatever. We're all made up of the same sort of things and we call it come from the divine source creator. So we all have the ability to connect with that source, whatever people call that and source can be many things for many different people. So that's what really lights me up and I really think, teaching energy to people and especially children. I'm a mother, I have three children, and there are so many things that I have learned in the last four years that I wish I would have known when I was younger, and I know from everything that I've done that I just wasn't meant to know them and I'm meant to know now. But I feel it's better for people to learn how they perceive energy, what it feels like in their body, to trust their intuition. I think that's so important because growing up, you're taught like oh, you always want to give someone a chance, and that's not a bad thing. I always tell my kids if you have this feeling, even if the person appears to be very good or kind, if there is something in your body. There's something off here. You got to trust that and I don't want my kids to push that down and also protecting yourself, your energy, your boundaries Not everybody deserves to be your friend, that everybody deserves to be in your energy field. There are just having those boundaries in place and that it's OK to not maybe see eye to eye with someone, but then you're able to agree, to disagree, or you just learn who should be in your circle and who shouldn't, if somebody is trustworthy or not. I really am so passionate about teaching kids and parents and people about that and the various healing modalities that we all have at our disposal. There are so many. I just want to talk about all of them, because some speak to some people, or sometimes you use one for a while and then you switch to a different one, or you do combinations. I know you do a combination of healing with all the modalities and facilitate. That's what lights me up. I'm just super passionate about all those things and that's why I do my podcast.

Speaker 1: 18:10

I just love to talk about this and also I want people to feel better and, like you said, you can live a joyful life no matter what is going on in your life and I understand that there are sometimes some very difficult in traumatic situations that we will all experience, but we can still find the silver lining.

Speaker 1: 18:28

I have learned to sit back and say, ok, what is the lesson here, what am I supposed to be learning? Or even if I'm triggered by something, I have started to say to myself, ok, what is unhealed in me? And being triggered by this? What this person is saying or doing or so like, my approach is totally different. Now, four years ago, I would have been in that place, but now I am and I very much approach and evaluate things in a different way, and I just want people to know that they have that ability to, and they can connect to their spirit and tap into their intuition, and that will help them, I believe, live a life that is more in alignment and also you have a better flow, more joy, all those yeah.

Speaker 2: 19:11

I love that. Thank you for sharing and, to your point, you said a couple of things that are really important. I'd love to pull them out, which is your intuition came online. Even more when you begin to embrace what lit you up and that's one of the things that happens for us is we think where's my intuition? And then the minute we start to really embrace things, it just light us up, Whether or not they're related to intuition. Our intuition starts to come online and it's just such a beautiful alchemy that happens for us when we do embrace the things that make us really happy. I love that.

Speaker 1: 19:51

Yeah, and it's okay. In just having the courage to do, I think you have to get to a place where you just can't care about what anybody else thinks, because you are living your life for yourself and for no one else. So you shouldn't be worried about what anyone's going to think and I know I understand that's easier said than done in some cases, but you know what you just got to live for yourself and love and accept yourself for all the things, and I think that's something too. I like to talk about self love, because I feel like self love is not taught very well to anybody in the world, and I agree.

Speaker 2: 20:26

In fact, it's often portrayed as something selfish or arrogant.

Speaker 1: 20:31

Yes, yes, you're conceited, you're full of your and it's hold on a second. Here You're putting yourself first and making sure that you have what you need. That is not selfish. You cannot give from an empty cup.

Speaker 2: 20:42

That's where you burnout comes in and also you cannot love someone better than you love yourself. If you're holding back on yourself love, you're also holding back on the love that you can offer other people, because you can't give something you don't have. The more you love yourself, the more deeply you can love everyone in your life.

Speaker 1: 21:10

Yes, we all have things that we may not love about ourselves Right, I've been time to time. But we just are human. We're here, we're spiritual beings living this human experience for a reason and we just have to love and accept ourselves and give ourselves grace. We're not meant to be absolutely perfect when doing all the things. We're just okay. If you forget something, it's okay. I really do believe in most cases, a lot of people are really doing the best they can with what they have. Absolutely Nothing will shift if you don't meet it with love.

Speaker 2: 21:46

And what I mean by that is if there's some part of your beingness that you want to shift, if you meet it with contempt or hate or impatience, you're not going to change that. And the same thing if you were to be working with somebody else in your life, whether it's kids or a spouse or a coworker or a boss, if you meet them with contempt or hatred or frustration or impatience, they don't shift, they oftentimes get defensive. And the same is true for us. When we can meet our own arising, we can meet our own arising, our own arising with love and really embrace it and love it, all the parts and all. Then all of a sudden that we can unlock a healing that can happen and an acceptance and we can show up differently. And when you were talking about triggers, I have a mentor who says never waste a good trigger because I love that there's so much information there.

Speaker 2: 22:43

When you get triggered, what's it really about and what needs to be healed?

Speaker 1: 22:49

That was huge for me. A lot of times I would think to myself oh no, it's not me, it's not me. But then it is something unresolved in myself and you know what it's tough. But the mirror needs to be held up sometimes and it's okay. Let's figure out what it is that's really bothering me here. But what? Get it out on the table and let's release it. Let's work through it. Absolutely let's release this, forgive ourselves for being triggered and then move on. And then you just you're able to let it go and move on.

Speaker 2: 23:18

Yeah, Because everything's a hologram, right. So we're seeing back what we're projecting out. So if we are projecting out that we are loved and accepted and we love and accept, we see that. And if we are feeling, like this morning, for example, I was really aggravated by something and I was like this is weird. I'm not typically aggravated, what's this really about?

Speaker 2: 23:46

So I took some deep breaths, got into my body and I was like, okay, so I feel this aggravation under my collarbones. So I just put my hands on my collarbones and I kept breath going. I was like okay, so now it's shifting and it's under my ribs. So I put my hands under my ribs and I kept breathing and I felt the aggravation and I'm like what is this about? And all of a sudden, just the light bulb went up and it was like oh, I'm not aggravated at them, I'm aggravated because I haven't yet communicated my needs so many times. If we don't take a moment and just sit back and think, okay, what's really coming up, we'll blame the other person or the situation, and it might be something in us that we could shift Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 24:33

And it's like taking full accountability for your own well-being, yeah, and I think that's something that sometimes is hard for people to do, but I feel it is necessary. You have to get out of that victim's mindset and you need to be in a state of empowerment and yes, and radical responsibility for everything that's showing up.

Speaker 1: 24:53

Yes, I love this 100%. I was looking at another talking point you had sent to me and talking about the lie of the comfort zone, so let's dive into that, because I think there is so much juiciness there and I will include myself in this. Sometimes I get comfortable and don't want to push myself out of that comfort zone, but I have found that the most to grow is when you're uncomfortable. Because if you're not uncomfortable and I think this is true even if you think about it in like the form of exercise if your body's not going to change unless you get a little bit uncomfortable.

Speaker 2: 25:27

Yeah, yeah, all of that. And then also, if you think about it, the comfort zone is not that comfortable. If we say I'm not willing to leave my comfort zone, the first thing I hear when I hear someone say that is they're scared to change the status quo. But the comfort zone is not comfortable, it's familiar and there's a difference.

Speaker 1: 25:54

I love that. There is a huge difference.

Speaker 2: 25:58

Yeah, and if you think about, like, even right now, is there any way you could make yourself even more comfortable? Would it be shifting position and, listeners, you can do this too. Would it be to shift your weight in your chair? Or, if you're walking, could you tighten or loosen your shoe? What could make you even more comfortable? So many times we don't give ourselves permission to stop and do what would actually make us more comfortable, which then gives us courage and bandwidth and fuel to make the changes that we want to make.

Speaker 1: 26:36

And just because something's familiar, you could be miserable at familiar, right, absolutely, you know what the familiar is. Right, it's going to be X, y and Z. But you could be very miserable in that space which doesn't seem so comforting, right, it doesn't seem very comforting.

Speaker 2: 26:52

It's really making a choice to play small.

Speaker 2: 26:56

If we stay in the comfort zone, I believe that we each have our human being, the human that shows up our ego and our humaneness and all of our human emotions, and there's so much love for our humans.

Speaker 2: 27:08

And then we also have this inner being, our higher self. And when we can really bring our human being together with our inner being which happens over and over again all day, every day, because none of us can keep that alignment going all of the time but when we can really bring that human being and the inner being together, then we can expand and your human being will never be misled by your inner being. Your inner being is not going to have a choice, something on your heart, whether it's to move to a different place or to rent or buy a different house, or to have a different job or to go meet that guy. Your inner being is never going to mislead you. And when you have those repeating nudges oh I wonder what would happen if I wonder if I should go here it's probably your inner being saying, hey, it's time for you to leave that familiar zone because there's more for you.

Speaker 1: 28:08

I love that. Do you have any examples of working with somebody where you were able to show them how to get out of that comfort space?

Speaker 2: 28:19

Yeah, it depends on the person what the timeline looks like, and there's a wide variance. It could happen instantly, it could happen over months. It just depends on the person.

Speaker 2: 28:30

I worked with one client who was very frustrated with her job as an architect and she was working for an architecture firm in Boise, idaho, and she loved her colleagues, she loved her bosses and she just felt like this low-level irritation all the time and she wanted to do something different. But she kept holding herself back and she was feeling a sense of loyalty to the firm. She was feeling a sense of fear about doing something different. So what happened was it created a low-level static in her life where every day she'd feel just slightly irritated, that she was going to work and wanting something else, but not quite sure what else she should choose. I'll jump to the end of the story. The end of the story is she now owns a very successful architecture firm of her own, and it's so successful that she doesn't have a website or advertising. She works on word of mouth only and she's busy full-time, with a waiting list that goes out about six months and if she would have stayed in that architecture firm where she was, that wouldn't have happened.

Speaker 2: 29:45

She would have still felt like she was the only female in a male-dominated firm in a male-dominated field. And now she's representing women and being a leader in her field and she's working all over the Northwest. It's really exciting and beautiful to watch.

Speaker 1: 30:03

That's fantastic. It made me think of a saying where somebody says to their mentor what if I fall? And they say to them what if you fly? And that is just exactly what she did. As soon as she took that leap, she is flying. Wow yeah, that is just really a beautiful story.

Speaker 2: 30:22

It's cool and there can be a messy middle and just want to name that and sometimes it gets messy, but it was always fun. Even in her messy middle she was still having fun.

Speaker 1: 30:35

Yeah, and it's just figuring it out and getting to that next place. It's not always just cut and dry and I know it's not all sunshine and roses like you're saying. There's things that you have to put a growing pain, but isn't that true of anything that we do?

Speaker 2: 30:51

Oh, I think anything we're doing has a growth that happens, and I think that actually is where the sweetness lies. The sweetness lies in the journey and in all the things you learn, and the process, and oftentimes the journey itself, is where we experience the greatest impact and the greatest joy.

Speaker 1: 31:12

We can share that with others. And then others hear your journey, my journey, this female architect's journey, and lets them know that it's possible, that's it that changes possible. All they have to do is just hear that. I believe it's like a raise in vibration. It's a raise, and then that just switches something in their brain, in their mindset, absolutely, and they're more open to the possibility, which everything is about mindset. Right, how you approach something.

Speaker 2: 31:42

Yes, and if we only come from the mental field in our mind, we're missing out on two other really important fields.

Speaker 2: 31:51

We're missing out on our intuitive body and our emotional body. If we only come from the mental field, that's where we can get into the overthinking. If you're worried or ruminating or overthinking, you're not accessing the other two fields. You're stuck in your mind. So if you can come down into the body, the emotional body lives between your I would say, just below your belly button to right above your heart, and it's out about three feet. This is where your emotional body lies and then your intuitive body goes all the way from your feet, all the way around your whole body, covering your head like a giant arach field almost. So if we access the intuitive body and the emotional body and the mental body, then we can get into a place of knowingness where there's as much certainty as we'll ever have and there's a calmness, a stillness. If we notice that we're overthinking, it's a great invitation just to take a deep breath, maybe put a hand on your heart, maybe hand on your belly and just come into the body and slow it down.

Speaker 1: 33:04

When I was thinking being stuck in your head. I've heard the term analysis paralysis. Have you heard that before? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's where we get stuck sometimes if you're just in the mental part of your mind, but it's all tied together. There is a balance between your mental, your intuitive and your emotional. There's a balance there and keeping that in balance is so important and that's why I think doing breath work, energetic work Because it could even be simple. Things Doesn't have to be you're doing it for 45 minutes, or it could be five minutes, it could be four or two minutes.

Speaker 1: 33:38

Yeah, exactly, it could just be that thing. If you need to reset I've told my kids this if you are in a place at school, it is okay to say I need to go to the bathroom, I need to excuse myself and go take some deep breaths, go do what you need to do to reset and get yourself back under control. If something is upsetting you or you're feeling anxiety or whatever that is, it's okay to address that in that moment.

Speaker 2: 34:02

Absolutely. If we take it into nervous system and we talk about the science behind that, when we feel that anxiety, that upsetness, that overwhelm, our nervous system has decided that we're not safe in that moment. So we're in fight, flight, freeze or fawn, which means that the part of our brain that's working is that reptilian brain, the amygdala which is down the brain stem in the back of the head. When that part of the brain is fired up, we lose access to the rational part of our mind. That part of the brain is not where the energy is centered. The center is just in survival. So what also happens when we're in survival mode is we shut off the vagus nerve.

Speaker 2: 34:42

The vagus nerve is the largest, longest nerve in the body. It's not just one nerve, it's like a bunch of tree branches that go from the base of your skull clear down to your tailbone and it connects to a ton of different organs and all along your spine. When that vagus nerve gets turned off, we're not digesting as well. Our heart rate can get a little bit higher, our blood pressure can raise. If we can bring the vagus nerve back online, we not only have access to our thinking mind again, but we also bring on that vagus nerve online, which means our digestive enzymes improve our whole digestion improves, our heart rate normalizes and we can actually feel and think more clearly. Can I show you something really fun? You could even show this to your kids.

Speaker 1: 35:31

Yeah, I'd love to. Yeah, I was just going to ask you is this a vagus nerve exercise? I was going to ask you about that next.

Speaker 2: 35:37

Yeah, let's do it. So I taught for 26 years and I used this in the classroom before I was even a breathwork facilitator, just because I learned it in yoga for Ed, which was a professional development for teachers. And then I modified it a little bit when I became a breathwork facilitator to engage the breath, which makes it work even faster. So when we're talking about the vagus nerve, we want to bring that online, which means we need to come up into the upper parts of our brain and the upper parts of our brain. I'm not a neuroscientist or a neurosurgeon, so I'm just going to use really layman's terms. We know the right brain and the left brain exist at the top of our brain. When we can cross our right and left meridian meaning we cross the right and left parts of our body over each other we also are crossing the right and left meridian in the brain. If we can cross our hands, we're actually bringing the right and left brain together, which means we're taking energy from the back of the brain stem, putting it up in a thinking brain, and we want to stay there for a few moments so that we can actually normalize the vagus nerve.

Speaker 2: 36:49

So I'm going to show you something called heart hug, which is really fun to describe it for our listeners. So you're going to start with two thumbs up just up in front of you, just regular two thumbs up, and then you're going to turn them upside down, so now you have two thumbs down, the backs of your hands are facing each other and your palms are facing the wall. Then open the hands, so now the hands are flat against each other, not necessarily touching, although they could be. Then you're going to cross one over the other so that the palms are facing each other, and then you're going to hold the hands and then swing them down and up so that now they're twisted, they're crossed in front of my heart and I can just lay them right on my heart. This alone is really soothing for the nervous system. Like I could just see you take a breath, kelly. I could see you just I felt an immediate calming yes, the media.

Speaker 2: 37:45

Yeah, it's almost instant. The longer you stay here, the more you can really make sure that you are out of that fight, fight, freezer fawn out of the stress response back up into your thinking brain. And now, if we stay in this hand position and we activate the breath, it's just magic. So let's just do something really simple. Let's do a box breath, which a lot of people know. A lot of kids are going to know it because of their SEL curriculum in school social emotional learning.

Speaker 2: 38:15

So we'll just do a breath, four counts in. We'll hold the breath for four counts, we'll exhale for four counts and then we'll hold the exhale out for four counts. I'll count with you and guide it for three rounds and then I'll breathe with you for two rounds. I'm going to change my sound just a little bit so you can hear my breath, okay, so we'll inhale for four, three, two, one. Hold for four, three, two, one. Exhale four, three, two, one. Hold for four, three, two, one. Inhale four, three, two, one. Hold for four, three, two, one. Exhale four, three, two, one and hold for three, two, one.

Speaker 2: 39:05

Inhale four, three, two, one hold for four three two one exhale four three two one hold for four, three, two, two more on your own no-transcript powerful thing and it's not hard.

Speaker 1: 40:00

Anybody can do it. Yes, and you could do it, and just the twisting of the hands and doing the breath, and someone might not even necessarily know if somebody was self conscious about doing something. I think you could do that exercise at your desk or, of course, in a bathroom or whatever, wherever you needed, but you could do that and you wouldn't be drawing attention to yourself either, if that was a concern, exactly.

Speaker 2: 40:24

So I have something for educators that has a picture of this in a description and it's just a free guide and it's called Breathwork for Educators and that you can just get into my website. It's brandonwinkelcom forward slash educators and you can download a free breathwork guide to use specifically with kids in classrooms and if you have children of your own, you could also download it and get that for your kids and then, if you want to try breathwork to really impact your own intuition, this is for adults, but I have a four part video series and PDF guide that is free, instant access and you can get that by going to brandonwinkelcom forward slash breathe.

Speaker 1: 41:05

Oh my God, I love that. Oh Brenda, that was really powerful.

Speaker 1: 41:09

I just love everything about what you do and what you bring to this world and it's amazing how you went through this transformation and you're sharing everything and you're helping people and it's just an amazing thing. And then you feel good. Right, you feel good, other people good, and it's like this again I've talked about like a ripple effect, but it does. That is how things begin to change. It's just hearing or doing an exercise, learning a little thing, and I always say there are no accidents. If somebody found your podcast, they were meant to, because it's what they needed. I find that spirit leads me to podcasts to people, because it's people I need to interact with. It's people or it's messages I need to hear without fail. It's always when I'm listening to things. I definitely needed to hear that today.

Speaker 1: 41:59

I definitely need to talk to you today. I really believe in that is true for every single individual, listening to this or not listening to this. We are being given signs and led all the time, and it's just are you paying attention? I believe that, too, 100%. Are you watching the signs? Because they're there?

Speaker 2: 42:17

Yes, when you get those little impulse to look for a new podcast today, or you get ready to read a book and one falls off the shelf yes, that happens a lot. Or I'll get ready to queue up something on YouTube and then oftentimes, for me it's an Abraham Hicks video, and whatever is in that Abraham Hicks video for the day is exactly what I needed to hear. That's your higher self.

Speaker 1: 42:41

Yeah, exactly yes. That's how that works. I just love that you have something on here on a yes filled leader leading from yes. Let's talk about that, Because I think leadership is important and that's another reason I like to do this podcast is I feel like as adults, it's hard to be in the human space and I feel like our children will be better if we're able to write ourselves, get ourselves to a good place. Then we're going to be a better role model for our children, but we'll also be able to teach them the tools that we've learned so that they can approach the world in a better way, with more ease and joy and glow, and 100%.

Speaker 2: 43:18

When I think of leader, I'm thinking of self leaders, people who lead themselves. I'm thinking of leaders of homes, leaders of organizations, leaders of schools, leaders of communities, leaders of clubs, leaders of families. So a leader is someone who steps into leadership. That's it, and so we're all leaders. And so when we think about the yes filled leader, this is somebody who is empowering other people. Leaders lead by showing example, by clearly communicating and then by giving people time and space to respond to the request in their own way. Bosses and managers are micromanaging and they're telling people how to do things, and there's a place for both of them. I'm not trying to make one better than the other. They're just very different. But when we're talking about leadership, the more that we can allow the people in our worlds to dive into their own creative resources, then we can begin to create expansive organizations, expansive initiatives and really create change. Because if a leader is trying to manage things and do it only their way, they're really pushing down the people around them in a way that makes it so that they might not share their ideas. And so when we're talking about the yes filled leader, it starts with self leadership. How are you leading yourself? Are you taking time to rest and recharge? Are you taking care of your body? Are you taking care of your emotional needs? Are you showing up for yourself? Are you allowing yourself to feel your feelings? Because when you, as a leader, do that, you also set the stage for everyone in your world to do the same and you model it by example. And if, as a leader, you're not taking care of yourself in any capacity, you're also setting that to be the standard. So when we think about leadership, oftentimes we think about oh, I have to have this deliverable, I have to have this measurable goal, and we think about the stress that a leader is under, and a lot of times that's what comes to people's minds. And yes, there are deliverables and measurable goals that leaders need to make sure are coming out.

Speaker 2: 45:50

If the leader starts with self and really takes radical responsibility there's that word again radical responsibility for how they're showing up in the world, everyone that they're leading will show up differently because of the way they're showing up. So the way you create organizational change is by changing the way you show up as a leader self leadership, first self to self and then self to other, and when you, as a leader, are taking really good care of your emotional, physical, spiritual, psychological needs. You show up in a different way. You're more grounded into your own central channel, meaning that you can now come from a place of I feel me and I feel you, but we're not merged, so that the emotionality that you might experience doesn't feel like it's compressing your system. You're aware of it. You can be aware that the person you're leading or the group that you're leading isn't doing what you want, but you're not getting bogged down with it. You can recognize where you begin and where your team or, whatever the case might be family, yeah, absolutely Voluntary organizations feeling where they are.

Speaker 2: 47:05

Then, once you have that little bit of discernment between here's me, self to self, and self to other here's you, then I can be aware of the information that's coming to me through what I call the field. Those are those little drop-ins that you get where you think. Oh, I think that this person might need me to reach out to them. They might just need a little bit of encouragement and to know that I notice that they didn't show up to the meeting today. Or I need to reach out to them and ask how can I support them? If we can show up as leaders, totally grounded in ourselves, everyone that we lead will show up that way too. Eventually it's like a domino effect.

Speaker 1: 47:50

I would ever agree. I love that, oh my gosh. And I love that being able to say no, because I think that is so important being able to say no. I think that's recovering people pleasers right. Learning to say no is hard, but no is a full sentence and it's okay to say no. It's totally okay because you need to honor yourself and are you really honoring the other person if you're just doing it out of obligation or you feel you need to?

Speaker 2: 48:17

No, you're not. You're totally not. I think the biggest learning I personally have and that I love to share with people is that when you say no, say it with a smile and end it at the no, that's not going to work for me, but thank you. And when we start to give explanations and reasons and justify our no, the person we're talking to they will have a natural response of trying to overcome our objection.

Speaker 1: 48:52

Sure.

Speaker 2: 48:53

If we can stop explaining and just say it's a no. For me it's received totally differently. Now, if you're in an intimate partnership or with your best friend or your sister, then maybe there's more discussion because of the richness of the relationship and that is important to distinguish. Just saying somebody's asking you to do volunteer work for your kid's school and it just does not fit into your schedule, just a joyful no, I can't do that this time. Thanks for asking. It is a great way to say no.

Speaker 1: 49:26

Absolutely, Brenda. It has been such an amazing conversation connecting with you, talking about all these amazing things you do. How can people get in touch with you if they want to work with you?

Speaker 2: 49:38

My website is brendawinkelcom and Winkle is W-I-N-K-L-E and that's really the hub of everything. That's got my links to social and it's got whatever masterclass I'm running for the month. I run a free masterclass every month. It's got the link for that. And then I'm on Instagram at Brenda Winkle. I'm active on Facebook a little bit and less so on LinkedIn, but Instagram is where I really enjoy playing around.

Speaker 1: 50:04

I will put all of Brenda's stuff in the links and for your podcasts, everything will be in the notes. What would you like to close this conversation with today, for all the listeners?

Speaker 2: 50:15

I would love to just invite people to think about one thing they could do today that has a low barrier of entry and a high payout of joy. What's one thing you could do today that would bring you a lot of joy? Something simple, something really accessible, something easy. Is it playing with your kids? Is it playing with the fur baby? Is it blowing bubbles outside? Is it sidewalk chalk? Is it dancing to a song? Is it going to buy flowers? Is it making dinner and like actually having time to sit down at the table? Whatever that joy point for you would be, I would invite people to do that.

Speaker 1: 50:57

Oh that's beautiful Brenda, thank you so much for your time. I just want to say that I honor the light that you are and all that you do in this world.

Speaker 2: 51:05

Kelly, thank you so much for having me. It's been just pure joy. Thank you for all you're doing.

Speaker 1: 51:10

Oh, be cute.

Speaker 3: 51:15

Hey, it's Jen Mitchell, host of the Soul Traveler podcast and your partner in leveling up your life through quantum hypnosis. I'm sure that you've heard before that all answers lie within, right? Well, it's true. Do you ever wonder how some people are so wildly successful and seem to achieve all of their life goals? It's because they've figured out life's secret the power of the subconscious mind. Highly successful CEOs and entrepreneurs have used hypnosis to make their dreams a reality, and it's no longer a secret. Now you can transform your life with the power of the subconscious by using these same techniques with quantum hypnosis. Let's level up your life. Let me online at thesolexperiencescom and click on subconscious coaching.

Speaker 1: 52:17

Hello, beautiful soul. Thank you again for listening. I'd like to ask you to please rate, review and follow the show. It really helps to have it become more visible and the beautiful messages be spread to more people. I also wanted to mention that I am now offering Reiki distance sessions. The link will be in the podcast notes. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions about that. Also, I wanted to put out there. If there is something that you have to share or you have to be a guest on the show, please reach out to me and we'll see if it's a good fit. Thank you again for being here and sending love like joy and peace and magic your way.