Just Breathe. Using Your Breath to Find Your Calm in Perimenopause with Jennifer Mansell

Ever felt overwhelmed with worry, stress, or anxiety? A sense of calm could be just a breath away.

Join us as we explore the power of breath with Jenn Mansell, a breathwork practitioner who transformed her life through conscious breathing. Jenn shares how to harness your breath to calm your mind, reduce anxiety, improve sleep, and even boost your energy. It’s a natural and free tool that every woman in perimenopause should have in their toolkit.

Jenn even guided us through a guided breathwork exercise. It’s amazing how zen you will feel afterward. Tune in and transform your life one breath at a time.

ACCESS to 20 Minute Guided Breath Work Recording

Connect with Jennifer:
Website
Instagram
Facebook
LinkedIn

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How most people aren’t aware of their breath and how this impacts our bodies.
• The body’s stress responses and how they alter our breathing.
• Different types of breathwork techniques and their benefits.
• The science behind breathwork and its impact on cortisol and the nervous system.
• Techniques for using breathwork to regulate your nervous system and manage anxiety and stress.

Thank you so much for listening to the show. Here is how you can connect with us at This Is Perimenopause.

Sign Up for our Newsletter
Instagram
Facebook
TikTok

Want more resources? We've got a ton! Visit our website

Transcript

Jennifer: 0:00

I like to think of breathwork as an active form of meditating. So if the goal in some way of meditating is to come into the present moment, the breath is a great gateway for that. So I often think of breathwork as like a doer's meditation. It gives you something to do or to focus on while you're meditating so that you don't have to just sit there and like find nothingness.

Mikelle: 0:26

Welcome to. This is Perimenopause, the podcast where we delve into the transformative journey of perimenopause and beyond. I'm one of your hosts, Michele.

Michelle: 0:34

And I'm your other host, Michelle, and we know firsthand how confusing, overwhelming and downright lonely this phase of life can be.

Mikelle: 0:42

Join us as we share real life stories and expert advice to help you navigate this journey and advocate for your best health.

Michelle: 0:49

We used to think menopause signaled an end, but really it's just the beginning. I don't even have the words to describe how excited I am about today's conversation. We're talking with my breath coach, jen Mansell. Jen is a certified breathwork practitioner, which means she helps people heal by lovingly guiding them out of their heads and into their bodies using the power of their breath. Today, we're exploring the science behind breathwork and how our breath can help to reduce stress, anxiety, soothe our nervous system, improve our sleep or even boost our energy. As a special bonus, jen takes us through a two-minute breath exercise that's guaranteed to soothe even the most savage beast.

Michelle: 1:32

Now I'm recording this introduction after our conversation, and so I want to say how fascinated I was to see how our energy changes from the beginning of the conversation to the end, and I'm so curious to find out if your energy changes too. Drop us a note and let us know. Hello, jen, I'm so excited to have you here today and to introduce you to Mikkel and Amy and all of our listeners, because you have changed my world in so many magical ways, and I'm feeling really high strung right now, but I am sure by the end of the podcast I'll be nice and zen again. But welcome to the podcast, jen. So happy to have you here.

Jennifer: 2:11

Thank you for welcoming me.

Michelle: 2:14

Jen, you've got such an incredible story about how you found breathwork and I would love if you could share that with our listeners, please. Yeah, of course.

Jennifer: 2:25

You know, I think breathwork found me. I would. I would say that's how it happened. I was talking to someone this week about that that. You know, sometimes in life we're looking, looking, looking for what is our thing and sometimes it finds us.

Jennifer: 2:42

And I struggled with, uh, chronic health problems since I was a baby. I had a vaccine injury and all kinds of things happen when I was very young and spent most of my life feeling very unwell, like an outsider. I didn't fit in. I had all these rules and restrictions on my life. I was really like a sick kid and identified with that and I somehow balanced that with, like, this bright, shiny spirit that just wanted to play and create.

Jennifer: 3:23

Um, when I was 16, I I was really frustrated. I'd been in and out of the hospital and I said to my mom I have to get out of this and if you're not going to help me and the doctors aren't going to help me, I'm going to figure out my own way. My mom's like, okay, okay, like whatever you think you know. And I found a newspaper clipping and it said the natural doctor. And I went to see this man who was like a, he was all kinds of things, but he was an amazing healer in a forest cabin and that sort of started my journey of healing and finding my health and my vitality again.

Jennifer: 4:08

And that was the beginning of it when I was 16. And it just went on and on and on and I was running a startup in 2017 and my health crashed again pretty bad, and during that time, I was doing some work with different coaches and things and found breathwork. And breathwork found me and I experienced it a few times and then, months and months later, I was at a dead end of my life and I was sitting in meditation and I heard this voice and it said you need a tool and your tool is breathwork. Go, wow, and I was like okay, so I followed it. And here we are six, seven years later and this practice has changed my life significantly. I'm happy to say I'm in the best health of my life and don't consider myself sick anymore and healed, and I didn't think that could ever happen, and now I support other people to use this tool and this practice to also walk the same path.

Michelle: 5:15

It's an amazing story, thank you. Can we start by talking about breath, because we all breathe and it seems pretty easy, and yet most of us are doing it wrong, or I think we're doing it wrong anyway. So can you please describe how most people breathe and what this does to our bodies?

Jennifer: 5:34

Yeah, of course I don't know if I would say that we're doing it wrong, but most of us are breathing unconsciously. You know, our bodies just breathe on their own. That's part of the magnificence of this brilliant body vessel that we have. But something really powerful changes in people's lives when they start bringing consciousness and awareness to their breath. Because most of us, when we breathe unconsciously, we're just kind of like we're not breathing very deeply, we're breathing shallow, we're probably creating more stress with our breath and when we welcome in more conscious awareness to how we're breathing, we can change how we're breathing and essentially retrain our respiratory system to breathe in a way that can help us regulate our nervous system and feel change our state essentially. So if we want to feel more calm or we want to feel more energized, the breath is a powerful tool for that.

Jennifer: 6:42

So most of us are breathing quite shallow and we're breathing short, shallow breaths that don't really use the capacity of our lungs and we learn from a very young age to manage our emotional states with our breath. So when I work with people and we take big, full breaths, you would be blown away at the things that come up for people. They start to realize they've been holding so much tension and so much built up emotion and stress, because we're usually just keeping our breath really tight and really held and so in a way, it's a way of avoiding feeling. If we don't breathe that deeply, we don't really have to feel that deeply, and so for most of our unconscious minds, that's very. That's a great thing. For those of us that want to feel more like ourselves and feel like our human bodies are thriving, we have to learn to breathe in a deeper, fuller way.

Michelle: 7:48

I love that.

Jennifer: 7:50

I can say one more thing on that too is that there's a lot of talk these days about breathing through our nose versus breathing through our mouth and there's an amazing book by James Nestor on this topic and most of us are breathing quite habitually through our mouths and more ideally, we would be breathing more through our noses. Why is that? It's kind of the passageway that the body prefers. There's lots of conversations about how we've evolved anatomically and that the nose is specifically for breathing and the mouth is supposed to be for eating. And when we breathe through our nose it's more stimulating to our vagus nerve and we tend to be more in a parasympathetic nervous system state, so a state of resting and digesting, when we're breathing through our nose, because we just can't breathe very fast. So try going for a run and breathing through your nose and you'll figure out that it's very difficult to activate your nervous system in that way. So more ideally we would especially when we're sleeping we would be breathing through our nose, as it's just better for our bodies overall.

Mikelle: 9:07

I have a question to follow up on. You said that when we're not breathing deeply, we're not able to feel deeply. Is that why we have a tendency to hold our breath when we're stressed?

Jennifer: 9:22

Yeah, so when we're stressed we often have more sensation in our bodies and our brain is more oriented towards usually towards action.

Jennifer: 9:36

We either go into flight, fight or freeze response when we're in stress, usually depending on the level of stress and how our body has learned to adapt.

Jennifer: 9:51

And so when we go into one of those states, usually our breath is oriented in a certain way. So if we go into a freeze state, our breath is very shallow and not moving. If we go into a flee state or a fight state, our breath might be more charged and more full, but in either case we're not really breathing like full, deep, diaphragmatic breaths. And so, yes, our brain wants us to go into some kind of action to get out of the stress state and out of the overwhelming sensation of stress in our body, and so to orient ourselves towards like slowing down and feeling what's here is not what the mind wants to do, unless we bring a higher conscious awareness to it and say wait, I'm noticing stress in the body, I want to fight, flee or freeze, but I'm going to stay here with my breath and teach my body and teach my mind that we don't need to be in this state right now. We can be in a different state. Does that make sense?

Mikelle: 11:01

It does. So it makes so much sense because, obviously, way back when, when you needed to have a stress response because of a saber tooth, tag or whatever it is, that was the source of your stress, you certainly don't want to take a moment and figure out okay, should I be reacting this way or should I not? You need the immediacy of that reaction, but we're so stressed out on a chronic way that, yeah, now it would be really important to stop and say, okay, wait, why am I feeling this way? And yeah, how can you do that without your breath?

Jennifer: 11:49

that without your breath? Yeah, exactly, exactly, and often, when we're not breathing deeply, we are often more stuck in our minds.

Mikelle: 11:54

I'm so stuck in my mind, jen, help me.

Jennifer: 12:00

When I watch my clients doing breath work, the second they leave their breath and their body I'm like where'd you go? They're like oh, I'm back in my head. I'm thinking about later, I'm thinking about tomorrow. Come back to your breath, come back to your body. Let's retrain you.

Michelle: 12:20

Well, and even when I started the first session we had, it was in a group class and after, at the end, I'm like so was I doing that right? Like I don't know, like I got nothing out of the first set, like I really tried, but really I was still in my head the whole time going I don't know, am I breathing right? Did I do that deep enough? Am I getting this right? It's really hard to get out of your brain and into your body, out of your head and into your body. I still struggle with that regularly.

Jennifer: 12:47

Yeah, it takes practice. It's like building a muscle, building a new pathway.

Mikelle: 12:52

So maybe you can tell us a little bit about how we build that new muscle and what breathwork looks like or what some of the techniques are that you use.

Jennifer: 13:01

Yeah, of the techniques are that you use. Yeah, so breathwork really means conscious breathing, like breathing in specific ways to elicit a specific state, change or shift in the body. So I like to think of breathwork as an active form of meditating. So if the goal in some way of meditating is to come into the present moment, the breath is a great gateway for that. So I often think of breathwork as like a doer's meditation. It gives you something to do or to focus on while you're meditating so that you just you don't have to just sit there and like find nothingness. So breathwork really, there's kind of a couple different pathways of this work. All of it is focused around bringing consciousness to your breath. There's sort of like a therapeutic path of breathing and a functional path of breathing.

Jennifer: 14:02

So there's lots of different specific breathing techniques that we can use to manage our nervous system, and I think people often think about managing your nervous system as trying to find peace and calm, but they don't realize that we can also use these of practices to build energy or to shift out of a more numb or depressive state can be used in that way too.

Jennifer: 14:31

So we can either up-regulate or down-regulate the nervous system using the breath, and so functional breathing techniques are things like 4-7-8 breathing, box breathing, coherence breathing. There are these different techniques that we can use throughout our days and lives for usually shorter chunks of time to give ourselves a physiological state change. Therapeutic breathing tends to be where you use a specific breathing technique for a longer period of time, usually 45 minutes to an hour, and you're just breathing continuously, and oftentimes this can bring up like deep subconscious material Because, like I said, if we manage all of our emotions and our stress by holding tension in the body and holding our breath in shallow breath, when we breathe in a deep, full way, oftentimes we can really get into some deep things that we have repressed in one way or another. So those are sort of the two different paths of breath work, and certainly there's lots of different ways that you can use the breath, whether it's like a daily practice, or if you're doing therapeutic breathing, I would say that's more like a weekly practice or a monthly practice.

Mikelle: 15:53

So fascinating. Could we maybe dig into the science a little bit?

Jennifer: 15:56

Yeah, absolutely so. Like I was saying, the breath can be used to down-regulate the nervous system or to up-regulate the nervous system or really to find like a middle ground. So most of our nervous systems throughout the day, you know, we wake up, our nervous system rises, our cortisol rises, we have energy, we're like on the go, we're making moves, and then at some point during the morning we kind of come down again and then middle of the day we go up, then we come down again around 3pm and then we come up right before dinner and then we come down again. So essentially, our nervous system is flowing like a wave. It's not a flat line, it's in motion, it's moving with us.

Jennifer: 16:42

If someone was wanting to upregulate their breathing, they would breathe more through their mouth and they would take more vigorous breaths. What this does is this essentially activates the nervous system. It tells the body wake up, tells the mind wake up. We're on the move, even though we don't have to be on the move. So I find that this is really helpful for people to do if they have a crash in the move, even though we don't have to be on the move. So I find that this is really helpful for people to do if they have a crash in the afternoon or for a lot of people who are going through, maybe, struggles with cortisol levels. If you wake up in the morning and you just you can't get off the runway, so to speak. I really find that breathing in this way in the morning time can really help to shift you into a more awakened state of awareness. I like to breathe sort of like I'm sipping through a straw, so I would go and do multiple rounds of breath like that and, like I said, what that's going to do is it's going to temporarily increase your adrenaline. It will activate your nervous system and essentially prepare your body for movement and for activity. The flip of that is when we breathe through our nose, like I said earlier, really stimulating your vagus nerve along with your parasympathetic nervous system. So when we breathe through our nose we release nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is a beautiful anti-inflammatory compound in our body that is very supportive in all forms of healing and longevity. So breathing long and slow breaths through the nose really helps the body shift into more of a parasympathetic state.

Jennifer: 18:38

Oftentimes we get stuck in one state or the other and people don't realize that we're doing this wave all day long. But a lot of times we get stuck. We get stuck on a high, or some people get stuck in the low. You know they just can't get motivated, they can't get moving and the body really needs transition time between states and needs oftentimes a stimulus and something that can encourage it to shift states. So all of this is happening beneath the surface of our biology, but we can impact it quite easily and the breath is like the number one way, the simplest way. Any moment, anywhere, anytime. You can be in your car, on the subway and if you either slow your breath down and breathe gently, long, deep breaths through your nose, or you breathe more actively and vigorously, you can shift your nervous system state in a matter of five minutes.

Michelle: 19:45

Jen, what is the humming or buzzing? I know that that sometimes works in tandem with breath work. How does that help? What does that do?

Jennifer: 19:55

Yeah, they would call that vagal toning. What does that do? Yeah, they would call that vagal toning. Okay, so when we make a humming sound, especially if you are doing an exhale, either an audible sigh or a humming both vibrate in your neck and your vagus nerve runs through your neck so it can be stimulating to that and your vagus nerve is essentially the conductor of your whole nervous system. So when we stimulate that, we sort of say like hey, see how our levels are, see where we're at, and the body can then make adjustments as needed.

Jennifer: 20:34

So, yeah, a simple practice might be just sitting for five minutes and each exhale, either doing a sigh like a or simply doing a humming, and quite quickly you'll notice that your whole system just starts to really, really, really settle. And so one part of that is the breath and then the other part of it is the vibration from the sound. That can be really effective. Short story when I did one of my breathwork trainings, they taught us about sighing and I got really into it and I was at my parents' house we have an open concept house and I'm sighing all the time and I overhear my dad say to my mom is something wrong with Jen? She's doing a lot of sighing, is she okay? She was so funny because I was just getting into a relaxed state and he thought there was something wrong with me.

Michelle: 21:43

Well, jen, when I first heard you on a podcast that's how I first discovered you and you said something about sighing. So I would walk around the neighborhood during COVID and I'm doing my like rocks breathing, and on the exhale I'd be like, oh, when I started working with you, I was like, oh no, it's just a ha Like, it doesn't have to be so aggressive and guttural, and I thought my neighbors must have thought I was crazy and I am crazy. But yeah, thank you for helping me to find a more Zen way of doing the sigh.

Jennifer: 22:16

You know, maybe you probably had a lot to release at that time. I'm happy that you honored it and let it be expressed. That's good, yeah, well thank you.

Michelle: 22:24

Yeah, no, I wonder if maybe at this point, because so many women, our listeners, are going through that anxiety and that stress and that depression, is this a good spot to maybe do a quick little exercise.

Jennifer: 22:38

Yeah, of course, oftentimes anxiety and depression are nervous system states that we get stuck in. So oftentimes, if we get stuck in a more parasympathetic state, we would call that kind of a freeze response, which sometimes can show up as depression, aka my energy is depressed or suppressed and I can't access my energy flow. So for those people who are kind of in that state, it's really really helpful to do more activating breath and movement practices to get your energy moving. So usually something happens in our life. We have a big change, whether that's internally, physiologically, hormonally, or externally, and our system doesn't know how to adapt. So we get stuck in this state and so doing a vigorous breath practice, along with movement I would say like shaking, is a great thing. Just to stand up and to do a and shake your body, anything that's going to get your energy into motion will be powerful.

Jennifer: 23:55

For someone who is, you know, feeling kind of stuck in a state of depression and, once again, for folks who are feeling like they're stuck there, these are really good things to do as a daily practice or multiple times a day. You want to tell your body it's safe for us to change states. It's safe for us to change states. So same goes for anxiety. Often anxiety is like we're stuck in a sympathetic state, can't get out body, doesn't know how to downregulate, we're kind of just buzzing and vibrating there often. And for those folks I would say that a more down-regulating practice can be helpful. So whether that's like I said doing, I love 4-7-8 breathing, which is breathing in through your nose for a count of four, holding for a count of seven and breathing out through your mouth with pierced lips, very long and slow, for a count of eight, that can be extremely powerful and helpful to help you shift out of that state of constant buzzing and anxiety.

Jennifer: 25:11

And one thing I would add here those are practices to do on your own, but the human body is so cool, we actually are constantly mirroring and matching each other. So kind of like you said, Michelle, when I came on here this morning you said I feel like my nervous system is unwinding. I'm becoming more Zen already, winding, I'm becoming more Zen already. And so what can actually be very helpful if you're stuck in a nervous system state is to co-regulate with someone else. So if you have even a dog or an animal or another human that is able to access a regulated state or an upregulated state, depending on the medicine you need. If you're stuck in a depressive state, find somebody who's got energy and go be with them and be in their energy and let that move your nervous system into motion, because we're always syncing up.

Michelle: 26:18

Oh, interesting.

Jennifer: 26:21

When we come together, there's like a nervous system standoff that happens. It's like whose nervous system is going to win? Am I going to meet you in your dysregulated place or are we going to go to a regulated place? And so a lot of times what happens? We get together with friends and people and they're in a dysregulated state and they're all over, yeah, and then our nervous system gets pulled on into that with them. But we have a choice. If you can, if you're conscious and aware of your own state of being, and you choose to stay in the regulated state and you stay there, the people around you will match you eventually. So all my clients come in and they're like and then five minutes in they go I'm here now. I'm like okay, good, let's talk.

Mikelle: 27:23

I have to share. When you were with Jim, when you were doing the humming, I felt that in my in my chest, in my anxiety spot, and I I've not done breath work in. If there's a skeptic among us, I'd probably be more of the skeptic and I felt that. So, for anybody listening, wow, give this a shot because, yeah, even if Mikkel is feeling this, there's something to it.

Michelle: 27:51

There's something to it.

Jennifer: 27:53

Yeah, and it's this gift that we have that we can give to each other. I think a lot of us are like stuck in these chronic states and we don't tell the people around us that we feel anxious, we don't tell the people around us that we're struggling with depression. But you know what, if we saw it as like I'm in a state and I want to shift states, but my body can't and I need support, and there's such simple ways you can sit back to back with someone and both hum and you'll sync right up. Your nervous systems will sync up with each other. You'll feel just like you felt when I was humming. So it's wonderful and it can be really, really supportive of each other. Give that gift and you can also do it on your own.

Michelle: 28:42

I like that too. I wish I wish I'd known you when my son was younger, because to sit back to back when he would now he won't, he would never do that with me. So he like taped us together. But when he was little, he definitely, and he does, you know he's got some anxiety. He definitely and he does, you know, he's got some anxiety. Most teenagers do. I think that something like that would be would have been great for me to have trained him on or taught him earlier so that we could maybe continue. But maybe I can get him to even just hum on his own. We'll see, yeah, but even they say singing is is good as well for stimulating the parasympathetic nerve, right.

Jennifer: 29:20

Absolutely yeah. Just get him singing some sweet rock songs.

Michelle: 29:27

Oh yeah.

Mikelle: 29:29

So, Jen, we've talked about, obviously, the benefits in terms of relieving stress. What are some of the other benefits that people get from breath work, particularly if there's a consistent practice over the long term?

Jennifer: 29:44

Yeah, I mean, I think for me the greatest gift of having a breath practice is presence. When you connect with your breath as a gateway to presence, mm-hmm, and to me that is the greatest gift, because that is the cure for all of the ailments is just to be able to be right here in whatever's happening. So definitely presence. I know for me that when I really built a relationship with my breath, I started to realize that I was tired all the time before and I think so much of it was just I wasn't breathing well, I wasn't breathing well, I wasn't managing energy well. We are energetic beings and most of us it's like having a car and knowing nothing about the car. We're energetic beings and we know nothing about how that works.

Mikelle: 31:01

So true.

Jennifer: 31:03

And the reality is that we can shift and change and use our breath in any moment to kind of like dial things up or dial things down throughout the day, and when we do that, our energy levels are much more easily sustained because we train our body. Eventually, our body just does it on its own. If I need more energy now, my body will just start breathing in the way that I've trained it to breathe. If I'm feeling overwhelmed, my body will now just breathe in the way that I've trained it to breathe, which is really really, really cool. And I think if we can do that, why wouldn't we spend some time doing that, so that we have this built-in mechanism that is working for us and supporting our bodies to move in the direction of health and well-being instead of the direction of dis-ease and repression?

Michelle: 31:59

And so how much time do people need to dedicate? Like is this something I need to breathe for? An hour every morning, 10 times a day, like, what does it take to see some of these benefits?

Jennifer: 32:09

Sure, yeah, I would say that the payoff is immediate. So that's a great reason to do this practice and you can kind of get hooked on it because you're like, wow, I feel different. I would say, to see the benefits in a sustainable way, it's best to do a daily practice and that will really help you to build a relationship with your breath which then you can carry with you out into the world wherever you go. I would say sort of a five to 10 minute morning practice is most ideal because before our mind hijacks our day, it's really great to get centered into our body and the present.

Jennifer: 32:54

I have tons of these things on Insight Timer. If anybody wants to go on that app and find me, you'll find a bunch of recordings of these things. I have some on my website. But just doing a simple practice every day is a really great way to build a relationship to your breath. And then longer breathing sessions can really deepen the work. As you know, Michelle, you've done a lot of them over the years. But certainly doing the deeper dives, the therapeutic breathing that's 45 minutes to an hour once a month at least, is a really, really great way to come to understand the power that your breath has.

Michelle: 33:39

I don't. I don't know how to articulate this, but things became so much more clear that I had done years and years of therapy and I never figured out. So I don't know what it was. It was, there's just something magical. Um, there was just something very magical to it.

Jennifer: 33:54

Yeah, we, we know that when you breathe in this way and it's been studied since the seventies when you breathe in, you breathe in this way, and it's been studied since the 70s there's room in our minds to have more spontaneous thought. So things in that space where there's room for the spontaneous thought, oftentimes our subconscious material comes up, but we can kind of think about it in a different way or more creatively or make a new neural pathway around it. So oftentimes people come out of longer breathwork sessions and they say like wow, I had such deep insight. Or I realized I'm still grieving my mother, but I didn't know that I was. And I think it's really special because we're so used to going around the world and everyone tells us how to feel and how to think and what is real for us. But how many things bring us so deep into connection with ourselves that our truth emerges, that our own original thought can come through, and I think that that's a really powerful gift to have access to.

Michelle: 35:19

I agree, I think the most powerful moment for me was in one session. At the end I was like I'm enough, like, and I, you know, I've gone through life always feeling not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not enough, and I was like, no, like, everything I have is already here, like I've it's. It was I don't know it's. I've got chills, I've got tears. It was. It was really powerful. So, yeah, thank you Jen.

Jennifer: 35:44

Yeah, you're so welcome.

Mikelle: 35:48

That's a that's a very powerful endorsement, um, and I haven't done this work and I suspect a lot of our listeners haven't. I haven't done this work and I suspect a lot of our listeners haven't. Maybe you could take us through an exercise, jen, and introduce those of us who aren't familiar with this process how it can work.

Jennifer: 36:08

Sure, yeah, of course, let's do a little bit of coherence breathing. So, coherence breathing is a balanced breath, so the inhale is balanced with the exhale, which means that it's not really stimulating our nervous system too much or down-regulating. We're kind of just like creating more of a balanced state of being. And so what we'll do is we're going to breathe in through the nose and out through the nose for a count of six. So we'll breathe in for six and out for six, and we'll do, we'll do 10 breaths and simply just being here and noticing the breath going in, noticing the breath going out, and we'll check in after and see what everyone's noticing in their body, see if you can notice a change in state from where we started, and even just 10 simple breaths. So all you have to do is I like to imagine that the breath is moving into my body and I sort of imagine that my center is expanding outward so that we don't have to force the breath into our body, but that we're taking a nice full breath and it will be slow anyway, so you'll have time to kind of feel into where the breath wants to be in your body. Okay, so just I'm going to close my eyes and just take a minute to let my body settle here, okay, and just see if you can bring your awareness to how your breath is already. We don't have to have judgment. We can just become aware of our current state of breathing and then we'll just take an easy breath in and an easy breath out. And then we'll just take an easy breath in and an easy breath out, and we're going to begin by breathing in through the nose. So we'll breathe in for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and out through the nose 6, 5, four, three, two, one.

Jennifer: 38:57

Breathing in through the nose and out through the nose, breathing in one, two, three, four, five, six and out six, five, four, three, two, one. Breathing in, breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, expanding your lungs, breathing out with ease. Breathing in one, two, three, four, five, six, one. Breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out. Final two breaths here breathing in one, two, three, four, five, six and out six, five, four, three, two, one. Last breath in, last breath out, and then just let your breath return to normal and just see what you notice here, see what you notice in your body, what sensations are present. I notice like a dropping in my belly, like a heaviness and sort of like a soothing warmth over my shoulders, and then we'll slowly come back and I would love to hear what you noticed, I think for me very dramatic recognition of my body.

Mikelle: 41:49

So I noticed my posture, my head was kind of hurting, like things that I would have gone through my day and not paid any attention to and not paid any attention to. And it was the first count of six. It was hard for me to get to six and then it became not hard, which I think speaks to how I was breathing and how this might be a more beneficial way to do it. And then at the end, almost like a pulse feeling in my legs and arms and throughout, and not in a bad way in almost an awareness of hey, I'm here.

Jennifer: 42:32

Yeah, wonderful, thank you.

Michelle: 42:35

I think for me, similar to what Mikkel said, I could feel like my breath was getting caught at first and then by the end it was just fully open and expanded and I always have that. I find that I do a lot of the inner safety daily practice and I always find afterwards I can feel the energy kind of moving. It feels like it's moving in this circular, expansive kind of pathway after.

Jennifer: 43:07

Yeah, yeah, and I'm so happy that you both shared the sentiment of feeling connected to your body, because I think this is why this is so important for your listeners is that I think, when we're experiencing big shifts and changes in our body, or if you're struggling with a chronic health problem, like I was, we often get into this mentality of being in our mind and trying to figure out how to fix our body. What do I have to do to fix my body? And that is certainly where I was stuck and that's why I was sick for years on end, because I was really not listening to my body, not actually being present with my body.

Jennifer: 44:07

And I think you know, bringing consciousness to our breath helps us build this body awareness, which means we have a relationship with our body as we're going through this change, instead of living in this paradigm of trying to dominate the body into health and well-being, which never really works. I love that.

Michelle: 44:32

I feel very zen right now.

Jennifer: 44:34

Thank you, michelle has landed.

Michelle: 44:39

It only took an hour 45 minutes. I'm here.

Mikelle: 44:44

Wow, I can't believe the impact of even that short exercise. I'm sure for those listeners who've either just been listening or maybe actively listening, they would love to know more and how they can work with you, particularly as I think this needs to be in everybody's perimenopausal toolkit. Right, there are lots of approaches to managing perimenopause, but I think what hit me over the head was listening to your body instead of trying to fix and dominate your body. So how do our listeners go about starting that process with you?

Jennifer: 45:24

body. So how do our listeners go about starting that process with you? Yeah, I work with people in many ways these days, but probably the most accessible way to dive into my world is that each month, I do a community breathwork practice. It's 90 minutes long, we breathe for about 50 minutes. It's done online, so you build yourself a cozy nest at your house and you get headphones and an eye mask and tuck yourself in and I guide you through a breathwork practice virtually, and despite it being virtual, I think it's quite beautiful and intimate and people love it.

Jennifer: 46:04

So people have been coming back over and over and over again for years now. So that's one way that people can work with me, helping them deepen their relationship with their body and their feelings and all of the wisdom that's here, including the breath, and I do a bunch of different group programs over the year, which kind of weaves, breath work and somatics. Somatics is really just all of everything we're talking about here building body awareness and connecting deeper with the body and all of those are available through my website, jenmansellcom, and you're welcome to reach out to me via there or email and I would be super happy to guide you in the right direction.

Mikelle: 47:00

Jen, what's the one thing you'd want to leave our listeners with today?

Jennifer: 47:04

in the right direction, jen. What's the one thing you'd want to leave our listeners with today? I think I would love every woman to know that there is a way of feeling deeply connected and empowered in your body. Even if you're unwell, even if you are navigating like deep challenges with your health or your hormones or whatever it is, your body wants to be alive and wants to feel joy, and there are so many powerful ways that you can get connected to yourself and your essence. So many powerful ways that you can get connected to yourself and your essence like the part of you that was the young girl that was vibrant and playful, and it's right there, just underneath the surface, and it's actually not as far away as you think it is. And I guess my, my nudge would be instead of going out, go in and see what's there, cause there's, um, there's so many gifts within you that you may not know already.

Mikelle: 48:17

Thank you, jen. I hope everyone who's listening takes you up on your community program or reaches out. This has been really impactful and I'd say, just scratch the surface of what's possible with breathwork. So thank you very much.

Jennifer: 48:36

Thanks for having me. Everyone's so calm. I'm like this is really. I feel nourished by this space with all of us.

Michelle: 48:45

Jen, I was just thinking. Like we started, I was like, and now like I think all of our listeners hopefully no one's driving I've gotten too Zen.

Mikelle: 48:55

You should put a disclaimer on this before listening. Pull over.

Michelle: 48:59

No, this was incredible. I think we've all reset and I think that I definitely needed that, so once again, it's been magical.

Jennifer: 49:09

Thanks for having me. It's an honor.

Michelle: 49:13

Thanks so much for listening to the show. If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate and subscribe to our podcast. When you do this, it helps to raise our podcast profile so more women can find us and get a little better understanding of what to expect in perimenopause.

Mikelle: 49:29

We also read all the reviews the good, the bad and the ugly to help us continuously improve our show. We would love to hear from you. You can connect with us through the podcast, on social media or through our website. Our information, as well as links and details from our conversation today, can be found in the show notes. This podcast is for general information only. It's designed to educate, inspire and support you on your personal journey through perimenopause. The information and opinions on this podcast are not intended to be a substitution for primary care diagnosis or treatment. The information on this podcast does not replace professional healthcare advice. The use of the information discussed is at the sole discretion of the listener. If you are suffering from symptoms or have questions, please consult a qualified healthcare practitioner.