Curt Storring 0:00

Welcome to the Dad.Work podcast. My name is Curt Storring, your host and the founder of Dad.Work. Today's guest is Amanda Asta. And I am very excited to have Amanda on because she was my teacher. As I was trained to become a breathwork facilitator under her program transcend Academy, we go deep talking about what is breathwork and what are the immense benefits of breath work, the nervous system and the body's response to difficult events and how trauma gets stored, how to release that stored trauma, the wisdom of the body, how to hack the nervous system to calm down in the moment with some actionable take home practices, co regulating with our children and how they watch and model us why talking about our story isn't enough to heal, and some self care practices to take home. Amanda Asta is the founder of transcend Academy and transcend breathwork. She's a trauma informed certified clarity breath worker and proud member of the International breathwork Foundation and the World Federation for mental health. She has traveled to 30 countries around the globe and experimented with countless healing modalities and plant medicines in her quest to find and craft the most effective solution for healing. In her quest she found breathwork to be the most powerful Amanda has helped hundreds of people heal in her clinical breathwork practice transcend breathwork and now teaches conscious connected breathwork via her industry leading online school transcend Academy, she is passionate about spreading healing and consciousness raising globally in order to change the world from the inside out. You can connect with her at WWW dot transcend with breath calm, slash breath work training or at transcend breath work. And at transcend Academy official on Instagram. If you want to heal yourself, check out her personal transformational course. And if you're passionate about quitting the cubicle and want to change people's lives for living, apply it to her incredible breathwork certification program. And quick note here, I as I said have gone through Amanda's course the full thing including the Personal Transformation Course in the breathwork certification program. And it's just been transformational. The breathwork sessions, the training, the healing, everything has been so amazing that I want to have Amanda on hear her because she can do so much more justice to this topic than I can. And it has been one of the many things that I've used over the last eight plus years to seriously heal and change my life for the better that I really wanted to bring this to you today. And this is something that is still quite niche. But I highly recommend you have a listen, because it could be right for you. We talked a little bit about why just speaking and Counseling without any somatic work doesn't usually solve the problems because the nervous system is so wrapped up in our trauma and healing that usually requires some sort of bodywork or breath work or something like that. So I highly recommend you have a look and listen to this. If you're interested in trying breathwork for yourself, let me know. Like I said, I am a trained breathwork facilitator, we can work together, I'd be happy to hop on a call with you to go over what it looks like what to expect how it works. So please find more information dad dot work slash coaching. You can find coaching and breathwork information on there, send me an email contact form. And we'll go from there. You can also take home the actionable tips that you can use to sort of hack your nervous system within just a couple of minutes with the breath and all that will be shared in this episode. So all that being said, I highly recommend you listen to this. This is transformational stuff. And I'm so happy that Amanda brought it to you today. Here we go.

Welcome, Amanda to the Dad.Work podcast. Thank you so much for joining me, I'm very excited to have you on as someone who has been a teacher of mine to share this work with the dads listening. So thank you.

Amanda Asta 3:50

Thanks for having me on. It's a pleasure. Yeah.

Curt Storring 3:53

And so part of the work that I'm trying to do here in Dad.Work, with a podcast, with the website with Instagram with the whole project is to introduce dads to practices, modalities, wisdom that can help them in their journey to grow, heal, and just process things life as a father. And one of those things that I would love for more people to know about is breathwork. And so I thought a great way to start this off is just to maybe walk us through what some of the benefits to this is and we'll get into what exactly breathwork looks like. But I think it's so important that if people can just understand what it could do for them, they would want to learn more. So what are the some of the things that you've seen with your clients and that you teach people going through your class the benefits are?

Amanda Asta 4:41

Mm hmm. Okay, so there's obviously so much that can be said. If I were to distill it down to, you know, the in the simplest form, it would be that breathwork helps you connect with parts of yourself that have often been either fragmented or hidden away or suppressed, were able to come home to ourselves and in, in a way sort of become whole again. And so when we go into the breath, you know, because we're able to tap into our nervous system, we're able to tap into the limbic system, different parts of ourselves, our bodies, our minds. You know, depending on your belief system, you know, your spirit, we're able to tap into these elements of ourselves that we normally don't really make contact with. So, or we're just unconscious of right. So we often you know, when it comes to any kind of interaction, whether it's with your children, or your spouse, or friends or anybody, you are having that reactivity coming from your nervous system. So even, even though you know, we're not conscious of how everything is an interplay. It is right. And so when we, when we do breath work, we're able to become more conscious of these elements of ourselves. And that is what helps us you know, discover, maybe suppressed memories or suppressed emotions, and allow for those things to be expressed or healed. We're able to really connect to our deepest desires and the truth of what we are underneath all of our social family and cultural conditioning, we really get to the core of ourselves. So I don't know it's like, the breath just reveals everything. And from there, we can decide how how we want to show up in the world, and how we want to show up for ourselves and our kids and everybody, right? So there's so much to be said. But that's probably that's probably the shortest, I could say it. But it's not even doing it justice. As you know, there's just there's so much there. Yeah, I'll sort of leave a gap here. So don't just continue doing a monologue. But if you want more specifics, I'm happy to go on. Yeah,

Curt Storring 7:31

there's a few things in there that would be I think, important to touch on, including the nervous system and the sort of repressed feelings and accessing that. And I have been doing breath work for, you know, about three years now. And I went through your breathwork Teacher Training Course, which was amazing, you guys can find it a transcend Academy will give all that information in the show notes. But doing it regularly, has been such a clarity piece for me, it's like you said, you get to drop in and learn who you truly are most authentically. And from that, from noticing all of the things that conditioning and what's actually you you can start to move through and be less reactive, you can heal that nervous system. So you're not yelling at your kids when they come across. And you're you know, you're angry for some reason. So calmness, patience, just like opening myself to love. These are some of the things that I've got personally. And just this like knowledge of like, wow, I'm this. I'm more than I think that I am. And so I think, like, just for me, it's been enormously helpful. And I would love for more dads more men to even know what this is and how to access it. But before we get into that, could you talk a little bit about the nervous system, maybe explain that a little bit for men who have not experienced what that is what that looks like, and why some of this is stored, like you said, What does that mean?

Amanda Asta 8:59

That's a big one to unpack. Okay, so we have the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system. In the simplest terms, the sympathetic nervous system is, you know, when you're going for a run, and you're getting your sort of engine all revved up, right. This is also the part of the nervous system that you know, people experience when they get anxiety. This is also why just a little sidebar here why? When people have anxiety, they often steer clear of things like cardio, because they experience a sensation that reminds them of anxiety. And so they have this connection in their mind between the sympathetic nervous system and their anxiety, but those things are, are not mutually exclusive. And so actually doing cardio can be really beneficial. For people who have anxiety, and yet they often steer clear of it because of the activation of the sympathetic nervous system. So with that being said, you know, when we're doing breath work, we're activating actually both branches of the nervous system. So initially, we're actually activating the sympathetic nervous system. So again, that rapid breathing is actually activating the sympathetic. And, you know, if you're a person who is, is always in the parasympathetic, there's a particular branch of the parasympathetic, which actually is, you know, freeze, which a lot of us are actually in it is a protection mechanism. But if we're in there all the time, that's not healthy either. So you could kind of consider it like a toning of the nervous system to be able to shift gears from parasympathetic to sympathetic and back and forth that ebb and flow is very healthy. And so the parasympathetic, if you don't know about it, that is, you know, in the most simplest terms, your rest and digest, Irene Lyon, who is a nervous system, specialist, Cillian, we interview in the course, she says she hates it when people just describe it with that term, because it's oversimplified, but it does help people kind of understand it in the simplest way, it's sort of like, you know, sympathetic is you're on and parasympathetic is you're off, if you were to really just try to distill it down. Again, she would hate that, because it's too simple, but And so, you know, being able to work with the different aspects of your nervous system, right. So when we're doing conscious, connected breath work, we're activating the sympathetic, usually towards the end will activate the parasympathetic by doing slow breathing, the last 10 plus minutes of the session. And so this toning is really good for you. Now, when we have a traumatic event, which, you know, a lot of people associate with just, you know, vets having PTSD. Now, trauma is really actually very subjective. You could have two people, two children have the same event happen and one child is traumatized.

Amanda Asta 12:37

And the other one is not. And so it's not about the event, it's about how the body responds to that event, and then how that is stored within the body, because the body is always trying to protect you. And so if it creates this association between this type of event and danger, then it's going to create mechanisms to protect you from that event, and anything that remotely resembles that. And that's how we get this hyper vigilance, hyper reactivity. And I really try to come from this approach of not making the body wrong or bad, because it's just trying to keep us here. And so it's more about how do we gently guide the body and reteach it, how to protect us in a different way. And so when we're in the breath, we're able to do I mean, there's a number of things that happen, one of the things that happens is that often people will shake it in their breathwork session. And so that is a very natural process. You've probably heard it been said, I think, practically, I don't know every coach and every person in the wellness space talks about how animals shake off their stress. I'm sure your audience has heard that a million times too. But it's true that as humans, we generally don't when people have, you know, like a nervous, twitch or whatever people tell them to stop. And the reason why we do that is usually because it makes other it makes them uncomfortable. And so they're like, stop doing that, because you're making me feel uneasy, and yet, we need to give each other the permission to actually release those tremors and when they do come up. But certainly within the safe container of a breathwork session people do tremor, eye tremor, like crazy, for example. And the beauty of that is the permission and the the freedom and safety to allow your body to just move the way that it needs to. So there's something really wonderful that especially in a world where We have, I mean, I can only really speak for Canada. But you know, in terms of our culture, we're not really encouraged to really be natural in our bodies, we are in, basically animal bodies. And so, you know, a lot of the the manners and politeness that we have really inhibits our natural animal bodies from taking care of themselves the way that they would. And part of that is shaking. So we do that in the breath. And then sometimes in the breath, you know, it's, for example, if a if a trauma comes up, and it's about like allowing that to be released through the nervous system in a trauma informed way, I won't get into the specifics of that, because that's going to be an even longer answer. But these are ways that we're able to actually release through the nervous system, and people generally just feel lighter, they feel like they've taken the load off, because they've actually released so much of the contraction that's in the body. And when we're able to really just allow that release, then they're not, you know, wound so tight that they're just gonna snap at any tiny little thing. And the more that we do this, the more we actually build resiliency in the body, we build resiliency in the nervous system. Because when we're wound really tight, it actually makes us more fragile. So you want to have that flexibility and fluidity. And that means giving ourselves a release.

Curt Storring 16:37

Yeah, thank you for that. And I'm glad you mentioned the shaking like animals, because I was definitely gonna go there. Just because it's so important. Like, it's the Victorian sensibilities or whatever, we have to be prim and proper, and have all these manners. And like you said, this is an animal body. And so I tell my kids the same thing. Like if you need to shake it out, if you just need to go like that for a little while. That's perfectly fine, because it releases rather than stores and represses. And so I love in the breath, which don't worry, we'll get there in a second, what is the breath? What does this even mean? But in the breath, just to have that safe container for anything to come up. It's like a nervous system reset for me in many ways, you can almost go back to a more level more even maybe not zero, but it really gets close. And it's so much easier to relate with your family, with your spouse, with your kids from a place of grounded clarity, then if you didn't take, you know, the time to do all this work. And it all comes back to the nervous system. I think that's important for men to know for their children, too, that when we react angrily, that could trigger a perceived trauma in our children, and how can they then heal from that that's been a lot of my work is just like, Oh, my goodness, it's not, you know, I, I'm going to forgive myself for acting certain ways when I was less of an aware awake parent. And I now see some of the responses that my children have, because of nervous system protection, basically. So this is all such important things, for fathers for parents to understand. And maybe we should explain what is breathwork. And I'd like to explain in CCB first, and then I'd like to give some very individual examples that people can do at home. Because what we do what you do, what you teach, is quite an in depth process. And I highly recommend it. And there are some really quick ways for the breath to basically, I don't want to say it, but hack the nervous system to calm you down in the moment. So what is conscious connected? breathwork? What is breathwork? What is what does that look like? And what does this session look like? So that we're all just on the same page now, and so that people know that this is even an option? Because unfortunately, it's still not mainstream, and it should be. So what does a breathwork session look like?

Amanda Asta 18:59

Okay, so just before I answer that I just wanted to say about your comment about with your children, I just wanted to add to that one little tiny thing about how our children learn how to regulate themselves by our example. And when they're really young, they co regulate. So us being self aware, and having the clarity and having the ability to observe ourselves, they model all of that. And so if you have a very anxious parent, you will very likely have a very anxious child and but that can also be remedied because they're so they're still so resilient at that age. So, if you you know, if things are already a bit later on, don't worry if things are earlier on, great, you've got lots of time but just knowing that Yeah, they're watching you, especially in those first, let you know first period of time before they're even able to speak. They're just watching you. And that's all they have to do all day.

Curt Storring 20:11

Absolutely. Sharing that, thank you so much that has been just in my own life, I was extremely anxious. Angry, I've shared about this a lot before, I was basically mean, because I was so overwhelmed with my own unhealed childhood stuff when I was a young father, that I would act in ways that would be shaming, scary, all the rest of it. And I see now, the remnants of that in my oldest, and we are now repairing that and it's not too late because the growth of our relationship has been unlike anything I thought could possibly have happened, I thought I was just I thought I was screwed. Basically, I thought I had messed up so badly, that there could be no coming back. And that's proving not to be the case. And comparing that with my youngest son. It was totally different. I had done so much of the work I had, you know, I came into it calm, confident, and able to regulate and seeing the difference in the two children. Like my goodness, my youngest will take breaths, breathe in, he'll breathe out. And he's just content and calm and securely attached and all of these things. And so it's never too early to start that bond, because like you said they co regulate immediately. So anyway, thank you so much for going there. That's extremely important. And let you get back to work.

Amanda Asta 21:31

Yeah, happy to. Yeah. Okay. So basically, now, we're, we're going to be talking about conscious connected breathwork. So just want to be clear with your listeners. Yeah, it's conscious, connected. breathwork is a particular style that's different than yogic breathing, for example, you know, so maybe later, we'll get into I don't know, box breathing or something like that for your take home tools. So a conscious connected breath is basically where you are breathing in an infinite loop where your inhale and exhale are connected. And so it's a very simple breath, which actually, I love. Because that means that it's so easy for people to learn. I think that our ego wants sometimes for it to be complicated, because we think like, oh, things have to be hard if they're good. And it's in this case, it's a gift from nature. And it is simple. And there's a real beauty to that. So basically, we're doing a rapid breath, which is an intentional and controlled hyperventilation, which causes respiratory alkalosis, which is sort of a scientific term for meaning that the breath creates an alkalinity to the blood. And long story short, what that means is that, we're able to actually tap into the limbic system and the brain. And through that, we're able to do very, very in depth therapy. And so that is, you know, when you normally go see, when you normally go see a counselor, you're only able to talk about what you are conscious of in your prefrontal cortex. So if you don't remember that suppressed memory, or if you have numbed yourself to a point where you don't feel any unwanted emotions, you can't bring that to the table to be healed. We're also you know, when you're working with it, and I don't say this to NACA counselor, because I think is a place for every wellness practitioner of every kind, and just sort of trying to highlight the differences. And so again, when we're seeing a counselor, we're only working with the mind, we're not working with the body. And in my experience, both with myself and my own healing, and as a practitioner, I've seen that, you know, it's, it doesn't trying to work with the mind, you can't heal the body, just through the mind, you have to heal the body through the body. And so it just seems funny to think that we could just talk about our stories and that it's all going to disappear, because that it that it's ignoring all of the other parts of ourselves. And so you know, if you are going to see a counselor, still see a somatic therapist of any kind, whether that's a breath worker or somatic experiencing. Therapist, but you've got to incorporate the body because otherwise the nervous system is still going to react. And you and this is why we get this whole thing of, Oh, I know better, but I keep I keep doing the wrong thing. And that's because your body is primed for the old way and we have to walk the body, you know a new way you have to show it in New Way. And the way that it learns is through experience. And so, you know, it's also the same thing with, if you see someone who's just a coach alone, usually we're when we're doing coaching, where we're building something, right. But if we don't address the foundation, it's not going to work. And so I remember I was looking into coaching way back and the textbook said, don't address anyone's childhood or trauma. I was like, What is the point of that, because anything that we build together is going to be sabotaged. Because the inner child is going to come up, the limiting beliefs are going to come up, that traumas are going to be there that any of the nervous system dysregulation is all of these things. So it's, it's, we need to look at things a bit more holistically. And that's why I love the breath, because it incorporates mind body spirit. And then we can do the coaching and the integration. And so the results are not just meaningful, but they're long term. And so we're not chasing our tail in this form of therapy. So it's a really a really powerful practice. Yeah, and I see, it's not all shadow, I should also mention that too. I've seen people have, you know, there's many different ways that we purge. So people purge through tears, they purge through laughter. They purge through shaking,

Amanda Asta 26:35

and other ways, but And so, you know, I've seen people even sweat, I've seen people sweat through their clothes in a breathwork session. And sometimes people feel freezing. So there's so many different things that can happen in the breath. I mean, the impacts are, are very vast and very, very individual. But certainly in general, it's just a powerful way to heal and a powerful way to, to get that clarity. If you were, if you're confused about something, and you've been wondering for a long time, usually the breath well, it sort of connects all the dots, all the little, you know, you might have had one thought five years ago, and then that connects to three other memories of something that happened. And then another thought, and suddenly you realize all of the puzzle pieces come together and you realize, oh, I've been doing that because of this thing this whole time. And you can really start to see your patterns. And through the awareness and observation of those patterns. That's how you stop yourself from falling down the same hole every time.

Curt Storring 27:48

Absolutely, yeah, that was excellent. Thank you so much. There's so many reasons to do this. And I think maybe just to like, make it super simple for anyone wondering like, Well, where do I do this? What do I do, you basically work with a breathwork, practitioner, facilitator, a coach, counselor, therapist, whatever their designation is, find somewhere comfortable to lie down and start breathing. And just like you said, it's a rapid intake, it's a circular breath, there's no stopping on the top or the bottom of the inhale the exhale. And it's so hard to explain. Because I'm just imagining people going like, well, and then why'd, that literally breathe like that for 10 or 20 minutes, even, like for a minute, and you'll see what I mean, like, just just go right now, take pause this, breathe in and now deeply without stopping, and you'll see something happens. And if you do this sustained for 30 minutes or 60 minutes, and you have a guide there to really help you feel safe while you're doing this. So much can happen. And much like you didn't want to describe the nervous system and you know, potentially a crude way. I have heard some people explain, explain breathwork like this as a near psychedelic experience. And I think that's fairly accurate. I mean, you can go places that your conscious mind can't, you can see things you can experience things you can feel being held by the Earth. I mean, it is deep and it is literally life changing. At least it has been for me and most of the people that I talked to who've done it and so this isn't just like well I could go see a counselor this it's like no, this changes your life if you sit there and actually breathe and that's all you need. It couldn't be easier. And so you're right it's what such a gift from nature. Now in saying all that you don't have to go book an hour long appointment, I mean, if you want to please contact Amanda or myself, we'd be happy to help. But you can do this at home in the moment to a degree. So what are some of these maybe take homes that people can bring with them at the end of this episode to be like okay, now I've got some tools I'm going to use the breath a little bit more. You mentioned box breathing, alternate nose breathing, alternate nostril breathing. Sorry. And there's a few more. So would you just give us like a quick rundown of tools that you use?

Amanda Asta 30:11

Sure. So first, I'll just say, Okay, if anybody did pause and do a minute of CCB. If you're going to do it, do it lying down, because usually we get a bit lightheaded. Please don't do it for longer than 10 minutes, because we don't want you to drop in by yourself. And by dropping in, that's basically sort of a, I don't know an industry term for how we sort of slip into an alternate form of consciousness. It's safest to do that with a practitioner. So I just had to put that in there. Yes. And like that's where all the juices so if you do it for one month, and you're like, Oh, I just felt lightheaded. What's the big deal? Don't worry, you're not there yet. But I recommend being with somebody like Curt or anybody on our team to actually facilitate you so. So there's that. But yes, Kurt is right, there's, there's a lot that you can do in terms of gosh, there's a lot of tools that I use. Some of them are the breath, and some of them are self care practices that really helped me regulate my nervous system. So I'll share with you some of the ones that I do. So yes, you can hack your nervous system with Box breathing and alternate nostril breathing. So I'll tell you about box breathing for now. And those of you can google alternate nostril breathing, also known as natty Shona, it's a yogic breath. So box breathing is where you do, it's so simple, once again, which I love. So you're going to do an inhale, for example, have a count of four, and then you hold for four, and then you exhale for four, and you hold for four again, now you can do a count of six 830. I know like the the yogi's do it for a really long time they build up to that though, of course you can, that the body is so amazing, you can really you can, you can almost condition it to do just about anything, it's incredible. So play around with what count feels comfortable. You know, if you're a smoker or something like that, you might want to do a count of two, I don't know. So feel into what's comfortable. And I should also mention that it is really normal to feel a bit. I feel like anxious is too strong of a word, but uncomfortable. When you're holding the the exhale, like when at the bottom of the exhale, when you've got no oxygen in your lungs. This is a primordial thing. Of course, we we have this urge to gasp for air. And yet when you start to do it for longer periods of time, there's this weird thing that when that when you hold it long enough that discomfort actually subsides. And there's this weird sort of blanket of peace and calm that comes over you. So there's actually a lot of really cool things that you can experience in playing with your breath. But by doing this slow breathing in general, it activates the parasympathetic nervous system. So if you're feeling really like worked up, or you're struggling to kind of turn switch off so to speak, you can activate your parasympathetic by doing box breathing so great for if you're having a stressful they, maybe you're caught in traffic and you're feeling like you want a road rage on somebody. Another you know, kind of speaking of road rage, something that's really great for regulating your nervous system as a cathartic release. So, you know, maybe that is sort of just like slamming your your fist down on the dash, or my personal favorite is to beat up your bed, punch a pillow. And, you know, I think for many people anger is deemed to be

Amanda Asta 34:34

frowned upon or unsafe because it's usually coupled with violence. And but it's absolutely does not need to be coupled with violence. It's all about context. So, you know, if you go home, and you communicate with anybody who you live with, whether that's your kids, your spouse or your roommate, and you just say I need some time in my room alone and you lock the door, then you can just go to town and wail on your bed and I think it's, it's not about it being, you know, just some exercise, the important part is to have the emotion present, because then you're actually releasing that emotion from the body. Otherwise, it's just another mental activity. So make sure that when you do feel it, and another thing that helps, is music. So, you know, if you're feeling like you can't access that rage, put on some rageful music, and that can help you tap in, it's actually amazing how we can get really activated by music. And, you know, so you can have a cathartic release, and then maybe you have some slow music afterwards, to sort of reflect, I know, in some of the tantra courses I've taken, they've said, fill that, that that void that's created, once the anger is gone, or once the grief is gone, and fill that with pleasure, so that you can actually release those endorphins and the oxytocin back in the brain, and then that becomes the baseline. So you know, there's a lot when you actually start to unpack this stuff, you can learn so much of how to hack your body, you know, like, think about this, this thing that we're in that we ignore most of the time, and actually tune into it and see how we can help it help us. Yeah, so and then there's self soothing as well. I'll give you that isn't the last one. Yeah,

Curt Storring 36:31

no, thank you. This is I love the tips. And I think a lot of guys will as well, like 100%, please look into, you know, a full breathwork session if what we're talking about appeals to you, but to have these things that we can do when we're feeling ungrounded. When we're like untethered when we're angry, when we're impatient, when we need to sleep and we can't win, we just need to access that calm, to be able to just box breeze 4444 Or just take a five second inhale and a five second exhale, and do that three to five times. It's amazing what that can do breathe into your belly. You know, you mentioned alternate nostril breathing. Wim Hof is another one, which is a little bit different, it's a little bit more activating for some people. But there are all these things that we have access to. And I've just worked breathing into my day, you know, I've got things on my calendar that I see. And I Okay, breathing in the morning, breathing before bed and breathing it into the workday. And it's just three to five breaths sometimes. But it helps so much maintain that layer of awareness. And I think that's a lot. What you're talking about here is when you are feeling something, being able to express that thing without it exploding because the body's in charge, and it's disconnected from the mind. And so by doing these things by doing breathwork, you start to reconnect, body and mind. So that, you know, like me as a young, angry father, something would happen. And I would just, you know, explode, basically. And I would catch myself after I'd go, why? Why do I keep doing this. And it wasn't until meditation, journaling learning about mindfulness practices was I able to find that space between the body wanting to react and me being able to be the one going, Okay, this is not appropriate, find a different way, cathartic release, screaming into pillows, all that kind of stuff. I mean, unfortunately, it sounds a little bit weird to people, I'm sure. And you know, just from anecdotal experience, and I know you have much more of that than I do. But like this stuff, works, it is so, so important. And I'm so just so grateful that you're here, because this will help to get this into more people's minds, so that they can then perhaps use these things in their own lives to feel better. And then just to be a better man, partner and father in their families. So yeah, thank you for sharing all this.

Amanda Asta 38:49

Yeah, then no worries. And the last one was just self soothing. So just quickly share on that one. And, you know, this one might be for dads, I don't know. I mean, the whole conditioning around gender and masculinity can be inhibiting at time. So if this one feels too soft for you, then I implore you to remember that you are human, and you were once a child yourself. And so give yourself the grace to at least try it. But I normally get like a big fluffy pillow, and I'll hold on to that pillow and I'll rock myself like a child and breathe really slowly. And this is so good for your nervous system. And you know, sometimes when people are in a breathwork session, I'll give them a pillow. And they'll do it during the breath because feeling that compression on your chest is really soothing. That's why they give sometimes they give kids those weighted vests because compression on the chest is very soothing. And so you know I Yeah, would recommend, really allow yourself to explore that soft side to as much as you're releasing through cathartic release. And you're releasing your anger also remit, like come back to your soft side, because that's also going to come out with your children too. And the Kinder that you are to yourself, the kinder, you're able to be with others, including your children. And so that compassion piece for yourself and the soothing and your own self nurturing it, it spills out everywhere. So

Curt Storring 40:32

that's such a big one. I yeah, I mean, just personally, I've worked on self love for so long, but what a difference it makes, if you are harsh with yourself. And it's almost like, I think you mentioned filling up your cup. It's just like, if you have nothing in your cup for yourself, how are you going to distribute from that cup to your family, you just scraping along the curb. And if you treat yourself that way, that's what's going to be it's going to treat other people. And so I'm glad that you went into sort of a self soothing, and this is where I was going to end up anyway, just like doing some self care, just simply doing something, whether it's meditating, whether it's breathing, whether it's rocking, that's such a wonderful idea. And I understand the societal implications of all I'm not going to do that. But like, like you said, you were a child, how do you hold your child you rock them, you might have been rocked as a child yourself. And there's something about that this highly, highly soothing, and brings you back down to baseline.

Amanda Asta 41:32

Yep. And that's something you can do, you know, just again, in your room, so nobody sees you, right? whatever is most comfortable. You know, hopefully you're not, you know, within your family. Hopefully, that's not a space of judgment, either. But even if you if you're just like getting started, and you're like, Ah, this is kind of weird, then just just do it in your own room. It's totally fine. You know, nobody's gonna watch you and just see how you feel. Yeah,

Curt Storring 42:03

yeah. Okay. Well, I would love to ask you about 100 more questions. But I know we have to end now. And so where can people find more about you? And I mean, I very willingly have given testimonials for your work. I'm so pleased and grateful to have been a part of transcend Academy breathwork teacher training. So where would people go to learn more about you maybe even becoming a breathwork practitioner or getting some breath work done?

Amanda Asta 42:33

Yeah. Yeah. You know, we're, we're hoping to spread healing around the world. So you know, whether people want to do just their own healing and the level one, which is the personal transformation, which you know, of, and then the level two, which is the full training program. So whatever you're looking for, you can find us at transcend breathwork.com. Think it's backslash or forward slash breathwork training. I will give you the link, and you can post it below. But that's where you can find us. And yeah, so whether you want to do it for yourself, or to share it with others as a profession. We've got you covered.

Curt Storring 43:17

Wonderful. Alright, well, I hope everyone has taken a lot of practical tips away. There was a lot in this episode and just learning more about how your body works. It's, I mean, it's, it's in many ways, it's science. And I know that's very hard to say these days. But it's just how we are we're not simply brains. We're brains inside of a body with the Spirit. So I'm gonna leave it there Amanda, thank you again so much. I've loved having you.

Amanda Asta 43:40

Yeah, thank you. It's been such a joy

Curt Storring 43:48

that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. It means the world to find out more about everything that we talked about in the episode today, including Show Notes resources and links to subscribe leave review work with us go to dad dot work slash pod. That's da d w o RK slash pod. type that into your browser just like a normal URL, Dad dot work slash pod. To find everything there. You need to become a better man, a better partner and a better father. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai