Catherine Divine [00:01:22]:
Okay.

Mark Divine [00:01:22]:
And also talk about the power of the retention. Right. And how to use our mind and train our mind using the breath. That’s ultimately what we’re all about here, is like, taking control of the mind and training it and how the breath can be a really. Is the master tool for doing that. So how are you today?

Catherine Divine [00:01:46]:
I’m doing well, thank you. I’m breathing.

Mark Divine [00:01:49]:
Recovering from your little surfboard head injury?

Catherine Divine [00:01:52]:
Yes, yes.

Mark Divine [00:01:53]:
Catherine got smacked in the head with her surfboard. I did a couple weeks ago, and that was pretty traumatic.

Catherine Divine [00:01:59]:
Yeah. I broke my occipital bone.

Mark Divine [00:02:02]:
Yeah, say that 10 times.

Catherine Divine [00:02:04]:
Occipital bone. And got a good cut and a nice concussion that I’ve been recovering from.

Mark Divine [00:02:10]:
Well, I’d like to know, like, how you use breath. Breath work, your knowledge, like, Catherine has thousands of hours of teacher training with yoga and has been teaching yoga and coaching people with breath work for years.

Catherine Divine [00:02:24]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:02:25]:
So it’s probably automatic to you. You may not even realize that you just probably went into a practice at the acute moment of crisis and then like, so what was that like? Talk about that. And then have you used the breath to help in your healing?

Catherine Divine [00:02:38]:
Yes, thanks for asking that. Well, in the water, I was more concerned immediately with getting out of the water as fast as possible.

Mark Divine [00:02:48]:
Right.

Catherine Divine [00:02:48]:
I was not really conscious of my breathing. Besides making sure I was. I was more conscious of keeping my hand on the wound and getting out.

Mark Divine [00:03:02]:
Because you had an open wound I.

Catherine Divine [00:03:03]:
Had an open wound and stay and trying to stay above water. So I didn’t want to go back underwater once I popped up to the surface. But the minute I got out of the water and I located somebody that I could ask first, A, you know, how bad is this? Because I wasn’t sure. I just knew I was bleeding. And I guess ask B, ask for help was I immediately started to regulate my breath because I didn’t want to approach. The person panicked.

Mark Divine [00:03:32]:
Right.

Catherine Divine [00:03:32]:
And so I had the awareness in that moment. And I attribute all the years of training to having that ability to gain awareness immediately of I don’t want to trigger someone else into fear.

Mark Divine [00:03:45]:
Right.

Catherine Divine [00:03:46]:
Because I’m extremely terrified right now.

Mark Divine [00:03:48]:
Right. And that. And that regulating your breath through slow nostril breathing, diaphragmatic breathing.

Catherine Divine [00:03:52]:
I was doing slow nostril breathing. So I was breathing takes back control.

Mark Divine [00:03:55]:
Right. You have a sense that you’re back in control even though you were feeling out of control. And aspects of your, you know, aspects of the situation are out of your control.

Catherine Divine [00:04:03]:
Aspects of the situation are out of my control. And I knew I could control my breath in order to control my mind as well as tone and quality of voice and how I was going to approach or handle any interactions with other people as well as getting myself to safety. And once I was on shore, I felt relatively safe, but I still wasn’t sure what the scale of injury was. And so that was part of it. When I addressed this woman, I was breathing, I talked to her. I noticed as she, the response on her face was the big, wide eyed and yes, you need to go to the emergency room. And so then that also, you know, like that mirroring that happens, it also sent some rush of stimulation through my body. And I asked her if she could help me, if she could give me a towel.

Catherine Divine [00:04:56]:
She offered to carry my surfboard. And then we were walking and I continued to watch my breath because there it was, it was interesting because there was this parallel of almost wanting to freeze, I guess, and melt into terror or tears. And then that other part because I was alone, even with a stranger, I still felt like I’m alone, I’m in charge of this, knowing that I needed to stay in control. And the breath was my anchor point the whole time. Yeah. And so there was that point when we got past the lifeguard, you know, they did their check and they told me the same thing, you need to go to the emergency room. There’s a big stairwell. It was about a quarter mile, you know, walk down the beach.

Catherine Divine [00:05:42]:
So when I got to the top of the stairs, and then there was the decision whether to go with this person in their car to give me a ride home or just to walk home. It was that same thing again. Checking in with my breath and. And then it would say breath binding to intuition of what’s the next call that’s going to be the most fluid and, you know, opportune for this moment. And it was very clear I needed to break from that person at that point and go home.

Mark Divine [00:06:14]:
And what about using the breath for healing?

Catherine Divine [00:06:17]:
Breath for healing, yeah.

Mark Divine [00:06:18]:
So your situation and then maybe, you know, extend it to generalization.

Catherine Divine [00:06:22]:
Yeah. The breath to me is, you know, and Will Potter, who has taught with us for years, you know, it’s free medicine, and I love that term that he uses. And I think the breath can heal almost anything, if not everything, when done with conscious and present moment awareness. And so for myself, you know, having an injury, having my brain not working 100% for the last few weeks, I would say that there’s been an emotional influx of. And there’s also been heightened, like, amplified areas around certain emotions that maybe on a normal day or on a day where I didn’t have these injuries, I would be able to breathe and kind of move through it. But I’ve noticed in the last few weeks the. The accentuation of it. And so the breath has become very much my medicine in the way of.

Catherine Divine [00:07:28]:
First of all, I was holding my breath more. I was noticing because I was gripping still. There was still a response to the acute trauma. And, and, and so when I would notice I was holding my breath, it was just that, like, that’s right, breathe and then, that’s right, breathe and focus on the exhale. Try to let go. I’ve done a few practices of breathing in light and just visualizing, you know, because I don’t think of myself as a vain person, but, like, I’m not super stoked to have a scar on my face. So, like, you know, I would like burly. I think I would like to heal.

Mark Divine [00:08:04]:
Nobody wants to mess with you now.

Catherine Divine [00:08:05]:
Yeah, I don’t want to look burly.

Mark Divine [00:08:06]:
Nobody wanted to mess with you before, but now they really don’t want to.

Catherine Divine [00:08:09]:
So I. I’ve been visualizing, like, light, you know, through every cell of my body on my inhale. And then I’ve been exhale of the gray or black smoke of releasing any tension or toxicity in my system, which is a Tibetan breath that I learned. I’ve done alternate nostril breathing, which we can Talk more about to help balance and center my brain. And I’ve also been doing box breathing to just help kind of center. Center the looping that was going on emotionally, but also mentally. Because you know, honestly, like one of the reasons for me, I love pranayama and why I fell in love with the practice was around all that self regulation. And so in, in these last few weeks, it’s been just more.

Mark Divine [00:08:59]:
Right. A life incident like that is a. If you’ve been practicing for a while, then they. They become the go to tools. But it also validates. Right. The free medicine and how important and powerful these the breath is and knowing how to work with the breath.

Catherine Divine [00:09:15]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:09:15]:
I’d like to address, you know, we mentioned alternate nostril breathing first. It’s important to acknowledge that breath is consciousness. Breath air is air. It’s oxygen, nitrogen, but it’s also life force.

Catherine Divine [00:09:32]:
Yes.

Mark Divine [00:09:33]:
And if it’s life force, then it’s life. And if it’s life, it’s awareness. It’s aware. Life is aware. Life is intelligent, it’s consciousness. So you’re breathing in consciousness, you’re breathing in life, you’re breathing in energy. And so with the practice of breath work, we acknowledge that it’s not just oxygen. Right.

Mark Divine [00:09:57]:
That’s like kindergarten. Yes. You’re getting more oxygen using all the muscles. Right. We want to develop that for health. That’s great. But breath control is so much more than that. It’s controlling your life force.

Mark Divine [00:10:09]:
Right. Pranayama means controlling or managing or evolving your relationship with life force. So where this is really pronounced and can be experienced pretty quickly is through alternate nostril breathing. I think a few more points and I want to get your perspective on it. So alternate nostril breathing. First of all, when it comes to the different sensory organs we have, the nose is unique. We smell with it and we breathe with it. We can also breathe through our mouth, but we were designed to breathe mostly through our nose.

Mark Divine [00:10:47]:
And the mouth is secondary when you speak. Sometimes you have to breathe through your mouth or if you’re extremely winded. A lot of people breathe through their mouth a lot and it’s not optimal because it takes a lot of air in directly into the top of your lungs. And so you’re not getting the opportunity to get that full diaphragmatic breath. You’re not getting the massage of the vagus nerve and you’re not getting the cleansing that the hair follicles do and the warming or cooling of the air, and you’re not getting the nitrous Oxide dump. And you’re not getting the split into the two vessels, right and left nostril, which then basically stimulate the right and left Nadi. Right. The Nida and Pingala.

Mark Divine [00:11:29]:
And so with alternate nostril breathing, what we’re doing is saying, okay, we’re going to inhale just through one nostril, let’s say inhale through my left nostril, that’s going to stimulate the right Nadi, which is the Nida. Right. I’m not sure how that is.

Catherine Divine [00:11:45]:
The right is the Pingala, the left is the Ida. Because Pingalas is the Surya, the sun, and Ida is the moon.

Mark Divine [00:11:51]:
Pingla is the sun. Yeah. So right hemisphere, this is gonna. Left nostril is gonna stimulate right hemisphere. And because you’re breathing in slow and it’s going up there, it’s stimulating that Nadi, the energy system. And it’s literally sending life force electricity into the right hemisphere of your brain. And it’s sending energy and life force throughout that nadi, which is crossing over, you know, all the chakra systems enlivening right from that angle. And then as you breathe into the right nostril, it’s doing the same with the left Nadi, the Nida.

Mark Divine [00:12:27]:
And so you get this kind of experience of stimulating the right hemisphere of the brain and the stimuli left hemisphere and right and left. And of course, there’s communication happening between them. And you’re training your mind. Yes, I mean, you’re training your mind with any conscious breathing, but specifically with alternate nostril breathing, you’re getting that. Excuse me, I was about to snooze. With alternate nostril breathing, you’re getting the very distinct experience of balancing and harmonizing and also stimulating the inter. Interlacing, I guess, or the communication between cross the corpus callosum between the two hemispheres. And it leads to healthier thinking.

Mark Divine [00:13:20]:
Whole mind thinking.

Catherine Divine [00:13:22]:
Yep. Yeah. You said quite a few things that I wanted to touch on. One of them is about the nose breathing versus the mouth breathing. And what I really like to remember in that was something that our teacher’s teacher said was, you know, be aware of what comes out of your. What? Aware of what goes in your mouth. But be more aware of what comes out of your mouth. Right.

Catherine Divine [00:13:48]:
That’s a very important thing. And you can think about that with breathing too. Be aware of how much you’re breathing through your mouth or breathing out through your mouth, but it’s more about speech on that one. And then the nose really is designed for breathing. And you pointed to that with the other part was around the Eda, the Pingala. So if you think of the chakra system, which is in. These are Sanskrit words. And you guys talked about this in the episode with Curtis.

Catherine Divine [00:14:13]:
Curtis. So these are Sanskrit terms. Pranayama, Ida, Pingala, chakra, and the Chakra system, the main chakra system starts at the base of the spine. It runs up the spine. The Ida and the Pingala are these left channels which are known as little rivers. Chinese medicine has the meridians, which are also rivers of energy. So it’s. That’s more popular globally as a system.

Catherine Divine [00:14:39]:
But the naughties are. Are similar, slightly different, and they crisscross like you’re saying. So where the Ida, the Pingala intersect along the main nadi, which is the Shushum Nanari, is where these wheels of energy get connected. And then as you said, the reason why they’re crossing is at the very top at the Ajna chakra, right before the, the final chakra. Then they cross there and they stop. And that’s how they’re stimulating these different hemispheres energetically as well as physiologically in the brain. Alternate nostril breathing is one of the most important pieces about it is you always want to notice what’s happening when you breathe through the left or the right nostril because it’ll tell you about imbalances in your system. So usually people have a predominant side that’s clogged or it’s harder to inhale or exhale on.

Catherine Divine [00:15:30]:
And that in itself already is going to give you a wealth of information.

Mark Divine [00:15:34]:
And that will change throughout the day too.

Catherine Divine [00:15:36]:
And it’ll change out the day. It’ll change different seasons, day to day, different seasons. But some, some people, they’ll really start to notice a common one that is. And it’s like, oh, I have too much heat in my system, so they need to do more cooling breath. Oh, I have, I’m, you know, can’t exhale out of that more cooling side. Okay. I need to build more heat. But for me, the reason why I chose to apply it, like prescriptively why I chose to alternate nostril breathing is one of the practices because one of the, one of a friend of mine said, why don’t you do Breath of Fire, which is the Kalabati breath.

Catherine Divine [00:16:10]:
Well, I have a concussion.

Mark Divine [00:16:12]:
Yeah, probably not.

Catherine Divine [00:16:13]:
It’s really contraindicated. That’s not a good idea to build heat and also to possibly kind of create pressure in my head. Right. So the reason I picked alternate nostril breathing is because it’s one of the most calming and centering breaths that I’ve ever learned. It helps stimulate concentration and focus in the mind. Because of what you’re saying. I don’t know if I can say it. Corkum classum, corpuscloss.

Catherine Divine [00:16:39]:
It’s like caudal paduncle, the bridge between the brain. You know, I just think of a bridge, a magical rainbow bridge that, like, is back and forth between my hemispheres of the brain. But that. And I’m starting to say, hey, if there’s any areas that aren’t quite working right, hello. Work on this side. Oh, over on this side. And that’s, to me, part of the imagery I was doing, but also that balancing effect. So invoking balance, that was why I picked it prescriptively.

Catherine Divine [00:17:09]:
And, you know, there’s so many different. Also, just in case people don’t know, there are so many different nostril breathing practices. There’s not just one.

Mark Divine [00:17:20]:
The duration of the inhale and the exhale will. Will have an impact whether you do a retention after the inhale or the exhale. And these are all legitimate how you know, the duration of the practice itself, the intensity of the breath. I mean, there’s a lot of nuances.

Catherine Divine [00:17:38]:
Yeah. And whether you’re switching back and forth or if you’re doing one side 15 times, the other side 15 times.

Mark Divine [00:17:44]:
A lot of variation.

Catherine Divine [00:17:44]:
There’s a lot of variations. The key. One of those key things, if you want to play with it, is always starting on the left and always finish on the left. So you always start inhale. Even if you’re going to go to just a right nostril before you switch to the left. So say you’re going to start on the right. You think it has to do with the channels of energy, and so it has to do with that activating. That’s what I was told.

Catherine Divine [00:18:09]:
So I haven’t questioned it. I’m a little bit of a blindfold.

Mark Divine [00:18:14]:
You don’t know. It can be like the story of, like, hey, why don’t we cut this. Cut the corner off the ham? Like. Well, it’s because that’s how we’ve always done it.

Catherine Divine [00:18:21]:
Exactly.

Mark Divine [00:18:21]:
You go, ask the grandma. Grandma. That’s how we’ve all done it. She says, ask the great grandma. She goes, oh, it’s because I didn’t have a pan big enough.

Catherine Divine [00:18:28]:
Exactly. That’s what Gary said. And Gary studied with, you know, the pranayama master, so.

Mark Divine [00:18:34]:
Right, yeah, we’ll go with that.

Catherine Divine [00:18:35]:
We’ll go with what Carrie crafts.

Mark Divine [00:18:37]:
So the basic practice, let’s say Mark one motto is to close off one side and when you close it off, you want to press against the cartilage, right? So you’re actually just closing it off the airway on the right side, you’re going to inhale. So you’ll start with all the air expelled and then you’ll inhale through the left nostril to about roughly a five count, like box breathing. And then you’re going to just switch, take your fingers like this. Or you can use, you know, your ring finger and you’re just going to switch and you open up the right and you can even keep a little bit of pressure or just not and close the left and then you’ll just exhale through the other nostril and then do it like that. Then you’ll inhale the right, close it off and exhale left. Yeah, that’s like the basic beginner practice.

Catherine Divine [00:19:30]:
That’s anuluable, man. So there’s a way to do this for people where you bring your forearm of your non dominant hand to your.

Mark Divine [00:19:37]:
So your shoulders don’t get burned, so.

Catherine Divine [00:19:39]:
Your shoulders don’t get burned out. You rest your hand in or your elbow of your dominant hand in the non dominant hand. And then you can either do like you said, where you bring your ring finger, thumb and you place them right there at the cartilage area. And you aren’t ever like closing, like you said, completely. You’re valving. And so you’re doing a slight pressure that does close the channel of the one nostril you’re not breathing through. But then you also use the, say the ring finger here as my demonstration as a place to valve it. And then so you are regulating airflow and that’s how you can start to build on counts like say you go from five to ten the other, right.

Mark Divine [00:20:19]:
So that’ll slow it down. But also it creates a vibrational quality.

Catherine Divine [00:20:22]:
It creates a vibrational which then stimulates the brain further. This is the other holding that you can do. This is your two fingers here and then your pinky and your thumb. So it kind of depends for people which one’s more comfortable and how long.

Mark Divine [00:20:35]:
Should the practice be? Similar to box breathing, right? 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 rounds. You know, really you could do it by number of rounds. You can do it by minutes.

Catherine Divine [00:20:45]:
You can do, I think five to 20 minutes. I think 20 minutes is an extremely advanced practice. I don’t think anyone wants to start with 20 minutes. I think three minutes is okay to start with. I’M always, you know, an advocate for do what makes sense. Do what you’re gonna do, do what you’re gonna do. Don’t go, don’t set a goal. I was talking about this with my friend this morning about, like, ideally, I would practice for three hours every single morning.

Catherine Divine [00:21:12]:
That would be my ideal. If I had three hours in the morning, however, that’s not feasible. So what’s practical? Okay. 30 minutes to 45 minutes. That’s something I know I can do every single day no matter what. Right. And that’s pranayama asana. That’s the physical and the breath work.

Catherine Divine [00:21:28]:
So awesome. Yep.

Mark Divine [00:21:30]:
So the last. And we’ll close this out after this, but we mentioned box breathing. Box breathing is a foundational practice of what we teach mind and teaching the Navy SEALs for years. And I’m really proud to say that the seals have now kind of adopted box breathing and some of our unveil mind practices at buds, which.

Catherine Divine [00:21:50]:
That’s really cool.

Mark Divine [00:21:51]:
Yeah, that’s really cool. Yeah. I should have trademarked it.

Catherine Divine [00:21:56]:
Yeah. You know, I just saw this thing on social media the other day. Or this lady was like, I trademark everything. I trademark my name. I trademark everything I say. And I was like, my goodness, is that the world we live in? Instead of just the old adage of like, how I mentioned Gary, like, let’s honor our teachers, let’s acknowledge free medicine.

Mark Divine [00:22:15]:
Yeah.

Catherine Divine [00:22:15]:
But box breathing, we. We didn’t make it up. Right. We definitely were the Originally popularized it. We popularized it. And I think we’re the first people introduced more yogic breathing to the BUDS candidates. I don’t know if that’s true or not. You were in buds.

Mark Divine [00:22:30]:
Yeah. I’m not saying that there weren’t certain individuals who had those skills or learned those skills, but weren’t being taught, not institutionally. And so we had a hand in helping the SEALs and other military organizations and other. Not just in this country, but Canada and Europe.

Catherine Divine [00:22:48]:
Yeah, it was. And that takes me. So the. With the box breathing, that is a breath also similar to alternate nostril breathing of the one that you just described, where you’re inhaling, hold, exhaling, hold, inhaling, hold. Right. It’s a box, too. The alternate OST breathing as well as the. It can be.

Catherine Divine [00:23:09]:
And it can be different, but then the box breathing of the inhale, hold, exhale, hold. That’s like that real similar where you’re just breathing through both nostrils. On the inhale, the exhale. There’s so many nuances to breathing, and so something you Said, and I’m glad I’m remembering this about the. Everything’s life force. I wanted to touch on that too. And I think we talked about in the first part of this. But if we think about that we’re receiving instead of doing the breath, there’s a real different energy that starts to happen.

Mark Divine [00:23:40]:
Like you’re.

Catherine Divine [00:23:40]:
You’re being breathed, I’m being breathed. And I really believe that it helps.

Mark Divine [00:23:44]:
End the feeling of separation.

Catherine Divine [00:23:46]:
It does. And I mean, we do breathe automatically all the time. So there is something breathing.

Mark Divine [00:23:52]:
Yes. So who’s doing it? Right, you say, well, the body’s doing it. Well, you sure?

Catherine Divine [00:23:56]:
Consciousness is doing it. Consciousness is doing it. Right.

Mark Divine [00:23:58]:
There’s a. I would love to talk.

Catherine Divine [00:24:00]:
Kath. Sorry, but back to the box breathing. I just want to note on that.

Mark Divine [00:24:04]:
Okay, so the box breathing is in a ratio with equal parts. Okay. This is important because there’s just like with all nostril breathing, there’s a lot of different ratios. You can have I think the 4, 7, 3 or the. What is it? I don’t know. There’s a breath that’s been popular that.

Catherine Divine [00:24:25]:
Had 4, 7, 9.

Mark Divine [00:24:26]:
4, 7, 9, that’s a 4, 7, 9 breath. So inhale four, hold for seven and.

Catherine Divine [00:24:30]:
Then exhale nine and no hold afterwards.

Mark Divine [00:24:32]:
And no hold afterwards. So that’s kind of a lopsided triangle, and that’s fine. And I would say like that breath can stimulate you and calm you down simultaneously because of the long hold is stimulative, sympathetic, and the longer exhale. I remember one of our teacher, Gary, who we did a lot of breath training with weeks, one of his admonitions was to make sure that your exhale always equal to or longer than the inhale hold. And that’s just a safety tip so you don’t overstimulate their brain. But anyways, we’ve tried a lot of different patterns and we just settled on the box pattern and I train it as the ideal to do five count. And each count is equal to one second. So five count in five count, hold your breath, five count, exhale, five count, hold your breath on the exhale hold.

Mark Divine [00:25:31]:
And so Each breath is 20 seconds long, which means you’re doing three breaths per minute. One of the really cool benefits of that, if you practice this every day, ideally twice a day. Ideally, you’re working up to 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the afternoon. Over time, you’re rewiring, you’re retraining your nervous system to be breathed or to breathe for that five Second in and five second out. And that can also be a practice. We call that tactical breathing. So inhale five, exhale five.

Catherine Divine [00:26:02]:
Yes.

Mark Divine [00:26:03]:
So that’s when you’re moving about. That’s in your everyday life. Well, you train yourself through box breathing three breaths per minute, but half of each breath is the retention. So when you drop off the retentions, you’ve trained yourself to breathe five count in, five count out through your nose. And now you’re at six breaths per minute. And they’re just like. The evidence has come in that that’s the optimal breathing pattern through your nose for perfect health, your ideal weight, mental clarity, and longevity.

Catherine Divine [00:26:35]:
Interesting.

Mark Divine [00:26:36]:
Isn’t that cool?

Catherine Divine [00:26:36]:
Yeah. I love when science catches up.

Mark Divine [00:26:38]:
Science is catching up. So we want to breathe, train ourselves to breathe six breaths per minute through the nose. Deep diaphragmatically massaging that vagus nerve, getting all that oxygen in the lungs, getting all that life force. And so that becomes your new normal, which helps bring you peak performance and optimal health. But there’s a lot more to box breathing than that.

Catherine Divine [00:26:59]:
There is.

Mark Divine [00:27:00]:
So just talk for a moment about kind of the awareness that you can bring to each phase. Inhale and the inhale retention, the exhale and the exhale retention. I liken those to, like, expansion, the expansion phase of life, and then the contraction phase of life. The inhale hold can represent flourishing, and the exhale hold could represent death or your fear of death. There’s so much development, awareness, mental clarity and insight that can come from just paying really, really, really, really close attention to every aspect of the breath.

Catherine Divine [00:27:43]:
I agree. I totally agree. And I said this in the last time, too. Just paying attention to your breath will change your life. Just learning to pay attention to the inhale exhale, and then bringing in retention amplifies it. So with box breathing, you know, one of the things that is so important is not to grip in any of it. It’s not a contest, and it’s not about anything but your relationship with your breath. So it’s a very individualized practice.

Catherine Divine [00:28:19]:
And so the nuances you, again, get to know, learn about who you are as a being instead of a doing back to that receptivity of breath. So that’s part of the nuance. One of them is just that physiological noticing how you breathe on an inhale. Like you said, this deep diaphragmatic breathing. Right. So you’re so well trained that you know how to breathe in a way that feels full. But some people might start the practice, and even if they’re breathing through their Nose. It’s all up here.

Catherine Divine [00:28:56]:
So, like a tip for people that are starting out is you can put your hand on your rib cage and just kind of grip around your waist. And notice when you breathe in, does your rib cage move at all? And if it doesn’t, then there’s probably, you know, there’s more to explore there because you want to start to feel your rib cage moving out. You want to feel your breath in your back when you inhale as that diaphragm.

Mark Divine [00:29:18]:
Yeah. We want to breathe multi dimensionally horizontally and a little bit vertically. But most people breathe vertically, meaning just from the chest up.

Catherine Divine [00:29:27]:
Yeah. And I always think of a barrel, like a barrel to expand and contract. Man, I love that Tim was like that. Whenever I did Pranayama with my teacher, Tim Miller, I always imagined this barrel with like a whirlwind of air because he. His breath would go and go and go and go. Anyways, so the inhale, you. You said mainly what I think too. And what I’ve learned is it’s prana, it’s life force.

Catherine Divine [00:29:52]:
Right. So there’s an animation that’s happening on the inhale. There’s a bringing in chi on the inhale. That’s why practices of breath work in nature can be so powerful because you can really like harness, call in the energy. There’s also a welcoming in newness.

Mark Divine [00:30:14]:
Right.

Catherine Divine [00:30:15]:
The retention after the inhale. I personally, when I hold after the inhale, I do feel that expanded state.

Mark Divine [00:30:25]:
I feel my mind expanding in all directions. Out in space, galaxies.

Catherine Divine [00:30:30]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:30:31]:
It’s like that life going in all directions.

Catherine Divine [00:30:33]:
There’s an opening now when my mind’s really, really active because it’s decided that it wants to focus on things that are not serving me.

Mark Divine [00:30:42]:
You still have a monkey mind.

Catherine Divine [00:30:43]:
Yeah, I do. I do. Yeah, me too. Yeah. Oh, you do too.

Mark Divine [00:30:48]:
Everyone does.

Catherine Divine [00:30:48]:
Everybody does. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Then I noted, then the retention becomes very much a big part of the focus practice.

Mark Divine [00:30:59]:
Right. Because that’s the, that’s the opportunity to clear your mind and get control.

Catherine Divine [00:31:03]:
Yeah. It’s kind of like a squeegee to the mind. Yeah. Because on the inhale, because I’ve been practicing so long, I can kind of bypass the focus on the inhale sometimes. But once I hold now I know I’m holding.

Mark Divine [00:31:15]:
Right.

Catherine Divine [00:31:16]:
So there’s something really cool about what it does to the mind. And this is the training.

Mark Divine [00:31:19]:
I think you’re right. So breath. This is a good point. Thanks. I’m glad you brought that up. Movement of the breath moves the mind, it moves energy. That’s why if you’re breathing really rapidly through your mouth, you’re going to have a lot of mental activity and probably emotional activity. And if you just slow down and start breathing through the nose, then the mental activity starts to calm down.

Mark Divine [00:31:38]:
That’s why it has a clarifying effect on the mind and the body gets calmer. But think about the inhale. You’re bringing in energy. You’re drawing in the life force, stirring things up a little bit and moving the mind. And so you’re trying to hold on to the mind so it doesn’t spin off by concentrating on the breath. So the inhale is actually concentration.

Catherine Divine [00:32:00]:
It’s a concentration practice.

Mark Divine [00:32:01]:
But then you hold and the mind stops.

Catherine Divine [00:32:05]:
Yep. If you’re lucky.

Mark Divine [00:32:06]:
If you’re lucky. Right. No, let me rephrase it. You have the opportunity for the mind to stop, to be still. And so this is where you can say, okay, you’re counting and you’re holding. The mind has the opportunity to stop, but it doesn’t, but you’re able to observe it. So this is where you open up to that witnessing, that mindful awareness, that spaciousness in the holds. You’re developing the capacity to witness your thoughts and to be separate from them and not be engaged in the dramas.

Mark Divine [00:32:33]:
So that over time, that just works magic, right?

Catherine Divine [00:32:36]:
Yes.

Mark Divine [00:32:37]:
And that’s primarily that experience is on the inhale hold and the retention of the exhale hold. The exhale hold. Let me just jump ahead. Sorry, you’re going to fill in the blanks. So the exhale like this is okay. You released all that energy, right? Life forces come in expanded. Your mind’s gotten clear. But because we’re living in this physical body.

Mark Divine [00:33:06]:
Right. We can’t hold that space forever. We’d like to sometimes.

Catherine Divine [00:33:09]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:33:09]:
So you’ve got to let it go. And you let the breath go slowly and controlled against concentration. Slowly and controlled. And so what you have the experiences of release. It’s a releasement. You’re letting go. You’re letting go of holding and grasping for that air, that oxygenate life force. The air itself is spent.

Mark Divine [00:33:29]:
Right. So it’s kind of spent air. The energy is like a releasement of anything that’s not serving you. You feel more grounded. You feel you even actually settle down. Because the inhale ends the spine. The exhale, you know, releases. And so that exhale is really powerful way to like combine it with letting go.

Mark Divine [00:33:52]:
A surrendering practice.

Catherine Divine [00:33:54]:
Yeah. And it will also going to what you’re saying about releasing it’ll show you another aspect of your mind which is clinging.

Mark Divine [00:34:02]:
Yeah. What are you clinging on to?

Catherine Divine [00:34:04]:
Because the exhale is now a departure. And so if you think of every breath as a rebirth. So one of the things that I’ve said For almost all 20 years I’ve been teaching is, you know, may we die thousands of times each day, meaning in our breath. And so that exhale is a death. There’s a letting go, a release. It really teaches us how much we cling when we focus on our exhale. Because for a lot of people that exhale and the retention after exhale is when the mind gets really active.

Mark Divine [00:34:40]:
Yes.

Catherine Divine [00:34:40]:
And not everybody.

Mark Divine [00:34:41]:
And that’s when it activates a lot of fear. The primordial fear of death.

Catherine Divine [00:34:46]:
Yes.

Mark Divine [00:34:47]:
And some people have real struggle with the exhale retention.

Catherine Divine [00:34:50]:
And that’s.

Mark Divine [00:34:51]:
That’s okay.

Catherine Divine [00:34:51]:
And that is why people. It’s contraindicated, you know, for people that have high anxiety or acute trauma in the moment.

Mark Divine [00:35:00]:
Um, let’s say in that case, just drop. Drop the exhale hold. Or just do a real brief pause.

Catherine Divine [00:35:06]:
Yep, that’s right. And so. But with the exhale. So. Yeah, you said it. The waist is leaving. They call that upon itself. Prana is the life force, the chi.

Catherine Divine [00:35:14]:
Then upana in the Sanskrit is the waist, and you’re letting go of that, which doesn’t serve you. And so there’s a really nice.

Mark Divine [00:35:22]:
It’s a downward movement too. So prana is an upward movement and apana is the downward movement. So you feel that grounding and settling and sinking.

Catherine Divine [00:35:30]:
Yes. And like you said. Yeah. So there’s a kind of like, calling into spirit. Right. If you think of. Of the. The top channel being like welcoming in inspiration.

Catherine Divine [00:35:40]:
In inspiration and then releasing, letting go, coming back, grounding down. And that can even be linked to death, going back to the earth, returning again. And so when you exhale, why it’s so important to focus on the exhale is because most people, because whether they’re conscious of it or not, with have that clinging, they won’t exhale completely. And that’s where toxicity builds up in our system. And. And this is why people can lose weight just through, like, really focused on breathing.

Mark Divine [00:36:11]:
I’ve made that claim a lot because I’ve seen it happen. Just doing a daily box. Breathing practice over time. It takes some time, but you will lose weight. You’ll come in.

Catherine Divine [00:36:20]:
It’s not a 30 day.

Mark Divine [00:36:21]:
It’s not 30 days. Right. There’s no quick thing. It could take several years. But you’ll find Yourself in your ideal weight and ideal health. It’s a master practice.

Catherine Divine [00:36:30]:
It’s a master practice and it’s also the retention. So this is one thing that’s fascinating because I’ve been reviewing the yoga sutras due to some studies I’ve been doing, and it’s reminded me, in the first chapter, the Samadhi Pada chapter, there’s a sutra on part of accessing the state of yoga. So yoga is a state. Right. It’s a state of. Of. Of unity or detaching from the ego and attaching to conscious collective consciousness. And so it says in this sutran, I think it’s 1.34, it’s 1.39.

Catherine Divine [00:37:05]:
I can’t remember, but focus on the retention after the exhale. And so I’ve been sitting with that and I’ve been thinking, yes, because once you as a practitioner, me as a practitioner can notice I’m clinging. Surrender to the clinging. So this is where there’s a surrender, the breath, the exhale. And then I hold the expansive state that we’re talking about on that retention after the inhale happens at the bottom on that retention after the exhale. And it becomes like in the chronic breathing, like the holotropic breathing, it becomes like, like, wow, I. I am infinite.

Mark Divine [00:37:48]:
Right. And you can feel, though is. Is from the body, not from the mind, not from the head.

Catherine Divine [00:37:54]:
Right, right, yeah, yeah. It’s a body thing because you now you’re. There’s a calming of the parasympathetic, but I would also think it has to do with the mind relaxing. So this is when the mind has completely stilled and there’s like this quietness.

Mark Divine [00:38:06]:
Death of the mind represents death of the ego.

Catherine Divine [00:38:09]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:38:09]:
I think that the exhale, the retention. Exhale, retention is our best opportunity to experience this radical stillness where everything is still. And like Poonja said, stillness is the most important thing. Don’t waste time not seeking it.

Catherine Divine [00:38:29]:
Yep.

Mark Divine [00:38:29]:
Doing it. Stillness.

Catherine Divine [00:38:32]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:38:32]:
So this practice ultimately is coming home practice. It’s. It’s a health practice. It covers all five mountains. You’re going to be developing and training and integrating physically, mentally, emotionally, intuitionally and spiritually with box breathing. That’s why it’s a master practice. And the key is just simply do it every day. Do it every day.

Mark Divine [00:38:49]:
Like Gary, Gary, our teacher, Gary Kraskow is amazing. Guy would say, just do it every day, five minutes. And then he would look at us and he’d go, I know you’re not going to, though.

Catherine Divine [00:39:01]:
Yeah. Which, you know, if you do it.

Mark Divine [00:39:02]:
Every day for five minutes. It’ll transform your life. But I know you’re not going to. He did that to, like, you know, it’s like that, that. That rule with children, tell them what not to do.

Catherine Divine [00:39:10]:
I agree. And I will say that that that works on some people. It doesn’t work with everybody. So I would say some people would actually relate to do it. See what happens. I’m curious. And I’ll say in that stillness comment, it’s remembering that there is dynamic movement within the stillness, of course. So that stillness.

Catherine Divine [00:39:30]:
And this goes back to that gripping part when you’re doing a breathing practice, box breathing, anything else, but notice the movement within the stillness. So, like, this goes back to even the anatomical. When you’re inhaling your spine, you mentioned it is going into axial extension. You’re elongating. There’s space, there’s dynamic movement. There’s also stillness in it. Even though you’re breathing in there. There’s stillness in the hold.

Catherine Divine [00:39:58]:
You’re elongating still. And then there’s the exhale. There’s movement, but there’s stillness in that movement. It’s the yin and the yang. There’s pieces.

Mark Divine [00:40:07]:
And what this teaches you or develops in you is to find the stillness in every area of your life. In the midst of a conversation, the midst of a firefight, even I experienced when I was in Iraq. And I box breathe every single day when I was there. And I was really, really calm and still, even in some pretty intense situations.

Catherine Divine [00:40:27]:
Yeah. And that goes back to. We started this conversation on my surf injury. And you know I’m not a lifetime surfer. Right. I’m a beginner. I’ve only been surfing for three and a half years. So I attribute my response and my ability to handle myself in that moment in the ocean.

Catherine Divine [00:40:45]:
I am a lifetime ocean swimmer. But to the practices of concentration and breath and the ability to slow down, focus, pay attention, that all came the.

Mark Divine [00:40:58]:
Only thing you can control.

Catherine Divine [00:40:59]:
That’s right. And that came from my breathing practices. That comes from training the mind in the ways that we’ve taught over the years. And so box breathing, if I didn’t have so many hours under my belt of box breathing, of alternate nostril breathing, of all the breathing, it might not come so consciously. And that’s why we practice every day for those moments, too. Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:41:22]:
Awesome. Thanks for joining me today again, Catherine.

Catherine Divine [00:41:24]:
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Mark Divine [00:41:25]:
Many more of these conversations.

Catherine Divine [00:41:26]:
Yeah. It’s one of my favorite topics. Breath is life.

Mark Divine [00:41:31]:
Breath is free medicine.

Catherine Divine [00:41:32]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:41:33]:
Thanks for joining us on the Mark Divine Show. Appreciate you being here. Appreciate you doing the work. So stay focused and breathe. Lock in that practice box. Breathe five to 20 minutes every day, ideally in the morning and the evening. And just enjoy the benefits because they will come. You can find the show notes on markdivine.com you can get the video on the YouTube channel.

Mark Divine [00:41:57]:
Search for Mark Divine. If you haven’t rated or viewed the show, please consider doing so. It really helps keep us relevant and shooting for 5,000 five star reviews this year. If you’re not on my newsletter subscription, go to markdivine.com to subscribe. It comes out every Tuesday. Divine inspiration with all sorts of goodness in that that you will enjoy and inspirational. And please share that with your friends. Till next time, stay focused.

Mark Divine [00:42:22]:
Be the change you want to see in the world. Let’s do that at scale. Thanks for your support of the Mark Divine Show. You’re awesome. Ooh yah. Bye now. Boom. Boom.

Mark Divine [00:42:34]:
That was our best film day. Yeah.

Catherine Divine [00:42:36]:
Yeah. That was a good one.

Mark Divine [00:42:37]:
That was long. Do you think that should be two or is that. Just keep it one.

Catherine Divine [00:42:41]:
Sorry. I know I tried to be short.

Mark Divine [00:42:43]:
It was 40 minutes, but that’s a normal one.