How Breathwork Heals the Mind and Body | Jessica Dibb on Conscious Breathing, Ep 205

Jennifer Norman:
Take a breath with me for a moment. No, really. Pause.

Jennifer Norman:
Inhale. Exhale.

Jennifer Norman:
We live in a world obsessed with optimization. Better productivity, better habits, better health, better skin, better sleep. Entire industries promise the next breakthrough that will help us feel calmer, clearer, and more alive. But what if the most powerful medicine that we have has been with us since the moment we were born? Our breath. We breathe about 20,000 times a day, yet most of us rarely think about it, let alone harness its potential for healing, transformation, and deeper awareness. Today's guest believes that conscious breathing may be one of the most powerful pathways we have. To regulate our nervous systems, reconnect with our authentic selves, and access expanded states of awareness.

Jennifer Norman:
Jessica Dibb is the founder, spiritual director, and principal teacher of the Inspiration Consciousness School. She is also the author of Breathwork and Psychotherapy: Clinical Applications for Healing and Transformation, a groundbreaking work exploring how breath can support physical, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual healing. Jessica's work synthesizes deep psychology, consciousness studies, somatic wisdom, and scientific understanding to cultivate what she calls embodying wholeness. She's also the founding co-director and ethics chair of the Global Professional Breathwork Alliance, helping establish standards for safe and multi-dimensional breathwork practices worldwide. Through her teaching, Jessica guides people toward authentic breathing practices that support emotional regulation, expanded awareness, and deeper connection, not just with ourselves, but with life itself. In this conversation, we explore how conscious breathing can transform the way we relate to our bodies, our emotions, our relationships, and even the world around us. So if you've ever felt overwhelmed, disconnected, or simply curious about how something as simple as breath could open the door to profound transformation, this episode is for you.

Jennifer Norman:
Welcome to the Human Beauty Movement, Jessica. I'm so delighted to have you here.

Jessica Dibb:
It is really an honor and also a profound joy. Listening to you give that introduction was just like hearing angels sing and symphony orchestra and the beauty of oceans and lakes and rivers and wind moving. I'm just so moved at how much you've taken in about what this can be, conscious breathing, and also what you want to give to the world and your listeners.

Jennifer Norman:
Really blessed that you see that. I see you, and I'm so grateful for for all the work that you've done and that you're sharing this with the audience today. So let's start with breathing. Breathing is something that we all share as human beings. It's so universal, and yet most of us don't realize how truly powerful it is. So I wanna hear what first drew you to breathwork and consciousness studies, and how did that path eventually lead you to founding the Inspiration Consciousness School?

Jessica Dibb:
Thank you for that question. I remember knowing from my earliest memories, I could really sense with my parents as a very, very young girl that all people had this desire to love and to be loved and ultimately to be love itself in every situation. I could see that, I could just feel it. And I could also sense that there was fear that was holding people back from doing flowering that gift fully into the world and whatever gifts and skills they also had that could express that love in ways, whether it was plumbing or being the president of a university. I just, I could sense that there was something more that wanted to come forth. And I remember feeling very like I wanted my vocation to be, how do you get that out of, like, how do you release that in people? How do you give it to the world? How do you dissolve that fear. So the first thing that happened was that when I was 5, my mother took me to see the Royal Danish Ballet under the stars on a summer night. It was an outdoor performance and it was my first time seeing a ballet and I thought I had never seen anything so beautiful in my whole life.

Jessica Dibb:
And I thought, and that's part of the synchronicity of being on here with you today, I thought to myself, beauty, that's what will unlock this potential in everybody. That's what will dissolve the fear. If everybody can be exposed to enough beauty of various kinds, because it's so inspiring and uplifting. And so I decided to be a dancer and I spent many years being very serious about it. Even moved to New York when I was 12 without my parents to go to a special school for ballet, got to dance with the Royal Ballet from England and the Bolshoi at Lincoln Center. I mean, it was, I loved ballet, but I did realize by the time that I was 14, 15, that this wasn't going to be a universal medicine. And somewhere in me, I began to know that what I was looking for was a universal medicine that everybody could have access to regardless of gender, religion, culture, language, race, socioeconomic status. I knew that there was a unifying medicine and nutrient.

Jessica Dibb:
And so at that point, I began to— I was still dancing, but I began to explore many other pathways in politics and literature and arts and science and all kinds of things. And eventually I ended up living in a yoga ashram for 4 years and being very disciplined with practices and meditation, and we did breathing. It's called pranayama in yoga, different breathing exercises. And I was learning that you could create state changes in your body through these, and in your mind and in your heart through these practices. You could, if you were tired, you could energize. If you were energized too much and couldn't fall asleep, you could fall asleep. If you needed to heat up your body, you could do that. If you needed to focus more, you could do that.

Jessica Dibb:
And then of course there were even other kinds of exercises that could help with respiratory distress and asthma and things like that. And so I was learning all of that. And I decided at that point that I wanted to go to medical school because I felt like I wanted to have the credential. I love medicine still to this day. I love medicine. And I decided that if I had the credential, I could start to teach some of these things that I had been learning along the way. About beauty and about the body and about breathing and about yoga and about all of these different things. And there came to be a point where I was very concerned because I knew that, first of all, medicine as it's practiced allopathically often overrides some of the symptoms that people's bodies are saying to give us information about how we can do healing on a deeper level.

Jessica Dibb:
And so I knew that there would be times that I would have to give somebody a medicine in order to pass, in order to continue on my journey, when I would know that perhaps something else would actually— dietary changes or nutrients or breathing techniques or other meditation or other things would be good for them. So I was feeling a little bit of a challenge about that. And then I'd had a beautiful son at that point at a young age, and I just knew that was also very important. And how could I spend all these long hours, but I did want to be a doctor. Nevertheless, I was in an inner journey, an inner inquiry about it. And at some point I went to get help. I went to get help at a holistic healing clinic and a beautiful psychologist who knew about breathwork said, well, I'm going to have you do something called breathing awareness therapy, which in the book I now describe this whole plethora of breathing practices that I call Group 5 breathwork that are about human potential and deeper inquiry and expanded states of consciousness. And on my very first session, I remember opening my eyes.

Jessica Dibb:
Now, I'd been doing breathing practices already for 5 years, but I remember opening my eyes and thinking, why isn't the whole world doing this? Because my entire orientation towards life changed, and I could see colors brighter, and I could see almost like see the atoms moving in the air, and I could feel my essential unity with things., and so then I was doing breathwork and with him, and at one point the medical school thing became, I was in my senior year of pre-med studies and it became very urgent. What am I going to do? And so I went into retreat and I was sort of meditating and breathing. What should I do? And I had this epiphany like you've described to me that you had a spiritual awakening. I had another sort of like almost a second or third awakening, kind of an epiphany where I just knew, I could hear, there was like guidance inside that was saying, you're not gonna go to medical school, there's something else for you. And I kind of entered what some people might call an altered state, but for me it was just a very awake state. And 2 days later, I'm in this awake state knowing I'm not gonna go to medical school, but I don't know what the thing is yet. And the man who had been, the psychologist who had been guiding me in my inner healing and transformation said, I have been looking for someone for 2 years to train, to apprentice, to do this deep inner work with breathwork, and I think it might be you. And at that moment, everything just cleared.

Jessica Dibb:
And so I entered this deep apprenticeship with this man for a couple of years, having the beauty of all of his training in psychology and psychotherapy, as well as his spiritual understanding of things and his knowing how to do breathwork. And I think it was just invaluable.. And so that's how I kind of came upon it. And the more that I practiced it, the more I began to realize that it literally is a unifying modality. It unifies our somatic, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual capacities, and it unifies us with everything on the planet because everything is breathing and/or it's part of the oxygen cycle. Even the water that has oxygen in it, photosynthesis that happens, everything is a part of the oxygen cycle. So I began to realize that here's this powerfully unifying medicine, which we can certainly talk about the ways that it unifies more. And I just feel inspired to really help people feel the medicine chest that they have right in the treasure chest that they have right in their own chest.

Jessica Dibb:
And the fact that if they connect with the breathing of another person, all kinds of barriers and projections and misunderstandings can dissolve and something new can happen.

Jennifer Norman:
Wow, that sounds incredible. I think you definitely were before your time. I'm sure that now that breathwork has become so much more popularized, it's probably like, I've known this for so much longer than a lot of people have. That I think that the kind of breathwork that comes into play very often, people hear about square breathing, box breathing, and they're not necessarily, it might be great to help to calm their systems down and to help to regulate the nervous systems in a certain way, but getting to a state of transcendentalism about seeing atoms and colors brighter, I want that. Everybody wants that. And I'm sure that the audience is listening and thinking, how do I get there? What's the magic? What's the secret sauce? And of course, you've got a wonderful book that helps to explain this, but let's go a little bit further as far as breath being medicine. Tell us, how is breath medicine? How does it help us to heal? What is that, that it's, uh, so extraordinary and that might help to preclude us from having to do a whole, a lot of other things that we might take orally or go to Western medicine for? Please tell us.

Jessica Dibb:
So first, like any responsible person, let me just say that I'm not in any way, uh, shooing or denying that allopathic medicine has been a profound gift to this planet. And literally, like, IV fluids can save lives. And if you're in a car accident and you're bleeding out on the street, you're— the beauty, the profound gift of surgery and things like that. We— I'm not in any way saying that we wouldn't want to use those or particular medicines, but I do think it's important for people to understand that if they can center their breathing as a way of looking at life, if everything that they do can be almost reconstellated, re-envisioned from the perspective of their breathing, they will learn that first of all, they have the capacity, we all have the capacity to be present with everything that happens with us, no matter the time, the place, the situation, the people, no matter the emotions that may be coming up in us, ranging from rage and jealousy and envy and fear to confusion, to joy, to love, to ecstasy that we have. And no matter what may be coming at us from relationship or people that we're around, no matter what we may read about or see in the world, we have the capacity through our breathing to be so present with all of that, with whatever it may invoke in us or cause us to feel. That we are able to stay in touch with some fundamental gifts that dwell within every human being, such as compassion, wisdom, ingenuity, creativity, and intelligence, which has nothing to do with IQ. I mean, it has something to do with IQ, but it's like knowing what you need to know when you need to know it.

Jessica Dibb:
Like, you're the one that's showing up in that moment, and there's a way of being present that you just know what to do in that moment. And so the breathing, conscious breathing and breathwork, can help us move through all of the things that we have felt were overwhelming or dysregulating or unsettling, things about ourself, things from our past and our childhood, things about the world, really help us to feel our capacity to just be here no matter what in a way that is regulated enough that we have to our resources so we can contribute to the moment. And we have many examples of human beings that have been able to do that kind of thing, and we often think of them as luminaries or on a higher level than we are. And they are, they're beautiful, amazing, inspiring luminaries. And I would say to everyone listening that you have that same capacity. We all have that capacity. Whatever it is that we do in life, whether it's baking bread or fixing plumbing or taking care of children or cleaning places so that they're beautiful and healthy or creating computer programs or being the leader in a company, all of these things are vectors and avenues and pathways for contributing this kind of presence and love. So what I would say, having said all of that, is there is no faster way to become present than to take a conscious breath.

Jessica Dibb:
One conscious breath, and you may still feel at that moment the anxiety or the worry or the fear or the whatever, the projecting out in the future that you're doing. And as soon as you consciously breathe, several things begin to happen. First of all, you become more embodied. You're feeling and sensing your breath. So now you're not as dissociated. The more breaths you take, obviously, the more this is going to happen. But it begins with one breath. You start to feel embodied.

Jessica Dibb:
You start to have more access to your somatic wisdom, your somatic information and energy that's there. You also— your brain is now opening up into a place of global, meaning the whole brain neural coherence, because usually we're only breathing from the automatic. The automatic breathing is coming just from the brainstem, but as soon as you're breathing consciously with awareness, you've invoked the neocortex, and you're also breathing consciously because you're having some kind of appreciation for why you should be breathing consciously or what might happen because you're breathing consciously. So that brings in the emotions and the limbic brain, is now more animated, activated. So now you've got these different parts of the brain all working, all activated, and all working together on the same thing— breathing. And we know from neuroscience that neurons that fire together wire together. So they start to give information to each other, and now you are activating what I like to call the social-emotional-cognitive continuum. You have information coming in from all of these different sources and they are conjoining, they're coming in together.

Jessica Dibb:
So you have greater intuition at that point, you have greater wisdom at that point. So that's a powerful medicine for physical ailments where you could be sensing into the body, what is happening in my body? It creates greater interoception so that you have more actual felt sense of what's happening, even like with your heart rate and other processes that might be going on in the body. You have greater access to your emotions. You're not rejecting anything at this point. You're actually welcoming in with each breath, what is the information that is coming to me? So we also know that when we breathe more deeply, when we relax on the exhale, when we inhale more deeply, we're starting to have regulation with our autonomic nervous system. So many of us spend so much time in sympathetic dominance, which the sympathetic nervous system is wonderful. It's what you need to do to make things happen, to do things. And certainly if there's an emergency, you want to be able to rise to the occasion.

Jessica Dibb:
But in our culture, as so many people have written about, it's so known, we are just overrun with cortisol. There's such a high anxiety level because of constant digital information, because of awareness of global events, of what's happening in this place or that place that's violence or environmental catastrophes or poverty, um, need that isn't being met. And then just all this information coming at us all the time. So we're, we're kind of in a state that we used to only be in when something would happen, you know, but now it's like we're in it all the time. So when we do conscious breathing, we start to upregulate the parasympathetic part of the autonomic nervous system, which allows us, invites us to rest, to relax, to flow with the situation. And so conscious breathing brings tremendous balance to the sympathetic and parasympathetic system. And so then you become regulated in a way that, by the way, ultimately, I think a lot of people feel like, oh, I need to do, do, do, and then relax, relax, relax, and then go for it and then have a break. Yeah.

Jessica Dibb:
With breathwork, the promise is actually that you would enter a state of flow. We know that flow, as it's usually described, you know, when people are in extreme sports, for instance, and they're in the flow and they're getting inner guidance, they always describe then at the end, a period of letting go of that flow and relaxing. Guess what? There's so many practices people can do, working in the stock market, doing an extreme sport, art, and then all of your, like, your tai chi, your Sufi whirling, yoga, all of these things. Every one of them has to come to an end. Guess what doesn't have to come to an end ever? Breathing. So the implications of that are so profound. Sometimes when I speak it, I feel like people sort of look dazed because they're just so habituated to this idea that we have peaks and ebbs, flow, you know, and we do. That's okay.

Jessica Dibb:
There's nothing wrong with that. But the idea that there would actually be something that would create a constant state of flow through every moment of your life is almost like so mind-blowing that they can't actually take it in. But that's actually the promise of breathwork. Is that you do a breathwork session, especially some of these deeper human potential breathworks that can take you into these expanded states of consciousness, or just breathing practices. You know, I describe 5 different groups of kinds of breathing practices and what they are most useful for. And then you can keep on being aware of your breath as you get up off the mat, as you go to wash the dishes, you can be aware of your breathing and you can keep invoking and inviting these experiences that you've had through breathwork. So for me, that is also one of the most powerful medicinal parts of it, is that you would have access to greater wisdom in yourself, a more, a more unified somatic, emotional, cognitive wisdom with whatever is happening.

Jennifer Norman:
You know, there was a time long ago, I remember, I used to suffer panic attacks, and, uh, there was one time in particular where I was able to really regulate myself down from it because I said, remember your breath, remember the breathing. And it was able to just completely dissipate those feelings of stress, anxiety, worry. Can you, let's take, let's talk a little bit further about how that mechanism works. I know you go into detail in your beautiful book, but for those that are on this extreme go, go, go, because they feel that they need to keep up, they've got so many responsibilities in life, they've got, you know, just a million things on their mind and they're perseverating about the news and a lot of the, the crises that are happening and are absorbing that into their emotional state and feeling a bit paralyzed. What does that state do to our subconscious or unconscious breathing? And then coming into awareness of it, how does that help us from a parasympathetic perspective?

Jessica Dibb:
Yes. So, you know, when we are overwhelmed like that, stricken with fear because we hear about certain things, panic, as you're talking about, anxiety is probably the thing that most people talk about nowadays, it absolutely affects our breathing. I mean, our heart rate variability tends to get really dysregulated. Our breathing rate tends to go up. It gets higher than normal. We breathe more shallowly. Our diaphragm, which is a muscle, you know, it's not like a bone, it's a muscle. So it needs to be able to move up and down like a kind of a pump., you know, it gets more constricted because we're constricted.

Jessica Dibb:
And so it can't move. It literally can't move as much as it is, as it could. And so all of those things begin to happen. And that sometimes what will occur, even if we're breathing shallowly enough, we might start to feel unconsciously oxygen deprivation. We might start to feel like we're not getting enough breath, but we might not even be aware that we're feeling that way. And then the body tries to compensate by trying to breathe deeper, but because we're so constricted, all we can do is breathe faster. And sometimes what that will even lead to is that we're now breathing so quickly that we're breathing out too much carbon dioxide with each breath, and that can create hyperventilation, which is something that people understand, that you're breathing so fast, blowing off this carbon dioxide, your pH begins to change, your, you know, your the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide begins to change, you can actually start to feel sweaty. Your heart can start to palpate a little bit.

Jessica Dibb:
You can even get what's called tetany, which is that your muscles are having so— the pH is changing and calcium's being removed from them that your face might start to feel very stiff or almost like it's hard to open or smile or do anything. And your hands might even feel like they're kind of curling up or your toes.

Jennifer Norman:
Like your whole your body wants to brace itself against impact.

Jessica Dibb:
Yes. You're tightening everything. Yeah. Everything. And so, you know, this is what these are the, you know, I was kind of describing a kind of a continuum of what happens when we're at the mercy of the fear and we're not able to center our breathing as what's really, you know, like I'm here right now, even if all of this other stuff is happening. I'm here. And even if that stuff were happening to me, and God knows, I want to be really careful to say this to everybody. I'm not saying like a panacea, like if the United States, for instance, since we're doing this podcast in the United States, we're suddenly having violence or war. I'm not saying it would be easy for any of us if we suddenly found ourselves eating out of a rusty tin can or we were faced with potentially losing our lives.

Jessica Dibb:
But what I am saying is that every moment is precious. And there actually is a way to live where even if we were facing potential, some, you know, something really horrible, we could feel the beauty of ourselves in this moment. And we would be able to appreciate that we have it, you know, that we're not in this moment gone, you know, we are here and something's happening. And we know that there, we've heard so many inspiring stories of people in these very challenging situations who seem to be able to rise in a certain way and, and just cut through all of that and still have something powerfully beautiful happen to them, either internally or even with the people they're relating to. And I again just want to say to everybody, that power dwells within each one of us. And I do feel that if we can connect with and befriend and cultivate the connection with our breathing that capacity is there for any of us. Meister Eckhart said years ago, back in the whatever century it was, he said, "Every creature is a story of God." And I hold that whether you believe in the divine or not, I think the sentiment is really true that every human being is unique and is precious and has something valuable that could be given to this world if the pathways within them the chemical pathways, the muscular pathways, the emotional pathways, the cognitive pathways could be supported in a way that they knew and they could be free. And I think that conscious breathing is an incredible medicine for unwinding all of the knots and the things that have traumatized us, the unmet needs that we've had.

Jessica Dibb:
The potentials that haven't been nourished and nurtured. It's powerful medicine for all of that unwinding and then ultimately for nurturing and nourishing our greatest potential to come into the world.

Jennifer Norman:
You said something that I want to just reiterate because I find it so beautiful, and that is the value in every creature, the value in every human being, the fact, the true fact that listeners, you are worth it. You really are here because you have a place. You deserve it. You belong here. You have a right to take another breath. You have the right to exist. You have the right to take your breath and harness it and continue moving towards your own health, your own freedom, your own inner power. And that is is a value that we believe very strongly of, that everybody matters.

Jennifer Norman:
You matter so much, and that's why we want to share this message with you, that breathing is something that we can all possess and harness and know a little bit more about, and that can help you to stand a little stronger as you are withstanding all of the faces of the day, because we know we are in tough, turbulent times, and You know, certainly we, we recognize that we're not running away from it or anything. It's just how can we better manage the day-to-day that we all face and do it as, as most spectacularly as we can. And something that is so fundamental is the awareness that we can use our breath in order to be able to shape some of that to come.

Jessica Dibb:
Everything that you just said, Jennifer, was so beautiful and It reminds me of a quote that I put in the book by Jon Kabat-Zinn, who I'm sure many of your readers know because he is kind of the founder of mindfulness in a way in this country, a professor at Harvard. You know, he said that, he said, as long as you are breathing, there is more right about you than wrong. And I think it was just such a beautiful quote. And I really do feel that way.

Jennifer Norman:
Echo everything you just said. Well, Jessica, you spoke about conscious breathing, which I think now everybody understands. We have the unconscious, the automatic that we do, and then bringing awareness to the conscious can help us to, you know, have control, have power over matter potentially. You also talk about authentic breathing, and I want to just dive into that a little bit and see if that is something different or what you exactly mean by authentic breathing.

Jessica Dibb:
Yeah. So, you know, that's really powerful. And thank you for reading the book. You clearly read the book because authentic breathing comes in part 3. So, and it is a kind of an evolution. So I think that authentic breathing, which I sometimes say that the deepest kind of breathwork that could get us to authentic breathing is what I'm starting to call conscious responsive breathing. And so when we first set out on the journey of breathwork, Many of us, like you mentioned, box breathing, for instance, or, you know, there are, there are all these different techniques. I think a lot of people do breathwork for stress reduction, for regulation, performance, you know, and with all of which is wonderful.

Jessica Dibb:
I mean, any kind of breathing, deeper breathing, more conscious breathing is wonderful. And I talk about all those methods and practices in the book. But as you so astutely said at the beginning in your introduction, Jennifer, there's a kind of deeper flowering of the individual, a really awakening all of their potentials and having a life of deep meaning. And then I would say love, you know, having that ultimate feeling of love that helps you transform the world. That's a game changer. It's a force multiplier, you know, it's an amplifying force. So I think there's kind of a journey to get to authentic breathing. We can authentically, we can become aware of how we are breathing right now..

Jessica Dibb:
And whether that's a panic state or a relaxed state, or even there could be somebody that's even so downregulated with depression that they're not breathing in panic, but they're under-breathing. They're literally barely breathing. So you can become aware of your breathing on that spectrum. And in a way, that's the beginning without judging it, just befriending it like, oh, this is how I'm breathing right now.. And in a way, that is the beginning of the journey to authentic breathing. However, real authentic breathing is also the reflection of you without sort of the defenses, the, what would we call it, compensations that you've created, the masks that you've produced, the way that you promote yourself in a certain way. It's really being able to just be with yourself as you are and let the breathing reflect and support your flower, your potential from that moment. And so I think that there's a kind of journey that needs to happen, and part of it is that you develop an appreciation for your breathing, you befriend it.

Jessica Dibb:
Secondly is that you do practice some of these different practices that can help with regulation, can help with mindfulness, can help with therapeutic interventions about particular, you know, like respiratory challenges, diabetes, you know, ADHD, lack of focus, to developing some of these kind of breathing techniques. This would be the Group 4. Now I'm kind of taking us through the groups. The Group 4 would be about developing human capacities such as compassion, strength, focus, mercy, Understanding beauty, joy, there are actually breathing practices that will help you somatically feel those things. And then ultimately, the Group 5 breathwork is about doing the deep inner work of really meeting yourself without judgment, with appreciation and understanding that everything that's happening within you, you know, the sensations of your body, even like your knee is in pain, you know, or something, a back thing that you might have, an illness that takes place, every emotion that you have, every thought, every image, everything, you learn not to reject it. You don't act out on it. You don't want to, like, just because you feel angry at somebody, you don't want to take out that anger on them, but you don't reject yourself for feeling the anger. And you learn to breathe with it and metabolize it and alchemize it so that you are understanding what's the deeper motivation here? What is the deeper information that is coming to me? What's the deeper guidance about what I can do or should do? You respond to pain that you have had that might be stored in your cells, the muscles of your body, trauma that you've had.

Jessica Dibb:
And as you do that deep inner work with the breathing, and I really want to say that because it's a game changer. I mean, I've had people that have done therapy, done depth psychology. It's uncommon for somebody to come out of a Group 5 breathwork session and say, that feels like I just did 3 or 6 months of therapy in one session. Because when you're doing the breathing with it, you're getting the somatic shift, not just the cognitive or orientation shift. You're literally experiencing what you're realizing. Okay? And so anyway, if you do enough inner work with the breathwork work with it, you finally can get to a state where you are authentically breathing. You're not asking your breath to breathe in a certain pattern. You don't even— you've done enough breathwork now of all of that kind of stuff that you've broken up some of the physiological constrictions, and you understand how breath can create state changes and even trait changes over time.

Jessica Dibb:
You've done so much of that, you're kind of like a master. Like, I like to think of— I love the cellist Yo-Yo Ma because I used to watch him play and I thought, I'm literally watching— he looks like he's turning the cello into melting butter. Like, who can do that, you know? But when somebody becomes connected enough to something and disciplined or discipled enough to it, it's almost like they can paint outside the lines now, you know? They can be creative. And so I think that begins to happen for a human being with their breathing and the non-rejection of these different aspects of themselves, that they, they can get to a place where their breathing is freed up enough that it responds to what they need in any given moment, what their body needs, what their emotions and heart need, what their awareness needs, what their thoughts need, what their spirit needs. And that's what I mean by authentic breathing.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. Wow. It almost seems like you're practicing from levels 1 through 4 and you're getting so good at it that you master it and then you embody it. And that's when you arrive at breathwork as flow state or a 24/7 kind of a flow state where your breathing just responds and knows almost intelligently or innately what it needs to do.

Jessica Dibb:
Perfectly said. You know, I, I remember after those initial breathwork sessions, the one where I said, why isn't the whole world doing this? And then some other really significant sessions that I had where, um, with this psychologist where like I had had chronic tonsillitis since I was 5, and it would happen twice a year almost like clockwork. I would have fevers of 104. I would be sick for a week or two. I got these huge penicillin shots with like needles that were so long, but luckily my doctor didn't believe in taking out tonsils, so he didn't. And so I, you know, now here I am like 16 years, 17 years later after the age of 5, and I'm just so used to getting the tonsillitis every year. And I'm in a breathwork session and my throat starts to become really sore. And I think to myself while I'm breathing, oh, well, maybe I'm getting my tonsillitis that I always I get, okay, you know, but I'm breathing, I'm doing the breathwork session, and I become aware through facilitation— the facilitator is very important, by the way, we can talk about that if you want— I become aware through facilitation that I'm connecting to my 5-year-old self, and my 5-year-old self is wanting to say to my parents, please stop arguing, please stop arguing, it's really painful.

Jessica Dibb:
But I don't feel that I can because they're caught up in whatever they're doing. And so I suddenly, you know, I'm facilitated to speak, to breathe, to say to my parents with a lot of, you know, deep breaths, please stop, please, this is hurting me. And I want you so much love. And I want, you know, all of those things. And then the sore throat clears and I'm breathing and I think, well, that's interesting. Thinking, maybe it wasn't that I was getting my tonsillitis. I might get that in a month or two. Maybe it's just that I was clearing this.

Jessica Dibb:
A year later, Jennifer, I realized that I had not had tonsillitis. I usually get it twice a year, and I've never had it since then, and it's been decades. So I was having experiences like this. Interesting. Yeah. And I remember just kind of at that entering a state where I would say that for the next 5 years, I was so aware of my breath that my practice was whenever my breath would start to catch, whenever it would get shallower, whenever it would get, you know, very high rate or something, I would say to myself, what's going on? I'm getting some kind of message. My breath is reflecting that some part of me is in needing something or it's in touch with a past memory or it's, you know, whatever. And I would either right in that moment take the time to just kind of feel into what that was until my breath was more full again, or I would just flag it, you know, like, okay, because maybe I was doing something.

Jessica Dibb:
And then I would at night take a few minutes to try to sort that and unwind it. And it was just incredible to spend 5 years using my breath as my therapist. Like, it was literally showing me, you know, oh, there's this thing and it wants to be attended to. And so I think that we can all do that and we can get to that authentic breathing. And in a way, it is like you have to master sort of these first 4 levels of breathwork. But I also want to shy away from the word master for people to feel like breathwork is hard because it's not, you know, especially if we shift our orientation from I need to take a deep breath to let me be aware that I'm being breathed already. And then it's much more relaxing. Relaxing.

Jessica Dibb:
It's like we've been being breathed by creation since we were born. We don't have to put any conscious effort towards breathing. It just happens. So if I can be aware that I'm being breathed, then I can receive my breath instead of taking a breath, and then I can receive it deeper, and I can breathe deeper, and I can be breathed deeper. And so I don't want people to think it has to be hard. It's not like that. It's like opening up to you know, this profound nurturing, really this profound nourishment.

Jennifer Norman:
I love the shift from taking to receiving. I don't think anybody really thinks about that as far as breath goes.

Jessica Dibb:
Yes. Receiving really makes a difference. And recognizing it's a gift.

Jennifer Norman:
It is.

Jessica Dibb:
You receive. Yeah, it's the Big Bang moving out into existence and happening right now with this next breath we have, you know.

Jennifer Norman:
Yes, yes. Now I'm sure that my audience has in some shape or form been involved in some form of breathwork or some way that they've been made aware of their breathing, whether they've been exercising or whether they feel that constriction with stress. What would you say would be a good way to start just moving beyond that to even further deepen their consciousness of their breathing to help them to get through the day in just a very simple sense, as you were saying, it's a very simple thing that we can incorporate.

Jessica Dibb:
It's something that we can do daily and all the time. So first of all, I would say, can everybody become aware of the quality of their orientation towards their breathing? Can you start to befriend your breath? Can you? And really, that's like actually an emotional thing. You know, like people do gratitude journals at the end of each day, 3 things that I'm grateful for. Can you wake up in the morning and just be grateful? Even, you know, even I think about when people in the early days of the pandemic and there were people in hospitals, you know, and how every breath, you know, brings tears to my eyes even still, how every breath was valued. You know, they were just like, can I get one more breath? One more breath? You know, I think we started to become aware then that was part of the awakening into breathwork of how how precious each breath is. So don't wait to be sick, you know, but, or if you are sick, then okay, that, do it then too. But even if we're not sick, how about waking up and just being aware of like, wow, this one breath and this one breath and to befriend it. Don't, don't feel judging of it.

Jessica Dibb:
If it, if it, if it's not deep or if it's not smooth or if it's not harmonious, just appreciate it, you know? So I would say first is to befriend it. Friend it. Secondly, can you actually experience each day for a few minutes, I'm being breathed. Look, I get to decide to scroll through my phone for hours and hours. I get to decide to eat this thing or go to this place. I get to decide I'm using all this energy for that. And without even having to use any of my energy, I'm being breathed. Wow.

Jessica Dibb:
Okay, so now can I join with that? Can I join with the being breathed to let myself be breathed deeper? And I would say that if people could spend 7 minutes a day, and with all the other things we do, I know it's possible to create 7 minutes just doing that, befriending, focusing on being breathed, and then letting ourselves be breathed a little deeper. Even if you only did that for 7 minutes a day, by the end of a week you would feel a real qualitative shift in your life. Really, you would. Now, if you want to add to that, then you start to do things like take your fingers and put them, curl them underneath your, the bottom rib and feel where there might be tension, where your diaphragm may not have as much flexibility. It may be adhering a little bit, just press in ever so slightly, not painfully, and just give your body more room. Give your diaphragm more room to breathe. Put your hands on your rib cage while you're doing the receiving breathing and just feel, is my rib cage expanding in all directions, 360 degrees? Is there a place where it's tense? It's not moving at all. It's constricted.

Jessica Dibb:
When I was first doing pranayama, Jennifer, I had a place in my rib cage that just wouldn't move when I breathed. It took me 2 years. And if you're friendly to your breathing and not judging it, it's okay that it takes 2 years. You don't want to override the natural intelligence. And then you can be aware, does my chest actually lift a little bit at the end of each inhale? Is there room there for my heart to feel what it feels, to love what it loves? So this is actually very simple, what I'm telling you, and it's a game changer. I mean, if you would do this for 7 minutes, your whole orientation towards yourself towards others and towards life will change. And then you can kind of be aware of that as you're going through your day. Like, wait a minute, I'm being breathed.

Jessica Dibb:
Wait a minute, my breath is my friend. And you can just sit in the middle of an office meeting, a board meeting. You can be bored, you can be frustrated. And it's like, wow, I've got this medicine right here. The other thing that I would say is if you want to go beyond that, two breaths, two kinds of breathing that I would do is one is The body loves regulation. So if you can, as a part of that 7-minute practice, start to feel what would be a count. So you're not doing somebody else's count, all of which are beautiful. There's 4-7-8 breathing, there's coherent breathing that's expressed per minute, all very effective and have done miraculous things for people on this planet.

Jessica Dibb:
There's box breathing. There's also people like to do breathe in and then breathe out twice as long, and all of those are effective. But what I like to talk about is what called from the East, Matrika Pranayama. Matrika means mother of mothers. And it's a breathing where you find a rate that you can breathe inhaling and exhaling at the same, you know, same amount of counts. Might be 3, might be 10, might be 7, might be whatever that works for you that you can do right now. You don't have to try to become some other breathing and just do that for a few minutes. You know, like, okay, maybe you breathed in 4, but you can't breathe out 4.

Jessica Dibb:
So you have to shorten the inhale. You find what, what can work for you in that particular day and do that for a few minutes. That will be very helpful at regulating your autonomic nervous system and calming you down considerably. And then the other thing is, if you are having anxiety, this one technique was studied at Stanford and showed to be better than box breathing or cyclical hyperventilation for downregulating anxiety and for upregulating mood. And really simple. You breathe through your nose if possible. Some people I know might not be able to do that right now, but if you can breathe through your nose, you breathe in, and then before you breathe out, you take in another little sip of air through the nose. So you kind of extend the inhale and you have it be in two segments.

Jessica Dibb:
So you breathe a little deeper than normal and then take in another little sip, and then you sigh it out through your mouth. Mouth, just long slow sigh. And they found that 5 minutes of that breathing would downregulate anxiety more effectively than the other breathing techniques they studied and upregulate mood. And they found that 28 days of that created a trait change, that overall your anxiety levels dropped and mood upleveled. So that's another thing that it would on. So the daily practice would be befriending, receiving, being breathed, and then being aware of the rib cage, the diaphragm, the chest. And then if you want to add that Machika Pranayama, which I go into some detail in chapter 7, I think, of the book, of how to do that correctly. So that would be your 7-minute-a-day practice.

Jessica Dibb:
And then you could add this anxiety-reducing thing whenever you feel anxious.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for that valuable advice. I think that I'm going to start incorporating that today as soon as I can. That's amazing. And I, and I do, it seems like something that anybody can do, and that's so beautiful about these kinds of things. They're so accessible, they're so powerful, and the simplicity is the beauty of it that we can just incorporate it and it just becomes part of the way that you you are, part of your ritual of well-being for you.

Jessica Dibb:
I love that. Well said. Yeah. I, when I was looking for that universal medicine and I also thought, you know, I thought to myself, well, even people on respirators can do this. You know, I was really looking for a universal medicine and they might not be able to count and, you know, to do the kinds where you have to do it a certain way, but they can do what I just described to you. They can do a lot of that. They can feel the receiving. They can befriend their breath.

Jessica Dibb:
They count the inhale and the exhale.

Jennifer Norman:
And yeah, breathing is a universal medicine. It's extraordinary. I have come to become so grateful for every breath. My son has been living on a ventilator 24/7 with extra oxygen for many, many years. And there's not a day where I wake up and I don't think, thank you for this next breath. Thank you so much for this breath. And I hear his machines and I just, I feel love. I feel so much gratitude to your point about medicine and things that, that can help us take yet another breath and be here and be present.

Jennifer Norman:
And I know that when he's out and about, when I'm, you know, with him in his wheelchair and he's got his ventilator there with the oxygen tank, people look at him and I know that they also too are stricken with that compassion. Compassion and that empathy and that gratitude, sometimes sympathy, yes, but there's also this appreciation. Yeah, I should be grateful for this breath as well. And I think that that's the magic of it, is that this is something that is so special. Not everybody can do it on their own. And so that's why I think I appreciate it so much more that, you know, the breathwork and the ability to control and regulate your own breath for your own well-being is just, it really truly is a gift. And so it's one that I certainly don't take for granted. It's one that I'm hoping that my listeners, you know, come to value that, you know, they, they are so extraordinary because of their ability to have a breath. So just wanted to share that.

Jessica Dibb:
Jennifer, I just felt so profoundly blessed for you to share all of that with us. And I think it's so synchronistic that I just happened to speak up about respirators and how I used to contemplate that because I did work in a hospital for a few years when I was thinking of becoming a doctor in the nursing field. And so I am just so profoundly moved about the story about your son and what you must have given to him, what you must be giving to him, and how lucky he is to have you as a mother. I have worked with people on respirators, people who are paralyzed, who have had spinal cord injuries, who are on ventilators for different reasons. And I too feel the music, feel the beauty of the sound of the machine. I don't find it irritating at all. I find like when I hear it, I feel like it's the love of so many people that went into creating this thing, this thing that can help your son and you be able to share love every day.

Jessica Dibb:
And, um, you know, I just really wanted to honor you for having got— being in that experience and understanding the preciousness of each breath.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you so much for mentioning that. And yeah, I hope that it just brings a little bit more awareness too for, you know, those who maybe have, you know, more physical limitations and such. Um, you know, I try to be an advocate for accessibility and for those that, uh, you know, might be marginalized or disadvantaged in any way, but knowing the value and believing in the value of every human life, of every life, of us being connected and interconnected as we are with nature and the world. So yeah, that is, you know, something that I, it's a value I hold so deeply and that I hope that is something that I can share with my audience at all times.

Jessica Dibb:
Well, you're doing a very good job and I just want to say that reminds me that at the end of the book, the last chapter is about, is the Universal Breathing Declaration, which is something that came through to me when I was doing some breathwork in the middle of the night when we had experienced all the forest fires that broke out in Australia and Europe and the United States that were just smothering animals and people. And then we had COVID, and so people were feeling the preciousness of each breath. And then George Floyd saying, I can't breathe, which really represented countless people throughout time that have been in that experience. Of marginalization and having their, literally their breath in some way inhibited or stopped. And this Universal Breathing Declaration came through, which is a statement of the right for every human being to be able to breathe safely and well. And it's something that people can sign on to where we say that we understand that we want to live our lives with awareness of the preciousness of each breath, and we want to live our lives in a way that supports creating a world in which all people can breathe safely and well, including people with respiratory challenges. That's in the declaration. And I just am so happy to tell everybody that the website with that declaration on it that you can sign on to, any of you, we just make a little promise that we will at least spend a few minutes each day valuing our breath and breathing consciously to support that.

Jessica Dibb:
Is going to be launched on March 22nd, and we're having a little 1-hour event here at our Inspiration Consciousness School to launch that. And so if any of you would like to— if this is— if you're hearing this before March 22nd, I will give you a link, Jennifer, that you can share with people so that they could sign up to be at that event online and be amongst the first to sign on. But even if not, after March 22nd, you'll be able to look up the Universal Breathing Declaration and be able to sign your name on it. And we hope to grow it into millions and billions.

Jennifer Norman:
Yes, I, I can't wait to sign up and do my part to help get more petitioners into universally agreeing that we all have the right to save breath. That's beautiful. Yes. Can't wait to share that out. My goodness, Jessica, this has been such an amazing conversation. As we close, I always ask my guests 3 questions, which are a reminder of what connects us all, our beauty, our humanity, and the truths that we live by. So my first question to you, Jessica, is what makes you beautiful?

Jessica Dibb:
What makes me beautiful? Well, creation made me beautiful as it makes everyone beautiful. So I want to say that first. And part of what is created in me is that I really do see the love in everyone, and I really do want to be love for everyone. So I work to cultivate that every day.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you so much. My second question is, what does it mean to be human?

Jessica Dibb:
To be human means to understand that we are having an extraordinary experience. I think many people do think that this planet and this being human is somehow less than what our Soul or Spirit is. I don't feel that way at all. I feel like this is the child of creation, this being human. This is creativity itself happening, and we're getting to experience emergence all the time if we can be present for it. So I think to be human is to realize that we're in an extraordinary experiment and experience that is highly unique for each of us. No one else is gonna have our experience.

Jessica Dibb:
We are a part of the garden that only we can tend to. And so I think that to understand that and to understand that with that, there are inherent strengths and powers and there's vulnerabilities and to be compassionate towards the vulnerabilities, to be grateful for the strengths and power. I think all of that is about being human, to know that there will be tremendous joy and gain and there is loss, and that all of it is a part of the story, the unique story that ultimately is about love.

Jennifer Norman:
Gorgeous answer. And my last question is, what is one truth that you live by?

Jessica Dibb:
Well, I think that the same thing that made me beautiful and makes me beautiful is the truth that I live by. That I know that every human being, every creature, every bit of this planet, every atom and molecule of water and earth and, you know, all of it has value. And I would like— the truth that I live by is that I have each moment, I have each breath to decide to be present to the love that can be awakened in everything. And so may I do that. May I do that. That's my prayer.

Jennifer Norman:
Gorgeous. Jessica, thank you so very much for sharing your wisdom with everybody today and for reminding us that healing, presence, connection, all of it might just be one breath away. And to everyone listening, once again, let's take a moment. We'll Inhale and exhale. You're alive, you're here, and that breath may be the beginning of everything. I'm Jennifer Norman, and this is The Human Beauty Movement. Thank you so much for being here. Until the next episode.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you for listening to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. Be sure to follow, rate, and review us wherever you stream podcasts. The Human Beauty Movement is a community-based platform that cultivates the beauty of humankind. Check out our workshops, find us on social media, and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn more at thehumanbeautymovement.com. Thank you so much for being a beautiful human.