taking pictures with the camera off
the act of intentionally and consciously breathing
(breathing) (breathing) (breathing) (breathing) (breathing) (breathing) (breathing) (breathing) (breathing) (breathing) (breathing) (breathing) (breathing) (breathing) Hello? Hello? Um... Hi. Um... How's everyone doing? I am coming to you from Northern California. Um... It's good to be here. Uh... I'm also coming to you from my new apartment, which I just moved into, like... Uh... Almost two weeks. It's almost been two weeks. Um... Yeah, I'm settling in. I've been out here in California since mid-May, though, so... About four months. Over four months. I've been here almost two weeks, and... It's gone great, and... I don't know where to start in terms of talking about all that, but... As you can see, I'm in somewhere right now, but yeah, this is my new apartment. Um... Just to point this out right away, get this out of the way. Those top four are... My cousin's old artwork that we found buried away. Um... We took from my aunt's house before we moved in here. Um... He's actually in North Dakota, but we stole some of those and hung them up just to remember him buying. 'Cause they're super goofy. I don't know if you can tell if it's easy to see, but that's a self-portrait. A self-portrait job by him. It's super creepy, but... Yeah, so just really aesthetically pleasing wall art we got going on in the background, and then... That one, I drew when I was in first grade, and then got the flat iron in New York City, but um... Yeah. So, the act of intentionally and consciously breathing, um... This is a topic that I wanted to talk about for a long time, and... I gotta say it's a topic that I... I have felt self-conscious to talk about with a lot of people, friends, family, but it still has been brought up. Um... I think I've done a decent job of at least fighting off my own fears or fighting through my fears and... Just bringing up how important of a topic this is, even just the word breath, um... And the act of breathing, but... It's definitely a conversation that I have wanted to have on this. Basically, since I started this little podcast, if you want to call it that, um... Only with the hopes of being able to get some of that off my chest, because I love talking about it, and I love thinking about it, um, since I haven't had the most experience talking about it, I do have a couple friends that, you know, we can get into all that kind of stuff, but... Um... Yeah, it's a... Tough place to start, um... Just because it really is such a special and important topic in my eyes, um, like very much so. Um... It feels like I'm also very new... Newly versed on the subject. I haven't done a whole bunch of formal studying or anything on it. I'm not usually like that when it comes to any topic that I'm super interested in. Um, I'm not... I mean, I loved studying and learning stuff in school sometimes, um, when it came to certain things, but since I've been out of school, it's... To be completely honest with you, it hasn't been super tough to find that for myself, that desire, whatever you want to call it, to do legitimate, more professional-style research, you know, and take notes, and back up the stuff that I'm speaking about with evidence, with research. Um... But this is one of those things that I have felt out and seen the change within myself and people around me, and... Um... Honestly, yeah, okay. Super nerve-wracking having a camera in front of me while doing this, and... If you're new here, I usually... Start recording something like this, sitting in the comfort of my own room 100% alone, and... Um... Although I'm sitting there with the freedom and the knowing that I don't need to post anything, um, and this is just for me. It's been about 95% of the time that I end up keeping it going, and I post it for everyone to see, so... Using the camera is a first time for me, and this is my first time, uh... If I were to... Go through with this, it would be my first time video recording a podcast, so my apologies for being awkward and nervous. I'm not apologizing for being nervous, I know it's very reasonable, but, um, yeah, just need to breathe and take it slow. Yeah, okay. It's a very important topic to me, and I hope you enjoy some of the things I have to say about it, um... And I hope you learned something from it, because... It's just talk, and you just get into here my perspective, which I think is a very powerful thing, just like me hearing yours. Um, if anyone, or if you are willing to give it to me, I'm willing to give you my ear, and... That's how we grow, that's how we ascend, you know, it's like... The greatest shit, the greatest opportunity we have in this life is just to be able to share stuff, so... Um... The act of intentionally and consciously breathing, so... One of the first, one of my first, like, big introductions to that topic, besides an entire lifetime of knowing that I breathe... And playing sports year round, and coaches telling me to put my hands over my head, or not to, you know, or... You know, it feels like very minimal talk about it my entire life, but my first, like, legitimate introduction to... How important of a thing it is on my day-to-day was... Um... The stereotypical, um... Blanking totally. Comparison, um... And association with yoga, and with meditation. Um, a lot of Eastern studies, a lot of Eastern ways of life that... Breathing can bring you into a meditative state, and... Can allow you to relax, can allow your thoughts to disperse. All that kind of stuff, obviously, I know many people are familiar with that, that's very stereotypical and very... Obvious that it does that. As we've grown up, seen movies, seen people, heard people talk about that, um... I love being able to point that out, because that's one of those million things that feels like that I've witnessed that... We see our entire lives be talked about, but it never goes any further, and... We end up missing out on so much... Power behind some of these incredibly important things about life. Um... Fuck... Dad... Oh, I'm so terrible. 'Cause... How the fuck... Are we not gonna talk about breathing from the moment that we're born? How the fuck is that not one of the top... Top topics of discussion that we're talking about with teachers, that we get... How is that not a quarter of our day in school is talking about breathing. Our entire lives for 12 years, minimum, that we're... In a way mandated to go through, at least here in the United States. It's totally and completely bizarre, and... That's the balance of... We have known so much for so long, just how... Widely known it is, that breathing and focusing on your breath can bring you into a meditative state. And yet just how unaware we are, just how true that is. And that can go a lot deeper because of how it's talked about in a joking manner, or that it's some hippie-dippy shit, or... You know, only gurus, only health gurus focus on their breathing or anything. It's just totally bizarre when we do have people like me, or people that do far more, say, in their childhood. And I did play for sports year round for a decade during the metal chunk of my childhood, and all the running around in between, and let alone all the sitting that I did, or the certain ways of movement and ways of life that a lot of people went through, just all the different points of the spectrum of people with different heart conditions, different lung conditions, different body types, different routines on the day-to-day, different families, different interests, so doing so many different things that require such detailed attention to one's specific health and personal health. And I really had quite literally a thousand of these incredibly strong realizations over the last few years of if you could put on one hand the number these five things, and I don't know the other four, all I know is if you were to give me five things that you could fit on one hand, of the most important things you could teach a baby growing up into a toddler, a child, you know, a teenager, into a young adult, what is one of the most, what is one of five things you could teach this kid, or guide through, or help him figure him or her figure out, is breathing. Like we come out of our mother's womb, and you're telling me if we're not talking about how to breathe, I get it, I get it, our body is able to fight off disease, it's able to breathe and digest food we're able to run, do so many incredible things without really being taught. It's funny that we get taught how to walk so early. It's like that's such a thing that parents are trying to teach their kids as quick as possible, and if the kid can't walk, you know, within the first couple years it's like a sad thing, and I get that, you know, doing something on your own, but eventually the kid's going to learn how to walk, like everybody will, like it stands up, it's got to follow, you know, it's got stuff it's got to do, you got fun to be had, enjoy to be had. Breathing and technique on how to breathe was not brought up once in my household, and I haven't gotten to experience everybody's household in the world in my 25 years now, but all the people that I spend time around in my life and shared experience and other people that I've talked to or let alone the fact that I have had the internet in my hands for the last seven years that it seems like most families didn't mention breathing once, and if it was brought up, it's brought up in some dumb, you know, you're having an argument, it's like breathe, you know, or someone's having a panic attack because they're so stressed about school, or they're learning about math, science, English, the US government, whatever, we're so stressed about that, when we're having a panic attack, that's finally when your mom or your dad or your teacher or your fucking counselor at school says take a breath, take a few breaths, breathe, deep breaths, deep breaths, and same with sports, it's like only when you're bent over having just ran ten laps, you know, is your coach like breathe, you know, drink some water, like what the fuck? Like by now, I can just say like what the fuck, in the most casual way because I've been around and around and around my own head and with people about this, I mean this is one of the basic things that we do as humans is breathe, and so then I've thought about, in these realizations that I've had, I think about that, and then it just becomes obvious because I led this, it's pointing out the fact that one of the biggest stereotypes about breathing, or intentionally breathing, bringing focus onto your breath is such a hippie-dippy, you know, meditative, yogiastic practice, and yet we, it's one of the only couple essential functions of our body, just like we need water, we need food, you know, we need nutrients, we need the sun, you know, and we need to breathe, but because we do it so automatically, and we don't have to go fill up a cup of water, you know, or we don't have to step outside, like we do those other things, we have to like act, we know we have to act on it, we know we don't, we don't even, I was about to say we know we don't have to act on breathing, but we don't even, because it's never even brought into our, the front of our brain, our conscious mind of what is breathing, you know, my breath, what, like, you know, like feeling it all out that, you like, and then it starts a, you know, a ball rolling down a hill, it's, you start breathing sideways and frontwards and backwards, and like, you start hearing yourself, you start feeling the exact amount that you can hold in your lungs, and the exact amount you can push out, and there's so many important things about it, I can't go into all the detail right now, I did want to only like touch on it because it's such a massive subject, and I don't have the research to back it up with, but, and I could, and I would like to talk about this for hours or for days, or make this like, my practice is breathing, and it has become one, but it's not the center of my attention, probably should be much more than it is, I can't lie, but I brought it enough to, I brought it enough to the front of my attention to be able to witness just how large of an effect it has on me, as in my heart rate, my ability to digest food, my ability to handle situations, my ability to, this can sound so cheesy and so basic, but to feel better at any given moment throughout, any day, day or night, 24/7, if I need to feel better, I bring my full attention onto my breath, even if it's only for two breaths, but I know how I feel before, and I know how I feel after one, and I can feel the oxygen from that breath, oxygenating my blood, I can feel it opening up my airways throughout my whole body, I can feel it strengthening my nervous system by opening pathways, by opening airways, it's crazy how logical and obvious that is to someone who has no professional experience studying the breath, and perfect example right there of kind of what I've gone through for the last couple of years is all the answers are inside, I have gone down a very spiritual path in my own right these last couple of years, and that thing, that part has just become abundantly clear, which just so happens to be one of the most basic fundamentals of diving deeper into oneself and kind of embarking on a true spiritual journey, not a religious journey, but on a spiritual journey as you realize all the answers are inside are with you, they're not even just like inside and you have to go in and find them, that's a part of it, but more that the answers are with you, that to feel secure knowing that you don't really have to find the really important stuff outside, you will always need help and guidance and there's so many amazing tools that we can use, especially in today's world to help us but all the good ones, just all the gems is, because I'm not the most intellectual obviously, I don't know if you can tell, but it's like all the gems, all the good stuff that I like that has had an insane effect on me and has inflicted a lot of change on me is knowing, not even just thinking, but by now it's becoming knowing that all the answers are with me that they walk with me every single day, they get up with me in the morning and they go to bed with me at night and I love that and yeah, just to go back just how logical that sounds that when you breathe if we all know this, 6th grade, 5th grade science, whatever it was when we learned what organic elemental compounds are in, the air that we breathe and oxygen, we all know about oxygen, is the thing that we need, we also need all the other shit that's in an hydrogen carbon oh god, hydrogen, I don't fucking know, you know, all of them see, it doesn't matter to me anymore, and because I haven't done, I haven't intentionally put my time and energy into revisiting all that stuff, I definitely should and this is a good reminder too, but I just think of oxygen, I know when I breathe them, I, in effect, ever comes across my mind I just think of the "oh" you know, the "oh" on the periodic chart and the "oh" that's entering my bloodstream, like, I can feel it filling me up and doing the right things to my body by intentionally breathing by basically giving myself the placebo effect of I know this conscious, big, slow breath in, it's going to give me oxygen, and I know that my body is going to do the good thing again for me when I calmly and slowly blow all of the air out of my lungs and I push until there isn't any more in my lungs than I fill it up as fully as I can and then I push it back out again I can feel it stretching, expanding, opening, healing my nervous system, I can feel it healing the cells in my body and it sounds so corny and obviously you're fucking breathing, but then why don't we do it? Why don't our parents talk about it? Why don't schools talk about it? It exists, there are plenty of people, plenty of parents and schools and teachers and coaches, now that we have the internet you know, it's like, you just know that they exist, I know those kinds of coaches, those kinds of healers, especially like there's plenty of those people that are there for people but I never had one in my entire life and anything that was a little bit more was not even close to enough and here I am, so I couldn't be more blessed to just be alive and to be able to realize it now but it's more just bizarre like I love being able to point out the bizarre shit of what we had to go through when we were kids and the fact that all this other bullshit was being force fed, it feels like now, like looking back on it it's like, when you're a kid you're retarded, like you know no better, you know no better it would take someone cracking your world and you know, getting inside of it and being able to grab you and tell you like you know how important breathing is, like you might want to try sitting in your room, you know, cross your legs put your hands on your knees like this and just focus on your breathing no, instead I lived an entire lifetime thinking that that's some corny, you know, yeah, hippie stuff that like isn't really needed you know, I don't really need to meditate, I don't need to meditate, like that's for those people like they don't do what I do and I don't do what they do and there's no in between, you know, like I don't know I know, I'm gonna say it again but the main reason I even wanted to talk about this one here was just because of how obvious it seems to me that if I were to have a kid after realizing some stuff like this just for a couple years not 50 like our parents have had but just after 25, 20 years, you know, I realized damn like when I have kids if I am blessed to be able to have kids that's gonna be a basic thing that I talked to them about the moment that we're able to have a conversation is about breathing and making sure they know they have the power to be able to help themselves just by a few breaths let alone many breaths over the course of an entire day or being able to witness the change that might come after months or years of improving your breathing improving your meditation practices like I haven't touched on that this much in here but to be able to quiet thoughts especially in today's day and age with so much stimulus and with our phones in front of our faces it's I know just as much as all y'all out there just how difficult it is to quiet everything to quiet your body, quiet your mind it's pretty excruciating and I wish the best for everyone out there because it really is tough and it really is something that we have to face all individually and together though, you know, both of those happening simultaneously we're facing it together but when we're in our rooms alone or get home from work and all we want to do is lay down and scroll or even if it is something different from being on a phone whether it be video games or it could be reading or drawing it could be really good stuff, it could be planting food, you know, planting something new back on your patio, it could be making food, you know spending a lot of time making a meal it's not that we're doing such bad things instead of breathing all the time it's more that we can always devote more time to focusing on our breathing intentionally like knowing that I'm about to take this breath and I'm doing it to help myself, I'm doing it to help my nervous system, I'm doing it to calm myself to find some peace in the midst of so much stress and anxiety in a fast paced moving world and yeah also, oh sorry, that was fuck, at least for me it was just so you know this is personal but it's not anything crazy, I can tell you because I'm not a fucking monk, you know, I was born and raised in rich white suburb in Minnesota like and that's no church, it's just the truth it's so possible to get into a meditative state, it's just as possible as you changing a tiny routine and are going for a run when you haven't gone for a run after a few months like however difficult that is for you to get up and do something you haven't been doing in a while, that's how basic of a function it is to meditate by focusing on your breathing by sitting still, excuse me, excuse me, sorry, by sitting still, maybe closing your eyes, maybe finding some solitude sitting in your bedroom and just focusing on your breathing it's so possible, I have found it, I'm sorry, I keep burping, I have found that, I have had those my own versions of semi-crazy experiences, of fully crazy experiences, of the bunch of little ones, you know, just like a million basic day-to-day type moments where I can just feel it, I can just feel even, like because my awareness, because I've been practicing it and it's become habitual my awareness has become acute to sensitivity just when it comes to where my breath is at throughout my entire day that if I feel the slightest bit of shortness or I might have been so distracted by something that I wasn't paying attention and I kind of just like you know, this is one of the things that also really doesn't get talked about is, and it's just, it's super random, but I always think about it and how different of a world would it be if this was like common conversation, just about our breath, let alone about how I feel like we're when we're busy, when most people are busy doing shit, we're like unconsciously not breathing, like we're almost holding our breath, I feel like that's, that's got to be at the core reason why when I say sometimes I get distracted and then because my awareness, for me personally, at least I can witness myself, the slightest bit out of breath, like how the fuck did I just get out of breath right there? like, there's the balance of you have stress in a moment, you might have a moment or five, ten, a minute, five minutes of stress, of a stress-inducing event, even if it's very slight or subtle, or you, and that increases your heart rate, you know, that means your breath is going faster or then you, then I realize I need to take a breath and the other half of that, that's one part of the balance, the other one is, I feel like nothing just happened there or I'm driving and I'm like, all of a sudden I'm like, oh, you know, and it's just a habitual thing for me and I'm like, okay, let's just take a deep breath, like that sounds so nice right now and I do, and I can feel it sets me back to what feels right for that state of mind and state of body, like I'm driving, I'm chilling and the moment I feel that slight imbalance, I can intentionally and consciously, 100% focus on my breath just for two breaths and then it's back to whatever, or I can do it for 30 breaths in a row, you know, for ten minutes, it's like, I am very new on this path, even though it feels like it's been a couple years of intentionally, you know, it feels like it's been a couple years of intentionally and consciously breathing, I have so long to go on just that journey, let alone the journey of life or with anything in general, yeah, I just think that that's an incredibly insane topic, and I love talking about it just because of just how much I know, it does not get talked about, it does not get talked about, I don't hear I have had 13 jobs in the last five years, ranging in from trade jobs, working in new construction sites to in elementary schools to warehouses to retail to, yeah, those are single bases, but sports, you know, it's like, I don't hear any whispers of it, you hear whispers of so many different topics and so many different conversations that other people are having, you're having with coworkers or random people when I'm just being a regular civilian, you know, out on my day, out to a store, you know, friends, family, family events, nothing I don't hear a fucking peep about breathing, and yet you're doing it right now, I'm doing it right now That's why I love this topic and I think it's just so important, and bringing awareness to it means just sharing about it and that's the power that I can feel and why I get out of breath while talking about this in front of a camera by myself and my place of residence because I can feel that importance, you know, I can feel the vulnerability, I can feel me just purely hoping to share this with people and share it with myself Anytime I talk about something, it's always a reminder, it's definitely practice what you preach for me, and I do practice this, but anytime I preach or I talk about anything that I think is good for myself for people, the main thing it does is it reminds me And because I don't know if anyone watches, you know, I don't know if I'm going to put this up, like I said right away, it's like, I'm speaking in my room right now myself, like if anything, this is just a good reminder for me to breathe To find my version of meditation doesn't have to be with the movies or what people whisper about or what anyone might think that focusing on your breathing means, to me I know it centers me, I know it It gives me an opportunity to release thoughts, release anxiety, stress, and it feels so good, it builds my health every day, like it feels like I can make up for some shit that I just ate, even just a little bit not fully Interesting, it's not, I have no idea what the balance ever is, but I know if I'm breathing right, that's one out of those, that single hand number of steps, eat right, drink right, breathe right, move right, you know, and speak right As in speak love to yourself and speak love to other people, you know, feed yourself with love, you know, drink love, drink water, eat good food, breathe well and practice it, sound obnoxious Find that solitude, find your bedroom for two seconds, and just like I think it's good for the soul, the journal, or to just face real facts of what you got going on in your life, you just lost someone important to you, you know, you're struggling with this or with that Just like we need to face all of those things or experience all these different things, find some solitude and just obnoxiously breathe for a sec, just, you know, there's every, I want to finish it out with this, there's every range of the spectrum when it comes to breathing, just like anything You know, you could work out by doing calisthenics, just by doing 200 push-ups a day, or you could do one push-up a day, go for a run to the mailbox and back, or you could go for a 10-mile run, you know, you could play darts for two seconds, or you could play for the next 12 hours, it's like breathing, I could give you like a... You know, there's all the YouTube videos in the world on breath exercises, or you could just think about it for two seconds, you can just, I'd say at least give me a couple obnoxious breaths when you get a second, you know, give me a... You know, just some dumb shit, like, it's like, you find that balance of taking it seriously as in breathing, you know, take that shit seriously, but you don't have to do it seriously, like, breathe, motherfucker, you're alive, like stop not thinking about breathing, sorry, I don't mean to push that on anyone too hard, but yeah, the act of intentionally and consciously breathing, I think that's all I've got, I appreciate you all, take care Hey, so that just ended, and I just had two things, two things I wanted to add on to the end of that, and this I never do, and I've had 14 episodes of taking pictures with the camera of podcasts, in terms of the word "podcast" that have been put out on podcast platforms for someone to listen to and stream I've never done this before, which is just add a little bit, because one really important thing that happens with me personally doing something this vulnerable, which the old me would have never guessed, I'd be doing something like this is, at the end of most of these that I've recorded, those old ones that I did almost two years ago, and ones in between now and then, I will finish recording and I'll immediately play it back, or I will watch it the next day or listen to it the next day and I just want everyone out there to know with this one, that I am fully aware of how all over the place I may sound sometimes, and most of the time, honestly, because there's such an acute sensitivity that I have when I watch myself or listen to myself back and it's like I'm a third party just, and I'm some random dude off the street, and it's like, okay, that didn't really make sense, and to me it does, because I know my brain, but to someone else listening, it just might have missed it, went straight over the head, whatever it is but mainly that I'm kind of just all over the place, I wish I could stand one topic or at least one more specific point for a little bit longer and explain a little bit better just for anyone out there listening, but I just wanted to point that out because that is actually kind of the purpose of what's happening here, of what I'm going through and what this is to me, like what you're watching, like what it means to me is taking a picture of myself in time and not letting the camera or what the camera represents affect my natural expression, and I guess that's what means the most to me, and that's why I don't edit it, that's why I don't go back on how it feels and to be re-recorded when I recorded those 30 minutes or whatever of me talking about breathing and that's what you just watched, so I don't or listen to and yeah that's the point, is even though I can look back at it immediately after and know that I could have explained things so much better, and you know for your guys' sake for my own like how I might look just totally dumb or you know you butchered that you know I think to myself but I don't really, I don't let that thought stick around at all because that's that picture that's taken in time that I don't want to change I don't want to change, I don't want to edit and yeah that was only one thing, that was only one half of that and the second thing is super important, I'm going to keep this insanely quick which is how simple of a task breathing is, because after watching that back and listening to myself describe breathing, remember how simple of a task it is, me or the universe is not asking you to do much by sitting exactly where you are, by standing exactly where you are, by standing exactly where you are. By standing exactly where you are at this moment and taking a breath and focusing on it, it doesn't require you to stand up if you're sitting down, doesn't require you to take out the garbage, doesn't require you to do thinking, it's actually the opposite of that, there might not be a more simple and more important task that we have the opportunity to experience in this life than breathing and by focusing on our breath. Sit there, take a breath, take it easy, take a load off, you know, let's get someone that worry that's stressed, that negativity off your shoulders and just remember how simple of a task it is, you're not asking a lot of yourself, so be easy on yourself, take a breath, focus on it, let's find some peace and quiet together, I really do appreciate you, I'll drink water, breathe and I'll see you soon. [ Silence ]