The Balance Code for High Achievers

How to Stop Stress Breathing with Chiara von der Goldtz

Katie Rössler Season 3 Episode 9

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Are you unconsciously sabotaging your health by simply holding your breath? Discover why this common habit might be affecting your well-being more than you think in today's episode.

In this episode of the Balance Code Podcast, I’m joined by Chiara von der Goltz.

Chiara is a transformation and embodiment guide, moving you to your soul’s alignment and through past pain and current challenges with a magical mix of intuitive guidance and her expertise in the science of quantum leaping your healing through somatic practices. Her mastery in esoteric arts and proven biohacks come together to guide you to where you want to be.  

We delve into the surprising impact of holding your breath and explore practical techniques to enhance your breathing for better health and balance. Chiara shares her expertise from the unique setting of a tree house in an eco-village in Tulum, Mexico, offering insights into how conscious breathing can transform your daily life. Tune in to learn simple yet powerful ways to improve your breathing and overall well-being.


In this episode:

  • Understanding the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems
  • The health benefits of activating the parasympathetic nervous system
  • Why we unconsciously hold our breath and its impact on stress levels
  • Techniques for effective deep breathing
  • Biohacking through breathing and sound healing
  • Practical exercises to improve breathing and reduce stress
  • The science behind sound healing and its benefits
  • Tips for incorporating breathing practices into daily routines
  • Solutions for those with asthma or nasal congestion to benefit from breathwork
  • The power of humming and toning for self-soothing and relaxation

Connect with Chiara:

Email her at: hello@cosmicmamacoaching.com

Visit her website at: www.cosmicmamacoaching.com

Her Instagram and TikTok are both: @cosmic_mama_cl


Resources:

Couples Goal Setting Workbook
⁠Rebuild Program

Couples Goal Setting Workbook

Complimentary Relationship Assessment

Follow Katie Rössler on Instagram

Check out the podcast website

Welcome to the Balance Code Podcast, a place for high achievers to step outside the hamster wheel of day to day life and start learning tools for more balance. I'm your host, Katie Ressler, and I will be guiding you on this journey of discovering your balance code.

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. Today, I have Chiara von der Goltz, and we're going to be talking about the impact of holding our breath. Now, that might seem like a weird title for a podcast, but you're probably holding your breath more than you realize, and we need to talk about the impact of it.

So Chiara, thank you so much for being on the Balance Code podcast. Please share with the community. Who you are, what you do and where you're doing it from right now. Because if you're watching the video guys, you're seeing there's like a plant growing in the background and there's trees and it looks like she's in a tree house, so you're a, you got to fill us in, tell us about yourself.

Yes. Hi, I am in a tree house right now in the jungle [00:01:00] in Tulum, Mexico. I'm in an eco village overlooking a beautiful cenote, but I'm so happy to be here talking with you about this because. I'm a body embodiment coach. I do a lot with somatics and biohacking. I do sound healing and coaching as well. And so this is one of my favorite things to talk about.

This is always how I start and finish a sound bath and it is with breathing. And specific ways to breathe because when you are conscious about your breathing, what happens is, your parasympathetic nervous system gets some love, your heart rate gets some love. We've seen measured performance in athletes when they focus on their breathing.

And I grew up as a musician, which is why I do sound healing now. And breathing is actually what started this whole thing for me. So I'm so happy to be here and talk to you about it. Excellent. Let's start from the beginning about what's the difference [00:02:00] between our sympathetic nervous system and our parasympathetic nervous system and maybe put it in words that the everyday listener can understand.

Absolutely. So your sympathetic nervous system, it's going to be, well, the difference really is one is going to be a fight flight and freeze response. A lot of times we are in this place and it was fine when we were hunter gatherers, all this, that was helpful, but right now we're not doing that. We don't need the high cortisol response, it elicits, we don't need any of this, and yet we find ourselves in this state a lot.

So what we really want to do is turn our parasympathetic nervous system on a lot more than it is and that's our rest and digest. What happens when we do this is we get a lot of cellular regeneration. Our hormones are balanced and we hear hormones balance a lot in regards to weight in regards, especially to [00:03:00] women's health, but really everybody needs better hormone health usually.

so when we give our parasympathetic nervous system some love, which you can do with easy, easy biohacks, We really do see an enhanced quality of life and we feel better. It's a noticeably better, stress response. And right, if you have a balanced stress response, what that is going to do is going to help you, when you react to high stakes environments.

When you have to make big decisions, you can come at it from a more measured point of view. You're not going to be like making kind of, iffy reactions. You're not going to lose your head. You're going to be calm and cool under pressure because you know that that pressure is not actually a saber toothed tiger coming at you.

It's just a decision. what happens when we give our, our, our parasympathetic nervous system some love. Yeah. Why do you believe as really as a, culture, as a [00:04:00] society of a whole, we're holding our breath so much and we're not breathing properly. so what it comes back to is we are. One, we haven't been taught.

Um, so I grew up as a classical singer and I got into sound healing a couple of decades later. I realized that my whole singing career, which started as a child and ended in my early twenties, was what got me through kind of a tough life and. What I was doing was oxygenating myself constantly in trained ways.

And then I realized like, okay, this is actually a healing technique, all these things. So that was a blessing to me to have that in my life. If I didn't have that in my life, I'm not exactly sure how I would have fared. So why we're holding our breath is because for the most part. [00:05:00] We're not trained to breathe.

We're moving fast, right? We're not just trained to sit and like kind of ground ourselves and focus before we move on to the next thing. We've created our own saber toothed tigers. And we haven't put these things into perspective, which is important, and it actually does help your performance. with sound healing, with, a lot of these biohacking somatic, uh, meditation techniques.

Where we see them a lot, we don't hear it talked about as much, we see them in high performance athletes. Who are under stress constantly. but also they're not taught to breathe properly either. They're kind of taking short bursts of breath often. and so for the most part as society has kind of trained us into quick responses, which elicits that short burst of breath and the breath holding.

so unless you were trained to do it, trained to slow down before you move to the next step, you're holding your breath, usually. [00:06:00] Yeah. And I find with my clients who are going through depression or anxiety, or like you said, you got a lot on your plate and you're go, go, go. If you don't stop and go breathe, you're probably doing it at such a short and like you said, the.

Kind of pace that it's adding stress to your system. It's actually compounding the problem. And so walk us through what a real actual deep breath looks like. I would love to. Okay. For a deep breath, you're going to want to connect to your belly. It's called your diaphragmatic breathing. It's a muscle kind of right near your sternum.

And you can breathe in through your nose. And out through your mouth, and to notice if you're doing it right, or just in a way that you would get benefits from this, you can just put your hand on your stomach and watch it expand. Or just feel it expand. And that's going [00:07:00] to know you're in the right spot.

So what you really want to do to get a good deep breath is feel it in your belly. If you want to feel your diaphragm, you can pant like a dog, and that's going to move it in or out. That's going to show you where it is in your body, but just to get a good deep breath, just a hand on the belly. Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth, and feel it move in and out.

And actually, I do have a little exercise you can do literally anywhere that biohacks your body and kicks your parasympathetic nervous system on anywhere you go with this breathing technique. I start and end every sound bath with it as well for grounding. Technique excellent. Can you share that with us?

So if somebody's listening and they're driving, are they allowed to do it? Or is this something where it's like, hey, maybe you should just do it when you're like You can please don't close your eyes if you're driving the the ideal space is to sit somewhere level [00:08:00] and Get shut your eyes place a hand on your chest a hand on your stomach But if you are driving you do it as well, just please keep focused.

Yeah, but really All you're going to do, we're going to do five counts through your nose, five counts through your mouth. You do it five times. We can do a little sped up version for the podcast, maybe do it three times, but really if you do this five times and just sit in the moment after, I promise you, you'll feel better.

So much more grounded and level. So to start, we're just going to place our hand on our belly if we're not driving, and you can maybe float your eyes shut. We're just going to breathe in through the nose for five counts. Breathing in one, three, four, five. Breathing out through the mouth,

in through the nose. One, [00:09:00] four, five. Out through the mouth,

in through the nose.

I'll do them now.

And that's it. How do you feel? Easy to do. Like you said, you really can do that. If you're in your cubicle at work, or at a desk, or even standing. I can imagine if you were, you know, like, In the grocery line and you're like, let me just pull hold on a second, take some deep breath. You can do that. Anywhere, really just find a little, a little pocket and go for it.

The ideal is [00:10:00] five rounds of that, but three also, it's just going to make you feel more grounded. What it does is it actually stimulates your vagus nerve. Which is what's really at play in your parasympathetic nervous system and all the responses Associated with fight flight and freeze as well in your sympathetic nervous system You brought up the word biohacking a few time and I I know my listeners.

They're like wait, wait Oh, what was that? Tell me about that So because anything that's hacking and simplifying and getting faster to the end result My listeners like to hear about so share with us a little bit when it comes to biohacking You In our parasympathetic nervous system, helping us to calm down.

Yes. Okay. So that's one of them, right? If you just practice that, you know that you already feel more grounded, more relaxed. I mean, what did that take? 20 seconds, you know, like you could put on your headphones, listen to a mantra, listen to, a meditation. [00:11:00] And that's great. And I took that as well, but simply doing that.

Guaranteed physical response. so that's one of my favorites. I also work in sound healing. Now, when you find a sound healer you like and trust, what they're doing, I guarantee it, if it's a good one, what they're doing is they're playing the instruments in a certain way that's actually changing your brainwave state.

it's gonna take you from up here in this beta place to probably an alpha or theta state. And how that works is that we're playing in a sense, it's kind of creating a drone effect and it's going to change your brainwaves. What happens when you get into a brainwave state, a theta brainwave state, is that you get into deep rest and digest.

super fast cellular regeneration. So again, from just seven minutes of listening to one [00:12:00] sound healing bowl, play the same thing over and over, you're getting, you know, if you do that for a half hour, an hour, you're getting what would be equivalent to two good hours of sleep. So things like that. because for healing, what I found is that You know, we can do talk therapy and, and all that's great, but what really, and doctors have studied this, Um, what we're really acting from is our subconscious response.

Half the time, if we even go to make a motor skill, we've already decided to do it before we're doing it. So when you kind of tap into things on a subconscious level, you can really experience deep, deep healing, um, just quicker. And, and we see that like. with a measured response. So that's one of the things I love about sound healing.

I am absolutely spiritual and I do psychic readings, all this, but with sound healing and, certain things in a biohacking sphere, right? We've measured. the benefits of the reduced heart rate. [00:13:00] We've measured the brainwave state changes and it's all just a little bit of A plus B equals C. And we've measured, especially, like I said, on athletes, the improvements in their times as well in accordance to how long they've been listening to these things.

So I absolutely love the biohacking, results from, from these practices. Yeah, I remember, my mid 20s, I did neurofeedback and I remember them asking, do you want us to put you in a theta state? And they, Put on these headphones and like darken, you know, you have to put something over your eyes. It's just warm.

They wrap me in a blanket and I'm laying in this recliner and the sounds were so soothing and put you in such a state of relaxation that they're like, it's okay if you fall asleep. Don't, don't worry. We'll wake you up. But you know, and I've done theta healings as well. It just puts you in the states of listening to.

the sound bowls to listening to like anything, if you go on YouTube and like, let me like Google search this or whatever, [00:14:00] don't Theta state when you're at work, I'm sorry, like maybe when you're laying in bed, when you've got time on the couch. That's when you want to explore those types of frequencies and things because it really it is amazing how deeply it Relaxes you and you're not focused, you know, it's not like take deep breaths in or you're not talking to them You're literally playing these sound bowls and just at a certain way that goes and your mind can just go Thank you.

Thank you. I can turn off now. It's beautiful. It's literally like a switch is flipped and some people will get a little upset. Like I fell asleep. I didn't get the full experience. Half the time you're not even actually asleep. Your brain literally just kind of hit the switch. For a minute and you'll notice because a lot of times you wake up right after it's over, wake up.

You weren't actually asleep. You were doing this deep, deep, regenerative, restorative thing. So your body is actually super grateful and you will find a lot of [00:15:00] times you'll either feel really relaxed after or even really energized after. Yes, definitely. This is beautiful. So that's some great biohacking.

So looking at one, how we breathe and taking that time to do the breath the way you taught us. Second, looking at how the sound ball healings and really in that beta state can, you've said it, 30 minutes can feel like two hours of deep restorative sleep. Yes, please. Thank you, . I love for that. I love that.

And if maybe if you're a work from home person or if you just have a little bit of a private area, if you do that vagus nerve breathing. Once a day, just before you go into a little bit of a high stress environment, I would be interested to see how you find yourself breathing through the rest of your day.

because just by breathing in a deeper, more connected way, right, that's going to send more oxygen through your body, more oxygen into your cells. You're going to feel better. The systems in your body are going to work better. a lot of the [00:16:00] biohacking is cellular love and cellular regeneration. So I would be so interested to kind of see, how just incorporating the five little breaths once a day affects.

The rest of your day. Yeah, definitely. 

Hey there. I wanted to take a moment to interrupt this interview to share with you a resource I have for you. Do you find that you and your partner struggle to set goals together? No, I'm not talking about cleaning out the garage or finally filing taxes, but to actually set goals about your relationship.

Well, I have the couple's goal setting workbook just for you and your partner to help you start getting more focused on building your relationship rather than getting the to do list items off of your household tasks. So check down in the show notes for the couple's goal setting workbook and make sure you take some time out in the coming weeks to use it and start to build a stronger relationship together through setting goals that you're both excited [00:17:00] about.

what about those who are listening who have things like asthma stuffed up nose because of a cold things like that, where, the deep breathing either is hard. It can lead to coughing. It can lead to issues like that. Is there some times where it's better to do the deep breathing or different way of doing the deep breathing?

Or do you have any Tips for those who might struggle with breathwork. Yes. Um, let me think about this. Well, if it's stuffed up nose, I do love kind of a saline solution, neti pot situation and just anything you can do to kind of get it just clear just for the moment. Um, there is also another kind of breathing that I love.

toning. a lot of people will say, I don't sing, it's not singing. What you can do is you can essentially just pick a vowel, ah, E, O. You can do it for about 10 minutes, and definitely put yourself in a little room for this, even if it, you just might feel silly. But, what you're [00:18:00] gonna do is you're gonna pick this vowel, uh, etc.

Take it through with a couple of stops for about 30 seconds to a minute, for about 10 minutes. If you have time, you can do this on a couple different vowels for 30 minutes. Just by speaking, we're taking in oxygen. So when you tone, And just when I say tone, I mean saying these vowels, what you're doing is oxygenating.

I do this in private, uh, sound healing sessions with people. If you do that, what the response is so, incredible. People just feel so good. It's like if they could go to an oxygen bar and sit there and just they feel incredible and why they feel incredible is because you've taken in oxygen. So it has less to do more with the like, I'm breathing deeply in that way.

But what you are doing just by being able to speak and speak a vowel repetitively, [00:19:00] you are also oxygenating oxygenating yourself highly. Yeah. I've also heard that the trick about humming. Like just that humming that helps vagal nerve, but also that helps with the congestion too. I tried to do that one a little more than the vowel note.

I hadn't heard the vowel note one, but the humming and it is really soothing to hum. Yes, yes, exactly. So high humming is going to break up stuff up here. We also like to say it breaks up limiting beliefs, but it's really vibrating in this part, in the upper part of your mass, near your eyes, near your forehead, lower humming.

You're going to feel it right in your chest. You also feel it again in the place in your diet. And that belly kind of area and, we love that for self soothing and that is something beautiful, right? If you think about it, I always think of mothers with babies kind of doing that humming. So when we're doing that humming [00:20:00] for ourself, it really is like the deepest kind of nurturing and soothing.

Yeah. It's a great self soother. And I definitely found myself in high stress environments, kind of pick a corner and be like, um, yes. Absolutely. Everyone's gonna laugh. Oh, goodness. My camera. There you go. Everyone's gonna laugh and start like humming in different places. Or if you hear someone humming, be like, okay, rub them on the back.

You've got this deep breath. Yeah. I think there's so many different ways to soothe ourselves. But actually, like you said, really help on the cellular level. And they're so basic, right? It is a basic thing for us to make a sound or singing kind of to ourselves or making those vowel sounds, or just taking a deep breath.

And we gravitate away from the easy and make it way more complex. I've got to go do this. And this is the way I'm going to relax. And this is how I'm going to de stress. And everything you've shared today is something we can do like every day throughout the whole day. [00:21:00] Yeah. Every day, anywhere, no cost.

Yeah. Very low overhead. Yeah. And often for people, they think, well, I don't know if that's really going to work for me or I'm not going to remember, you know, I love setting reminders on my phone at certain hours to do some of these exercises because sometimes you need that reminder until it becomes a habit to do that.

Like say you're driving and you've stopped at a red light. And maybe the red light is the reminder to hump or do the vowel sounds and just practice that out. Or as you're cooking or getting dressed for the day, taking a shower, use what you already have in your normal day to day life as the triggers of reminder.

To practice these things that deep breath, especially in the shower with that moist air. I bet it's really like oh Oh, yeah, for sure. And also I love like book ending Um, this is so interesting. Like I used to have a really intense anxiety issue now I don't thankfully and it's [00:22:00] beautiful But for me It was really about going into spaces with a lot of people.

I just felt that very overwhelming. And now knowing what I know about me, like I'm a psychic, like a lot of people overwhelm me sometimes. what's really beautiful is like, I definitely had like high stress corporate jobs, all this and sitting in my car before going and back into work after lunch, you know, just doing the five breaths, anything.

So literally I, I really like to use it bookending things. Okay. Before I go into work, right. As I sit in the car, I'm going to do this. Before I, you know, I love my family, but they're kind of crazy, you know, before I go into the house, I'm going to sit or do this, or maybe I had trouble falling asleep. Some of these tools are great to implement, trying to do that, you know, or maybe you want to get into meditation in the mornings, but you don't really have time, meditation [00:23:00] kind of feels boring for you.

Just any of these tools can, you can try it and just see like, maybe that's a little thing for you. So yes, I love what you said too. And I also love the idea of like really bookending parts of my day with these things and, and helping me with transitions into new spaces. Thank you so much for the tools you've given us, for the practice you've taught us, and I know that these listeners are going to be like, okay, I'm going to make this part of my routine.

If they want to learn more from you, here's some of the stuff that you've got recorded and stuff. Where do they find you? Absolutely. So my website is cosmic mama coaching. com and I'm on Instagram at cosmic underscore mama underscore CL stands for Chiara Luce and I'm so glad to have shared these tools with you.

It's really my joy to do this. Thank you. I will make sure that all of those links are in the show notes, so it's easy for you guys to go find her, follow [00:24:00] her, listen to this. I just am like, I feel so relaxed right now. Just free breaths and talk about it. You deserve it. You deserve it. We're not supposed to be constantly uncomfortable more than is necessary.

So we all deserve this, these easy, accessible little bits of peace. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, enjoy your time in the jungle and to the dear listener, here's to finding our balance code. 

Thank you for listening to today's episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Take a moment to leave a rating and a review on your favorite podcast platform. That helps other listeners just like you to find this podcast too. Want to connect and learn how we can work together? Check out the links in the show notes below.

Discovering your balance code doesn't have to be a one person journey. You can have a team and I'd love to support you. So here's to finding our balance code. [00:25:00] 



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