“So my people who are fit have sometimes the hardest time. They have to be able to be tight, but also be able to be relaxed. And a lot of folks don’t know how to do that.”

–Doctor Belisa Vranich

Who is Dr. Belisa Vranich?

Dr. Belisa made the move from clinical psychology to focusing exclusively on teaching people to breathe correctly. She has been on various talk shows and most recently, she is the author of the book “Breathe: The Simple, Revolutionary 14-Day Program to Improve Your Mental and Physical Health.” How we breathe can have a large impact on both our physical health and our emotional and psychological well-being. So naturally, as Commander Divine has talked about before, it is essential that we learn proper breathing technique, even though many of us will think of breathing as just being an automatic action that our body does unconsciously. See if you recognize yourself in the breathing issues that Dr. Belisa describes.

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Discussing Breathing Techniques With Dr. Belisa Vranich

Hey folks, welcome back. This is Mark Divine with the Unbeatable Mind podcast. Super-stoked that you’re here today. Got a really cool guest. Thank you for showing up, Dr. Belisa. Really appreciate it. We are in person here at Unbeatable Mind headquarters in Encinitas, California, where it is sunny and warm.

Before we get started, please go rate the podcast at iTunes. And many of you have done that already. Thank you so much. Give us 5 stars. In fact, just pretend that it starts on the right, so if you click all that way to the right you don’t have to worry about thinking too much. Just give 5 stars and then we’ll pop up and things’ll be rosy, and everything’ll be good.

All right, so, Dr. Belisa Vranich. Is that how you say it?

Dr. Belisa: Yeah. You’re in the ballpark. It’s good.

Mark: Close enough?

Dr. Belisa: I would respond to that, yeah.

Introduction

Mark: All right, so I’m gonna read the formal intro, this is pretty cool. So Dr. Belisa Vranich, you’re a well-known… or renowned, actually… Isn’t that cool when people say that about you?

Dr. Belisa: (laughing) Yeah, I know.

Mark: You’re renowned. Really? Who said? A clinical psychologist, you’re an author of a new book that’s coming out. I just read the proof copy. I really, really liked it. Called “Breathe: the Simple, revolutionary 14 day program to improve your physical and mental health.” You’re a public speaker and founder of the breathing class. Which I think we’re going to do a little breathing training today.

Dr. Belisa: We’re going to do a little breathing, yeah.

Mark: So you’ve taught nationwide, actually probably around the world, I would imagine on topics related to dysfunctional breathing patterns and stress. This is a topic that’s near and dear to our heart. We talk all the time about dysfunctional movement patterns and extend that to dysfunctional breathing patterns. And breathing is a big part of what we do here at SEALFIT, Unbeatable Mind. So I’m excited to have you here as an expert. Because we’re basically a bunch of experimental hacks. Right? That’s what warriors do, we experiment and we find out what works and what doesn’t. So it’s nice to have someone here who can validate the path that we’ve been on. So welcome.

Dr. Belisa: Thank you. And you know that even before meeting you today, you’re in the book.

Mark: Am I?

Dr. Belisa: Yes, you are. Because the box breathing, of course, is fantastic. And I recommend it. And I mention your name, so even before having gotten to this beautiful place, you were already in there. So yeah.

Mark: And I think we have a mutual friend in Dan Brule. Do you know Dan?

Dr. Belisa: His name sounds familiar.

Mark: Okay, I guess not. You gotta meet Dan.

Dr. Belisa: I have to meet Dan now, yeah.

Mark: He’s been teaching breath-work now for over 40 years.

Dr. Belisa: Oh wow.

Mark: So he’s like the grand master.

Dr. Belisa: There’s some fantastic people out there. I may be renowned, and this may be revolutionary, but I’m definitely not the only one.

Mark: Well, this is evolutionary, not revolutionary, right? The breath has been around… it’s pre-medicine.

Dr. Belisa: Yeah, it’s been around. There’s some great stuff, and… This take is a little bit different though in that I look at baselines. I come from a numbers background, I come from a science background, so I like knowing what baseline is.

Mark: Yeah, you’ve got those two letters in front of your name, D and R, Doctor. So that means you’re what I call a 3rd quadrant, objective person. So you’ve gotta be able to test and validate, or else it doesn’t make sense.

Dr. Belisa: You have to test. But I also come from a gym, I’m a gym rat, so I like 1 plate and then work towards 2 plates and so on and so forth. So I come from liking knowing where I am, and seeing where I can get to. So the combination of those 2 things.

Mark: Got it. Well, let’s back up a little bit. You are a clinical psychologist. How did that come about? How did you get interested in psychology? And what was your formative years like?

Dr. Belisa: So I went to school in North Carolina. I’m a tar heel. Even though I was born in Wisconsin, if we’re going to go that far back. That far back. But psych gave me the flexibility to be able to work in a whole bunch of different places. Because I’ll admit that I do have a bit of vocational ADD. So although I’ve stayed within the field of psychology–and breath work is psychology as well–I like being able to change and move around and sort of change my focus. So I’ve worked with every single type of person on the planet. Violent ex-cons, mothers of multiple children, people with COPD, people with medical problems, people with anxiety disorders. Just the gamut of types of people.

And having the psych degree actually helped me be able to change and move around and work with all types of folks in different situations. So that’s why I chose it, or it chose me. But the movement to just doing breathing was kind of interesting because I never  envisioned that I would go from being a clinical psychologist… well, I guess I still am a clinical psychologist, but now I only teach breathing. And psych comes into it, for sure. But I only teach breathing. I actually don’t see people in the clinical practice at all anymore.

Mark: One of the things that I’ve noticed and I’ve been kinda… part of our lexicon is that every breath pattern has an associated emotional pattern. And so if you’re really agitated or anxious, your breathing’s going to be patterned or reflected a certain way. And then you can change your emotions and you can change your physiology and therefore you psychology by changing your breathing. So I can see how you linked from psychology to breathing. So tell us about that journey. Like, what was it about the breath that you first noticed how it could be used therapeutically? Let’s start there.

Dr. Belisa: One thing is that, as a psychologist I was dealing with a lot of people coming in…. the most common mental health problem there is are anxiety disorders. And then comes depression–depressive disorders. So when you… somebody comes into therapy with you, even though I’m considered “psychodynamic,” which means that I will bring all types of different modalities into the session to get good results, you end up doing a lot of talking. And understanding is over-rated if you just stop there.

Breathing and Psychotherapy

And most people will come in to talk about how they’re feeling, or their disorder… whatever’s going on with them. And once they get to understanding, they stop. Because they don’t know how to go from, “Oh, now I know I’m dysthymic. I have some PTSD. I have sensitivity to this, that and the other thing.”

And they don’t actually change it, because they don’t know to. They just sort of stop at that point. So the breath… breathing was something I actually brought into therapy so then it would help people change. So they didn’t have to just say, “Well I have an anxiety disorder. I’m going to take medication.” Now you may be able to lower your medication and do breathing. Or get off your medication and be fine with just breathing. And a whole bunch of other things.

But my take was always that, you came to see me and you had to make an agreement that you were going to work. So it wasn’t just to come to see me and vent. That was just not my style. It was you come to see me and you have homework. You have to do volunteer work. You have to journal. You have to do some kind of martial art or yoga. You have to do something creative. So there was just a lot of requirements.

Mark: Very integrative approach, so I love that.

Dr. Belisa: Let’s get this over with so you can stop seeing me and go back to life. So breathing made sense. I started bringing in breathing wh