Episode 102 . Using Breathwork to transform your health with Dr. Geoff Lecovin

Adam Rinde, ND: [00:00:00] Welcome to the one thing podcast. It's a delight to be here with you.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here with you again.

Adam Rinde, ND: Yeah, so you were the first guest of all time on the One Thing podcast. And now we're a hundred episodes in and it's just really great to reflect and get a chance to talk with you again.

Adam Rinde, ND: We've come a long way since then.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Yeah. I feel honored to be on your podcast. It's just a great dissemination of really practical, useful information and glad that I can be part of it.

Adam Rinde, ND: Yeah. Thank you. And you and I have known each other for over 20 years and you actually were one of the first mentors I ever had in the profession, so I think it's always really, Fun for me to look back and just see like the journey.

Adam Rinde, ND: And when we were discussing to do this podcast together I was looking back at some old things that we've done together in one of, we gave a workshop on foam [00:01:00] rollers and on myofascial release techniques and back at Bastyr in 2008. It's fun to look at that. And then today to be speaking about breath work and just to see how your career has really you're like a consummate learner and you're always building your skills and always trying to build yourself and learn and improve.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And it's just amazing. How much you continue to grow and add to your practice. So with that yeah, just curious when you started to really get into breath work and where, how that developed.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Okay. I've I've always been interested in altered states of consciousness and dating back to when I was a kid and just did a lot of reading and also a lot of reading Don Juan, the book Call of Castaneda, and that was my first introduction, and then there was a book called Altered States of Consciousness by Charles Tarp that I read.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And then the interest was there, but there [00:02:00] was always that fear factor of letting go and just trusting. And the years go by, I go through my training and and then my mom told me about something called holotropic breathwork. So I was intrigued by that, about the book and started reading about it and just put that to the side, just I wasn't ready.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And then more recently within the last year, I just became more and more open to the idea of letting go and just trusting my your healer and feeling more comfortable. I think one of the biggest triggers for me was as in the state of Oregon, psilocybin is now legal and they are training facilitators in order to help people have access to this plant medicine.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: So my wife, Stephanie and I. Went through a certification through a company called InterTrack in out of Portland. And while it's legal in Portland, this is not a licensed state. So I wanted to be able to offer like another way to access an altered state [00:03:00] of consciousness that's legal until we can access psilocybin legally in the state and facilitate sessions here.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Okay. So that's interesting because I think most people don't associate breath work with. Altered states of consciousness necessarily. So maybe you can break down like what the definition of breathwork is and, how you're framing that definition.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Sure. So breathwork can be defined as specific volitional manipulation of your breath to enhance health.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And we're enhancing health, looking at it from a holistic perspective. So there's physical health. There's biochemical health and there's mental emotional health. So when you manipulate your breath, you can manipulate all aspects holistically of your health. And even there's a spiritual aspect as well.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And so we can talk about this a little bit more, but when you are manipulating your breath, you are producing [00:04:00] different hormones and neurotransmitters. So one of them is I'll give you the, I use the acronym a dose. Okay. So the A would stand for anandamide. and adrenaline. So anandamide is a bliss chemical.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: It's commonly associated with cannabis. And and then there's adrenaline, and then D stands for dopamine, and then there's O for oxytocin, S for serotonin, and an E for endorphins. And so when you are manipulating all these neurotransmitters, you're going to get into an altered state, specifically the serotonin and the dopamine and the oxytocin makes you feel more connected.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: It's a love hormone, right? So by manipulating all these different hormones, you get into an altered state of consciousness. And one of the other things that happens. is you have something called transient hyperfrontality. So there's part of your brain in the prefrontal cortex, where there's a place called the default mode network.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And that's like your ego. That's your [00:05:00] story. That's who you are. And when you reduce the blood flow to this area, You can get into a state where you're not focused so much on you, but you're more open to spiritual types of experiences and altered states.

Adam Rinde, ND: Okay. So by definition, breathwork is much more than just like a breathing practice.

Adam Rinde, ND: It's actually like certain techniques that stimulate these pathways to certain breathwork techniques.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Yes, there's a lot of ways and we'll talk about them to manipulate your breath. But let's go back, let's go historically first, and then we'll come back up and talk about the science. Historically, breathwork goes back thousands of years.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And the training that I did was through an organization called SOMA. And there's a lot of different organizations out there training. I happen to resonate with SOMA because it was a little bit more holistic and, Brought into other [00:06:00] practices like heart math and some of the work of Jodah Spenza and meditation and things like that.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: But the story that I've heard is historically, there was a brew called Soma. And this brew was a concoction of maybe some sort of plant medicine. Could have been cannabis, could have been ayahuasca. I don't know exactly. But. At some point, so they would use this mixture of the Soma in order to access higher states, spirituality, and so on.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And at some point this access to the Soma was wasn't there anymore. It could have been maybe sourcing or it could have been the first war on drugs where for religious reasons the access was taken over by other authorities and so they needed to find another way to access these altered states of consciousness.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And so they looked to the breath.

Adam Rinde, ND: Okay. And with that historically, they [00:07:00] would induce certain breath patterns that changed the brain chemistry.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Yeah, so there was like, there's a secular and religious aspect to it, and there's a diagram that we spoke about before we went on that's out of a paper that we can, you can reference at the end of the show in the show notes, and the diagram, it goes through the history of Breathwork and how it started.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And so if you look at the top there, you can see that it's more of a yoga or Sufi type of practice. And then as as the years go by, it had been used in psychotherapy. And then probably one of the biggest so the next to warm on drugs in fifties was a time when just before that LSD and other psychedelics were being used for psychotherapy and quite successfully.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: [00:08:00] And. Stanislav Barov, he was probably one of the biggest researchers in this area, and he started something called holotropic breathwork. He and his wife, Christina, and the reason why they went that route is because they no longer have the access to LSD. And so they need to find other means. So they developed this holotropic breathwork.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And then from then there have been other branches. So there's shamanic breathwork. There's a Wim Hof is another individual who's really popularized breathwork and done some research in the field showing how you can manipulate. your biochemistry in order to do extreme things like be in the cold, for example or change your pulse, blood pressure, things like that.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: The bottom line is that all these different forms of breathwork has a common theme. They're circular, they're connected, they're repetitive breath work with no rest between the inhalation and the [00:09:00] exhalation, and often they're done to some kind of evocative type of music.

Adam Rinde, ND: Yeah it's interesting that, Wim Hof made that list. Obviously that's become very mainstream. I know I did, I've done cycles through Wim Hof on several occasions and I'll be interested to hear Your your approach, because I know there's a big difference between just doing things on your own and working with a guide and working with someone that kind of coaches you through your experiences and versus, just doing it on your own and with a self practice.

Adam Rinde, ND: So the different types of breathing people do you, you just mentioned that the commonality between all these techniques is they're No rest between inhalation and exhalation. Is there something about that makes? Makes that a more profound practice or that changes the effect

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: [00:10:00] If you're over breathing, it's it's a form of hyperventilation in a sense.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: So what happens is so generally we want to breathe through our nose Because when you do that, you have a filter, it prepares the air for your lungs, it increases nitric oxide, which is important for it's antimicrobial, it's a vasodilator, so it's very helpful, from a healthy perspective, and and then you exhale through your mouth.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And so when you manipulate the breath, you can change your nervous system. You can change the pH in your body. And you can change then that kind of, that's where you get this whole slew of of neurochemicals and like we talked about with the anandamide and the ADDOS acronym that we use that we talked about.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: So generally when you breathe through your nose and out through your mouth hopefully you're doing like a belly breath, So the ideal is you breathe into your [00:11:00] belly and then into your chest. And when you breathe into your belly, a lot of times there's stuck energy in that area and you can release that energy and then you bring it up to your chest where there are a lot of times stuck emotions.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: So you move energy and you move emotions. So with this breathwork, a lot of times people who have somatic types of traumas stored in their body, you can get some kind of a release from the from that perspective. In So if somebody's just doing like in through the nose, out through the mouth with and you can use like maybe a four, four tempo.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: So in for four seconds, out for four seconds, that's more like a balanced type of breathing where you're going to balance your sympathetic and your parasympathetic. And I think your audience probably knows by now. The sympathetic is that part of your nervous autonomic nervous system that is your fight, flight, or freeze.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And it's, unfortunately, it's a part that a lot of us are stuck in these days because of the ongoing stress. And it's not like we're running away from a bear or a saber toothed tiger. [00:12:00] We're running away from bad relationships, bad jobs, poor nutrition, things like that. The other part is the parasympathetic, which is the rest and digest or the breed and feed.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And that's where a lot of the anti inflammatory effects occur while you're increasing your vagal tone. By when you change the tempo, or change whether you're breathing through your nose or breathing through your mouth, you can manipulate That part of your nervous system, depending on what you're looking to get, your desire and stuff

Adam Rinde, ND: that you're looking for.

Adam Rinde, ND: So what does carbon dioxide have to do with that?

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Okay. So basically if you change, if you want to pull up that other diagram that from that study it's a good diagram that kind of shows what's happening with the change in oxygen and carbon dioxide. So when you are over breathing, what happens is you are taking in a lot of oxygen and blowing off a lot of carbon dioxide.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Carbon [00:13:00] dioxide is a stimulus for breathing, for making you take a breath, right? As you're blowing off carbon dioxide, you're changing the pH into your, of your system. And when you do that, there's certain physiological changes that are going to occur. So you're going to increase lactic acid. You're going to maybe start to tingle a little bit.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: There's going to be a shift in that curve. You can see the hemoglobin and oxygen. It's called the bore effect, right? So when you're breathing in over and over, the oxygen is going to become bound to the hemoglobin and it's going to stay bound as you continue to over breathe. Now the key is that when you breathe in and then you do breath holds, so that's also part of this.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: The breath holds is going to increase the carbon dioxide in your system, and your body is going to flood out all the oxygen that's being held on to the hemoglobin to all the tissues in the body. And in, in addition, you're also going to have the release of [00:14:00] stem cells, you're going to have the state of what's called intermittent hypoxia.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Now, you don't want to be in a prolonged state of hypoxia, but think of it, when you measure your SpO2, right? You want to be. In the mid nineties. So when you're doing this, you're going to get into a lower level under 90, hopefully. And when you're in this brief state of hypoxia or this intermittent hypoxia, it's going to stimulate these stem cells.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: It's going to stimulate these changes in your nervous system. And a whole slew of healthy things are going to happen to your circulation. It's going to help with your brain activities. It's going to be good for things like neurodegenerative diseases in your brain. It can be helpful for asthma.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: He'd be helpful for arthritis and pain changes in your endocrine system, increasing your red blood cells and so on. So it's this temporary change in pH that's acting as a kind of a metabolic stimulus. In order to get things moving. [00:15:00]

Adam Rinde, ND: Wow. That is fascinating. And can you just comment on this effect on GABA?

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: So basically what's happening there is it's affecting your, that's where it's affecting your nervous system and you're getting like, and there's like a hormetic effect. When you, the term hormesis or there's a eustress type of effect. So what's happening is that you're stimulating.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Your your cortisol and you're getting like kind of a sympathetic stress effect. And we talked about, you don't want to be in the state of fight or flight, but what happens is it makes it more, more durable in effect, in a sense, like you become more able to deal with that sympathetic.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: overload. And so when you do this, when you are creating this sympathetic, cause we're doing mouth breathing most of the time when I'm teaching this. So it's like that too far breath. So you're going,

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: and when we're doing that, we're getting that stimulation of the sympathetic. [00:16:00] state. Okay. And then when you do the breath holds, that's where you shifting over to that parasympathetic state. And like I mentioned, you got like with hormesis, like a little bit of something can have a profound, healthy effect.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Like you get like a little bit of a poison creates a healthy effect in a sense.

Adam Rinde, ND: Very nice. Wow. That is really fascinating. There's all these different ways were getting to the hormesis effects such as, fasting and other practices. And this is just another way that, we're conditioning the body to become more resilient to stressors and to be able to adapt.

Adam Rinde, ND: Yeah, that's fascinating. So we've talked a little bit about what people experience is. I think, if people are listening to this and they're like, Oh, I'm just gonna try this on my own. And, Be you know give us a whirl [00:17:00] like what are some of the precautions you would say are contraindications to doing

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: So there's definitely contraindication so somebody has uncontrolled hypertension somebody has an aneurysm heart disease a COPD, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease that's not controlled.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: If somebody from a psychological perspective is, schizophrenic, that's a paranoid or is not able to be in a state where they can be off centered a little bit, that could push things a little bit. You want to have precautions with those things. If somebody is pregnant, obviously.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: You wouldn't want to do this. You could still do breath work, but it would be more of like a heart coherent type of breath work where you're breathing in maybe for five seconds through imagining breathing through your heart. So five seconds in five seconds out, trying to get that heart brain coherence going and not doing the breath holds obviously you wouldn't want to do this while you're driving.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: You wouldn't want to do this in a water where you [00:18:00] might pass out because, when you do this, there are, physically, you're going to potentially start to feel dizzy. You might become cat neck where your arms cramp like this. You might get a dry mouth. Emotionally you might feel like.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: I don't want to do this. This is not good. I want to stop. And then spiritually you might experience this feeling of oceanic boundlessness that's often described with psychedelics. Where you just feel like connected to everything as one and that answer your question?

Adam Rinde, ND: Yeah. I think it's also, I imagine for some people repressed feelings might come up and that could be very concerning or uncomfortable.

Adam Rinde, ND: Yeah. So generally for

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: example, with holotropic breathwork, there's a sitter and there's a breather. Yeah. And so the sitter is there just to make sure that the person who's breathing is safe. And when I meet these class, I [00:19:00] always want to make sure that people know that they're in what's called a safe container.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And that they're prepared properly, so they haven't eaten for two to three hours beforehand. and that they set some sort of intention and that they know that unlike the psychedelic where once you get on the train or the roller coaster, you're going to be on for a while with the beautiful thing about the breath work is you can take it as deep or as shallow or less intense as you want just by slowing down the exhale or slowing down the breathing.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And I think it's very important not to just go out and try this without having a guy right now. There are a lot of videos out there. Did you think that Wim Hof has one? Soma has some great videos. There's one that I'll do often called the daily dose. And that video guides you through 20 minutes of this, the circular continuous breath work with some music and guide you on like in two, three, four, out two, three, four, and then holding your breath on the [00:20:00] inhalation and the exhalation.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: So the breath holds are like a big suite of this. In the Soma breathing that I took, we do breath holds both on expiration. Full exploration and I'm on full inspiration. And and those create slightly different effects, but in general, you're still increasing the CO2 flooding the system with oxygen.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And then increasing that transient humble type of frontalis, where you're getting to that altered state because you're decreasing circulation to a certain part of your brain. That's where your ego is stored.

Adam Rinde, ND: Yeah. And I want to get more into that here because I think, one of the real interesting benefits of this practice is how, we all can Get stuck in our lives and feel like we're, we're blocked in our progress or, we're not able to manifest our, our path or [00:21:00] our, our true self and there's limitations that can crop up in our ego or in our brain.

Adam Rinde, ND: And so one of the things that's really interesting about this practice is, how. You can shift, shift those patterns. And so you talked about the default mode, what network and I'd love to just hear more about that. And, what actually is that? And can you give us some examples?

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Yeah, so it's a, so it's an area in your prefrontal cornet cortex that is as grow and develop as a person and your personality you get a story, like I'm Jeff, the naturopath, chiropractor, acupuncturist, and I see patients and I have a family. And, I go to the gym and this is my life and this is who I am and you get stuck in that story.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And it's not necessarily a bad story, but there are other parts of your brain that you have access [00:22:00] to that can open you up to a whole lot of possibility, including manifestation. And there's a there's a great book. I just read, I'm going to just peek over here. Cause I want the listeners to know what it's called.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: It's called it's called mind magic by James Dottie. And it's his second book. He's a neurosurgeon and he discovered the use of manifestation. scientifically, like he goes to prove it. And, there's a lot of ideas about manifestation with through the, the book, this or the movie or books, the secret.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And he takes the science and just shows what happens when you. Are mindful, mindfulness and gratitude and compassion and forgiveness and using all these emotions are really important, but I'm digressing a little bit, but with so again, with getting out of that place, you can't just will it, you can't just say okay, I'm going to get out of that story of my ego.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: You need to change the chemistry or the circulation. And the way that you do [00:23:00] that is by reducing circulation to the area and breathwork and psychedelics are the ways to basically do that.

Adam Rinde, ND: Yeah. These days, everybody's like referring to what is someone's vibe?

Adam Rinde, ND: What is someone, a vibe check, that's like a big term. Like people are really familiar with these terms and in a lot of ways, These practices, can change, the energy you're giving off into the world. And the way you're relating to people, people can feel lighter and feel, more connected with other people.

Adam Rinde, ND: And you can really see those shifts, right?

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Yeah, for sure. The, the other thing I would say is so psychedelics are, they're a lot stronger obviously than doing breathwork, although you can have some profound experiences with breathwork. But one of the main researchers on breathwork, Robin Carhart Harris, he talks about this kind of shaking of the snow globe when you take a psychedelic.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And when you do [00:24:00] that, you create neurogenesis or there's a neuroplasticity in your brain where you're creating new pathways. So imagine You're a skier and you're going up skiing and you take the same pathway down every time. There's a kind of a groove in the snow and you're skiing down that. When you take a psychedelic or with the breath work habits, like a profound experience, you have a fresh part.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: It's like fresh snow. And now you can go down another path and create other pathways. So you're creating like these new nerve pathways in your brain. And so it's it's, it can be quite profound. And the other aspect of this is when you have a cut, for example, you don't necessarily need to have some medicine.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Your body knows what to do, right? It goes through a whole slew of changes in order to kill the cut. You also have what's called the inner healer, and that's the part of you that, knows how to heal your body. And you have access to that inner healer through psychedelics or through [00:25:00] breathwork.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And so by getting out of that ego state, you can access that inner healer and get, messages or information. And so for me, I'm not a great meditator in the sense of there's all kinds of noise, right? And if you can quiet down that noise, which is probably what breathwork does, you could be in a place to receive things from a deeper level.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: You can access that inner healer.

Adam Rinde, ND: Makes sense. And this term transient hypofrontality, can you explain that and how that is Changed or accessed during breathwork.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: So again, what it is it's a decrease in the circulation to the blood supply, because you're cutting off the blood supply to that part of your brain that houses your ego, the default mode network.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And it's a transient thing, right? We wouldn't want that. It's not a bad thing to have an ego, right? Unless you have a big [00:26:00] ego. But with transiently, when you can bypass that and get into an altered state or a different place, then you have more access to getting more, more healing or accessing different parts of your brain.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: where you can connect to like maybe what's called the collective unconsciousness or like a higher power, whatever you want to call it spiritually. But also again, the main thing is as we go through this process of getting out of our ego, getting out of our way, we have access to information that can be helpful for healing.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And even if you will, psychic information and psychic abilities to manifest. I'm reading a book right now by a PhD. His name was Jeff Tarrant. He's out of Out of Oregon, and he he's done research on brainwaves. And brainwaves are also another way to look at what's happening with breathwork.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: So with brainwaves, you have delta. [00:27:00] Which is the deepest brainwave when you're sleeping. And then you have theta, alpha, beta, and gamma. So beta is our waking state brainwave and alpha is more of that relaxed state that people will get into when they're maybe doing the beginning stages of meditation.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And then that, that theta delta. Is where you have that access to these deeper states. And also there's gamma, right? Which a lot of times monks will be in that gamma state.

Adam Rinde, ND: Okay. And it's unique that these practices are done with music. And is there a certain type of music and why is music needed?

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: So music is a really big part of this and it's it's an interesting thing with music, right? So music there's a certain kind of maybe almost cognitive dissonance with certain types of music, right? So for example, like you could like, maybe [00:28:00] like Mexican gangster rap, right?

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: For example, and that might be something that really you like really resonate with that. But if I heard it, I might say, Oh my God, what are you listening to? This is awful, right? But in general the music part of things is it's something that should be evocative and evoke some emotion and make the process of the over breathing stimulating and easier.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Cause it's not easy. Like you think about it like if you say, okay, we're gonna do some breath work. You think oh, okay. I'm just gonna do some breathing. No, it's work. You're working It's almost like I tell like my patients and the students in my classes that When you do a breathwork session, it's like you're taking a medication But you're creating the medication And it's, it takes work to create the medication, but the results of the reward are awesome.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: But the music helps, it helps to make the process easier. And so generally for my classes, I'll create a playlist [00:29:00] and I've been working on this playlist for months and I'll keep on changing it and adding and subtracting. So basically. What I'll do is I'll do you want me to go through like a typical type of breathwork?

Adam Rinde, ND: Yeah, that'd be great.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Yeah. So I'm doing this either one on one with patients in my office, or I'm doing it at a yoga studio right now. I'm doing it at the old house in Kirkland and I have another class coming up at the end of June. And so what we do is we start off explaining what's going on with what you're doing.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: So people have an understanding of the process. And then people are lying down generally on a yoga mat, the lights are dim and everybody's comfortable. And a lot of times people will wear eye shades because it allows you to go in deeper as well, having your eyes covered. And so we'll start off with some kind of like very relaxing type of music.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: It's just like a music where I'll take people through a systematic relaxation. So I'll have people do a body [00:30:00] scan to see where they might be holding some tension. And we'll start off by relaxing the feet all the way up to the head by doing like a contract relax And then meanwhile listening to just very meditative type of love of yin type zen music and then We'll go into this have people walking down like a spiral staircase and then they get to a door.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: They'll open up the door and they'll have them find themselves a place of comfort. Maybe it's a place they've been to before, maybe it's a place in the forest or beach, their room as a kid, whatever it might be. And I haven't just said, whatever comes to just accepted if you have any questions, ask if you have some intentions that you want, go ahead and set these intentions.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And then we start the music, the breathwork music. And so for about 40, my sisters are using about 40 minutes of this intense breathwork, but this work can, people can do like up to three hours, four [00:31:00] hours of this breathing. The holotropic breathwork goes on for a lot longer. But I found that like in 40 minutes, I can get a lot of stuff and a lot of changes can happen.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: So basically we're going to like this

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: for a good amount of time. I'll have people maybe do like a song, maybe four minutes of that, and then we'll do like breath hold. So they'll exhale all the way, they'll hold, and then we'll work our way up to maybe like a minute to a minute and a half. People will feel the tingling, the dizziness. And then we'll go through these different songs.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And as we're going through this, that's when things, people start to feel these changes and this transient hypofrontality occurs and people get these, like these downloads. Or they get I had this one client that was like, had experienced something from childhood when he was bullied and he was able to go back and resolve that, that type that what happened to him back then.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And so we go through this heavy breathing and then we [00:32:00] spend about 20, 30 minutes with just like very relaxing music. That's just no words and just totally like non evocative, just very relaxing. And during that time, we'll go through a kind of a a meditation. So I'll say for one song, I want you to think of something you're grateful for.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: So gratitude is such an important meditation that creates all kinds of changes in your body. And so I'll say, think of somebody that you're grateful for and somebody that you love, somebody that you appreciate. And then we'll go on to compassion. And I'll say for example, what's going on in the Middle East.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And I'll go, not only I want you to think about something that you feel compassion for, but what could you do to help somebody? How could you be compassionate towards somebody? And then we'll go to forgiveness. Who is there somebody you want to forgive or even yourself forgiving yourself.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And then we'll do the, what I call the perfect day. It goes through from the beginning to the end of a perfect day. And then the [00:33:00] last thing I'll help people do is like manifestation. What do you want to manifest? And then having gone through all these positive emotions like with, for example, heart math is you're creating this heart brain coherence, which really puts you into a state of being able to create and manifest.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And you really You know you're connecting that energy out there, in the universe and the power of group, a group session doing this, you can really make some positive changes in your life. And then after that, the integration is really important. Because people go through this and they say, holy, what the hell just happened, right?

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: What the hell was that? And so we talked about it, right? Because it can be overwhelming. And there's, and the integration process is as important as the process of the breathing and so on. And so I'll have people integrate by sharing by, making sure that they take care of themselves with good nutrition.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: By maybe going for a walk in holotropic breathwork, you [00:34:00] draw mandalas, or you can dance, whatever it might be. And then and then that's the close of the session.

Adam Rinde, ND: Great. Wow. That's so comprehensive and it seems like just very well thought through. And I really liked the last part too, because integration of the experiences and grounding it into your body is so important.

Adam Rinde, ND: I've been to different workshops where that wasn't emphasized and people feel a little unsteady if they don't integrate, they feel, a little uneasy if they don't take that last, that step that you're talking about.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: It's like the same, like with plant medicines, right?

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Like you have this journey, right? Then what do you do with it? You got to do something with it. You got to break, take those changes and put them into your life. And that's where the integration comes. And then getting a practice, having a regular practice of breath work.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And like when I. When I have a problem or I have something [00:35:00] that I need some help with, I'll do breath work and I'll ask for a solution. And it's, and then, and they're there, I get messages. It's very helpful.

Adam Rinde, ND: Yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting. There's always skeptics of these types of practices or what have you, and I always remember something one of my early teachers said to me about, whether people believe in this or not believe in it, it's like, whether you believe it or not believe in it, it's certainly a better way to live than the alternative,

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Even if it's like, even if it's your imagination or placebo, placebos work, I don't know if you've read Joe, Joe dispenses book, you are the placebo.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: I have. Yeah. There's a ton of research in like in placebos. And if you're creating your own perfect medicine, your own placebo. So be it, right? You're healing yourself.

Adam Rinde, ND: Yeah. Yeah. And certainly just so much healthier to walk through the world with, that empowerment [00:36:00] and, plugged into an energy.

Adam Rinde, ND: That's just healing in general. Great. So what's the setup? Like, how would people work with you? What how does it work to become your client in this area?

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: My practice in downtown Kirkland, so you can get to me through my website, which is www. drgeofflecovin.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: com. And so right now in my practice I have done breath work with some patients in my practice. I'm doing most of my breathwork sessions with with in conjunction with the little house, which is a yoga studio. So I can get more people in a class.

Adam Rinde, ND: So what about remotely? Because a lot of our listeners are, throughout the world.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: So so remotely, I don't work with people at this point. I would say if [00:37:00] you go to the solo website or just Google breathwork in your area, you could probably find somebody that could work with you. Here in Kirkland or in the Seattle area, I'm happy to do one on one or group sessions.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: It's also something like if people wanted to get like a group in their home, that could be something where I could go and do a session. That would, that could be an option.

Adam Rinde, ND: Yeah. I can imagine like working with people that you're friends or your Close, close loved ones in a group setting would be very appealing.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Yeah, especially like maybe like husband wife scenario or boyfriend girlfriend, you know working together as a couple it could be a really cool way of like Of like we need these like for example breathwork therapy, let's call it like when you're let's say you're in couple therapy or you're doing therapy for something like I talked to a friend of mine who said, he's been therapy for like You 10 years, he was like, nothing's changed.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Where am I? What's going [00:38:00] on? Then he did then he started doing psychedelics and he goes, okay, like his life has changed. He's a different person. He's a nicer person. He's, he's a better partner. And there's certain things that you just, you know, when you go into a counseling session with your ego defenses up, it's just not going to go anywhere.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And that's not to say that counseling is bad or it doesn't work, but I think that you can bypass things and get to a lot deeper levels with breathwork or psychedelics, for example. Yeah. And the reason why I like to work with people too is because I'll often do body work as well. And so if somebody's got like stuck energy in their abdomen, I like to try and move that energy.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And like in breath work, when the when we're doing the inhalation holds, we're also doing locks. So with the locks, you're going to lock the lower part of your body, the mullabandha it's called. That's your perineal muscles. If you're going to do a Kegel exercise, for example, so you'll lock that and move the energy up from that [00:39:00] part of your body, right?

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: So if there's any kind of like sexual trauma or stagnation there, you help to move that by locking it. Then we'll lock the lower abdomen. We'll lock the solar plexus. We'll lock the throat. We'll lock the third eye and then the crown chakra. If you are into or believe in chakras, you can lock and move that energy throughout your body and it can be quite phenomenal.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And it's healing. But sometimes you need a little help, right? I have somebody that I'm dealing with right now who's got some stuck energy in her jaw from having some trauma. And when we're doing some treatment, I'll put my hand here just to help move that energy.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And so that can be really helpful part of the treatment therapy.

Adam Rinde, ND: Yeah. Yeah. I love the term like bioenergetic body work. Moving this whole concept of the body keeps the score, the body holds trauma and bioenergetic body work, or techniques can [00:40:00] help release that trauma from the body.

Adam Rinde, ND: And that's really amazing that you do that. And, it just really goes back to the opening of this is you've always been like a dynamic health practitioner. Where, you find ways to keep making the dimensions of your practice expansive and, seeing this human body and this human experience is eclectic and diverse and the fact that you just keep expanding these these areas is just really, truly phenomenal.

Adam Rinde, ND: Physical, emotional, spiritual, you haven't even talked about nutrition and all that you do with nutrition and exercise. So kudos to you for all that you've done and learned.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I felt like like nutrition is a big part of what I do.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: It's a big part of my practice, but I, I've really our profession and not to talk bad about our profession, but, I went to school for naturopathic medicine in the nineties and it was a lot more nature cure and back [00:41:00] then the scope of practice, we didn't even have the ability to prescribe antibiotics and that slowly came in, in Washington in the nineties.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And I just find that a lot of our profession has it's just so easy to take something to take this drug or to take, even to take somebody that will go into it for a naturopathic visit and come out with a couple hundred dollars worth of supplements, rather than you need to change your diet I teach my patients like a pyramid of prioritization of nutrition and the foundation is not a nutritional supplement.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: That's the top of it and you can't out supplement a bad lifestyle and a bad diet.

Adam Rinde, ND: Right.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Getting back to breath work. It's just a way to make those changes in your body by manipulating your breath, and then just using your own body or using the elements with hot and cold.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: These are so many things that we as nature paths have that I think our profession is losing the sight just because, we want to become [00:42:00] accepted. And fit into the system, which we're never going to, you're never going to get fit in and I don't believe you're going to fit in as a nature, proper position into a medical model, right?

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Because not, but if you stay in your lane, in my opinion, and do things that are profound, I'd rather my patient say to his medical doctor, Oh, my God, I went to see this guy and he did some breathwork on it and my headaches are better and I've held up a lot more energy and I haven't even changed my diet yet.

Adam Rinde, ND: Exactly. Said. Yeah. Yeah, any closing thoughts other than that, that you just shared that was really excellent, anything that, people who, maybe this is the first time, they've heard or really dove into the breathwork topic, like any just basic takeaways that they could try at home or try to dabble in?

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Yeah, so I think that I want to give everybody a tool, a practical tool that they can take home and use. And There's videos on this if you want to go to. You've [00:43:00] probably heard of Andrew Weil. He's the, the integrative medical doctor. And so the breathwork is called 478. And so with this particular breathing, it's four seconds inhaling through the nose.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: We can try it in a second if you want, seven seconds holding, and then eight seconds breathing out through the mouth with an ah. So as you're, if your exhale is longer than you inhale, you're going to have more of a parasympathetic effect, right? And when you use this type of breathwork, you can.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: immediately shift your body from that state of fight or flight to a state of of relaxation or increasing your vagal tone. And that's that as stimulates the back of your throat. And that will increase vagal tone as well. So if you want to practice, you're going to go like in for four seconds.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: And I've had patients do this and lower their blood pressure in a matter of minutes. And so what you would want to do this for seven, eight breathing forced four times, like a set of four and then throughout the day, [00:44:00] so if you find that you're stressed out or you're in an argument with your spouse or your girlfriend or your boss, whatever it might be.

Adam Rinde, ND: Try this and see how you feel. Wonderful. Thank you so much. And hopefully a hundred episodes don't go by till we catch up again. But thank you for being here and sharing this wisdom. And I look forward to, having, people set up sessions with you and, continue to learn this most important practice.

Geoff Lecovin, D.C, N.D.,Eamp, LaC: Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Adam Rinde, ND: You're welcome.