The Surf Strong Show
Subscribe to The Surf Strong Show
Harnessing the Power of Breath with Mateo: Practical Applications for Surfing and Life
In this episode, Greg engages in a thoughtful conversation with Mateo, the author of 'Breathe, How You Want to Feel.' They delve into the core concepts from Mateo's book, focusing on how conscious breathing can impact one's physical and emotional well-being. The discussion touches on the significance of the book's opening quote, the role of the autonomic nervous system, and the practical application of breath control in surfing.
Mateo shares five key tools for optimal breathing, emphasizing the importance of awareness and the physiological benefits of nasal breathing. The episode also explores the capability of breathwork in managing stress, fostering interoceptive awareness, and preparing the body and mind for dynamic activities like surfing. They conclude with a promise to delve deeper into the subject in a future episode.
Matteo began his study of the breath over 30 years ago while living in Nepal and Tibet—at the time working for a human rights advocacy group. Informed by his study of Buddhism and Hatha Yoga, extensive periods of solitary meditation, and pilgrimages across the Himalayan landscapes, Matteo offers an engaged approach to ancient wisdom traditions.
Matteo has a Masters’s degree in Indian Philosophy from the University of London, and his writings have appeared in The Washington Post, BBC, Men's Journal, and elsewhere. Matteo and his wife surf and ride mountain bikes from their home in Encinitas.
Resources
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Opening Remarks
00:10 The Concept of Breathing and Its Importance
01:36 Navigating Stress Through Breathing
03:31 Breathing Tools and Techniques
04:38 Practical Applications of Breathing Techniques
08:28 Understanding the Science Behind Breathing
17:22 The Role of CO2 and Oxygen in Breathing
25:28 Breathing Practices for Surfers
36:25 Pre-Surfing Diaphragm Techniques
37:24 Understanding the Diaphragm
39:09 Breathing Techniques for Paddling
40:54 Upregulating Breathing Patterns
44:09 Downregulating and Recovery Breathing
46:12 Nasal Breathing Benefits
49:41 Post-Surf Recovery and Awareness
53:25 Mental Awareness and Non-Judgment
58:04 Practical Applications of Stoic Philosophy
01:02:07 Personal Experience and Breathing Techniques
01:06:28 Conclusion and Book Insights
Full Transcript
026 - Matteo Pistono
===
Greg: [00:00:00] Hey Mateo, how's it going?
Matteo: Good. How's it going, Greg?
Greg: Very good. Thanks for being here, man. I really appreciate it.
In the opening of your book breathe, how you want to feel, you have a really great opening to it. And I think it just says so much about what we're going to talk about. And I think a lot of what I took away from the book really started just right from this opening quote that you say, which is may every one of us breathe how we want to feel, breathe, how we want to live, breathe, how we want to die.
It really just, It's such a great synopsis for your book. And I'm just going to let you kind of start from that, where that came from, how you kind of came about your book and just kind of start your process with
Matteo: Yeah. Well, thanks for it. Thanks for having me on Greg. Yeah. The you know, breathe. When I was thinking about titling the book, I wanted something that did summarize completely what I was going to be writing and actually the title [00:01:00] of the book came to me quite early on in the, in the, in the writing of the book.
And my idea of this is that and, and let me, let me say this also is that when I was decided to write this book, I wasn't, I didn't want to try to write anything that people had to believe. Right? It wasn't sort of belief based. It wasn't dogmatic based. It wasn't. I mean, if people want to bring their spiritual ideas or the religious ideas or these type of things into what I write in the book, that's totally fine.
But from from my side, I was trying to make it somatically based. Right. What are we actually feeling in our body? And the idea here is that, that we have lots of stressors going on all around us, right? We have crazy amounts of stress coming at us through our five senses, and then also from within us, our thoughts, our emotions, our feelings.
And, and because of that, As a way to navigate to navigate those [00:02:00] stressors to not to be sort of just completely overwhelmed, not just to be a casualty of our own life. The idea here is that we can use our breathing. We can use breathing interventions to change how we feel, because the way that we breathe affects how we feel, and the way that we feel affects how we breathe.
And it's absolutely immediate. Like it only takes literally half a breath. Like that long exhalation. You can feel your heart rate going down when your heart rate goes down, your respiratory rate goes down. When that happens, your relaxation response is turned on. So, and that doesn't take belief again. I mean, if you want to incorporate someone with that all good, but I was trying to make it very sort of concrete and feeling based
Greg: I love the way that you frame it too. In in several parts of the book is talking about it as tools. This is your tool bag, place to go to. I think that happens so much in our [00:03:00] lives. And obviously this, a lot of our listenership is surfers. And so we have this place that we always know we can go to to focus and be present and this, this love.
But it's not always available to us either. You know, this is, of course, the double edged sword of it. It's like, we're frustrated when we can't have it. And that is what I find, not only just in your book, but just in general, the topic. Breath is accessible to us all the
Matteo: at any point at any point. And that tool kit is, you know, it is like just like a tool kit, you know, like a carpenter. He doesn't like, not know how to use his tools and then take his toolkit to a work, to a work site, he won't know what to do with them. So the idea here is that we, we sort of hone, we get familiar with these, with a, a toolkit, a breathing toolkit, and then we can meet any situation.
I mean, just yesterday. I was at my local surf break at Pipes in Encinitas and I was [00:04:00] using this like I, there, there was just that dude. I was getting irritated. It was the whole thing that we all know about. And I, I got like the moment sort of overtook me in the sense where I got irritated. And as I was sitting there, I'm like, I don't need this right now.
And I did exactly what I talk about in the book. And we'll talk about some of these things. Put my tongue on the roof of my mouth, extend my exhale, relax my face, relax my shoulders, as I was sitting there on my board. Right? So we can apply these whether we're at the break, or whether we step on our kid's Lego, or if we jump on the interstate, or whatever sort of stressful situation that might present itself from outside.
Or like I said, from within and we can talk about maybe maybe that might be good to talk about those five tools that I talk about in part one of the book.
Greg: Absolutely. And before we go into some of those specifics, I want to jump back to the analogy of the carpenter, which I think is great. And to extend it even farther, which is to say, That carpenter also, he [00:05:00] needs maintenance on those tools before he goes to actually use them. He needs to make sure that they're ready, they're prepared for the job to do.
And, and that's the beauty of this, which is I do this professionally with surfers and keeping them ready. You, your expertise and your background and, and your, your education on breath specific. And of course, larger, which we'll go into. We still have got to be so diligent about the practice of that and the maintenance of that because you're right we are Susceptible to the same kind of influences and distractions I very similar to you like you're describing the experience you had yesterday.
I'll find myself paddling and being in a situation that I'm Anticipating to be bad, you know not crowd or seeing somebody be like, I mean have this conversation in my head of like Well, that person does that. I'm going to do that. And I, so often I need, and in a way we could be down on ourselves [00:06:00] about that, but really I, I've inverted it as much as I can in my head and say, this is a form of awareness is to catch myself doing this.
And I'm practicing and sharpening this tool of breath centered, put a smile on my face. It sounds so silly sometimes, but you're getting back what you're projecting. This is the whole situation.
Matteo: And it does. It is, as you just said, it starts actually with awareness and and I think it maybe it's important for our listeners to also like the way that we're talking about. Sometimes people say breath. A lot of people call it breath work these days. I always refer to it as sort of conscious breathing.
And this is something like what we're talking about here is, is not necessarily the 30 minute or hour long breath work session. You go to a yoga studio or you're at wherever Burning Man or you're doing whatever, you'd sort of have this sort of like super upregulated breathing. And you sort of get high in your breath and, and those are all good.
Those are all, but that's not what we're talking about [00:07:00] here. Here we're talking about Sort of breathing interventions in the moment to regulate our nervous system. Right. And it has to start with awareness, right? Because if we're not aware of both what's happening internally and our surroundings around us, then then that dynamism that happened that plays out upon our nervous system, we won't catch it until it's too late.
Right. And so this is a specific kind of awareness that we're talking about. You know, it's this it's a kind of how we feel. It's the awareness of how we feel within. Not how we think we should feel or we're projecting outwardly. It's just how we are in this moment in our body and it's called interoceptive awareness, right?
It's this awareness of, of, of, as you just said, you're paddling out and you see that dude who, who just does that thing every time. And you get this, what, what happens, you know, your eyes might squint a bit, [00:08:00] your heart rate might go up a little bit, your shoulder, your, your, your shoulders might come up to your ears and your heart rate is going up just because of, because of this.
Particular situation. Now, if you want to continue like that, if you want to continue to feel nervous and kind of pissed off and all the rest, great. But if you want to have some agency over how you feel, the quickest intervention is vis a vis the breath.
Greg: It just puts you in that place. And, and you, you talk about this in the book, and I think it's a great I think it's a great way to quickly frame up what we're about to talk about, and maybe even a great entry into this idea of the tools and the tool bag, which is, you just call it AIR, which is great, easy to
Matteo: Yeah, it's an acronym. Yeah.
Greg: intervention, And regulation. And we're going to go deeper into these areas, but it's a great way for all of us to stop for that second. Okay. [00:09:00] Where am I start with that awareness of that? So let's, let's kind of, yeah, let's kind of go into the concepts, you know, the five principles of optimal breathing, and we will be able to cover in depth as you do in the book, all of them, but let's really start giving some practical, the tools, let's give the tools to everybody to really start Getting better
Matteo: yeah. Well, I mean, the first tool is awareness is that interoceptive awareness and it's it's again is that it's that kind of awareness of of the feedback is the feedback loop between our body And how we feel and what we're perceiving. So for example, if you're, if you are, if we, if we keep on using surf analogy, let's, let's use, let's use a different analogy.
Let's say like, as you're walking out to the, your mailbox, like, cause I like to use like, like real world analogies, right? If we're walking out to our mailbox. And we're expecting to get like that, that, that, that [00:10:00] bill that we don't want or the, we're sort of expecting that the IRS is going to like send us something as we're walking out, we might notice.
that we start sweating, right? We might notice that our mouth goes dry. We might notice an elevated heart rate. That is the type of awareness that I'm talking about just when we notice those things and our body is set up for this. Evolutionarily speaking, our body has adapted to react when we fear something, right?
And it's, and, and so when we notice these things, or like the example that we just had, or the same type of thing that like maybe, Anticipating something super joyful, you might have this levity that also that feeling that you have. That's what I'm talking about. So when we become aware of that, that is, we can, we have a choice there that if we want to change it or not, not to say that we are, we're not going to be like all day, like monitoring our breath, monitoring how we're feeling and just.
Always intervening. That's not that would be kind of neurotic. That's not what I'm suggesting. What I am [00:11:00] suggesting, though, is that, as I said earlier, we have to have some agency when we aren't feeling sort of on our game or we want to change our state and breathing is the quickest way to change our state.
It's a state changer, right? So we have that awareness. And once we have that awareness, what do we do? Well, as you said, we have to hone the skill of the breath and we can breathe In different ways to affect our nervous system in, in the, in the in the book, I talk about sort of our autonomic nervous system and I'll use these phrases.
I use these phrases in the book and we may as well introduce them here that, that, that part of our nervous system is governed by this autonomic nervous system. It has sort of two wings. One wing is, What we call the sympathetic nervous system, and that's responsible for sort of our drive, our focus, our concentration, getting things done.
It's when we need to have our energy up, the inner energy increasing. If we, if we go [00:12:00] too far in that direction, we can move into the fight or flight mode. And the other side. On the other wing of the autonomic nervous system is the parasympathetic nervous system that rest and digest mode. It's just like turning the volume way down on our system to move into that relaxation response.
And we can affect these two. They're, they're, they are related to each other, but they're not dependent upon each other. So it's not just like a teeter totter or it's not like one is on and one is off. We can raise both of them up. We can, or we can move them around and we do this with, we can do this with the breath.
And how do we do it with the breath? We can do it with the strength of the breath or the breathing super powerfully like what you're doing when people are doing sort of Wim Hof breathing or very lightly, very in a very light manner. We can do it with the speed of our breath, really fast breaths or super slow breaths or the depth of our breath.
Very [00:13:00] long, expanded diaphragmatic breath. Or a little guppy breath when we combine these three kind of these three ways of breathing and when we know how to combine them, we can either turn up the sympathetic dominance to get our game on or we can turn it down to move into that relaxation mode or we can move them both up at the same time to enter flow states, right?
So those are the first two. Those are the first two tools awareness and the dials on our breathing system. The third one that I talk about is the difference. Between breathing through your nose and breathing through your mouth. Now, I'm, I'm a huge advocate of, of keeping it nasal. Like, breathing through your nose almost all the time.
Surfing's an interesting thing, because, of course, in wa surfing or swimming, surfing's a little bit different than swimming, though, because, like, on the paddle out, if we can keep, if we can keep it nasal, there'll be so many benefits. If, as you're paddling out, you're breathing only through your nose. And and it's a difficult.
It's a super challenge [00:14:00] because of the position on the board. You're compressing your diaphragm. Also, just the effort that you're expending. It's a challenge. But I talk about in there. The difference between nasal and mouth breathing. There's a there's a time for both, but predominantly we should be breathing through our nose.
And then I talk about the kind of superpower that we have. Through holding our breath, and I'm not talking about holding her breath when we go underwater, although there are physio, the same physiological changes that are happening. But here I'm talking about just during the day sub maximal breath holds 5 to 10 seconds to affect our nervous system.
Right. And then the last one is actually integrating all of it, like doing, like you can have, you can have, you can know all of the stuff that's in, that's in my book. You can know, you can, for example, you can know that by extending your exhalation, it, it calms you down. That generally speaking, that we, when we breathe out for longer than we breathe in.
It's relaxing. [00:15:00] But if we never do it, it doesn't really matter. We're just going to be, like I said, a casualty to our circumstances. So that integration, the fifth tool, is actually doing what what we know after we've honed those skills. So those are, those are the five tools in our toolkit.
Greg: yeah, that's so great. And what's what's so great is about how multitudes of them are interactive and and interconnected. But I really like to talk about the awareness. and the application, if you will, of that. And you talked about like checking in all the time would be neurotic. Well, we'll dial that back a little bit and, and have some mechanisms to always be coming back and checking back with what's happening because again, that awareness is, is information that information can then be applied into the practice.
And then we're getting the benefits of it on a, on a really, Revolving and regular basis. Like, [00:16:00] I can't tell you, it goes back to like, this is something I think about all the time and I can't tell you how many times I go back and I'll, I'll catch myself like shallow through the mouth. I was like, Oh, come on, come on.
And you know, the, the tongue on the top of the roof of the mouth, let's go a little deeper into that. We've talked about this before. In, in some of the other, I have several podcasts that are breath centered Brian McKenzie. Emily Hightower, both these are very focused breath.
Matteo: Yeah. Great ones and go back and listen. Those episodes. Emily and Brian are just awesome. Yeah.
Greg: they're so great.
There's so, so much information there. It's like, it's the same thing at the end of the podcast. I wish I could just keep talking to you because there's so many more questions I have. But the first one Dr. Tim Brown, who's kind of a mentor of mine and somebody who was the first one to introduce to me years ago.
The idea of the concept of the Vagus nerve and how that is so physiologically influenced to [00:17:00] ideas of vasodilation, not to go too deep into the science, but the efficiency of your lungs to uptake oxygen and the misconcept that we kind of have about when we're feeling these different physiological responses, that I need more oxygen.
This idea like I need that my body needs this. And so let's just talk, let's just give a really quick little refresher here on that idea of how this all interplays a little bit and, and how it centers back to awareness, which is what the Vagus nerve is doing, what CO2 tolerance and that climb in our bloodstream is doing and how these kind of interplay a little
Matteo: Sure. Let's and let me reverse those. Okay, let's talk about let's talk about the role that and we're going to get a little bit sciencey nerdy for a bit, but it really matter, but it really matters, especially for surfers. Yes, because and actually for any sort of any of us who are who are really active, who are doing any sort [00:18:00] of athletic, even if it's just as a weekend warrior and so, so, and but let's do this sort of experientially, okay, unless you're don't don't do this if you're driving. Okay.
Greg: water,
Matteo: Yeah. Don't do this. If you're listening to this podcast on your on your board, don't do that. Don't do it when you're in water or if you're driving, but I just want to, I'm going to have you hold your breath for a little bit and I'm going to keep on talking.
So I'm just gonna have you inhale just normally just inhale and then exhale and then at the bottom of your exhalation pause. I'm going to keep on talking while you're pausing and all of us are going to feel a little bit differently. But some of us are already going to start to have a few little alarm bells that say I want to breathe.
At this point, you definitely are feeling something that you want to breathe. Continue to hold, relax your face, continue to hold, and then just inhale slowly through your nose. And exhale. Okay, that little experiment right there, the feeling. Did you have a feeling? [00:19:00] Yeah. So most people after about 10 seconds, 10 to 25 seconds will feel something.
Some people might be able to hold their breath up to a minute or even longer on the exhale like that. The point of that wasn't to hold it to see how long we could hold our breath. The point of it was we inhaled and we exhaled, we paused our breath, and while I was talking and you were wondering, what the hell is he going to do?
You were starting to have some feelings. Your body was sensing something. Your body was telling you to do something. And the reason that your body was telling you to do something that was to breathe was not. Because you needed more oxygen. And that's a, that's, that's a sort of confusion out there, right?
So when you inhaled and you exhaled, you held your breath and that feeling that you needed to breathe again, if you had, would have had an oximeter on your finger that, that was measuring the, the oxygen saturation in your blood, it [00:20:00] would not have changed at all. It would have been 98, 97%. It would have just stayed right there.
What you were feeling during that 10 to 25 seconds, Was an increase of carbon dioxide in your blood. Why is that? Because we're alive and we have all of this cellular respiration going on. And what happens when we have, when we create energy in our cells, they're the off product of that is H2O. That's why if you breathe out on your hand, you feel moist.
You're breathing out the water that your cells are expelling, and also carbon dioxide goes out into your bloodstream, and that's what you were feeling the rise in levels of CO2 in your bloodstream. We learned in biology 101 in high school that they used to say that CO2 was a waste gas, but in fact, it's not a waste gas at all, because that CO2 in our blood, the appropriate levels of that are, [00:21:00] and this is going to just follow the plot here.
They, the appropriate levels of CO2 in our blood is the catalyst for oxygen to move out of our blood and into our brain, into our cells, and into our organs. And so how that happens is that when we breathe in, when we breathe in air, however it arrives into our lungs, it arrives into our lungs, it goes down deep into the bottom part of our lungs.
The alveoli, it passes through our lungs and into the bloodstream. The oxygen, there's about 21 percent oxygen in the air that we breathe. That oxygen molecule goes into the bloodstream, and it attaches to a protein called hemoglobin. And that hemoglobin then goes through the heart, and the heart sort of makes it go throughout the body. The oxygen is just in our blood. It's not in our brain yet. It's not in our muscles. It's not in our organs yet. It needs to be up. There needs to be some uptake into those organs. It has to be delivered that [00:22:00] hemoglobin for it to deliver. It has to have the appropriate level of CO2 in the blood. So CO2 is the catalyst.
CO2 is acidic. CO2 is is the catalyst. For the oxygen molecules to go into our muscles and into our brain. And this is why, when we hyperventilate, for example, some of our listeners for sure have done Wim Hof. Or, if you just hyperventilated for whatever reason, and you're like, It only takes about 5 or 6 breaths, let alone 30 or 50, to start feeling lightheaded. Now, why are you feeling lightheaded? The reason is because you're blowing off too much CO2. And when you blow off too much CO2, the oxygen isn't being delivered to your brain. So that CO2 is the catalyst. It's called the Bohr effect. It was, it was something that a Danish scientist by the name of Christian Bohr, he discovered this, that there's this relationship between [00:23:00] CO2 in the blood and the amount of oxygen that is being taken up by our organs in our brain.
Now, this is super important. Like it's a little bit. So that's okay. That's the, that's our science episode for right now, because it, but, but it's really important because, because we can, we can take charge of that. That's bit of science. It's not complicated. You had to get your head around to a little bit, but we can use that to our benefit because if we can withstand slightly higher levels of CO2 in our system, Then what is happening?
We're actually getting more oxygen delivered to our brain, more oxygen delivered to our, to our muscles and to our organs. And for those of us, and this is sort of a chronic problem everywhere we go, where people are habituated to mouth breathing just throughout the day, they have their mouth open. And they're breathing through their mouth.
When they breathe through their mouth, they are over [00:24:00] breathing. They might not be hyperventilating like, you know, like this heavy, heavy breath, but the over breathing that happens through the mouth drops our CO2 levels. And when we drop those CO2 levels, What are the consequence? Lethargy, brain fog, and all the rest, all of these other, and when people come to me and they want to learn about breathing, and I have, I give them, I give a little intake form, and when they start telling me that they have brain fog, and, and they have no motivation, their sex drive is down, all of these things, I mean, I'm, my focus is on the breath, right?
And immediately, I'm like, I, you know, I start asking questions, are they breathing through their mouth throughout the day? But this also matters on the paddle out if we're paddling out and we're breathing to our mouth in a super, super heavy breath, right? Now, sometimes, you know, if you're, if you're taking three or four sets on top of your head, forget about it.
Like you need to do what you need to do to stay alive out there. But I'm just talking about just, if [00:25:00] you're just piling out normally, we can train ourselves to breathe through our nose, we will be having more energy into our system. We'll be having more oxygen delivered to our muscles. It's literally on the paddle out instead of dropping it too damp, dropping it too low.
And then when we get out to the break, we sit up and we feel a little bit lightheaded, like Jesus, I was a hard paddle out. You feel that way because you were hyperventilating, not only because it was a hard paddle out.
Greg: yeah, that what's so practical about that idea of CO2 tolerance to the efficiency of the system to be utilizing the oxygen, like you said, because of the CO2. But it's also that ability to be aware of those fear triggers that are, there's multiple, multiple things going on there. One. If you start really flailing, you're physically going to be utilizing more of the oxygen that's in your system.
The [00:26:00] fear itself Is the brain is such a huge user of oxygen that if this is also ramping up, that's compounding
Matteo: Yeah. Because you're going to be expelling more CO2.
Greg: yeah, exactly. So it all just interplays to put you into again, we're talking about shy of actual danger. Those are almost different conversations when you're really getting to the limits of your physical state.
We're talking right now about this idea of the toolkit, practicing this. In a safe environment and becoming more. This is what I work so much on with my clients is this idea. Here's some protocols for you to go through to start to become more familiar with this idea, the physiological triggers where you're at, how your response is to it, we are so much better.
When we have familiarity with something and we're in a situation that's so dynamic, like [00:27:00] surfing again, shy of real danger, but being familiar with this idea when something unexpected happened, which happens all the time, we catch an edge, our hand slips off on a drop and we go down and poof, that lungful of air is expelled out.
If we have practiced this feeling, and again are comfortable and aware with my blood oxygen level is not going to change because of that. Just focus on my training, my being prepared for this, and then get back up to the top. And now the reserve that you have, that gas tank that you have is more full than it would be if you just flailed and got to this point and maybe you have to get out.
You know, it's just this idea of these practices of this thing. And it goes, it goes back to the toolkit.
Matteo: And I, you know, these is all about like what you were describing there is I sort of put them in this sort of bucket of down regulating practices. And so, [00:28:00] and I was, you know, like I just actually just said, I was out there and I got a little bit annoyed. It wasn't as though there was something physical that was happening.
Although we can, we can still get just as sort of stressed out with the mental, with, with something mentally as, as physical. But what did I say that I did there? I got out there. I noticed that it was happening. I don't dig it. I don't want to have that happen. I want to change my state. So the first thing I did, well, I was aware of it, right?
And then the first thing I did was I put my tongue on the roof of my mouth. Why do I put the tongue on the roof of my mouth? Well, you mentioned earlier, because of the Vagus nerve. Now this Vagus nerve is, is, I write about it a little bit in the book. The Vagus nerve sort of starts in the brain stem, and it goes, it's this massive nerve system that goes down throughout, it goes over the palate, down the neck, and, and, and, and, and goes through All of our major organs and down below the belly.
And it's, it's a, it's the principal nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system. So it's the principal nerve of the rest and digest mode. And there is a two [00:29:00] way street between the brain and the Vagus nerve. The reason it's called Vagus, it is, it comes from the same, it has the same root of the word vagabond.
This is wandering because it wanders all throughout the body and it's sending all of this information about there's about 20 percent of information goes to the brain through the Vagus nerve, but the, but the 80 percent goes from the Vagus nerve up to the brain. So if we can tell the body, hey, we're in control, we got this, like, it doesn't necessarily change the stressful situation, but it changes our response to it.
And that's where the magic is. That's where we have some sort of control. And how can I, what's the quickest way for, for you and me to affect the Vagus nerve? Tongue on the roof of the mouth and extend your exhale.
[00:30:00] Why is that, that tactile action of that? Why does that affect the Vagus nerve that way? Is it
Matteo: you're literally touching the Vagus nerve. The Vagus nerve goes over the palate, right? So there's the, number one. And number two, when the tongue, and when I say the tongue on the roof of the mouth, I'm not talking about, I'm not talking about forcing it. Just put the tip of the tongue behind your front teeth, not touching the teeth.
With your lips closed, if you can put your whole tongue on the top of the mouth, on the roof of the mouth, on the upper palate, that's good. But even if you just have the tip of the tongue behind the front teeth, and when you do that, it puts anatomically your breathing apparatus in the most suitable condition for the breath to move in through the nose and it opens up [00:31:00] your passageway.
If you don't, When the tongue, if the tongue is on the bottom of the mouth, and if it's on the bottom of the mouth and you're relaxed, or if you're on your back, for example, sleeping, it will sag, it sags to the back of the throat, and that subtle that weight and the subtle constriction in the back of the throat, your system feels As slight strangulation and this, you might not even know it, but as you're sitting there strolling your phone and your mouth is a gape and your tongue is back and then you start kind of hold unconsciously holding your breath and if, and your body feels as though it has a hand around its neck, what's happening as opposed to the Vagus nerve parasympathetic tone happening, what's happening is you can juiced with adrenaline and cortisol and a bunch of stress hormones.
When you don't need them, right? We need them. Sometimes we definitely want them. Sometimes like [00:32:00] when you're taking, you know, like when you need to have your game on, you need to go chase after your kid who's run into the street. You want all kinds of adrenaline cortisol. Hell yeah. You know, you actually want it sometimes when you're surfing.
You take when a big set is coming and you need a beeline, you know, if you need to move around the wave. Yeah, it's fine to have that surge. We're built that way. We're built our evolutionally speaking. Our system is built to be able to respond quickly and efficiently to stress to external stressors. But not all the time.
And this is the problem that we have in today's modern society is our system is in a constant state of feeling. And so there's stressors out there and we might be exacerbating that simply by how we're breathing with our mouth open, shallow, guppy breaths with our shoulders moving up and down all other.
And I, in part two of the book, I talk a lot about dysfunctional breathing, [00:33:00] right? How we might be breathing anatomically. Sub optimally and also how we are affecting our blood gases, as I said earlier, by mouth breathing by over breathing. So, and then, you know, think about think about this great. So, so we spend the morning we get up.
Okay, we're gonna we're gonna be out. We're gonna go surf at 9 o'clock in the morning, right? And say if we get up and we have, we don't do anything except breathe in a way that stresses us out, jump in the car that we're trying to get away, get our kids off to do whatever we have to get into traffic to go down the break.
We're just all of this stress is coming in. And then we go out to surf and surfing is not necessarily or even any physical activity. It's exercise and exercise by definition is a stressor. Yeah. It's not an, it's not a chronic stressor. But it is something that is catabolic. It's going to be, you know, if we're paddling a bunch, we might be breaking our muscles down.[00:34:00]
It's a good thing. We're getting, that's how we get stronger, actually, through the catabolic activity on the muscles. But we have the other sort of stressors out there because, whatever, whoever's, who's ever at the break or, or whatever we're feeling, we also might have some sort of relaxation happening as well.
But generally speaking, exercise, we can think of it as a stressor. So if we combine all of that. We have to have some point there needs to be at least interspersed within it or afterwards a full on down regulation. Because if not, we maintain those high levels of, those high levels of, of, of stress hormones.
And it's just, it, it hammers our system. That's why whenever I, after I get, I catch wave and I paddle back out. If I, if I have time, I sit there and I immediately put the tongue on the roof of my mouth. I closed my, closed my lips. And it just takes slow, light, slow, and deep breaths, deep breaths, LSD breathing.
Greg: So let's talk about that. Let's talk about your [00:35:00] approach and some of your systems that you use. We talked about in surfing. What about leading up to a session, whether you're on the beach or you're driving to it and then post a session, like your recovery post.
Matteo: Where we're going to be needing a larger amount than usual of ventilation, right? That is, and you can say that another way when we need more energy, because it's sort of the same thing that ventilation is moving energy into the body. It's moving. Oxygen into our system. So why would we just like warm up only our muscles and stretch only our muscles and not stretch or warm up the primary muscle that is used to move the energy into our system, the diaphragm. And so my, my thinking behind this is that, is that especially during, excuse me. Especially before we, we, we do anything that you, you just take a few minutes. Now you, we've all [00:36:00] seen, you know, we've all, we all go down the, to the break and put our board down and we sort of like look out there and we might, I don't know, you know, do a few jumping jacks or couple up dogs down dogs and boom, we, we, we paddle out, right?
So what I'm suggesting is take a little bit longer and, and you can also during this time check in to see if you're super stressed. Before you paddle out, like, do you want so check in with that? Maybe you need to down regulate a little bit. But then regarding anatomically, right? I suggest that we just do pre surfing.
It is to is just to work on the diaphragm and I'm talking a minute or two that is massage your diaphragm right because the the diaphragm for those of us who don't know is sort of if you take your fingers right now if you're driving don't do this but otherwise take your fingers and put them right on below your sternum.
And, and move down and [00:37:00] push in a little bit and it's like, wow, that's a little bit sensitive and then move your fingers, do a little claw with your fingers and move them under your ribs just sort of grip your ribs. And even as you grip that, keep on breathing. And if you, if you go as far as you can underneath it and then inhale. And you feel that pressure that moves against your fingernails. That's your diaphragm. And if you, and your diaphragm connects to the edge of your ribs, all the way down to your floating ribs, and goes all the way around your back and connects to your spine. So it looks like a, it looks like a jellyfish, a sort of umbrella, if you will, a jellyfish.
And as we breathe in, the diaphragm moves down. And when it moves down, there's negative pressure that is like a syringe being pulled, and that's what allows the lungs to fill up. And as the lungs fill up, the ribs need, the rib basket needs to expand out. That's on the inhale. Then on the exhale, the ribs move back in the, the lungs [00:38:00] collapse a little bit, and the diaphragm moves back to its neutral position. This is this, this apparatus of the, of the, this, of the diaphragm and the in between the, the ribs. Those are called intercostals. The intercostals. We can massage those and we can have more flexibility. And just to summarize it, is that if we massage, if we have more mobility through massage or other techniques of our diaphragm and intercostals, We'll be both more efficient in breathing and we'll have more energy because we'll be able to move in, we'll be able to breathe more efficiently and in larger, we'll have larger capacity to breathe.
So, and the reason, and one of the reasons that I, that I suggest not only massaging with our hands here on the intercostals and also rolling the, because it's, it's difficult to do that in your back. To massage your diaphragm in your back and to, to have some sort of thing that you can roll. You can have an old deflated volleyball or one of these sort of [00:39:00] courageous balls or something, and to, to, to, to lay on it and massage your diaphragm even before you, even before you go out or massage your lower back. And the, one of the reasons for this is that it, when we're, when we're on the, when we're paddling, we're in a very compromised position to breathe. You know, I've worked with a number of people that they talk about when they're paddling out the. They it's the only time they ever hear themselves wheezing.
They're sort of like they, and it's hard to breathe. And why is that? Well, our body weight is literally laying on top of the diaphragm. Right. Or at least the front of the diaphragm and often most some of us are only breathe into the front of the body. Right. Now, as I just mentioned, the diaphragm is 360 degrees, so we can train ourselves when we're out of the water to begin to breathe in a horizontal manner. Rather than thinking of breath moving upward and downward, we breathe [00:40:00] outward. So we breathe in this 360 degrees. So we breathe, and you can have your hands, if you put your hands like claws, and you put them on the sides of your, so your, so your thumbs are on the back of your ribs. And as you inhale, you can feel or try to breathe into your thumbs. Like this. And so this idea that when we're in a compromised position, I'm, I'm cycle a lot. It's like a lot more than I serve. And it's a similarly compromised position. You're slouched over and you're collapsing onto the diaphragm. So I breathe like my, I have very good flexibility in my lower back.
Where, where the, where the breath moves, right? Because I need to breathe into my back. So, you ask the question, like, what do you do beforehand? Well, when you're down there, sure, warm up everything else. Your shoulders, and your knees, your ankles, everything else. But move a little bit but, but move have a little bit of manipulation of [00:41:00] of your diaphragm and of your intercostals and the, and then you can also as a pre surf and I, this is my main thing that I do is that I try to do a little bit of upregulating breathing, right?
Now we talked about a little bit already about how to sort of calm ourselves down when, when situations are, are sort of stressful. Well, here, I'm actually thinking of the opposite. I'm like, no, actually, I want to get my game on. So I will breathe. I will, I will take in, I will breathe a little bit faster and a little bit larger breaths, maybe 10 breaths.
And then I'll inhale and hold my breath at the top. I'm not in water. I hold my breath at the top just for about 10 seconds. And then exhale. The, the thinking behind here, and again, it doesn't rely, this doesn't rely upon belief. We're just talking about human physiology. That when we breathe out for longer than we breathe in, that's generally relaxing.
When we breathe [00:42:00] in for longer than we breathe out, that's relaxing. It's generally more energy. So on the, on the beach, it might sound something like
that's about two or three times longer than I breathe out, right? This is an upregulating breathing pattern. It might look a little similar to Wim Hof for those, for those people who are, or it might look similar to after you've been sprinting for a while where you're breathing, where you're moving more air.
And when you breathe faster, Then you breathe slower, slower generally down regulates, breathing faster at a faster pace is up regulating. So I'm only going to do that for about 10 breaths, 2 or 3 cycles, and what does the, and you'll feel this. When I do that, and I hold, and I hold my breath at the top, when we hold our breath at the top, This generally gives us more energy when we hold our breath after we exhale.
This is generally relaxing. So here [00:43:00] now 10 breaths, sort of quick, fast big breaths. I hold my breath at the top and then I exhale. I do that two or three times. I will feel that my heart rate goes up. Right? Just slightly. I will actually feel my hands and my feet being warmer. And why is that? It's because the system, my body doesn't know that I'm going surfing.
My body just knows that my breath has increased in pace and volume and speed. Right? So the breath is like, what? Is there a mountain lion nearby? Is there a grizzly bear? That's what it has evolved to do. Right? So it, what does it do? It turns off my digestion. It turns off my sexual function, right? It sends blood to the things that are going to fight, that are going to get ready to fight.
Or run away. That is, it sends blood to my arms. It sends blood to my legs, right? My heart rate goes up. My peripheral, [00:44:00] I, I, I can, I can hear better. I can, my, my, my vision changes. All these things that are, that are, that are characteristic of, of upregulating. And I just do that a little bit. I'm not trying to, like, freak my system out.
I'm just trying to get some blood flow, vis a vis my nervous system, into my arms. And so that's what I do right beforehand. That is, massage my system, and I up regulate my breath right before the session.
Greg: is, is almost combining these ideas of what you were talking about is, so let's just say, let's play, let's, let's Flesh out a scenario here. So we pull up to our break and a good time for this is what I'll, I'll, I'll tell the surfers that I work with too, is as you're starting to get your board out, and if you have to put a wetsuit on, you're starting getting your things together, start that awareness, start checking in, how did my shoulders feel?
How does my back feel? And what we can be doing at that same time is maybe. Downregulating at that moment right [00:45:00] there, checking in with your breath. Maybe it was a stressful drive there. Maybe somebody cut you off into a parking spot. Whatever it is, start downregulating your breath there as you're checking in when you're doing these other really easy activities of getting ready.
And then we're walking down onto, you know, the beach and we're getting ourselves ready. And I'll do the same, I'll talk about the same idea. In the physical sense, which is at that point, we do not want these long static stretches. We don't want our body, you know, elongating in that way to not be reactive and ready for this highly dynamic activity you're about to do.
And we can think about our breath the same way. So start doing some more dynamic flow and motion. While you start to maybe upregulate your breath and that sequence you were just talking about, you're getting your mind ready, you're getting your body ready, and you're present and aware in both those things, you're going to put yourself in a perfect, [00:46:00] as perfect situation as you can when you hit the water.
Matteo: It's exactly that. It's exactly that, you know. And then, because then, then you're in, then you, then you start to paddle out, right? And like I said before, if we can keep it, if we can keep it nasal, you're getting all kinds of benefits of, and I talk about, I mean, the mantra of, of breathe how you want to feel is keep it nasal, right?
The water presents particular challenges. Now, when you're paddling out, you're, you are taking maybe a bit of water in the face. You know, if you're duck diving, I'm not going to be saying, saying, you know, be keeping it nasal when you're duck diving, but, but for the most part. If we can, then you'll be getting a lot more benefits through the blood chemistry if you're going to be able to keep it nasal.
But, but of course, you know it can be challenging especially if you're, if you're actually, actually in the water, right? And, and swimming is a, is a whole nother thing. That's why Brian McKenzie talks about swimming. It's a, it's a, it's a different it's a different
Greg: Different
Matteo: It's a different category, but, but paddling out isn't, and [00:47:00] I've, and I've really played with this a lot myself, and, you know, sometimes, sometimes if you're paddling out, right, and you see a big set coming that you want to get out there before it comes in, then, well, all bets are off.
Do what you need to do. To get out and don't be like all up in your head about your breath. But then when you made it out and what do you do immediately, you know, put the tongue on the roof of the mouth, keep it nasal, just nasal breaths. And what happens when we breathe through the nose, the, the, the hole, the size of the space that you can breathe through is less than half of your mouth.
So it takes more force. It takes more suction power. To pull air into the lungs. So simply by breathing through the nose, you're going to engage the diaphragm more than if you just have your mouth agape and the air just comes in over the tonsils, right? And so you're going to be engaging your diaphragm more.[00:48:00]
When you have your di When you When we have diaphragmatic breathing, it stabilizes, it creates an inter abdominal pressure. A very beneficial inter abdominal pressure because it stabilizes the spine. Right. And we need that spine stability to prevent injury for the most in many sense. And and also just just for the posture both on the board and when we're not surfing.
Right. So we want to have that core stability. And we can keep core stability by our nose breathing. When people come to me and they're like, they say, Oh, I got lower, my upper hips bother me, lower back pain, all these things. I, you know, nasal breathing can, can play a huge, can play a big role in spine stabilization.
Right? So then we like we paddle out, we get out there in between sets if you're not talking, right? Because when you're talking, it's most of the time you're talking and you take a deep breath in through the mouth. And there is [00:49:00] a kind of hyperventilation or over breathing that happens when we, when we talk and we should be, we should be aware of that just for when you're not at your breaks.
If you're, if, if your job requires you to talk all the time or if you're on a zoom calls all the time in your speaking, if you can try to take nasal breath. In between sentences, it slows everything down. And you'll feel better afterwards. You won't have that crazy sort of like mental fatigue that we have after we speak a lot.
The reason that we have mental fatigue after we speak a lot, much of it has to do with over breathing. Not because we've just been like thinking a lot, it's because we've been over breathing. Right. And then so we, we, we, you have sort of pre and then during what wire surfing or in between sets, I guess, or in between, in between when you're on the wave and then afterwards, and I really, I'm a big proponent of recovery.
Of recovery breathing, and it doesn't have to be, you know, a half hour of some [00:50:00] sort of recovery is when you're done, know, say, for example, you know, thinking about this, that if we if we just had like this kind of an intense surfing session, it was like, super is for whatever reason, it went a good way or perhaps negative way.
And we just grab it, we get done, grab a board, go up the cliffside, throw it in, pull off our wetsuit, we're probably breathing through our mouth. And our body's like, what is this? Is
the lion still chasing you? And then you jump in and you throw on some sort of like, you know, SoCal surf punk or something.
You jump on the five and your system is like, Whoa, what's happening here? Like, can I, can I, can I get a rest? And you go home to your family, right? And, or you just go home and you just start throwing in food. And all the blood is still in your arms, there's no blood in your belly. And so then we wonder, like, why do I have poor digestion?
It's because you didn't down regulate before you ate anything. Why did I come home and I had a difficult conversation? Well, maybe you [00:51:00] needed to just chill out a little bit before you see your partner, right? So that down regulation doesn't have to happen when you're sitting in full lotus. It can happen on the beach, it can happen when you sit back in your car.
Just take a beat. Just take two or three minutes where you put the tongue on the roof of the mouth and extend your exhale. That's the easiest, that's the simplest way. I mean, I have many downregulating breathing sort of protocols in the book, but this one is where you put your tongue on the roof of the mouth and extend your exhale.
When I say extend your exhale, it might mean that you sort of count however long your inhale is and just extend your exhale for two or three count longer. So maybe you breathe in for a four count and breathe out for a six count, something like this.
Greg: what's so great about that? And again, it centers all back around that first part of awareness. And what I talked to the surface I work with a lot, too, is this idea of habit stacking. Try to have a trigger that is common and [00:52:00] that you come across quite often that just triggers your mind enough to kind of be present back into it and aware of this.
So here's one of the things that I've been doing personally and practicing This idea, which is every time I get into my car, when I'm getting into my car, I just take a couple conscious diaphragmatic breaths and then throughout driving, hopefully I'm being conscious of my nasal breathing, but I have other actions going on, but every time I put it in park, I do the same thing.
And again, this is, we're talking 15, 20, 30 seconds,
but if you commit that time to it. You immediately see the benefit and this is what you're training this positive habit with. Have this trigger That you take this action and then you see immediate benefit and it reinforces this positive to you That then just is just compounding positive throughout your your days and your weeks and your months But you have to practice that consistent [00:53:00] positive habit So to start with that have a trigger that gives it that to you And so that pre surf is a perfect one post surf.
Just give yourself that Grace, if you will of those times To get everything out of that beautiful surf session that you just had again, positive or negative. There's, we learned a lot from negatives. If we can reposition our perspective of it. And one thing I want to touch back on earlier and get your thoughts on is this idea of awareness and us coming into and noticing.
So both of our examples were very similar of noticing ourselves starting to get really kind of stressed out about it in a session. And we're aware of it. And. What's to me is so important about that is not judging that, not judging your, your reaction to it, but being aware of it and learning from it.
Just maybe talk about that a little bit more and how we can get the most out of that without compounding it onto ourselves. Like, I [00:54:00] can't believe I did that
Matteo: Yeah. Yeah, it's it's a really it's a really good point and We talk a lot about this in in the because I teach meditation as well. We talk a lot about this as well This this point about being self critical About so because when we become a bit more aware of our internal landscape, you know, it was like, Whoa, you know, I didn't know that I was like, thinking that or, you know, wanting to do that, or I had that urge and the point.
Isn't to isn't to hone our attention on negativity. That isn't the idea at all. The idea is that is that is that these things are going to rise, right? The thoughts and whatever is happening around us is going to arise. And between and all of that that happens around us like, okay, we have our five senses, right?
What we, what we, what we taste, what we smell, what we see, what we hear, what we feel on our skin. And then we have, those are our five [00:55:00] senses, and then we have what moves through our mental landscape. Thoughts and emotions. So in these six portals, that's how we experience the world. That's how we experience surfing is how we experience everything through these six portals, right? That what comes through through our senses could be we could encompass that is we could call that stimulation. There's all kinds of stimulation and we can't we can't control hardly any of it, right? Everything that's coming at us through through our phones, through our computers, through the news, through our family, through all that.
It's just it is just coming at us. Like a fire hose. We can't control that. It's coming at us, right? And even our thoughts and emotions. There's no saying that in the next thought, you won't think about chocolate pop tarts like it could be.
Greg: We are now.
Matteo: exactly. That's that. Well, and knowing this actually is quite important, actually, [00:56:00] by suggestion, reminders, these type of things.
But what's coming up? So, you know, But that interoceptive awareness is that when these things arise rather through our five physical senses or through our mental as they arise and we become aware of it, it makes us feel a particular way. That is the moment that if we are feeling aversion to it, aggression towards it, like whatever we're feeling towards it, that when we recognize that, Before we act before we react, we can intervene.
We have that capacity. We have that power to do that. I talk. I use a quote in the book by this writer by the name of Victor Frankel. He wrote between stimulation and reaction. There's a gap and in that gap is where we find our freedom. This dude wrote that when he was in a Nazi concentration camp. [00:57:00] What, you know, the degree of horrors that were happening around him was, and his, and his, all of his feelings towards it was the stimulation.
And he recognized that there was a, there could be a gap before he reacted in a way. All of the breathing interventions that we talk about in Breathe How You Want to Feel, Are focused on that gap that that moment creating a gap or at least noticing what's happening in the gap. Sometimes we might have already reacted and we need to sort of dial it back in.
That's all good. No reason to beat ourself up. We just we're just going to reduce the amount of time between between habitually reacting and and skillfully responding. Because that's what we're talking about. We're talking about using our breath to skillfully respond to everything that's happening in our life.
And like I said, we can't, it's a very stoic thing as well. Like we [00:58:00] can't control what's coming at us, but we can control our response.
Greg: I would encourage everybody listening to to read Victor Frankel's words and his writings on the situation that you described that he's in, that he's writing this from and how applicable it is to our own lives at this present, like, is, is such a big deal. Powerful teachings. And so I would encourage you definitely to to read his words and to kind of pursue some of his writings and you touched a couple times on stoic philosophy.
And one of the things that you talk about in the book that I really love and it kind of goes in this context. I'm just going to read the quote that you wrote a little bit. It's just like situations. They're guaranteed in life. So you might as well have a planned response. And in stoic philosophy, they call that premeditato malorum.
Matteo: malorum. Yeah, premeditation on troubles. And this is this idea, almost everything that we've [00:59:00] talked about today in a practical application. is in practicing that away from that. If we said surfing specific, a lot of the things I do, if we talked about breath or response or pop up or anything that we described, it's about practicing that in positive, progressive habits away from the stimulus and the dynamic situation that is surfing.
Greg: We could go as far into breathing the same way. And here's a perfect example of The practical application of that in life, right? Stress is an absolute part of life and how we respond to that. Back to Viktor Frankl's words, how do we get that pause in there to be able to be conscious of what our almost immediate reaction is going to be to this, especially if it's a stressor and it's anxiety or fear or any of this, right?
There's an [01:00:00] evolutionary response. Why that's happening is that that fear is giving us this idea going back to sympathetic parasympathetic nervous systems. Like, are we okay in this? Are we, is it fight or flight? Like just that pause, that split second is so powerful in practically every situation that we're describing.
Matteo: it is. And you could apply this, you could apply this directly to, to, to surfing, for example. You know, you could just be in your living room and you could like contemplate this premeditation malorum. Yeah. Like meditating on troubles, right? What is going to happen, like, if I'm paddling, like, whatever. Just take your pick of the thing that you, that generates a bit of fear in you when you're in the water.
Right? Whatever, whatever the case may be. And you can actually think about it. You know, and it's safe. And you can even, when you start to think about it, you can notice how you feel. [01:01:00] You can notice that your heart rate might go up. You can notice, you can also tell yourself, this isn't actually happening, so let, you know, I'm just, I'm just doing this to prepare myself.
So that when the situation arises, or a similar situation it's just like practicing any skill. You know, when LeBron James, like, when he, like, jumps up, he's not thinking, how am I gonna dunk this, at all, right? He, he, he has, he has trained his muscle memory, but also his, like, mental, mental, mental muscle just to do those things right?
And we can do the same thing. We can do the same thing with, and we have this, this, this like superpower of the breath to, to utilize within it because it's not gonna change. Like the, the way we breathe isn't gonna change. The size of the wave isn't gonna change. The kook that just cut us off isn't gonna change any of this, but it's gonna change our response to it, right?
And it is absolutely applicable. [01:02:00] When we're at the break or in life or wherever we are, you know, and that pre meditation Malorm is an interesting one. My my brother used to always tell me when I was growing up You got to take part in your own rescue. That was like a thing. I grew up in Wyoming, so I didn't grow up at the ocean, right?
I grew up like skiing and mountain biking and whatnot, but it was that that idea that and it's a it's a little bit like this. I see that premeditated simian malorum is the actual practice of taking part in your own rescue. You know, I had this, you know, I'll even share this. I had this on in December on December 24th.
I was I was surfing just my local break and I was out there. Just just one other person out on on New Year's Eve and and took a tumble. Got all I don't know. I got I got rolled with my board and my fin. stabbed me. It didn't, it didn't slice. It actually stabbed stabbed me right on the side of my knee.
And when it hit, I was like, Oh, this isn't good. And then I sort of came up and [01:03:00] and I had that sort of like that rush of adrenaline. I was like, what just happened? Like, is my knee okay? I could sort of bent it. I could sort of feel it. And I looked down and I see blood like in the water. And so I get on my board.
I was able, fortunately, I was able to just sort of catch the smaller wave that came back in, wrote it in, came out. Look down my, you know, blood was coming out of my wetsuit and my heart rate was just jacked and right then I just did. I mean, I did literally what I'm telling you. I put my tongue on the roof of my mouth and I had to find my breath.
And I was like, I was, I was panting just because of the situation. And so I just calmed myself down. Like I just, and it was just fairly quickly, you know, within four or five breaths, I was able to sort of like down regulate. I was like, okay. And there wasn't anybody around. I just need to get up to the, I declined with the cliff side, got one of the cliff side and put my board down by my car.
And when I took off my wetsuit, it was, it was pretty gnarly. Like [01:04:00] the wetsuit was holding what's inside the skin in and it was, I took it out and, and, and I was, and again, that surge came and my brother who works in emergency room, I called him already and he was on the phone and he said to me, he's like, dude, you know, do that breathing thing that you do.
And he, he was my reminder because I hadn't really thought about like, you know, I, I, I teach this stuff. I do this stuff all the time, but I, but I was in a situation where I was really scared. There was blood there were Body parts. It was like this type of thing, you know, and I didn't know if I didn't know what was happening.
So also that. So again, I just did the thing. I put my tongue in my mouth and I was just working on that. And I used a technique also, or was counting my breath because
Greg: to be even more aware of the moment.
Matteo: the reason is actually knows to, you know, when we, when we, when we count the same part of the brain that counts, yeah. Is the part of the [01:05:00] brain that ruminates that thinks of worst case scenario.
So I just as skillfully distracting myself from myself. And so that's why I was sort of said earlier, you can count in for four and out for six. When you count, you're going to stop worrying about your finances, at least for the count of four, it might come right back, but then we keep doing That's that space. the space. You've given the space. And yeah, so I've tried to, you know, apply these things. And, and I hadn't thought about that about getting injured like that and using the breast. So it was, it was a good little test.
Greg: It's interesting though, too, because even though in the moment, you know, Like you said cortisol adrenaline. You're just you're pumped and visually seeing blood the reaction to that You needed the reminder from your brother to click into it But those skills are very sharp The tools were sharp and practiced and so you could get there you weren't [01:06:00] Having to flail around with trying to think of what that was, you knew exactly what that was because it was practiced away from those stressors away from the situation.
So then you're, again, you're occupying your mind, you're bringing it back to that moment and then you're down regulating into a better situation to then give you the space to think more clearly about what your next step is. I mean, the, I mean, how powerful is that name? Any scenario.
Matteo: exactly. Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah So I did yeah I put these three parts of the book that as you said that had the five tools and apply them to Daily daily life how to breathe breathe how you want to do breathe in and sleep How to actually improve your sleep. Breathing for exercise. We talked a little bit about that.
Breathing for meditation and flow states. And so that's the sort of, so the first part was sort of breathe how you want to feel and the part two was applying those, which I titled breathe how you want to live. And part three, which some people have it sort of surprises some people because the title of part three is, is breathe how you want to [01:07:00] die. And for me, you know, this, this aspect of the breath is and the way that I learned 30 years ago when I started breathing started to study the breath, it was, it was intimately connected to studying the impermanent nature of life because every breath we have, it arises. then falls only for a new one to appear.
But that singular breath is done, right? And we do that 20 to 25, 000 times a day. And so that, that awareness of impermanence, not only of the breath, but of, of life as well. And my training of this is, is, is, is it came from, from Buddhism and from Hatha yoga, as I said, like 30 years ago when I was studying.
So in part three, I talk about. Using breath to sort of live life to its fullest, but also as a way to prepare for the only thing that we know is guaranteed in life. And [01:08:00] that's that we're all going to pass away. And so how do you use the breath in the preparation for that and actually at the moment of our death so we can talk.
I think we maybe maybe could do a whole episode on this. I'm happy to come back and talk to you about it. Great.
Greg: Yeah, that's, there's a lot in there and I think it's really important. I think. Some of our culture probably isn't, isn't very good at that. Isn't very good at this conversation. Doesn't have a natural dialogue with it. And just like we talked about the tools breath within, obviously we talked about specifically surfing, how to utilize this, how to practice this, that's coming.
I think that would be really valuable. And I think that we could, yeah, just do a standalone episode on that. I'd love to have
Matteo: Yeah, happy. I'm happy to do that. That'd be fun.
Greg: Yeah, well, thank you so much, Mateo, for being on really, the book is tremendous. And we touched on a lot of the things within there. I would really encourage everybody to get it.
It is go so deep into what we talked about here and has. [01:09:00] really great practical tools in it. Like the end of every chapter, when you talk about it, you really give great keynotes and points back onto to really apply back into what we're talking about and the practice of it. It's a great book and thank you for sharing it with
Matteo: Yeah, Greg. Well, thanks so much for thanks so much for the compliment and and for reading the book and for the for the conversation.
Greg: Yeah, it was great. Thanks so much. And we'll i'll let everybody know when we're going to have you back on and Certainly within the show notes and on the page when when the episodes come out We'll have links to all of this links to your book links to the topics that we we touch on here. And Yeah, thanks again, my