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Breath Awareness and Practical Application with Reis Paluso
In this episode of the Surf Strong Show, host Greg Finch talks with Reis Paluso, a coach and educator specializing in breath awareness. Reis discusses his work with athletes and the practical applications of breath awareness in daily life, emphasizing the importance of noticing and adjusting one's breathing patterns. They explore the concept of CO2 tolerance versus air hunger and the psychological impact of breath control. Reis also shares insights on his Our Breath Collective community and how they integrate breath practices into various settings, including professional sports. This episode provides valuable tips for anyone looking to understand and optimize their breathing for better performance and quality of life.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the Surf Strong Show
00:09 Meet Reis Paluso: Breath Coach and Educator
01:05 The Importance of Breath Awareness
02:25 Practical Applications of Breath Techniques
03:36 The Role of Curiosity in Breath Work
05:11 Adapting Breath Techniques to Daily Life
09:56 Mechanisms for Breath Awareness
17:53 Understanding Breath vs. Respiration
30:34 The Breath Collective: Community and Practice
34:54 Breath Work with Professional Athletes
39:58 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Full Transcript
027 - Reis Paluso
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 Welcome to the surf strong show conversations for a healthy community. I'm your host. Greg finch. Thank you for joining us It really means a lot today. I'm really excited to welcome Reis Paluso Onto the surf strong show Reis is a coach an educator within breath and breath awareness He's a co founder of our breath collective has worked with Major league baseball players, Olympic and X game medalists, military special forces, and has really just done some amazing work and continues to grow this field and our ability to incorporate that into our day to day lives.
And that's what we talk a lot about today is the practical application of breath, breath awareness, and how we can really get some of this low hanging fruit, if you will. And incorporate it into our day, make huge strides within it for both our quality of life and our ability to advance and progress in our surfing.
Let's get to our conversation with Rhys Paluso.
Yeah, so our breath is literally happening all day, every day. We can't stop breathing. So, if you're looking to integrate it into what you're already doing, the first Thing to do is just start noticing your breath in the different activities and different situations you find yourself in that could be sitting at your computer and writing emails and watching what happens.
A lot of times people are holding their breath. When they're writing emails, email apnea, it's a thing. And also during exercise, right? Like our breath is constantly changing as metabolic demand is changing. We start breathing in faster or in different parts of our body. So that's kind of always the first point for when I start working with anyone is to build awareness.
And once we have awareness, then we have a choice. We can make a conscious choice as to how we change our breathing or the place in which we are focusing on moving our body. So I think they're, they're really, that awareness part is really the most important starting point for everyone. And typically when I start working with someone, it's just introducing a bunch of different behaviors, breath behaviors, if you will, ways in which we can change and manipulate our breath, whether that's the speed, the location, the pathway, uh, The inhale versus the exhale and just starting to like feel how manipulating and changing those things feels in our body.
And so in addition to that awareness piece is also curiosity. And most people, their curiosity leads them to, I want to know the protocol. What do I do like in this situation? What do I, what's the breathing pattern that I use in this situation? And yes, we can give generalized. Patterns of breath and, and protocols that, you know, we've all heard of box breathing, uh, four, seven, eight physiological side, all of these things, those are great, but really what I want to encourage people to do is what's going to work for you.
I'm different than you are. My nervous system is, is different than yours. So something that might feel really good might feel challenging for you. And, and so the curiosity comes from the play, like just start manipulating your breath in different situations. You know, if you're surfing and you're in the water, okay, what happens if I start breathing like this when I'm paddling out?
Or what happens when I get out in the lineup and I notice like, okay, I'm out of breath and I just spent all this energy to paddle through these waves and duck dive. And, and then I sit down on my board and I'm waiting for my turn and waiting for the set to come. What happens if I do this and, and you just start kind of playing with it and it doesn't have to be like the way or the right way, it can be your way.
And, and through that curiosity, then you start to develop your own kind of protocols that you can then insert. And, and it's a constant evolution. So I think that goes against human nature in a way where it's like, We really like to have the answer. We want the pill. We want the right way. We want to do it how we're told.
And I'm on the other side, like, well, that's fine and great. And, and we could get there if that's really a limiting thing for you, but instead let's just play and let's experience our breath in all of these different ways that we can. Because let's face it, we're, we're breathing 25, 000 times per day. And every single time that we're breathing is different.
So, um, what does it look like if, if we start to pay attention to that and we draw awareness to that and, and so much opens up from there,
I think that speaks a lot to that idea of. Being adaptable, having resilience. Um, you're vested and first person in that part of that experience for you to your awareness is bringing in this information to have an informed decision about something.
And that's where collaborating with. Yourself or me as a coach or just a friend and a buddy going through these things together And starting to get that ability to adapt because you're right. There isn't one way there isn't one answer Be it breath or practically anything else in our life. Yeah, but it's also that idea I've used the analogy in the past of just like Like music like jazz music.
It's like having a couple of these really strong Chords and really knowing what these notes are going to be And then being able to play and improvise off that And if so, and if you hit a couple bad notes and you're getting this information back, you can go back to knowing what that song is and resetting and re being from that foundation.
And then again, like you said, play and awareness going hand in hand and, and that also makes it fun. It's not, it's not like this chore constantly because you're right. We do this all day long, every day. If we can have some play in it, that really is benefiting us. I think that's just a huge step forward for everybody.
Yeah. Life is life doesn't have to be this serious thing all the time. Like we forget that play we thrive and play and, and creativity comes from play. So a lot of things that I've noticed for myself that take me in a certain direction with my breath, I would have never. Known had I not just been like, okay, what happens if I change this right now?
And, and I find myself struggling with that too, where it's like, we, I just, I think just the way that we're, we're taught and we learn is like, here's the thing, you do the thing and you get this result. And, and so it's, it's breaking that down a little bit, which, which can be challenging and confronting.
And, and also that, that there's an opportunity within that too. Um, So, you know, I think, yeah, the, the protocols are great. Like you said, it's like, okay, we can have a baseline understanding of like, okay, these things generally do this. And then from there we start to add these layers and, and different like knobs and levers that we're, we're twisting and turning to, to change the experience that then works for us.
Because also the protocols, like if you're not connected to that and you don't feel that sense of like. Oh, yeah. Wow. I'm excited about it. Then you're not going to do it. So part of it is like finding what feels good for you because then that's going to keep you down the path of experimentation, exploration and, and continually using the tool.
Yeah.
Um, so I think that's a big part of it too.
Yeah. That, that speaks to continuity too. And, and being, um, having that consistent appreciation and awareness. It really it's the superpower. It's what makes it's both biggest opportunity we have and and a lot of times what is the most difficult because we're like We're never going to it's it's not a solution based thing It's like what's working today and like I just got off the phone with a client with a check in And we were talking about this idea.
She was kind of struggling with something. I've said don't try to solve this This is just being um Understanding and aware of this. And I convey this to me, like every morning I wake up and I have my mobility routine to keep me started for my day and to help benefit my surfing. And every day I have this conversation, you know, with my head, like, ah, I don't want to do this today.
Like. And then the coach part of me is like, well, you need to do this. So, you know, it's like, and then that never goes away. It's this conversation I'm having. I do it every morning, but it's always part of that, you know, and this idea is the same, it's just like, you're aware of that primal kind of part of your brain, which is for me, it comes back to how do I reduce risk and conserve calories.
Those two things are kind of all thinking about all the time. And we have to play into that in our modern life, which is. We haven't, you know, as much as we feel we're busy, we have an abundance of time and abundance of resources and the ability to even think about these things. And so that is the opportunity and the rub.
And the lead into this is what mechanisms have you found to be the most effective with people that are, you know, First coming into really concentrating on their breath awareness. So for instance you talk. I love the email apnea. That's great Every time they sit down at their computer, let's say or you know brushing their teeth or what are some of the?
mechanisms that you give people to Check in with their breath because this is one of those ideas which is It's an abundance of choices, right? We're breathing all the time So sometimes that can feel like it's just always happening and where do I actually check in with it? Do you give them any kind of mechanisms to get that continuity practice?
Yeah, uh, that's a great question and Usually I'm telling people to notice in the transitions from doing one thing to another, and, and that alone also allows for a little bit smoother transition because then we inherently become aware of our body. We start to really feel into like, okay, I'm went from, from, you know, whatever it is like walking my dog to now I have to go into sitting down and focusing on my computer.
And so maybe there's a little bit, I'm breathing a little bit faster because I was just moving my body. And then my ability to focus is less because of the physiological thing. Things that are happening due to the moving. And so now I have to shift my focus to sitting down and, and doing something more with like my mind.
And, and, and so that those transitions are generally where, uh, kind of a starting point for people to put their attention on their breath. Um, and then another one is, is where you start to feel activated. And that activation in our nervous system, things start to ramp up and our breath is directly connected to that.
So then that really, it's a easy opportunity, easy, easy opportunity to, to be able to pay attention. Obviously there's, your mind starts going and the thinking starts to get in the way. Where you're, you know, trying to solve the problem or deal with the issue. But, um, if you can just kind of create a moment to like, Oh yeah, I'm actually really starting to feel ramped up.
And, and you put your attention on your breath just for a moment that creates a little bit of space right there. Um, so yeah, those are, those are kind of two of the times where, where I think it's a little bit, uh, Our breath becomes a little bit more, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? It loud is not the word.
I mean, yes, when we're activated, it becomes loud, but, um, it just a little bit more of an opportunity to kind of feel the difference. Um, from moving from one thing to another. And then obviously when, when we're feeling activated and aroused, so.
Yeah, it's interesting too, because it, it, it, it is that, um, you can, I don't like the word manipulation, but you're, you're influencing your breath by just that awareness.
And some of these protocols we're talking about and some of this play. Am I, am I ramping up myself and my nervous system? Am I bringing it back down? Am I trying to concentrate my focus? All of these things become, you know, tools in the toolbox, if you will. But what's interesting about like that transition that you were just talking about is, so you're out walking your dog and you're not really thinking if you have a fairly, uh, strong foundation in your fitness.
It doesn't feel like a big output. Maybe you do a small inclination of 7 percent or something. You're not really thinking about it and you're, you're, you're breathing and you're doing it, but then when you stop moving, your, your body has been working. Right? So physiologically you are ramped up and that transition into that seated position where maybe you have a meeting coming up or maybe you have a project that you're doing.
And that's ramping you up into a completely different way. Yet your breath can be affected very similar. So if you're coming in and you really don't check in with your breath and you really don't recover and bring it back down into focus, your body's going to recover. Your, your, your physiological output is going to drop, but now your mind is racing in this different kind of stress hormone and all these other activations that come up.
And. Your breath might still be really up there and you have, you're disconnected in both those ways. So it's compounding all that stuff. So I love that transition of movement and then coming into a stationary place and let's check in with this. Because that I think that what I've seen with the surfers I work with is they're they're fairly aware of breath because it's such a critical aspect of this thing that we love and so you're inherently you may not know the terms or you may not have studied the science behind it but you're intimately aware of how that affects your ability to surf or recover.
But then when I take it out of that scene and that scenario for them and they start really delving down into where this is in all the other aspects of their life, it's amazing how that light bulb really clicks on because they do have this like Kind of training that they've done for years. They've just never applied it in a different scenario and that becomes really powerful.
They're like, Oh yeah, I, you know, I noticed I'm recovering now I'm doing this thing. And like driving obviously is a perfect example. If we have any stress or anything. Those are the obvious ones, but I love when they sit when the client will come back and they'll give me an example of like something that's really subtle.
Like maybe they're on a phone call with somebody and it doesn't feel like a stressful conversation, but they noticed they were like walking around their deck or something. And they, this happened a couple of weeks ago. The client said, I noticed like how shallow I was breathing. Cause we were talking about like, Thanksgiving plans.
It wasn't a stressful thing, but it was like, what are you carrying from that? And you were like, they're like, I was like, I was like breathing my throat, you know, checked in on my breath and I just felt everything just calm down and focus like that. That's just like, it's a superpower. It just changes everything.
Yeah. And the more that you check in with your breath, the more that you then inherently start to notice it. And And so it's just that process. It's just, it's another practice. It's just bringing the attention in. We're so focused outward. Everything that we do is out, out, out, out, and we don't spend enough time in.
And then we get totally disconnected from our body and our body is giving us signals all day, every day. And it's, and it is those very like, small, um, quiet little signals that, that we don't even recognize are there. And then we start coming back and we start to feel those. And part of. It's like two sides of the same coin, right?
We have breath awareness and then we have conscious breathing. So conscious breathing is where we start to manipulate and change our breath. But then the breath awareness is the paying attention and becoming aware of our body breathing in space. And. One of the other things that I really like to get people to understand is, so when you go into breath awareness, you start to become aware of yourself breathing.
You said it before, there's inherent control that starts to happen. We start to, we, we do it unconsciously, like you, you close your eyes, you pay attention to your breath. There's some, some part of you is controlling it in whatever way, so part of the practice that I like to instruct people is, Noticing where you are controlling your breath, because where you're doing it in those moments of awareness are likely where you're doing it out when you're unconsciously breathing, and it's happening, and those are likely creating Those are likely connected to maybe some of the dysfunctional habits in your breath and then you can start to really pay attention to like, oh wow, I noticed that I really control my exhale and I'm, I'm using all this like musculature on my exhale and I don't necessarily need to do that.
And so then you might start to feel that out in your day to day when you're, when you're doing things. So, um, paying attention to where the breath is and starting to practice allowing your breath. Body is very smart. Respiration, different than breathing. Respiration is driving us to maintain the acid base relationship with our, with CO2 and oxygen.
So, when we start to control the breath, we disrupt that. And then when we allow the breath, the body is striving to get back to that balance. So allowing is going to help re establish homeostasis. So if we can practice allowing our breath, then we're working to the advantage of our body. Whereas the control starts to disrupt that in ways.
Tell me more about that. Tell me more about, um, some of the, the best ways to influence or at least become more aware of that difference between breath and respiration. I love that idea. Just hearing it out loud. We know that instinctually a little bit, but just that difference between that. So you're talking about acid based CO2 and O2, and we don't have to go too deep into the science, but what I would love to do is like, what are ways that people in their awareness and some of their, some of their mechanisms can influence that variation?
Because like you said, it's looking for stasis. It's looking to try to get back to that. What's a, what's a practical way for people to change that balance in a way that could be a positive influence in a situation. I know that's pretty broad and pretty vague, but I love this, that idea. Just talk about the difference between breath and respiration and how people can utilize that.
Yeah. So yeah, great. Pulling back breath and respiration. You can look at respiration. That's like the hardware, right? It's like your computer. It's built in. It's it's set. And then breathing is like the software it's programmable. And so as we go through life, that programming starts to change breathing as a learned behavior, and it's subject to the same principles as any other behavior and through life, we unconsciously start to engage in dysfunctional habits, mostly as protection mechanisms for us to Be safe and stay alive.
And, and so we start to disrupt that original software. It starts to get rewritten. And then there's dysfunction that's happening that we don't know. And likely there's downstream symptoms that we feel that we aren't connecting to that software change. And so that primarily, in my experience, has to do with over breathing, so breathing more than we actually need to, so that's where the CO2 gets disrupted, CO2 drops, and there's a number of symptoms that come from that, whether it's being light headed, Um, brain fog.
I mean, there's there's a list of a number of them that we're not associating to that. So part of that, like, uh, that disruption is is typically co2 is getting low. And so what we want to do is allow the breath to go back. Where's the control happening? I like to have people focus on the transitions between inhale and exhale first.
And then from there, where else is the control happening? And, um, it's really, it's, it's a really challenging practice to do, uh, without. coaching around it and and without like without some other things in play. Um, so, but I would say generally speaking, we're over breathing. And so slowing our breath down, like reducing the rate in which we're breathing, softening our breath.
So Particularly on that exhale, where forced exhalations is very common. And so softening the exhale and, um, and also even adding pauses in between our breaths, which will then allow the CO2 to, to restabilize. And those are interventions, right? And we're, we're trying to get back to our body doing the thing.
And so we can't always intervene. But we can start to train our body in these ways by, by consciously doing it and, and feeling that happening. And then we start to notice, okay, yeah, wow, that symptom is coming in play. I know that I'm doing X, Y, and Z. And so I can rewrite the ship here by doing these other things and then getting back to the allowing of the breath.
It sounds a little bit hard to understand maybe, but, um, hopefully there's, A little bit of clarity in that.
What's interesting about that, though, at its core, though, is that idea of the over breathing and this again co2 byproduct of metabolism again over simplifying. But really what's happening is. Is that if we're over breathing, we're getting that that's lowering in our in our bloodstream.
What's interesting to me is this is a question that would be great to get some data on and answer is that happening and say the surf population yet in session that rising of CO2. in their bloodstream and that CO2 tolerance idea of being able to be in that state more comfortably without overreacting.
I wonder how these two compound each other, meaning they're more inherently practiced at CO2 and maybe their tolerance isn't great because they don't practice that and they're not giving themselves that ability to practice away from the stress input of surfing and feeling like they need to breathe and that little bit of What's perceived as oxygen deprivation and it isn't it's co2 rising And then over breathing in their normal state of their day I wonder if those really negatively influence each other meaning Maybe they over breathe more because of that as a surfer and other people experience it too, right?
I'll just give a quick description for for those that are listening, right? If you're a surfer you've felt that flutter in your throat You You grabbed a rail, you fell to the bottom, the air that was in your lugs just got blown out and then that first instinct to you is like, I need to scratch the surface.
Cause I need oxygen right now and it isn't right. It's that panic feeling of that CO2 rise in your bloodstream. I wonder if that influences their over breathing in their day because they've felt that state and it's frightening, you know, shy of risk. I'm not talking risk where you're really in a state where you're in a bad situation, something unexpected happened and you feel that just inherent evolved state of I need to get up and breathe right now.
And then over breathing their day. It's not a question we can answer, but it's an interesting concept of that, how those two might influence each other.
Yeah. And because breath breathing is a learned behavior. We have an experience, a quote unquote, little tea traumatic experience. Maybe we got, yeah, had a bad wipeout.
We got held on the bottom. We have no air. We're in a panic state. And so then that can potentially become a learned behavior. And, and when we look at CO2 tolerance. The more that I'm learning and understanding, it's less about the CO2 tolerance and more about the air hunger tolerance in the sense that it's a psychological thing.
It's not, it's not necessarily about the CO2, it's more about the psychological connection and feeling that we get that then creates the panic. And so it's, it's, It's psychophysiological, if you will. Um, and so, so part of it is, is, um, you know, practicing being under stress in those ways and, and noticing what that psychological thing that is happening in that place.
Yeah. So that, that is interesting because you're right. Like in the moment. When it like that example again of grabbing a rail and poof you're beating hold on like You're you're you're c2 hasn't quite risen that much yet because you're just in a state you haven't done anything in that example perfectly like Yeah, you a little bit of output to paddle get into the wave But if you were at quote unquote stasis before you did that You're not really getting co2 rising that quickly that much So you're right.
It's that psychological piece of that of that connection connection to the oxygen. It's interesting too because maybe then practicing the co2 tolerance training Helps with that because you become more comfortable in that state And you don't go into so quickly into that You Panicked overreaction, you know that it just happened a couple months ago Where's something close to that scenario was going down the line and then made a turn and then that's you know Didn't make what I expected and the wave hit me way more than I thought it would and so I was a little Depleted and I thought about it just because we're coaches and we think about this all the time But I was underwater and I was just like calm down.
Just don't do anything You That wave is still holding you. It wasn't a huge way, but it was like, it's still got you. There's nothing you're going to do at this point right now. Anyway, just be right here. And then you get up and it's like that, that it's like, you can't really train the, our inherent connection to the, the one in need of oxygen, but you can train that CO2 component.
Huh? That's it. I like that concept a lot though. Let's circle back around to that idea. Tell me again that idea less about CO2 tolerance and more about, I forget the term that you use.
Air hunger. So it's the sensation of feeling air hunger. Like I need to breathe. And so that air hunger is, is tied to the psychological, uh, um, The way in which we feel towards that, right?
So how does that air hunger make you feel? And, and then that's, that sort of starts to compound on itself and, you know, the mental chatter and all the things that happen. And then we get tense and tight and we struggle more. And then that starts to impact the CO2, obviously, which then creates more of that feeling.
Um, so, so yeah, it's kind of looking at air hunger is, Kind of more of a, just a different way of talking about CO2 tolerance that is not necessarily, it's not necessarily as much about the CO2, but it's more about the sensation, the feeling of air hunger that is then, that is triggering us, is, is creating that like psychological stimulus.
Oh, yeah, that's interesting. I love that. That's great. So if you um, so let's talk a little bit about the breath collective Tell me what that is. Like how are you working with those clients? And what are some of the um, Yeah, just to talk about the breath collective
Yeah, so, uh, I have a partner. His name is Luke.
He's also a surfer. And in pre pandemic 2019, we were teaching classes and different workshops individually here locally in North County, San Diego. And the question from people was always like, okay, well, I love this information and I feel like I have a better understanding of my breathing. How do I then implement this and have a daily practice?
And we were kind of like, all right, well, we were already at home doing our practice in the morning. Let's just broadcast it. So we started live streaming short practices, 6am every single morning. Uh, they're all about 15 minutes. And the idea was like, come and do the practice. We're not going to teach you lessons.
It's not, we're not getting into the science or the why we're just doing the experience and let the experience create the curiosity and also create the, uh, just the, the reinforcement. By starting to feel what's happening when you do the practice and when you don't do the practice, what happens every day.
And so from there, people were like, okay, this is awesome. Now I want to know the why. So then we started developing our, our curriculum and coursework. We teach a breathwork intensive class, um, that gets into. More of the science of breathing. We really follow more of a principle based approach rather than here.
Here's the method. It's like, no, understand the principles of your physiology, the mechanics of your breath, how you're, how it's connected to your nervous system, and then how to apply that to your life. And then people were going through that course and they were like, okay, this is awesome. I want to share it with my community.
So we developed a teacher training. It's called breath school. Uh, it's a four month training. It's a combination of online and in person, uh, where, you know, we obviously teach the science and work on facilitation. And then we have an in person portion where everyone comes together and we just get hands on and, you know, work together.
And down and dirty with all the things. And, and so certifying people to be a breath coach, breath facilitator. Um, I kind of look at them a little bit differently and, um, yeah, really merging this like functional breathing, which is kind of what we're talking about to the therapeutic side of breathing, which is kind of more of like the, uh, transformational breath work, the Wim Hof, the kind of cyclical hyperventilation.
It's, There's there's these two side two ends of of breathing, and we're looking to merge the two. They both have equal importance and value and, um, ability for transformation. And if you want to call it that, uh, but when you can merge the two, then One works, they work with each other. They kind of enhance each other.
Um, so yeah, we basically have uh, an online like community platform where we host our daily breeze. They're live and then they get recorded into an on demand library so people can watch them at any time. I would say only about you know, A small portion of our, our, um, members are doing 'em live and the rest are kind of doing them in their own time.
It's just the way it works. Yeah.
The way life is and
Yeah, the way life is. And, and that's part of it too. It's like accessible for when you need it. Some people, they're like, yeah, I do it in the morning and then I come back to it. My favorite one in the afternoon that I have bookmarked or whatever. Yeah.
Um, so really it's more, it, it's kind of like merging education and experience. We always say experience is our best teacher. It creates that curiosity. It allows it for us to explore. And then actually bringing the education, the science of it. And so it's the merging of the two, the art and science of breathing really.
Um, Yeah. So that's, that's OBC in a nutshell. Um, and then outside of that, you know, I, I have personal client work that I do one on one type work or group work. Um, this past year I started working with the San Diego Padres, which was, has been really awesome. Um, different environment to, to integrate some of this into, um, which has been cool.
Very, very much a learning experience for me, never having been into a professional clubhouse like that. So yeah, It's been a lot of fun.
Yeah, that's great. Yeah. And, and, and the, the fundamentals that you're teaching and then of course, progression from there would probably be very similar, the application drastically different.
Yeah. Yeah. And, and working with athletes in that way, like. I don't know. I just find that there's a little bit different connection to their body and, and the ability to apply it directly, immediately to what they're doing. It just, it's a little bit different. Um, which has been a lot of fun, uh, trying to up my ability to like, My skills to, to be able to really impact those guys.
Um, because the, the reality is I have a really short amount of time, like three to five minutes and it needs to stick and, and they need to like, They're not, they're not going to stick around and do something that's not working. And honestly, primarily what I was doing with most of them was really down regulating and letting, helping them rest and recover a lot of times helping to like put them to sleep for five or 10 minutes.
Well, the reality of it's in all professional sport, but I think it's specifically baseball is you have a high repetition, high stress. Over a very long period of time. How they're playing 162 games, let alone going into the postseason in that environment. And not being able to rest and recover. I mean, they're traveling, they're conscious, all this stuff is going on.
And that part is, would be really, really intriguing because, you know, they're, they're playing games six, seven days a week sometimes. So it's like, here's another day, here's another inning for that matter. You know, and just like getting that. Feedback in that data. It's not like you're seeing them on that repetition that much, but they're in that application and then feedback loop constantly, which inherently in itself has its own issues.
But yeah, that's really interesting.
Yeah. And it's like they, they, you know, they get to the clubhouse and they're in it for. Like literally immediately they're there. It's like, boom, boom, boom, boom, up to game time, game ends, post game interviews, dinner, go home, try to down regulate themselves after being like, just peaking and try to fall asleep and then wake up and do it all over again.
And. Most of them are, they're professional baseball players. They know a lot about baseball, but there, there's a lot of blind spots on these other areas that really, in my opinion, could enhance their performance. And, you know, the more that I've been in that environment, the more that I'm convinced that.
Yes, having a flexible nervous system is extremely important, but I think the modern superpower is becoming having the ability to down regulate, recover and relax on demand.
And what's, what's amazing about that is like you give, you give the, you know, professional baseball example, right? That seems even to somebody that's never been in that environment, you, you kind of understand the stakes.
And the stress physically physiological mental, you
know
Fame all of those things but what's interesting about that is a lot of those are so directly applicable to everyone's life
Totally
we're stimulated constantly. We just have this And that's it's a relatively new phenomena like even my life i've had that But it's ramped up in the last 10 years, especially and it feels so normal to us now, but we are Constantly stimulated so it's like that talk about the superpower that ability to bring that down Both those as divergent as they are Have so many parallels
Yeah, totally.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like they're, they're obviously on one extreme and And, and that, that's a great, um, experimentation, playing ground, playing field to then, okay, how do we then translate this to someone like you or I, where, you know, we're, we're active and we do the things that we love to do, but we also are dealing with a lot of the same things just in a slightly different way.
So. Um, yeah, I mean, it's all, it's all connected and, and it's, yeah, it's really cool. I, I, that's what I love and, and it's kind of a puzzle, you know, everyone's a little bit different and, and that's what makes it exciting and interesting. And we're also out of time in. Human history, uh, where there's a big, um, attention being put on our breath.
And there's a lot of science being, um, done around it. There's a lot of research. And so it's a really exciting time to be a part of it because what we know now in five years, we're going to know exponentially more and, and it's going to become even that much more potent of a tool, um, based on that research that we, we start to learn more about.
So, I mean, even in the last, like You know, a handful of years that, that I've been a part of this, it's, I just, it's, it's kind of never ending, you know, and, and I love that about it. It's, it's really a fun time to be a part of this whole kind of breath movement, if you will.
Yeah. And, and, and absolutely. It's that as it, as it is.
We get structural data on it and do that, but it's like it won't really, uh, it will inform us and maybe give us better understanding or the ability to convey that to populations or individuals that, that don't have that awareness. But that day to day component, it, it doesn't change. We just have to check back into it.
Like the brand new day, all of those things, all of those days before inform me right now, but they don't define what it is. I have to figure it out again today. That's that can be overwhelming for people, but I think once you lean into give yourself to that, that it's so freeing. It's the, it's the actual opposite.
You're just like, okay, today I have to figure out what the best is for me. It's like what you said earlier, we can know all these protocols, but if, if we have rigidity in them, we're losing that really powerful part of like, I need to figure this out right now. So perfect example right now, I've been talking for this last minute or so.
And I probably took one effective breath. Everything else has been, I can feel it already. I can feel it already. It's like. You just have to get back into that place and it's, it's that never ending progress of that. And that you're right. It's exciting. If we don't let it overwhelm us.
Right. Yeah, exactly.
Cool, man. This has been awesome. Thanks so much. That was great. Thanks again to coach and educator Reis Paluso for joining us on the surf strong show. We'll have links and all the places that you can find Reis and the work that he's doing his, our breath collective community. Thanks for listening to the surf strong show like comment, subscribe, share this and any of the other episodes of the surf strong show.
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