Summary
Joe and Jonny Miller (creator of Nervous System Mastery) explore the nervous system, polyvagal theory, and how nervous system work relates to emotional and intellectual development. Jonny explains polyvagal theory’s three branches — ventral vagal (connection/safety), dorsal vagal (rest/freeze), and sympathetic (activation/fight-flight) — noting these states blend rather than toggle on and off. A healthy nervous system is dynamic, characterized by capacity (holding intensity without overwhelm) and resilience (efficiently downshifting after stress without substances).
Joe introduces his three-system model: the nervous system (reptilian, fight-flight-freeze), the emotional system (mammalian, held in muscles), and the intellectual system (prefrontal cortex, thoughts). All three dance together, and effective transformation requires working on all three levels. Most people in society are head-oriented, so cracking the intellectual trap first often opens access to emotions and nervous system awareness.
The conversation covers the activation-release-rest cycle, where integration requires genuine rest (not just calming down). They discuss how the inner critic prevents this rest, how breathwork can facilitate deep somatic releases, the importance of in-person facilitation for transformational breathwork, and the poorly-defined but experientially real “energy body.” Jonny shares his personal journey from numbness through grief and breathwork to embodied aliveness, and Joe reflects on seven years of weekly Reichian breathwork that changed everything from his laugh to his capacity for resilience.
Key Concepts
- A healthy nervous system is dynamic, not perpetually calm
- The activation-release-rest cycle requires genuine rest for integration
- Intellect, emotion, and nervous system are three interacting systems
- The inner critic prevents the rest needed for nervous system integration
- Breathwork without integration is catharsis, not transformation
- Interoception makes emotional work dramatically easier
- For most people, crack the intellectual trap first
Key Quotes
“Our nervous system is like the lens through which we view reality and when we’re in different nervous system states our experience of other people, our experience of ourselves, of the world shifts.”
“Capacity is basically: I’m able to hold intensity and I have a strong ventral vagal tone, meaning that I can be with intense experiences without going into shutdown or going into overwhelm.”
“If someone’s inner critic voice is constantly going, they never get the rest, so integration is hard. Often when people change the relationship with a negative voice in their head, their transformation happens quickly.”
“I think the intellect is the very human, the very rational, the thought-centered area. The emotion is the mammalian part of the brain. And the nervous system is the part of the brain that’s more reptilian — that immediate reaction area.”
“Most people in society are far more head oriented, so if you can crack open the intellectual trap that they put themselves in, that’s often the first step because that allows them to pay attention to their emotion and/or their nervous system.”
“You brought all this stuff up but you didn’t heal it… they’re having big experiences but they’re not actually integrating into transformation or development.”
Transcript
for most of my you know certainly my teenage years and most of my 20s I was fairly numb from the neck down like I was you know I I had emotions but I didn’t have any kind of definition or Attunement as to what like where they were or what I was actually feeling and hug part my journey right and huge part of it was actually like realizing the you know the so many different flavors of Sensation that are alive in the body and and increasing that capacity has made the the emotional work just like 50 times easier hey Johnny Hey Joe how are you I am great really good I’m glad to hear it so let’s get started what what the what the fuck is a nervous system in your in your world in your terminology yeah so I I’m I’m also really interested to hear your kind of map of this and perspective as well I I think the the frame that I like to explore is is the that our nervous system is like the lens through which we view reality and that when we’re in different nervous system States our experience of other people our experience of ourselves of the world shifts and being able to kind of map those States and knowing with like what our nervous system is doing at any point in time is incredibly incredibly helpful um and and I’m yeah in this conversation I’m super interested to hear how you think about the nervous system in in the work you do and almost like comp the maps that we have yeah okay I’m happy to share but I want to dig in a little deeper before I do the how would you make a distinction between say the nervous system and the emotional system and the intellectual system or the prefrontal cortex or intellect yeah so I I tend to I tend to lump the nervous system in with the emotional system um and a lot of my my training is informed by um breath work and poly vagal Theory which I imagine you’ve come across which we can get into if that’s if that’s relevant um so I I tend to I tend to see that um there are certain emotions which are connected with like safety with what’s known as vental vagal there’s certain emotions which are connected with like dorsal kind of collapse freeze States and then there’s other other emotions let’s say like frustration or anger which are more in the sympathetic realm so I kind of use that as a way of of mapping um different states okay and so for for the audience can you give us a brief overview of the poly vagel Theory yeah sure so it was developed by a guy called Dr Steven PGE um he basically says that there are three main branches there’s the the sympathetic well the sympathetic branch and the parasympathetic and then the parasympathetic which is rest and digest that has two branches one is known as ventral and one is known as dorsal and the ventral is basically like connection it’s like the place where we can play we feel safe we feel grounded we can make eye contact we we kind of in tune with ourselves dorsal is in a kind of low tone healthy state is rest and digest so like when we’re sleeping when we’re relaxing lying down um but it’s also it’s also responsible for like when we go into freeze or shutdown which is like a kind of adaptive um survival response to stress and some you know some people as as I’m you know in your work some people when they get stressed or triggered they go into either like anger kind of sympathetic intensity or they go into like collapse freeze kind of Shame shutdown and and like disconnects um so so that’s generally how I think about it and the sympathetic is um it’s also important to mention that like these States can be online at the same time so like like right now I’m probably in some some degree of sympathetic and some degree of ventral because there’s activation there’s alertness I’m like talking to you and there’s a sense of like oh I can feel my body I can make eye contact with you I can feel connected um so these States can be Blended they’re not it’s not just like one on and off switch for each one and then you mentioned a third but you didn’t name it so ventral sympathetic and dorsal vental okay so in the theory ventral and dorsal aren’t part of the the same it’s an actual Third Branch because I believe that there’s some Theory out there about the social nervous system too right that part of the Vegas nerve and and so how does that fit into the so the social nervous system is another way of saying the vental vagel which is part of the part of the Vegas nerve the Vegas break yeah that’s the kind of um ATT tuning part where when we feel safe and grounded that can be online for for connection for play creativity all those all those things okay and then what does do a healthy nervous system look like so this is this is a a really interesting question I think some people have this view that like we should be totally regulated and you know calm the entire time which you know might work for some people but it’s I think it’s certainly setting unrealistic it might work for some people but I’ve never seen anybody do it yeah neither neither have I um so the two words that I think are helpful to use are capacity and resilience capacity is basically um I’m able to hold intensity and and I have a a strong vental vagal tone meaning that I can be with intense experiences without going into shutdown or going into overwhelm yeah um the other piece is resilience which is basically your H how efficiently can you downshift your state of arousal after a stressful experience and find kind of healthy relaxation without relying on substances or crutches or alcohol whatever it is which you know a lot of people do so a healthy nervous system is basically very Dynamic it responds adaptively to the situation great and then one more question for you around this is that there’s a theory I’m trying to remember the name of the person but basically it’s like I think it’s in the I think it’s in some of the emot literature of loen but may maybe it’s maybe it’s the core energetics there’s core Dynamics core energetics I I always get it all confused but basically like there’s a cycle of activity and um part of that cycle of activity is like activation and then part of the cycle of activity I think it’s like four or five but I always think about the last two which is so you’re finished with something then there’s a release and then there’s a rest yeah yeah they’re not like releasee and rest aren’t the same thing they’re two different things mhm and so when I hear you talk about um how quickly you can get back to like a rested nervous system in your in your world is there getting back to rested nervous system is there a release and relax in it is it just a relax if so what’s the difference between the two like to get to that resilience of being able to get back to a restful State yeah so I um I think what you’re referring to is the the the activation or the mobilization response which typically has the kind of intensity which is the sympathetic and then like you say there’s usually the release and then there is the the rest digest which is where whatever occurred integrates and actually gets rewi in the nervous system um and in terms of how that maps onto poly vagal the the activation is the sympathetic where it’s the intensity then the the ventril comes online usually during the release and then it’s actually really important as you say to have a period you know particularly if someone’s doing like a breath wet Journey or going through going through an emotional process that there is that um complete like deep rest which is where the actual kind of rewiring in the from the point of view of the nervous system takes place and and I believe there’s like roughly a 5H hour window of neuroplasticity which um if someone is able to rest deeply after an experience like that then whatever whatever emerged will kind of go from a state to a trait it’ll get rewired yeah what what so just to make it practical for a second uh somebody has goes into a meeting and they are activated because they get called out on performance and they go through the activity of the meeting and let’s say it comes out well they’re like oh that was good and successful in that meeting what does the release look like what what would a variety of releases look like and what would the rest look like in a healthy nervous system yeah so um so what what I could imagine happening is let’s say in the in the boardroom or in the meeting they’re unable to like you know fully come into contact but as they walk out they realize oh I’m I’m realizing there’s actually a lot of like in my system so let’s say they um they go home later that day or or they find some private space they’re able to let that anger move um and then usually there’s a there’s a space where like there’s a feeling of like ah like I feel whatever the tension is whatever they’re experiencing um shifts and after that it’s it’s usually really helpful to have as much kind of rest or spaciousness as possible for for that to for that to integrate great yeah just to say it reminds me of um I it’s like one of the foremost like bylon like the people who like cross country ski and shoot or something like that from Norway or something like that and he was saying that like seven hours a day he just sits and watches television not not the best way to rest but that resting was such an important part of him being a gold medalist like he said so underrated like I I do really intense workouts but I do a tremendous amount of resting so that I can be at top performance and I think that a lot of people uh underestimate that same capacity in doing any kind of self- transformation how important the rest and not doing is and something that I Noti is when somebody’s like uh critical voice in their head is constantly they never get the rest so integration is hard it’s like often times when people change the relationship with a negative voice in their head their transformation happens quickly and I think a or a lot quicker and I I noticed that a lot of that happens because they’re actually getting rested they’re not under attack all the time there’s a phrase that Kevin Kelly says where he he shares that most people think about having a good work ethic but very few people try and cultivate a good rest ethic and that that’s honestly like that’s one of the main pieces in the the work that I do with nervous system Mastery is helping people to um strengthen that like vental vagal tone which is basically capacity for rest it’s like H like how able are we to find safety and and actually relax without needing substances um so practices like Yoga Nidra um nsdr breathing practices are super helpful for kind of retraining that that ability to find relaxation and and what’s interesting is the voice in the head will often like if you change the the body if you change the physiology with a kind of a bottomup approach the the thoughts spiraling tend to kind of diminish naturally um is that’s that’s what I’ve noticed yeah I notice it works both ways actually like you can directly address the voice in the head and then it creates more relaxation or you can use the breath as I think somebody said you can’t control your emotions but you can control your breath which controls your emotions and I’m not a huge fan of controlling emotions but I am a huge because I think that that goes down a very dark deep Rabbit Hole of misery however I think creating a a fertile soil of healthy emotions is a really important thing which is where I would put the I I would put the breath work or the yoga or like how do you like what I would say is can I create a soil for a healthy lifestyle style is a really important piece as soon as that turns to I’m going to control my emotions with breath then it can be very destructive then it can be like very up and out and very um uh like uh overriding and denial a whole bunch of other stuff can happen there yeah so so I actually have a question for you around that um where where do you view the line between let’s say someone is is like experiencing a lot of anxiety like what is the line between beginning with kind of like some kind of self-regulation to allow them to feel grounded enough to kind of even feel their experience and be with themselves versus you can obviously take that too far and someone um they just use you know let’s say a breathing practice to just calm down but then ignore the underlying emotion because I feel like there’s risks in both like what one side someone could just like get overwhelmed shut down and then that’s not helpful but then like you say you if someone’s always using a breathing practice to calm themselves down when they’re feeling an emotion they’re likely never going to be able to experience the the beauty of that emotion so how do you think about guiding people through that yeah so I would add the intellect on it which you’ve already actually said which is like oh the the negative voice in the head is going to reduce if you’re doing the breath work so there like on one level you have three systems on another level it’s one system it’s us right so but I think it’s a distinct a good distinction to break them into the three um and as anybody who’s listen to my podcast knows like to me the prefrontal cortex is the very human it’s the very rational it’s the thought- centered area the emotion is the mamelon part of the brain and then the nervous system is the part of the brain that’s more reptilian it is that immediate reaction area and it’s a lot of that is in that fight andlight area and so and so anything that happens in any of them can affect all of them right so so to me it’s all you’re you’re addressing all three and so I’ll take access points wherever I can get them with somebody right so if the breath thing works to get enough access to the other two components I’ll take it but I’ll make sure that the work is done on all three levels as much as possible so all of our courses are thinking about it in all three levels in general most people in society are far more head oriented so if you can crack open the intellectual trap that they put themselves in that’s often the first step for people because that allows them to be able to pay attention to their emotion Andor their nervous system what I notice is unless they’re fully committed unless for some reason or another they’re like okay I have breath work is there I need to do breath work and I have the kind of intellectual structure that allows me to have a disciplined approach to something which is not a huge amount of Americans anyways then I would rather work on the intellect deconstruct that enough uh deconstruct the stories enough for them to be able to start finding the enjoyment in the breath work and then they’ll do it naturally or the enjoyment of the emotions and then they’ll do that naturally um but usually the intellect doesn’t have enough space for it however there’s definitely times I’m working with people where it’s like the emotion has to be addressed first or the n nervous system has to be addressed first so if I see somebody who’s very what I would call hysteric not in a bad word not hysterical but it just that terminology is from the reikan and Loan work um if I see somebody in that hysteric then that nervous system work is going to be really really critical for them so they’re the people who are kind of in a society they seem a little more flighty they seem like they like are interacting with like crystals and energy more like typically they’re like their emotions typically are bigger they’re like that kind of human being than uh nervous system work is a really good important part first step for them because they’ll fe they have such a they’re so in touch with it that they’ll feel that breath and immediately react and know oh this is a good thing that I can enjoy and do so it’s it’s kind of it’s more person byerson situation and in general the idea is to give them all three tools and and allow them to work on all three tools instead of just doing one and I think that’s generally the issue with most work out there is that they’re working on one or maybe two of the of the places and so really effective for some people but there’s a missing component for others so that makes sense yeah and at some point I think you know I I view it so I had a teacher I can’t remember who it was um say that they thought development was like um a whole a bunch of pencils with rubber bands and you could like pull one of the pencils up but there was like the tension of the other ones and so on one level you pull one pencil up and then everything else wants to come up but if it’s down there’s this tension and so the there’s a certain way in which development worked where you had to kind of work on all the pencils so that it was there wasn’t creating this tension between them and so I notice like if I’m working with somebody who’s done a tremendous amount of intellectual work or a tremendous amount of emotional and emotional work than the nervous system work when they find it it just makes huge difference really really quickly right because that there’s that tension has been built they’ve got some really tense rubber bands and all of a sudden like it can make a huge difference because it up levels everything and and how do you distinguish between the nervous system work and the emotional work like what’s that what’s that line for you yeah so the way I think about it is it’s like a bit of causation like when you said oh I’m I’m not great at the terminology you’re using I apologize I did read the the theory book like while ago it’s it’s it’s an older book right it’s like I think it’s at least a decade old or something several yeah yeah um yeah it was given to me by a a really amazing cranial sacal practitioner just a mindblowing one you’d sit and you just walk out of there just completely shifted and so he he was the one that gave me the book and um and and his work was so effective I had to read it but it you know it’s been so long um but basically you were talking about how the um uh one of those things could have two different emotional outputs right like the way I’d say it is like you could do freeze or fight or flight like depending for me those are three different and because there’s three different emotional reactions to that instead of just one emotional reaction to that that’s how I kind of layer the cause and effect so for instance and and if you think about how they’re built on top of each other it’s like the nervous system is kind of the the primary quickest reaction and you know that from the studies that of like people can react without ever going into the intellect whatsoever like just have a snake jump at you and you know what your nervous system is because you’ll be halfway across the room before you even realize there was a snake and so um so to me it’s like a cause and effect chain so for instance I could have the thought um my boss loves me and I could have um M lots and lots of emotional reaction there could be like a plethora of emotional reactions to that and so to me the the primary level is the nervous system the secondary level is the emotional system and the third is the intellect however the dance goes both ways meaning I can have like every time a certain thought hits my brain a certain emotion is going to come up and it can go every time I have a certain emotion I I go oh that that and I tie it to a thought so both of them can come up like I’ll you’ll see people get a little agitated because they haven’t had enough food and then they’ll start a fight and everything will start looking binary in their world right it’s just like so um but the way I would look at it is generally uh if I was to say what the nervous system was I’d say the nervous system is the is is close to like fight or flight AS fight flight or freeze as you can get and then the emotional level is on on a a muscular level so it’s it’s it’s like you hold the emotions in the muscles and then the and then the intellect is the world of thoughts and they all they’re all dancing with each other yeah yep yeah that that that reminds me of an experience I had when during a Meditation Retreat where I could almost I was still enough that I could notice when a certain looping thought would arise there was a corresponding tension in my body and kind of really mapping that connection and seeing those those things co-arising was was fascinating and I think that was another piece that I wanted to mention in this conversation is the the idea of interception and like and building this sematic awareness because for most of my know certainly my huge part of my journey right and huge part of it was actually like realizing the you know so many different flavors times easier because for me at least if I’m feeling something I like I may pay attention to the story but more often than not and I see you in the in the live coaching like you will often you’ll see when they go into the head and then you’re like okay bring bring it back down into the body what’s the sensation and that’s at least in my experience usually what enables it to move by actually feeling this the interceptive sensations that are associated with whatever the emotion is yeah yeah yeah for me there’s kind of a a phase depending on where you are with the emotional work there’s the um there’s the identification piece to be able to identify it is really useful and then to be able to feel have the sematic experiencing of it is another really important piece to be able to express it is another to actually have the movement and the expression of it is another really important piece and then to see that it is not particularly cause and effect related is another really important piece like that like you were saying something to the effect of I realized every time I had a thought I had a corresponding sematic re experience what I’ve also noticed is that’s true and then that thought leaves and then a replacement thought comes in and then creates that experience so for instance I had a relationship with my father that for a long time every time I thought about my dad I had the sematic experience of like oh I’m not getting enough of his love somatically right and I stopped living with my dad and that got replaced with money oh I’m not getting enough money and the same sematic experience occurred so there’s this yeah um it’s just anyways a really cool relationship between that so that it’s it is like a a dance between the three for me for sure yeah um I have another question this is a question I’ve never gotten a good answer from from anybody so no no and I don’t have a good answer for it either yeah exactly and and I think I think it’s you know if I look at just even the research on it for instance it’s like the intellectual cognitive development has like so much work so much like research behind it and then the emotional stuff is far thinner it’s starting to get popular now but the emotional stuff is far thinner the nervous system is pretty thin the very worst is the energetic system so what is in your mind if you can create a distinction between like energetic and a nervous system if there is one what what’s the distinction for you between an energetic system and a nervous system yeah wow that is a that is a tough question um right my so it experientially I’ll say that I I only even became aware that the the energetic system was a thing during the breath work training where it became obvious that by moving breath or breathing in certain ways there was more aliveness sensation um in certain parts of my body and the more that I meditated and the more that I did the breath the more that that even became a thing and and so I I think I’ll preface this by saying like for most people they might not even know what feeling the energetic system might be like um my so I actually listened to a really interesting podcast recently with a guy called Dr Jack Cruz and he he’s a very kind of contrarian type figure but he talked about this this theory that our our cells on mitochondria actually produce light they’re kind of like light factories and that it is in theory possible and I think this has been done in in non-human cells to measure the very low bandwidth of light that is created by these cells and so like the working theory that I have and I have absolutely zero proof of this is that when cells are healthy they are kind of releasing this low bandwidth of light and um that when we have um Trapped In Motion trauma incomplete reflexes from from childhood that that in some ways reduces that area’s capacity to produce produce light produce energy and that by going through these sematic releases these these processes we’re kind of um rejuvenating the cells in that way um in terms of defining the Energy System I mean without kind of going to Chinese medicine or any some of the more like esoteric literature I I don’t think that modern science has a a compelling definition which is largely why it’s it’s mostly ignored right there’s there’s very little you know most most people get laughed out the room if they start talking about the energy body in a in a neuroscientific way yeah it’s amazing that so to me I think I when I like look at anything like if someone’s talking about science or emotion or dreams or energy work or like they have a a language that makes sense to them but it doesn’t really make sense to potentially other people who are speaking other languages and so you can look at something like the energy body and like you said there’s no not a really great definition but you can see scientific research about how ayurvedic medicine traditional Tibetan medicine or traditional Chinese medicine has really good results and things like ulcers so there’s a system that’s completely based on the energetic body that has really good results but we still don’t particularly have an an an a definition or know how to work with energy and it is like the only thing that I can do in a session that would like turn more people off than like um you know like let’s talk about your chakras um is to be like let’s talk about God and how like Jesus Jesus’s wisdom there it’s one of those things that creates uh that those particular languages create so much defense in the system and I and I think for good reason frankly I think that there been a lot of attack a lot of people have been attacked through the language of religion and a lot of people have been attacked through the language of energy right it’s like this you just have bad energy so I can’t be around you and it’s like what the fuck do I do with that like you know what I mean it’s like this thing that’s undefined that somebody apparently understands that you don’t understand that you’re being condemned judge for and you can’t there’s no way to protect yourself and so I I feel like there’s good reason why why why um people get really defensive around that languaging y yep yeah and and I think there’s a couple of like the other two interesting directions that are I think like pointing to this um both the research with with heart math where they’ll kind of um they will measure the I believe it’s the electromagnetic resonant of the heart you you can kind of track people’s heart rate variability will in when they’re singing together or or dog owners and their dogs their HRV will also in Trin when they’re in kind of sympathetic resonance with each other and I think that is one way in which it you know it is measurable through kind of like charts you can see where these numbers become aligned so I think that’s that’s one way and then the other is that during these kind of um let’s say practices like using breath work as an example that create these Altered States of consciousness there are both kind of certain brain wave States and also changes in the blood chemistry which can be measured quite easily which correlate with these kind of energetic experiences that people report and so I think that there’s almost like adjacent things that we can measure and quantify which like point to the something point to a there being there um and we’re you know several years maybe decades away from being able to actually like take a photo of it or or measure it in a in a meaningful way as as far as I’m aware yeah I mean the amazing thing is that as the one like so for instance like you do certain breath work then your nitrogen level and your blood goes up it has a certain experience like you can feel like your body tingle you can call that an energetic state or you can call that a like increased nitrogen in my blood right and so on one level it’s like the energetic system or the people trying to describe the energetic system it’s like to me it’s like they are describing something that’s happening potentially happening scientifically but when science defines it they’re not going to Define it as energetic they’re going to Define it as and that’s the thing that I think happens in all of the areas is that like because we’re one system this like language is learning to describe the whole system the intellect describes a part of the system a lot better than the energetic system system the energetic system but as will describe something a lot better than the intellectual system but over time like you can see that they’re pointing often to very similar things with different language yeah yeah I totally agree and and I think you’re also right that like the art of of I guess the work that we do is kind of finding the languaging that resonates with the person like if they’re doing a yoga teachy training the energy stuff might resonate and if they’re exactly leading a company it’s probably going to be more on the intellect or the the the sematic realm that’s right that’s right so um tell me how so you’ve been pretty dedicated to this nervous system path for how long um I’d say kind of three to five years depending on how you define it great but we we’ll Define it as five years and what what’s the what’s the changes what what what has shifted what has shifted for me yeah wow um well I’d say that like I have a background in I was a startup founder 11 12 years ago um I went through a burnout experience and and then six and a half years ago I I lost my fiance um she had an anxiety attack and ended up taking her own life and that that kind of Journey Through grief really like completely opened me up to to like my entire emotional experience and and I realized how numb I’d basically been for um the last five five to 10 years and yeah and in the process of discovering meditation breath work and then more recently how the nervous system kind of ties those together um I mean I feel like a completely different human I think my my life has has changed fundamentally and and I actually find it in some ways difficult to relate to myself um you know 10 15 years ago um but tangible pieces are like the quality of connection in relationships is beyond anything that I I think even comprehended when I was younger um I think that’s been a huge piece the the amount the capacity for joy and honestly love as well um and and and and the kind of the way in which I think um my body is constantly giving me feedback about any moment or experience and as you guys teach with you know decision making and like I used to be the guy that made a spreadsheet with like ranking things with like one to 10 and like weighted variables and just you know really like doubling down on on the the intellect for everything and um now I just move through the world in a in a very different way and I think another piece as well is um confidence in my capacity in new situations like before I think if I was triggered I would like especially in social situations I’d shut down and I’d feel very kind of like almost like a victim of my own body in in ways and now having both kind of toolkits to downregulate if needed or even better just like feel the thing in the moment and then and then move through um that’s that’s been life-changing as well so I mean there’s so many there’s so many areas that my life has shifted and I’d say also the doing somewhere between 150 to 200 breath work Journeys um with this this uh this guy in barley his name’s Ed Dangerfield kind of coming into relationship and learning to love as you guys teach like loving these different emotions that previously I’d I disowned I think initially for me it was grief and then anger and then shame and then helplessness and I can kind of track my journey to exploring those emotions in a sematic way and learning to welcome them more fully and and how how has been your journey of teaching it to others what what what has been the like for those who are who don’t know Johnny has a nervous system Mastery class and I’m and my question is like what has that been how has your per how have you personally Changed by that in that process I would say an a number of ways um one I I feel like I’ve kind of found work that I truly love in that it feels like the intersection between communicating complex kind of scientific ideas in ways that land and resonate with people um sharing some of my own story and kind of what has been important in my life and seeing the impact that that’s had on other people um and feeling the kind of I guess like satisfaction and joy of other people having meaningful breakthroughs and experiences in their life that’s been immensely rewarding um and it’s also been like as with I think any business or work it’s been its own Arena of challenges particularly in the early days like I remember the first time I I did a workshop for like 100 people online and I I was in I was in Mexico at the time and uh the town had power Cuts every like like once a week and there was a power cut that that had and there were like like a h 100 people on a zoom call and some of them were like CEOs and leaders and stuff and I like raced down to my friend’s house to get this like backup generator and just like ran back and managed to get the power back on but like I was in a state I was just like I was just like so um like expanding my capacity let’s say uh yeah in in that experience and and now yeah I think now I feel much more comfortable leading groups of that size and much more I’d say if if I had kind of pin it down to one thing there’s more trust in in life and more trust in myself to show up in a way that um yeah that that where things work out and flow one of the things that I really appreciate about you as a teacher that I don’t see with a lot of teachers um is is that you you’re transparent about your learning process so you’re not like when I see you on Twitter or when I see you out in the world you’re you’re I would say you’re far more interested in learning than teaching if I just if I just look at the time spent maybe it’s because in the situations I see you but even on Twitter I see you more interested in learning almost than teaching and and also very much happy to share what you’re learning even if it’s not a part of your teaching yeah yeah and so I’m just which is rare for teachers a lot of times teachers get caught in the kind of the knowing aspect of things and and not in the like learning aspect of things and I think and I think there’s at some point also a natural tendency that happens after years of doing something that you have to be really specific about who you learn from right so like everybody wants to teach you that’s that that cannot always be a useful or fruitful thing so yeah I’m just wondering like so the question behind that is is that natural was that a learning is there a been a bit of a a dance with that what what’s been your experience and journey with with the being a learner and being a teacher and and finding that balance yeah it is a it’s a really great question um I think the the honest answer is is I love learning and very selfishly I think part of the reason that I’m I’m doing what I doing do doing what I’m doing is that it’s a fantastic excuse to continue learning like it gives me a platform to invite people like yourself and other um genuine Specialists and experts in other fields that I can then learn in real time with them in front of a big group of people and so I I kind of view both the podcast that I have and the course as like a a forcing function to continue my own learning um I think that there’s certainly a point where um like you can kind of or or I can gain a certain level of like I feel like this topic makes sense to me now and then for me it’s like okay what’s the next what’s the next experiment what’s the next thing I want to really learn about and go deep in and you know recently I’ve been fascinated in neurode Divergence and there’s a number of students that come in with ADHD with with different um a constellation of different symptoms and I find it fascinating talking to them figuring out like how their experience maps on to what I know and um yeah I honestly I just like I I would hate to One Day become like an expert and and stop learning like that actually terrifies me a little bit and and and I think something that I heard on your podcast you guys were speaking about this about how that kind of teacher student Dynamic can create disconnection in a way yes um and whilst I think it’s it’s obviously important to present with a level of professionalism and expertise the more that I am able to like view my students as people that I learned from as well the the less that disconnection happens yeah yeah yeah um you spoke a little bit about the breath work you did you said I did you kind of offhandedly said I did x amount of Journeys and um breath Journeys can be a whole I mean my I think I think you know this I did breath work like every week if not every other week depending on my travel schedule for like seven years like hourlong sessions so and I did this didn’t know that much yeah so um pre you know it was it was one of the she’s past dead but she was one of the last and in her she told me I couldn’t find anything that said any different was that she was the last person who was doing kind of the pure Reich breath work that hadn’t taken the Reich breath work and like modified it right I think a lot of the modifications that have been done to it like Len’s work I think is great so so I’m not suggesting that it was better by any stretch but um but but I’ve also done a whole bunch of other kind of breath work in my life like coherent breathing and and all sorts of I I have a book this big of like an Indian breath work person and I’ll I’ll like literally that my friend gave me and I’ll just like open it up I’ll be like let’s try that for a bit and I’ll try it and see what it does to my system um so what do you mean by breath work Journeys and and what what’s what what’s the result in your mind like what’s that not the result but what’s the experience like for one of your breath work Journeys yeah sure um well I think it’s helpful to categorize breath work into like there’s many categories but the two main ones in my mind are like the kind of real time shifting like either upshifting or downshifting your state so something like um triangular breathing or humming will calm people down or if you do like Breath of Fire kapalabhati whm Hof hyperventilation that will amp people up and you’ll feel more alert um so that’s can we just stop for a second can we just stop for a second so everybody listening just big deep breath in that’s what he’s talking about as far as like a breath to regulate a state your state is different after a single deep breath in I just want to I want I want I love that visceral experience not just the the explanation okay yeah it’s great and and and you can um I mean we we could we could do like another full breath and then humming on the exhale also releases nitric oxide and that’s one of the one of the most effective ways of downshifting is just like a long hum all the way to the end of your breath and again you’ll you’ll feel so much so much different after just one or two hums want to do it yeah let’s do it okay we’ll do one just because we don’t want it to be too Point yeah get comfy so full breath in through the nose inhale and then humming through the nose fuck that it feels too good let’s do another the rest of the podcast will just be showing Johnny huning for 20 minutes felt good to us yeah it has that same thing with the that’s like the the UI breath has that same thing where it like you can feel it like toning the the the Vegas nerve ve whatever not good with words but yeah the the nerve you can the constriction that the hum causes also creates like a vibration in that nerve Corridor that’s cool I’ve never done that one yeah no it’s it’s great um I did it this morning the C tub as I was like trying to find my breath um anyhow so so that’s one category and the other category is has many names but like transformational breathing is is the general category and that includes like holotropic reichan conscious connected breathing rebirthing there there’s there’s all different types of names um the particular branch that I trained under was called facilitated breath repatterning which is a form of conscious connected breathing but the practitioner will um basically read the breath during a journey and make certain adjustments certain verbal cues nerve flossing different things to um both create more ease in the exhale and sometimes more activation and energy on the inhale and generally speaking um once someone kind of drops into this circular breathing pattern the the journeys go from anywhere between an hour to two hours and and once someone’s kind of dropped into the breath these incomplete reflexes or like stored emotions will tend to kind of rise to the surface and for me it’s it was almost like layers of an onion like one one thing would come I would move Express whatever the thing needed to be felt would feel and then there was a a brief integration and then the next piece would come up and it was just like so many different things would would would arise um and for me it’s it’s always like I don’t recommend that people do this online because I think there’s a huge amount to be gained from having an in-person facilitator like really out of safety reasons um such that if something big arises they can be there to help co-regulate and help you ground totally agree yeah we do our version of breath work and but we’ll only do it in our inperson stuff yeah yeah I I think it’s it’s really important and and and also having a high facilitated to breather ratio as well um in in the the place that I trained it’s it’s 1 to four we do we do 1 to three one to four yeah I totally agree with you gotta have it yeah because you know I’ve seen people go comos I’ve seen people have like massive trauma response I’ve seen I’ve seen so much puking so much stuff happens in those rooms you really completely that high and it’s not that you know I know there’s people out there that do you know breath works like crowds of like two or 300 people and it will work in the sense that like big emotions can arise but what we talked about earlier with that mobilization kind of cycle it’s it’s much harder for people especially if they don’t have that kind of um down regulation capacity to to feel through and to find the the the ease and calm and integration on the other side so I’ve I’ve known people that have done some of these holotropic let’s say and then they’ve been in this kind of semi- triggered State for the next like several weeks or even months and they found it really hard to to downshift so yeah I worked with somebody who did um some version of a breath work journey and didn’t sleep for fuck a decade wellow yeah no no doubt there is like and I would I would I would offer that it there’s one not knowing how to downregulate is part of it but there’s also that’s the or a trauma gets released and they don’t know how to actually integrate the trauma is another potential thing but the and so so there’s a retraumatization that happens and but there’s another too which is like you brought all this stuff up but you didn’t heal it so maybe it doesn’t re-traumatize but like great you had the experience and I’ve seen this with like with both some drugs that’ll do or medicines that’ll do the same thing and breath work where they get these big States they get these big but there’s no integration of it so you’re not actually seeing transformation of a person over time like I did another iasa journey and I had this other big experience but like the way you’re living your relationship your friends like the your level of connection your level of emotional fluidity none your thought patterns aren’t particularly changing um same I’ve seen the same thing with breath work where someone’s doing breath work that doesn’t have the integration care afterwards where they they’re having big experiences but they’re not actually integrating into transformation or development yeah absolutely and um one interesting piece that I love about breath work in particular is that when you’re if you’re breathing someone especially in a one-on-one capacity you can you can see the changes in their breath kind of before and after and you can tell has that has that thing landed has it been integrated by the way that they’re breathing and you know if they come if they come for another session the next day or the next week then it’s like you can see if that actually landed in their system whereas with a lot of other modalities you know particularly psychedelics things like that it’s very difficult to know like was the actually a meaningful shift or was it just a big cathartic release that didn’t have any like you know lasting impact on on them as a human on yeah so I know that at one point I was was Su was suggesting that you might do some live iners ones has that happened or do you have plans for it in the future yeah I’ve been doing um one-on-one sessions with people here in Boulder um oh great mostly mostly friends and also the odd kind of client as well um which it’s kind of a good mix because I I do really miss that the inperson live interaction that I know you get with with groundbreakers um yeah which has felt like a good good balance for me a that’s great fantastic glad to hear it yeah I mean that absolutely changed my whole world that the seven years that I did I mean it changed the way that I had an orgasm it changed the way I laughed it changed the like my capacity to my resilience my stress level it changed so much my armoring physical musculature armoring it it had a huge impact that seven years a lot of the impact happened in the first little bit because I was very ripe and then there was just like something that happened like over time that there was an eroding and a wearing away that happened over time that was really useful yeah it’s interesting you mentioned laugh like my both my laugh and my voice have changed even I I listened to a podcast episode I did four years ago and my voice sounds noticeably different then compared to how it sounds now and I think a lot of that is because the the tension in my lower belly and lower diaphragm has a lot of it’s kind of been released and so when you’re doing your breath work I I could geek out like inhale exhale body position like I could completely geek out but I I would it would bore the crap out of everybody but at some point I’d love to chat with you about it but yeah I’m just curious when you’re doing the inperson breath work and you’re watching somebody breathe are you making adjustments in any way to help them deepen into their breaths or is it like it is it an interactive thing or is it a like a prescription thing no it’s constant real- time adjustments so there’s hands on the body usually most of the time um and generally what what we’re looking for is both seeing like what is someone’s window of Tolerance what is their capacity and keeping them within that window yeahum and then titrating or pendula is another term the breath to either increase more energy usually by like deepening the inhale sometimes getting like hands under the rib cage and allowing more more air to go into the upper lungs or more often than not especially with kind of type a high Achievers it’s helping them find ease in the exhale so often people will have like holding in their throat oh wow it’s really similar it’s really similar to the work that I do I’m sorry to interrupt yeah all it’s all for me it’s the same thing it’s the most full breath inward capacity breath like a stretching like how do you increase the both in the belly and the chest and other places but like and how do you release with no effort exactly EXA okay so it’s really actually really similar fascinating and and and then finding out what are all of the blocks and tension to either a full kind of vibrant inhale or a relaxed effess exhale that’s right us usually starting around the rib cage and then kind of working up or down depending on and and also you know bearing in mind how many sessions is someone going to do and do you want to open up a big piece knowing that you’ll have three or four or five sessions afterwards to help integrate it if something big arises well I I could geek out after we turn I I want to be real um I mean as in I be real not as in the media social media thing um I think I don’t know if we have much more time for another question how are we doing I can’t read time oh yeah we’re done okay I have to go to another podcast so it was a total pleasure to have you is there um anything that you want to leave uh our audience with any any thought process any good wishes or tell them about anything you’re doing yeah um well with like thanks so much this has been so fun um I would so I I have a podcast as well called curious humans podcast um you’ve been you’ve been a guest um if you enjoy this conversation there’s a chance that might resonate too and yeah and if people want to learn more about the nervous system Mastery course that’s uh we have a spring c-walk coming up in mid-march and the website is nsasy tocom um and there’s I I love seeing how much overlap there is between our two communities there there’s a bunch of people joining that have Tak a away and I know vice versa so it’s it’s really cool to see that see see that overlap very sweet yeah pleasure pleasure to have you on Johnny yeah you tojay yeah pleasure all right see you soon