Let Go And Let The Breath Do The Work

 

You breathe somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 times a day. Ryan McBurney says most of us are doing it wrong, and it’s affecting our anxiety, our sleep, our cravings, and the way we think.

Ryan found breathwork through a Wim Hof interview while he was in what he calls an existential depression, searching for meaning and leaning on substances. The first few sessions gave him something he had been reaching for his whole life. In his words, breathwork was “in large part” a gateway to sobriety. He has since trained in seven breathwork programs, studied with breathwork pioneer Dan Brulé, and with his fiancée and business partner Shelby Von Oepen, RN, founded Liquid Breathwork in Phoenix, where they have certified more than 60 facilitators.

Recorded live in front of clients and staff at Camelback Recovery’s outpatient treatment center in Phoenix, Arizona.

What we get into:

• how Ryan found breathwork
• why most people overbreathe and mouth breathe
• the slow, nasal breath Ryan calls optimal
• the difference between breathing practices and breathwork
• what makes Liquid Breathwork different
• the theatrical sigh of relief
• breathing to wake up versus breathing to wind down
• humming before bed
• box breathing
• “the same sun that melts wax hardens clay”
• breathwork as a gateway to sobriety
• what to do with your breath during a craving, using David Hawkins’ Letting Go
• why breathwork can feel like a psychedelic experience without a substance
• whether anyone can guide breathwork, and how to do it safely
• what treatment centers should look for in a facilitator
• audience questions on feeling safe enough to let go, rebirthing breathwork, and how to do circular breathing.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Let Go And Let The Breath Do The Work

Breathwork facilitator Ryan McBurney told our clients in Phoenix how changing the way you breathe can calm cravings, quiet anxiety, and give you what you were looking for in substances, without anything outside yourself.

We’re talking about something every one of us does about 20,000 times a day, usually without giving it a second thought, which is breathing. My guest is Ryan McBurney, Creator and Co-founder of Liquid Breathwork. Ryan has been guiding breathwork sessions since 2018. He has trained in seven different breathwork programs, covering everything from slow, calming practices to powerful, activating ones. He has earned four certifications and mentorships along the way.

Years ago, Ryan and his fiancée and business partner, Shelby, launched the Liquid Breathwork Certification Program. Together, they have trained more than 60 people to guide breathwork themselves. In this episode, we’re going to talk about how breathwork can be a doorway into sobriety, what kind of breathwork makes sense for people in recovery, and what happens in your body and your mind when you learn to change the way you breathe.

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Introduction To Breathwork And Ryan McBurney

Ryan, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. I’m excited.

Who here is familiar with breathwork? All of you because we do it on a daily basis, but we also facilitate breathwork sessions here. I’ve been doing breathwork for ten years or so. It’s been so powerful in my life and in my journey. It has brought me to tears. Has anybody been brought to tears doing breathwork?

You led a breathwork session at the Breakthrough in the Desert with Anthony Balduzzi a couple of months ago. I don’t always cry, but I cried, and I completely lost it. It was powerful. I’m excited about this session because we’re going to talk a little bit more about what happens when we do breathwork. We’re going to talk about the different types of breathwork and what makes the most sense depending upon what state you’re in, what state you’re seeking, and so forth. How did you find breathwork, and what was going on in your life when you did?

Finding Purpose Through Wim Hof And Conscious Breathing

I was watching a lot of the Joe Rogan podcast back in the day. He had a guest, Wim Hof, on his podcast. If anybody has heard of Wim Hof, he popularized breathwork in the West in a large way. It fueled the resurgence of breathwork. He was talking about all these world records he has and all these cool feats that he has accomplished. I remember thinking, “This guy is like a superhero. I want to be able to do that.” He starts talking about how he does breathwork and explains the technique.

I paused it right away, lay on my bed, and my mind was blown pretty immediately. I was like, “How does the whole world not know about this? This is the craziest thing ever.” At that time, I was going through an existential depression. I was always searching for meaning, asking questions, and not finding happiness and purpose in life. I was leaning a lot into substances and this, that, and the other. Breathwork was the thing that felt like it finally brought back this zest for life that I had before when I was younger.

I saw Wim Hof in San Francisco a few months ago. He took us through his process. In the second round, I passed out. I woke up and was like, “Where am I?” It was good. You went through seven different programs. What were you looking for that kept you coming back for more?

I started with Wim Hof and his whole course and program. I then kept going through a bunch of different ones and realized how much there was to learn within the field of breathwork. There’s hyperventilation, breathing in excess, and then there’s hypoventilation and breathing less. There are these two different schools of thought that are in complete opposition and saying different things about what’s better. There are two different tools for different reasons. The hyperventilation is more of these powerful breathwork sessions.

It is more therapeutic. It is emotional release, spiritual awakening, and different things like that. There are a lot of practices that we can use to optimize our daily breathing and improve our breathing habits. The way we breathe 20,000 to 30,000 times per day has a massive effect on our nervous system, our state, our thoughts, our behaviors, and our patterns. Our breath is directly tied to those things. If we can improve our breathing patterns and habits, then we can improve our life, our sleep quality, the quality of our thoughts, and all of that.

I remember I started working with a guy named Larry Arnold because I wanted to do an Ironman, and I couldn’t run more than five miles. When I started working with Larry, the first thing he said was, “You’re not breathing.” I’m like, “What are you talking about? I’m breathing.” He said, “Watch. I’m going to show you that you’re not breathing.”

He had me put on some boxing gloves and hit the bag, and I was seeing stars. That was when I first realized that I wasn’t fully breathing. I noticed that other people weren’t fully breathing. Once I became aware that I wasn’t breathing correctly, I noticed most people are walking around not breathing correctly, which leads to anxiety and lots of issues like sleep and so forth.

The Science Of Breathing: Overcoming Chronic Hyperventilation

Big time. Easily over 50% of people, but probably more like 75% or more people, over breathe and are in this chronic state of shallow hyperventilation. Over 50% of people mouth-breathe a majority of the time. When we breathe through the mouth, we’re breathing more up to the chest. It’s putting our nervous system in this state of chronic sympathetic fight-or-flight, stress, poor thinking, and poor different states in the body that we’re creating. Through that hyperventilation, we’re getting less oxygen delivery in ourselves. We need carbon dioxide. It is this waste gas, but people either severely under breathe or over breathe. Either way, we’re not getting enough oxygen in the cells, and it’s throwing the nervous system out of whack.

How do we know when we’re breathing correctly, and we’re getting the right amount of carbon dioxide and oxygen, and how do we balance it out?

It’s a rabbit hole. It’s super complicated talking about all the biochemistry and all the different things that are happening. We mentioned this number of how many breaths we’re taking per day, which is 20,000 or 30,000. That’s in far excess of what we need in terms of metabolic needs, but then we can say that’s 12 to 20 breaths per minute if we’re breathing that many times per day. The optimal number of breaths per minute is five-and-a-half. It’s a 5-and-a-half-second inhale, and a 5-and-a-half-second exhale. That comes out to five-and-a-half breaths per minute.

We can become aware of our breaths. Even as you’re reading this episode, you can start to pay attention to the breath, too, and multitask. Ask yourself, “How’s my breathing? How fast am I breathing?” People will usually notice their over-breathing. It’s a shallow, quick breath. You see small little breaths that are up in the chest. It’s shallow. The proper way to breathe is to make sure we’re breathing through our nose. That’s going to promote more belly breathing, this full diaphragmatic breath where we get a full breath into the diaphragm.

We can slow it down because it’s a bigger breath. It’s a long, drawn-out inhale and long, drawn-out exhale for about five and a half seconds. It doesn’t need to be that exact number. It’s different for everybody based on body size and diaphragm size. It could be anywhere from 4 to 7 seconds for optimal breathing. If you think about that and try to slow down the breath, it is breathing through the nose and slowing it down on the exhale. Breathing in and out through the nose is far superior to the mouth. We want to focus on breathing there and slowing it down.

 

For someone in this room that’s never done breathwork, what is it in plain language?

I like to draw this distinction between breathing practices and then breathwork. Breathing practices are becoming aware of the breath, consciously breathing, trying to breathe more optimally, and maybe using a technique like box breathing. Those are all breathing practices. We have breathwork, which I consider hyperventilation.

These are more therapeutic, fast, over-breathing practices that have a purpose of releasing some emotion, bringing us to tears, stimulating the nervous system and bringing it back down, and then maybe having these spiritual experiences as well. I look at it as more of that with that activating hyperventilation.

Breathing practices versus breathwork, can you do either on your own?

Both are great on their own. Both are great being guided. Sometimes, it’s nice. I’ll have to think, especially in the beginning, like, “What should I do? Why should I do it? When should I do it?” Throw on a breathwork audio or a guided breathing practice and let it guide you. Those are great when I don’t have to think. I can surrender a little bit more.

As somebody starts to become more advanced, what’s great is starting to pay attention to, “What does my body feel like it needs? What breathing technique or what way of breathing feels like it’s giving my body exactly what it needs and meeting myself where I’m at?” That’s the mastery level of it as we start to get more experience and get more in tune with ourselves. It’s like, “I need to speed it up. I need to slow it down. I could use a little bit more of X in this situation.”

What makes liquid breathwork different from other styles?

What Makes Liquid Breathwork Different: Safety And Surrender

When we guide sessions, we do our 45-minute or hour-long sessions. It’s based a lot around giving people permission to meet themselves where they’re at. People often go to a breathwork class, and they feel like, “I have to keep up with this pace. Here’s the agenda.” It’s like, “We’re staying with this rhythm. It feels fast for me. I feel like it’s a bit much.”

For some people, it’s stimulating for their nervous system. If they’re already in a state of anxiety or stress, sometimes it feels like a bit much, and then they feel like they have to do that. We try to make sure people know, “This is your journey. You follow your own internal guidance and internal intuition. Find a balance between that and then our own guidance. There’s a balance somewhere in there.” One big thing is meeting people where they’re at.

Another is we incorporate the sigh of relief throughout our breathwork practice. Whether someone’s breathing in the nose or the mouth, it’s a big sigh of relief out through the mouth. The reason we incorporate that is because the sigh of relief sends the signal to the base of the brainstem and sends the signal that says, “I’m safe to the nervous system.” In breathwork, we’re stimulating the nervous system. It’s going into fight or flight a little bit when we over-breathe.

When I hyperventilate, I’m amping the nervous system up. We use that sigh of relief to say, “When we create a little bit of stress, it’s met with safety. Every breath is met with a little bit more stress and a little bit more safety.” It’s reconditioning and repatterning so that we’re having this positive response to stress throughout the breathwork experience. One big staple of Liquid Breathwork is incorporating that. Lastly is this element of surrender and inviting people into that and to find what that is. It’s like a buzzword, I feel like, but also, the deeper we go into it, the more powerful the experience can be.

I noticed when you’re breathing, you’re snapping your head back. I saw Dan Brulé speak. I saw him at Optimize. That was the thing that I learned from him. Explain to me what you’re doing when you’re breathing in and snapping your head forward.

As I walk through it and do it myself, I’ll invite everyone here and all the readers to do this theatrical sigh of relief. I got that from Dan Brulé. We wove that into our practice because of him. How do we make the sigh of relief like the Shakespearean sigh of relief? Exaggerate so you can find relaxation with that exhale. Go ahead and try that for a moment. Breathe in, and then a big sigh of relief. It’s like you’re on stage performing. You want everyone in the audience to feel how relaxing it is.

You can draw your head back. It opens up the diaphragm. Getting a little bit of body movement into it helps with that element of tapping into it a little bit more. For me, there are 3, 4, or 4 breaths, and I’m already feeling this lightheadedness or this shift in my mental. Move and get into it a little bit more. There’s this element of tantric practice where I’m drawing all my presence and all my awareness into that act of breathing in and then a sigh of relief. I feel like that adds to it. It amplifies the practice a little bit more by getting into it more physically.

You’ve studied and are teaching both breathing that fires you up and then also breathing that calms you down. What’s the difference between the two, and when would someone use either-or?

Activating Vs. Calming Breath Techniques For Nervous System Regulation

Breathwork, this practice of hyperventilation, many people here have done it. It’s rounds of breathing for three minutes or so, and then a hold, and then another round of breathing for 3 or 5 minutes and then a hold. Those are pretty stimulating. You probably don’t want to do that right before bed. Sometimes, it’s great in the morning if we’re trying to wake up. There are so many different times throughout the day that it would be great.

We then have stuff like, “It’s bedtime. I want to wind down.” It’s going to be slowing down the exhale as much as possible. It’s extending that exhale and prolonging the amount of time between inhales. Inhales are what’s stimulating. The more inhales we’re taking, the more stimulating it is. Before bed, we might want to exhale as slow as we can. Act like you’re breathing out through a straw. If you want to amplify that even more, we can hum. The hum is a great way to activate the vagus nerve.

 

That vibration of the hum stimulates the vagus nerve. That will be more parasympathetic, which is to rest and relax. I often do that before I go to bed. Even if you don’t have trouble falling asleep, it’s great to activate that parasympathetic and the vagus nerve because that’ll help improve our quality of sleep. That’s great. Before a meeting or before a tough conversation, hum or slow down the exhales. Different things to say, “Let’s calm the nervous system down and get back to baseline before we do something that’s going to be challenging.”

There are hundreds of breath techniques, all of which would be for different reasons, even box breathing. Navy SEALs will use box breathing right before a mission because it’s very symmetrical. It’s 4 seconds in, 4-second hold, 4 seconds out, and 4-second hold. It’s going to balance the nervous system so they’re not too activated. They can focus. They have this grounded focus where it’s this balance between activated but relaxed.

Every breath technique has its thing that it’s doing to the nervous system and what it’s doing to our mind and all of that. Every breath technique has a specific thing. I got this from Dan as well. He has this quote he likes to share from Charles Spurgeon. It’s, “The same sun that melts wax hardens clay.” The sun is melting one thing and hardening another. It’s the same sun. The breath is the same way.

The same breath that does one thing to me might do a different thing to you because of where our nervous system is at that day. What’s going on in our lives? What are the circumstances? That’s another reason I like to bring in and give people permission to follow their own internal guidance. Us guiding everyone through one breath and it’s one-size-fits-all is not going to meet people where they might be on that day. We like to give people permission to follow that guidance and say, “Whatever feels good for you right now, follow that.”

I like that. You’ve said breathwork can be a gateway to sobriety. What do you mean by that?

Breathwork As A Gateway To Sobriety And Inner Peace

In large part, it was that for me. I was in this search for meaning and trying to find it through different substances and also using it for escapism and avoidance. I didn’t even have the awareness at that time that that’s what I was doing, escaping and avoiding. What I was looking for, breathwork gave me. I found it through breathwork.

Probably my 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time doing breathwork, it was this divine experience where I felt like I saw the center of the universe. It was this orb. I felt like, “That’s God. That’s heaven. I don’t know what it is, but that’s what it feels like. That feels like home.” It gave me this feeling that I hadn’t ever felt before. It gave me this relief from this yearning and longing for something outside of me and needing something outside of me to give me this feeling I was looking for. Breathwork was this way to finally be like, “I don’t have to reach and try to find something outside of me to give me what’s already there inside of me.”

The breath is always with us. In any moment, if I’m feeling myself not being at ease or feeling like I’m maybe reaching, I come back to that breath. Your breath will never forsake you. It’s always there. I remember that. Sobriety is a journey. I used to think, “One day, I’ll feel like I don’t need these things anymore. I’ll be at peace forever.” The voice will come back, or the urges or whatever. It’s like, “How can I continue to repattern?” Every time that thought comes, I come back to my breath. It’s like, “It’s all within me. I don’t need something outside of me.”

For someone that’s early on in recovery, is there a type of breathwork that you recommend that’d be more appropriate for someone at that stage?

It depends. If I were going to be one-on-one with somebody, I’d sit down with them and feel out where the nervous system is at and what state they are in and go from there. A general rule of thumb is a ten-minute breathwork session, which is a more hyperventilation style or Wim Hof style, is great because it’s not super long. We’re not going to bring up a ton of stuff and go deep into where we’re going to need processing, and it’s going to be a full journey.

A 10-minute session or 20-minute session is nice. As Wim Hof says, “Get high on your own supply.” Give somebody a taste of it and let it be this profound experience that can be fulfilling in a way and maybe a little bit relieving if there is a lot of anxiety or a lot of emotion under the surface. Breathwork is great for that. It’s relieving the pressure valve on anything that’s stored and built up. That’s one great practice.

Most of us breathe 20,000+ times a day and do it wrong. Share on X

Breathing practices are great as a form of meditation. The breath is this thing we can focus on. It’s like this anchor. We can have breath awareness. I like breath play. For ten minutes, I’m going to explore my breath. I’m breathing in whatever way feels good. There are no rules. There’s no right or wrong. I’m going to experiment and explore a bunch of different types of breaths.

I like that sometimes. I’ll be like, “I don’t feel like doing breathwork right now,” and I can sit there and breathe in whatever way, like a kid playing with his breath. I jiggle my body a little bit. I’ll be like, “I’m feeling a little bit of stiffness in my body. I feel like I need to wiggle it out a bit,” and different things like that. That’s a great practice because there are no rules and there’s no right or wrong. You can meet yourself where you’re at.

First off, I would do the Wim Hof. I had the Wim Hof app. I would do Wim Hof first thing in the morning when I woke up, and then I’d lead into a meditation. For a few years, I was doing Othership. Othership I loved. I would grab a 10-minute or 20-minute upregulated session. I’m still lying in bed. I would do that, and then I’m up. I don’t even need coffee. I did that. Are there any other apps or services that you might recommend someone do if they want to get started with doing their own breathwork?

Those two are great. YouTube has a ton, even if somebody doesn’t want to subscribe and pay money to one. I don’t know if you know Dan Vadnais. He lives here locally in the Valley. His channel is @BreathworkBeats. He has a bunch of great audios on there. He has a lot of different variations. They’re all 10 or 20 minutes long. I’ve never been like somebody who makes short, quick audios, but I like using them. YouTube’s great. Othership’s great. Wim Hof’s app is great. Other than that, Spotify probably has a few, but YouTube’s great.

There are a million out there. You just have to search. For someone that’s early in recovery that’s dealing with anxiety, racing thoughts, and cravings, what can someone do with their breath in that moment?

Managing Cravings, Anxiety, And The Art Of Letting Go

That’s a great question. I would say extending the practice beyond just the breath. It’s another piece of what we weave into the philosophy of Liquid Breathwork. I got this from David Hawkins. He created the Maps of Consciousness. He has a book called Letting Go. It was the last book he published.

I love that book.

It’s good. When I was reading it, I was like, “This is Liquid Breathwork.” I use it when I teach in our program. It’s these steps of, number one, it all starts with awareness, becoming aware of what I’m feeling. We can use the breath to first center ourselves and get to a place where we can feel more body awareness and more mental awareness, amplify it a little bit, and create that space. It’s like, “I feel anxiety. I feel a little bit of stress. I feel myself reaching,” and becoming aware of that.

Then, it’s accepting it. It’s this full radical acceptance and no judgment. That’s a big piece. Even for me, knowing the process, this other part of me comes in quickly, like, “That’s bad. Don’t do that.” It’s still a judging thought. How can I view it from this seat of zero judgment and it’s just awareness? It’s like, “I have this desire to reach. There it is. There’s that desire to reach. It’s been here before. Here it is again.”

With non-judgment is also non-resistance. It’s not even wanting to get rid of it. It’s being with it. It’s not like, “I can’t wait until this feeling of reaching is gone again. I’m tired of it.” That’s judgment. That’s another part coming in. It’s like, “How can I be with it?” It’s like, “Here’s that desire to reach again. It’s okay. I’m to be with it as long as I need to be with it. Let me breathe with it, and let me feel it.”

Where in my body do I feel it? Is there a specific place in my body where I feel this sensation or an emotion? It’s like, “It’s the anxiety. There’s something I’m avoiding. It’s this thing in my life, this relationship or whatever. Now, I’m trying to avoid it using a substance.” It could be like, “I’m feeling tension in my body. I want to stop feeling the tension, the stress, or whatever it is.”

We can weave in this last piece of it, which is letting go. It’s like, “Now it’s here. I’m aware of where I’m feeling in my body. Let me breathe into it a little bit more.” We can do an inhale and a sigh of relief. That sigh of relief is where we weave in that surrender and that letting go. Almost think of it as like, “My body is contracted. I feel it somewhere in my body. I’m holding on. I feel the stress or the anxiety. How can I let go of that tension? How can I ease up that holding pattern that exists in my body and relax and surrender a little bit more one breath at a time?”

I like to think of it as peeling back layers of the onion. It might be 1% more relaxing. It might be 1% where I can not feel so attached to this reaching. It’s like, “I can pull my head back and come back here.” Sometimes, sobriety or whatever it is can feel daunting, like, “I have to do this for the rest of my life. Can I do it for the next five minutes? I can sit here for five minutes and let go of that reaching.” It’s letting go and coming back to myself more and more. That is a great practice that anyone can lean into.

Some people describe experiences during breathwork that sound a lot like a psychedelic experience. What’s going on there?

They’ve done fMRIs or functional brain scans that show the same regions of the brain are activated during both. There’s a lot of crazy stuff going on with breathwork. We’ve only studied it so much, so we only know what we know. There’s a lot we don’t know, but we do know that breathwork has these effects on us that lead to these profound spiritual experiences. We’ve had people tell us they felt like they were visited by a loved one who’s still with us or has passed away. We’ve had people feel like they’ve healed the trauma that they had with their daughter, mother, father, or son.

It’s these profound experiences that are going on in the brain. People might say similar types of things if they were doing psychedelics or if they did some sort of plant medicine. With breathwork, you don’t need something outside of you. This is just my breath. Anything outside of us, our brain is already capable of doing and producing that experience. Breathwork is like a doorway to do that, but it’s natural. It’s a way to access those pathways and those experiences. There’s a lot of cool stuff with the brain, too, of what’s going on, but it’s probably super deep to get into.

Can anyone guide breathwork? What does it take to do it well and to do it safely?

Facilitating Breathwork Safely And Pushing Beyond Limits

My general rule would be that anybody can guide breathwork. When I got started, I’d done a bunch of breathwork, like Wim Hof through the app. I was like, “This is amazing. I have to show all my friends.” It started with me and my friends hanging out. We’d lie on the floor, and I’d be like, “We’re going to try something.” I’d put the audio on a speaker, and we’d all start breathing in together. Everyone loved it. They’d say, “Ryan, can we do breathwork anytime we were hanging out?” It became a thing.

Sometimes, we wouldn’t have a speaker, so I would guide everyone through it. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know how to explain it to people. I was doing it as Wim Hof did it. There’s a layer to get some of the basics, but at the end of the day, anybody can do it. It’s great to know a lot of the safety things. Number one, never around water. Don’t do it while you’re driving and all that. Don’t do it while people are standing up because they could pass out, fall over, hit their head, or something.

There’s also more of the subjective safety, like not pushing people past their limits. We want people to feel safe in their body, so we do not push them. That’s a lot of the type of stuff we teach in our program. The first layer is how to help people feel safe when you’re guiding them through an experience and how to be there but also be in the background.

Anybody can do it, but then you have the skills to become better at it and be a great guide that helps people go deeper in their experience. There are a lot of layers to that. Coming back to surrender is our number one thing. As a facilitator, as someone guiding the experience, you surrender while you’re guiding. You’re training the room to surrender as well. If you’re trying to control everyone’s experience and make sure everyone has this great experience, that feeling of control will be in the room.

It’s going to be in people’s systems, and then they’re going to be trying to control their experience. If we can let go and surrender, everyone is going to have their own experience, and I trust everyone’s going to have what’s meant for them. That’s going to create the space for them to have their own experience and go through that. That’s a big piece, for sure.

What does your certification program look like?

We have a couple of variations of it. We have a three-day in-person. We do it in-home. We limit it to six people, so it’s intimate. We have more time with each person. I feel like with too big of a training, it is hard to make sure everyone gets what they need. It’s three-day, in-person with lots of hands-on experience and practice. People leave this three-day weekend getting to practice guiding breathwork, guiding a session, and getting over some of the fears of doing so, like fear of talking in front of people.

Then, it’s going through all the science of what’s happening in the brain, what’s happening in the nervous system, the biochemistry, the oxygen, CO2, and all that stuff. We go over all the science. We go over what people need to know about the art of facilitation, how to go from being decent at facilitating and good enough where everyone feels safe to mastering all the skills necessary to create this experience where people have profound experiences. We have this three-day in-person that we do. We have a twelve-week online course. Some people do both. Either way, people walk away from that feeling ready to guide and facilitate breathwork.

Who would be interested in going through your certification program?

We have a pretty wide range. There are some people who are already in the space, like sound healers. They want to add breathwork to what they’re doing. There are people who do Reiki. Some people who have gone through our program are therapists who want to use it with their clients or do group sessions to offer to their clients and their community.

We’ve had a lot of different types of massage therapists who are doing Thai massage, lymphatic, and regular massage. They’re like, “I don’t want to work with people one-on-one. I want to also be able to offer a group offering.” I’d say anybody like wellness practitioners in general, mindset coaches, or anybody who’s feeling the call. We’ve had people who are working corporate, working in a hospital, or whatever it is. They’re like, “I love breathwork, and I want to guide people through it.”

Teaching it is the best way to learn something. You have a lot of your students bring breathwork into recovery centers. What should a recovery center look for when they’re hiring a breathwork facilitator?

How Recovery Centers Can Hire The Right Breathwork Facilitator

That’s a great question. One of the number one things is being aware of the range of breathwork experiences. There’s that super far end, high-intensity breathwork. I would never say that’s bad, but you want to have an experienced facilitator that’s doing that in a safe way if they’re doing an hour-long intense hyperventilation session because a lot can come up from those.

I would always err on the side of focusing more on relaxing. It doesn’t have to be so intense. It can be healing, if not more, through that and finding more through surrender. Safety is the number one thing. Whichever end of the spectrum it’s on, is that a safe facilitator? Are they experienced? Also, not finding a practice where they’re pushing people deep, looking for those fireworks. They’re trying to push people deeper for the big experience or the big emotional release. That’s the number one thing, for sure.

@liquidbreathwork's Ryan McBurney on why breathwork became his gateway to sobriety, and what to do with your breath in the middle of a craving. Recorded live at Camelback Recovery in Phoenix. Share on X

We’re at the point in the show where I want to open it up to questions.

You said that you changed the way you’re breathing. How is it different from how you normally breathe?

The way I can explain it is my breaths were short and shallow. I didn’t realize it until I put on the boxing gloves, and then I was seeing stars, and Larry said, “See? Your breaths are short and shallow.” He had me go take Pilates. He said, “I want you to go take Pilates for a month. Stop running. No more running. I want you to go take Pilates for a month.”

With yoga, you’re supposed to focus on your breath. A lot of times, yoga instructors are going to jam you through a session so quickly that you’re not even connecting with your breath. Whereas with Pilates, you’re inhaling and exhaling on every single move. That was what I did first, and that was when I first started gaining awareness of my breath. Now, I’m aware of it. There are times when I go back to the short, shallow breaths, and I realize, “I’m not breathing.” I’ll consciously take a deep inhale and exhale. Did that answer your question?

Yes, thank you.

A lot of what you’re describing about those big experiences sounds a lot like what I hear about near-death experiences. Can you make that connection for me?

Yes. I’ve never had a near-death experience, so I can’t speak from experience. I want to make sure I answer the question. Could you rephrase it?

I don’t know if it’s okay to talk about this on here.

Talk about whatever you want.

I have a tendency for self-harm. With that is that search for that experience. What you’re describing sounds like what I’m searching for. Along with that idea of surrender, how can I get this from breathwork versus self-harm?

The times that I’ve had these experiences of the divine and deep experiences within myself are these more therapeutic breathwork sessions, which are usually somewhere 30 minutes to 45 minutes. I know you guys do the breathwork once a week. Are those usually about that long?

I think so. How long are the breathwork sessions? 45 minutes.

It’s interesting. The more breathwork I’ve done over the years, sometimes I go deep, and I get there. Other times, I don’t. There’s this element of surrender. A nuance of it is sometimes there’s this resistance with me. I don’t want to go there. It doesn’t matter how much I’m hyperventilating or how much air I’m moving. There’s this aspect of allowing myself to go there and melting into the breath a little bit more, melting into some emotion that might be blocking me.

It’s finding the subtle ways where stuff might be coming up. Where are you blocking yourself in that experience? Do not be in a rush to get there because that sometimes creates this resistance, or you’re pushing it away. It’s like, “Every breath I take, it’s here now.” That usually will allow you to move closer. The next time you try breathwork, it might be 5 times or 10 times, but making that a practice of, “It’s here now,” and stopping and being present with whatever’s coming up.

With self-harm, ask yourself, “What’s coming up? Why?” It’s that self-inquiry. It’s then like, “Let me breathe into that and sit with it and feel what I need to feel.” There are likely emotions tied to it. What if it’s safe to feel that emotion and safe to let it out? Breathe with it. It’s like, “As I breathe with it, more is going to come up. I feel it more and let it out more.” It might be through that experience, or it might be 5 or 10 sessions down the road where it’s like, “Here it is.”

What I’m hearing is to not let myself get caught up in expectations of what this could lead to. I should just be.

The expectations are prohibitive.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Creating Safe Spaces For Emotional Release In Group Sessions

I heard you talk about safety. I’m thinking about myself. I’ve done lots of breathwork sessions. In order for me to get to an emotional release, I have to feel safe. How can a person feel safe while doing breathwork? You have to get vulnerable, and in order to get there, it should be an intimate, safe space. What does a safe space look like, and how can a person get to a place so that they can feel comfortable enough to release?

There are a few different contexts for that. We could be doing a breathwork session by ourselves, laying on her bed with headphones. We could be doing a one-on-one or a group session. There’s the safety that someone is going to feel or not feel within. It’s like, “I don’t feel safe in groups. There are a lot of people. I don’t feel comfortable.” It’s working with that, and it’s like, “What am I afraid of? What if everything was okay?” Work into that internal safety.

The facilitator is the person creating an environment that’s going to facilitate more people feeling comfortable, at home, and at ease. That’s one area. When people walk in, how do we make them feel welcome and feel safe? I guide sessions with my fiancée. She talks to every person when they walk in the room. We’re asking them, “Have you done breathwork before? Are you okay with physical touch? Are you okay with Reiki?” We’re getting to know each person a little bit before the session. Some rapport is already there.

When we are guiding, we’re up at the front, like, “Let go of any expectations of yourself, of us, of this session.” We’re trying to take off any mask we might be wearing. Sometimes, there’s this expectation like, “I’m a facilitator. I have to be a guru. I have to be some sort of master and not be going through anything.” Shelby, my fiancée, will say, “I’m nervous today being in front of the room.” That honest expression gives other people permission to be like, “I’m nervous being here.” It gives people permission to feel that and acknowledge it within themselves.

People being willing to be vulnerable will often have people set intentions before. Even if it’s 1 or 2 people, someone sharing, “I’m going through a tough time in life right now. I feel like I need to be here,” and being vulnerable allows other people to be like, “I don’t have to have my walls up and feel like I have to be so tough or hold on to everything.” That helps.

We have a few more minutes left. If anybody has any more questions. Many times, there are people that have questions, and they think they’re going to come up and ask him after. I would encourage you to ask the question now because if you have that question, somebody else has that question, too.

Where did you study to learn how to facilitate breathwork?

 

I’ve gone through a lot of different online programs. Wim Hof has a lot of different courses and programs. I went through one called SOMA Breath, probably one of the biggest in the world, as big as Wim Hof. I went and studied with Dan Brulé. He’s been teaching breathwork for 50 years.

He’s the OG. He’s the original breathwork facilitator in the 1970s.

In the 1960s and 1970s. He was with the groups who discovered what we’ve considered breathwork now. A funny story is that breathwork was stumbled upon by lying face down in a bathtub with a snorkel. They were trying to do these rebirth experiences and heal any trauma from being in the womb or heal trauma from birth.

Sometimes, the umbilical cord is wrapped around the neck during birth, or there are complications. Those birth imprints, those things that happen, stick with us throughout life. They were trying to heal those things. They were in this warm bathtub, face down, like you’re in the womb, with a snorkel. They noticed this breathing pattern would always emerge.

It was this circular breathing. They were like, “What if we try that outside the bathtub?” They started doing breathwork. Dan Brulé was right there with this guy, Leonard Orr, and this group that was doing rebirthing breathwork. I studied with him. I took a few other courses that are talking about optimal breathwork or breathing for optimal sports performance. There’s Oxygen Advantage, Buteyko Method, and lots of different ones.

Thank you.

I was going to ask you about circular breathing and how to do it because I’ve tried and I can’t do it. Can you tell us how we could do that?

Mastering Circular Connected Breathing Techniques

One of the staples of rebirthing or a lot of breathwork is conscious, connected circular breathing. It’s conscious. I’m thinking about it. It’s connected. There’s no pause at the top or the bottom. Each breath is connected to the next. It’s circular. I’m trying to think of this wheel. You can breathe through the nose, the mouth, or whatever. You try to imagine this wheel. Your inhale is coming up the spine in the back and then down the front.

The breath starts turning over on itself. You breathe like that for 10 breaths, 50 breaths, or 100 breaths and see what happens. You can do a breath hold at some point. It can be more like an oval. It doesn’t have to be necessarily like a circle. That is this practice of what we were talking about. Rebirthing breathwork. It’s this pattern that they saw emerging from people who were lying in the bathtub doing this deeply healing, transformative technique. It’s this natural way the body wants to breathe and let the energy move. It can lead to a lot of profound experiences.

Thank you.

Is there a question that I didn’t ask you that I should ask?

I don’t think so. We covered a lot of the juicy stuff. Nothing comes to mind.

Where can people find you? How can they connect with you? How can they learn more about your program?

We have LiquidBreathwork.com. All of our classes are there. We have our students who have gone through our program. We have a directory. If people are looking for facilitators in their area or looking for more classes, we have all of our classes listed and our students’ classes listed. A lot of our students are living in Arizona. We have some across the US as well. We also have a Breathwork Near Me search app on our website. They can type in a city or state if people aren’t local, try to find a breathwork class near them, and dive in.

How can we help you? Is there anything that we can help you with?

Anytime you guys need a breathwork facilitator, I would love to come fill in if somebody is not going to be able to make it one week. I would love to dive into a little bit of Liquid Breathwork and see how people like it.

Thank you so much. I appreciate you. We appreciate you. Let’s give it up for Ryan McBurney.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

 

Important Links

• Ryan McBurney on LinkedIn
• Liquid Breathwork
• Breathwork Certification | In-person in Phoenix, Arizona or Live Online
• Breathwork Classes Near Me
• Wim Hof Method
• Othership
• @BreathworkBeats on YouTube
• Letting Go

 

About Ryan McBurney

Ryan McBurney is the creator, cofounder, and lead facilitator of Liquid Breathwork in Phoenix, Arizona. He has been guiding breathwork sessions since 2018 and has trained in seven breathwork programs spanning both ends of the breathing spectrum, from Wim Hof and SOMA Breath to functional breathing methods like Oxygen Advantage and Buteyko, including study with breathwork pioneer Dan Brulé.

He holds four breathwork certifications and mentorships. Four years ago, Ryan and his fiancée and business partner, Shelby Von Oepen, RN, launched the Liquid Breathwork Facilitator Certification, and together they have trained more than 60 people to guide breathwork. Liquid Breathwork’s approach centers on meeting people where they are, pairing every breath with a sigh of relief, and surrender over force.