BONUS: Breathing Tips To Calm Nerves with Cindy Doire

Welcome

[00:00:09] Rosalyn: to Refocus, a podcast that helps you find your focus to build a thriving creative career in the music industry. I'm your host, Rosalyn

[00:00:17] Cindy: Dennet.

[00:00:28] Rosalyn: We've got an incredible guest with us today, Cindy Dir. Cindy is a registered psychotherapist qualifying, a certified trauma informed yoga teacher, a somatic coach, and an award-winning singer songwriter. She's a therapist, teacher, artist, and coach who embraces the difference in every day and every moment.

Welcome to Refocus, Cindy. Thanks. Happy to be here. So glad you're here. So we're going to, uh, talk a little bit about breathing and regulation exercises. Certainly with artists, we feel the butterflies, we feel the nerves, we feel anxiety, and everyone knows the word stagefright as something that happens to folks who perform.

I think that. Carries over into more general music industry stuff, if you have to do some public speaking or negotiation or, you know, and, and for folks who, who just feel general anxiety or nervousness, I'd love to get into some tools that people can use to regulate themselves when they're in these, these moments of adrenaline.

[00:01:25] Cindy: Adrenaline is, Totally the key word for most people who you know when you're feeling that anxiety that your body's getting ready for mobility. So there's that excess energy. So, Essentially you want to give the body the message that we're okay. Right? So breathing is an amazing tool. Even if you start to notice, probably every hour or so, your body's naturally sighing.

So a sigh, just taking a deep breath.

Just that and repeat. And you can do that anywhere. Nobody, they might go, oh, are you okay? But like your body does that automatically when it starts to feel stress. And first of all, the sound that you make with a sigh can kind of create vibrations along your VA nerve. So that's like a really, really easy thing that people can do all day long, everywhere, anywhere.

And it just, The message to the body, like, Hey, we're okay, but breath, if you have time and space to get into a few actual breathing practices. One of my favorite breaths to do, and if you can do this before a show like. It's so efficient, you feel it right away. In yoga, they call it boari breath or humming bee breath.

It's really good for vagal toning and vagal stuff. So the invitation is to close your eyes and lock your ears when you do this breath. And I like to encourage people because I know when we're in a state of anxiety, we shallow breathe, right? It's like, and there's like tension here and it's like, it can even feel really claustrophobic.

Think about belly diaphragmic breath. So one thing that I find is really helpful is to picture an air hole at the base of your spine, and that is the source of breath. So like you're breathing from that area and what that does. Is it helps guide the breath to that lower abdomen. So it just kind of facilitates that diag breathing, which, which we wanna be doing.

So the biari breath. So again, picturing that air hole at the base of the spine, taking an easy breath. So you inhale through the nose, but then as you exhale, you put the lips together. Block the ears, close the eyes, and you make a humming bee, buzzing bee sound. So like Mm, vibration. So it just looks and sounds like this.

I'm gonna do it even though it might be as silly, but just so you get the feel for it. So, deep breath in. Mm.

And then repeat, and you cycle through that five, six times. And I mean, a lot of artists are vocalists as well. So that vibration you create here, you can kind of play around with it and try to send it down to the belly and try to play around with increasing the intensity of it. But the immediate impact of the body is, it's amazing.

Like your body immediately gets the signal to stop releasing adrenaline. As soon as you take a breath, it's like this parasympathetic kicks in and goes, oh, okay. It's immediate. And that's really nice to know, right? It's like it's, it's not like you have to spend hours getting out of this state. And Sure, you may have to, it's not like, okay, you take a breath, everything's fine.

However, as soon as you do start doing that breath work, you're sending the message to your body that, Hey, we're good. Everything's fine. You can stop releasing cortisol, you can stop releasing adrenaline, and then you go back to that homeostasis, which is where we wanna be. And of course with performance, there's like a healthy bit of anxiety that gives us that sense of excitement.

So like there's a healthy dose, but we wanna remain within our threshold. Right? So it's if you get beyond that threshold and you're vomiting in the back, then obviously you're not tapping into that energy the way we want to. So there's another one. There's a, an amazing, um, Dr. Peter Levine, he does somatic experiencing, and it's similar to the one we just did, but it's, it's a woo sound.

So same thing, and you could close your eyes if you're seated and you're, you know, obviously don't do this when you're driving. But yeah, similar to the other breath, and again, always visualizing that air hole at the base. Spine so that you're doing that diag breath and like, and it's a vu sound, so it's just.

And then you just keep doing that and, and you try to send that vibration of that one in the belly, and that stimulates the vagal nerve, which, you know how they say like, we have this brain in our gut. 80% of the information goes from the gut up to the brain. So when you start to do these deep diag breath with the vibration, It sends the message to the brain like, Hey, yeah, no, actually we're good.

We're okay. So that that cycle of adrenaline production can then stop the, the rest, and Digestate gets to kind of replace that sympathetic arousal. So that's a really good one. And for some people, You have that excess energy, right? So for some people shake like shaking it out like and somatic energy, sometimes releasing that energy.

And it can be activating too. So it energizes you. So for some people, like getting those jumping jacks in before your, your performance it releases cuz you have that adrenaline. The, the purpose of the adrenaline is to get you out of the jungle when you're getting chased by lion. So it's like that's the very primitive function of the autonomic nervous system.

We're wired for survival, danger, get out of there. So that's why we have that excess energy because your, your body's reacting to perceived danger and then responding. In a place of mobility, let's get you out of there. But you're just going to on stage or wherever you're at, a conference, you, you know, so getting that energy out, and that's why including physical exercise a little bit daily also helps with that because then you can modulate from that place of hyper reaction back to that place of homeostasis with more ease.

So when you're doing these things that allow you to regulate on a regular basis, Your body can then go from the altered states with more ease. So it's, it's like again, practicing, right? It's a practice. It's a journey. Some days it feels more accessible than others. Some days like the thought of breathing when you're upset is like, don't you dare offend me.

Like I'm just really upset, like to tell somebody to breathe when they're angry, like forget it, right? So finding ways to express this energy out. And some people like to visualize really grounding techniques like grounding. Feet sitting down, feeling the soil like you know on your feet, feeling the support of the chair beneath you, orienting to the here and now.

So coming to the present moment tells your body that you're safe. So you can do that with your five senses. You can use smells, you can use putting a candy in your mouth that will bring you in the moment, right? Um, I always have this bottle. It's got essential oils in it. I'm always like doing this all day long.

Having that sense of smell brings me to this moment in this space, cuz when we're in a hyperreactive state, usually our body is functioning from a place of the past. Whenever there's like really, really heightened emotion, it's usually. Cyclical response based on things we've experienced. So, and even hand stuff like Play-Doh, having Play-Doh, something tangible, a texture that you can focus in on.

And again, like touch. So like if you're grounded, taking your socks off and putting your feet in water, even hands underwater, right? Brings you and really mindfully engaging in that cold water on the hands or on the. I mean, if you're about to do a show, obviously you can't just splash cold water on your, on your makeup and all that.

But you know, just using sounds, I used to do like a really drony sound and then doing vocal stuff with it gets that vagal nerve activation going. And I think the key for it to really work for you is really finding something that resonates with. Right. Because there's all these things that we can do. You can look around you and okay, find, you know, five things that are this color, like it's engaging a different part of the brain, essentially is what we wanna do, right?

Some people playing Jenga, like, bring a Jenga. And then as soon as you're activating you're, you're in the process of like focusing on what piece you're activating a part of the brain that gets you out of that reactive hyper reaction. So again, What's gonna work with you? What do you want in your suitcase when you're traveling and that you feel is easy to put in your back pocket?

Right? Visualizations too can be really helpful if there's an image of something that, to you, gives the message of, I'm calm, I'm safe, I'm protected. It could be an image of, of something that has happened. Visualization of you in the middle of a lake floating. Like maybe that image brings a sense of calm that gives the message to the body.

Because visual, we know that if you visualize something, the brain reacts as though it's happening, right? So that's the power of visualization. So there's just so many tricks and exploring, I think exploring when you're feeling good is, is a really key thing. Like when you're feeling great, notice what's happening.

And those, those are like little indications of like, oh, it's because I did this today. So, okay, well maybe I'll do that more. And with the breath even, just an easy, easy breath. Just a simple belly breath, just normal breathing. And then like my daughter learned the five star breath. So you inhale. Hold, exhale, you know?

So for some people, if you need a guide, inhale up the next finger. Hold, exhale. So just the act of touch, you're touching your hand, the act of focusing. You're like, okay, there's a roadmap. I go up and down, I breathe, I exhale. And some of it can seem like silly, right? Because it's like it's simple, but it's not because when you're in a reactive state, These things all of a sudden don't feel accessible.

You're not in the part of your brain that's gonna think, oh, I just need to do this. Right? So that's why it's important to premeditate what's gonna help me in a moment. Where I start to feel outta sorts, where things start to distort or I start to feel anxious or I'm in that panic attack, even for that heart racing, placing your hand on your heart when you feel that accelerated heartbeat and naming it like, oh, okay, I'm, I'm, yeah, I'm reacting right now.

This is normal. Naming it and just kind of like taking a breath, leaning into it, giving it. To just do its thing. You can write it down before show heart racing, you know, and the act of writing will engage the part of the brain. So it's like, I don't know about you, but rituals, like creating little rituals can be really nice.

And it's that sacred time that you carve out for yourself, which is an act of. Self-love. Right. And, and taking that time for

[00:13:20] Rosalyn: yourself. So thank you so much, Cindy. That's incredible. There's so many tools in there and, uh, thank you so much for sharing with us today. Yeah,

[00:13:29] Cindy: my pleasure.

That's

[00:13:35] Rosalyn: it for this episode of Refocus. Please subscribe, rate, and review on the podcast app of your choice so you never miss an episode. For more information, you can visit us at bo mus ontario dot. And follow us on social media at Folk Music Ontario. This refocus session is brought to you through the generous support of the Department of Canadian Heritage.