What are the key underlying structures that we need to give ourselves the best chance of having good mental health?

So go to that.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's where that stuff came from.

OK, firstly, when I talk about the thing you can hear from Julie is what I worked hard with what mattered to her.

Yeah.

Now one of the things if you've spent your whole life being people pleaser, don't know if you know anyone like that Ravs, but you can be very aware what other people want and what other people like and how what makes someone else's you know, world tick.

But you haven't spent as much time working on your own.

And I loved hearing about you say, Heather, I really love fixing things.

I love the vans that you've done because then I got you truly engaged with you.

At that moment.

You weren't thinking about me.

You were thinking about yourself in a really healthy way.

When I talked to Julie about her art, she goes to the same place.

When I talk to Julie about what she gets from swimming, she goes to the same place.

And so as we talk about tunement and we talk about what are those things that we resonate with that really help our mental health is, is spending some time really figuring out what floats your boat?

What really gets you in that?

What we call sometimes a flow state where there's a there's this kind of like, I feel like I'm connected to this thing and everything else is kind of suddenly not mattering quite as much.

I'm not thinking about the future.

I'm not, you know, analysing my past.

I'm actually in the present and that's what we call mindfulness to a degree, is like being in the moment on on purpose, non judge, mentally connected with what we can see here, touch, taste, smell and just being here because you if I said to you most of the time, can you tell me Rebs, is anything wrong right now?

Like right now?

No, the answer's no.

No, it's only when we analyse our past or we're worried about our future that we actually start to get into these situations.

Yeah, it's.

Interesting, the whole thing of mindfulness and being in the moment when you're doing this thing.

I just did an episode recently when when long recorded from a Jazzercise class.

Of course they want it as a competition to have the pod van come along.

And they came out after the class and we had about 15 of these women sitting around on these chairs out the back and each came in.

But the way they spoke about it, yeah, one, there's a lot of mental health stuff in there.

People had moved to the area, didn't know anybody.

So they went along to that.

They have this scheduled in.

They love, they look forward to to going along to it.

But then one of them actually said as well, when I'm following the steps that the instructor's doing up there, I can't be thinking about what happened at work today.

I can't be thinking about what I'm going to be doing for dinner tonight and getting the kids ready for this.

I'm just in that moment.

In that moment, and that is mindfulness.

So when we think about what mindfulness is, we don't want to think we have to be lying on our backs with our eyes closed in a darkened.

Room that's what I think of when I think of mindfulness and Nope.

But as you were saying all those things before I was picturing when I'm on the tools and like when I was renovating this van to turn it into the pod van.

Oh could've been happier.

I'd spend all day long on the tools creating and fixing and of it, but I'd never would have thought of that as mindfulness.

Right now, because obviously I'm a psychologist, I would want to add to that.

So I'm going.

OK.

All right, Ravs, we've got you connected enough with the present moment.

Yeah.

Now, most people with anxiety have, as I said, have avoided their Physiology.

So I'm going to bring in something else I would want you to do.

So this is my acronym.

BIMS.

Yep.

OK.

If you can think of a better acronym, we send it in.

Well, I mean, if it's BIMS, is that what it?

Is BIMMS.

IMMS, what else are we going to?

Do yeah, yeah, yeah.

Put it out there as a prize.

You get to, I don't know, you think that perhaps.

But look, I think what it starts to say is his birth rate.

Now, if your listeners would probably have no idea about their birth rate, do you know what your birth rate is per minute?

Birth rate per minute.

I mean, I know what my heart rate is.

You know.

You know you're breathing.

That's a good thing.

It's the first thing you'll ever do.

The last thing you'll ever do.

Breathe.

Good idea.

What we know from the interface between biology and psychology, and this comes from an amazing professor that works at the Reed Clinic, Professor Ashley Craig, who does a lot of this research.

Incredible man.

So wise what they've done is they've looked at the impact of birth rate and mental health, OK?

And they're how people recover from serious injuries, who does a lot of work in post traumatic stress disorder.

And what we know is that there's a certain birth rate that unless you've got asthma or some other illness, there's a certain birth rate.

It's what we call our functional birth rate.

And that's the birth rate that we want to have most of the time when we're functioning.

Is this to do?

With heart rate as well or no?

Well, you're so clever.

So if we look at the autonomic nervous system, as I said to you in your first podcast, it's divided into two parts.

And I think we talked about this.

I've mentioned autonomic nervous system.

Yes, you did.

You've got the sympathetic nervous system, which feels sorry for you.

That's how you remember sympathetic sorry.

So it wants to feel sorry for you.

It wants you to go into this flight fight mode where it's going to lift your heart rate, where it's going to make sure the blood pumps to those areas that you need to be able to kind of either fight the tiger away or run from the tiger, OK?

I love that whole thing.

I was just pausing that for a second because when I found out about what anxiety really is, what the body is doing, is that take it way, way back to running from the tiger.

It's your body preparing you for fight or flight.

You're either going to fight this thing or you're going to be able to run.

So I'm going to up the heart rate, pump blood around the body just like if you were just getting ready to do a Sprint race.

Absolutely.

And and anxiety and living with anxiety is your body doing that all the time, all the time and it and it's not meant to that's.

What I said, what's the threat?

Yeah.

What's the threat?

Yeah.

And you're anticipating threat.

That's what anxiety is.

I'm anticipating a threat's about to come.

I'm anticipating this person's not gonna like what I've said about them.

Or whether I didn't do a good enough job or I didn't make them feel welcome enough.

Or I asked them a question they weren't really familiar with, and then they felt bad about themselves.

And then.

Or I didn't explain myself very well.

And that, that.

So the, the, the the show didn't make any sense.

And I'm sure my audience must have lost interest that point.

And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah.

And then so you're anticipating this threat all the time.

So you're in that sympathetic nervous system, which is meant to be temporary.

Yeah.

And then we're meant to go back to the parasympathetic nervous system or the ventral bagel system, where our heart rate is lower, our muscle tensions lower, our movement is slower, our speech is slower, our breath rate is slower.

And it's saying, yeah, calm here.

And then we get back to being in the present.

We go back to, it's easy to be mindful in that moment.

We're connected to the people around me.

We're looking at that person who's with me, not from a position of I wonder if she likes me.

I wonder if she doesn't.

I wonder if she's going to call me again.

I wonder if, you know, if I say the wrong thing, is she going to like some put something on social media about me, blah, blah, blah.

It's actually I'm just listening to Heather.

Yeah.

I'm just listening to Heather right now in this moment, grounded, connected, curious about what we might say next.

Yeah, that's predicting.

I'm looking forward to what we might talk about, not what if I say something wrong.

What if you didn't like what I said?

What if I asked a dumb question?

So it's that what I want people to know is that ventral vagal system, parasympathetic nervous system is already in you.

You don't have to go finding it.

You don't have to create it.

It's already there, right?

It's waiting for you to return home.

And if we look at what happens, and that's why we talk about birth rate, is if we look at all the organs that are impacted by whether we're in the parasympathetic nervous system or the sympathetic nervous system, the one organ that we can directly influence, the only one is our lungs.

And that means our breath rate.

And all of your listeners would probably be bored if they've got some help from someone or read something on the Internet or listen to a TikTok.

They all go on about breathing I.

Know I'm going to take deep breaths.

OK, No, you don't.

But you have to understand what your breath rate is.

So if all your listeners want to get out their phones and put a timer on.

Yeah.

OK for a minute.

Now, if I was analysing you, I'd do it to you right now.

I'm not going to.

You can do it when we finish.

Oh, we can do it.

We can do it.

Yeah.

OK.

Do you?

Want to get my phone out and time it.

It's, it's a boring minute for everyone to listen to, Yeah, but.

I mean, what if?

We do it, you can cut it out and then we can come back, OK?

And then people, so people don't sit in silence for a minute.

That's really smart because I was just going to sit in silence for a minute kind of thing.

That in radio would be terrifying.

In fact, a emergency tape would kick in after 30 seconds or something of silence.

Yeah.

But OK, so this is something that people can do.

We don't have to do it right now altogether.

We can do it, but you can.

Do it later.

We are about to do it, yeah.

And then we'll we'll come back.

We're going to cut back.

Do I need to start a timer here or something?

Time.

Why should you be doing it?

So I don't like look at the.

Time and then what I'm going to do is for all your listeners at home before you do this put it on you've got to try and keep breathing at the rate you were breathing before now everyone will say good I don't know how I was breathing before and that's true I'm.

Paying attention to it now.

I'm paying attention to it now, so try and keep it the same as it was before, OK, All right.

Set it on a one minute timer.

OK, we're going to start.

And then we'll come back.

OK, Can we go?

Am I meant to be counting?

He's so funny, Yes, sorry, I don't know who he thinks he's going to count, but it's got to be.

Him What am I going one?

The in breath, Yeah.

And the out breath, that's one counts as one.

OK.

All you do is count OK inside your head.

Oh, OK.

Yeah, good.

Listen, look, just look outside the window, you know?

Be counting on my fingers.

Be counting, got it All right.

Now this is the point where we were going to edit out the minute of silence.

But no, it's the great thing about a podcast.

If you don't want to do this test right now, you can just jump on forward, pass this bit.

Or if you don't want to sit here in silence for a minute because you don't want to do the test, you jump on past it.

But if you would like to do it at the same time as we are and then find out about the results straight from this moment, we're going to do the minute from now and.

Go.

And stop.

We're back.

We're back.

I got bored and distracted.

So everyone who was doing that exercise, I want you to write down what you got or put it in your phone, whatever, because I don't want you to change it when I give you this information.

Should I say what mine is?

Yeah, 20.

OK, that's really interesting.

So I talked about the autonomic nervous system.

I said which system are we in?

Are we in the parasympathetic nervous system, which is rest and digest and reproduce?

And then the other part is the flight by.

Now, I haven't talked about the collapse state yet.

We're going to come back to that.

But the flight by is when we start to anticipate threat and the system mobilizes.

Our birth rate is one of the key predictors that we have of which state we're in now.

Unless you've got asthma.

Rabs and I are sitting together in his van.

We have been sitting for quite some time.

I'm relatively boring.

There's not a lot going on in here, people.

So we would anticipate A reasonably low birth rate.

However, I have been talking about things that I know resonate with you and have been causing you for a lot of reflection.

12 breaths per minute is what we're looking for.

Oh wow, really?

I know His eyes just went big.

Oh.

Geez, I was so proud of my 20 he.

Was proud of his 20 that's.

Good.

Wow, that's really interesting.

I'm gonna tell you Julie's.

I took his yesterday.

I will actually.

I did want to say back when we were talking about Julie before that Julie's OK with us talking about the stuff that we're talking about.

Yeah.

You see, there could be some people listening going.

She can't be talking about what Julie said in her sessions and stuff.

No, these are the best, Julie said.

Is are OK to talk about.

Yes, and she said that to me as well.

So, and because, you know, she's named me in her book, and you know, we, we, we.

It's a very conscious decision to move into this space.

Yeah, but I want to know where I am against Julie's.

No.

Well.

That I can't.

I remember, I said.

I see Julie.

I can't do anything about what.

I'm just going to text her and tell her my breath rate was 20.

Yeah, OK.

So and then she can too much share you.

Because she knows I'm not really talking to you.

As he does that, I'll no, no, yes.

My breath rate was 20.

That's all I'm sending and we'll see what she she's going to know what that is because you did it with her yesterday.

Oh, wow, that's funny.

OK, great.

I really look forward to this.

We'll be back in just a SEC to break it all down with Robbie.

What we're looking for is birth rates for around 11:50, being a functional birth rate, so we can still get things done.

We can drive around.

We can, you know, talk to people.

We want it around 11:50 births per minute now as it gets towards 15, but certainly towards 18 and 20.

We're actually invoking the sympathetic nervous system because that birth rate suggests threat unless we've got asthma people.

I'm not saying if you've got some breathing difficulties.

So what we know from Rabs is he's a typical birth rate of someone who's carries anxiety.

He's a typical birth rate of someone who has no idea that that's a high birth rate for everyday function.

I'm thinking I'm sitting a little.

So I was proud of my 20.

I'm sitting, I'm looking out the windows and I'm like, I was thinking I'm not being legit here because pretty sure I'm slowing my breathing down for this.

I'm trying not to, but I reckon it's actually, it would be higher than what it is now.

But because we're just sitting there and I'm in a very relaxed state, Yeah, you're going to get a a low number out of me.

It's not a low number.

So is there any correlation between the breath rate and the heart rate?

Because I've spoken on here about, it was around the time we were doing contract negotiations last year that I was in the kitchen at one point.

And I guess this was a panic attack.

And I don't think I'd ever.

Yeah.

Now we go way back to many, many years ago.

Maybe I have had a panic tank before, but I was coming out now.

Hang on a second.

I was standing in the kitchen and I could feel it's my heart leaping out of my chest.

I'm like, what is going on?

I mean, put my hand on the bench and I on my watch.

I brought up my heart rate and it was 142.

That's that's huge.

And yes, you're quite right.

So when we're trying to think about which organs that we can change through, whether in sympathetic, which is getting towards your panic attack versus your parasympathetic, which is rest, I just reproduce.

As I said, the breath rate is the only organ that we can directly influence to influence all of the others.

So you speed up your breathing right now and you will increase your heart rate, You will change a lot of physiological symptoms, which is why people who have chronic stress and anxiety have a lot of physiological symptoms in those organs, right?

I'm going to give you listeners a link to some of the, there's a really simple 6 minute Ted talk to talk about stress in the body, which you're going to.

It's really, really simple.

That is in the description for this episode.

I'll pop it in there.

But yeah, so when people think about what can I most, when you hear when people say we're having a panic attack, which is that heart rate going up, sense of dizziness, all those other things that come along with the with the panic attack, you'll ever heard me say what?

Breathe.

I want you to just notice your breathing.

I want you to bring your breathing right down because that influences all the other organs because that's the only point of entry that we have.

So when people have been told, you know, we were breathing, I'm sick of telling about breathing.

Hopefully now you understand why your psychologist or whoever you've been reading about has suggested to look at your breath rate.

Most people don't know, however, what their recommended breath rate is, so they don't know that for a functional breath rate, we're heading between 11:50.

Wow.

So what happens is people try and breathe too slowly, so they try and get down to that six breaths a minute even that was.

What I was just calculating in my in in my mind, well not the six I was sort of working at how many times per like 10 seconds or how many times per second I

should be out to be at 11:50.

Around about 3 seconds in, three seconds out.

However, this is another important stuff around this.

If a Saber toothed tiger walks in the room we both breathe in OK and you can see as I breathed in what happened to my muscle structure.

Tense up.

Right.

Your heart rate increases on the breath in.

As you breathe out, your heart rate just slows down slightly.

Right.

As the Sabre toothed tiger left the situation, what do we both do?

Breathe out.

Sigh.

Go see now you got you're linking.

So is this why you find yourself sighing like I'll I'll find and actually feels better when you do a big breath?

Out.

Ah, there you go.

And now you understand why so.

You.

Is there actually a chemical thing happening as well with the breathing?

There is so much happening in your body as you breathe.

So that is why looking at your breath rate is really important if you want to understand mental health, particularly anxiety, depression, trauma, OCD, all those things that kind of relate to physiological symptoms, you know, even some of your psychosis.

We, we will always work on biology in line with psychology.

If you have someone that understands this, which is good, you know, seek someone who, who understands that their connection.

So that's why when, when you're practicing this breath rate and you can look at, there's a gazillion apps out there that, that get that you can put into the, that the equation that you want to breathe in for approximately 3 breathe out for three.

And that's called a functional breath rate.

You want to focus on breathing in through your nose.

Why?

Because it's said when the Saber toothed tiger walks in, we breathe in through our mouth.

When you're breathing in through your nose, why are you breathing in through your nose?

Because you're normally smelling something that's actually soothing.

So you're breathing in a smell, you're breathing in the flowers, you're breathing in the environment.

So you're breathing through your nose to actually bring in a sense of being safe breathing in through my nose and I'm breathing out through my mouth.

That's.

Interesting, because if something stinky you're not going to do a big long breath in through your nose.

It's only if it's pleasant.

Remember I said your your goal

is to get to 11:50, but you may need to bring it down more slowly because the last thing you want to do is breathe so slowly.

That's too much.

And then you'll invoke that.

So what about the box breathing then?

Box breathing's fine, but you've got to think about how many seconds for each and if you had 20 breaths per minute.

OK, so that's a breath cycle of three seconds.

In and out is 3.

So 20 * 3 is 60.

And I'm asking you to do a breath of about 10.

So that's that's three in, three out.

So you can do your box breathing, which is following a box round.

You can do star breathing when you breathe in and out.

I don't care how what you do.

You can watch your ball go in and out.

Look at those heaps of apps that do that.

But just be aware you're trying to get it to about a three seconds in and three seconds out.

That's interesting through the nose.

So.

One of the box breathing things that I was trying at one point was I think it was 8IN in for 8, hold for eight, out for 8, hold

for 8:00.

This is killing you, isn't?

It and that is such bad advice because it's too slow for you.

And what happens is, is then it's trying to get you to what we call a relaxing breath rate, which is non functional.

So you're trying to move from 20 down to about two breaths a minute.

And your brain isn't can't handle that.

So it's going to say this breathing isn't for me.

I can't do this.

And you're going to give up on you think that the people telling you about breathing is a waste of time.

No, it's not a waste of time, but you've got to incrementally bring it down each week.

You might bring it down one breath per minute, and you've got to do it for about 5 minutes a day.

Because as I said in the first podcast, understanding what you need to do for yourself is about attunement.

I talked about Julie loves art.

If I suggested you needed to do art to enjoy life, you would throw something at me, right?

If I said to her she needs to fix up caravans, she'd throw something at me.

So attunement to you is important.

So when we practice for 5 minutes a day, it's because I

want you to know what 11:50 breaths a minute feels like.

So the next time you're interviewing me, you've got enough experience of that so that if you notice your birth rate getting up to 18 to 20, you're actually going to go, oh, I'm breathing too quickly for this situation.

I'm sitting here with Heather.

It's relatively boring.

Why is it high?

Well, because my system's used to sitting too high, I'm going to bring it down to 11:50 and I'm going to keep myself out of that sympathetic nervous system.

I'm going to stay within the parasympathetic nervous system, which makes it easy to be more connected with Heather.

I'm more grounded.

I'm more present.

I'm not thinking about the past or the future.

I'm giving myself the best chance to be in this relaxed state through my breath.

All right.

That'll do it for this quick fix.

Remember, if you ever want to hear the full conversation it comes from, just match the number in the title of this quick fix to the full episode number.

And don't forget, if you turn on the notifications and Spotify and Apple Podcasts, you won't miss any episodes or extras that drop Quick fix with Rabbit.