223. Feeling Stressed? Catch Your Breath with Harmony Slater

With stress management and spiritual wellness techniques, Harmony Slater is focused on supporting spiritually curious entrepreneurs with science backed Wu to eliminate burnout.  If you're running a business and you're feeling the day-to-day stress Harmony gives us tangible, workable tips in this episode that you can start using right away for free. Harmony is a National Board-Certified Health Coach, trained in Quantum Coaching and in the Mastery Method. She's also Certified Ashtanga Yoga Teacher, one of less than 20 women in the world to hold this honor, after training in India for 15 years. Harmony says she has always felt a deep spiritual connection. She recalls her mother taking her to various churches, teaching her how to meditate and about yoga.  “It felt like for me that this idea of God, a higher power, was very much just normal and something that was real. … But also there was a keen understanding that that doesn’t always show up in one way,” says Harmony. Her journey took her to China to study Buddhism and India where she learned about Indian philosophy, culture and practicing yoga.  “I think that you can connect to something that really feels like it's from your heart, and it doesn't have to be the same as someone else, but that the principles are the same, right?” says Harmony. There are heart-centered emotions and values such as love, peace, goodwill, generosity, courage and compassion that every religion talks about. Harmony says the idea of going it alone – that you have to do everything yourself and work hard feeds into the myth that the harder you work, the more you’re going to get and the more successful you will be. But this creates a disconnect. It keeps us in a constant state of fight or flight. You start to see division and sides and it creates all kinds of chaos, physically in our bodies and mentally and emotionally in our experience of the world and with each other. For example, if you’re in a fight or flight state because you’re stressed out at work and then you get cut off in traffic, your response might be over the top.  Overstimulation, hypervigilance, fear of the future and the desire to change the past can have a direct effect on our nervous system. It can reinforce the idea that you’re not safe and affect your trust in yourself, your decisions and can ramp up stress. Breathwork is powerful. It's in control of our heart rate, our digestion, reproduction activities, and hormones. Our breath is the one function we have control over, explains Harmony. Our inhale is connected more to a sympathetic state. It's leading, it's expansive, it's energizing. The exhale is connected to that surrender, that resting, that relaxation, the parasympathetic state. People reflect and mirror each other because we have this awareness of what someone else's energy is like, says Harmony. We co-regulate. If you're someone who is in that beautiful state feeling relaxed and calm -- you're automatically more attractive to everyone around you. They want to be near you because they just feel better by being in your presence. Download Harmony’s guided audio for a two-minute breathwork exercise and check our her course on Ancient Breathing: https://harmonyslater.com/ancient-breathing-2-0  Connect with Harmony Slater: https://harmonyslater.com/  Other GoG episodes you might want to check out: Curious About the World of Spiritual Energy? https://sarahwalton.com/karen-foote/  World Events, Stress & Your Ambition — How They Go Together https://sarahwalton.com/stress-ambition/  You can check out our podcast interviews on YouTube, too! http://bit.ly/YouTubeSWalton   Thank you so much for listening. I’m so honored that you’re here and would be so grateful if you could leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts by clicking here, scrolling to the bottom, and clicking “Write a review.” Then we’ll get to inspire even more people! (If you’re not sure how to leave a review, you can watch this quick tutorial.) #breathwork #BreathingExercises #pranayama #TakeADeepBreath #ParasympatheticNervousSystem #StressRelief #AskExpert #IntuitiveBusinessCoach