Speaker A [00:00:07]:
Hello, Susie. I am so excited to have you here today. I've already said the intro, but Susie, you're an incredible breath worker and you guide people in breath work sessions. I just want to ask this. The first question, of course, is can you tell us, for people that don't know, what is breath work? And it's such a trendy thing right now, I feel like it's becoming more and more like everyone like breath work is. They like breath work, the new yoga.
Speaker B [00:00:33]:
And I agree with you exactly that concept, that breath work will be as popular as yoga. I have absolutely no doubt that it's going to end up running side by side in its popularity, because breath work is a very broad term. So there's three different types of breath work, first and foremost. So when I say that I work with the breath and I teach breath work, automatically people assume it's pranayama and yogic breathing, okay? Because that's the go to of breath work, which everyone knows, but it's not pranayama. Pranayama is very much focused on restorative breath for the mind, and it works pretty much with the kind of top part of the body. And it's the ancient practice of breath work. It can be very calming, very soothing, very meditative, and it works alongside yoga. Then you've got the other breath work, which is the kind of the scientific, the functional breath work, which has been given approval, shall we say, by a scientific community, because it's been assessed, if you like, for its validation and its benefits, and it's used for people that want to increase their endurance.
Speaker B [00:01:46]:
It's used for people that have things like asthma. So you've got the poteko method, which is very much used to help people with asthma. You've got a guy called Patrick Keown, who is probably the king of functional breath work. And it's about how you breathe light, to breathe right, and to lower your breath can actually increase your tolerance. There's a lot of science behind functional breath work, but it's what science creates for ultimately for athletes, that's where it came about. So to increase your endurance. And then you have my breath work, which is conscious, connected breath work, which is a circular, connected breath through the mouth, mostly through the mouth. Some people do it nose and mouth, some people can do it through the nose.
Speaker B [00:02:30]:
You can still have quite deep experiences. But conscious, connected breath work came from rebirthing, originally from a guy called Leonard Orr in the 1960s, or he wanted to create an altered state through the breath. So he created this cyclical, circular breathing so conscious connected breath work, much like happy yoga, is like a derivative of. So you've got that as your baseline, should I say? And then you've got all the different ways that people use it. So you've got shamanic breath work, which has been around for thousands of years, but that's circular breathing. You've got thing, which is the circular breathing. You got transformational breath, which is where I was trained. You've got integrated breath.
Speaker B [00:03:13]:
There's loads of different breath works now that come from conscious connected breath work. But I say to people, if you're going to do breath, just ask, which is it? Is it conscious connected? Is it functional? Or is it pranayama? They're the three that you really need to know the difference. With conscious connected breath work, it's the big one. It's the one that takes you into your unconscious. It's the one that allows you to release trapped emotions. It's the one that is more likely to call physical shaking. The others can, but not to the speed and degree that conscious connected breath work can. But it's also known as therapy without talking because of its benefits in releasing trapped emotions that sit in the body.
Speaker A [00:03:53]:
And so who is it for? Like, if you were going, who should do this kind of breath work?
Speaker B [00:03:58]:
I'm going to say everybody.
Speaker A [00:04:01]:
Everybody should be doing it.
Speaker B [00:04:03]:
It's become more and more apparent to me how important the breath is in our lives in general, for our emotional health, our physical health, our mental health. Now that I've been working with it for, we're coming up to seven years, I just keep learning more and more, and I think it's so important that people recognize that some people will come to me for emotional trauma, which breath work is absolutely fantastic for, because you don't have to talk about it. We hold onto it on a cellular level, and this is where the body allows it to release through this particular style of breath work. So for people that have tried therapy or don't want to talk about it, it's perfect because you can have that release through the breath and feel like you've let go of something without having to go back over it, which I sometimes find can retraumatize people. I'm not saying talking therapy is bad. It's definitely beneficial, but it never gets to the root cause, which is what breath work, conscious connected breath work can do. And then you've got people that want to use it for their physical benefits. If you sleep with your mouth open, learning to breathe correctly, if you've got sleep apnea, learning to breathe correctly and working with your diaphragm and your full respiratory system is only going to improve that and reduce that, because sleep apnea is just dysfunctional breathing.
Speaker B [00:05:23]:
So on that level, it can help people and then people that just want to feel good. Most people are not breathing correctly. Most people have a dysfunctional breath pattern. Every single one of us has a breath pattern that says individual to us as a fingerprint. That's a fact. No two breath patterns are the same. The breath work that I teach, the way I work, is I work to heal your breathing pattern, because your breathing pattern will tell me what is going on in your body on an unconscious level. So once we start to heal that, anything that's keeping you from breathing incorrectly, which is usually some sort of emotional baggage, can come up, be lifted out, and the breath starts to open, and the pattern will change and the pattern will heal.
Speaker B [00:06:08]:
It's for everybody. It really just depends what you want to get from it.
Speaker A [00:06:14]:
So I'm just wondering, how did you get into it? Because you said, now that you've been doing this for seven years, what's your path? What was your path in life? Yeah, give us the story.
Speaker B [00:06:24]:
I always say to people, oh, there's a little robin just landed outside my window, a little nod from the universe going, tell your story, girl. So, breath work found me. The breath found me because it just took me. And before I knew it, I was training, and I was like, okay, this is what I'm meant to be doing. But the way that it actually found me was, I've been a single parent since my son was about three. I had a great job with a great company, and I loved working there. It was like family. They were very relaxed.
Speaker B [00:06:56]:
I was a corporate pa, but we weren't really corporate. It was in the hospitality industry. So we had lots of parties, lots of fun, and most people that had worked there had been there for years. But I started to develop an interest in Tarot. I'd done Reiki courses. I just started to open my mind to things, and I started to realize that life and that job just probably wasn't for me. I just started to open, but I didn't know what I wanted to do or where I was going to do it. It was just like, okay, let's just let everything keep flowing.
Speaker B [00:07:29]:
And then I just made a decision. When my son left school at 16, I was like, I'm done. I don't need to support him the way I have done. He can now go and get a job. He can choose if he wants to go to college. He's not as reliant on me now that he's 16. And so I decided to have my notice in. But what happened, quite interestingly, is the day before I was about to have my notice in, my boss told me about a merger that was happening.
Speaker B [00:07:59]:
Now, I got told a lot of stuff quietly because I was a PA for the director, so I knew stuff before it came out. And she said, I think we're going to have to make some redundancies. It's not going to be pleasant. So my little light bulb went, I can ask for a voluntary redundancy and get some money out of this. So it literally 24 hours before I was about to leave, I just changed my letter of resignation to one of a voluntary redundancy. And I knew the amount of money I had in my head. So I went into the meeting and they agreed and they offered me two grand over what I asked for. So I smiled sweetly, took the money, and that was it.
Speaker B [00:08:37]:
All of a sudden, I was free. And I was like, now what do I do? And I got a call to go to Bali. So I went to Bali. I worked with some healers. I experienced some breath work out there, but not to the point where it made me want to do it. But it sparked an interest. When I came back into this country in my local yoga studio, there just happened to be a breath workshop. And I thought, I wonder if that's anything like what I experienced while I was away.
Speaker B [00:09:04]:
And also one of the other things that had been apparent to me, my son, when he was 13, he got diagnosed with type one diabetes. And it was really tough. Really tough. And what I'd noticed throughout that period is I kept holding my breath and I was thinking, that's not right. Why am I doing that? But just didn't understand why. So the fascination started to creep in from about then. And I went to this breath work thinking, a, it will tell me why I was doing that. B, I've enjoyed it in Bali.
Speaker B [00:09:33]:
Let's just see what happens. And I came out of the two hour session, which ended up being the woman that taught it is Rebecca Dennis, which she's quite renowned in the breath work world. And she ended up being one of my teachers. But I came out of there and quite honestly, the first thing I said to myself, excuse my French, was, what the fuck just happened there? You've experienced it and you're kind of like, hang on a minute. Was that just the breath? What on earth was that? And I couldn't get over how profound and how powerful it was. I mean, I was crying, I was shaking. The only thing I can equate it to the only thing I'd ever experienced in my life up until that point where I'd had that kind of profound experience was when I'd sat with shamanic medicine, ayahuasca, and it was like having ayahuasca, but in a short period of time where I could actually get up, go home and drive. And I was just that, I need to know how to do this.
Speaker B [00:10:35]:
This is what I need to bring to people. Because it was so easy and so accessible and so quick, and it lasted. I felt amazing for about two weeks. I just couldn't believe it. And that was when I joined the mailing list for one of the women that was there doing the facilitation. And within a couple of months, she sent out a training program saying, this is my first training program. Anyone who feels called, and straight away my intuition went, you need to do that. You've got the money.
Speaker B [00:11:07]:
This is what you're waiting for. Do it. And that was it. And that was the start of it. And I went there purely out of curiosity. I didn't go there thinking, I'm going to be a breath work facilitator. I'm going to run my own business. That wasn't even part of it.
Speaker B [00:11:21]:
It was just, this is what I need to do. And every part of my body, every part of my system was going, do it all right. And I knew when I sat with it in my body, it wasn't like I knew why or where it was going to take. I just knew that was what needed to happen. So I just trusted fully and freely trusted the process, and it just snowballed. I did that, which was like a personal seminar, and then I did her next one, and then she did, if you want to start training, you just need to do one more. And that was it. Before I knew it, I was in this space of retraining, and it just gathered speed.
Speaker B [00:11:58]:
And the more I learned and the more I started to practice on people and saw it for myself, I was just like, yeah, this is what I'm destined to do. This is without doubt my purpose.
Speaker A [00:12:08]:
Amazing. And I just like to say, because I have experienced a breath work session with you by Zoom, but it was incredible. It was incredible. And you're an incredible teacher and guide in that. The session that we did, because I actually invited you to a group that I host to share a session with us, and we're on Zoom, and people in different countries and different places, and we're being guided by Susie. And the session was amazing. I had never done breath work at that point. I was curious about it.
Speaker A [00:12:36]:
I was like, okay, what is this?
Speaker B [00:12:37]:
Let's try this.
Speaker A [00:12:38]:
And the experience was just so much more than I could have ever anticipated or imagined, because it was like you said, I just felt high afterwards, I must admit. I was like, I'm just, like, buzzing and just feeling amazing and just at home in myself again in this extraordinary way. That session, too, one of the participants, she had been complaining of a hip problem, and she'd had this hip problem for a couple of years and had tried so many different things with it and knew that it was associated with some anxiety around certain issues in her life. But then she said that one breath.
Speaker B [00:13:16]:
Session, and I don't know if this shifted. It.
Speaker A [00:13:19]:
It just went. She goes, I don't know what happened, but my hip has not been painful since.
Speaker B [00:13:26]:
And that's a really common story. It's a really common story. It's so unbelievable to people that experience it. And obviously, when you're told the story, you're just like, what? Wow. But I hear it so often, it just reconfirms every single time, this is my medicine. This is my medicine. Whatever I am bringing to my sessions, however, I'm working with people, however, I'm bringing the energy in, because obviously, I work with my guides. I protect the space.
Speaker B [00:13:54]:
It's a very ceremonial style session. I bring in because I call in everything to help me. It just reconfirms it every time that I'm here to do this, to help. And interestingly, I've just been in a book called be Bad Better by Rebecca Seal, and she talks about the same thing. She had a problem with her hip. She went through this whole amazing experience, profound experience, very similar, that lifted this thing that had been troubling her for years, and now she has no pain in her hip. And that's written in black and white, so people can see via other people's experiences. I don't need to sell it.
Speaker B [00:14:35]:
I don't need to prove anything, because it does it itself.
Speaker A [00:14:39]:
Yeah, it's incredible. I have a question, which is just that. So I had the experience with you, which was amazing, and I was like, I have to explore this more. But then didn't life carrying I. And then suddenly in my Facebook feed popped in, or my Instagram, I don't know, an ad for a breath work session. Somebody was coming to Barcelona, near where I live, and doing this breath work, like my memory is so bad. I think his name was Tim Morrison. I don't know.
Speaker B [00:15:09]:
Okay. Yeah. Would that be. Yeah.
Speaker A [00:15:13]:
From Australia or something? And so I went to it, and it was funny because he was doing two nights, and the first night it sounded like it was like a cacao ceremony. It sounded like a little bit lighter in a way. And actually, the way I was feeling, I was like, I think that's what I want to do. Like, it feels nurturing, and I really want that. But it turned out I couldn't do that night, so I went the following night, which was like, this is the full on fireworks.
Speaker B [00:15:35]:
Yes.
Speaker A [00:15:36]:
This is where we go deep. And he started it with the whole center. He talked about the ayahuasca thing, too. And actually he said that something in your body, like when your breath, when you're breathing that way, it creates some chemical in your body, ayahuasca.
Speaker B [00:15:54]:
So it's the natural DMT that sits in the lungs. That's what can create. What can sometimes create a psychedelic experience. Not for everybody. Not everybody has that experience. And I say to people, don't go in the expectation that's going to happen, because your body might not need that. It might be more physical for you, it might be more emotional for you, it might be more visual. Everybody's different.
Speaker B [00:16:16]:
But we have a natural DMT in our lungs. And when we breathe in this particular rhythm, it's the way the chemical makeup of the body changes due to the increased oxygen levels, messages start to change in the body. We have the vagus nerve, which is an important part of the autonomic nerve system. The breath is part of the autonomic nervous system. And what we do, basically, is when we breathe into this capacity, we put the body into a state of safety. Yet we're also in our sympathetic, which is the mobilization, so things can start to move and shift. And it's that point, it's that chemical makeup that can activate the DMT in the lungs. Just breathing in this capacity to expand the lungs as much as we do, and to get the breath so deep into the body that it goes into every little crevice, it goes into the muscles, the fascia, the tissue, and the issues are in the tissues.
Speaker B [00:17:08]:
So it starts to push all this cellular memory out. And that's depending on who you are and how your body wants to integrate whatever is sitting in your unconscious body. It can come up visually, physically, emotionally, all depends. And sometimes it can come up all three. Oh, my God. It's all coming up.
Speaker A [00:17:30]:
In that room that night. It came up for a lot of people. It was a big thing. There was a lot of people, and it was an extraordinary experience. I did have a full trip. I was like, I was astral planing like insane. When we were eventually guided out of it, I felt like I had no idea how long I'd been away. It was that sort of thing where it's like, have I been away for a minute or 5 hours? I have no idea at this point.
Speaker A [00:17:56]:
Just being visited by a whole series of images and presences and all kinds of things. So I guess my question is though, right? Because it was amazing and it definitely an extraordinary experience and so grateful for it. But I guess my question is, what's like a breath work practice look like? Because going to an event like that was incredible and I loved it, but that's not something that I would want to do necessarily every week or on a regular. Is there a way of practicing breath work that is regular, that sustains and nourishes us in a regular way? Or is it something that we use as a big ceremonial kaboob?
Speaker B [00:18:37]:
Yeah, the ceremonial workshops. Whenever I do a workshop, the energy is very different to. If you're coming for a one to one, and people will always notice the difference. The energy of a workshop. We're working with the collective energy of the group. It's more of a ceremony. People around you, you're all connected, because we are all connected. It depends what the main theme of the group, energy wise, will be.
Speaker B [00:19:02]:
That just amplifies. So you've got this really big energy that sits in the room and you're not going to want to do that every week. I don't run workshops every week because I've got to hold that space. And whenever I come out, I'm absolutely energized, really energized, because I protect myself and I protect my space, and nothing can attach itself to me, it doesn't drain me, but I couldn't do it every week. Whereas one to ones, I see up to twelve, sometimes 15 people a week. That's very different. That can be exhausting physically, because I move around. You had an online, but in person I work very much hands on, so I'm moving around the person working with acupressure, helping the body release.
Speaker B [00:19:47]:
So it's a very different experience. And depending on what you want to achieve. I do have clients that come to me weekly for one to ones. I do have clients that come once a month just to keep it up and running. But I always say to people, unless you're really experienced with this type of breath work. You don't need to practice this style at home for any longer than five minutes a day. That is enough. Five minutes a day, ten minutes a day, until you really start to understand how your body activates.
Speaker B [00:20:19]:
Because trauma can come up, but the body can react very physically, and it can freak people out because you don't quite understand what's happening. You can go into that fear state, and that's not what we want. So I always say to people, five to eight minutes. If you've done three to four sessions with me, I say five minutes maximum. If you've done more than that, you do ten minutes. But that's all you need just to keep your breath open, because what it is, more than anything, is activating that diaphragm.
Speaker A [00:20:49]:
Okay?
Speaker B [00:20:49]:
So you can also do that with other breath work. Pranayama is good for daily practice. That's something I say to people. If you want a ground in breath work, you can use the pranayama. The other ones we can use are things like four, seven, eight box breathing. That's more on the functional scale. But all of that is utilizing the diaphragm. It's just really making sure with any daily practice of breath that you're using your full respiratory system and opening the diaphragm, because it's the diaphragm that creates the movement in the body.
Speaker A [00:21:19]:
And we do want to do that. Right? We want to create a regular practice, as opposed to just like, once every few months going to an event. Is that true?
Speaker B [00:21:29]:
Again, everybody has their own practice. And again, I say to people, I try not to be too militant with it, because, again, I'm like, you got to feel into what's right for you. I don't do it every day. Big newsflash. I'm a breath worker. I don't do a breath work practice every day. But I do have practice, and I breathe myself fully for 45 minutes once a week, and that, for me, works. If I get stressed or I'm busy or I feel overwhelmed creeping in, I'll just stop and take some really long, slow, deep breaths.
Speaker B [00:21:58]:
And I know that my breath will calm my nervous system, but I don't practice the conscious, connected breath work every day. I don't need to. You might have moments where you go. If I go through a period of, I had to move house recently, then I dropped the 45 minutes once a week, and I was doing a ten minute practice every day because I needed it in that moment. So I say to people, just ebb. And flow with what feels right for you. I'm not one of these people that believes in creating this kind of. You must do this, and then you'll get this reward.
Speaker B [00:22:31]:
It's working with your, you know yourself, you know what you need when you need it. And I think the thing to remember more than anything is when your body is asking for something, you're tuned in enough to recognize what to give it. And most of the times, I would say that's the breath. The breath is so powerful. It is so healing. If we haven't got the right amount of oxygen in our body, we can't function. Our optimum level. It's like a car with not enough petrol.
Speaker B [00:22:57]:
It's not going to get you very far. So it's just recognizing that the breath is probably the main foundation of anything else that kind of comes out of alignment.
Speaker A [00:23:07]:
Yes, I remember when I was teaching yoga, coming across this idea, I don't know where, but that a human body can live 30 days without food, three days without water, and three minutes without air. And it's like, what is your primary nutrient, your most essential nutrient, right? And so many of us are so obsessed with our diets, and we're completely ignoring the most memory thing for rejuvenating ourselves and taking care of ourselves.
Speaker B [00:23:37]:
And that's the functional breath work. That's what started this recognition of how important the breath is in relation to people and athletes. If you're training, if you're running, keep your mouth shut. See how many sports people now play and run with their mouth shut. But we're so used to thinking, I need to breathe, I need more oxygen in, so I must open my mouth. That actually doesn't help the body. What happens is then you get an unbalance between the co2 and the oxygen and you can create what we call an overbreathing situation, where you've not got enough co2 and co2. We were taught at schools of waste gas, which is bollocks.
Speaker B [00:24:15]:
It's really important. And if we haven't got the right levels of both of those, chemicals in the body's not working properly. So fine tune the breath and everything else falls into place. And talking about sort of cliched comments that you hear about the food and the water and the breath is also the other one that is quite common in the spiritual community. Where can they hide the thing that's the most important, that will never look and that's inside of us, and the breath is inside of us, and we'd soon know if we didn't have it. But we never think about it. We never actually equate our health and our optimum health to the way we breathe. And it's almost like a cosmic joke, because once you recognize how powerful the breath is and how much it can heal, you're like, oh man, it's been sitting under my nose all that time.
Speaker B [00:25:08]:
Literally.
Speaker A [00:25:09]:
Amazing. For people who are listening to this and getting curious, what does a typical breath work session look like? Is there such a thing for this kind of connected, conscious breath work?
Speaker B [00:25:18]:
Someone could come to me, for which I've got clients, have been with me for years, they could come for twelve sessions. Every single one will be different. The way I would run it be the same. But whatever your body wants to release, it will tune in as soon as you book the session. That alchemy starts to work as soon as you book that session. Because I don't perceive myself as a healer, I perceive myself as reminding. Sorry, your body what it needs to do to heal itself. Sorry, I'm just getting over a bit of a.
Speaker A [00:25:51]:
That's okay.
Speaker B [00:25:52]:
Hold here is I call in that energy in the breath to remind your body of what it needs to do to heal itself. And the breath is paramount to that. So one time you might come for a session and it could be really emotional, and you don't even know why you're crying, you just know it needs to come out and you can't stop it. That's the interesting thing, where I hear so many people, I just couldn't stop it. It's just like I had no choice, it just came. People that say, I don't cry, I'm not a crier. And I just think, okay, let's just see what happens. And they cry and they're just like, I can't believe that happened.
Speaker B [00:26:28]:
And then there could be other instances, and this is more common with men that I find is there's a lot of shaking, because I think men, not all men, women can do that just as much. But there's a suppression energy, especially with older men, where they've just been conditioned not to express vulnerability, not to express that they're scared or afraid or hurt or whatever. So they hold onto it and you can get really severe shaking in the legs, and they can't stop it. It's involuntary, very similar to tre, and it's just the body releasing the trauma. You see two animals that come together in the wild, watching a wildlife program, and they fight. When they separate, they shake it off. They're releasing that cellular memory of what's just happened in that moment, and they're present again. Whereas as humans, we don't do that.
Speaker B [00:27:19]:
We hold onto it, we go over it in our mind, and then if we don't share it with anyone, we're not processing it. We don't have the right caregivers around us as children. We don't process it, so it stays in the body. So the shaking is very deep stuff on a cellular level that comes out. The other thing people can get is really sweaty, hot and cold. Really hot. They're really cold. And that's to do with the vagus nerve.
Speaker B [00:27:42]:
And because I work shamanically, I'm on the shamanic medicine wheel, and I'm trained in a lot of shamanic practices, and I work with that kind of shamanic energy. There's also that kind of energetic lift that can come through for people. They can see animals, they can see loved ones. They can have very ancestral experiences. And I work specifically with the ancestors. I have thousands of ancestors that I work with. And my shamanic teacher, when he journeyed to get my shamanic name, he just said to me, I've never seen so many. You've got hundreds, and I've seen them before.
Speaker B [00:28:19]:
When I've been in medicine journeys, they're just there because I had a medicine journey where they told me that Covid was coming, but I didn't know what it was. I just said to the people in my group, something's coming. This was September 2019. I said, they're telling me something's coming, but I don't know what it is, but it's big. And when it came, I was just like, this is what you were telling me. And I remember saying to my ancestors, what can I do? This is just me. I'm just this little human. How can I help? What am I supposed to do? And they say, you're not doing it by yourself.
Speaker B [00:28:52]:
And just hundreds and thousands as far as the eye can see was just. And they're here now. I can feel it. I call all of that in to work with people. So seeing past people that have passed away and having actual conversations with them is very common. I was on a program on e four, which is the channel over in the UK called the big Celebrity detox. And one of the women on there had lost her child. And she was very english.
Speaker B [00:29:19]:
She was from the aristocracy. I think she was in some royalty, maybe in the russian royalty. So again, there's very much a play the game don't express. We have to be seen to be very strong. And she never dealt with any of it, and you can see it on the program, but I'm so grateful that people are able to see that for themselves, because sometimes when I'm talking about it, there'll be people listening to. I don't. Again, as I said, jerellia, I'm not here to prove anything. This program found me, the book found me.
Speaker B [00:29:51]:
And obviously, it's because this work needs to be shown. And she had a conversation with her ex partner, who passed away, and her son, and she just couldn't believe it. It was like they were in the room. And that, again, is another really common thing. So it's hard to say exactly what would happen, because anything could happen.
Speaker A [00:30:14]:
Oh, my gosh. Just about the shaman aspect of your practice. Tell me a little bit about that. How did you find that path? Or how did that path find you?
Speaker B [00:30:25]:
Yeah, it comes back to when my son got ill when he was 13, and it was horrendous because we weren't expecting it. And anyone that's got anyone, any loved one with type one diabetes, will understand it's a lifelong condition. It's not like type two. It's a very different diabetes to type two. It's organ failure, basically. It's not because you eat too much sugar. It's not because I fed him too much sugar when he was a kid. We've heard all of that, which is hurtful, but it was hard to get our head round because he has to inject daily to stay alive.
Speaker B [00:30:58]:
That's the bottom line, really. And it took its toll on me. I had not the best upbringing. My mother got breast cancer when I was 13. She died when I was 17. My dad's stepdad turned to drink because he couldn't cope. I turned to partying and drugs. He couldn't cope with that, so he kicked me out.
Speaker B [00:31:18]:
So I was living on my own in a bed sit at 18. I've lost my family, my mother, my home, everything. And obviously it was traumatic, but at the time, when you're 18, you're like, I'm all right, I can deal with this. But I wasn't processing any of that, any grief or anything. So it took me on quite a dark road and I was partying and taking a lot of drugs and drinking too much. And so I never really dealt with any of that. When my son got ill, obviously, I'd split from his father when he was three, and all of that was quite toxic. And again, nothing been dealt with.
Speaker B [00:31:53]:
But when he got ill, it just all started to come up because it was just like. It just cracked. It was a point where my body went. You can't take any more of this because the container is full. You need to let some stuff out. And I didn't know how to do it. And my sister in law went to sit with ayahuasca, and when she came back, she looked different, she acted different. She just looked softer.
Speaker B [00:32:18]:
And she had such an incredible experience. She said to me, she said, it's ten years of therapy in one weekend. Why don't you just try it? I signed up once, chickened out, signed up again and went with it because I was so desperate. I was desperate. I literally couldn't think of any other way to get through this. Where did you go?
Speaker A [00:32:37]:
Where were you saying?
Speaker B [00:32:38]:
I went to somewhere in Spain. Okay. I went to somewhere. I live in the UK. I'm in London.
Speaker A [00:32:45]:
In London?
Speaker B [00:32:45]:
I thought you were in London. Yeah.
Speaker A [00:32:46]:
Okay, so you came somewhere, so you signed up somewhere in Spain?
Speaker B [00:32:49]:
Yeah. And I got there to have the medicine, and that was it. Everything just changed. The first night. Nothing happened because I was so trying to control it, because I was so scared. And then the second night was like, it just opened. All the emotion that I'd been holding onto, all the pain, all the grief came up, and it was the most incredible experience. And this beautiful voice came in which they say, is Mother Aya talking to you? She's a feminine vine, feminine medicine.
Speaker B [00:33:16]:
And she just said to me, you're done the crying. You've had too much pain. It's time to move forward. And she made me go and bury my pain. So all I could see all of my pain, all these different colors were circling me. And she said, get them. Put them all together. Put them into a ball.
Speaker B [00:33:34]:
Now go and bury them in the ground and patch. Your mama will transmute it. And all this, I was crying. I was being sick. It was just cacophony of release. And after that retreat, it was different. Something was different. And because that medicine is such a shamanic medicine, and it made such an impact on me.
Speaker B [00:33:54]:
And one of the teachers there said to me, because I didn't get many visuals, I just had her talking to me. She was just talking to me. And it was so profound. And one of the teachers, the guide, said, if she's talking to you, that means quite a lot more than just getting the visuals. There's a direct link with there that she wants to communicate with you. She said, that's quite special. And it just made me tingle. And I just thought, this is something that I need to be part of this felt familiar.
Speaker B [00:34:26]:
I felt like I'd come home, that it was something about what I was working with was part of me, somewhere in my history. So it sparked that kind of interest into the shamanic world. And then once I'd passed all my breath work training, because I was training for 18 months, it was a lot. There's a lot of work goes into breath work training. And incidentally, I just want to put a caveat here. If somebody tells you that they can train you to be a breath work facilitator in any less than six months, don't do it, because it is not going to give you the background, the experience, and the knowledge you need to hold the sort of shit that's going to come up. So just be aware of that. The training should be six months minimum.
Speaker B [00:35:11]:
End brackets, end caveat. Thank you. But once I started my training and I got that out of the way, I really felt called to bring the shamanic ceremony energy into my breath work to work with me. And the ancestors were always there whenever I was doing healing, because I do energy work with people. So I've always had the connection with that side of things. But I wanted to go deeper. So I joined the medicine world, which is all of the shamanic teachings, is the teachings of life, of what we're here on this earth, the circle of life, of what we're here to learn, to work with the elements, to work with nature, to work with the lower world, the middle world, the upper world, and just connect all that and being able to bring it all together into this existence, to be able to channel that through and again, it feels right. It just feels right.
Speaker B [00:36:03]:
I'm not the most typical shaman, and I sometimes recoil a little bit of saying that I'm a shaman because I find there's so many people in the spiritual community that I'm a shaman I'm aware of. We're getting a little bit pantomimey in some aspects of the spiritual community. When I do ceremonies, I can wear a pink, fluffy tracksuit and I make a joke. This is my finest shamanic outfit, because I think we're all shamans at heart, and I want to get away from that kind of. You have to dress in a certain way or look a certain way. My ancestors know that the work that I'm doing is for the greater good of humanity. So I don't need to wear a costume. I don't need to wear all the beads.
Speaker B [00:36:47]:
Yes, I've been to Peru and I've done my pilgrimage yes, I've sat with the medicine. Yes, I respect all of the teachings, but I don't feel that I have anything to prove in what I do. Shamanism, to me, is just a way of life. It's just a way of life. It's in my heart, it's in my blood, it's in my work. And that's really, I think, why it works so well with the breath. It's just this is what I'm here to be.
Speaker A [00:37:15]:
Amazing. I think this is obviously one of the big topics of conversation on here is how our purpose in this life reveals itself to us. Do you have a sense that you're always being guided to your truth, like in your life, when you look back on it, that everything has happened to guide you to truly who you are and who you were always meant to be?
Speaker B [00:37:37]:
Yeah. I remember when I went through a really dark period and I got my first job, which was the job that kind of changed everything for me, because when my mum died and I was living in this bed sit and just partying and stuff, I just had little silly jobs. I would sign on and get benefits from the state, and I was just a mess, really. And then my grandparents said, come and live with us, get yourself so you haven't got to pay your rent, get yourself a job, get yourself up on the ladder. And they really helped me out. And I remember sitting in the reception, I'd been there about three months, and this guy that was also quite spiritual was talking. He was a lot older than me. His name was.
Speaker B [00:38:16]:
I never forget his name, Robie Keane. He was a lovely guy and he had a faith. He really had a faith in a greater. I was. I've always been a bit spiritual, but I didn't really understand where it was taking me. And I don't know what we were talking about, how it came about, but I remember saying to him, he said to me, oh, God, yeah, you've had a tough time. That sounds awful, that sounds really hard. And I said, yeah, but I know it's going to be all right.
Speaker B [00:38:41]:
I just know it's going to be all right. I just felt, I know it's all going to be all right. And I never forget that. And I always knew from a really young age, even though I'd gone through this horrendous initiation of grief and being split open, I just knew deep down to trust the process that it was all going to be all right. And since I found the breath work, it just seems more manifesting and creating. I can do it like that it's ridiculous if I think it within a couple of days, weeks, whatever it arrives, I'm in abundance constantly. Not just financial, but in life in general. So I work with life and know that anything that happens is always as benefit.
Speaker B [00:39:32]:
You just have to reframe it. So I've got this innate trust. I've always had it from a very.
Speaker A [00:39:37]:
Young age and I think, like, this breath work and this bath, you become a clear channel. When you say you can manifest and create, I'm like, that's because you're a clear channel. Like, when your channel is clear and you're not bunching it up with your doubts and your fears and your second guessing things and all that. That's the key. I love that. Thank you so much for. This has been an incredible conversation.
Speaker B [00:40:02]:
I've loved it.
Speaker A [00:40:03]:
Yeah, I've just been in cheers for quite a bit of it. There's so many resonate. You're amazing. I'm so glad that we had the chance to have this conversation.
Speaker B [00:40:15]:
I'm glad to be here. It's been wonderful. Thank you.
Speaker A [00:40:18]:
Yeah. So, first of all, if people would like to work with you, find more about your work. Are you mostly in person? Because it seems like a lot of the things that you post on the instagram are in.
Speaker B [00:40:30]:
Well, the workshops. The workshops are in person. I have got an online workshop coming up this year. I stopped doing the online because they weren't. I think everyone got so fed up with doing online stuff because after Covid, people couldn't get out and I noticed that the numbers were dropping. So I let it go for a bit. I thought, I'll come back to it when I need it, but I am actually going to have an online session. I'm going to advertise that it's going to be around about March time, March time, beginning of April.
Speaker B [00:40:57]:
So there'll be an online session that people can jump onto, which is an introductory workshop for people that aren't in the UK. If you're in London, then I am based in Bromley, which is southeast London, and I do regular workshops every other month and they're in person. I also do one to ones and that I do online or in person. Stefan. Everything is bookable through my website. My business name is intuitive breath work, so you can easily find me on Google. I've got loads of Google reviews if people want to read other people's experiences before they commit. And you can always book in a strategy session with me, which is free of charge, just a half an hour chat to see whether or not, what I do is going to be helpful to you.
Speaker A [00:41:36]:
It's going to be helpful.
Speaker B [00:41:38]:
It is going to be. Yeah, I know that. But there's always people that have that kind of fear of, and I suppose it's for those people that don't want to jump straight in, they want to have a little chat.
Speaker A [00:41:52]:
That's amazing of you to offer that, because I'm just like, this is a no brainer, people.
Speaker B [00:41:56]:
Yeah, I know.
Speaker A [00:41:59]:
Also, if you feel it at all, do you know? Because I think in life, and you've said this in your story, when you get those little intuitive nudges, you just know. It was like me when I first practiced yoga, and I was also a wreck in my life. I totally relate to that. I was also working in a savage store and partying all the time and taking loads of drugs and all those things. So I totally relate. And I remember when I first went to a yoga session, it's like your soul knows, like there's something pulling you. Right? And the first time I went to yoga, I was just like, this is it. Hardest thing I'd ever done.
Speaker A [00:42:35]:
I was so inflexible. I was so talk about body. All the trauma, this in my body, so tight. And it was not easier for me at all. But the minute I got into that yoga class, I was just like, there.
Speaker B [00:42:47]:
Was something about it.
Speaker A [00:42:47]:
I was like, you've got to do this. You've got to keep at this.
Speaker B [00:42:50]:
It's that higher intelligence as the body's wisdom, your higher self, your soul's purpose, they all come into alignment in that moment. And it's that full system. Yes. When you're in tune with what your body wants, it's that full system. Yes. But you just know, don't you? It's that wherever it's going to take me. And I think that's when you know that it's your intuition and not your ego, because you're not going, so I'm going to do this and then we're going to open a studio, then I'm going to. You're not in the story, you're just in that moment, in that present moment going, this is what I need to do.
Speaker B [00:43:25]:
And that's it. It's not like where it's going to take you or how it's going to affect you. You just know, let's just go with this and see what happens. Yes.
Speaker A [00:43:32]:
And when you do that, always just such good things come off it leak.
Speaker B [00:43:37]:
And the net will appear completely.
Speaker A [00:43:39]:
Oh, my gosh. I don't know if that's one of my favorite quotes.
Speaker B [00:43:42]:
And I have it.
Speaker A [00:43:44]:
Wait right here. Because I have it above my.
Speaker B [00:43:46]:
Oh, my. You haven't got it on a fridge.
Speaker A [00:43:48]:
Magnet because so have I printed this up.
Speaker B [00:43:52]:
Oh, my goodness. That's amazing.
Speaker A [00:43:54]:
I printed this up five years ago on this little piece of paper, and I've kept it like it's been above my desk for over 20 years.
Speaker B [00:44:06]:
There you go, babe. See, that's when we know that we're meant to be having this chat. We're definitely in a life of when someone bought it for me on a fridge magnet, and I've had it on my fridge for 20 years.
Speaker A [00:44:16]:
Oh, my gosh. That was funny.
Speaker B [00:44:18]:
Yeah, I love that. I love that. That's the little wink from the universe.
Speaker A [00:44:23]:
That was amazing. That's too funny, but that's it. And I go, if you feel called to it, try it. And I'm so glad that we connected because we connected in quite a random way online.
Speaker B [00:44:35]:
Yeah, you just found me, didn't you?
Speaker A [00:44:38]:
It was one of those energetic. That's that energetic hit. I really trust my intuition. Like, I was curious about breath work, and I thought, I'm going to look up and see if I can find some breath workers on Instagram. And I found you. I looked all the people. I found you, and we're just like, oh, she's the one.
Speaker B [00:44:51]:
I know.
Speaker A [00:44:51]:
It was amazing because the thing is.
Speaker B [00:44:53]:
I've got a few people that are in the filming industry, and I thought it was through somebody. It just goes to show. And that's the other real clear message to anyone listening. Just trust the process and trust yourself because it will lead you in the right direction. Just let go of the doubt and that little voice that sits in the back then. Yeah, but, yeah, but just trust the feeling. Come back to the feeling in the body because you picked it, you knew. And now we've had this amazing connection, and it's just what people will call by chance, but nothing's by.
Speaker A [00:45:29]:
Yes. Yes. Amen to that. So intuitive breath work is the headline here. That's Susie on Instagram. And definitely follow her Instagram account, too, because it's really great. I love the things she posts. And if there's one thing that you could, like, your legacy thing that you could teach people, that you could teach the world, what's the thing? What's the gift that you would want to give everybody?
Speaker B [00:45:56]:
Okay. I think it's the breath teaches you to turn your pain into wisdom. Let the breath teach you how to turn your pain into wisdom, because once you're aware of what is going on in your body, what's been holding you back, that's all healing is awareness. It's not any. This is going to burst a bubble in the spiritual communities. What is it called when you're a plot twist? It's just awareness. It really is. Because the more aware you are of something, the less it has a hold over you.
Speaker B [00:46:31]:
And when you can start to integrate these things that have been holding you back, you become more aware of what they are. You just evolve. So it's turning your pain into wisdom.
Speaker A [00:46:43]:
That's beautiful. That is beautiful. Thank you so much, Susie, for being here today. I really appreciate and I've just loved chatting with you.
Speaker B [00:46:50]:
Yeah, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much. And I will see you again soon, no doubt.
Speaker A [00:46:55]:
Thank you.
