00:14
Hi everyone, this is Ali, the host. 

 00:16
Of the Ally show. 

 00:17
You may have noticed that the episode name for this episode is a little bit different compared to the other episodes of the Ally show starting March 1. I've started a weekly meeting called we pause in order to bring a space for everyone to come in and join me and the people that I know around me to practice things that helps with our mental health. It's only a 30 minutes call on Fridays, 02:00 p.m. Pacific time that we are all joining to learn about something that helps with our mental health. This is, for now, a beta project and I'm aiming to keep it free for as much as I can and also sharing the content of it on. 

 01:00
My podcast, the Ally show. 

 01:02
To sign up, simply go to Wepods space. Sign up so that you can join these calls starting this next one. In any of these calls, you can expect to see a guest instructor joining me to teach you something about improving your mental health. For example, in this first meeting, Dr. Arizum Omini joined me and she helped everyone practicing some breath work. In the next one, we have someone helping us learn about emotion theories. We may have yoga instructors coming in to show us yoga moves that may help us improve our daily moves and activities as professionals while we are working on our full time jobs. So hopefully this is going to be a place for you to pause for 30 minutes, and I'm hoping that if you enjoy it, you're going to bring your other friends to also join us on these calls. 

 01:52
Now let's go and listen to the audio recording of our first call. Just a couple of notes before we go. This is an audio recorded from an actual Google meeting that we had. So there may be some issues with the audio. I hope that this is not impacting your experience listening to this episode. Also, in the beginning of the show, I'm telling everyone a story about myself leaving my job. The year that I'm announcing there is 2013, but the actual year is 2023. It's a mistake. I kept it there, but you now know it. There we go. Without a further Ado, let's tune into this first recording of a repause meeting we had on March 1, 2024. 

 02:43
It can get started because by the way, this is going to be recorded. As you know, we are testing and this is a pilot project that I'm running to see what we can do to help each other's mental health. And I'm going to be recording this. The audio is going to be on my podcast, the ally show of course, I'm going to be cutting if we have conversations within the meeting, so no worries on that aspect. And then as far as the agenda for today, I'm going to be walking through a little bit of a story of myself, and we pause and why we are doing this. And then I will hand it to our first amazing guest instructor, Arizu, in these meetings. Hey, what's up, Drew? 

 03:29
In these meetings, we are actually trying to bring instructors, guest instructors who can help us learn about small things weekly that can improve our mental health. Things that I always wished I had way earlier in my life. So it's never too late. Let's get right into it. I started a little bit of a presentation. I missed working in corporate, so I had to do this. All right, welcome to Wepause, guys. Thank you. Thank you for making it here today. I just want to, first of all, start thanking everyone for joining and appreciating everyone's time. I know it's a Friday, and I also want to start this conversation by telling you a little bit about my own journey. As some of you may know, or most of you. 

 04:21
In 2013, I hit a turning point in my life, and I made a decision to step away from my tech carrier for a while, and that was fun so that I can prioritize my own mental health and also help others with their mental health and be an ally for them if I can be. So that's why we are here. That's how things started. But if I want to go back. Growing up in Iran, as some of you are also like fellow Iranians on this call, there was a lot of complexities in my own personal life. Considering a child born during the war and also having complexities in my family and things that happens in a strictly religious country. I always felt like an outsider because I could never believe in so many things. And then I always felt I'm never enough. 

 05:13
Growing up, I was also dealing with a lot of sicknesses and a lot of emotional problems that I could never figure out what that is until it was around, like, five years ago when a severe back pain hit. And as some of you may remember, the folks from course hero may remember it, actually. I couldn't even walk for a time. And that was when I started understanding that these pains are actually not physical pains. These are pains that are caused by my emotions that I was not able to handle within the last 30 plus years. Thanks to the book by Dr. Sarno. Healing back pain, if you guys want to check that out. It's an awesome book. 

 05:55
So it was actually that wake up call that I needed to start taking care of my physical and mental health care and be more cautious about what I'm doing with myself. And right around that time, I started spending a little bit time, like, taking care of myself. But as you know, in 2020, Covid hit, which actually caused another swing in the situation. This was also like, while happy with my career, I never felt satisfied with what I was doing. I always, again, felt that I'm not enough. I always had to feel that I'm hitting all the bars, which, again, some of you may empathize with that as well. And it was until just about two years ago, 18 months ago, I started my podcast, my Farsi podcast, ten minute pause, which is a guided Farsi meditation podcast. 

 06:55
In that podcast, every episode about, like ten minute, I just guide people through meditation in Farsi language. And I started that as a very small family project to help my family back in Iran. But it just got expanded a little bit, got some love. And right now, we have over 70 episodes of meditations in Farsi. We created this community that every month we have meditation challenges for ten days. So it became a very interesting sort of project that kind of gave me that satisfaction and fulfillment that I always wanted from a project. I can tell you that just last week, I recorded ten episodes for one of the challenges we just had. And it was so much fun. It was one of those projects that I really wanted to just do it from the beginning to the end. 

 07:45
And it was just like something that I never experienced. And right after ten minute pause and around the time that I quit my job, the Ally show was born. And during the Ally show, the concept comes from Joseph Campbell's book, the concept of the Ally, someone that actually helps you going through the journey that you have to become the. And it was through these two projects that I really felt that I have this passion and this kind of, like, excitement to continue being a bridge for people and being the ally that people always need and maybe be the ally that I always needed in my life and find for myself. So it was through those projects that I really found this passion. And eventually, I really want to make sure that I'm creating environment for all of us who are in the same need. 

 08:48
I know that I'm not alone, frankly. I talk to a lot of you guys one one or as group conversations. These platforms that I've created, both Ally show and ten minute pause taught me a lot about true stories of people out there, and I want to continue being an ally for you. And I want to continue helping all of us to pause, even for a few minutes a week. And if you're looking for that solace and support and the group and the community around you, to get there and to get to that pause that you need know that you have arrived to the right place. And I just wanted to tell everyone, welcome home and welcome to wepause. 

 09:37
So, as you know, as I mentioned earlier in wepause, every meeting we try to just have quick conversations and then have guests who can help us with stories or with practices, such as today's guest, Arizu for breath work, for example, that can help us with our mental health processes so that we can better, be more happy. We already have a few guests for the next few weeks. Some of them are on this call. Thank you for joining Mariam and Amanda, that they're already going to be our next guests for the next following weeks. And for now, we are trying to keep this as a beta project and keep this free. So please make sure that you're joining the next ones and also sending me your feedback at the end of this meeting or on a call however you like it. 

 10:28
I am just here to make sure that we are getting the best out of these calls. But before getting today's call, I just also wanted to send a shout out to everyone who joined today, also those who helped me get to this project, especially all of you who supported me in this first meeting. And also Shadi, for always being the support in all of my projects and never giving up on me. And also some of the great friends that I have on this call, including Amanda, for supporting as far as, like, the marketing perspective. And then also Amir and others for giving me feedback on this. Also, Sina, if he's on the call, I don't know. He has been a great advisor to this project so far. So I really appreciate everyone's input throughout this journey. 

 11:14
And a special shout out to Arizu for always being one of the first people who support me in these projects. Even the first challenge we had on my Farsi podcast was idea. So thank you, Arizu. And I just want to introduce her, Dr. Arizu Momini, former scientist, also a yoga instructor today. She wants to help us see how we can have a good breath, work in those moments, work that we're in the need of lowering our stress. So without a further ado, I want to stop and I want to pause and pass it to Arizu. 

 12:00
Hello, everyone. Thank you so much, Ali, for that beautiful presentation and for the very kind introduction I appreciate all the kind words and just listening to Dr. Ariz sounds interesting after my journey so I'll share a little bit about myself. Just born and raised in Iran, I moved to us as a PhD student and I was studying chemical engineering and I continued working in the field for a few years as a bioengineer, research scientist, mostly lab setting. And I was really disconnected about what I was doing. I was feeling really disconnected. And again, the challenges of being an immigrant, trying to adjust a new culture, a new environment, and most of you might know already how toxic and challenging at graduate school can be. 

 12:54
So dealing with all that, I had a lot of mental health issues personally that I was working through them too. So I started exploring healing modalities, different healing modalities. I think I started with acceptance, commitment therapy and mindfulness practices mostly. And I was fascinated. I got hooked and I could not let go of just diving deeper and deeper. So I just kept exploring. I explored yoga, meditation and even some feminine embodiment practices. Just really working with coaches with different practices. Whatever is out there, I just love reading, listening to podcasts. There's so many resources out there that I feel anxious for not being able to read everything and go through all the training. So there's a lot. But eventually it was last year that I also left my research job and I decided to dive deeper and focus more on my own healing journey. 

 13:57
And recently I finished my 200 hours. Not two hour, 200 hours yoga teacher. I wish it was 2 hours. We would all be yoga teachers. 200 hours yoga teacher training and I am recently certified as a life emboness coach. So I'm excited to be more available in this because really, just like Ali talking about mental health and this healing modalities and being the support for people to go through this growth and healing journey is what excites me the most in life. So I'm happy to dive deeper and be more available in this space. So yeah, thank you Ali for having me. I'm excited to be here because I really believe in what he's doing. He's just amazing, as all of you know already. So thank you for creating this amazing space and thank you for having me as your guest instructor. 

 14:56
As you probably know, we're going to explore some breath work technique. So to get started, I just want to get familiar with our natural breathing rhythm. So you can sit upright on your chair and if you feel comfortable, you can close your eyes to go deeper into your body, but you don't have to. You can just keep your eyes open. Whatever feels comfortable. But try to really become present and feel your natural breathing rhythm. Feel it to your body and see where you feel the breath most in your body. Now let's take some deep breath and notice if you feel the breath in your chest or in your abdomen. So start deepening your breath and become more familiar with how that deep breath feels. Is it in your chest, in your abdomen? Do you feel it in both? 

 16:07
Now let's try to consciously bring our breath all the way down into our belly so you can exhale the breath out, push the air out fully, and then take a deep breath in. Inhale through your nostrils, all the way into your belly. You can place one hand on your belly and one hand on your chest just so you can feel the movement of the breath a little better. And then take deep breath. Feel your torso expand from all four sides. Really take the breath deep into your belly and continue taking deep breath into your nose. Feel the movement in your abdomen and your chest. You can even really consciously alternate between keeping the breath in your chest and moving it all the way down to your belly just to get a good feel for what it feels. Beautiful. 

 17:18
You can open your eyes if your eyes are closed. This is simply called belly breathing or diaphragmatic breathing, where you breathe into your belly. And it's really the most basic breathing technique to calm the body and induce the state of relaxation. But being a scientist, let's see why that happens and what's actually behind that. So, as many of you know might know, our autonomic nervous system divides into parasympathetic nervous system and sympathetic nervous system. Parasympathetic nervous system is the rest and digest. So it's your state of calm and state of relaxation. And then sympathetic nervous system is that fight or flight response. It's when you're active, your heartbeat faster, you're ready to go, but also the state of stress. One major component of parasympathetic nervous system is vagus nerve. 

 18:21
Vagus nerve is one of the longest and most complex cranial nerve that connects your brain to the base of your spine. So it really travels from your brain to your body and communicate between the brain and the body. And this vagus nerve travels through your diaphragm. The diaphragm is this dome shaped muscle that sits under your ribcage. And that's the muscle that we use for belly breathing. So because of that position of vagus nerve and diaphragm, the more you engage the diaphragm and move that muscle, you are stimulating that vagus nerve. And as a matter of that, you are stimulating your parasympathetic nervous system. So really you have the control to regulate your nervous system, but by just simply engaging your abdominal muscle during the breathing more. So this is really the base of a lot of yoga breathing too. 

 19:24
In yoga, the breathing is mostly in belly. And I don't know if any of you notice that you normally breathe in chest. I was personally a chest breather and that's really our lifestyle. Because of the chronic state of stress that we're in, we're really just using our upper body. And actually the lung is not a muscle. So to compensate that abdomen that we're not using, we're using our upper body more. So we're lifting our chest up. And that might be one reason why your neck and your shoulders are tighter, because of that constant chest breathing. So really just the simple awareness of where your breath is and just like guiding it into your belly is really powerful. Another technique that I want to go through is called two to one breathing. The base of it is again belly breathing. 

 20:25
But this time we're going to exhale twice as long as we inhale. And again inhale is known to regulate our sympathetic response. And our exhale is responsible for regulating our parasympathetic response. So by increasing our exhale, we are again increasing our parasympathetic nervous system response. So again, we can again practice with this belly breathing. And now increase our exhale. So let's DO a FeW rounds together to get a feel for it by just again sitting upright. And again you can close your eyes if that feels more comfortable for you or keep your eyes open. Just relax your body and again become aware of your natural breathing rhythm. Get a feel for it. And when you're ready, deepen your breath and allow the breath to travel into your belly. Feel your torso expand. 

 21:40
Take a few deep breaths into your belly to get comfortable with the deep inhale. And exhale, deep breath into your belly. Exhale out through your nose. And now to extend our exhale, we're going to contract the abdominal muscle to gently push the additional air out. And then on an inhale, you can relax your abdominal muscle and breathe into your belly. Again, contract the abdominal muscle as you exhale to push the air out and then inhale. But relaxing your abdominal so really as you engage your abdominal muscle out and exhaling and then your inhale is just a relaxation of your abdomen. And then let's practice this for a few more rounds. And then we are going to count our breath. So we can start with an inhale for just the count of two. Inhale for two. Hold and exhale for 4321. Inhale for two. 

 23:13
Exhale for 4321. I'll let you tune into your own rhythm, and if you elongating your breath, you can go for three. Inhale and six. Exhale. BeAutiful. You can let your breathing return to its natural rhythm and tune into your body. Feel how it feels, and notice if anything's changed in your body. You can open your eyes if your eyes are cold. So this was the combination of belly breathing and two to one breathing. And both of them you can use in combination or separately anytime that you want to relax yourself, calm yourself down, and you can really practice even once a day just to get more comfortable. If you're not familiar with belly breathing, just to get more comfortable, how I feel. But really, I think, honestly, the most challenging part of this. These are all just tools. Breathing techniques. Stress managements are tools. 

 24:50
But I think the most challenging part is to know when to use these techniques. Because when we are in that space of stress, we tend to go into our autopilot mode and kind of act based on our old patterns. So really recognizing what that stress feels like, what is that response to your body? Where do you feel that stress? Or even what happens? What do you say normally? What do you do normally when you are stressed and just getting more in touch and in tune with yourself and your body's response to different stressful situation, you gain that awareness in your body. And then knowing these techniques, these tools, when you use these tools, you are literally changing your neural pathway. You're creating new neural pathway, a new way to respond to stress in life. 

 25:40
So I would say that is the most important part, to just get comfortable with yourself, explore what your response is, what helps you, what works for you, and just really be curious with that process. And I think really the most important work today was that all of you showed up here for yourself, for your well being. And that's awesome, because I know all of you have busy schedule. So thank you for being here and thank you for sharing your time with us. 

 26:14
Amazing. Thank you. Arizu. I saw a hand was raised. If that was intentional, feel free to ask a question. Otherwise, we have other question. Also, this is a survey we have pre every meeting. If you want to ask your questions, I just send it right now. In case we want to ask anonymous question, please feel free to ask. We have four more minutes. The question we have, Arizu, which I think you may have already answered it, but it's about how many times per day do you pause to do the breath work? Is there a recommendation? I also feel like there's interesting aspect of mindfulness in this question if you want to respond to that. 

 26:59
Yeah, I actually love that question. So honestly, from one to as many as you can is perfect. The more you practice. If you're into meditation, you can even induce the state of stress and practice this breathing to really see how it affects your stress response. But I would say, again, the most important and challenging is to be able to use this when we need them, when life happens, but also at the same time, just practicing it daily, even for once a day, five minutes. The more the better. If you want to even go deeper, you can set timer on your phone or reminder on your phone, like three times a day. Whatever feels right for you, whatever is the next step that you would like to take for yourself. Just set reminders throughout the day. 

 27:55
And when reminder goes off, just do five belly breathing tree belly breathing. Whatever is more comfortable. Don't set the bar too high that you're not going to keep yourself up to it. Do whatever. Even when belly breathing do. Love those, right? 

 28:14
Yeah, I love that. And if I want to add one thing, it would be connected to a habit you already have. If you're brushing your teeth in the morning, do it after brushing your teeth. That's something I actually learned from Orezou, and I try to keep building habits by that technique. So it's been working and helping me. By what technique? You said just connecting a new routine to an existing routine. It's a habit forming technique. So if you're already brushing your teeth every morning, do two minute breath work after brushing your teeth. Yeah, it's a hack. Yeah. 

 28:52
I love that you brought it up. It's called habit stacking if you want to look more deeply into it. But it works for any new habit that you want to incorporate. 

 29:01
Yeah. 

 29:01
Psychologically makes sense for sure. 

 29:05
Making things easier for your brain just to help it a little bit, engineer it that way that it's easier. 

 29:14
And I think the reward is you inhale a fresh, minty air. All right. Thank you so much, Arizu. If there is no other question, let me just refresh the list. Yeah, no other question. If there is no other question. Oh, there we go. Atomic habits. There we go. 

 29:39
That's where I learned it from. Exactly. It's an amazing book. Highly recommended. 

 29:44
Yeah, the favorite book. Thank you vipal for that. And thank you, everyone, for showing up. I want to echo what Arezu also like. I think the biggest part of this weekly meeting is that we show up. We show up for ourselves, we show up for each other, and I think that's amazing. Thank you for making it. We are right at 30 minutes. You're all amazing and beautiful and have a wonderful weekend. You.