EP 22 - Healing through breath with Kirsty Lyon

In this episode I am joined by my friend Kirsty Lyon. 

Kirsty is one of my favorite humans and any time we get together I walk away feeling so much better than I had at the beginning. We met during a breathwork facilitator training and just clicked. 

Kirsty is a trauma informed breathwork facilitator and holistic healing guide. After using holistic modalities and breathwork to overcome and heal from a debilitating illness she is passionate about showing others how to do the same and empower them to reclaim their health and happiness. 

In this episode Kirsty shares her journey of grief and illness and how breathwork helped her find safety in her body. Her story is beautiful and she has such a way with reframing trauma, autoimmune illness, and her relationship with her body.

Kirsty’s big message from this episode is to breathe and rest. In our society we are so busy that we often undervalue the importance of rest. 

You can find Kirsty  on Insight Timer at  https://insighttimer.com/healingbreathalchemy

Transcript

Sabrina  0:00  
I'm joined by my friend Kirsty Lyon. Kirsty is one of my favorite humans. And anytime we get together, I always walk away feeling so much better than I had at the beginning. We met during a breathwork facilitator training and it's just one of those times where you just click Kirsty is a trauma informed breathwork facilitator and holistic healing guide, after using holistic modalities and breath work to overcome and heal from a debilitating illness. She's passionate about showing others how to do the same and empower them to reclaim their health and happiness. In this episode, Kirsty shares her journey of grief and illness and how breathwork helped her find safety in her body. Her story is beautiful, and she has such a way with reframing trauma, autoimmune illness and her relationship with her body. Kirsty's big message from this episode is to breathe and rest. In our society. We are so busy, that we often undervalue the importance of rest. So I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you're like me, and you love listening to Kirsty's voice, or you want to try some meditation or breath work with her, you can find her on Insight Timer at healing breath alchemy. You can also find her on Instagram, at healing breath alchemy. I am so excited. This is my friend Kirsty ah, and she okay. She is one of those people that I have never met in person, but she is still one of my favorite human beings. So I don't know if any of you listeners have like people like that. I love the internet. For that reason, Kirsty and I met last year during a breathwork facilitation. And as soon as I let her talk, you guys are gonna fall in love with her. Because one she's got the best Scottish accent. And she is just a beautiful human being. So Kirsty, do you want to say hello.

Kirsty  2:03  
That was the nicest introduction ever. I don't think anybody's ever. And I feel the exact same way. So thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here and speak to you and see you.

Sabrina  2:19  
I know. I know. For those of you who are listening, we do this record on Zoom. So I get to see everybody face to face, which is awesome.

Unknown Speaker  2:28  
And one of these days we'll see each other in person I'm sure the

Sabrina  2:31  
whole yes as soon as I don't want to say as soon as but when the world starts to open up from COVID lockdown and travel gets to open up. Yeah, we're definitely we're coming to Scotland and if you ever make it to the states, you are welcome to visit and Iowa.

Unknown Speaker  2:48  
Oh yeah, I want to get out of here as soon as possible.

Sabrina  2:53  
Yeah. So I was saying that Kirsty and I met during our breathwork facilitation so I wanted to bring Kirsty on today to talk about breath work to talk about meditation. She's also had some chronic health conditions that she has found a lot of relief from, with breath work. So Kirsty I always start out these episodes with guests kind of talking about your relationship with food talking about your relationship with your body. Where have Where have you been? And where are you at now with that?

Unknown Speaker  3:27  
Yeah, I think probably every woman has a story with food and their body.

Kirsty  3:38  
I definitely had a lot of fear with my body. I also had a lot of image issues as well. You know, when I was a little younger, I was kind of teased because I'm very we've not met in real life. I'm very short and like five foot and I stopped growing at like the age of 13. I had a lot of issues around that. And yeah, we touched like briefly on the chronic health stuff. So a lot of my food issues came from, I had a lot of food fear, which was to do with a lot of issues I was having with my gut, you know, I was given that umbrella diagnosis of IBS and at its worst, I felt like I couldn't eat anything without extreme symptoms and pain and illness. And I became like frightened of eating basically. And is this gonna make me feel worse and I started to have a very distorted view of foods and labeling it as good and bad. I've definitely come a long way now don't feel that way. And I am learning to love my body. I'm learning to appreciate it outside and in as well. Because like I mentioned I I was very afraid of my body, I was very fearful. And that's how breathwork helped me was begin to feel safe in my body and feel at home in my body. I was I'm still like on a journey, I think a lot of us are like, I'm not I can't sit here and say I am cured and absolved of all my issues. I still have days where I don't like how I look, I wish I was taller. I wish my boobs were bigger. I wish the, you know, this, this and this. But I'm certainly getting to a place are really beginning to accept and love myself a little bit more.

Sabrina  5:41  
I think that's so beautiful. And thank you for sharing, because not everybody has body image issues that are related to weight. I think a lot of us, especially because of the culture we live in. Yes, that is that is a big thing. But also, there's also these other ideals of you know, the perfect woman is, I don't know, what is she like, five, seven these days? And I would unless you start to wear stilts, there's not much that you can do about your height.

Kirsty  6:13  
Yeah, and I had this I had this conversation with a friend who it is it does feel that you have to be careful of saying this, but I have had a lot of I am slim build, and weight isn't something I've struggled with. But I've also been at the other end where I can lose weight really easily if I'm stressed. And then I get all the comments of You look sick, you need to eat more, what's wrong with you? And I think what a lot of people don't understand is just generally commenting on weight isn't acceptable, almost because I you know, I still take that personally, I get a lot of comments from women who thought it was okay to tell me that I was too skinny, I needed more carbs, I had a flat chest, I you know, I wasn't a real woman and that, that is not pleasant to hear. And that was something that I definitely, really kind of struggled with. Probably more so. Maybe in my early 20s just feeling like I didn't look womanly enough, like I was kind of small and scrawny. And that wasn't desirable. So I think it's important to view it from all different aspects that it's, you know, just generally shouldn't be commenting and commenting on way or, or just your

Sabrina  7:33  
body in general. Like yeah, yeah, no, our bodies are are usually our least appealing thing about us, or the least interesting thing about us. And yet we always feel or think we have the right or the need to comment whether it's on somebody's weight loss, weight gain. body size height, like, oh, wow, you're really short. On she thanks. I hadn't noticed. Yeah, I love that one.

Unknown Speaker  8:01  
When people are like, Oh, you're so short. And I'm like, Yeah, well, I know. I'm 35. I've

Unknown Speaker  8:06  
been looking in the mirror every day

Unknown Speaker  8:09  
Like I'm well aware. Yeah, it's, I don't remember, like trying to veer away from like, appearance based compliments. And I remember telling a friend one day you look really healthy. And she sort of squinted at me and was like, what are you seeing? I look fat? And I was like, No, you look healthy. So um, yeah, it's it's it, but it can feel a challenge sometimes, like trying to dig out those compliments of like, right, this needs to not be appearance space. I love your energy. You look really healthy, you're glowing? And yeah, it was really interesting that she kind of was like, What are you saying by that?

Sabrina  8:49  
It's so funny. Yeah. And I think that's a good, good point of we can mean well, and I think even when people comment on our bodies, they they mean well, a lot of times probably those people saying, Oh, you look sick, we're we're trying to be nice and point that out of like, I think there's something wrong with you. You need to get help. Hmm. Not that, you know, they're trying to be malicious about it.

Kirsty  9:15  
Yeah, no, definitely. And I remember when I'd gone on a soul trip to Thailand. And of course, I was really timed. And I remember I posted it on. I think it was when I had Facebook, I posted a picture of me in my bikini. And of course, the way the way it was hitting me I like Tanda was totally healthy and everyone's like, Oh, you look amazing. What nobody knew is at that time. I was so sick, and I was so so miserable. So even in this picture, I like glowing and tanned and healthy and I was on a tropical beach and oh wow, that looks amazing. I was so unhappy. I was going through a marriage separation. I was just starting to get this was kind of like the the precursor to actually getting a diagnosis and becoming really unwell. Like something was not raised. So even then, like you can look at someone and think they look amazing, and you have no idea what's going on below the surface.

Sabrina  10:15  
Yeah, and I think before we kind of shift gears a little bit, yeah, the moral of this first part is, don't comment on other people's bodies. Yes. Even if you mean well, even if you're trying to give them a compliment, because you never know what's going on with somebody internally.

Unknown Speaker  10:31  
Absolutely.

Sabrina  10:33  
I think that was I don't know a little bit before you found breathwork.

Kirsty  10:40  
Yes, so I totally, it's so funny time is like, and you start to think about you like, How long ago was this? So I am. Yeah, at getting into, I was kind of told about breathwork. So I basically, back at the beginning of 2019, maybe the end of 2018, I started to have like, lots of like, really random symptoms. And of course, I was going through quite a lot emotional at the time. So you know, it was kind of dismissed as you're just depressed. And I started keeping a list of all the symptoms like my sleep, I started to deal with insomnia, I was getting all these random aches and pains. I was so tired, and I was such an active and fit person, I was like, walk my dog every day for two hours and do dance classes twice a week. And suddenly, I was coming home from work. And I just felt like I couldn't function. And then a few months went by, and it was kind of getting worse. And eventually, I got to a point where I really didn't stop being able to function, I caught what I thought was a virus, and I just never recovered. And then my doctor kind of said, I think you it's likely that you have chronic fatigue syndrome, which for people that don't know it, it's it affects every system in your body, your digestive system, your nervous system, your cardiovascular system, everything. And it's usually triggered by a virus. But there's a lot of other factors at play. Like it's quite common in people who have suffered from trauma, who have a very dysregulated nervous system, which I was a perfect candidate for I had complete viral overload. And so the doctor was kind of like, okay, well, there's nothing we can do. There's no cure your chances of healing or recovering from are very, very slim about 5% chance, which is not very much. And he said, I'm going to give you antidepressants, I'm going to give you painkillers sleeping tablets, a whole bunch of other pills to help you with symptoms. And I said thank you, but no, thank you. I think I'm going to do this another way. And it's not obviously to dismiss medication. It's just I knew it wasn't right for me. So I started to go down more of a holistic healing route. And looking at people who had recovered from it and thinking, what are they doing and what have they done. And so long story short, I was seeing a practitioner for something called Bowen therapy, which is to do with kind of MIP manipulations of the fascia to help the body heal. And my practitioner had recovered from chronic fatigue syndrome herself. And she said to me one day have you ever heard of like Wim Hof and breath work? And I was like, no, like, what's that? And then she said, I'm gonna send you this video, check it out. And she sent me and I looked at all these comments on YouTube, and people were like, Oh, my God, like, I healed my PTSD through breath work. Like, I've managed to come off medications because of breath where I thought, wow. And then I never tried to, like, I didn't, I didn't do anything. I was like, Oh, wow, that looks great. And then I didn't, I didn't touch it. And fast forward to a few months later. I was really struggling with grief. I was going through obviously, this illness and with chronic illness comes a lot of loss. And I was also going through a divorce. I've lost a lot of friends, I've lost my job, I'd lost my home. And then I lost my dog my sweet dog Max had to be put to sleep he was he was still very young and it was very shocking and sudden and I was so and I know we've talked about grief in the past. I was so overwhelmed with grief. I was like

Unknown Speaker  15:00  
I don't want to go on anymore. Like,

Kirsty  15:01  
I don't want to. I don't want to do this. How much more stuff can I lose in life? I can't, I can't possibly cope with this. And then I remember the words of my my bone therapist you're seeing I wouldn't have got through the grief of losing my parents had it not been for breathwork. And for some reason those words came into my head and I thought, oh, maybe now's the time to try it. So I did. So I went onto YouTube. I went on to a Wim Hof video, a guided breathing, meditation, like, I don't know, 1015 minutes long. And I was blown away. I was like, what I've never felt was calm in my life. Like, I do all these sensations in my body. Like I, I feel like amazing. I feel like I have energy, like, what is this? And that's kind of where it all started. And then it's been life changing. It's been the most powerful healing modality certainly that I've discovered anyway.

Sabrina  16:03  
For the listeners who aren't familiar with breathwork, who were kind of like you and I, when we first found out like, Why, yeah, I breathe. In the words of Kirsty what is breathwork?

Unknown Speaker  16:15  
So breath work.

Sabrina  16:17  
And yeah, way to put you on the spot. Hmm,

Kirsty  16:19  
I know, I really should have thought of this so that it comes out more eloquent than I'm about to describe it. So breathwork is essentially using your breath to supercharge your body, and to help release blockages in the physical and emotional body. As the lead you see, a lot of people go, I know how to breathe, I know how to breathe, and I But what people don't appreciate is that the breath is probably one of the most underutilized, free tools that you have to help boost your immune system to help revitalize your body to help lower inflammation to help decrease anxiety and stress and help you move through stuck trauma and pain in the body. Yeah, that's, that's the best way to describe it.

Sabrina  17:20  
I think that's a really good, and a good way to put it into kind of more of layman's terms of, you know, because when we're going through facilitation, like they gave us this whole spiel on what it is. That's a bunch of I mean, in my opinion, fancy dancy words strung together, and I'm still like, huh, huh?

Kirsty  17:43  
I describe us to somebody. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because, and you can lose people because, you know, I am quite a spiritual woowoo person, I will say that I'm loud and proud about it. But sometimes you can lose people when you start talking about certain aspects. But there is very much like a physical. It's very much a physical thing, the benefits of it. And before I actually started doing breath work, I had actually been, I had gotten to the worst point of my illness, and I was about to say, I was bed bound, probably 80% of the time, 90% of the time, for about five months, I could not cook for myself, I couldn't, a lot of times, I couldn't sit up straight. I couldn't. I couldn't shower, I couldn't do anything. And so when I started doing breath work, I was kind of amazed that the first thing I noticed, I was like, Well, I feel like slightly energized food. That's quite nice. So I thought, Okay, I'm going to do this practice every day, for however long I'll see what happens nowhere. After three weeks, four weeks of doing it every day, I was able to start moving my body again, I was able to start doing some kind of light yoga, I was able to start taking like really, really short walks and a lot of my symptoms were starting to really kind of decrease or they were starting to disappear. And that was what kind of gave me the the boost I needed to be like, Oh wow, like I need to I need to learn more about this. And of course after that, and how I came across the where we trained was I started to become interested in it for emotional healing as well. And that was kind of what came next as well. And it's it's really like an all round kind of thing that it can help you with physical and emotional stuff stuckness or blockages.

Sabrina  19:44  
I had one of my good friends describe it as that the meditation part of yoga, the best parts of yoga without the moving part of yoga.

Kirsty  19:56  
Oh, yeah, kind of like that. Yeah, yeah, obviously I get so frustrated with your guys still can't like develop any kind of practice. But yeah, no, it's, it's because I was like an avid meditator, I started meditating, I don't know, maybe 2013 2014. But I very much had like super, super monkey mind, I had like, an overactive hyper puppy brain like it would kind of go all over the place. So sometimes meditation was a little bit trickier to kind of come away from it thinking, oh, man, I'm like, still really in my head. And that was the beauty of breath work was it helped me, come out of my head, drop the thoughts and come back into my body and come back into the present moment. And of course, when we're anxious, and we're in our heads, we're not in the present moment, we're thinking of the past, we're thinking of the future, we're thinking about what we're going to do for dinner, we're thinking about the scenario. So to take that break, and just come back into the body and feel a sense of calm and peace. I was like, Yeah, I want to do this more. I want to feel like this all the time.

Sabrina  21:07  
So how often do you personally practice breath work, or some type of meditation?

Kirsty  21:13  
Oh, I, every day, every day, I would have to say, it's probably the one habit that I've, that I've formed, like, every day, and it's not necessarily that I do. I'm not rigid with it. Like, I'll do some kind of like, even if it's just five minutes of me focusing on my breathing, or just taking nice deep breaths, that's enough for me to calm the nervous system down, to feel a sense of relaxation. It doesn't have to be massively profound, you know, it's the same with like, when I say to people about meditation, you don't have to sit down for like, 1520 minutes, half an hour. I mean, it's pretty good if you do, but even just five minutes, three minutes, or one minute of doing something like this is like sending a little love note to your body to say, We're here, we're laxed. We're good. But it's, for me. And like I mentioned earlier, a lot of what has to do with chronic fatigue syndrome is a complete dysregulation of the nervous system. And of course, that that has been what they're working to heal that breath work has really helped with that. And meditation has helped with that, because it's about strengthening the nervous system. It's about coming out of that stress response and coming into that relaxation response. Because I think what a lot of people don't realize is, most of us are living in that stress response, we just have no idea of it. And that's why it's important to tune into your body and listen to its cues, listen to what it's telling you. And think okay, how can I like best nourish myself in this moment? What can I do to help me feel good again,

Sabrina  23:03  
when what a good point to bring up is that yes, most of us are kind of living in this trauma response state of chaos. But we don't realize it because it's normal. And we don't realize that there's, we can feel a different way we can think a different way until we have a little taste of what that's like. And then it's like, Whoa, yeah. And then get once you have that taste of it, you're like, I don't ever want to go back.

Kirsty  23:37  
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I, you know, several years ago, you know, before all of this happened, I used to suffer so badly from like, very debilitating anxiety and depression. And I would go round and round. With this boom, bust cycle of, I would work full time I would go to the gym after work, I'd be doing all the things I would fill up my days, like socializing, like I would never stop, I would not stop. I did not like, rest days, I did not like DVDs, because it was lazy. And I was getting nothing done. And I would over function to a point that I would then completely crash and burn. And I would become so debilitated by anxiety that I couldn't leave the house for months on end. And I just repeat this cycle. unconsciously. I just thought it was like, This is my life. This is what I'm supposed to do is just go round and round the circle. And I think it was a bit to those in 13. I start to question like, Why? Why am I like this? Surely this isn't. I don't actually have to be this way and many mistakes and rock bottoms later. It's really not until the last, I would say three years that I've learned a lot more about this norm that we perpetuate of hustle, hustle, hustle, go go go stress, stress, stress, always doing things isn't actually normal isn't healthy and is committed pletely detrimental to your physical and emotional health because what people don't realize is stress is the precursor for illness. It's not a coincidence when, and I can't remember and I don't I don't want to give wrong facts. I think it was on there. I don't know if you've ever watched at the heal documentary. It's, it mentioned, like only a very, very, very small percentage of disease and illnesses are actually genetics, like a lot of them are factored in with the level of stress and trauma and inherited trauma. And I know like even gabber Marty, who's a trauma trauma specialist, he talks a lot about that, who illness and disease is linked to this. So when I first learned I had this chronic illness, I was like, yeah, no wonder I was not in a good place for years and years before that. Yeah.

Sabrina  26:03  
What would you say to listeners who are kind of stuck in that hustle culture right now thinking that I need to go Go, go, go go, I have to meet this goal, I have to meet this deadline, I have to do doo doo doo doo?

Kirsty  26:16  
Yeah, I think well, first of all, as an adult that to do list will never end, it will, there will still be stuff to do. Even on your deathbed, you really, really need to do this. Is it's like a never ending to do list. Ultimately, I think what people need to learn is their sense of worthiness, without their sense of worthiness is not linked to your productivity. Like your level of worth is not related to the job you do, how much work you do, how much money you make, you are inherently worthy, by existing and being alive, and you don't have to prove it. And sadly, we live in this culture where we actually believe the opposite to be true. We think we need to, and we think we need to prove ourselves. And and that was a hard lesson for me when I was sick, because I couldn't work and I felt so horrible. I was like, you know, what am I contributing to society, I'm not contributing anything, because I can't move out my bed. And I had to really learn to love myself, in all my phases at my lowest at my highest and my worth is not going to change based on what I do, or how much I get done. But my worth is based on how I treat others and how I treat myself and what I'm, you know, contributing to the world and what I'm putting out there. Yeah, and I would see, there's a really great quote that I saw the other day, and it was listened to your body whisper before it has to scream. And that's the biggest piece of advice I would do, I would say is don't ignore, don't push it down. Your body is always communicating to us not through words, but it's communicating to us. And it's for us to slow down. And and understand. Yeah,

Sabrina  28:14  
that gives me goosebumps. Yeah. Yes. And I talk to whether it's coaching clients or counseling clients all the time about how we are like headless horseman running around. We are so stuck in our heads, we're so cognitive, that we're ignoring our bodies until it is screaming at us. Yeah, because we've just are discredited or ignored, or avoided thinking about our feeling all of those little cues that we get.

Kirsty  28:46  
Yeah, and we're not we're not taught to process our emotions, right? We're not you know, it's drilled into us as children lay, you know, Boys Don't Cry, stop being so sensitive. And these little things we don't realize have an impact on us as children, we go, Oh, okay. It's not safe for me to, to feel this or to speak this out. So we completely disconnect. And then of course, we we will, I mean, we've all grown up with this, you know, body image thing, like what's the perfect body? You should you should look like this. And so we do it's no wonder we become completely disconnected from our bodies, and we're always living in our heads. And of course, what a lot of people don't appreciate is all the thoughts and the junk going into your head is not fact it's, you know, it's you don't want to be listening to it all the time. You don't want to let it dictate and rule your life. Yeah, and and that for me, that was big for me. And it wasn't till I started doing breath work, and I remember doing one particularly transformative session where I was like, it's safe to be in My body has like, it's actually safe, and I'm safe. And this is my home and your body is your home. And it's important to take care of that home and love that home. Because it's the only home you have from the minute you're born to the day you die that isn't going anywhere, you know, you're not, you know, swapping it for another one. And so often we we point out its flaws, we don't talk very nicely to, oh, I'm falling apart, or this is going wrong. And for me a big part of healing my illness was really learning to love my body. And even going through that illness. You know, my body was still trying to help me because ultimately, our bodies are designed to heal, we just have to get out of the way, right? Like, how can we do that if we're not living in our body, and we're living in our heads? So yeah, it's important to learn to cultivate a loving relationship with your body. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's definitely necessary.

Sabrina  31:04  
Yeah, and I think that's probably one of the hardest things that we do. And the scariest because we've learned over the years through conditioning from the outside world, that our bodies are not okay, our bodies are not safe. And then when we can sit in our bodies, we can love them, we can appreciate what they do for us and us for them. That's when the real magic starts to happen.

Kirsty  31:32  
Definitely, and it's changing the narrative of it, right? Because even somebody with an autoimmune disease is taught that the body is attacking itself, which doesn't sound nice. The body is not attacking itself, the body is actually trying to help you. It's just that it's misfiring. It's a little bit misguided. It's got his wires crossed, right and used. Yeah, it's confused. You just kind of see it's actually trying to do its job. It's just confused. And it is important to appreciate that. You know, I mean, talk about I mean, I'm not a very sciency person. So please excuse me when I fumble over my words. But yeah, like I said, we're designed to heal homeostasis is healing like you caught yourself. You don't have to sit and stare at that cotton will it to heal, it does it on its own, and our bodies do the same. And we just have to provide that environment for

Sabrina  32:27  
it. Is there anything else that you want to make sure that our listeners hear or know, before we wrap up for today,

Kirsty  32:37  
I would probably say that you are your own greatest healer, that is something that I have learned, I always look to other people to help me heal, whether it was you know, Western medicine, like a doctor. Or if it was a therapist, or whoever, you are your own biggest healer, and you are far more powerful than you've ever been led to believe. And yes, it's good to have help. It's good to have guidance. And sadly, we are so conditioned to not believe our intuition to question ourselves to listen to an authority out with us, you know, what's best for you? When I first started doing this, like a lot of people did have things to say about me, kind of not taking the traditional route of going down medication. You know, when I started doing cold exposure people like what the hell are you doing? Or I started, you know, just saying I started doing all this people are like, This is so dumb, like you know what's best for you. You do and learn how to get out of your head and get into your body and let that intuition guide you. And healing and recovery is possible. So something that I heard, I think it was Deepak Chopra said you can believe the diagnosis but you don't have to believe the prognosis. And I would say that's yeah, that's that sticks with me. And prognosis can be very depressing and it can also be very untrue like I see I was told I had like a 5% chance of recovery and here I am. almost recovered. So I would say to the listeners that you are far more powerful than you think you are. You are your own best healer. The rest is just important as the work.

Sabrina  34:31  
That is beautiful Kersey and thank you so much for coming on today. I hope the listeners get a lot out of this. Even if it's just to like, take 20 minutes to rest.

Kirsty  34:41  
Yeah, exactly. I hope that you're not late. If you're listening to this, stop doing whatever else you're doing. Just really listen, just take the words and no Netflix no scrolling.

Sabrina  34:52  
Wonderful. Thanks so much, Kirsty.

Unknown Speaker  34:55  
Thank you so much.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai