Dr. Jay Wiles

So state changes are things that are occurring transiently, so happening right now.

And then trait changes are things that are actually occurring across time that are building a more robust system.

You can think about it as more of like if we fine-tune the engine of a car over time.

So maybe we know that there's a little bit of some – I'm not a mechanic here, but maybe we know that there's some creaks and some things that are going wrong.

We hear the belt kind of like not working in its proper way.

can we fine-tune it over time so that we can create a more robust engine that maybe one day we create this car that we're working on over time to create more of like a race car or something that can actually perform at a really high level.

So we know that things like breathing is...

It's probably the single greatest lever that we can pull, maybe aside from focusing on sleep, that breathing is one of the greatest levers that we can pull towards state change.

But it's also a lever that we can pull more towards trait change.

And we have really great studies and evidence that I use to kind of base my claim here.

State change, what is happening when we are, let's say, engaging in something like slow-paced breathing or resonance breathing, which we know is an effective strategy for shifting and regulating the nervous system.

We start to create this internal environment.

We start to distinctively change our physiology so that it experiences change.

a position of safety, a position of security.

I always like to kind of share the story.

It's like, it would make no sense that if we were in face of a viable threat, let's say the mountain lions chasing us, for us to stop and take a moment to do some deep breathing.

Because we need to execute and mobilize all that energy.

The sympathetic nervous system needs to be firing on all cylinders.

We need to have that parasympathetic withdrawal.

We need everything that we can to get out of that or fight in that environment.