The birth-ed podcast

Breathwork in pregnancy and beyond, with Carolyn Cowan

• Megan Rossiter, birth-ed • Episode 7

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If you’re a regular listener to the show, or you’ve done a Birth-ed course, you’ll know that I really value breathwork in labour, but I hadn’t realised the calm that breathwork can bring to pregnancy until I read today’s guest’s book. 

This week I’m talking to Carolyn Cowan, embodied psychotherapist, yoga teacher and author of Breathing for Pregnancy. Carolyn explains why and how conscious breathing works, gives a short breathwork demonstration and shows how to integrate the practice into your life.


Find more from Carolyn at www.carolyncowan.com
Buy Breathing for Pregnancy, by Carolyn Cowan from Penguin, in all good bookshops.


Please subscribe, rate and review, so we can get this vital info to as many parents-to-be as we can!

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Megan Rossiter  00:00

Ad - This episode is brought to you in partnership with iCandy. I've been using our iCandy peach pushchair almost daily for the last seven years and counting. And I've really put their five year warranty to the test using it for both my boys on muddy walks in aeroplane holes in and out of my car boot and aside from being completely filthy, my fault not theirs. It's still going strong. I can't wait to tell you more about my experience with eye candy later in the show.  


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Megan Rossiter  00:50

You're listening to the Birth-ed podcast. I'm your host and founder of Birth-ed, Megan Rossiter. If you're looking for the evidence, the nuance the detail that's missing from your antenatal appointment, then I've got your back. The Birth-ed podcast is here to help you sort the facts from the advertising the instinct from the influences and the information you're looking for from the white noise of the internet. I hope you've got a cup of tea in hand and a notepad at the ready. Let's dive in. 


Megan Rossiter  01:16

Hi everybody. Welcome back to the Birth-ed Podcast. Today I am delighted to be joined by Carolyn Cowan. Carolyn is a London-based psychotherapist and yoga and breathwork teacher. She has spent more than 20 years specialising in psychosexual therapy, trauma and relationships and working with pre and postnatal clients. Carolyn, welcome to the podcast.


Carolyn Cowan  01:39

Thank you, Megan, lovely to be here.


Megan Rossiter  01:41

So if you have been listening to the Birth-ed podcast for a while, or you've worked through the Birth-ed method, you'll probably be familiar with how effective breathing can be to regulate our nervous system and manage painful sensations in labour and literally help us birth our babies. But I've actually just finished Carolyn's fantastic book called breathing for pregnancy. And it has a real focus breathing Not for labour but for pregnancy itself. Now breathwork practice in this way is really not something I knew much about before reading Carolyn's book. But my interest has certainly been piqued even for myself, someone who is very much not pregnant. And I'm really excited to pick your brains Carolyn about how breathwork can have such a profound impact on acid during pregnancy. So when we kind of hear the title of your book breathing for pregnancy, if somebody's not familiar at all, with breath work, they might be thinking, Well, surely, you know, surely we just breathe? Doesn't everybody breathe in pregnancy? So what is the practice of breath work? And why is it so relevant or helpful to us when we're pregnant? 


Carolyn Cowan  02:53

So thank you, the the practice of breath work is actually to breathe consciously. And so if you think about how we breathe most of the time, it's something that we take utterly for granted unless we've walked really fast up a hill, and we're out of breath. So we don't really notice our breath. And I suppose I could start by saying, I think that I'm fascinated, I know, I'm utterly fascinated by the stress system, I think it's a magical thing. Although at the moment, everybody hates it, because so many people are anxious. But you have a system in your body, which I would say is the stress system, which you can overtake. And the fastest way to overtake your stress system is to breathe consciously. And then if you think about breathing consciously, most people who are stressed or anxious or overwhelmed are breathing about 15 to 16 times a minute, which is very fast and breathing consciously is to go into that unconscious mechanism, take it over and slow the breath down. Certainly in pregnancy, I work mostly with slowing the breath down. But in essence, what you're doing is going into your body and you're taking over the diaphragm, which is normally smooth muscle and functions by itself without you consciously adjusting it. And you're going in and you're saying to your diaphragm, No, I'm okay, I'm going to slow my breath down. So the sort of optimum conscious breath, if you will, could be five seconds in five seconds out, which is six breaths a minute, which is very different to 15 or 16 breaths a minute. 


Megan Rossiter  04:29

So I'm gonna pick your brains in a minute. When you're talking about the stress system, there might be people listening that have absolutely no idea that this is even a system that exists kind of in our in our bodies and our brains. But I want to kind of ask first, what was it that like, what was it that led you to write this book? Why for pregnancy? What is it about modern day pregnancy that has activating so much of this stress system that you spoke about? 


Carolyn Cowan  04:56

I love that question. And it is exactly why I wrote the book is I've worked with pregnancy for over 30 years. And actually, because I had a lot of problems conceiving, I had six pregnancies, and only two live births. And I met the practice of breathwork whilst I was pregnant with the first successful pregnancy, which was my fourth. So I signed up to do a yoga teacher training, I really knew nothing about it. But a huge part of it was breath work. And in my history, I'm 32 years clean and sober. So I stopped drinking and taking drugs a long time ago, and I've lived 32 years sober. But what I noticed when I started the teacher training, and I started doing the yoga was that the breath work was calming my mind. And my mind, I was very anxious. I had a big, tall, dark history, and my mind would never stop. But I noticed that breath work stopped it. And so throughout my pregnancy, I did a lot of breath work. And I very fortunately went on I was pregnant in that time where natural birth was a thing. And it was an option available. And I was actually with the Albany midwives. I don't know if you know about them?


Megan Rossiter  06:09

I do and their very, very sad and controversial closing. 


Carolyn Cowan  06:13

Yes, exactly. So I had two home births with the Albany midwives, I was really lucky at that time, it was the 90s for my first child, early 2000s. For my second and natural birth was a thing it was really propounded, you know, the spiritual midwifery book had come out. And so there was this huge movement for natural birth. And the breath work was what really helped me a day, particularly the breath work to release endorphins in labour, because I knew I wanted a natural labour, and I did have a natural labour. And I understood the power of releasing endorphins into the system in labour to help me go through the discomfort or pain of labour. I might have gone off your actual question...


Megan Rossiter  06:55

No, you know, that's, that's, it's, it's always interesting, isn't it to find out what's led somebody to create something. And I think understanding, like a real, like a really difficult journey to parenthood that you experienced. And that is, I think, we don't we get we go to school, and they give you sex ed lessons. And they're like, Well, that's it, you go with a man and then you have sex once and then you get pregnant. And that's it. And then you go and have babies. And then we get there. And you're like the reality of it, you go, Oh, I lost two pregnancies between two of the two children that I've gotten, and you suddenly start talking to people and you're like, oh, it's not. It's not the sort of always super straightforward journey that we're kind of, you know, we've spent most of our teens and 20s going, God, what if I get pregnant, and then you try and get pregnant and have a successful pregnancy and it's, yeah, potentially more stressful than we expect.


Carolyn Cowan  07:47

But over the years, so my son was born in 1998. So he's now 25, my daughter in 2002. She's 21. And I was a pregnancy yoga teacher trainer. I was a doula. I was actively working and running pregnancy classes. And then I stopped the pregnancy classes because my life changed. And I worked really with teacher training, training teachers. And then over the last 567 years, I moved away from that, but COVID came. And because I work with pre and postnatal trauma as a psychotherapist, I was really shocked by the care, the lack of care, and not that any midwife or doctor didn't want to care. But what happened in COVID was so shocking. And then how the press have weaponized pregnancy and weaponized labour and weaponized words around it. I didn't like I really didn't like, and I just thought, I know so much. It's almost a waste, not to put it out there because I have something to offer. And so that led to me approaching through my agent approaching Random House, and here we are,


Megan Rossiter  08:51

yeah, amazing. I think it's it. It's unlike any other book about pregnancy that I know. And it's full of really practical, like tangible things that people can start utilising kind of right away, right from the very, very beginning of pregnancy. So we've sort of sort of started to touch in lots of areas already. But I think maybe a helpful place to start would be if you're able to kind of give us a sort of lay woman's to her understanding of what you mean by the stress system, and how that exists in our body so that we can kind of begin to understand how breathwork might potentially be helpful.


Carolyn Cowan  09:30

Yes, okay. We have the capacity to defend, protect, and attack and escape. That's a capacity that we have as human beings. And if we understand how that system works, then we can recognise that we can go into that system and we can actually say to that system, I'm okay right now. So the stress system is made up as far as I'm concerned and in terms of what we need to know applied stress system for what we're doing. Talking about so the stress system is made up of five parts. One is the amygdala, a tiny part of your brain, your lower brain, your more animal brain is a tiny little gland and two parts called the amygdala. And the amygdala is job is to use past experience and past events to project into a future where you need to keep yourself safe. So the amygdala triggers a lot of thought processes and, and looks for the negative because that's its safety mechanism. So it magnifies the negative and then the amygdala is part of a five part system. So you have the amygdala, you have the vagus nerve, the vagus nerve goes from the centre of your forehead, through your eyes, your ears, your nose, your time, your lips, your throat, your heart, your liver, your stomach, it goes down to all the organs of your body, weirdly all the way down to the cervix and the pelvic floor. So that's the vagus nerve, you have hormonal flow. And obviously, we have 1000s of hormones and sciences discovering more of their value and their uses, and even more of them as it keeps delving into our body. So when you're triggered and stressed and anxious, your hormonal flow changes and it it becomes orientated towards escape, threat, defence attack. So the hormones change and they become stress hormones. And then you have the major muscles in your body, which is your larynx, your diaphragm, your psoas, your pelvic floor, and your thighs, in essence, and their job is to get you ready. In different ways your thighs help you run your adductors help you fold up, curl up, your pelvic floor tightens to hold your organs in your body. Your diaphragm goes faster to speed up your breathing, so you can escape and your throat tightens to communicate danger. So if I was stressed and anxious, my voice would be faster and higher. And then you have the fascia. And so the fast fascia is the connective tissue in the body through the ligaments, the muscles in the fascia contracts in relation to the vagus nerve and your whole body when you're stressed. Not only your thinking, but your physical body contracts in a story based on the past based on what your amygdala is perceiving and thinking. And then it's ready to to it's always in an escape mechanism or a defence mechanism. So the stress system is that people call it the ANS I think it's the onus I was getting them muddled up, but you have the the sympathetic system is when you're stressed, which sounds lovely, but it's a bitch. Yeah, the Pap, the parasympathetic is almost as if you've sent in the paramedics and you've stretched your body and you've breathed your way, or calm your thinking down to slow it down. So when you're in your parasympathetic, which is relaxed, your body is in something called homeostasis. But when you're in your stress system, your body's primed to escape or defend or attack. So I think perhaps another overview is that currently, it's been discovered that it's very easy to weaponize the amygdala, that's what data gathering and social media do is they trigger us to keep going back so they get more data. So we watch things and read things that trigger us. And then we have to find safety. That's the nature of our brain. So a lot of people are increasingly in their stress system. And if I relate that back to pregnancy, it's hard not to be stressed when you're pregnant for multiple reasons. But if you learn that you can take periods where you make yourself safe enough, it's really important for your baby, for your pregnancy, for your hormonal flow, and actually for any outcome in terms of labour, and progression in labour.


Megan Rossiter  13:47

Yeah, and that is certainly a focus of my work is the way that that autonomic nervous system impacts us in labour and how essentially the hormones that we need for labour work when we're in that calm parasympathetic state, and they don't work when we're in that sympathetic, that kind of stressed state. And so some people listening who've done our courses will be really familiar with that from the kind of perspective of how it impacts birth. But the focus of your work here was very much on how that kind of impacts pregnancy as well, which is, I think, just the perfect extension of if we've got the understanding of how important it is for us in labour to be able to access that kind of calm state of, of body and of mind, because that enables the basically all of the functions that happen in our body to work effectively in that kind of low stress mode. But that stress mode is obviously sometimes beneficial to us and sometimes important to us. It's about kind of differentiating, isn't it between, you know, it working when when we actually need to be stressed or we actually need to feel afraid or escape something, versus when we're kind of we're constantly pushed into that part. Part of our nervous system day to day, you know, we're in 2024. What are the things that you mentioned social media and kind of use of devices. And that's certainly something we talk about that can upper stress in labour and birth is the kind of constant reliance on machines and tracking things on apps and text messages, WhatsApp from friends and family. All of these things are kind of building our stress in labour. Are those the things that you would say the kind of key points of stress for people in pregnancy? Or does it go much wider than that? 


Carolyn Cowan  15:27

Well, I think it goes much wider than that. I mean, I think it's such a huge subject that we're looking at, because of course, what is it, it's something like 82% of women have children in the UK. But obviously, not every pregnancy, as you and I have already discussed turns out as we want it to outcomes, don't go the way we want. Miscarriage happens, we might have tried multiple times to get pregnant, we might have gone through IVF. Those are just the beginnings of you know, and then second, if you've had a miscarriage second pregnancy is, of course, it's terrifying, because you don't trust your body. So that's a stress life, on its own terms in your relationship, you already have another child, maybe you had a difficult labour of your foot, I mean, so many things just in real terms can contribute to stress. And I think that a lot of people are quite unconsciously stressed all the time. And if you start to learn that you don't have to be, and that you can access periods of actual really a blessing relief, or a sort of supreme calm, that's quite a nice thing to begin to learn to do. And in the book, I talk about how that facilitates what I call attunement with your children, with the people around you with your baby. Because if you calm down, your hormonal flow in your body changes and the foetus inside you calms down. But just as if you're stressed, let's say it's very painful to breastfeed, and you get really stressed that the baby that you're trying to breastfeed is going to pick up that stress. So calming yourself down and make so many things easier around you and facilitates better relationships.


Megan Rossiter  17:13

Yeah, and I interesting that you mentioned breastfeeding there. Because obviously, in order to in order for breast milk to be released from the breast, we need to be producing the hormone oxytocin, which again, is not created when we're in that kind of stress that day. So these tools, they're not just for pregnancy, but they're right through. I mean, you know, if you've got a toddler who's drawn on the wall that you've painted earlier that day, which has had has happened to me, it's that actually just having a tool to calm yourself, before you respond before you react, it is yeah, that's there for life, I guess. 


Carolyn Cowan  17:49

And it does make a difference. Because when you can calm yourself down your children, your babies, I mean, I my book does cover the fourth trimester. And I actually expand the fourth trimester to two years in my work, because I think it's a really difficult period of time. But if you can learn to calm yourself down, you actually teach your children that they can to you show them by example, that you can change how you feel. And you also don't come across I suppose in simplistic terms as a dangerous person. Because if you're stressed, if your voice is really fast and high, and your face is crumpled in anger, your child your baby will read that as being dangerous. And that's not fantastic. Unless, of course, there really is, like you said, a huge problem or there really is danger, then that's, that's valid. But most of the time our stress system is reacting to imagined danger, because that's what the amygdala does. And that's what the phones do. And that's what social media does. And that's what the news does. makes us worry about things we can't do anything about. 


Megan Rossiter  18:57

Yeah. 


Megan Rossiter  18:57

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Megan Rossiter  21:15

How much of reducing stress do you think has to be in part, restricting our consumption of social media and things? Is that something that you would recommend kind of hand in hand with the kind of actual proactive practice of something like breath work?


Carolyn Cowan  21:32

I think if you choose let's say you have somebody who chooses to stop being quite so stressed. And they might notice that I play a game with somebody and like the client and they'd say, Well notice, let's imagine you wake up in the morning and you're feeling quite nice, you know, it's a sunny day, or it's a crispy day or whatever you're feeling okay? Notice, check into your social media account, do your scrolling, and then see how you feel and just notice, because its job is to trigger you because that's why you'll go back because it'll trigger your amygdala and then you'll have to go back. And if you can notice, and if you choose that you want to calm yourself down in the bigger picture, then I would say, yes, you know, notice and maybe really take charge of that and limit what you look at and limit what you watch not don't watch. But if you're endlessly watching serial killer programmes, you're probably going to find that you don't trust anybody.


Megan Rossiter  22:26

Yet, you know, what's really interesting is that I used to really be interested in the like, True Crime podcast. Anytime I read a novel, it was always like a thriller. And then I had my first child now seven years ago, and ever since I have not I have not had the like mental capacity, the kind of emotional regulation to be able to engage in any of it. And is it true that there's a sort of a shift that happens in that amygdala forever when you become a mother for the first time? 


Carolyn Cowan  23:00

You must know the book Matressence? 


Megan Rossiter  23:02

Yes, yeah. 


Carolyn Cowan  23:03

Which I think is a wonderful book. But I wouldn't suggest a pregnant woman reads that you read it afterwards. Not because it's bad at all. But I think it's nothing you need to know until afterwards. But she's really interesting about brain changes in postnatal women. And I think that, you know, if you think about just in the simplest terms, you have a child and you open a huge box of love, you have another child and you open another box of love and you have you're going to have a third child is yet another box of love. And so what your amygdala and your your pineal gland in terms of your intuition and things like that does is it's very expansive in awareness of danger awareness of keeping the child safe. So yes, I think it does. 


Megan Rossiter  23:46

Yeah. When just when you mentioned that that's exactly where my where my brain went. So if we are then utilising something like breath work to hopefully help us access more periods of calm during pregnancy, how does this actually work? Like what is going on inside your mind or your body that is that that breathing is pausing to change,


Carolyn Cowan  24:12

breathing consciously or breathing on breathing?


Megan Rossiter  24:15

Conscious breath work. What are the shifts that that is causing within your your physiology?


Carolyn Cowan  24:22

It's a really, it's a really good question. If you if you do look at the book, you can notice that I've added stretching in I've added some very simple stretches because if you stretch before breath work if you stretch the front of your body, let's say seated on a chair with your knees wide, if you stretch the front of your body, you do a preliminary reset of the stress system. So I've added stretches in because they make such a difference they make breathwork much easier. So when you stretch the front of your body you access the vagus nerve when you like say fold forward or lean forward or Roll your shoulders forward, you're stretching the spinal nervous system. So different stretches affect different things. But when you then go into sit and breathe, let's imagine you've stretched first, you've calmed your system down by stretching, because by stretching, you've gone into the contraction of the sympathetic system. And you've said, literally, I'm okay. Something I always say is, if you're walking down a dark alley, and somebody's following you who you don't know, do not stretch, that's when the system has value. So if you're actually in real danger, don't stretch. But if you know you're at home, and like you said, the kids just painted on that freshly painted wall, and you're just about to sit down and breathe, your breath works going to be easier if you open up your system first. So you access the system by stretching the front of the body. When you sit down to breathe, most of the breaths I teach aim for five seconds in five seconds out. And by coming out of that 16 breaths a minute into five seconds, in five seconds out, you go into your system, and you say, I am actually okay, but thank you. It's a bit like, I don't know if you know about the hippocampus, which, for most people, their hippocampus has been so stressed by by, you know, the life events of 2024, that it's kind of gone, I can't do this anymore. That's a slightly different conversation, but you're going into your body by stretching and consciously breathing and saying I am okay right now. So on one level, it's counterintuitive to stretch if you're really stressed, but on another level, by trying it, you start to learn that you have agency, you have an ability to master your stress system. So when you're doing a five second breath, if you only breathe into your ribs, and you don't release your belly, you don't take over the diaphragm, and you don't have the lung capacity for a five second inhale. It's when you release your belly that your diaphragm drops, and then your lungs expand. Now, even at 40 weeks pregnant, you actually have the still that same tidal volume in your lungs, it's just that your heart has moved into the centre of your body and you have more access to your left lung. Very clever thing about pregnancy. So you can still actually release the belly a little bit, drop it down and expand your lung capacity. And it's that dropping down of the diaphragm. And in postnatal breathwork. In the book I teach, forcing the diaphragm up. So in either case, you're taking over the diaphragm. And that's a direct path into the stress system. Does that make sense? 


Megan Rossiter  27:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you're literally hacking? Yeah. So you've mentioned like a few specific techniques, I wonder if we could just take maybe a minute or two or however long it would take. I wonder if I could be your your demonstrator, if you're able to kind of that people could literally try this out for themselves as they're listening, or hand over to you but pick the but just pick any breath. So most people listening are probably pregnant. So thinking maybe like second third trimester, if they've been feeling a little bit stressed out, what would be your kind of go to tool or technique for,


Carolyn Cowan  28:31

okay, I've got one, which is, hey, it's called the resolution breath. It's in the book. And you could say New Year's resolutions, but perhaps your resolution could be, I'm going to calm myself down. Okay. So let me facilitate the practice just by first of all, suggesting that you sit up. So you want to be if you're in a sofa, Chair listening, you want to sit on the edge of the sofa chair so that your pelvis is just on the edge of the sofa chair and your knees are wide. So that what you're doing there is you're actually straightening the spine, you're stretching the diaphragm from from the start, and I'm sure as I see you sit up, can you feel that? Yeah, give it gives you more lung capacity. So if you're slouched in an armchair that isn't going to give you lung capacity, so you want to be sitting at a table chair or an office chair like you are. So if we just put our hands on our knees, wide knees, put your hands on your knees as much as you can, understanding that there's limited forward fold in pregnancy. So perhaps roll your shoulders forward and drop your head and notice you're stretching your back and breathe out so you're not putting any pressure on the uterus at all. And then as you inhale, push your belly forward, roll your shoulders back, raise your chin. Stretch up as high as you can and then really stick your tongue up and then exhale. So pushing back and if you're very pregnant, just roll your shoulders forward, open your shoulder blade Push your belly forward, open your tail, pull your shoulders back, raise your chin, take a huge inhale, stick your tongue out. And then exhale and just come to sitting straight and close your eyes. And if you notice, you've got a wash of dopamine moving through your body because releasing the fascia releases dopamine. And you've reset your hormone or slow for as long as you can bear. Can you feel that? Megan? Can you feel like, Oh, yeah. Yeah. So now you've made it much easier to breathe. So when you're what does it feel like, tell me what it feels like.


Megan Rossiter  30:42

I feel like I'm sitting much taller. Like there is more space in my body. Like I'm more comfortable in the way that I'm sitting. Relaxed.


Carolyn Cowan  30:51

Nice. Nice. Okay, so I don't know how to describe I'm going to make a cup out of my hands in front of my chest. So my, my top part of my arms is against my ribs, and my breasts underneath or on top of so I'm making like, I'm bringing my elbows into my ribs. And then I've got my hands just under my breasts coming up in front of me. So I'm making like a cup out of my hands. Can you see?


Megan Rossiter  31:16

Yeah, like a little Oliver Twist, please, sir, can I have some more? pose.


Carolyn Cowan  31:21

Exactly. So I'm going to face that bowl towards my towards me and I'm sitting up straight. Okay. So this is quite soothing this breath. Now, some people find it quite difficult to breathe and think there's a famous American president who couldn't walk and chew gum, I think it was Jimmy Carter. So if all you can do as you do this breath, because you've partly got to want to count is if all you can think is Thank you. You could use this breath to blow away negative thoughts. Okay, so imagine you have an intention, you say I'm setting an intention. So as you inhale, you're inhaling through the nose. There's a slight sense of look, look with your eyes, as if you could look into your hands, but close your eyes. So imagine that your hands are going to allow you to blow away negative things. But if you have resolutions like I'm going to be calm, I imagine that's what you blow out. So as you inhale, you're going to slightly lean back. belly breath, try for four seconds, and as you exhale, you're going to blow into your cupped hands, five seconds. Allowing yourself to lean slightly forward. So slow your breath down, inhale through your nose and blow out into your hands. Feel the coolness, really make sure your belly breathing as you inhale


Carolyn Cowan  32:59

and out through your lips, pursed lips


Carolyn Cowan  33:08

to become more and more gentle inhaling


Carolyn Cowan  33:15

the moving backwards and forwards is soothing. And maybe if you're doing this and you're thinking something negative, blow it out into your hands feel the coolness and feel the release. So keep moving and breathing, we'll do three more.


Carolyn Cowan  33:47

You might find that as you soften, you can even go to six or seven seconds, make this the last one. The last one and then as you finish the breath, just inhale and imagine your hands letting go of all those negative thoughts and then sit for a moment with your eyes closed and just notice how you feel. And I know that you Megan have to have lots of thoughts in your head. But perhaps the listener might notice that actually, there's no mind and there's perhaps almost no breath because the system has moved over to the parasympathetic system. And I would always say to sit for at least two minutes after a breath and allow the neural plasticity allow yourself to get accustomed to being okay. Without the stress system.


Megan Rossiter  34:41

I felt all relaxed now. So I'm gonna go have a nap. Now. Say love. I feel like we have to be nice and peaceful now people are coming out of that. If this is a kind of a practice that somebody wants to start to build into their day to day lives, you know If I know certainly for me, and certainly supporting people with Hypno, birthing preparation, and all of this kind of thing is that, you know, you can listen to something like this, you can Oh, yeah, that sounds absolutely brilliant. I'm going to do that. And you maybe do it like one time, and then it drops to the bottom of your to do list and the way it's gone. And maybe in a few years, when I remember learning a little bit about that, do you have any kind of tips in terms of the most effective way to start to become consistent with habits like movement or breath work? Or the two things kind of together?


Carolyn Cowan  35:35

I do. Actually, yes, I think that the first thing I don't know if a lot of people know this, but there's two ways to tell if you're stressed, or if you're in your stress system. And one is how you're thinking. So if you're thinking abandoned, left out, if you're jealous if you're angry, justified or not. If you're feeling like somehow you've been hard done by, you're in your stress system, because that's stressful thinking. So if you can notice that you're in your stress system, you can choose to do something about it. But of course, some people really like being in their stress system, because they want to ring someone up and go, Oh my God, you know what they said, or, but also you don't have to be there. So the first way you notice if you're in your stresses to miss how you're thinking. And the second way is, if you haven't had Botox or plastic surgery to freeze the muscles of your face, you might notice that you're frowning or you're clenching your jaw, or you're speaking really fast. Those are the indicators because it's the vagus nerve controlling your face. So noticing I'm frowning, noticing, Oh, am I feel anxious, that's when you can stretch and breathe. You can do the breath work on the bus, on the tube at your desk. It doesn't have to be done at a specific time. But I think that if you if you want to establish a particular practice, and I've been practising for a very long time, every day, I have a space, a place where I unroll my mat, I light a candle, I have flowers. And in the morning, that's where I do my practice every day. And that practice that that practice has made that space very sacred. And that space has made the practice very sacred. So I know once you've had children, and particularly you know, you can do this while you're pregnant if it's your first but if you've already got another child, it's quite difficult to fit it in. But perhaps you could do five minutes of breath work every time your child naps, and you will find that you'll be much more relaxed in that gap. And you'll probably get a lot more done. 


Megan Rossiter  37:45

Yeah, absolutely. 


Carolyn Cowan  37:47

postnatally, I would say, feeding times whether it's breast or bottle, you could while you're breathing. While you're feeling sorry, you could do a breath. And notice, you'll release oxytocin, you will increase the connection and make an agreement with yourself that while you're breastfeeding, you won't look at your phone, you'll put it on silent and turn it face down. So that you're actively taking steps to really connect and be present. And you're breaking a cycle of anxiety with that. 


Megan Rossiter  38:17

Yeah. And do you find that the impact of this breathwork is it an instant thing? Is it like long lasting? Or is it both? I mean, I can see you sitting there, and you come across as a very calm, relaxed, chilled out comfortable person. Do you feel like that, that your years worth of breathwork practice in your approach to that that sort of practice has has led to you being that or do you feel like you were drawn to the breath work because you've always been very calm person


Carolyn Cowan  38:48

I was not a very? No, I really wasn't a very calm person, especially when I first got sober. That was a really interesting time, because I drank and used drugs to forget. And then I got sober. And I remembered so it was bonkers. But it's interesting, because actually, just before coming on to you this morning, I was very stressed. A couple of things that happened that had stressed me. And I could notice that I was stressed. And so I actually stopped what I was doing, went stretched and breathed to like regulate my system to the point where I was ready to come here. And it's not that this is fake. It's just that I got stressed by two things this morning that put themselves together and I could notice that I wasn't present enough. I was drawn to breathwork right from the beginning because I noticed how instantaneous the effect was. And I liked it. And I suppose now yeah, I'm 32 years sober. I've been teaching breathwork and yoga for 28 years. It's a very long time. That it now is my nature to actually not like being stressed. And I will actively notice how I think and how I feel I'll actively do something about it. So, over time, I've changed my neural wiring to not like being stressed and how I teach as a breathwork. And a yoga teacher is that the mat is a magical place where you can learn, to play with neural plasticity and learn to be able to bear yourself in calm.


Megan Rossiter  40:21

Yeah, I think pregnancy is such a good time to start making these kind of changes to our lives. I think sudden we fall pregnant and our well being and our health and stuff suddenly comes to the forefront as a priority in a way that it might not have been for us before. And I love that you said, you've got like a special kind of area, actually where I'm sitting right now. So I had a baby in that COVID, lockdown, fun point of history, where there wasn't yoga classes and things for you when you're pregnant. And so I did, I was very, very ill when I was pregnant. And so I actually really like movement and yoga and stuff wasn't particularly possible for me. But I did go to a pregnancy yoga class, and I did it right here, literally where I'm recording with you today. And it, I didn't really do much yoga, I did a lot of breathing and sitting on a mat and connecting with other people that were pregnant and having those kind of conversations and things. But it really made this exact spot that I'm sitting talking to you today feel like a very safe, a very positive, a very kind of sacred space that I really associated with pregnancy. And then when I went into labour, very, very intuitively, this is exactly where I laboured for the vast, vast majority of it. And it created this real kind of space of of safety and positivity around the kind of birth preparation. So if there is a little and for people that can't see, because we're on a podcast, I'm literally sat at my desk, which is like a nook in the corner of my bedroom. So this is you don't need like a little a whole sort of sacred room, just a level corner that you can set up for whether that is breathwork or yoga or something when you're doing that practice can have the kind of psychological benefits of that can be far reaching beyond just that kind of instant moment of practising 


Carolyn Cowan  42:17

that is so true, because where I practice, I've lived in this house now for 11 years. And where I practice is actually my yoga teaching studio because I teach on Zoom only. And so every day I'm in there with candlelight with my dogs, you know, if it's like now it's dark and cold, you know. And when people walk into that room, the immediate feeling because it's also a sitting room, the immediate feeling is, wow, this room is so peaceful. And I'm sure it's because it's had so much of that energy put into it.


Megan Rossiter  42:48

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Wow, amazing. We have covered all sorts of things. But if somebody is now intrigued to go and buy your book, and I would really recommend it, it is because of Carolyn's background as a psychotherapist, it is a really big, I very much like to bring together the kind of the science of pregnancy and birth with the like the wisdom and the sacred nature of the experience of it. And this book does it really beautifully. I think it's very kind of, yeah, human experience. But also, if you're interested in that, that sciency bit that is very much in there as well. So if you would like to purchase it, it's called breathing for pregnancy, I will by Carolyn Cowen and I will place a link to it in the show notes of the podcast. And but Carolyn, if people would like to find you join you for a yoga class, is there anywhere in particular that we should be directing them? 


43:44

Yes,my website is the right place, which is www.CarolynCowan.com. And everything I offer there is, is unfortunately, I don't currently teach classes for pregnant women. But there is a whole section of all the breaths filmed actually from the book. So you can purchase that and do the breaths with me. So that is on there in the videos section.


Megan Rossiter  44:06

Amazing.


Carolyn Cowan  44:08

That's very generous of you. Thank you.


Megan Rossiter  44:10

No, not at all. Absolutely. Thank you so so much for joining me.


Carolyn Cowan  44:14

Megan, thank you. I really appreciate what you're doing. I think it's so needed


Megan Rossiter  44:24

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of the Birth-ed podcast. It's my actual life mission to get these conversations in front of as many expensive families as possible and you can be a part of this mission. Don't worry, I'm not recruiting you into my cult. But if you leave a five star rating and review of the podcast then we creep up the charts getting more ears, change more births, change more lives and come on, you know you want to be a part of that change.