S1E36 Mallory Combemale - Taking A Conscious Breath

Join me this week as I sit down with Mallory Combemale, founder of Breath Connection and Co-Founder & Chief Energy Officer at The Inheritance Project. 
Mallory, a Chinese-Singaporean-French-American change maker, is fascinated by identity and cross-cultural understanding.  With 10+ years experience consulting incredibly diverse groups from non-profits, to Fortune 100 executives, to government officials and entrepreneurs, this brilliant and gifted human being is committed to bring peace, balance AND understanding to the world, one conscious breath at a time.   

Mallory shares her incredible life's journey which began with a rather traumatic birth and an incredibly stressful childhood that even included abuse at an early age.  Through her own life experience, Mallory spent many years unpacking how these early impressions influenced her behavior and how she navigated her life.  After a rather remarkable educational and career path, she now spends her time helping others in dealing with things like conflict resolution out of an incredibly robust tool kit, which includes breathwork, yoga, ethnography and transformative coaching.

Mallory has a deep rooted desire to help bring people together and help them understand their differences and how they can find a shared perspective, even while holding on to what makes them different.  She fulfills this desire through her private practice as well as through her work at The Inheritance Project, a fascinating collaboration that helps leaders transform their inherited beliefs, behaviors and systems that can many times create unresolved division and conflict.

I ABSOLUTELY loved my time with Mallory and could have spent hours learning more about this beautiful soul and her incredibly important work. I am confident she will be back again, we have lots to talk about!   

To learn more about Breath Connection, visit: https://breathconnection.co/

To learn more about Mallory's 21 Day Breathwork Reset, visit:  https://breathconnection.co/breathwork , her 1:1 program to support you to integrate breathwork into your daily routine!

To learn more about The Inheritance Project, visit: https://www.inheritanceproject.org

Thank you for joining us and we can't wait to welcome you back again next week! New episodes drop every Thursday and can be found wherever you find your favorite podcasts!

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Want to learn more about our host, Eric Nicoll? Visit: https://ericnicoll.com

Transcript

0:05

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Just2u podcast. My name is Eric Nicole and I'm your host. If you are a first time listener, welcome to the conversation. And if you're a regular, I'm honored that you've decided to join me for another episode. The Just2u podcast is centered around a network of conversations, which are meant to connect us, to inspire https: otter. ai And who knows? We might even learn a little something new that ultimately allows us to live in the sweet spot that I like to call the just you, you space it being. Each week I have the privilege of sitting down for unscripted conversations with friends, family, colleagues, community leaders, and influencers that all share their own personal journeys. I hope that you enjoy our time together as much as I have. We are certainly gonna laugh, and yes, we might even cry a little, but in the end, we're gonna know that we're not alone during our life's journey. So, are you ready? Great, let's do this. Welcome to The Conversation. All right, everyone. Welcome to today's episode. I am particularly excited today to introduce you to my guest. We're going to have a amazing conversation and I'd like to introduce everyone to Mallory Kambamal. Hi Mallory. Hello. It's such a pleasure to be here, Eric. Thank you so much for joining me today. I woke up this morning and as I was doing my daily. practice, which includes some meditation and some breath work and some mantra work and some yoga. I immediately got a smile on my face knowing that we were going to talk today. We recently met at a very large international convention in Las Vegas. And your session that you did, which we're going to talk about that incorporated breath work was Such an amazing way to kick off what is typically a very hectic and crazy week with 16 or 17 thousand people So thank you for really setting the tone and the intention for me that week because I used quite a few of your techniques Throughout those course of those three days. So I'm glad you're here I'm so happy to hear that. That brings me so much joy. It's my greatest joy to bring these tools to more and more people that are so simple and can help us manage the everyday challenges we have to work through in life. Whether it's going to a 17, 000 person convention in Las Vegas or being in an argument with our spouse or whatever it happens to be. Well, we're going to talk about, excuse me, the breath work. And we're going to talk about some work that you do with another organization that you're co founder, but I want to take a second just to give everyone a little bit of background. Then we're going to jump right in. I was fascinated that you were absolutely stunning, beautiful energy and also just. The most beautiful eyes and the most beautiful smile. You're Chinese, Singaporean, French and American, right? Correct. And you were raised in London. Yes. Northwest London. I love that. That's so cool. So give a brief little, if you don't mind, family history, where does the Chinese, Singaporean, French American come into play? Sure. I was born in Singapore. My mom is Third generation Chinese Singaporean. So her family migrated from China during the civil war to Singapore, like many families. And my dad's side, he is French and American. His mom is American from New York city. His father is French from Paris, which is where my last name comes from my French grandfather. And he grew up in Manhattan. And when I was about one year old, we moved from Singapore to London for a career opportunity for my dad, which was a really big change for my mom who'd never lived outside of Asia before. Wow. And definitely it was hard adjusting to the climate. And also it was a lot of pressure on my parents to be in a foreign country. where they had no family, where they knew nobody, and they had no support system, and a young child. I also something I've been contemplating a lot recently is the fact that I had a very traumatic birth, and my mom had to have an emergency c section against her will. And had very bad postnatal depression. And I've been unraveling more how those very early moments really affected my attachment with her. And gave me this deep sense of insecurity, I think, from a very young age, which I think many humans share for one reason or another. And when I was younger, my parents were under a lot of stress and they had a lot of conflict around money around how to raise the family and this foreign country and culture. And I was often in the middle of that. So I think because of witnessing so much conflict and arguing that sometimes became violent. And physically abusive towards me occasionally that really affected my nervous system and it took me many years to really understand and I'm still unraveling how it did. And I think that we can talk more about, about all of these things, but it's been a big part of my life's journey to understand how those impressions that were made in childhood that. I wasn't even aware of for so long was influencing my life's behavior. And for much of my young adulthood and early career, I was very much a people pleaser and would want to avoid conflict at all costs. It's ironic because I now do a lot of work in conflict resolution, which is actually part of what I studied in college. I think that my desire to help bring people together and help them understand their differences and how we can find a shared perspective, even while holding what makes us different comes a lot from my multicultural upbringing and seeing a lot of the beauty of the cultural exchange, but also a lot of the, the challenges. Too. Sure, sure. Well you are in the health and wellness industry that field and dealing with breath work You're the, the founder of Breath Connection. And before I go into more detail on that, I was thinking the other day as we've been. Experiencing this shift in the meetings and industry which is where you and I met is finally taking wellness and elements of wellness practices and looking to see how we can. Incorporate, them into our meetings and events. And I find it really fascinating because this is, you know, breath work, meditation a lot of the practices that you do and have experienced are not new. They've been around forever. But there's this genesis of, Oh, it's finally time that we take a look at what stress is doing to us, what, you know, our anxiety is doing to us. And so again, founder of breath connection for those that are listening that may not know. We'll get into a little more detail about breath work, but you also practice Reiki, which is a technique that uses energy to force stress and anxiety to help you relax. And also What I thought was really interesting when I was reading your bio is it said that you're fascinated by identity and cross cultural understanding. 10 years of consulting experience. So you've worked with fortune 100 companies, with executives, non profits, government officials, and entrepreneurs, and you have a lot in your toolkit. We're going to talk about that as well, but I really. I'm glad that we're having this conversation today because there's so much happening in our world. There is a lot of information coming at us while we're also trying to manage our own daily lives, our work, our families, our schedules our health. It's my lane these days. And the importance of Self care again, not one of those words that I want to start using as cliche, but self care is super important because if we don't take care of ourselves, then we are, in my opinion, no good to anyone. And so, as I mentioned, when we met, we did this breathwork session, which set the tone for me for the entire three days to really focus on myself, my health, my wellness, and how I was showing up for people. And so I first want to say, thank you for that. But before we get into the details of Breath Connection and the Inheritance Project, which is the organization you are co founder and chief energy officer of, I'd like to take you back a little bit. Again, you briefly talked about your childhood, where you were born. Are you an only child? Now I have a younger brother who's five years younger. Okay, younger brother. And where was he born? In London. In London. And as a child and being cross cultural did you find that difficult growing up in London? Did you see yourself represented? Did you find it easy to fit into this new city having come from Singapore? Honestly, I never thought too much about this until I left London. I grew up in a really multicultural neighborhood where I went to high school. It was probably 50 percent immigrant in my class. So most of the community was from South Asia, India, primarily. And many different regions from that country represented. So I grew up around a lot of immigrant communities and it was just quite normal to me that everyone's family came from a different place, even though there were no other Chinese Singaporean French Americans around, I didn't feel that out of place in high school. It was only when I received the opportunity to. Go to University of Virginia on a scholarship, which was a little unexpected and something that I hadn't planned but took the opportunity and it was only when I left multicultural London and ended up in that environment in Charlottesville, Virginia, that I really started to feel other. And that's where my fascination with identity and cross cultural understanding really started. I started taking anthropology classes. My degree is in global development studies, which was a wonderful interdisciplinary degree that was almost like pre grad school because we had to write a thesis in a really rigorous research methodology. Format and I ended up writing on the multiracial student experience and did an ethnography of a lot of other multiracial students. And so that was my thesis project because I really enjoyed doing it. Wanted to understand myself and what was happening with me. It was the first time going to Virginia where I had people ask me things like, what are you? Or, you know, all these ways that people really want to understand what box can I put you in so that it makes sense in my mind. And if I would tell people, oh, I'm from London, it was this blank look of Does not compute. They're like, no, but where are you really from? Where are your parents from? I'm trying to, to place me in that way, which I never really experienced in, in high school or in London, honestly. So that's where that interest was really born and where I was able to study it in a really rigorous academic way. And I'm really grateful for that time and the education I received because. In a lot of ways, set the tone for the rest of my life's work of marrying lived experience with rigorous research and blending those into the way that I teach and communicate. Which really solidifies my point on that this movement. And identity and self reflection and finding oneself why I titled this podcast. Just do you simply because we need to be reminded quite often to just be ourselves is really fascinating to me for those who don't know what ethnography is. What is that? Cause I'm one of those people. Oh yeah. Thank you. So thank you for asking. Ethnography comes from. It's a research modality from the discipline of anthropology, which originally was about studying other cultures. So there's, you know, there, it's a complex topic and field because the origins of it were European. people going out to other parts of the world and studying these other cultures and trying to document them in a rigorous scientific way, according to the scientific method. So that's the origin of ethnography. You can imagine this was happening in the early 1900s. late 1800s during the peak of colonial empire. So you can imagine why there's a lot of complexity in this field. However, what I really love about ethnography as a research modality is that it's purely qualitative. So it's not font based at all. It's all 100 percent based on interviewing and having conversations often long unstructured conversations with the people you're trying to understand better. So the skills that I learned being a trained ethnographer really helped me as a strategy consultant in my career. Being able to go into different organizations and really quickly understand their culture and how people were interacting with each other and being able to interview people in a really effective way through some of those tools. So I'm really grateful for that training. It really helps me, I think, connect with others and have a framework for how to understand the world and how people are building culture and community with one another in ways that are often. Implicit, so not explicit and unspoken. And you know, we so often go into a space and code switch even unconsciously, like maybe you. subconsciously behave a little differently at a wellness summit compared to the Las Vegas corporate convention that we were at. And we just subconsciously pick up these rules and norms of how we're supposed to be in different spaces. And ethnography kind of taught me how to observe that. and identify what's going on and articulate it. It sounds like something that should be taught in school. So many things should be taught in school, like breathwork. But when you think about it, when you're talking about creating this conversation around understanding, I, I truly believe it's a, missed opportunity in school. We may teach English, we teach history, we teach science, but we don't teach how to relate to each other, how to connect with each other, how to have conversations, especially these days. It's just, everything's electronic. I sound like my grandfather, but everything is electronic and happening so fast. And, but we, if we, if we taught that, I really believe that we would live in a very different world if we taught that early on so that when you went out into the world after your high school and you're, you know, you're developmental years and you're finding yourself we talked about this on an earlier episode. Somebody said something about being in their thirties and still figuring it out. And I go, do we ever really figure it out? Aren't we figuring it out until we're no longer Potentially in this lifetime. I really believe that. And so having the tools at a younger age as you go into college or even coming out of college to have that ability, I think would be so beneficial. I think business would be different. I think entrepreneurship would be different. It just seems like it would be something that would be really valuable to teach in schools. Especially these days. Great explanation. What is sustained dialogue? This was an organization that I was involved with also while I was at the University of Virginia, which gave me many, many gifts. I'm eternally grateful to the Jefferson Scholars Foundation for bringing me there and supporting me. Sustained Dialogue originally was a peacekeeping and conflict resolution methodology that was created by Dr. Harold Saunders, who played a leading role in negotiating some of the 1970s peace treaties between Israel and Palestine. And his philosophy developed through experience, not just in that situation, but negotiating many other high intensity of violent international conflicts. Was that before you can even start to talk about the terms of an agreement, and this is something that I noticed happens a lot in the business world too. We want to jump straight into what is the agreement? What is the action plan? What are all the details? His philosophy was before you do that, you have to first make space for each of the parties involved to truly, deeply listen to and understand the other's experience. And if that step doesn't take place. It's actually near impossible to find a resolution. And it's sounds simple. Oh yeah. We just need to listen and understand each other. But when there's generations of pain and trauma there that, you know, really keeps you stuck in your own Perspective. It's a very hard when you're so deep in your own pain to make space for another person's pain and to make space to listen to their experience. So he developed a whole suite of techniques and methodologies to allow that dialogue to happen. And it's called sustained dialogue because it's not a process that you can do in one hour or one day to really truly find resolution. It requires a willingness for everyone involved to be part of a sustained process that unfolds over time and happens piece By piece and I was really lucky to find this organization when I was an undergrad and get trained in this methodology and I used to facilitate these conversations that were on all different highly charged topics mostly around race relations, which was very Interesting for me as a somewhat an outsider to American culture and to the South to be able to hold space for that but also around gender, sexuality a lot of hot button political topics. And, you know, just really made such an impact on me because at the same time I was taking all these global development courses and learning about colonization and systemic racism and all these things that I felt so powerless to change. And It was very depressing and disheartening in some ways, although I'm grateful for that education to not be blind to the realities of the world, the contrast between those classes. And then going to these sustained dialogue groups where I really saw people change their whole way of seeing the world. People change their whole preconceived ideas about one another. People who were previously raised with homophobic beliefs meet someone who's gay for the first time in that group and completely change their whole perspective and in fact become friends with that person. Like those moments made me feel like, wow, change is actually possible on an individual by individual level. And that's where I really started to investigate and explore what is my role and that this skill set of facilitation is something that I could really bring to be of service to the world as a way of addressing a lot of these issues that I was learning about that were that felt so big and hard to, to affect. It's fascinating, especially as it relates to what we're going through right now in our current world. And that's not the topic of this conversation, but I'm sitting, listening, thinking few people could use some conflict resolution and some sustained dialogue again, something that is so important in. Our developments and being able to navigate through our adulthood, and we just simply don't teach it. And it's a shame. And I'm grateful to this organization who also brought you out here to have you start to have a conversation because I believe in my heart of hearts that it only takes one voice to start to shift the paradigm. That we live in and you're out doing that. So great transition to go from that to then, how did you get into this breath connection and what did you see? Had you been practicing, had you been introduced to it? How did you find your way into this now, new opportunity? I actually started practicing yoga also while I was at college in Virginia. And. First, I just went as a exercise class, but I started having really deep, profound experiences. For example, I hadn't cried in over 10 years. And then I cried for the first time doing camel pose in a yoga class. And I started having all these flashbacks in classes of traumatic memories from my childhood that I had repressed or had never really thought about. And After yoga class, I would feel calm and relaxed. For the whole day after where, you know, at that time in my life, I was extremely high strung, had a lot of anxiety. I actually was recommended that I go on anti anxiety meds, which I chose not to do. Because I was finding yoga and I was like, well, I kind of have an anti anxiety med. Like if I just go to yoga class, I feel so much better the whole day. And so that really started my journey investigating all of these spiritual traditions and tools, because I, Was having such a profound inner experience. I wanted to understand what was actually happening. Where do these practices come from? This is clearly not just an exercise plot. Something deeper is going on here. So that really started my journey. And then I moved to New York city and started my career as a strategy consultant. And at the same time, I was taking yoga teacher trainings constantly every weekend. And. Getting really deep into learning about the ancient Vedic philosophy, meditation techniques. This is also when I started studying Reiki. I was kind of drinking from a fire hose. Learning all these different traditions, because I was felt similarly to you. Like, why isn't anyone teaching this at school? This is so. Wild that I have so much power to shift how I feel every day. And I can do a practice. That's just me, my breath and my body. I don't need any equipment, don't need any fancy clothing or anything. I can just take 10 minutes and feel completely different. And I was awestruck by this, especially living in New York city, working in a very high pressure career. I wouldn't have. Survived or thrived or excelled in that world if I didn't have these tools and I'm so grateful and a couple of years into that. I start, I was very deep into understanding yoga and breath from a philosophical perspective and studying a lot of the old Sanskrit texts. But I. Felt that I wasn't able to communicate all of this information to my friends or other people who, you know, haven't weren't taking such intensive trainings. And I really wanted a language to be able to explain what was happening. And I also really wanted to understand what was happening in my body. on a physiological level. So that's when I took a training at the Nalanda Institute, which I highly recommend. It was life changing for me. And that training was actually designed for healthcare professionals and psychiatrists to use breath work and more somatic modalities into their work. But because that was most of the audience in the training, it was very technical and scientific and I loved it. And I learned so much about the brain and the nervous system. And I also had a moment again, where I thought, wow, I went through my whole education and I never got taught about my own body, really like what's going on in there. What happens when I get stressed? How is that impacting my ability to make decisions? And I was learning all this also very cutting edge at the time neuroscience research that was coming out about meditation and breath and how it was impacting the brain, really confirming in a different language, everything that the ancient texts talk about. And so. I may because of my multicultural background, also, you know, being both from the East and the West saw this opportunity to marry the ancient traditions and the grounding in that lineage with this more modern scientific perspective and to be able to connect that for people. when it comes to breath. So that's what I'm really passionate about. And what I do with breath connection is help people one integrate really simple techniques they can do with their breath on their own into their daily life and make it an easy part of their routine, but then actually understand what's happening in your brain, in your body when you do these things. And that's something that I found in my early days of. Doing yoga was sorely missing. I would just go to class and have all these intense experiences. The teacher never was explaining to me what's happening in my nervous system. What's happening in my brain. Why is the practice having this effect on me? I had to spend years searching on my own to try to understand what was going on inside me. And so I'm really grateful now to be synthesize all of this for people in a way that's It's much more accessible. And every time, like the experience that I, I guided for all of you in Las Vegas, even in a short session session like that, I like to integrate the science with the practice so that people have a more holistic understanding of what they're doing. Yeah. I want to go back just real quick, cause you said some beautiful things there. And I think what's important for the listener to understand is that. And I'm speaking from experience and I've been on this health and wellness journey now for decades and have tried a lot of things interesting things, some not so interesting things some kind of fad things that kind of have fallen away. But one of the things that I am most grateful for is the experiences that I have had more so in the last probably decade than before was Being very aware of how important it was for me to understand what the process was with the particular modality that I was going through. So when I would go through a breathwork session, I wanted to find out, just like you said, why is it important? What's the purpose? What's the science behind, or what's the physiology behind this breathwork? I am somebody, I'm 58 next week. I am somebody who walks through this world and I hold my breath. I don't know why, but I hold my breath and I've done it. I think it's a coping mechanism or protection, but I will be getting the most amazing massage. I, I hearkened back to being in South Africa. getting this massage at the resort we were staying at. And the therapist, Ben said, he's like, Are you going to breathe at all during this massage? Because I was holding my breath. And I didn't even know that I was doing it was subconscious. And that's happened multiple times. And so breath was always something very interesting to me and something that I was always very aware of. Now cut to many, many years later, I'm now hyper focused on breathwork because of not only what it does to relax me, but I'm also very conscious of how I'm breathing throughout the night, how I'm breathing during the day, when I get into a stress situation, and I'm able to catch myself now when I'm holding my breath because I can sense it. So. I want people who are listening to understand that when we talk about these modalities or these opportunities for breathwork or yoga or Reiki, that there is a scientific backing. There is not just a fad of this is what's going to help you relieve stress. There are things happening within your body that are beneficial to you both short term and long term to be able to have a healthy life. Am I, am I correct in that? Am I, am I tracking? Cause that's kind of how I see it, but it's really important. And I, I find it really interesting and I'm going to get probably a little flack for this, but it's okay. Cause it's my podcast. But I've been to several events over the past. eight, nine months, and I've been to some yoga classes and I've been to some great experiences like the wellness summit that I went to and meeting you. And I'm also a people watcher because I love to experience people. And I find it fascinating that even in yoga classes, Pilates classes, stretching classes, breathwork classes, that we are a culture of having to be connected to our phones. And I was watching people actually check their phones and their emails during a breathwork session and stretching session in our Newport beach experience. And I find it fascinating. We are so disconnected to our own bodies that we almost go through these practices. Not. Realizing the benefits, the true benefits. I'm sure we're getting a little bit, but I'm worried that we're at this place where. We have to step away from the phone, the electronics, the technology, the news, the families, the dog to take time for ourselves, or we're in for a whole heap of trouble. And that's just my belief because of what I've been experiencing. I'll share a quick little experience. I want to talk a little bit more about breath work. I earlier this AFib, didn't know that I had it, thought it was anxiety. And I was under the care of my doctor. Taking all these anti anxiety medications to try to deal with this, what I thought was anxiety, the medications made it worse, they made me uncomfortable, I was even more anxious, and so the drugs weren't really helping. What was interesting to me was I was masking what I thought was anxiety for something that was a little more serious, which was AFib. And I had the procedure for AFib and throughout the procedure and the recovery, I knew that being conscious of my body and being conscious of my healing was going to help me heal faster, but also prevent it from happening again, because I am not going down that road. It was not a pleasant experience, although I'm very grateful for the surgeon and the doctors. But I was struggling the first couple of months and it wasn't until one of my, I call them my life squad told me, have you been practicing your breath work? Have you been practicing your yoga? And the answer to her was no. And I share this with a lot of people and they're like, I don't have time in the morning to get up and do an hour yoga, half an hour breath work. And I keep saying to them, it's not about that. I do 10 minutes of breath work. I do 10 minutes of a mantra. I do 15 minutes of stretching. I do 20 minutes of yoga. And then I spend some time reading. I also do some color therapy with a mandala book. And what that does for me every morning is it allows me to get myself grounded. It gets me breathing. It gets me centered. And my days have absolutely changed as a result of those practices. And so I'm doing short little blips and people don't have to do exactly what I'm doing. That's what works for me. Right. I'm sure when you work with your clients and the people that you're working with, overwhelm tends to be a big conversation. I don't have time. So when you're working with people and you're working through yoga or breath work or the Reiki process with people, what is your experience of the person who may be the resistor? Having gone through that first or second experience, do you automatically see a big shift in their mindset as to the benefits of that? Or do you feel that we're too caught up and our habitual behavior? Does that make sense? Yes, there's a lot here. So I think there are two things that I want to share. The first about the phones and our habitual behavior. Well, the thing is The phones are designed intentionally to be addictive and the people who design the apps and the technology, they're experts on the latest neuroscience and how to hook our attention. And they're using all this information to their advantage to monetize our attention. So I want to Relieve anyone listening because I do it too. I and find myself scrolling on Instagram, even though I know 100 percent better, you know that that's not a great use of my time. It's not good for my nervous system or my brain. I still do it because the pattern is so deep, and it's so intentionally designed to hook our attention actually requires a lot of energy to break free of those habitual patterns. So the design of technology and then also, you know, checking your phone constantly, it's Basically a similar kind of pattern in your nervous system as any other kind of addiction. I know in our society, when we say addiction, people tend to think, Oh, that's only if you're taking hard drugs. And I I'm not an addict because I don't do those substances. Actually, we all have addiction issues. Every single one of us, the addiction is our habitual patterns that keep us face it, keep us avoiding. Our own discomfort or avoiding feeling our pain or some experience that we don't want to feel, and it's a distraction and soothing mechanism, and so it's totally understandable that we have that because most of us in our society are have experienced some kind of trauma, whether most more people than most actually pretty extreme if you look at the. Adverse childhood experiences, surveys and everything that that are being done more done more nowadays. And so it's a perfectly normal trauma response to have an addictive pattern that prevents you from dealing with the intensity of trauma. Your inner experience because it would just be so overwhelming to the nervous system so I want to relieve anyone listening from like Shame if they of course these had patterns or tendencies because we all do And that might sound really depressing but the You know, the positive flip side of that is that it's actually possible to change. And our brains are neuroplastic and we can create new habits and we can rewire our patterns. And one of the best ways to do that is through breath and meditation. Now there's so much scientific research out there about this, about how when you engage in these practices, you're not just You know, improving in certain areas, what you're actually doing is making your brain more flexible and adaptable to learn any kind of new skill or any kind of new pattern, which is why I often notice that when people start taking up these daily practices, they're sometimes go through incredible life transformations in a really short amount of time, or a take on a new career, or finally make the change in their life that they've been wanting to make for so long, but couldn't it's because they're actually. Working on their brain to make their brain more flexible and able to do new things, which I think is so cool that we have that capacity as humans. And I think, you know, for anyone to make any change in your life, you have to really want to go through the process of it. And so. You know, if you're not, if you're, if someone's really resistant or at a time in their life when they're not able to give that full commitment, then that's okay, I trust that they'll come back when the time is right, but I'm really lucky to work with a lot of people one on one and my 21 day program who come to me because they've been stuck in some of these patterns for a long time and they're ready to finally make a change and doing just 20 minutes of breath work a day which is. You know, even for the busiest person possible to fit into your schedule, you know and I always work with people to tailor the practice to something that works for their body or nervous system. So everyone does a different practice based on where they are in their journey, based on their health condition, what their body needs. And everyone works it into their lifestyle in a different way because we all have different commitments. Some people, you know, if you have a family or a certain type of job or whatever, we're all going to need a different routine. We all have different circadian rhythms. And so that's why I love working with people one on one to create that really personalized experience. And I think a lot of the reason why sometimes people have resistance to these practices is because they're not taught in that personalized way. They're taught. Like a one size fits all like everyone come do this same meditation technique. Then someone tries it. It doesn't work for them. And they think, Oh, meditation's not for me, but they don't realize that there are hundreds of other techniques, hundreds of other traditions, so many different breathwork practices. And so I really believe there is a technique for everyone that will meet you exactly where you're at. That will really serve your life. It's just that most of them aren't. really accessible or widely taught. And there's a lot of misconceptions about what meditation and breathwork is and is not right now. So I just don't know where I'm trying to find a way to close up this thought. I was going to close it for you because I think that's really interesting There is a lot of talk about what it is and distinctions, but I think it's important for people to just take the step. That's what I was going to say because I know so many people who take a look at, you know, what I do and they're like, Oh, I could never do that. Or I don't have the patience and I'm like, you just got to try because if you don't try, you'll never know. And it is about finding the right. one for you, whether that would be yoga or Pilates. I didn't think Pilates was going to be my thing. And it's one of the most amazing things because of what it does to my body, right? So I feel different when I go to that class than I would go to a yoga class. I'm incredibly unflexible. And so yoga for me is sometimes difficult. The Pilates completely different. I've done several types of breathwork sessions. I've done several types of sound bath healings that have been incorporated with breathwork. So when you find the thing that you love and you find the thing that makes a difference, what you said earlier is true. It's the consistency and building it into your life as a practice. I would be happy and joyful every morning if I just got up, listened to my music and colored in that coloring book every day. It just brings me joy, right? It puts me in a great space. Let's transition a little bit Transcribed And the time that we have left today, because I think you and I could have an entire podcast episode on just what is breath work? What does it do? Same thing with meditation and all that. Talk a little bit about the inheritance project, because I'm really fascinated by what you and your co founders are doing. Sure. Well, first I want to define what we mean by inheritance, because sometimes when people hear that name, they think, Oh, you do. Estate planning for wealthy people or taxes or something like that. But no, we're not just talking about physical or monetary inheritance. We're talking about everything that we inherit from our upbringing and past generations, including ancestry genetics, but also a lot of these intangible things. Like. Our beliefs, our stories about the world, the way we were taught to see things, the socioeconomic context that we grew up in our identity. And so all of these things are subconsciously shaping our behavior and how we see the world. And. I, you know, began this journey of unpacking my own inheritance. I shared with you some of my own process of inquiry when I was younger. And I was also in my twenties working as a strategy consultant, doing all these strategy retreats for a C suite executive teams and seeing that even though a lot of the time they were. homogenous teams on the surface, people would still get into a lot of conflict because they were coming from different inheritances, different ways of seeing the world, different trainings, different, different perspectives, and we're not able to connect or find resolution. And so I also started observing that all of these people in our sessions were in a state of extreme stress. And I was learning a lot about stress and the nervous system at the time. And One of the things I learned was that when we're in a state of stress, our prefrontal cortex, which is the front part of our brain, that's actually unique to humans. All other mammals don't have such a large developed prefrontal cortex, and it's what gives humans our ability to empathize with one another, to think creatively, to collaborate, and to and to and to be logical as well. So all of these human superpowers basically get shut down when we're stressed and we enter a pure survival state. And I think this is pretty You know, relatable to anyone who's listening. If you just think about your own personal experience, think about a time when you're really stressed out. Is that the time when you're having the best creative ideas or you're empathizing the most with other people. And I'd also been trained in this conflict resolution methodology that's based on empathy. And I was noticing that, Oh, it's literally physiologically impossible to have empathy when you're in a state of extreme stress, that part of the brain that governs that literally goes offline. And so I was realizing that if I was really to do a good job facilitating these sessions for teams to create a good strategy to find resolution with one another, I needed to actually address the nervous system and what was happening physiologically. And so I started trying to weave breath work into these sessions. The firm that I was working for was quite conservative and not super open to it. And I eventually got to a point where I. Saw that doing things in that traditional business way was really limited and it's real impact and not actually delivering the results that we said that we wanted to deliver for our clients. And I wanted to do things in a more authentic, holistic way that wove together all these different threads that we've talked about in my life and my studies. And my friend Kazia came to me about this time and told me about her vision for inheritance project, which was. Basically, going back to your, your original comment earlier in our conversation about why isn't everyone taught when we're young in school, how to understand ourselves how to relate to other people, how to empathize, how to resolve conflict, and her vision is really to create programming that could be implemented in Companies, schools, universities, every institution, communities of our society to basically teach these skills and give people the opportunity to reflect on and unpack their own inheritance, the inherited patterns that they're carrying from their childhood. I mentioned earlier, one of the things that I've really had to work through as a leader is. being averse to conflict and being a people pleaser and saying yes when I that really wasn't the right response and that comes from this inherited. You know, trauma response from going through physical abuse and being in a household where there was a lot of conflict when I was a child. And these are all topics that in the professional world have been considered taboo for a long time and not able to be broached in that way. And so Our vision for inheritance project is to break through those taboos to make some of these invisible things that deeply govern our behavior. But we all have a shared culture agreement that we're not going to talk about them or address them, even though they're actually deeply shaping our interactions and the outcomes of our work to actually have a space to do all of that and a rigorous process that's based in science that's based in a synthesis of all these different modalities that our founding team have studied throughout the course of our life. So that is the vision for inheritance project. And what it looks like now. The programming that we do is an intensive leadership retreat called the chrysalis. That is A three day immersion into reflecting on who you are as a leader, your inheritance, your background, your upbringing, all the things that make you, you all the gifts of that. But then also all those habitual patterns, all those addictive tendencies that, you know, you're ready to let go off and actually learning tools like breath work, conflict resolution, skilled, and really practical. Skills that you can go away and implement in your daily life afterwards. And it's followed by three months of integration coaching, because that's a big part of our, our, our model too, is like we talked about with sustained dialogue, you can't change. overnight, it's unrealistic to think even after a really meaningful retreat or powerful peak experience, everything's going to be different. And having that support and a process to actually make those small daily changes in your life, whether it's just doing five minutes of breath work every day, or five minutes of your mandala coloring book, or whatever it is for you that helps you. Unwind some of those patterns and show up as the kind of leader that you actually want to be in the world. So our, our next one is going to be in early April. And where is it held? The in person is going to be in the Hudson Valley. We're all based in New York city, so it will be in the New York city area. And then all the follow up three months of coaching are all virtual virtual. It's it's fascinating. I wonder are, are the companies that are adopting this quickly, more entrepreneurial based or fortune 100 based, or is it a mix of both? Like, what are you, what's your experience of who's, I don't want to say taking the bait, that sounds wrong, but who's, who's biting on this kind of practice and retreat for their company? It's really interesting. We've had a very big mix of different clients. So the experience I was talking about, You can enroll as an individual, regardless of where you work. And we also offer that same exact experience to teams. And I've actually been surprised by the type of clients that we get. Some of them may be more traditional, like older companies that have been around for, you A hundred years financial services. I think what brings people to us is if your team is going through some kind of conflict or some kind of challenge in the way that you work together, that's really affecting your outcomes. Like if people are not delivering on their KPIs, if people are, you know, the conflict that's going on is really impacting the business. Then people are open to solutions that are more innovative or different or new because whatever they've been doing before hasn't worked. So I've honestly been surprised by some of the people who've come to us, but I think that regardless of the industry or the type of company, what they all share, I think the leaders who tend to decide to work with us, what those people all share is a genuine desire to make things better, to do things differently, to see that the inherited ways of working in the organization is not actually serving the vision that they have and being willing to experiment with something different. And there are those types of leaders in all different types of organizations. But those, those tend to be the type of people who we work with. Yeah. Mallory, I've been doing this podcast now since February and, you know, 40 some episodes in and have had a lot of conversations and what. What empowers me and what makes me feel so content with what we're doing and the conversations that we're having is that there is a time and a place for a shift. And I think the unpacking of your inheritance is a beautiful way to do it. I'm super intrigued by that concept and by that process. And I am hopeful that we start to see a major shift. There are so many people out in the world like you, like your colleagues, like others that are out making a difference. And what is making the most impression on me is That no one's coming at it from a place of, it's just me. I'm just one voice. I'm not going to make a difference. It's we are here, whether it's my friend, who I had a conversation with yesterday, who's out campaigning to you and your colleagues are touching and moving and inspiring and changing people's lives And as we continue to do that, the ripple effect will happen, but I'm Really hopeful that we're in this time now where people realize that something's got to change. Something's got to shift or what hasn't been working in the past needs to be addressed. And I think it's great. I think it is organic. I don't think it is something that is force fed to someone. Cause you said it earlier, they have to be willing. First, they have to be ready. Second, they have to be willing to do the work, because this is not something that comes overnight. Like you said, the yoga practices takes time to be able to master some of those moves. I still fall on my face at times with some of those moves, just like it would in this course with The inheritance project, you need that three month follow up, right? You need that opportunity to have the consistent coaching. And so I'm super grateful that there are people like you out in the world, doing the things that you do. You impacted me in a very small amount of time. In that session, I. Felt like I was the only person in that room. I felt the breath work was new and different. It's not what I've been practicing, but it's different. And it was I used it throughout the weekend and I continue to use it today. So I just want you to know that sometimes you don't always see, like with this podcast, I don't always hear how it resonates with people, if it makes a difference, but I want you to hear that. I think what you're doing is really changing the game. And I am most grateful to you and to your colleagues and to your experiences and to your yoga teachers of, of, of the past who had you step into something that really is out making an impact because the world is a better place with people like you in it. And as we continue to go through the process of healing people and having them see truly who they are and to be in a space of this, just to you space of being and what it takes to get there. I'm, that's why I'm doing what I'm doing. And so thank you for what you're out doing. I think we could talk for hours. I'm fascinated by your work and who you are and your story. I hope you'll come back another time. I want to be respectful of your time today, but I hope we can find some time to talk a little bit more in depth about breath work and some of the practices that you use. But I wanted you to hear my gratitude. I ask all of my guests, one final question before we wrap this conversation. And so I'm going to ask you the same. If you could go back to that. Childhood, that young Mallory what would you tell her about her life today? I would say, I know it, everything feels really hard and confusing right now, but everything you're experiencing is for a reason and what you'll create from this will help so many people. So keep, hang, hang in there, hang in there little one and I'm with you and I love you. Well, we love you too. Thanks again for being here. And I look forward to our paths crossing again. And I'm so grateful for you taking the time today to sit down and chat with us. Yeah. Thank you so much, Eric, for your inspiration and for hosting this conversation and for doing you out in the world and being such a light for so many people to, to follow their own path. Cause it's hard when we have all these inherited beliefs and ideas and pressure from those around us about what we should be doing or what's normal. And it's really difficult to own the parts of ourselves that don't fit into those molds. So thank you for all you're doing to encourage more people to bring their authentic light to the world. Because I know that more and more people who do that will create such a profound shift. in ways that are even more magical and mysterious than we can perhaps even see right now. Thank you for saying that. And I appreciate it. And I hear it. I think it's interesting as a final comment that it takes us time to bring to fruition the things that we're passionate about. I talked about this podcast for a long time, long time. And finally, someone said, you're ripping people off by not. recording that first episode. And what was so interesting, Mallory, and I'm sure you experienced this with not only your clients through Breath Connection, but also through the Inheritance Project as you're unpacking this inheritance. That's exactly what I was doing. I was unpacking these, these ways of doing things. I didn't realize not only the impact that the conversations were going to have on me, but I had no idea that 99 percent of the people that I was having conversations Every week about a myriad of topics, all different had the same story or the same semblance of a story that their childhood. had circumstances which would cause many people to shut down and to disappear. But there was something in their conversation and their inner dialogue and an external force that had them see that something was bigger than that circumstance. And that circumstance did not define them. Who they were was not the circumstance. It affected but didn't define. And there was something bigger and greater. And they stepped through that. They moved past it and here they are now out making huge impacts in the world. And that to me is why we need to have these conversations. People need to know about the malaries of the world and the reasons why they're out doing what they're doing. So I will close there and say, thank you again. So beautifully put. I just wish we lived closer because you and I would have a lot of coffees and a lot of dinners and a lot of, I'd be taking your breathwork classes and, and everything else. So I look forward to our paths crossing again, have a beautiful day. And thanks again for being here. Thank you. Bye for now. All right, everyone. Thank you again for joining us on today's episode. I hope our conversation resonated with you like it did me, and I cannot wait to sit down with you all again next week. 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