680 Adrienne Rivera:

Yes, sometimes we can forget to just … breathe.  You know the drill, from alarm clock to your phone to that never-ending task treadmill where your gradually fade music here work is never done. Sometimes we can get so busy in the doing we become human doings instead of human beings. But as my guest today – Adrienne Rivera – says, we have the most impactful inspiration and results when we take the space to clear our minds. And today we talk about the power of breathwork.

MELINDA

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a 5-time serial entrepreneur who has lived and breathed the ups and downs of starting and growing businesses, currently the game changing social podcast app Podopolo. Wherever you are listening to this, take a moment and join the Wings community over on Podopolo, where we can take the conversation further with your questions, perspectives, experiences, and advice for other female founders at whatever stage of the journey you’re at! Because together we’re stronger, and we soar higher when we fly together.

So deep breath everyone because today we’re talking about breathwork and how it is a vital tool in your entrepreneurial tool kit.

Adrienne Rivera is a Spiritual Business Coach and she specializes in teaching healers and coaches how to create six figure businesses online – all in alignment their dreams and lifestyle goals. Her secret is breathwork, as well as helping her clients to master energetic enrollment and online events.

Adrienne Rivera started her coaching journey as an online fitness + mindset coach, grew it to a 6-figure business and discovered her passion and talent for business coaching to help other purpose-driven businesses achieve profitable growth while finding alignment with their business on a soul level with breathwork. Adrienne is also the founder of Breath of Gold–a breathwork company that hosts weekly breathwork and trains breathwork facilitators.

Be sure to download Podopolo and follow the conversation over on Wings there – and now let’s get into the power of breathwork with the inspiring Adrienne Rivera.

Melinda Wittstock:

Adrienne, welcome to Wings.

Adrienne Rivera:

Thank you so much for having me.

Melinda Wittstock:

I am excited to talk to you, and of course, before we do podcasts, we should all take a deep breath Even though we’re humans and we’re always breathing, we’re sometimes forgetting to breathe. What was it that inspired you to put breathwork really at the center of your practice as a spiritual business coach?

Adrienne Rivera:

Yeah, for sure. So breathwork found me about five years ago and it was by mistake. I had no idea what breathwork was, but I stumbled upon a class for it. In that session, it was so deep, so intense that my entire life was completely changed. It felt like there was so much energy in my body and so much euphoria that at that time I’d never known that you could access that amount of power within you. At that time, I was starting out my business as a fitness coach. That’s the first business that I had and had overcome calm six years of binge eating disorder and a lot of my past was looking for things outside of me.

So, it was looking for comfort in food, pleasure in relationships, pleasure in people, and really just externally motivated, like never really fully sitting or knowing myself. Breathwork was the thing where it was like, wow, it is actually the opposite. We have so much infinite energy to tap into within us and all the creative ideas that we have are within us, all the business ideas that are meant for us are within us. It’s the stillness and the breath that unlocks it all.

So, I started using it in my own life more and more and more. The first 10 sessions that I had when I first found it were wildly different. Some were processing grief, some were about old injuries, some were clarity focused, others were business ideas, all the things. I was immediately hooked because I’m always in for something that’s new. After doing hundreds, maybe even thousands of breathworks myself, I have found that it’s always different. I’ve never had one session be super similar to another and that always keeps me coming back for more and I always know that there’s more to discover.

Adrienne Rivera:

When I brought it into my business that I have now spiritual business coaching into the mastermind, I really noticed that the people that got best results were the people that come to breathwork every single week and really create that internal alignment within themselves as well as the ideas. Yeah, it’s really created from their own uniqueness and their own message, rather than just trying to be carbon copies of other coaches out there. They’re really finding their own uniqueness through accessing the portal of their breath.

Melinda Wittstock:

Really interesting, because I think when you’re really focusing on your breath, it’s actually an opportunity to clear your mind. It helps you get rid of all that inner self talk, all that incessant chatter.

Adrienne Rivera:

Yeah, totally.

Melinda Wittstock:

It kind of connects you, I guess, to yourself. Is that kind of the primary benefit of it, is just bringing people into awareness of being in the present?

Adrienne Rivera:

There are so many benefits, so many benefits. I would say that, in my opinion, the primary benefit is clarity and finding the answers within, because so often we are stuck because we’re stuck in our heads. We’re looking for the answers in our head. We open up Facebook and we say, “We should do a post,” but nothing comes through. It’s like this void of creativity. When we tap into the breath, it just flows. We get exactly the answers we’ve been looking for. We see clearly what is next for us and where we’re headed.

A lot about it is accessing internal vision because, why is it that we do podcasts? Why is it that we create books or other things in our business? Is it just to be busy or do things? Or is it because we see it as part of our journey and it’s a stepping stone along the way that we’re meant to create? So that’s really what I found breathwork has done for me, as well as my clients. It’s just been in this thing where you can see further and further and further. It started, for me, it’s like, “Okay, I can see, see where I’m at in my business in six months from now.”

Then you do breathwork again on clarity for vision and a year from now comes through. I’ve even seen what I’m doing in five years from now. I know that some of those action steps that I’ll be doing in five years will be completely different, and to not start on those yet, but that where I’m at is perfect, and yeah, it really just gives you that confidence and inner knowing and trust that you’re on the right path, that you’re going somewhere. It’s like you’re driving towards this mission and this north star, rather than just doing things to do things.

Melinda Wittstock:

We talk about this a lot on the podcast, how it’s so easy for entrepreneurs to just kind of hop on a task treadmill, like an endless to-do list and just be in constant doing. Something you mentioned before about out how we’re often in the external or looking for external validation or external things when the answers are within.

Melinda Wittstock:

When you’re on that task treadmill, your mind is just so busy in action that there’s no gap to actually receive any kind of information from within or from source or spirit or universe or God or whatever, right, when we get those divine inspirations, because there’s no place, there’s no gaps, there’s no place to receive it.

Adrienne Rivera:

Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

So one of the things I’ve learned on my own entrepreneurial journey is that the more I can create those gaps, the more I can manifest because the right people show up or the right ideas at the right time, or like you were saying about getting into flow, where there’s more ease and there’s more flow and less striving and actually things happen quicker as a result, the less I work. You know what I mean? Is that something that you’re finding with your clients and on your own journey?

Adrienne Rivera:

Definitely and it’s so much fun. I do this thing behind the scenes of my business, and I often coach my clients into it as well. It’s finding who you’re meant to serve now through the breath. That is literally your intention. So I did this yesterday in my one-on-one breathwork session that I had with my breathwork mentor who leads me every week. I have a business networking mastermind retreat in Lake Tahoe coming up next month. So I’m like, “Okay, universe, show me who gets to be at this retreat.” I had already thought of all the people from my conscious mind. I’m like, “I don’t think there’s anyone else. Who else is there to invite?”

It was so funny to hear myself that I had thought that because as soon as I went into the breathwork journey, I had at least 35 names of people come through where it’s like, invite Angela, ask Amy for referrals. All of this guidance came through that I just spoke out loud and my breathwork mentor wrote it all down for me. Now, I know exactly what to do and it’s less about doing the harder path. A lot of people come to me and they’re like, “Oh, I’m not getting enough clients. I think I need to do Facebook ads or I think they need to try a new strategy.”

Often, it’s about the things that are closer with us. Going back to the fundamentals of people buy from who they know, like and trust. So obviously, the people that I already know are going to be more likely to say yes to coming to something intimate like a retreat. That’s the nature of it. So yeah, it was powerful. One of my clients who first started working with me, his very first client that he got came to him in a breathwork session where he was like, “Call this guy, reconnect with him. You could totally support him,” and that was his first paying client.

So I love how that works because it’s divinely guided and it feels so much more in alignment rather than… I mean, I also have funnels, don’t get me wrong, but it’s great when you can just follow that intuitive guidance and know that you’re always being led and you’re present enough to notice the guidance.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. So the mechanics of the breathwork basically help you do that. There’s something you said that you set an intention around the breathwork. I want you to repeat that intention, because it was really important. I want everyone to hear it.

Adrienne Rivera:

The importance of setting an intention?

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, yes, and the intention, the example that you gave of the kinds of intentions that you can set. What are some of the ones that are really important at the beginning of a breathwork session?

Adrienne Rivera:

Yeah. So I believe that we can intend whatever we want to create. Intend and create is one of my mantras. So often I will have the intention for business clarity. I will have intention for who do I get to serve now that needs my support. Another one is what do I need to know for my vision of where I’m heading in five years from now in my business. Another one is show me any gaps that I have within myself for where I could be leading better from more of a authentic place. The list goes on and on. I’ve had a different intention almost every single time I’ve done breathwork. I would say the most common ones though are, for me personally, are business clarity of what I’m creating and who gets to be a part of it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. So it’s different for different people and at different stages. But you’re basically asking for help. You’re opening yourself up. You’re clearing your mind. Then so the breathwork is creating this pathway, I guess, for you to receive. So there’s all kinds of different types of breathwork. Take me through some of the things that you do and how it’s done.

Adrienne Rivera:

Right. So the main one that I lead is called circular connected breath, very similar to holotropic breathwork, a little bit more gentle and a little less long are the main differences. You’re breathing in and out through your mouth in a circular connected way. So it’s like, [inaudible 00:10:51]. So it’s an audible breath. You can hear the breath going in and out through your body and it’s bringing this new life force energy within.

But it’s also over oxygenating the body, which produces an ultra-state of consciousness and can change the levels of carbon dioxide and oxygen in the body and the blood which then creates changes in the physical body like tingles, sensations. You can feel energy moving, which I believe that the physical is very much tied to the emotional, the mental. It’s like a web. It’s like all different planes of being affect each other. So you can have emotions stored in the body. When I feel the tingles, it’s like I feel that those older stagnant emotions are being dealt with and released.

Yeah, breathing in a certain way very deeply, especially for an extended period of time can also naturally produce DMT in the brain, which sometimes is referred to as the God molecule. That is a big reason why people can feel like they have a more open third eye, or they see more, or maybe they feel really clear messages that come through and it’s that inner knowing.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes. That’s so interesting, the actual science of what’s actually going on in our bodies. What did you call it? The God-

Adrienne Rivera:

The God molecule, DMT.

Melinda Wittstock:

The God molecule.

Adrienne Rivera:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. Because I mean, that’s the kind of thing where you just talk to people who have had experiences with plant medicine, for instance, and it’s doing that. So you don’t necessarily have to go all the way into the Amazon and take Ayahuasca and all that kind of stuff. You can get to that same place with breathwork.

Adrienne Rivera:

Totally. I have gone to Peru and sat with the medicine for four times and I felt like I’ve gotten so much more from breathwork. The four session that I had in the week retreat that I was there, it was all about different dimensions and nothing for my life. I got zero intentions. All my intentions were like, show me my business purpose, show me where I am in five years. It was just like a lot of seeing things that were not relevant to human existence. So what I love about breathwork is that it’s so empowering.

Going back to what I shared at the beginning of I used to always feel like I was looking for things outside of me, this is so empowering that your breath is accessed within yourself. It’s free. It’s healthy. It expands your lungs. You can monitor the experience the whole time. You’re in control of it. It’s relevant to your life. Yeah, I think a lot of the times there’s a lot more risks and complications when someone wants to have a deep spiritual experience and try plant medicine. Plant medicine will take you on the journey and you will be on that ride forever. But with breathwork you can, if you want it off the ride, go back to normal breathing and then within five or 10 minutes, everything mellows back out.

So it’s safer. It’s healthier. I think both can be used. I’m glad that I had the experiences that I did, but the power of it, I think, sometimes is underestimated because it’s a lot more sexy to go to Peru and sit with the medicine and the shamans, but really what we’ve been looking for is within us this whole time. We’re always looking for the shiny objects outside of us, but it’s about time that we look at the gold that’s within us which is why my business is called Breath of Gold.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s a great name. I remember doing holotropic breathing and it was intense. It was a whole hour long session. It was hard to coordinate to begin with. It was a practice. You had to learn kind of how to do it. I remember being a little bit confused to begin with. Am I doing this right into the time? Because it was all to drums and it was quite quick and it was like… It involved a little bit of coordination at the beginning, but then once I got really into it, I got really into it and very deep. I remember feeling this tingling in my third eye. It was really bizarre.

Adrienne Rivera:

That is awesome. Yeah, yeah. That is a common experience. I hear that from a lot of people, almost every single Sunday that I lead breathwork online. Yeah, you can feel tingling in your third eye, sensations in the body. I’ve had people had some really profound experiences. In fact, one of mine I always forget about, because it’s been so long that I’ve been pain free, but for over 20 years of my life, I had felt this feeling of my stomach being upside down, like there was a knot. Going to my very first breathwork retreat was when I felt the feeling in my body leave.

Adrienne Rivera:

We did this water healing ceremony and someone placed their hand on my belly and it was like the breath started changing, the breath started breathing me. I don’t know if you’ve ever done Kapalabhati breath, but like pumping the belly in and out. My belly was just doing that naturally. I saw the energy, this knot, this fear that had been in my body for so long leave my body. It felt like it was going up into the sky and just dissolving. Of course, I still have fear, but I’ve never felt that feeling again. It was something that I lived with every single day.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s amazing. So when you work with your clients, I mean, is this something that you incorporate into your daily routine just off and on through the day? Or is it something that you do once a day? What’s the best way to start incorporating breathwork?

Adrienne Rivera:

Yeah, I recommend once a week. I think that’s a great place to start because of the power of integration and the time needed to integrate some of the powerful things that we see and feel through breathwork. Often, after a breathwork session, I’ll have a whole page of bullet points of inspired, intuitive, divine business actions or life actions to take action on. If I’m doing breathwork all the time, then I’m not having enough time to really integrate these lessons into my life and learn the wisdom that it’s trying to teach me.

So sometimes less is more, right? Going really powerful, really deep, but not needing it all the time. Having this tool once a week has been the perfect cadence for me. Sometimes when I’m really looking for a little bit quicker pace in my business and want to manifest more quickly, I will do breathwork up to once a day. Like with anything, I feel like you can kind of overdo it, like inspired action is key. Pranayama and Wim Hof techniques, those are really great for daily use. It depends on what your intention is for the breathwork.

The holotropic breathwork, as well as circular connected breath, those I consider to be more like journey type breathwork where usually your intention is either to release a trauma or to gain clarity on something. Whereas there’s a lot of other techniques that can be used for simply calming your nervous system, relaxing, sleeping better, clearing your head, but you may not necessarily see all the things. Personally, I love seeing and feeling all the things, because that makes it really exciting.

I always struggled with just normal, silent meditation and not wanting to sit still, and so breathwork was really that thing that I found that was able to connect me to myself and spirituality without needing it to be so hard or look a certain or cross your legs in a certain way, and oh, like it doesn’t have to look a certain way. Your breath just breathes you and it’s so freeing. I think for so many people that silently struggle and say like, “I’m a bad meditator.” I used to not tell people that I don’t really meditate, at the end of breathwork I do, but I’m like, “Oh, does that make me like a bad spiritual person if I don’t meditate because can’t really sit still?”

But then I realized that it doesn’t have to look a certain way. My meditation is running down the trails in the morning with my dog and looking at the sunrise over the mountains here in Reno, Nevada and doing the breathwork practices and swimming in the pool and moving my body and dancing with intention. So like journaling, there’s so many practices that we can do to find connection and presence. Really, that’s the goal of meditation in the first place, connection and presence. It doesn’t have to look like stillness. There is benefit to stillness. I feel like it’s so much more powerful when we can find what feels good to us because then we actually do it right.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, so true. So do you bring people together in a group or are these individual sessions? Or how do you work with folks?

Adrienne Rivera:

Yeah, of course. So I have a weekly Sunday breathwork membership, happens every single Sunday where I lead breathwork online. Anyone who stumbles across it for free for the first time, you can come and try it for free at breathofgold.com/Sunday-breathwork. Yeah, it’s powerful. It’ll change your life. We can talk about breathwork all the time and really giving yourself that experience of experiencing it and having that space held for you with a facilitator. It’s really profound and it takes you really deep.

A lot of people ask me like, “Is it any different in person or in the comfort of your own home?” There’s a lot of me that prefers the online space, because people aren’t necessarily distracted by the sounds of other people breathing around them, or there’s a part in the middle where we often do a primal scream. So it’s just them in the safety of their own home. They can adjust the temperature if they need and just really relax and not get so in their head about it.

So, I really love the online group space. I have the membership and then I also incorporate breathwork into my spiritual business coaching program to get clarity for entrepreneurs for their business. Yeah, it’s super fun. I definitely recommend trying it in a group setting first. If you really want to go for it and really embark on a spiritual journey, 10 sessions is what I recommend that you commit to. Starting there, you will have profound differences for your first 10 sessions.

That’s really what I’ve seen for clients where they’ve moved through a lot of the things that kept them stuck, imposter syndrome, inner child work, shadow work, things that come up. It’s empowering because I think a lot of the times we don’t know what keeps us stuck, especially as entrepreneurs. It can be frustrating for a lot of people because a lot of people that come to breathwork, they’re like, “Man, I’ve already dealt with this before. I thought I’d cleared this. I thought I no longer have”-

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, because in the conscious mind, you consciously have, but you haven’t necessarily in your subconscious. You don’t even know what you don’t know.

Adrienne Rivera:

So true. Yes. The somatic release is so powerful.

Melinda Wittstock:

So how has all this knowledge impacted, Adrienne, the way you run your own business? I mean, whether your sales, your marketing, your operations, all of that. On a day to day basis, how has it changed the way you do business?

Adrienne Rivera:

Everything is alignment. Everything is energy. It’s changed me as a person. So there’s so many subtle changes that it’s so hard to pinpoint all of them. But I always love to say at these four tips that breathwork can really support entrepreneurs with in general. The first one is clarity. Having your own solid I call it CEO breathwork once a week where… I mean, if you can afford a one on one breathwork mentor, then totally do that. Or a group setting is great as well. Different energies, both have benefits.

So going in to find clarity and alignment, because as entrepreneurs, we’re thrown so many different invitations to be on different podcasts, collaborations. We have our own things that we create. To really stay on track with what is in the highest and best good for what you can create right now, because we only have so much time here, I have a list of a thousand things that I want to create and there’s only one or two things that I focus on at a time. So just leading with clarity, alignment and whatever you have the most energy for and excitement for, that’s going to be key.

The second way that I see breathwork can really support entrepreneurs is incorporating it to their business to better support their clients and getting their clients better results. So this could look like you becoming a breathwork facilitator, which we have a breathwork facilitator program, but it could also look like you bringing in an expert either once or maybe once a month. I’ve been doing guest appearances and a lot of masterminds leading them in breathwork and that’s been really cool and it’s put a lot of the missing pieces together for their clients. I’ve gotten a lot of feedback that’s been positive from people. So that’s a really great option as well.

Third is that when you add more value with breathwork, you can add more income. So if you let’s say added breathwork to your business, now you have more value so you can charge more. If you create some sort of collaboration experience, let’s say you’re a business coach, but you don’t want to teach breathwork, you can collaborate with a breathwork person and create some sort of event and then new income stream there.

Also, just from doing it yourself, you will definitely create more income. One of the big things that I shifted this last year was consistently doing breathwork once a week in a one-on-one container, myself, and being guided and having that space for me and I tripled my income. So definitely attribute that to breathwork.

Then fourth is to create an experience. When we think about what humans want, our people want an experience. The market research now, especially for anyone who has an online business that is a service-based business is that people don’t want to learn more, they don’t want more information. We are tired and sick of more information. What we want is an experience and what we want to feel is alive. We want to feel a shift and breathwork is the thing that really gets people to feel all of that.

Whether or not you want to incorporate breathwork to your clients or in your business, you can use it in your own practice to then ask yourself and set the intention, okay, how can I make my group coaching container more of an experience, and really come from that angle and make it more fun and interactive and engaging and intimate and create that authentic container. So again, those four ways are clarity, better supporting your clients, adding income and creating an experience.

Melinda Wittstock:

Fantastic. Well, that’s awesome. So I want to make sure people know how to find you and work with you. What’s the best way?

Adrienne Rivera:

Yeah. If you want to reach out and have a conversation, we’d love to voice note you, it is me, not my team. You can reach out on Instagram at Adrienne Rivera Coaching. Then if you are intrigued about breathwork and want to try all the things, breathofgold.com is the place where you can find out more about the facilitator program, the weekly Sunday classes. We also have an Oracle deck that just came out, so breathofgold.com is the place to be.

Melinda Wittstock:

Fantastic. Well, I’d like to invite you, of course, to join the conversation in the Wings community over on Podopolo as well, my podcasting app business, because If anyone has any questions for you, Adrienne, or wants to learn more about it, you can answer their questions. They can share their perspectives.

So I’d like to take the conversation further, because there’s only so much time in the podcast, but there’s infinite time to interact over there. Adrienne, it’s amazing what you’re doing. The more we grow as people, the more that we find our businesses growing with ease. So I want to thank you for putting on your wings today and flying with us.

Adrienne Rivera:

Thank you so much for having me.