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Robin Daly
Hi and welcome to the first YesLife to show of 2023 New Year Same host for the show. I’m Robin Daly, founder of the UK charity Yes to Life, that supports people with cancer who want to look beyond the boundaries of their conventional care to see what else they can do to support their own well-being and their return to good health. This approach is called integrative medicine or integrative oncology and Yes to Life has been proactively advocating for it for nearly two decades. So to start the new year, my guest today is someone who’s very familiar to many of you, legendary for her creation of the Trew Fields Cancer Awareness Festivals, Sophie Trew. Today I’m speaking to Sophie over the internet at her home in Brighton about her current passion, breath work.

Sophie Trew
Hi Robin, great to be back with you and catching up.

Robin Daly
Okay so today we’re going to be talking primarily about breath work and which is something you’re focusing on and I’ve noticed really that there are two techniques out there both used liberally by people with cancer and primarily I would say to manage emotions like anxiety that kind of thing but they seem on the face of it to be ridiculously simple but they must be hugely effective as they’re so incredibly popular and widespread so that’s EFT emotional freedom technique and breath work as I say today we’re going to focus on breath work although I do notice that you do both but a cynic looking at this would say come on I actually know how to breathe it’s something I’ve quite experienced that in fact why would I start going to classes?

Sophie Trew
Mm hmm. Great question. And I’ve worked with quite a few cynics. And it’s often that thing that unless we maybe experience the tangible results for ourselves, this would seem like a weird concept, essentially, to give a broad picture of it. Every day we take 20,000 breaths. Most people are only using a fraction of their lung capacity. And that affects every system and function in our body. So the way we breathe can support our immune system, it supports our digestion, it can help us to regulate our nervous system, which in turn regulates our immune system, it can change our state probably quicker than any other tool that I’ve come across just by taking almost in those panic situations, people say, Okay, take a breath. So it’s one of the one of the most tangible, yet simple tools that we have. And your breath really is like a Swiss army knife. So you can change your breathing pattern to increase your levels of energy. You can change by maybe breathing a bit deeper and quicker. You can change your breathing pattern to bring about a sense of relaxation, exhaling longer, deeper, you can change your breathing to bring more mental clarity to even stimulate a cardio workout, for example. And there are many physical benefits to paying attention to the way that we breathe. And the reason so for the cynics, okay, every day I breathe, I’ve been breathing my whole life. Well, if you breathe a little bit deeper and can open up your lung capacity, then potentially you can get so many more of those benefits. And it’s also the way that we can change our heart rate. And it’s the that kind of one system in our body that we can really control as well as the thing that happens naturally without any focus, but also the thing that when we put conscious focus on it, and the breath that I work with, and a lot of people work with is conscious connected breath work. And the conscious element is, I’m conscious of the way that I’m breathing. And by doing that, we can really oxygenate we can. It’s pretty transformative, on a number of levels, mental, physical, spiritual. I’ve had clients that say for the first time in my life, I feel like I’ve realized I have a spirit. If that makes sense to anyone, it’s almost this thing, it can take us into a different state. So whether that’s a different brainwave state by moving more into the kind of theta brainwave, more in that kind of subconscious state or just coming out of our usual way of thinking.

Robin Daly
Okay, good sales job. Right, excellent. Very good. If you had asked me how many breaths I’d take a day, I wouldn’t have come up with 20,000. That’s for sure. That’s a lot.

Sophie Trew
Well, it’s the one thing that connects us to everyone because you’re breathing in the oxygen that every other living being is breathing in So it’s just kind of universal essentially

Robin Daly
And interesting, as you point out, it’s a kind of reflex action that’s happening on its own in a certain kind of way, but it’s not quite like your heart, is it? Because you, you know, just changing your heart rate at will is a bit trickier, but you can certainly change your breathing.

Sophie Trew
Yeah, you can do that through your breath.

Robin Daly
through your breath. Right. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So yours is one of those stories in which you’ve had to find things to help yourself and the successes that you’ve had have led you to want to share your discoveries with others who are in need of help. So I’m wondering if you’d mind telling us a bit of the backstory of how you got here.

Sophie Trew
winding, winding back. So in fact, I’ll go with the breath work side of things and breathing. I actually have been I was asthmatic from about the age of 11. Quite, quite severe asthma to the point of being allergic to horses. And I would kind of go to sleep at night and sometimes I would find that I wasn’t able to breathe. So I’d be doing that kind of wheezing thing, the kind of tight tightening. And then I had cancer diagnosis, blood cancer when I was 23 in 2014. And, and previous to this, breathing wise, no one ever said, so when I was going to the doctors and having checkups, no one ever said, well, how do you breathe? There was never a conversation about the functional element of the breath. It was just, we need to give you a stronger inhaler and more steroids and this kind of thing and very drug focused. And then I got the diagnosis and didn’t, didn’t ever notice my breath or pay attention to how I was doing that. It was about a year or two years afterwards, I was running true forward. So a cancer holistic and cancer awareness festival. And we had a breathwork practitioner there running a workshop. And I ended up going along to that and discovering breathwork, it was a game changer. It was almost kind of, you know, those moments in life where you have that moment where you realize, okay, this is where I need to be. And they’re kind of few and far between, but it was a real realization of wow, actually, this can be such a game changer. And it was life changing by changing my breathing pattern. I so I had six months of chemotherapy as well. And one of the drugs in the chemo that I had, bleamycin is it can cause lung toxicity. So not only asthma, and then I’ve got lung toxicity, after doing breath work, I don’t have, I don’t have asthma anymore. It’s not a thing. It’s not, I, I remember afterwards, I just got all my inhalers, put them in the bin, and just knew that it was time that was that was finished.

Robin Daly
is that common that people with asthma can actually fix it with breath work?

Sophie Trew
can definitely be supportive. There’s other elements, so that, I think sometimes we say it was this one thing, but there are other elements, which inevitably when I was healing from cancer, I was looking at my gut health, I was looking at inflammation, that kind of thing. And I think that definitely played a part. But very strongly was asthmatics at upper chest breathers. And there’s almost this fear of breathing deep because it’s caused you a challenge over the years. So you’re kind of afraid to take a deep breath in. And it’s almost rewiring that on a physical, mental level as well.

Robin Daly
I can sort of imagine that, not that I’ve had asthma, but I know when you have a sort of irritable cough, you don’t want to breathe in deeply because that’s just going to kick it off. Exactly. I assume it’s like that.

Sophie Trew
Exactly and and it kind of comes to how do we get into different positions stretching wise kind of yoga wise to be able to open up the chest as well.

Sophie Trew
Cause if you think back to, have you got any pets, a dog or a cat or?

Robin Daly
I’m not a pet person, no.

Sophie Trew
Interesting. I resonate with that. So if you think back to children, or if you hold a grandchildren or a young a young child, they don’t babies don’t breathe only in their upper chest or their belly. They have this really fluid motion and they don’t hold their breath. Don’t if you’ve ever noticed when you’re holding a breath throughout the day, sometimes we go and we don’t let the breath go or if we’re stressed or tense, we might be breathing with our shoulders and upper chest. And so the idea of this breath as well, as being that kind of Swiss army knife tool that we can use is to get us back to that kind of baby breath. When we came into the world and we didn’t, because when we don’t want to feel something, we hold our breath.

Sophie Trew
So for every emotion, every emotional state, there’s a different breathing pattern. So if we think about when we’re shocked or stressed or kind of in grief, we go like this.

Sophie Trew
or joy is kind of like that. And then if we’re calm and relaxed, we’re going to be breathing differently. It’s just the influence is very connected to everything.

Robin Daly
Interesting. So you’re saying in a way that holding of breath or that tightness is a kind of symptom of, you know, how we’re responding to life, but actually if you change it, it can change the way you feel about life.

Sophie Trew
100%.

Sophie Trew
And it’s almost this kind of balance of if we don’t breathe into our bellies, the blood vessels in our belly send a signal to our brain that triggers anxiety. And often we don’t breathe into our bellies because we’re stressed or anxious. So it’s this kind of

Robin Daly
vicious cycle right

Sophie Trew
Yeah, all of it.

Robin Daly
Yeah, interesting. So you mentioned there along the way true feels. I feel we can’t go past without just having a nod to the big story of true feels, the incredible thing. I just wonder if you’d say a bit more about it, particularly what you’ve come away with from the experience that informs what you’re doing today.

Sophie Trew
Yeah. So we did a couple of interviews on the festival. So we started in 2017. After I had finished my treatment, I wanted to create an event that was inspiring, hopeful, and showed that we could approach cancer in a different way by bringing the community together, but also kind of being about enjoying ourselves, having music. There was comedy, there were different workshops and talks, and a lot of the people that inspired me in my cancer experience were part of it. So we had, we ran it for, I think it was three years, and then Covid came in. And so what that, what that gave, I just absolutely loved it. It was a really, really special event to do. And then beyond that, when Covid happened, I realized I had to evolve myself as a therapist because there were no live events. So I started to develop my own practice, which I’ve always been coaching. I’ve always been doing kind of holistic cancer coaching for about six or seven years, but it was more bringing in a therapeutic tool and other elements beyond that.

Robin Daly
Hmm. So yeah, I referred to the fact that, you know, it wasn’t just breathwork going on there that you’ve, you’ve actually trained in all sorts of things. Do you want to say a bit about what and why?

Sophie Trew
Yeah. So, Breathbook, I’m also a meditation teacher. I think, for me, a really big focus or a big picture is how we can get into a healing state, that element of we heal in a healing state, and so much of cancer is not as stressful. So how can we then work with our nervous system, that nervous system regulation part of, it’s difficult to do because you’ve got the kind of hospitals and scans and cancer has a very, as a word, it has a whole piece that’s very activating and yeah, a lot of the stuff that I’m working with is finding a way to bring in more balance and calm, even if it’s just for that time. So we can be in a more resilient, it’s building resilience that I talk about it, like longevity juice. So it’s very kind of tailored to each person, but it’s things like the breath work, meditation and EFT, so emotional freedom technique, the tapping and accountability. A lot of people say that they struggle with the accountability or that side of support. And for me, a lot of it has been about working with the trauma that comes from going through the cancer experience. And we can do that in a breath work session, we can start to gently release the tension and trauma that might be in the body because we hold that. And so our bodies is that thing of too much too soon and what we hold in our bodies and a lot of a cancer process is too much too soon. So what happens when we don’t discharge the energy of that experience, we hold it in our bodies. And so these tools can really, while being great for just general feel good, it can also help us on a deeper level to be able to move forward or to be here now, this kind of presence process rather than being back there then, if that makes sense.

Robin Daly
It does make sense, yeah. I mean, one of the great things about this kind of understanding of mind, body, medicine, it doesn’t seem to matter which end you come at it from, the mind or the body. In fact, it’s good to come from both, it seems to me. But sometimes something that’s seen to be very much to do with the mind is actually a left-field approach that comes in a much more practical, physical way. It’s actually a really good way to get in there.

Sophie Trew
Mm-hmm. Yeah, totally interconnected, isn’t it?

Robin Daly
yeah it’s all one thing but it’s like well what’s going to work you know that’s the thing that trying to ignore half of the picture definitely isn’t a good way to go

Sophie Trew
And I think that the element of more somatic, more of the body side of things is really key or more, even more of the emotions, just feeling your emotions, because we have been very focused. And I know for me, I got really kind of focused on nutrition and what I was eating and these kind of things I could, there was an element of control.

Sophie Trew
And then the other stuff of kind of being willing to be vulnerable or release emotions or it’s not something that’s very supported in our culture as well to be that expressive of our feelings.

Robin Daly
stiff upper lip prevails. Well, absolutely. And it’s more so amongst men than women as well. I mean, men are much rather give them a practical thing to get on with. They love that much more. So especially if there’s lots of research involved to go with it.

Sophie Trew
That’s why I like working with men with breath work, for example, because meditation, a lot of people say, I can’t meditate, I’m too busy. And again, we have the busy, busy culture. The breath work gives you something to focus on. So it’s almost like, obviously, you can do walking meditations and different focus runs, but it kind of gives you a thing that can happen, you can get the benefits relatively quickly. And people know because they start to feel tingly, they might start to feel different sensations, that kind of thing. And so it can take you into a meditative state quite quickly.

Robin Daly
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s useful. It’s very useful. Yeah. All right. So there you are. You’ve looked at various other avenues. Have you got any other ones you haven’t told us about yet?

Sophie Trew
Um, I’m getting particularly interested in sound, sound, sound, sound, healing and frequencies. And also I do Reiki as well. So I kind of do the, the energy healing.

Sophie Trew
I did also train as a deaf dear, but it’s more, for me it’s more about supporting, I think with also the grief that we go through when we’re living, rather than just the kind of the death of the physical body, it’s more that the transitions, kind of endings and beginnings, that side of things as well.

Robin Daly
Right. So you’re saying that actually looking at that in some depth has helped you to deal with people who are not necessarily dying, but some part of them maybe needs to die. Yeah. Right. I understand. Interesting. Okay. And you said frequency there, very interesting, because actually I’ve just spoken to Rob Verkirk about frequency medicine, and he brought in sound healing in there and to do with colour and light as well. All the ways these different frequencies affect people. And he was talking, you know, very much bringing in the science behind all that stuff. Fascinating interview I’ve had with him.

Sophie Trew
Interesting. Yeah, I’m very interested in the science of that because it’s really that thing of how do we get back to the frequency of health as well.

Robin Daly
but yeah well he spoke about that quite a bit so yeah okay so uh you’ve done all this stuff and uh but breath work i think is at the heart of it all this seems to be your passion it’s a thing that obviously caught your attention back there in true fields and you’ve been at it ever since um so um let’s just if we can just find out a bit about it well specifically why you think that one technique is so valuable compared to all the other ones

Sophie Trew
Yeah, because it’s because it is something that we all do the whole time. And again, the first and last thing that we do in our lives. And it can really, it’s simple and practical. And it’s right under your nose once you learn the techniques. And mainly from experience and seeing the results as well that people have, it’s really powerful. And because of those reasons of it being able to support all of those internal functions, but with our mental state, our energy levels. Yeah, it’s it’s

Robin Daly
So it’s like a helpful technique that is ever present, you always have it with you.

Sophie Trew
100%. Have you ever done any? Have you ever done a journey?

Robin Daly
as in the journey by Brandon Bayes. Brandon Bayes is awesome. I mean a breathwork journey. I’ve done that, but I’ve not done it. I’ve done bits and pieces of breathwork, but I wouldn’t really engage in anything serious.

Sophie Trew
Okay, we’ll have to do a session one day.

Robin Daly
OK. So maybe you can tell us a bit about where it all comes from. I mean who came up with the idea in the first place.

Sophie Trew
Yeah, so well, it’s been around for many, many, many, many years, as has many of these healing tools that we’ve now kind of started to use a lot more. And originally, well, pranayama would go back to being used in yoga in India. And now these different techniques have, because there’s so many evolved to being used now. And yeah, so conscious connected breath work, which I use was why I did transformational breath, it’s a type of breath that was started by a woman called Judith Kravitz in the States. And then there is more kind of functional breath work, which I’ve been learning about, which is all about supporting on a functional, physical level. And obviously, people are very focused on Wim Hof breathing. Right. And again, that that the technique that he has used and coined goes back many, many, many years again, to yoga practices in India. So it all goes back. Yeah, thousands of years.

Robin Daly
all the time yeah yeah fair enough and so do you think this is a particularly useful tool for people with cancer and why.

Sophie Trew
a number of different reasons. So there is the conversation that people diagnosed with cancer in general have low blood oxygen. And so elevating our levels of oxygen, for example, with the hyperbaric oxygen therapy is really key. So we really need to elevate that oxygen, our blood oxygen, really good to test for it too. So many factors. So immune system being a challenge, a challenge compromise immune system, increasing our chances of getting cancer, the way you breathe can really support your stimulation of your immune system. Because if we’re not breathing into our rib cage or kind of that diaphragmatic breath, that muscle underneath our rib cage, and we’re not going to be really getting that stimulation of it. A lot of people have digestive and gut health problems, the way that we breathe before food can affect that. So the stress levels, for example, we can really work with our stress levels by working with that in breath and that out breath, your exhale is all about kind of the parasympathetic rest and digest response. The longer exhales can help you to relax, which in turn, we heal in a state of relaxation. So it’s really key to find those moments to actively relax, to really focus on downtime. And again, it’s a funny culture that we have to do that because back in the day, we wouldn’t be thinking about active relaxation, or there wouldn’t there wouldn’t necessarily be as much stimulation, but there was the challenges.

Robin Daly
Yeah and I think you know this is one of the kind of great anomalies of cancer is that of course people get to realize that stress is a key factor in driving cancer and the last thing you want to be if you’re somebody’s actually got cancer is stress but of course having cancer is enormously stressful in every possible way and so some tools and techniques that are going to help you with that are yeah very valuable.

Sophie Trew
Really key. So it supports mentally, physically, emotionally, because the physical side, elevating blood oxygen, immunity, your digestion, your heart rate, all of all of those side of things. And then on the mental emotional side, it can help us to release suppressed emotions, which is a really key one.

Sophie Trew
So again that exhale is about letting go, your inhale is about taking in, exhale you’re letting it go.

Robin Daly
Hmm. And kind of the bigger picture maybe is more like in the arena you were talking about with the work with dying is actually very often people with cancer are having to let go of their life as they knew it. Exactly. And that’s the sort of death and the exhale you just described could be a very big exhale of your past life.

Sophie Trew
Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, it’s those transitions.

Sophie Trew
And everyone has a unique breathing pattern. So it’s like your finger, it’s like your fingerprint. When ever anyone comes to breathwork, for example, most people have a dysfunctional breath. And by that, that may be that they hold their breath. So you might come across if you, I now start to watch people. So on the tube, I see that a lot of people breathe, breathe with their shoulders or they have a tight upper chest. And a lot of people struggle to breathe into their bellies. And so that dysfunctional breath is the way you breathe says a lot about your emotional state, so we can kind of see that in a first, first kind of sitting. And then when you start to rewire that it’s going back to that baby breath. So how you used to breathe as a child before you felt fear or you experience loss or tension, all of the things, the first thing that we change and we experience emotions as a child is our breathing. So we start to maybe breathe a bit quicker or we start to alter that function.

Robin Daly
Which is a natural response to fear.

Sophie Trew
It’s your guide, it’s almost your companion throughout your whole life, that inhale and exhale.

Robin Daly
Okay, so here I am. I decide I’m interested in breath work. What kind of thing do I expect?

Sophie Trew
Mm hmm. So it’s always unique dependent on what you are after. So a typical session would include finding out where you want to get to or what’s your intention. And then we would work with some gentle movement to start to open up the body and release tension. And then there’s the breath, there’s guided breath work techniques, so use a number of different techniques. Then we will bring in affirmations and visualization because we know the power of visualizing the fact that our body doesn’t know the difference. Well, we don’t know the difference between what we imagine and what actually happens. So the power of visualizing in the mind, that might be visualizing a picture of health or visualizing something that you want to move towards so we can start to plant the seeds of it. And then there is self massage. So usually I work online, so it’d be kind of guiding you to massage different parts of your body that might need some care. And then we end with a deep relaxation. So sometimes with the yoga which is a sleep meditation or at just the time of full rest with the music with different sounds.

Robin Daly
So that you just described as being online. Is that how you’re generally working with people?

Sophie Trew
Yes, I have been because I can do it wherever, so during COVID, during times, it kind of went that way to be able to be accessible. And the best thing is, it actually works just as well, because for me, it’s all about that empowerment thing of knowing that you can do this without a practitioner with you. So once you’ve done however many sessions are appropriate for you to then have it as a tool that you can just do in your everyday life. So if people can do it online, and they do self massage, and they’re kind of reconnecting to their body, which, again, another benefit for cancer is we lose trust with our bodies. And so sometimes it doesn’t feel like a safe place. And breath work is the, your breath is the bridge between your mind and your body. So it’s the thing that can bring you into your soma, your body, and come a bit more out of your head, which feels really key. So we can start to kind of rebuild that safety, that trust.

Robin Daly
Right, just to be clear about that one, for people who haven’t experienced it, do you want to say a bit more about why cancer makes people lose trust with their body?

Sophie Trew
I think everyone’s reasons are different because it’s such a unique experience that people have. So I think for some people it is the fact that you feel like your body tried to kill you. Some people say or some people say, I had no idea this was going on. It made me lose trust in my body because I didn’t notice it was happening or some people think that their body’s against them. It’s that side of things. And then for others, they’ve had surgery or they’ve had treatment and it doesn’t feel like a safe place or you’ve had a part of your body removed and that doesn’t feel safe. It’s a constant reminder or there’s scars. So yeah, so many factors.

Robin Daly
Hmm, right. Okay. So do you always work one-to-one?

Sophie Trew
I do. I also do groups. So I actually run a breathwork for cancer monthly workshop as well. which is great.

Robin Daly
Okay, and how many people come along to one of those?

Sophie Trew
So we’ve had up to 80 people in the past.

Robin Daly
80 yeah lots okay i thought you were going to say eight

Sophie Trew
So one-to-one you’re able to work deeper because you’re working on the specific thing for that person. So it’s almost like any one-to-one session it’s deeper and you can get quicker results. Group it’s kind of more surface kind of common elements to it.

Robin Daly
And how long is a typical session or a class?

Sophie Trew
So a typical one-to-one would be about an hour and a half, and then a group one would be an hour and 15 minutes.

Robin Daly
All right, so I just think it’d be useful for people who are particularly familiar with all the challenges of cancer, what are the places in which breath work could be useful to them, the specifics, you know, in situations or conditions?

Sophie Trew
Yes. So again, Robin, all the situations because it’s a tool that you’ve got the whole time. So let’s say you’re waiting for a call from the doctor, you’re waiting for scan results, you can start taking a few deep breaths in if you maybe for example, you could do a four, seven, eight breaths, you breathe in for four, you hold for the count of seven and then exhale through your mouth for the count of eight. That’s going to help you down regulate. So you’re going to feel more calm by doing a few rounds of that. Before bed, you’ve, I mean, for me, when I just had chemo, and I was then given steroids, I’d be awake all night long, feeling pretty wide. So let’s say you’re awake in the night, you’ve just had your day of treatment, the way that you breathe can then help you to get to sleep, it’s kind of can help you to create the setting or the conditions for more rest. Then you’re sitting in hospital, you’re in your chair, you can do some deep breathing to bring about a sense of calm. And then also, I think on the trauma level that we spoken about briefly, it’s if we are able to breathe into those moments of challenge to be really present with our body, we’re less likely to have that knock on mental challenge effects afterwards. Because we can kind of discharge a bit of that energy. And that might just be doing a body scan, for example, kind of, okay, bringing bringing yourself here now and actually being embodied in hospital, like feeling your ankles, noticing your breath, maybe taking a hand to your belly, to your upper chest, taking a few breaths in, it can be supportive in so many, so many situations.

Robin Daly
So, you know, there’s lots of bits and pieces. There’s lots of reasons to have anxiety for a start, aren’t there? And so there’s lots of situations that create anxiety fairly naturally. I mean, you know, waiting for your scan results, you know, you’re going to be anxious, whoever you are. Of course. And it’s fair enough. So that’s great from that point of view. But kind of underlying all of those is the anxiety of death, you know, that you’ve got this existential anxiety. So is that something you meet head on with breath work or is it something that because you’re dealing with lots of bits and pieces, it all adds up to helping?

Sophie Trew
I think it all adds up to hoping.

Sophie Trew
So on the death side, it’s almost if we can practice, not practice, but if we can practice letting go a little bit more or, for example, in the Dula work, it’s exploring what is your relationship to death. How can you start to maybe develop more of a relationship to death? And that can come from being in nature, from seeing the different cycles. And never to be, there’s always going to be a fear there or an association, but it’s how to make it or move towards making it less huge, less of the elephant, less of the iceberg and breaking it down.

Sophie Trew
For me, and it’s a different topic, but for me what has actually helped more with fear of death is psychedelic therapy.

Sophie Trew
And so that’s a different topic in itself. But for example, mushrooms can really support if people and in different countries where this is an accessible thing, people do use that for end of life. There is the talk of mushrooms psilocybin for end of life, because if you can experience ego death, which you can also experience in a breathwork after a while or in meditation, if we experience a part, what it’s like to die before we die, that can really help with the fear of death.

Robin Daly
Yeah, well, it’s a topic that comes up more and more often, I’ve got to say, psychedelics in my interviews with all sorts of different people, because, you know, it’s becoming pretty clear that they are enormously important things for our times, particularly, because I mean, you don’t just need to look at cancer, you just need to look at the levels of depression across society and the things that people are dealing with. And again, have…

Sophie Trew
far back that goes as well it’s thousands and thousands and i think yeah jesus was found with mushrooms in his pocket

Robin Daly
There you go. So, you know, I think it is an enormously important topic. It’s a huge relief that it’s sort of coming out of the closet, having been had the large boot put down firmly on it some years back, that actually, despite the fact that it’s still illegal, it’s actually it’s being talked about everywhere. And, you know, I think it is increasingly obvious that as a way to help people who are dealing with things like existential distress or depression, that it’s enormously important and far more effective than anything the pharmaceutical industry has come up with to date. And, you know, I’ve had a lady I interviewed on this show who actually spent her whole life researching pharmaceutical drugs to help with mental health issues. She dumped everything when she found out about what you can do with mushrooms and devoting all her attention to that because they’re so remarkable.

Sophie Trew
Fantastic. I think it’s really important nature is a gift from nature. And yet we’ve kind of made that illegal. It’s yeah. Yeah, that’s a lot. We lost about 50, 60 years, but we’re definitely having that renaissance research renaissance in it.

Sophie Trew
is important and I’ve spoken to friends about kind of having psychedelic hospices where

Sophie Trew
Because it has been, for me, it’s been the most powerful tool for letting go and that kind of fear of death and grief around it.

Robin Daly
Interesting. So, yeah, obviously, it’s a great interest to you on a personal level. Do you see yourself going anywhere with it on a professional level? I mean, it can’t happen here, but it can happen.

Sophie Trew
Yeah, absolutely. I would love to. I think with breath work again, we can go to that altered state.

Sophie Trew
and psychedelics, even more so. And it really does have really powerful, as you said, for existential crisis, for end of life, really amazing results and research in in America and hospices. I would love to work with the breath with mushrooms and really sound the kind of for the full package.

Sophie Trew
I did do an integration training in psychedelics earlier in the year, which I think is important is how to integrate so you can continue to have the benefits of the experience. It’s kind of the key aspect with a lot of things is that integration, making sense of what happened and how to then put it into

Robin Daly
Right yeah that is important. Your life. I mean that that’s in a way is one of the exciting things about psychedelics is that they’re demonstrating that with a very minimal intervention which consists of one, two, three sessions you can make a pretty absolute change, you know something from which people don’t go back but as you say it gives you an awful lot to work with going forward and you know what you just described as integration would be a way of maximizing on the experience. Absolutely. Getting the most from it.

Sophie Trew
Absolutely, it’s really key.

Robin Daly
Yeah, well the science is building for that. I’m glad there’s a huge amount of research going on. How about the science of breath work? Is there a science behind breath work?

Sophie Trew
There definitely is, yeah. And there’s things that you can do, there’s a lot of the gadgets that people have to measure oxygen, to measure breathing, but there’s a lot of research around breath work happening. I think more so it would be inspiring to do more research in hospitals, hospital settings and that kind of thing.

Sophie Trew
there’s more to be, there’s more to come of it. And I think, again, where’s the research, where’s the money, people kind of, there’s a lot of conversation, a little bit like the CBD cannabis conversation a few years ago, it’s now psychedelics. And there’s a lot of investment and a lot of interest in that. So inevitably, there’s going to be quite a bit more focus, I think.

Robin Daly
All right. So say someone sort of interested to know more about Brefort before they actually get stuck in, you know, or maybe there’s somebody who likes to sort of dive in and learn about what they want to get involved in. Can you point us towards some good resources you found helpful books, videos, whatever?

Sophie Trew
So book-wise, if you research Breathwork, there are some really good books. There’s Breathe In, Breathe Out by Stuart Sandeman, which has just come out, Breathpod. And if you look on Headspace, for example, or Insight Timer, the free app, you can get different sessions on there. I think they’ve just done a 14-day Breathwork course on Insight Timer. And there’s lots of resources out there if you research.

Robin Daly
And is there a kind of people you consider the world leaders in this field?

Sophie Trew
world leaders are all going to be in that conference that you shared with me actually, Robin, the shift network.

Robin Daly
Right. Shift network. Okay. And do you want to finish off by telling people where they can find out more about you and contact you?

Sophie Trew
Yeah, so I also do a chat with people before on anything rather related or coaching related anyway, just to connect. I think as we spoke about, it’s really important to resonate with the practitioner that you work with first. So I do that and people can contact me. So my website is Sophie true.com t e w and I’m on Instagram and they can email me on the website.

Robin Daly
Very good. OK, so if you want to look up that event, it’s a breathwork summit from the 9th to the 13th of January next year. So OK, fantastic. Thanks very much for that whistle-stocked tour of breathwork et al. Really interesting. And yeah, thanks for coming on the show. Tell us all about it.

Sophie Trew
Thank you so much. Sending love. Bye.

Robin Daly
So as I mentioned during the interview, Sophie’s been on the yestolife show before speaking about trew fields and if you’d like to hear more from her or indeed explore the massive back catalog of almost 400 other shows that are still available go to yestolife.org.uk look down the home page until you see the link to the radio show page and once you’re there apart from seeing the most recent shows you’ll see we now have three search boxes where you can look for topics, guests or keywords. Just start typing Sophie’s name in the guest search box and hit the search button to find all her shows. Also I referred to the previous show in which I interviewed Robert VerKirk about energy medicine. If you’d like to listen to that you’ll find full details there as well. And while I’m talking about the yestolife website if you’re not familiar with all the services on offer there I do encourage you to look around. Under the I’m new here menu you’ll find our services which collects everything on one page and gives you a good overview with links to further details. We like to think there’s something for everyone there whether it’s joining a wigwam support group calling our helpline, searching our online resources which include our extensive life directory of therapies and providers, our book, our peer-to-peer mentoring scheme and much much more. Thanks so much for listening today I hope you’ll want to listen throughout 2023. I foresee some very exciting developments in the world of integrative medicine this year so I’ll be aiming to bring you news of them and the insights of the leaders in the field throughout the year. I look forward to joining you again next week for the next edition of the yestolife show here.