We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sarah Hutcherson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sarah, thanks for joining us today. Any thoughts around creating more inclusive workplaces?

To cultivate an inclusive workplace start by asking yourself one question throughout the day. Am I able to take a slow, deep breath here?

This simple question that involves the seemingly simple act of breathing will bring to the surface profound insights about how your organization is living and breathing its promises of inclusion when you have multiple team members, including leaders, asking this question.

Once I started to get curious about and bring awareness to my breath throughout my daily life, when working, in relationships with others, and taking on new projects, I became clear about where I felt valued and heard (and where I didn’t) on the somatic level. This is why I am extra energized about using conscious breaths in the workplace as a tool to have conversations about belonging and boundaries.

As your emotions and thoughts come and go, your breath responds with the autonomic nervous system, which influences basic bodily function. This means your breath is shallow when you feel more on edge and your breath is slower and more expansive when you feel at ease.

You can play with this right now to see how the breath relates to your emotions and thoughts. When was the last time during work when you felt you couldn’t take an intentional breath? What were some thoughts you were having? Where were you and who were you with at that moment?

Notice and take a slow breath to come back to this present day. This is how the breath can be a tool to have conversations around how belonging and inclusivity are and are not present where you work.

I didn’t foster an appreciation for the breath’s ability to respond and support me in having hard conversations rooted in emotional regulation until COVID-19 infected my body causing chronic cardiovascular and neurological dysregulation, which forced me to STOP in all aspects of my life. Over the year and a half that I spent the majority of my 22,000 breaths per day on the couch or in bed, I noticed and began to listen to my breath’s cues about how my body felt in relationships, which helped me begin to find my voice so I could feel heard in my communities and most importantly, by myself.

You can approach your organization’s policies around inclusivity with a similar curiosity, especially if you think of your organization as a breathing body. Here are questions to assess how your company breathes to encourage inclusivity.

– Which departments and operations is the breath present? Where is the breath stuck?
– Which policies and measures create space to slow down and breathe?
– Whose breaths are slow and deep? Whose are shallow and absent?
– How do certain policies give certain employees more space to inhale and cause constriction for other employees?

It only takes five to ten minutes of mindful breathing per day to grow your capacity for emotional awareness and regulation on the individual level as I have through my healing journey. Let this article be an opportunity to start to cultivate that sense of belonging (an ability to listen to and mindfully breathe) on the organizational level by asking yourself and your colleagues, are we able to take a slow, deep breath here?

Sarah, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am most proud of how Slo Breathworks has supported people in building a conscious breathing routine into their daily lives as they are. This includes a brilliant breather telling his nurse proudly that while he was nervous about waking up after his heart surgery with a tube down his throat, he had practiced nasal breathing during breath breaks. Or, hearing how the creative juices of a creative session flowed after beginning the meeting with 15 minutes of slow breaths designed to encourage downregulation and awareness of the breath’s response to the nervous system.

For Slo Breathworks, incorporating the breath cycle’s values of flow, non-attachment, and forward momentum amidst change is central to the offerings. The offerings include a 2-month 1:1 container, breath breaks, and breath walks. Each of these was informed by my conscious breathing practice that I developed during the thick of Long Covid (and continue to explore with each season). My two years of studying the ins and outs of the breath, 10 years of teaching yoga, and my Sustainability MBA also coalesce to center experiential and somatic learning in each type of offering.

I recommend coming to one of Slo Breathworks’ breath breaks to get a feel of what it entails to work with Slo Breathworks, which are online sessions that center on a certain breathing technique or two to destress and connect with the breath. They are simple but so powerful. I gratefully hear after each monthly session that people haven’t felt that calm and at peace in a long time. This makes my breath deepen with joy because I remember the first time I rediscovered the immense support of the breath through conscious breathing. Then, from the breath break, people can dive into 1:1s or bring a breath walk to their workplace or friends.

Every session, walk, and breath break are reminders of the simple but profound joy that building a slow breathing ritual can have on people’s live through nourishing emotional regulation, gentle focus, and resilience.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Can you guess what I am going to ask you to notice here?

You guessed it – the breath! What I’ve found to be key in creating inspiring content on social media is noticing the breath’s shifts in pace, duration, and cadence when interacting with different social media channels. Now that I understand and listen to my breath to check in with my emotions and thoughts, I create from a place of zest and energy because I take time to listen to my breath’s response to the social media realm.

For Slo Breathworks, I’ve piloted different approaches with and without social media to notice which ones give me space to slow down my breath. When I felt myself holding my breath, I took a break from Instagram and focused on LinkedIn. When I felt my breath flow slow and low, I started a Substack and poured my soul into writing there. This season, I will create a nine-grid framework on Instagram and post stories daily, while focusing on my newsletter giving me more time to go on networking coffees and connect with people in real life where slow, mindful breathing is most present for me. Drawing my breath to notice its shape, duration, pace, and quality before I decide to take on a client, develop a newsletter, or shift my social media initiatives helps me support Slo Breathworks’ values of thoughtfulness and slow intentionality.

So, the next time, something doesn’t feel right when on the socials, take a slow breath, and ask, is this platform or post breathgiving?

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Working harder = more results is the lesson I’ve had to unlearn.

Slo Breathworks is called slow for a reason. To remind my clients, and the owner (me) especially, to detach from the ongoing urgency fallacy.

If you don’t answer an email within a couple of hours, you are lazy. If your calendar isn’t chalk full of engagements, you aren’t successful. If your business hasn’t reached six figures in the first six months, you must not know how to run a business. These are just a few of the limiting beliefs that I’ve breathed with to bring Slo Breathworks into its slow, restorative identity. The belief underlying these is that my worth is based on what I produce, and if I do more as a business owner, more results and money will come my way. But if you are to look at how slow breathwork revitalizes bodily and mental functions, the breath debunks this urgency claim.

The different parts of the breath or as Slo Breathworks likes to call them, the seasons of the breath, similar to nature’s seasons are also brilliant educators that remind me to release urgency as a business owner and in my daily life. Generally, the inhale and suspension after the inhale are connected with the arousal arm of the nervous system while the exhale and exhale hold are connected with the dorsal arm of the nervous system.

As much as I may try, I can’t choose to only inhale or only exhale. Both are present for a whole and complete breath so that my cells can function and support my body in navigating the world. I’d either be stuck with too much oxygen or carbon dioxide, which is not ideal in either circumstance, which is why when I feel the need to push through and DO, I giggle a little, because it’s a lesson that ceases to teach, and remember that my body isn’t designed to stay in the season of the inhale (aka grinding) for perpetuity.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.slobreathworks.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slobreathworks/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/slo-breathworks/
• Other: https://substack.com/@slobreathworks

Image Credits

Steve Kuzj for the first photo of me exhaling with the reed