Leveraging Breath to Stay Focused and Intentional with Jenny Lind

Leveraging Breath to Stay Focused and Intentional with Jenny Lind

loyb podcast Jul 05, 2021

Jenny Lind, Founder of Infinite Well Co., was living a normal 30-year-old life; she was getting married, moving, starting new jobs, watching friends have babies, etc. Life seemed normal, everything was fine, until one day it wasn’t.

Jenny was working on a convention floor, when all of a sudden, she had a full panic attack. She went from “everything is normal,” to being rushed by ambulance to a hospital, where she would spend the next 4 days undergoing multiple tests.

When all major health issues were ruled out, Jenny was officially diagnosed with having a panic attack. After being released from the hospital she went to a psychologist, fully expecting he was going to ask her to go on medication, instead he asked her to do one thing…. breathe.

She began meeting with him once a week for six months, to practice visualization and breathing over the phone. In that time, she found that her nervous system started coming back into balance, an avid runner, her speed got faster and most importantly of all, her work and family life changed as she began to see people differently; she was now calm, focused and slower to react.

Jenny has learned to harness the power of breathing to make heart-centered decisions, those decisions where you say yes because they align with what you want for your life and your business. Today she’s teaching others how they can leverage breath for their growth, and how they can use that same breath to stay focused and in the present moment because that’s where the magic happens.

In Episode 27 of the Lean Out Your Business Podcast, I ask Jenny why this concept of breathing is so important for entrepreneurs.

In this episode you'll learn:

  • How breathwork can help a busy entrepreneur 
  • What procrastination is actually teaching us
  • The physical changes that take place in your body when you breath
  • Shifting from time management to energy management 
  • How inner work helps to generate different and lasting business results 
  • How to leverage your breath to stay focused and intentional


References Mentioned in EP27: Leveraging Breath to Stay Focused and Intentional with Jenny Lind


"Breath brings us back and allows the energy to give us the best insight for our business." - Jenny Lind Click To Tweet

Listen to the podcast here:


Episode Transcript

Welcome to the Lean Out Your Business podcast a show dedicated to helping entrepreneurs accelerate business growth to simplify success. I'm your host, Crista Grasso, and I've been working with businesses for more than two decades to help them lean out and optimize what's working while eliminating anything that's not adding value. So if you are ready to get more time back in your day, more profit in your business, and to do business differently, growing and scaling on your terms. Let's dive into today's episode.


Hello, hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Lean Out Your Business podcast. Today we are going to be talking about the importance of breath work and how you can leverage breath for greater intentionality and focused results in your business Today, I'm joined by Jenny Lind. Jenny Lind is a lifestyle advisor and Founder of Infinite Well Co, where she provides a practical approach to health, well-being and personal growth. After experiencing a really severe panic attack back in 2010 she was given advice that completely changed her life and led her down a path of yoga and meditation. Today, she's a certified yoga therapist, Reiki Master, breathwork specialist and she is on a mission to help people transform their life into happiness, abundance and joy.

Jenny, I'm so excited that you're here today. How are you? Tell us all about this life-changing advice you got and what led up to it.

Well, thanks. I'm so excited to be here with you, Crista, and absolutely. In 2010. I was a pretty normal 30-year-old with all the life events happening: moving, marriage, friends having kids, changing careers. All the things piled up. I was in really good shape, someone who would go and run for hours and hours.

At the time I was working in corporate, traveling for sales and I was at a convention center with 400 people. I was just standing there when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I began to sweat, I began to get the chills, my breath just immediately started getting really short and I started hyperventilating. And then I literally had to unzip my dress, I had to have someone unzip it from the back, I was on the floor, I couldn't breathe. Someone called an ambulance and I was taken to the hospital where I was for days. They thought I had some type of heart murmur or heart condition.

After several tests, they said it was a panic attack. And it just really rocked my world for sure. Because I thought everything was going fine in my life. But there was a lot of things underneath that were going on that I was just shoving down. You know? We shove it down, push it down. We're not addressing it. We don't even think that things are bothering us, it's all subconscious.

I went to the doctor and my family physician who is just very holistic and he said, “you know, I want you to do one thing, I want you to go to this psychologist, his counselor actually is a psychotherapist.” So, I go to see this gentleman who saw me that day, actually, we sat down and I was just completely shattered and uncertain and all of those things. And I really felt exposed. So anyway, we're sitting there and he was like, you know, I want you to do one thing. And I swear Crista, I was was like, he's gonna make me take medicine. And yes, there's a time and place for that but he said, I want you to breathe. I was like, “you're joking?” So anyway, yes. he told me to breathe. And I really just, I was actually mad. I was very devastated by that answer. To be honest, I was like, there is no way that, that is going to help this at all, you know? And so we did, we took a breath.


He brought me into some visualization. And back then there was no zoom, or Facebook. So, we did phone calls. I met with him once a week for six months. And we did visualization on the phone, and we had breathes.


I love that. So what about that was so impactful for you? And how did you then turn that into part of what's now your mission to help other people with?

Yes, certainly. It was because the results I had from the breathwork were so profound. I mean, it was six weeks, maybe eight weeks and my nervous system started coming back into balance; it began to just become a pattern, a new pattern, a new exercise, a new habit for me to start doing. I became stronger and faster. But most importantly, my work and my family life changed. Over the course of a year, I started to see people differently. I wasn't so reactive, I became really calm and focused, I had a new job happen within that timeframe as well, even flying planes, like I flew planes all the time, and I would get real nervous. And I was able to breathe, as we're taking off and coming down and landing and found even just that was so much better. My relationship at home became not that it was anything wrong here. But there was certainly some, some lack of communication going on at the time, that wow opened up, it was literally like a like a burst of everything in my life.

That I think on something and then I breathe on it. And then it would happen maybe not the way I was thinking, but certainly in that direction. And I never thought that was possible.

So something that you said there that I think is so interesting, and I want to dig into a little bit more is it sounds like you got different results and different outcomes. But instead of going after and trying to fix those things, or kind of try to like externally go after them, what you did was more internal. So talk about that a little bit, because that's really interesting how much impact that seemed to have on your life.

I'm glad that you saw that. Because that's exactly what happens is, you know, so much is external; we want the house or the car, we want the job we want the children, we want the perfect dog, we want all these things in our life. We want the best friends, you want the party, you know, whatever it is, and we go out, we search and search and search and search but it's really everything. If I can share anything with everyone today, it's about an internal process.

Because once you make one simple change, it affects everything else in your life. And that's exactly what happened. You know, before the panic attack, I felt like I was pulled in so many directions. And I had to achieve all these things. And then the breath just really helped me to relax, internally reduce that tension and that stress, and then I could see things more clearly. And then I was able to really say no to the things and yes to the things that matter to my heart, not to what other people wanted me to do.

Yeah, I love that so much. And I think you know, my theme of this year is inspired growth. And it sounds like what a great way to help you get in tune with or kind of tap into what is inspired for you, versus what do you feel heavy and pressure and all of those emotions that you get when you're doing things that you feel you should do instead of things that you feel you're inspired to do. So I love that.

Yeah, it's always about you know, should. Right? Or I need to. Don’t should all over yourself. Those are the things that if you're shoulding or if you're saying I need to, even if you're procrastinating I really realized that about myself and my clients, is that procrastination has a lot of messages in that it's not that you're lazy. It's not that you're not getting to it, it's a sign telling you, “hey, we need to look at something else here. We need to move into a different direction. This isn't for you.” There's a lot of gold in procrastination.


Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about this in the context of entrepreneurship, right? Because I know this helped you quite a bit and shaped a lot of your entrepreneurial journey. And so for others, how can they leverage breath to stay focused and to be really intentional and build off of some of what you were just talking about?

Before a lot of us are taught or we had this vision that we had to go sit for hours on a meditation pillow, or we need to go somewhere to do that. My mission is to share that it's very simple. And we can do it right here for two minutes. And it's practical and it's easy, and you don't have to do all this work to go try to find yourself some peace and calm. So right here right now, like I'm looking at you at the computer, it's an intentional breath that allows you to really become focused. And what's happening is, is that it's triggering your nervous system and your diaphragm, that is the key, allowing you to tap into your diaphragm, which is alerting your nervous system that you're safe. And now it can be focused, and then it affects the neurons in the brain. And it affects our thinking patterns. And then zoop laser focused on what it is I'm doing. And then all of a sudden, I'm going, “that's interesting, I'm present.” Because presence is where the magic happens. That's when you're like, “Oh, I really don't want to do that task today,” or that that part of my business isn't serving me anymore. And so, you can start really feeling from the heart, as you said, heartfelt decisions for your business. And it's just a matter of a quick breath. 


So one of the things that I'd love to dive into a little bit is how can entrepreneurs really make this part of their practice? How can they make this part of their daily habits in those routines and things that they do to set themselves up for success, because as you know, entrepreneurs are always pressed for time? And although I know everybody knows the importance of self-care, sometimes it's one of the first things that people let slide and I think this is such an important practice that, you should share with us how they can do it and how they can do it in a way where it does not slide when they get really busy and start moving their self-care things off their calendar.

Well, I have really good news for anyone that's listening right now. And the good news is, it doesn't take a lot of time at all. You can do it anytime, anywhere. You can do it right here. I could do this right now and just take a breath. And actually, let's do that, Crista. Let's have a breath.


Just get comfy in your chair, in the seat of the chair and I just bring your left hand to your heart and your right hand down to right below your belly button. And then breathe fully into the nose and out through the mouth. Breathe in, exhale through the mouth. Three full rounds. On the inhale. Notice how the breath is drawn down into the navel, navel reaches outward, chest expands and exhale, beautiful Inhale, deep breath all the way down. Exhale. Last one, breathe in through the nose, and all the breath down to the navel. And exhale. Done. That's it. Magic. How do you feel?

Calm and centered.


I learned this from you. It's incredible the difference that it can make and the shift that it can have, if I'm having a moment of frustration, if I just do what you teach when it comes to breathing. It's amazing how I instantly just look at it with completely fresh eyes. And it's not frustrating anymore, or it's not that same level of frustration anymore. It's amazing.

I mean, so many things happen in that moment. As soon as you focus on your breath, your mind gets out of past and future, you are in the present, right? And then you are making space with lengthening the spine. So now your diaphragm is like, “Oh, I have room to breathe, and I can massage the organs” And then I can let the nervous system know that it’s safe. And I can make an executive decision and a focused decision, right? And then spiritually, it's saying I can make this decision from my heart. All of that happens in a moment of that breath. What's really interesting is that yes, that's a simple breath that anyone can do but there's also Guided Breathing that can happen just for you as well, that's really specific to you, Crista, or to anybody else. And what we do is that we get into the breath, and we get moving with the breath. And we do breath work that's very conscious. And we continue to breathe and we let that breath flow just like a dog. Have you ever looked at your animals or babies? Do you ever see them pause? Do they ever stop breathing? Never, only people stop breathing after like two years old or after anything that's ever shocked us. That's when we stop breathing. And so, we don't have oxygen in our body like animals do. That's why they're so present. Babies are present. They're like, “Oh, that looks great.” That's, you know, they're breathing, you know, and they're present. We stop breathing and we get stuck in the past. We get stuck in the future. And then all of a sudden, we're in chaos. And we can't make a decision and we can't move forward and we're stressed out and we're having side effects of that.


Yeah, it's interesting because I love so much of what you just said because in addition to personally, it makes me feel very calm and very centered, like I shared. But I really love that you shared the presence, because it really is all about being present. I think that's so important and everything that you're doing, whether you're working, if you can be focused and present in what you're doing, you're going to be more productive and more efficient, and enjoy what you're doing more. And if you're not working, if you can be present, and actually enjoying the moments of not working and not on the hamster wheel of thinking about work, I think you're going to be much, much better off there as well. So, I think that, that's all really important.

Let’s keep going with that. And so how do people do this consistently, and really become disciplined about teaching themselves to breathe to take a breath? I love the idea of leveraging this to help you when you are faced with a decision. So, let's talk about that a little bit more. So, the breath brings you to presence and you have many decisions to make, you know, you're an entrepreneur, you got things coming at you all the time emails and text messages you are prioritizing. So, with that quick breath, and I want to make it very clear, this isn't the breath that we're all taught by our parents.

This is a very purposeful, intentional exhale. Okay, I'm going to answer that text message, I'm going to be fully present in that text message, I'm going to answer them in full awareness, or presence. And then I'm going to take a breath, I'm going to look at my email, and I'm going to answer my email, the full presence, focusing in on what that is, and breathing while I'm emailing. Because normally what we do right is we're emailing, right and the holding, or I've got my legs cross, or, you know, a lot of people walk around, and that's great, too, you can walk around, that's fine. I actually am one of those people that needs to walk and talk when I'm on conference calls, and so forth. But breathing through it while you're doing it allows you to be really present. So, you're not monkey minding, you know, you're not trying to play catch up in all these things.

It's very possible. And as far as discipline goes, I wish I can tell you that there's a simple way to get to this. But it's like anything else; it's practice, practice, practice, because you have to experience it over and over again, in order for it to become you. Right? So, it becomes you though, and I promise you that it does. And it's just like running or it's just like, you know, all the energy that you put into your business and you're consistent, the breath is the same, but it's a lot easier and more attainable very quickly.

I want to ask you the same question that I asked everybody in every interview, and I'm so curious to hear what you're going to say. But especially since you have a background in lean, and you're Lean Six Sigma certified, which is amazing, but how do you work smarter, not harder and keep things lean?

Oh, my gosh, yes. Well, I've learned most of it from you. You know, with the breath work, and really focusing on getting really present, what I've noticed is the things that I struggle with to focus on are the things that I'm like, I really need to be doing that I think I mentioned that earlier, are the things that I need to toss, the ones that I'm trying to put all this energy into are the areas that I'm like, no. That's not something for me right now. And that happens time and time again, as soon as I'm like, “Okay, I'm going to move away from that,” because I think that I need to do that thing in my business. Yes, it's a very interesting thing to be able to really be present and feel that those things that we're trying to put all our energy in are usually the things that we don't need to because we all are taught in life that, hey, you have to put all this energy into things to create and to produce. And that's very true in some aspects. But a lot of times we're overdoing it, we're over spending our time and our energy. And the breath brings us back to allow the energy to give us the insight that we're really seeking for the best of our business.

One of the things that you have said to me in the past that I think is so powerful in this and that I really think you do such a good job of it kind of builds off of what you were just saying. But it's recognizing where you're just working too hard for something. And I think that goes into what you were just saying with where you're putting your energy into something. But sometimes if something is really, really hard, and you're putting, you know, an extreme amount of effort in for very little return that I think is just a good indicator that you know, get present and see is it actually the right thing. I love that something that you really consistently do and are always reevaluating and looking at is this right? Is this the right thing? am I working too hard for something that actually isn't the most important thing? And how can I reshift my focus and my energy into something that is so I think you are a master at doing that. So I really wanted to make sure everybody heard that because I think it's important.


Oh yeah. And to your point at the end of the day, what we're talking about is energy management, right energy management, not time management, energy management. And I truly believe that because time goes, right, we just flow with it, there really is no such thing as 9am. You know, but we can flow with it a little bit easier. And really dig deeper, you know, become part of the process of life, when we kind of back away from that time is of the essence, it's not, it's energy is of the essence is, is really the truth of it. And that's how we expend our energy. And we have to really think about, you know, what are the things that we've been taught for so long? Why do we have to be so busy? Like, why? What is that and asking yourself these questions? Do I need to really feel this busy? Can I enjoy my business? I think that happens, too. We, we get so passionate about something, and then we get so involved in it. And then we're like, I don't even like doing this anymore. I'm not even in it for that anymore.

You're in it with the paperwork, and the administrative and all that stuff. But once you start feeling that slip, that's pull back a little bit, take the breath, and then get like you said, Crista, what you've taught me so much is get really laser focus on what you're offering. What are you most passionate about? What do you most enjoy? What is the one message that you want people to hear? Mine is breath. And that shows up in yoga that shows up in meditation that shows up in my Reiki work that shows up in my conversations with people and helping them move forward.

Yeah, and it's been incredibly transformational and helpful for me as well. So I wanted to make sure that I shared Jenny's work with all of you, because she's amazing.

Yes, absolutely. So, you can find out about my company called Infinite Well Co. Go To www.infinitewellco.com. I'm also on Instagram and Facebook, I think the handle is @infinitewellco on both. And so what's coming up is that I am expanding to receive more clients, one on one, I do a lot of zoom, I have international clients as well, that I work with. So there again, their time is not of essence here. It's about energy management and meeting people where they are so time zones don't matter. But I do a lot of zoom and breathwork and really teaching and guiding them for their practice that's right for them. And then the second area that I focus on is the business aspect. So, I do corporate workshops and teaching breathwork incorporation. So, I do several of those a month as well. And then I just invite anyone to my weekly fireside chat, which is on Thursdays from 12 to 12:30 Eastern. And it's actually complimentary. And so I dig into different topics. And it's women and men. We just join entrepreneurs and we give them a little bit of insight to some yoga practices, philosophy, and, you know, just really see how those things show up in our life. And it's just been an incredible half-hour chat that we all have together. And the connections have been priceless, for sure. So, I invite you to all of those things, visit my website, join my mailing list

Yeah, I absolutely love it. And everyone, the show notes will have all the links so that you can very easily find Jenny. But Jenny, one final question for you, before we sign out, is there any kind of parting advice or things that you want to share with the entrepreneurs who are listening as it relates to leveraging breath to help them with whatever's next for them in their business or in life? You know, I think the best advice that I can give is that this is a self-journey. It's an inward journey. You can change anything externally that you want. You can add things externally, whatever that is, but your business is coming from within you. So, we have to work. It's an inside job really, is what your outside job is your inside job. And that's the most important thing. So, we have to tap into our breath, which is an untapped source. Right. This is an untapped source that we're not taught as human beings we’re not taught at a young age, it naturally happens. And when you tap into that, that source, that energy source, you'll find that your business will flourish, you will flourish everything around you will start flourishing because that's the energy that you're probably seeking. That energy, that's creative energy, all of that is coming from within you nothing else, nothing else can satisfy that. 

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for being here.


Thank you for joining me for another episode of the lean out your business podcast. I hope you got a lot of value and actionable insights from today's show. We'd love if you take a moment to leave us a review. If you have any questions on today's episode or on how to lean out your business, join us over in our private Facebook community, where every week we do live training and Q&A. I'd love to have you be part of the conversation.

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by Crista Grasso

Known as the "Business Optimizer", Crista has the ability to quickly cut through the noise and focus on optimizing the core things that will make the biggest impact RIGHT NOW to grow and scale your business. As a lean business consultant, she specializes in helping businesses gain clarity and focus through strategy, planning, and lean practices. She is the creator of the Lean Out Method and the 90-Day Lean Out Planner, and is also the founder of the global accessories brand Criscara Jewelry.


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