EP. 12 - Breathe Before You Serve: Olivia Sage on the Pickleball Reset

[00:00:07] Welcome to The Pickleball Talks, a podcast of the Interact Communication Company. Today, we welcome Olivia Sage. She is a relationship coach. She also offers some of the coolest retreats around the world, but she specializes in not only being super amazing person that I know for some time now and my own one of my own personal breathwork coaches. She's taught me transformational breathwork. Welcome, Olivia Sage. Olivia Sage

[00:00:38] It's so exciting to have you here. I've been wanting to do this podcast forever. And finally, we got to sit down and to do this. I wanted to offer my listeners and my audience everything that goes across the board for us to be able to take control of our health and our wellness, right? As I've said before, you choose from the spinning spice rack of life's ingredients to get back to the person you used to be or the person you want to become. And breathwork is the first thing because it's the first thing that we do when we enter the world.

[00:01:07] This world, right? We come into this world. Our mom gives us birth, the gift of life. And what do we do? We take our first breath, rise and shine, right? That's a rising sign. And a rising sign supposedly dictates our personality and the place in the universe and that moment in time of who we are. And from there, we have an opportunity to change our lives. Each day is what I call a reset. We rise and we shine. Our feet hit the ground and we have the opportunity for greatness.

[00:01:38] And that's what we talk about all across this show. But once again, as soon as you take your first breath, how you go along your day and how you've tried to forget what happened the previous day, because all that stuff will creep in. But along the way, we have an opportunity for change.

[00:01:54] So, Olivia, welcome. Please tell us about yourself first and then why you chose out of the laundry list of different types of breathwork that are out there, transformational breathwork that you do so amazingly across Boca Verton, Del Rey, all the way down to Miami. You go all around the world as well, but locally you're here if people want to attend your classes. So please tell us about transformational breathwork.

[00:02:20] Yes. So I actually am also a certified yoga teacher, right? So I actually didn't start with the transformational breathwork. I started with yogic breathing. And at the time, it was very helpful for me to get a control of my breath and match it with the movement, mind, body awareness. So I loved breathwork for a long time.

[00:02:42] But it wasn't until after I really dug deeper into my healing journey and realized I was trying to solve life's problems in my mind. I was trying to analyze everything, understand everything. And still, I got stuck. I was having panic attacks. I was having all kinds of relationship problems in my marriage. And I realized I needed something more. Something was still missing. I was still in my head.

[00:03:07] So I found transformational breathwork through a friend. And he was this person, Ryan. He was offering a transformational breathwork journey. You can do it from your home. I was like, you know what? I'm just going to do it. I'm just going to do it. And it just felt like I was hit by a truck. I realized in that moment that I was trying to solve like body-based, nervous system-based problems with my mind.

[00:03:34] And it was not working. I was so stuck. And I understood right away. Wow. I was working with the 20% of my wholeness when the problem was in the 80%. It was like the tip of the iceberg. I'm going to therapy, hypnotherapy. I'm doing all these different modalities, reading the books and all of that. And I was still stuck in different areas of my life, actually, more than one.

[00:03:56] So when I found transformational breathwork, I got dug deeper into somatic healing modalities and really understood that trauma actually happens in the body. And we hold on to stuck emotions, the past, like you mentioned, in our body. So transformational breathwork allowed me to free my body, my nervous system from the traumas of the past as well as ancestral traumas.

[00:04:24] I went really deep with this modality. So that's why I chose to get certified in it and to share it with the world. So the cliche, just breathe, right? Just breathe through it. It actually applies. We get so into our heads, right? But once again, it's you think about common core, right? Denominators. And what is it? And it took me the longest time to realize it's your breath. You can exercise. It's what you put into your body. That's important as well.

[00:04:52] But what does it all come down to? We let all that monkey mind take over, right? And we can drive ourself crazy, full of anxieties and full of fears. But once I started to realize reset and I will, what does that really mean? That means reset your breath. That's where it starts. If you come into the world with that and you go out with the last one and everything being bonus. Well, that's the most critical thing.

[00:05:16] I wasn't understanding that myself. And I think I employed it a little bit as an athlete. I employed it in my workouts. I tried to employ it in just, you know, you hear somebody sighing and taking a breath, but that wasn't really doing the work. That was just an exhaust valve, right? That was just scratching the surface. So I started to do this type of work before I had, you know, that accident in my life.

[00:05:41] But then afterwards, and then doing all the physical type of work in surgeries and then also the other stuff that I was doing to reset, you know, my brain is that I found that the most critical component and the best thing that I ever did was breath work. And I can say that it's the number one thing that helped not change. It changed my life. But most importantly, I feel like it integrated everything else, right? Yes, we use breath not only for transformation, but also integration from different experiences.

[00:06:11] It can be a traumatic experience. It can be, you know, a big life change. Like whatever it is, breath work is so powerful. And you know what's funny? It's the only thing you have control of, but it also goes by itself, right? Like you cannot control, like your heart beats even without you noticing. You're also breathing. But the difference is you can actually control your breath and utilize your breath to do so many different things. Regulate, downregulate, reset.

[00:06:38] It's the most amazing tool and it's free and it's just like the God's biggest gift. Not only is it free, it's necessary. Yes, it's an unnegotiable for me for sure. There you go. So here, what we're going to do for our listeners, because even though you specialize in transformational, you had to make choices along your journey of what you were going to do. So if you could just read this list that we kind of printed out and I can't even say the word. So I had to pass it over to you. I wasn't even going to try.

[00:07:07] And you know, because you've studied them and you live them and you teach them. So please, if you could help our audience, because not everything's for everybody. That's part of this show, right? There's no one end all be all. So this might work for me. It might work for you. It may not work for somebody else. So that's what we say. Keep trying. Keep trying till you find what you're looking for. And absolutely. If someone tells you this is the only way, whatever it is, just run. There you go. You need to find your own way. It's the same for everything, like the diet, life, like everything.

[00:07:34] You need to learn your body and see what works for you. So some of the breathwork options, the many, here's the open buffet. So we have Pranayama, Nadi Shoshana, Ujjayi, Kabbalah Bhakti. We have the coherent resonance breeding, box breeding, 478 breeding, Wimha, phallotropic, reburning, transformational, like it goes on and on, right?

[00:08:00] And I did choose transformational because I already was training a lot of like the yogic breathworks. And even though they helped me reset, I would say they helped me connect with my body. I just needed something a little deeper, stronger, more profound for a full nervous system reset. And transformational breathwork helped me with that. And in my certification, we were taught all kinds of breathworks.

[00:08:28] Actually, we were taught all of the, you know, like the coherent 478, box breeding, like we were taught all of them, including Wimha, like we were taught all of them. And we were given a choice. But, you know, my teacher has, you know, from his experience through my experience, we tried it all. And I chose for myself the transformational breathwork because that was the most transformational for me. Correct. So in terms of, if we were to say, you know, like a college course, you have breathwork 101,

[00:08:58] breathwork 102, or how have you, or a brown belt as opposed to a black belt in breathwork, right? So what would you say is that something, maybe somebody is transformational, something that is a little bit more advanced, or is it basic? Can anyone jump into that? Or should they take something first or just to give people an idea? So what I'm finding, and it's the same thing with pickleball too, people will have one experience or in, you know, and then they'll get discouraged. They won't go back. Or somebody takes a friend skiing and they take them to the top of the mountain without, you know, taking them to the bunny slope a couple of times.

[00:09:27] And they drag them up there and they say, oh, skiing's not fun. No, it was, it was the way that you were introduced to something, right? So same thing here is transformational on a higher level that maybe there's something more basic before to start and keep exploring. Or is it something that transformational you can just jump right into and feel comfortable? Honestly, it just depends. I would say depends. It is more on the advanced side where I would recommend someone professional and trauma-informed guides you through it. I wouldn't just throw myself in it by myself, right?

[00:09:57] Without guidance. So it needs to be trauma-informed, trained, certified, trained professional, holding this space for you and guiding you through it. Because you never know what will come up. I've had people have, you know, past life experiences connecting to their ancestors. I've had people remember trauma that they've been burying for like three decades, four decades. So it can be, it can be very profound and powerful.

[00:10:24] And it really, you need someone to create that safe space for you, to hold you, to support you going through that journey. This is definitely a long, you know, like a 45-minute minimum journey. And yeah, I absolutely advise to be supervised. No, 100% supervised. And part of the reason why is, and the main part of the reason why is that when you start to do breath work, all that stuff that you've pushed down, right, is going to start to bubble up to the surface, right?

[00:10:52] And what we call that is a somatic emotional release, right? And depending on what that is, it could be where you really need to have somebody who's there to guide you through that. And, you know, to the point where some people could even have a medical situation happen because they've been repressing it for so long. So yes, if you're going to get into breath work, just like anything else, and we always talk about, do it with somebody who's trained, certified, and properly informed, exactly, in order to deal with that.

[00:11:21] And that's what's really cool about breath work, as well as the fact that you can go into it and have absolutely into breath work class with no intention of anything. You go in with a still mind and you don't have any intention, and guess what? You start breathing and that stuff's bubbling up. And all of a sudden you go, whoa, wow, I didn't realize that. Because the truth is down there. You repress it into your subconscious mind and it comes in and you go, wow, I didn't realize I did that, or I behaved that way, or I said that, or I want to change this, you know, behavior,

[00:11:50] and I've been just lying to myself, or whatever it may be, you're going to have that. Or you go in and say, hey, today I want to work on, you know, X, Y, and Z issues as I go into my breath work. And you know what? The universe usually provides. Every time I go in there, whether I want to hear the universe or not, it tells me, right? Right, right. And that's what's another cool part of this. Yeah, I think you always get exactly what you need. And of course, it's good to set intentions and intentionally work on things.

[00:12:18] But sometimes you don't realize you've been suppressing your anger towards your dad since, you know, you're teenagers or you haven't grieved maybe your mom's loss properly because you have to be strong for other people, maybe for your family, right? And the thing with trauma is it leaves imprints in our body. So even when you keep your mind busy and keep on with your life, it's still there. Time doesn't heal wounds, healing does. So that's what breath work provides.

[00:12:47] Olivia, what was happening in your life when you first discovered breath work? To whatever degree you feel comfortable in sharing with us. Yeah, I would say, you know, I came from a very chaotic childhood where my dad was an alcoholic. So there was a lot going on growing up and I didn't feel safe, right? So when we have these experiences in our childhood, we grow up and recreate them because subconsciously we're trying to heal it and make it okay.

[00:13:13] So I created relationships where they were also very chaotic. There was a lot of chaos in them. So I was having panic attacks in my marriage, actually. And I felt super out of control. And so when I started having this panic attacks, I wanted to understand what was happening underneath it.

[00:13:36] Underneath the anxiety, underneath this actually fear of, you know, like I don't feel safe being my authentic self. But not only that, I didn't feel safe existing in general. Like growing up, it was like just growing up with a fear of death at all times. And, you know, people talk about walking on eggshells. It was like eggshells were underneath, like glued to my feet, right?

[00:14:01] So when you grow up like that, you create mechanisms to protect yourself, to keep yourself safe. So as an adult, when I realized that was, you know, that was still, I was still carrying all that. I started having panic attacks, anxiety, and I was controlling in my relationship. So I started seeing all these patterns show up in my adult life. So when I found breath work, the first thing it helped me with was the panic attacks.

[00:14:30] It helped me connect with my body and give me that, you know, it was a tool that helped me calm down, like calm my nervous system down. And sometimes it helped me to express my emotions fully. So one of the biggest mistakes people think is like, oh, you need to regulate your nervous system, regulate your nervous system. It doesn't mean just being calm. It means being able to express everything that you suppressed before, right? And that can be anger. That can be sadness.

[00:14:59] So when I found breath work, I was suppressing things for more than two, three decades. And it helps me, allows me to actually feel safe enough to face those things in my life and to process and release them. And I cannot even describe the freedom that I felt because they were just pulling me under. Every time I was like sticking my head out of the water, they were literally like pulling me under, pulling me under.

[00:15:26] So when I found breath work, I was in a very pivotal moment of my life deciding whether to stay or leave in my marriage. And it helped me through that process, not only with that process, but also with the healing and with the purpose that I have right now to help people through that as well. So it's been layers and layers of transformation for me. Understood.

[00:15:52] One of the things that happens in the human body when we do breath work, right? We have changes that happen, like you said. We happen to have chemical changes that happen in the brain that affect alpha, theta, and beta waves, right? It helps change literally how your serotonin is working and how your synaptic gap is receiving signals and transforming that throughout the human body.

[00:16:19] When you were going through this time in your life, was there that moment you just, all of a sudden was a moment that you just woke up and said, wow, it's the breath? Or was this a process to go through? Because I want our listeners to understand that sometimes in life you have that aha moment. You have that sentinel moment and it just pops and integrates. And sometimes it's, most of the time, it's a journey along the way, right? And not to get frustrated, right?

[00:16:47] And then if you don't see immediate results, there's just kind of like immediate acceptance too that I'm saying as if, you know, you have certain experiences, whether it's that showing up to a pickleball court and you have a bad experience once and maybe even twice that you don't play, but you keep going at it just in life, right? That these are the tools that help you get through that, where they're going through being lonely, right? And you're having anxiety and you're having fears is to keep plugging at the breath work and to just get all those toxins out and release, right?

[00:17:16] Not just that somatic emotional stuff, but actually pushing through the old residual that still lies beneath, right? Right. I would say it was more gradual for me, you know, when you're having the, you know, dark night of the souls, crying on the bathroom floor, thinking everything you've built is about to fall apart. And you just cry and cry and cry until you cannot anymore.

[00:17:40] And then I guess like at the end, what happens is like, like you mentioned, like that sigh. And that just makes your body calm down all of a sudden after having this like crying fit, right? And I think subconsciously I was like slowly connecting. It was more of a remembrance. I was remembering that I have this tool and that I'm supposed to use and I'm supposed to share with other people.

[00:18:07] But once I got it, I got it and I went all in. So it was both. It was gradual in the beginning. But once I understood how powerful it is, then I dived deeper in and went for the certification and started sharing it with people right away. Sharing with people right away. And that's exactly the question I was trying to figure out. How do I segue into this?

[00:18:29] Now, I tell people and I talk about breath work and I tell them, hey, I personally feel I've tried to do breath work on my own. Right. I've seen people say, oh, I did breath work. I just YouTubed it and I was doing it at my house. And I go, that's great. It's a great start. My personal belief system is that we come from energy. Right. Original Big Bang energy in the universe.

[00:18:53] The way that just where we are when we are getting out of bed and our feet hit the ground, that's part of dialing in to Mother Nature. Dialing in to the polarity of the earth and the vibration and the resonance and the energy. So for me, I feel when I do my breath work by myself, it's good. But when I go in and I have other humanity around me and I have energy of the people in a group class, that's where I really start to resonate and feel it.

[00:19:21] And so what would you say that would be something good for somebody who's thinking about getting into it? And do they start on a YouTube or should they go to a class first? I know everyone's got their own way of processing information and, you know, whether it's auditory, visual or kinesthetic, a feel. But in your opinion, I've attended your classes and I've attended many different types of classes around over the years.

[00:19:46] But I feel always the most refreshed, accomplished when I know I can let go and I have somebody guiding me who I can trust. Part of what we're making this show about is about making vulnerability cool and that it's okay in order to drop your guard down, open up your heart and let everyone else say, hey, I got issues, you got issues.

[00:20:11] And one of the amazing things I experienced in your last class that I never saw before was the sharing, the sharing of the stories. I was going through this with the class. The breathwork helped me this way, right? Things with complete strangers opening up and sharing about mental illness, health issues, divorces, abusive relationships.

[00:20:40] It was across the board of what we were hearing. Complete strangers and telling others their struggles, right? We all have problems, but we all have struggles. And if as human beings we can allow ourselves to just open up our hearts and share them, that's where true healing begins. And that's truly the absolute beauty of the gift of life and the gift of breath, right?

[00:21:08] And that's how we reset. Yeah. Suffering is part of human nature. We all suffer. We all have pain. We all have trauma. And I think one of the things that I want your listeners to know or everybody to know is that you don't have to suffer alone. We, a lot of us think at some point in our lives we are suffering when we are suffering, we think that we are suffering alone.

[00:21:32] But when we come together as a community, when we breathe together, heal together and share, that's where the real healing is. And one of the things in this modern times is like the lie is that with social media is, you know, absolutely not social. We need more of these like safe spaces to gather, to breathe, to share and to heal in community. And that's one of the reasons why, even though a lot of my work is online and I can stay online 100%,

[00:22:00] I really care so much about community and people coming together and healing together. And that's, that's just nothing gives me that much gratitude as seeing people be vulnerable, heal together, breathe together, share together. And as you were there and you heard, one of the things people share is like, oh, I felt all of your energies. Thank you for breathing with me. People saying thank you to each other for being there, for showing up for themselves.

[00:22:29] But what they don't know before they get there is they're also showing up for each other. True. It's like taking a breath. For example, if I take a breath like this, it's just a small breath. It's my own breath. But when you're taking that breath with the group energy, it's like a breath like this. And it's, you feel every single breath in that room coming into you and energizing you. If you're open to receive it. When we hurt individually.

[00:22:56] And I think one of the things that I've most recently have become more aware of is that we're hurting other ones around us. And by protecting ourselves and guarding our hearts and thinking that we can do it alone and by ourselves and the others around us are getting hurt as well. And just by saying, hey, and admitting to it and asking for help is critical. Especially now as we come out of a post-COVID age, right? That people want to connect.

[00:23:25] They just don't know how to connect. Yes. Right? Hurt people hurt people. And that takes radical self-responsibility. Notice that if you need help and you're not getting help, you're not only hurting yourself, but you're hurting your spouse, your children, your family, your friends. Because then you're not being your authentic self. You're not being who you're meant to be. And the biggest gift you can give to the people who love you is your vulnerability, is your best self.

[00:23:54] So I think it's very important to take that radical self-responsibility and ask for help, not just for yourself, but everyone around you and also future generations. We know trauma gets passed down up to 16 generations. So when you heal, you're not doing it for yourself only or your family, like current family. You're doing it for your children, grandchildren. Like it's a legacy. I always say like you're leaving a legacy to the future generations and you are an ancestor right now.

[00:24:23] Like you're the ancestors. And think about how do you want your grandkids and great-grandkids to talk about you? What are you leaving them? You have said it exactly how I want to convey to my audience and it's this here. It comes down to the fact that we had an industrial revolution throughout in the beginning of society that gave us all these tools.

[00:24:49] And then we had a tech revolution that's given us the phones, which was the blessing and the curse, right? And then we had COVID, which was something that affected the whole world and will for the rest of time. But now, and the reason why I have you on the show and the reason why I wanted to bring up breath work, there's a multitude of reasons, but ultimately it comes down to with pickleball. And we're a pickleball show, right? And we're doing the spiritual reset through pickleball, right?

[00:25:17] Where it's the only game that you have an opportunity to put four paddles down, make a friend and cure loneliness. But when you show up to the court for acceptance, don't be fearful. If the first person rejects you because they're more concerned about their duper score and whatever issues else that they have going on about winning how many matches in a row, don't take it personal. Read through it, find them. There's really great people out there.

[00:25:41] And that's what we're doing here is to say, hey, I'm going to show up and I'm going to open up my heart and I'm going to give it a chance. And through this, collectively, we can give you the tools as we use the platform of pickleball in order to reunite the world, right? That's beautiful. It's so needed. So thank you for doing the work you do. It is so needed. And you know what's funny? It's a little story. I was in Costa Rica with my son over this past June. I took a one-month sabbatical.

[00:26:09] And we went to a pickleball court just to play and just to do something different because it was, you know, we didn't want to go to the ocean another day. We were just in the ocean every day. So we're like, no, let's do something different. We went there and it was like close, but there were some people who were kind of working there. So my son and I just like rented and, you know, the stuff and we were playing. And then this guy came. He was actually working literally in the construction, like the outside of the building.

[00:26:36] But turns out that he is actually a teacher back in his country and he just moved to Costa Rica. And he was like, oh, you want me to show you guys and everything? And there's a language gap too, by the way. So he spoke Spanish. Our Spanish is like horrible. But he started showing us and my son started picking some things up and like we're playing. I was taking a little video and it was just like the purest, you know, form of human connection.

[00:27:04] Even without being able to speak and communicate, we communicated through pickleball. And it just opened up our hearts fully to this experience, right? This person we never met before was willing to play with us, show us and have fun with us. And it just felt so good. It's one of the highlights of our whole month in Costa Rica now. It was just beautiful.

[00:27:29] Can you believe that in 1965 and this little island in Washington, where this is spread out around the world all the way down to Costa Rica to have this with your son? What a bonding moment. But not just a bonding moment with your son, but with a stranger, with language that you can barely communicate. But it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Because the energy is there. The intent is there. Human to human connection. Human to human connection, right? That's the common core. And that's what I pontificate.

[00:27:55] That's what I speak of is like, hey, guys, you don't have this sport with purses now and sponsorships and what have you. Because what it is, it gets back to first it started about the family. Then it started about the community. It started about respect. And what that was that you guys had? Respect for just humanity. Respect for having fun. Respect for communication, right? Respect for like sportsmanship, right? Doing the more bodies. Speaking Spanish. You're speaking English. It doesn't matter. But guess what?

[00:28:24] Man, he wanted to come and he wanted to engage, right? With you. What a beautiful moment. That's what we're talking about. That's what I talk about in trying to bridge the gap between the beautiful game that it started as and the intent of the original energy that it came from and the sport. And it's cool. I'm very competitive. I love every single sport, right? And I want to always win, but it's the way that I go about it, right? And so that's why I constantly talk about the reset. Right.

[00:28:52] And the reset is a couple of different things, right? Justin Pickleball, and I'll read it to you because I don't think I've ever gone through this with you, right? Is the accountability pledge. Right. With the accountability pledge, it says, the point is never more important than the person. If there's ever doubt, call reset and replay the point. Lead with kindness before, during, and after every game. Choose courtesy over conflict. Choose courtesy over conflict. Clarity over arguing. And connection over competition.

[00:29:20] Be accountable for your own behavior and aware of how you impact others. Reset yourself. Reset the moment. Reset the community. That's the spirit of 1965. And if we can use this as our centeredness to say people, hey, yeah, play competitively, whatever. But don't argue. Don't fight. Have fun with it. Somebody's still going to win. And if the ball's in or out, it doesn't matter. Just say reset if you have any doubt.

[00:29:50] The Pickleball gods and Pickleverse will decide who wins the next point, right? It's not that important. It's the energy that you give it. So speaking of energy, can you guide us through a simple reset that your listeners can do right now? Right. Whether they see us or they don't see us. A little bit about what your class looks like. Because once again, I've gone through a couple of, well, more than a couple, many different teachers of breathwork, right? And unique experience.

[00:30:18] So in your guided imagery that you do, in the way that you convey to your class, what is something that when you go in there and I see you scan the class and you analyze, what are the processes that you go through in order to connect with your class? For me, my process to connect is, first of all, I always pray before I start a class. I pray to God that he uses me to do this work and that people get exactly what they need.

[00:30:45] I'm just a messenger. I'm just a bridge between the universal energy and the people. And I'm just there to help them remember their own power, their own power of healing. Because our bodies are incredible. I always tell them too, like your body knows how to heal. Your body knows how to release. My job there is to help them get out of the monkey mind, right?

[00:31:11] We're shutting down the monkey mind so we can access the subconscious mind and the nervous system. And we're also conditioned to suppress our emotions. It takes a little bit of like guidance to actually bypass that monkey mind and to get to the root of the problems. And when we do, it's incredible what happens, what gets to be released, the lightness. Like you heard people sharing how light they feel.

[00:31:40] People connecting with their children that they lost before. People hearing other ones like crying and really getting motivated if they stop breathing. Because it's a process, right? So they get back to the breath. And it's just incredible. And the way I connect is through energy because we're all the same, right? I'm just there to guide them. But they're doing the work. It's true. They're showing up for themselves. You feel people's pain in that class.

[00:32:10] And you feel for them, right? You try. And there, if there's darkness, you try to stay in the white light. Doing it by yourself, the darkness will creep in into the monkey mind and overpower the monkey mind and give yourself doubt. But when you're in that group collective energy and you see what they're going through and you're having your doubts and you're trying to find your own reset. And you're like, stay in the light. Stay in the light. Stay in the light.

[00:32:36] Don't let that negative energy, those negative thoughts, those old patterns creep back in because it wants to sit here up on your shoulder and tell you you're not good enough that you can't do this or bring you back into the darkness. But when you're in there with the group energy, it helps you get through that moment. It's that final push that you feel. Okay, they're vulnerable. I can be vulnerable and I can finally let it go.

[00:32:57] And that, I think, is the most critical thing that people can take from this show today is that, is to be able to trust and to trust the humanity again. And sitting in that clash, you go, okay, not everybody's bad, right? You're going to be disappointed and you're going to continue to get disappointed, but we still have to be able to trust again. Otherwise, we've lost our humanity. Yeah, we need to believe in the Ben Avalon of the universe and the people and that we all want to be better. We are all doing our best.

[00:33:25] For me, the only way that I can try to find a bridge that gap is through this game, right? You know, there's other games. There's tennis, pick up basketball. It's close, but it's different, right? Those were all sports to begin with, so they weren't games. They didn't come with an intended energy. This does, right? And I want to say something towards that because, like, we can do the breath work. We can release, like, but I think balance is the key to life, key to happiness. Because with pickleball, it is so much fun, right?

[00:33:53] And I think that joy is what we are missing as well as humanity. We are all on our phones scrolling, watching other people's lives, comparing ourselves to others. But nothing looks like that in real life, the way it looks on Instagram. But what we're missing, I think, is actually, like, that movement that we used to have naturally as humans and the joy of sharing something together, that vulnerability.

[00:34:20] And I think joy is as healing as much as a breath work, right? So we need it all. Like, that joy, that happiness, that connection. I felt when I played a pickleball with my son, that oneness is the medicine that we forgot. For two generations now, it's not that these kids forgot. They don't know any better. That's the difference. Kids, thank God I grew up in the 80s, okay?

[00:34:50] I love the fact that I grew up in the 80s or even in the 70s as a child. And as they say, if I wasn't bleeding before noon, I wasn't having fun, right? My knees weren't scraped or my elbows, I really wasn't out there kicking it with the neighborhood, right? We weren't jumping our bikes over ramps and crashing and doing all that stuff. But guess what? Everybody woke up in the morning and it's like, who's out in the neighborhood, right? That's what it was. Let's go find some fun. Let's go find what's the cool thing that we're going to do today.

[00:35:17] Are we going to go, you know, searching in the woods and we're going to try and find a cave? Are we going to jump our bikes? Or did somebody get a new skateboard? Or what was it, right? Are we going to play hide and seek? There's no hide and seek. There's like, okay, we're going to play this on our app. We're going to scroll over here. Check this out, right? That's the difference. Yeah. And exactly what you said is exactly it. You hit it on the head. And, you know, I've been trying to figure out the essence of it, but you nailed it. And then you'll nail the fact that, yes, we all know it's fun and it's joy.

[00:35:47] And we're all talking about group and collective energy and what have you. And it's that right there. It's that spirit. That spirit of getting back to 1985, not just 65, 85 is that when you went out to the neighborhood and you went looking for that, right? And while on our phones, we can't find it, right? But through pickleball is the game that allows us to get back to it. And that's why you're trying to use this as the springboard, as the launching pad in order for that to happen, to let people know, hey, somewhere, if you show up at the court, it's

[00:36:16] not about the ball being in and points won. The real win is finding that person who's hurting or that person who could be a friend. I see women join wine clubs and they go out and they do this and guys are getting together and doing things that you wouldn't think of. You're not going to do that in a pickup basketball game. That's the beauty of it. That's the joy. That's the thing that I'm seeing that's developing. I've made so many friends through pickleball. It's unbelievable. And I lived in LA and I lived there 23 years.

[00:36:45] And I could tell you the amount of true friends that I counted on fan. And now in the last two years, just through pickleball, the rebuilding of myself and then in my new persona or whatever personality or the new mark or however you want to put it is this game helped save my life. There's not even a question. I believe. And I hear it every day. I go to the Ford. I go to Diadem. I go to places all over the country and I hear stories all day long. Thank God for pickleball. Why?

[00:37:15] Because coming out of COVID, we needed it. It's everything. It was the right storm, the perfect storm. Right. But we need to keep it going. We need to keep it moving forward. Right. And we need to let people know it's OK. Go out there. So if somebody who has a band on their wrist, that's a 4.0 will play with you just because you're beginning. Keep looking. Don't worry. Ignore that band. Ignore that number. There's great people out there. Right. And it's just we don't want you to feel rejected. We want everyone is welcome.

[00:37:45] That's what this show is about. And we can use this. Keep searching it out. I love it. So as you move forward, if we could just tell people here, when they show up to the pickleball court, they're playing and they're winded. OK. In transformational and you show techniques. Right. So they're playing and maybe that it starts slow and then they go fast, fast, fast. And then we have something in pickleball called a reset. Right. And when they go to reset that point, if you could just go through what a breath sounds

[00:38:14] like, what it looks like, what it feels like, how you would explain it. And when they come back to the service line, when the point is over and they and then they come to the line, I kind of teach in my classes and to my friends and to everybody who will listen to me when you step to that line. Every time's a reset. Doesn't matter what the point was before. Reset in this. Put your feet pointing to the line. Just step back a little bit. Right. Take a breath. Look at the court.

[00:38:41] Look to the left side of the we're going to serve it to to the right side. Analyze the court. Just calm yourself. Just don't get up there and haphazardly just whack the ball. Right. It's like somebody who shoots free throws at basketball. What do they do? They approach the free throw line. Right. Intently. They look at the rim. They spin the basketball. They may bounce it a couple of times. They think they set. Then they shoot. Right. It's always repetitive. It's done the same way. It's a template.

[00:39:11] That's what I'm telling people. Every single time. Use that. Use that time in the court. On the game. Because that little reset right there will go to the rest of your day. It'll go and it'll teach you the terms of like when you walk in before you walk into that meeting. Step right up to the door right before you enter it. Same thing as like you're stepping to the line to serve. Take a breath. Just analyze the room. Analyze yourself. Where are you at? In your head? In your body? And go into there. And guess what?

[00:39:40] You have a better experience. Even if it's the person who you really don't get along with in the office. If you reset and do that, you're throwing off different energy. And maybe that person finally receives it. And you have a different experience. It's the same thing with the pickleball court. Yeah. What I'm hearing is just intention and presence. Two things that we kind of lost. You know, in the sauce as well with the social media and the COVID. And I think having that intention of like, you know, and resetting and looking. Not just playing to play. Just not hitting the ball to hit the ball.

[00:40:10] But having an intention and presence with yourself, right? I think we are, that's why we're so disconnected. Because we lost that presence with ourselves. We're always in our head in the past or in the future. So what I'm hearing with the reset is come back to your body. Remember the intention of why you're here, right? Remember your intention and be present with the moment and with yourself and with the people around you. Right. So just like everything, we have numbers.

[00:40:40] We have our social security number. We have our telephone number. We're identified by numbers. Now we have a game that became a sport that identifies by numbers, right? Rating systems. There's five rating systems. There's one that's most dominant. Now, a lot of people identify themselves by their number, right? And I went through that and I've talked about it in the past about a party that I went to here and where I live locally and how these folks have become so ingrained and so ensconced in their number and that that's how they self-identify. Right? Right.

[00:41:10] What I'm trying to get across to the masses, whoever's listening, is this. Even if you're interested in what your number is, that's great. Okay? But when you go to the court, don't think about your number and how you're going to pick a partner in order to affect that number for it to go higher. Think about it. And that's cool. But think about when you do, how you interact with those people. When you go there, don't think about how I'm going to make my, you know, X number go higher. How am I going to make myself go higher?

[00:41:37] How am I going to make that person who's right of me or to the left of me on my side of the court feel better? How am I going to make those people go, wow, that was fun. And that was a great time. How am I going to do when I get into the car and go, man, I'm glad I got up at seven o'clock in the morning and hit that court because I feel good. Not just good because I won 10 matches. I feel good because guess what? I had a great human experience and the energy that I took. I don't even need a second cup of coffee because that was awesome.

[00:42:05] That was so much fun. Oh, my God. I'm vibrating as I get in this car and I feel good. That's what you take away from when you leave. Not the frustration of the ball was out and you're arguing with somebody, you know, and I go, I went back to a court that I knew was toxic last week. And what happened? The same behaviors. And I told the person who I was going with, I'm not going there because it's bad and toxic and not good for my energy. And what happened? I went in there with the most love that I could have, the most open heart.

[00:42:35] And what happened? Those same behaviors and the same outcome, which I said to myself, why would you put yourself into that? Why? Because I had to reaffirm it. If I'm going to talk about it, I have to live it and have to see, okay, is this true? Is it right? And examine it. And then go back and say, is that still the same way? Or is that something that I was at a stage in my life and made a perception that wasn't true? But it was reaffirmed. It was reaffirmed even more across the board that we have a problem. So I'm glad I experienced it.

[00:43:03] But I went through two days of chaos because of it. Why? Because it affects me. So what did I do? I went to breathwork class. I swear to God, I did. And I reset and it works, right? And if I can use that, it was like a prime example of everything right there. It was like, God wanted me in that. Why don't we go back into the front line, get shelled again, right? And have that experience and have that traumatic experience. Why? To grow stronger.

[00:43:33] To be able to be stronger for my audience. To be stronger for my friends in my life and my loved ones. And to be able to help affect humanity even bigger, greater, and deeper. And more on the masses. Why? Because we have a moment in time right now in our society for greatness. And it's time that we take control of it and we help everyone come along. And that's what we're here to do, right? Let's go. I couldn't agree more. Let's do it. You're doing it. You're amazing.

[00:44:02] And thank you for doing the work you do. You know, like it's, I can tell your, you know, your heart is completely in it. And your intention, your presence. I feel it all. So. I appreciate that. But, you know, I do it for the hope that this future generation can start to get it again. Right? Who can go out there and just really talk to one another. You know, and that's part of the work that I'm trying to do in many different ways. And something else that I'm a part of called Interact. My other business that I do and my other app and company.

[00:44:32] But the bottom line is this, is that we're just trying to raise the bar of social consciousness for people to get along. That's the bottom line. Right? And breathe through it and breathe together and create positivity. So what does the future look like for you, Ms. Olivia? What's going on? Tell us about it. What are you doing out there? Yeah. I'm using all my tools to help actually people have a better relationship with themselves and each other.

[00:45:00] I'm focusing more and more on relationship, marriages, because I see that for me, like my bigger purpose is for our children to grow up saying that I know what a healthy love feels like. I know what healthy relationships look like. Because when I work with clients who are, you know, around my age, they're saying like I cannot attract the person I want to attract or I'm having trouble with my relationships.

[00:45:28] Because I don't know what I'm going for. I'm at point A. I don't know what point B looks like because my parents, right? Nobody modeled healthy love for them. So for me, through breath work, through my relationship work, through my retreats, my goal is to help people, adults right now, to learn, you know, effective conflict resolution.

[00:45:52] Having better relationships with themselves, with each other, and really creating that healthy family structure so our children can say, I know what a healthy relationship looks like and recognize it when that's not it, when they grow up, right? And pass on that type of love legacy to the future generations. And that includes, you know, having fun with your family. Like healthy love doesn't look like just going to work, coming home, doing dinner, going to bed. Like you need things like breath work.

[00:46:21] We need things like pickleball. We need tools. Like we, all of the adults that I work with, they've spent years and thousands and thousands of dollars to learn what they do for work. But they have zero training in relationships, have to have healthy relationships. So my goal is to change that.

[00:46:43] My goal is to teach what a health relationship looks like, all the tools that we need to have health relationship with ourselves, with each other, with our kids, so that our kids can grow up seeing that, knowing that, with that model. And so that we can pass it on to future generations. That's my ultimate, ultimate goal. Mine too. I love the term love legacy. Okay. And that's really what it is. And that's what I'm trying to do as well.

[00:47:11] And that's what we're trying to do is bring pickleball into the school systems, right? To give those kids those common core values, right? Love it. Yes. And redo that. Since they don't have the 1980s and they had two generations of the icons and the iPhone and the Android, and that's what the buddy was, right? And then the dopamine rush by seeing the different colors on their screens and all the wrong things here. Through the school systems, through that love legacy reset, right?

[00:47:38] And through your community, whether it's going to be the community component of pickleball, that love, or it's going to be through a semi-pro where people are little combination of what's happening competitively before you become a pro, which leaves to the pros. But tying them all together. So that legacy of love has a bridge from community to professionalism for understanding and respect, right?

[00:48:03] That's where it dovetails and becomes a highly vibrational system. And that's what I think that we, it's not what I think, excuse me, let me retract that. That's what I know, okay? That we have to get back to and that's what everybody's, they're yearning for it. Yes. They're afraid of it and they're scared of it, but it's like coming to a door and not opening it. And through breath work, that's going to start the process, right? Then you can exercise.

[00:48:32] Then you can have something to drink nutritionally. Then you can stretch. Then you can meditate. Meditation, I'll tell you, I've been meditating. And you know what? Great. It can help calm the monkey mind and all that. But still, you can't meditate if you don't breathe, right? So that's the number one thing, right? So if you guys are out there, I meditate, I meditate, I meditate, I hear. But do you do any breath work? No. So you're not really truly meditating because you're not truly vibrating. So that's just my opinion.

[00:48:58] But I do want to thank you for coming on here and helping my listeners and people who are playing pickleball or if you're not playing pickleball or you're hesitant to play pickleball and then we're going to teach you how to breathe. So you get over, get rid of that anxiety or get rid of that fear and say, I'm not athletic. I can't do this. I've been rejected. No excuses. Breath work will help you through that, right? Yes, absolutely. Okay. So how can our audience find you? Where are they going to find you on a podcast? Are they going to find you on Instagram?

[00:49:27] Where can they see you, find you and come to see your classes, whether it's in person or online? How do you know about it? So I'm mostly on Instagram and my handle is I am Olivia Sage. I'm Olivia Sage. I'm also on Alignable. Like I've been really into Alignable recently and meeting the most amazing people, doctors, professors, therapists, and, you know, collaborating with them in their work. So Alignable is where I'm hanging out recently. And of course, you can always DM me on Instagram.

[00:49:57] Thank you, Ms. Olivia Sage, for joining us. It's always a pleasure to be in your presence. And thank you for helping change my life and the breath work and the techniques that you've taught me. Many times I'll think about the class I attend afterwards and go through and say, okay, I'm here and I use that technique or I'm there and I use that technique. So I really want to just give you the highest level of tribute as my teacher. So thank you so much.

[00:50:23] Thank you for trusting me and trusting yourself, showing up for yourself. Absolutely. And that's what it's about. Show up for yourself. And that's the most important thing. So thanks for joining us on the Pickleball Talks. Until next time, keep the ball in the air, the competition friendly and fun in the game. Please listen to us on all your major podcast networks. The Pickleball Talks will now be also a TV show coming up in the beginning of December.

[00:50:52] Thank you for listening. See you next time, my friends.