Feel, Breathe, Move: How Exercising This Mantra Can Lead to Transformation

< Full Episode

Transcript: Feel, Breathe, Move: How Exercising This Mantra Can Lead to Transformation

Season 12, Episode 31  | May 12, 2026

Jamie Martin

Welcome back to Life Time Talks, I’m Jamie Martin. And in today’s episode, we’re talking about MB360 and the mantra, feel, breathe, move. I have Jessie Syfko with me again today. Hi, Jessie, how are you?

 

Jessie Syfko

I’m wonderful, how are you?

 

Jamie Martin

I’m doing great. I’m happy to be with you.

 

Jessie Syfko

I’m thrilled. I’m always excited to sit with you.

 

Jamie Martin

Well, okay, so Jessie is the SVP of Digital Innovation and Strategy at Life Time. But on top of that, she’s a certified strength and conditioning specialist, certified yoga teacher, and doctor of traditional naturopathy. She’s also the brand creator of the MB360 program. And that’s really what our focus is today. We want to talk about this program that you’ve really built around the idea of melding mind and body. So start there. What is MB360?

 

Jessie Syfko

Well, at the very center, it’s about shortening the distance between awareness and intentional action. So as we move through our life, as we get new ideas, if we have to messages from other people, as life changes, if we can be aware and we can grow and we can learn, and then we can be intentional about how we use that information in our lives, we’re starting to master ourselves. So energy being everything at the core, we built MB360 as a fusion of breathwork, deep core activation and mobility, and then strength and conditioning that builds better posture, better alignment, and better emotional intelligence so that we can get into a really great meditative state at the end.

 

Jamie Martin

Got it. Okay. So it’s really about melding those pieces all together. And one thing I’ve loved when I’ve heard you describe this in the past, it’s like it’s bringing together a lot of disciplines that you might be doing individually at different points. So you might over here do yoga, you might over here do breathwork and meditation, but you’re kind of saying we bring it all together because of how important they are all interconnected.

 

Jessie Syfko

Yeah, what I found was I had to go to a gym or a boutique to get strength and conditioning that was optimization focused or really teaching quality movement, mobility centered, right? So from my old athlete self or me being a strength and conditioning specialist for all these years of really teaching the great fundamentals of strength training, which is everything, right? We know that thick thighs save lives and the amount of muscle you can maintain in your life is one of the most important facets of longevity, right?

 

But also just keeping you injury free, letting you do the things that you want to do in your life, right? But then the mindfulness was out of there. There was no mindfulness over there. And so people are working hard and they’re getting injured and they’re focusing on how much weight or how hard they can work or how many calories or all these, what I think are kind of more secondary focuses of fitness.

 

And then you all the way over on the mindful side and they weren’t, we were losing the performance of great form or the structure of the skeletal body or the awareness of some of these other factors.

 

And then the third poses for me was I was involved with a lot of personal development. I had mentors and teachers about business and leadership and entrepreneurship. And I was like, those types of personal development messages weren’t in either of those two worlds. So I created the thing that I wanted to do the most. I wanted to be mindful. I wanted to feel amazing and energetic. Obviously, you wanted to be able to meet yourself where you were on the mat, so it was an inclusive environment. I wanted to be able to train as hard as I wanted to and in the same day, different reason. I wanted to just feel free to make decisions that I knew were best for me.

 

And then at the end, being able to earn a meditative state where you can ultimately reset, restore, and receive this amazing access to yourself that usually your brain is too noisy to feel into. And so through the developing this and then rolling it out, the world started to catch up, right? Then the world started to talk about somatics and the emotional overlay of the body.

 

Well, that’s great, because we do that in MB360. We teach you about how to release, how to let go, feel, right? People are now learning about intuition and how that relates to movement and how movement relates to mental health. Well, we have been doing that for years and then, and then MB360 talking about that. There is no gap between the mind and the body, right? Now, but you can create a super highway if you want.

 

And then, you know, using tools like weighted vests. When we started using weighted vests, we brought weighted vests to Life Time three and a half years ago. And I was using it for years before that. We started because we like, well, this is really cool because it’s gonna make movements harder. It’s going to allow you to use your arms and your legs without holding on or changing your form, adding a little bit of load. What we found though, and this was prior to Life Time, was when the weighted vest came off, the nervous system response, the calming effect, right, think weighted blanket, that people had was profound. And it was over and over and over and over again. People were like, my gosh, I feel so different. So yeah, we use it as a work smarter, load your body, know, strength training, enhancing tool.

 

And we parallel it with, do the movement with the weight, do the movement without, feel the difference, and teach the people, neuroplasticity, right, behavior change, how to let go. How to shift. How to go from stress to calm. How to go from hard to flow. And so I baked it into the format so that people could start to have a physical relationship to the decisions that they make and the impact. Immediate value exchange. Do this, feel this. Change this, feel this. So instead of, Jamie, here’s five things that you do, which one worked? Nobody knows.

 

Jamie Martin

Right. But if you can feel that difference.

 

Jessie Syfko

One variable. You’re the constant, but one variable change, two environments, what did it feel like to you? And then the next time you come, make a decision.

 

Jamie Martin

Yeah, you get to choose, right? You have the choice. I love that. You mentioned somatics, which I think is such an important thing to touch on briefly. you just speak to what that is? Because I know it’s becoming a more common in the mainstream right now. But when you say that term, somatic, whether it’s yoga or other forms of movement, what does that mean?

 

Jessie Syfko

So simply stated, soma means body. And the body is where all the feeling and the emotion lives, right? So we can describe something with our brain, but it’s really what matters is how it feels in the body. And so big moments in our life or big belief systems get anchored in our body. And so it’s like when you hear a song, for example, and it immediately pulls you back to a moment, right?

 

Jamie Martin

Nostalgia. Yeah.

 

Jessie Syfko

So, and you feel it, or you hear a song and you want to move a certain way. There’s a rhythm to our body. And then there’s a fascial field, and then there’s an aura field. And your body is this electromagnetic field, which is why 90% of our communication is energy. 10% is what we say and do in the room.

 

Moving the body changes what the body holds on to, it changes what the body can hold, you know, and so these rhythms of movement help the next part of that would be the nervous system. So we have a fight or flight side, which is stress and it’s contraction and it’s, you know, it’s a remove all the energy from the vital organs so that you can fight, flight or freeze or fawn, right?

 

Well, we want in a healing environment, in an optimization environment, in a creative environment, we want all that vital energy in the center. So vagus nerve, central nervous system, we’re calm, our breath is free. And so somatics create a resting, releasing environment for your body and your, so it’s not separate, your emotional body, really, which gets into the muscles as it gets deeper and into the attachments and bones as it gets deeper to release.

 

And if you think about how we release, right, we go to the bathroom every day, we need to sleep every day, we are cyclical in being, we need to charge, we need to engage, we need to adapt. We need to grow and then we need to calm and settle and heal and restore and then do it again. So sun comes up and the sun comes down.

 

Where we gap and why somatics I think are so important today is in the emotional ability to release the things that start just with perception, social media, other people’s opinions, imposter syndrome, the decisions that you made that didn’t lead you to where you wanted to go and how you feel about it.

 

You can teach emotional release through movement. And somatics is also very intuitive. It’s a feel-based science rather than you have to follow the plan or it should look like this. It’s feel your way through.

 

Jamie Martin

Yeah, and you incorporate that into your classes, but you have like these moments of like shake out and release that you do every single class.

 

Jessie Syfko

Every single class. It’s towards the beginning. So here’s kind of the flow. So we start in breathing on our back. we build a state of awareness within. I think when we walk into a workout, what we don’t always become aware of is what comes with us.

 

Jamie Martin

It’s what we’re carrying along and bringing into the space with us.

 

Jessie Syfko

So there’s an intentional moment of now arriving in your body again. I think a lot of us walk around out of our body, right? We’re in the past, we’re in the future, we’re focused on things that don’t matter, like presence, stillness, calm. And now we can start to deepen the breath, right? And then we move into deep core work, right? So very focused, transverse, abdominous, right? Supportive stability for your spine and your movement. All good movement comes from the deep core, right?

 

Or it doesn’t and then you’re trouble. And then we activate a brain system. So this is another thing that’s very cool about a MB360. It’s like a brain vitamin every time you go through the process. You start on your back, just like you started in life. Then you roll, just like you did in your life. Then you get to a crawling position, just like you did in your life. Primal patterning, right? Then you build into a squat, you walk. You move into a bigger, so it’s a progressive development for your brain and for the awareness of all your joints in multi-plane, which allows you to then be more ready for the next phase.

 

So now, okay, so now think about this. So we’re oxygenated, we’re mentally aware, we’re present, we’re focused. Now we have brand awareness to all the joints. How we move up, down, forward, back, right, left, right, you know, and now we get to our first standing moment posture.

 

So think about how our posture shows up and now we shake it out. So it’s like what gets brought to the surface with the breathing, with the deep core, with the movement, with the heat, right? Which is what you want. Think of it as a very highly intelligent warm-up and now we’re gonna release. The other thing about it is it brings joy into the equation. It brings community in the equation. So dopamine, serotonin, connection, right? Joy and connection. And then we all high-five each other. It’s like baked into the form.

 

We introduce ourselves to the people in the room. We create a bond. And then we start doing our mobility focused strength and conditioning segment of the class. What you get then though is better awareness of what your body needs you to know today. Where you soar, does this feel like you need extra time and attention? I’m not gonna do this thing because whatever, just awareness of my body today.

 

Jamie Martin

Where am I right now? Meet yourself where you are to your point.

 

Jessie Syfko

And you can’t prepare for that.

 

So we live in a world where it’s always about the plan for people or doing what the teacher says. And what I always tell my people is experience is the best teacher. I’m here to offer you choice. But ultimately it’s your decision to choose. So we teach intuitive intensity back to feel, breathe, move. If we can feel into it, and trust people to feel into their body and hold the space of unconditional love. Now we have an environment where people then choose things based on love. Not ego, not other people’s opinions, not keeping up with the Joneses, not the beat of the music, but what feels right.

 

And so feel starts first, right? So when we build our patterns, we do holds like they’re called isometric holds which means that you’re not moving shortening or lengthening the form or the muscle or the range of motion you’re just holding and feeling into it and then we go to that threshold of shake. So that we can build a relationship to the nervous system and it needs you to be focused and present and calm. In that moment. Another thing in that moment we talk to and teach in a lot of our formats is you can drive anger further into the body by constantly being angry when you’re doing the movement. Your body is just anchoring all the time.

 

I observed this, my gosh, 15 years ago in my classes, because I could feel it. I would feel the student doing the work of, I hate me, I hate me. You could feel that I hate me, energy. I’m not good enough, energy. Be thinner, be prettier, be richer, be whatever. You can feel these gaps when you actually pay attention. Well then they’re firing and wiring those beliefs all the way through their body, all the way through their movement, all the way through their strength. They’re getting, what I try to say is it’s like being stronger in a weaker place or being stronger in a angry place. And so now your brain starts looking out into the world for reasons to be angry. And so I started bringing that into the practice. If what you want to feel or where you want to be isn’t where you are, then don’t defend how you got here. Start again.

 

Jamie Martin

Yep, and that’s the opportunity every single time. Start again.

 

Jessie Syfko

I love that. And so instead of I’m angry and I’m gonna be angry and I’m gonna do angry things in my class and be like I’m angry I’m gonna neutralize it as it’s just sensation. And now I’m gonna move it through my body. I’m gonna release I’m gonna find the calm and if I’m the acceptance, I’m gonna find the joy, I’m gonna find the love, I’m gonna find the gratitude, the gratitude and the information now my feel ,atches breathing. Okay, so if I can feel it. In awareness, I can transform it and I can breathe with it. Now I have a partnership. Now I have movement in my body. And that’s what your breath does. moves stuff through the body.

 

Jamie Martin

From top to bottom, right? of it. It’s moving it, yep.

 

Jessie Syfko

Most important thing that we do all day, breathing. The most impactful decision to be better in your body, to be better in your mind, is to breathe better. It’s also the number one way you burn fat. So for people that are trying to burn fat, breathe better. Program yourself to breathe better. Breathe better all day, right? All night. Which is why mouth tape is so important.

 

Jamie Martin

Yes, and more more people are learning about that.

 

Jessie Syfko

And then move. So if you can’t feel it, we don’t move on to the focus on the breathing while the feel is there, right? It’s gotta be one and two and then three. So it teaches the brain to body connection. So the neuromuscular part of the brain. A lot of people have injuries or scar tissues or emotional trauma that breaks patterning, kinetic patterning in the body and so willpower isn’t gonna get you there, right?

 

So what that actually does if you’re not self-aware you don’t have a coach is it creates compensation and when you have compensatory patterning your joints your muscles and your body wear and tear in places. They weren’t designed to wear and tear, right? So it always goes back to energy. Energy and motion is emotion. Emotion over time gets anchored. Starts in the field, goes into the fascia, and then it eventually anchors deeper.

 

And so when you can build a movement pattern every day, release, let go, holistic thinking, right? So if you move any part of the body, the whole field changes. It’s called tensegrity. And you can build a relationship to what do I need? And when you actually start doing it, if your body guides you somewhere else, go with it. The somatic response, the release, the power of that movement is gonna help you shift whatever is ready to let go, because that’s the other part. Cells are always turning over. There’s always something being ready to be released. And your body is always changing, right? Organs are regrowing, skin is regrowing, your hair is regrowing, everything, right?

 

Jamie Martin

Nothing is static.

 

Jessie Syfko

Nothing. So it creates flow and rhythm with self-healing, self-love, and in our practice the mental part of it is self-awareness, self-study. How do I observe myself? How do I learn about myself? How do I ask better questions about myself with no judgment, right? So that I can go into the third phase, which is repetition, which is self-mastery.

 

So if I get to self-mastery, I have become aware enough to have an opinion of do I want to change or choose again kind of thing. Now I’m gonna study it in a manner. So think of it as like if I’m learning to lunge, what feels good, what other options do I have?

 

Again, something simple could be like, what angle am I in? What weight do I use? How fast do I go? Do I add impact? It still could be applied to a physical piece. And then the mastery is once I go, ooh, I got it. So I have great form. I have great emotion. I have great focus. I feel amazing. Now I want to master that so that I, again, I got to get to that 10,000 and more more more reps so that the unconscious programming of my body shows up without me thinking about it.

 

Think about it from sports. You know, we were at the US Open and it was incredible to sit back and watch Djokovic and Alcaraz. That is awareness study mastery about all of the pattern of their body from the serve and the ball and the arm and the grip of the racket and where you’re looking. It’s programmed. So you can program yourself to reset every day with really great movement.

 

Jamie Martin

I love that so much. I will tell you, and like I said, I haven’t been to a ton of MB360 classes, but the ones I have been in, I will tell you, kind of come in in one state and you, like when I’ve left, there’s like, you feel like a lightness upon you, like throughout. Because of just the way that it’s programmed, it’s almost like there’s a little bit of freedom that happens. That’s cool. With each time, right? Like there’s something that just feels a little bit lighter and like anything’s possible kind of a feel.

 

Jessie Syfko

I feel like people don’t have a relationship to their body. First of all, we are not our body, right? Just like we are not our mind. But we are gifted this incredible resource and this vehicle.

 

And think learning about your body should be the things that we start with kids in school. Learn about your breath, right? Learn about your physical body. Learn how to be strong. Learn how to drink water. Learn how to simplify and nourish yourself with real food that was as close to the source of where it came from as possible because it’s all chemistry. And then start to learn how to choose and think and breathe and speak and take action in a way that layers to you feeling better. Just like feeling better, whatever that means to you.

 

And so when you actually then go into that practice, by the end of the class there should be a liberation of authenticity. There should be an, I believe it’s an organic state. You think about children for example. How innocent, how joyful. I mean I forget the exact statistic, but it’s like if you compare how many times a day a four year old laughs to a 40 year old. It’s like thousands of laughs apart.

 

Jamie Martin

In between a 40-year-old and a child.

 

Jessie Syfko

And so, you think about what your natural state would be. And then you think about how far away from a natural state of that you got. And just how good it feels. That’s why I’m so passionate about mind-body training, is that it teaches you how to be the full you, the bright you, the essence of you in every environment of your life. It’s an on-the-mat practice for an off-the-mat life.

 

Jamie Martin

Yeah because you’re taking it out with you and how do you apply what you’ve learned elsewhere or just even have it if it’s within you it starts to become part of you you just start to innately start to do those things outside of the room too right everywhere you go

 

Jessie Syfko

And there’s more to your body than your muscles. And I think that’s the other part. if, you know, I look at it like this, I have my jacket on. Now there’s structure under my jacket, right? My shoulders are there, you know, I have a sternum. But if the jacket is pulled like that, and I’m like, do an overhead press.

 

Jamie Martin

You’re way too restricted.

 

Jessie Syfko

Well, there’s, yes. And that’s where there’s a lot more education around your own fabric, right? Your fascial body, which is largely two things, water and electricity, which is conduits of emotion. Which is it’s ancient Eastern medicine, but you’re not just the shoulder muscle. There’s a whole infrastructure above, below, and through, and it’s not only influenced by physical training.

 

So when we can kind of back up and go, gosh, this is actually a magical machinery here. And it’s not actually as hard as we make it, but the relationship to it, the education around it, the freedom to make choices for me. know, it’s funny people say they’ll walk into my class and be like, do I grab the 10s or the 12s? And they hate it because I answer back with a question, which feels right to you today?

 

Jamie Martin

What are you feeling in your current body in this moment? Do you need to go lighter? you need to go heavier? You know what I mean? Freedom to choose.

 

Jessie Syfko

But I ultimately believe people’s self-advocacy needs to be supported. And that’s how I teach the MB360 teachers to teach. A, trust your people. B, love the people. Three, give to the people. Serve the people. Hold the space so they feel like they can choose, that whatever they choose is enough, that they’re going to build a relationship.

 

I believe for me, I’ve had over 300,000 students to date, and then I stopped counting. My goal is if you come into my world and you leave and you never see me again, there was at least one thing that you learned about yourself that you can apply outside of that experience. That there’s a value add, a seed plant, it’s something. Something was there. Not about me.  About you. Because that’s ultimately what continues on, like empower people to be in their space. I also believe that I’m a consummate student. I love degrees. I love learning. The more I learn, the less opinions I have about any other person’s path or choice. So I only ask questions. I offer ideas and then I ask people.

 

How does it feel? Well, guess what? That’s the beginning of the class. Feel, breathe, move. Go back to how does it feel.

 

Jamie Martin

Always come back to that.

 

Jessie Syfko

And tomorrow, Jamie, you’re not, I can’t say to Jamie, what are you gonna feel tomorrow at 11 a.m.? Jamie, we don’t know if you’re gonna get tomorrow at 11 a.m., let alone what you will feel. So it helps people show up as they are, except where they are, which is the neutralizing force. Imagine a world where we accepted ourselves and we accepted others in there individually. Imagine that.

 

Jamie Martin

We didn’t resist it. We let that go.

 

Jessie Syfko

Imagine different opinions, different appearances, different ideas, different preferences.

 

That to me is what MB360 is. It’s designed for the human to be able to empower a better version of themselves or make changes or choices or heal or get through life through movement that’s above and beyond fitness or results of changing your physical body so that the world can actually live in coherence and joy and connection and community in a much better way.

 

It’s, you know, like you only have control of yourself, what you think, what you speak about, what you believe, what you do. But that responsibility changes the fabric for everyone else. It’s leading by example. It’s embodiment by choice.

 

Jamie Martin

I love that. I feel like that’s a perfect place to end this, Jessie. Did we miss anything? I feel like that whole idea of embodiment by choice, we get to take this out and share it, even if it’s subconsciously, right? It’s how we show up in the world, in the next place that we go.

 

Jessie Syfko

Yeah, I’ll just add this. It’s a great workout as well. You know, we get into the depth, right? And sometimes you’re like, I don’t even understand what you’re talking about. That’s okay. It’s a great workout. It’s an incredibly intelligent workout that you would pay a lot of money for that’s included in a membership because it’s a way to gift you an opportunity to be a better version of yourself in more than just your body. Cause everybody knows you are more than just your body.

 

And it’ll give you the physical results. It’ll make you feel stronger than you’ve ever been. It will help you move better and longer in your life. So longevity is a huge piece of mobility and mindset and facial aware training and breath work and everything that we’re doing in there. But when you come in, it’s a great workout and it’s a great time. So if that’s where people are, do you want a great workout and a great time? Enter the door. Take 10 classes before you have an opinion. It takes about 10 before your body and your mind kind of catch up to it. Then decide. Should I add this into my weekly recipe?

 

Jamie Martin

I love that.

 

Jessie Syfko

That’s what it is.

 

Jamie Martin

And people, it’s not just that you have to go to a club to do this either. There are amazing MB360 classes in our on-demand library in the Life Time Digital app. Highly recommend downloading. It’s free for everybody. Download it. Jessie, you’re on there. Other instructors are also in there that you’ve personally teach on this method. So that’s awesome.

 

Alright if people want to follow Jessie, they can follow her on Instagram at jessie.mindbodylife. And I think that’s it. Jessie, thank you once again for coming on with me.

 

Jessie Syfko

Thank you.