4 How to manage stress with breathwork, Jamie Clements

0:00So day four, we have all now lost track of what day of the week it is. It is a few days after Christmas and hopefully you're getting some much-earned rest. And this is what we think is a good moment to introduce Jamie Clements, who explores what it really means to support yourself when things start to unravel, which invariably they do when you start a business. Drawing on breathwork and nervous system regulation, Jamie shares how consciously working with your breath can restore autonomy, shift your mental and emotional state, and bring you back into the room with yourself. Thank you so much for having me.

0:35It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, my name is Jamie Clements. I'm the founder of the Breathspace and a Breathwork coach, Breathwork practitioner, facilitator. It sort of comes under a lot of different names and different guises depending on what hat I'm wearing. But yeah, really everything that I do and everything that I do with the Breathspace is centered around providing an accessible platform and range of experiences and events for people to engage with this sort of blossoming area of well-being and mental well-being which is which is breath work so the most common question i get from people is isn't it just breathing and the answer to that is yes but it's sort of yes it is but there's so much to it and so many different facets and different areas of how we can use our breath to create changes in our state to benefit our physical health our mental health and our emotional health so that's really i suppose the the big picture, which does get a little bit more niche and nuanced as we go through it.

1:31And the business itself provides really a combination of in-person and digital-led experiences, all centered around breathwork and mental and emotional well-being. Amazing. And when did you start it and why did you start it? So I started the business back in the beginning of 2020. So it was just pre-lockdown one, if we can talk in lockdowns. Yeah. So pre knowing that a pandemic was coming or you could see it coming and you saw the opportunity? Very much coincidental. Yeah. The business was really formed out of, I wouldn't say necessity, but I guess the story of how I came to start it really feeds into, I suppose, the timing of it as well.

2:12So I, for a very long time, probably from about the age of 15 until my early 20s, age 24, suffered very badly with anxiety, with depression, with panic attacks. Especially in my early 20s, I was very, very badly struggling with anxiety and panic attacks. And I was high functioning. I worked in startup world. I was working in commercial roles and sales roles within tech startups. And I'd studied economics and had quite a kind of traditional and standard upbringing and education. But I always had this sort of background hum of anxiety and issues with my mental health. And around the age of 24, I found myself more or less at what I view as sort of my lowest low.

2:58And from there, I found myself really trying quite desperately, if I'm totally honest, to find ways to support myself and to find ways to take myself out of that place. And that took many different forms. There was therapy, there was exercise, there was yoga, there was meditation, all of the things, you know, if someone is struggling with their mental health, you go, well, here's a list of things that you could try. And I was ticking things off that list when I sort of accidentally stumbled into a breathwork session. Not accidentally, but I was resistant to going and it took a bit of convincing.

3:28I was quite a skeptical, cynical young man. From there, I just, I fell in love with it and immersed myself in it and really went down the rabbit hole. And, you know, I launched the business and I became a practitioner really out of the way in which it shifted my own mental and emotional health and the passion for it came with that. And I really just found myself wanting to share that with other people. And also quite a core sort of pillar and probably the core pillar of everything that I do with the business is about accessibility. So how can I appeal to that version of me five and a half years ago how can i actually get him in the room how can i appeal to in in what cases in some cases what people might view as a quite a spiritually led some people you know like to use the word the term woo woo there's elements of that within the work that i do i'm sure for some people but i really want to demystifying and really clarify just how beneficial this work can be for everybody and so that was really what started the business was um that passion that i'd found for myself and the way in which it had helped me so much and really just a deep desire to share that with other people.

4:39That's incredible. And I think it's interesting what you said about the fact that you were the biggest skeptic and now you've gone completely the other way and that you are your own audience in the sense that you're trying to convince other people who'd be skeptical to do it. I've read a lot around this in terms of got to look after yourself as a founder, especially if you have a team and level of responsibilities higher. And a lot of people go, oh, you're your own boss. You've got as much holiday as you like. It's like, I have so much more responsibility and stress on my shoulders than I ever imagined, but in the best possible way.

5:05And I have elected also to do that. And I think that's something that people forget that when they start a company, it's you've chosen to do this. It kind of adds another level of stress of like, I've brought this on myself. So any tools that we can share with founders to help them combat that. And there's not one size fits all, I imagine, is with Breathwork, are there different forms to it? I'm sure there are. Do you want to go into a bit more detail about how it can help yeah i think if you think it would be helpful like probably the best way to do this would be a little bit of a and i'll try and keep it brief sort of a what is it from quite a high level picture and the different areas and then some of the i guess the more applicable practical elements that people can take away and it's funny as you're saying now around kind of this stress of starting up and being your own boss but also the magic and the autonomy and the freedom and everything good that comes with it there's a really sort of special irony to being a founder solo founder in the wellness world um because you still have the stress and everybody expects you not to be stressed and it's sort of this kind of you really have to and it's something that i've had to be so mindful of is just you have to practice what you preach to a whole different level that's another layer of responsibility and stress yeah exactly yeah i'm i'm stressing that i shouldn't be stressed so it's yeah it's it's it's been a really interesting uh journey in that capacity as well um but yeah to come back to breathwork itself so the way in which i define breathwork again is very much centered around this idea of accessibility and demystifying this area of practices and i like to talk about breathwork as an umbrella term that looks at any way that we can use our breath consciously to shift our state physically, mentally, or emotionally.

6:51So sort of this big picture. And then within that, I view it as a spectrum. So the full spectrum of breath work, which goes from, I've kind of broken it down into three key pillars. And this is how I work with individuals, with groups, with companies as well, which is we have functional breathing, which is how are you breathing day to day, moment to moment? How are you and I breathing right now, as we're sat here having this conversation, what is your natural resting baseline breath? What is the state of your breath because that's actually a really insightful window into the state of your nervous system the state of your mind the state of your body and so you actually we talk about learning speak the language of your breath so actually looking at how am i breathing in any given situation that will shift throughout the day that will shift depending on what you're doing how stressed you are and and your general kind of state of well-being and so you're actually using the breath as a bit of a yeah a bit of a window into how am i feeling and that's a really powerful starting point for everybody to say, actually, for me, this is something that I do quite naturally now, but it was definitely more of a conscious thing before was if I'm feeling off, be that under the weather, be that stress, be that tired, be that overstimulated, I go, how am I breathing?

8:00I check in. And based on that, I can understand more deeply how I'm feeling, but also I can start to look at how can I change that? How can I actually take back a level of autonomy and responsibility over my internal and external state, which kind of leads unintentionally, but very smoothly onto the sort of second pillar, which is simple breathing techniques for nervous system regulation. So the breath is a unique part of our nervous system in that it's part of our autonomic nervous system, which governs all of our body's automatic functions. But the breath is the only part of that system that we have conscious control over.

8:37And so through the breath, we have what is essentially a remote control into our nervous system. So we can choose to upregulate, to increase activation for energy focus, motivation, even to boost your immune system. And then you have breathwork for downregulation, which is the brake pedal, which is slowing down, alleviating anxiety, increasing relaxation, helping with sleep. And so you really have this sort of lever that you can play with to shift your state. And once you have that ability to check in and say, okay, how am I feeling? And that's the first step. You can say, okay, based on how I'm feeling, how do I want to feel?

9:14And that could be shifting into a desired state. So I want more energy or shifting out of an undesired state. I don't want to feel anxious. And so the breath can be used in so many subtle little ways to create these shifts in state. And I think that from a very practical day-to-day perspective is the best starting point for anybody is actually, okay, can I learn to tune in a little bit more closely and connect a little bit more deeply to my breath and in turn more deeply to my body, more deeply to just how I feel? And then based on how I'm feeling, how can I use my breath to support a shift in state that I want to create?

9:56That's sort of the magic wand that everyone's looking for, because it's also free, I guess. Once you've learned how to do it, you've got that skill for life. And it's just something you could tap into immediately. If you're getting worried about something or you can feel things bubbling up, you can just check in and see how you are breathing. And you know that. That's incredible. It is. And I think it's something that I come across a lot in my work is that the most common, as I mentioned a little bit earlier on, the most common slant or kind of comment that I hear from people who are slightly more skeptical is, well, I breathe all the time.

10:32I don't have to think about it. Why would I want to think about it? Or it's too simple. It's too good to be true. And it's sort of that I think is uniquely interesting and slightly funny for us as human beings is that if something's too complicated, we won't go there because it's too complicated. It's too hard to understand. If something's too simple, it can't be, it can't possibly be beneficial. Something has to be just the right amount of complicated to be beneficial. And I think that's where breathwork can be slightly underestimated because we just go, it's too simple. Anyone listening to this now, I'm obviously now thinking about how I'm breathing.

11:07and I've heard various podcasts before sort of box breathing and if you can't sleep you wake up in the night you could sort of breathe your way back into a good night's sleep and things like that but never done it religiously never kept up with it never sort of remembered it when I needed it how would you start being conscious of your breath yeah I think it's probably one of the more irritating things about getting to know me is that you just all of a sudden start thinking more about how you're breathing and you're going, Oh, am I doing it right? Am I doing it wrong? And, you know, I say irritating slightly tongue in cheek because it's a really powerful practice and skill to cultivate is actually just, uh, and that is where I encourage everybody to start is hopefully from this conversation.

11:50And if you ever engage in any kind of conversation around this topic, that's sort of lifting the lid on Pandora's box to say, Oh, I can't not think about my breathing anymore. And it might not be something that's instinctual and always there to begin with, but it almost builds and builds and you start noticing in certain situations when you are particularly stressed or when you are particularly anxious, your breath will be obviously shifting in a certain way. And so that is sort of where everyone needs to begin. It's sort of this going from unconscious to conscious. It's awareness, which is the first step with any any change right and so i think that is the first starting point and then it's really getting it's curiosity at the end of the day i think because but realistically there are four parts to the breath there's the inhale the hold at the top the exhale and the hold at the bottom there's nothing else that we can really do with the breath and so all we're doing is we're manipulating those four parts and seeing what happens and this is something that i'm always really keen to kind of emphasize to people, which is, yes, there are a set of principles and physiological facts that we say, okay, if we make the exhale longer than the inhale, that'll move you more deeply into relaxation.

13:08That's generally agreed as a biological principle. However, everybody's body will respond slightly differently to different exercises and different practices. And so the curiosity is really important there because you can really, I'm putting myself out business here, but you can really get curious with this on your own and try different things. And yes, it's important to have guidance and knowledge and do things safely, but you can just get curious and play around with how you breathe in different ways and actually stumble upon ways to support yourself just through play and just through curiosity and a bit of manipulation of the breath in its different parts.

13:43So yeah, I encourage people to sort of gain that awareness, get into that curiosity, but then also seek out the knowledge, seek out the education, seek out the support so that you can do things in the most effective way. Because especially for founders, given kind of the nature of this conversation, time is not our friend. And so the more effective and efficient that you can be with these practices, the better. And that's another big benefit of breathwork is it's a matter of minutes, sometimes a matter of seconds that you can just start to change and shift your state by changing your breath in very subtle and simple ways.

14:16Well, and if it's supporting your mental health and your general wellbeing, you're a better founder anyway, you're a better business owner, you're going to be better for your team, your health will be better, it seems like a no-brainer. And why do you think, I mean, I've noticed it in the press in the last year or two, but why do you think recently it's become well known or more talked about? I think there's a number of reasons. I think COVID, well, if we go pre-COVID as well, just the conversation around mental and emotional wellbeing, the mental health conversation has been on the rise and on the up and up for, in a very, very good way for probably five to 10 years.

14:50So I think it's been a natural byproduct of that. But why breathwork specifically, I think weirdly, slightly perversely COVID being a respiratory illness, you know, people struggling with shortness of breath, people struggling with, you know, tightness in their chest. I think that really brought a level of awareness to breathing and the importance of it and the fact that we can sometimes take it for granted into sort of the broader general public awareness. And so I think that probably has something to do with it, but I think probably more so to do with the fact that it's simple and effective.

15:24And actually, I believe that, you know, these practices, well, I know that these practices have been around in Eastern traditions for a very, very, very long time, but in the West, the mainstream kind of acceptance of it and acknowledgement of it is only just starting to get real traction and i think one of the big reasons for that is the nature of the western mind we like input and outcome and with breathwork you are very much saying to people breathe like this and this will happen and people can feel it there's a there's a visceral nature to it where you're actually feeling that change physically and mentally and that's what brought me into breathwork in the first place was actually you know the first session i did didn't change my life but i felt enough i felt something physical and visceral to say that's real i can't deny that and i think that's been really powerful for people in the west is actually to say okay there's something happening here and i can feel it and it can be quite quick and effective and so there's a slight sort of short attention span element to it, but also an element of it fits our psyche because we're doing something and something is happening.

16:38And I think that lands really well with how we go about things here. I read somewhere that across the world, different songs, hymns, mantras, carols are all in a certain phrasing to mean that everyone breathes in the same way when they're doing, no matter what religion, what culture is in, any chant, anything would come back to the similar pattern. And I think maybe that makes that breath work a conscious thing. But on the flip side of that, can you breathe badly? I'm always conscious of how I have this conversation because we're all alive. It sounds like a silly thing to say, but if you were breathing so badly that you weren't alive, you know, it's almost impossible to do, right?

17:19It sounds like a slightly mute point, but we do it in our sleep. Yeah, we do it in our sleep. We can do it unconsciously. There's no wrong way to breathe, but there are suboptimal ways to breathe. Yeah. And you've spoken before that 80 % of us are breathing dysfunctionally or have dysfunctional breathing patterns. And that's a lot. Yeah. So I think this is interesting. So a lot of the most recent studies are showing these pretty high figures around dysfunctional breathing patterns. And all the dysfunctional breathing pattern really is, it's not one set way of breathing in a non-optimal way, in a dysfunctional way.

17:53But there are lots of different ways that we can subtly breathe dysfunctionally. And that can be, I'd say the most common that I see in my work is people that are kind of chronic chest breathers. So breathing short, breathing shallow, breathing into their chest. And all that really means without going into kind of the depths of the detail is that you're very likely to be experiencing high levels of stress. And I think this is a byproduct of life, especially in modern society, is that we're all over activated. Even the most relaxed person in London is still going to be more stressed than someone who is living a much more balanced life.

18:30And I think that is just modern society, unfortunately. And our stress response, our fight flight response in the nervous system is characterized by that short, sharp, shallow breath. So we're breathing quickly and we're breathing shallow. And what happens is if you breathe in that way for a long time, for a lot of your, for a lot of your breaths, for example, that then becomes your baseline breath. And so rather than stress in your nervous system, triggering that short, shallow breath, when it's required, your breath is actually there at resting and that is then creating stress in your nervous system.

19:04So it's a little bit chicken and egg to say, okay, your nervous system should at points go into fight flight because it needs to when there's danger. But if your breath is that at rest, and it's actually become that because you've got into a kind of dysfunctional habit and pattern with it, then you're actually going to be triggering stress in your nervous system just through how you're breathing. And so it's, can we interject into that cycle to correct the dysfunctional breathing, to make it lower, to make it slower, to make it smoother. And in doing so, we regulate the nervous system back to a better place of balance and homeostasis.

19:40And so again, this is where this first pillar of breathwork with the functional breathing and actually breathing in an optimal way when you're not thinking about it can have such an impact in very subtle ways, but in very profound ways at the same time. It's not a big shift, but it can have a really big impact. My team have done some research around this and the ONS have come up saying there's 149.3 million sick days, which is 4.6 days a year per worker in the UK. Are there some basic things that you could share with a new founder of good rule of thumb to start on Breathwork? I think the two things that I would encourage everybody to start with, I'm actually, I've recently started working with a new private client who's a CEO and founder of now very successful business.

20:29And I've been having lots of these conversations with him because I'd say there's a personality and a kind of a particular type of person. You know, we're all different, but there's a particular set of kind of characteristics that make someone a good founder. There's some things that kind of you need to have. And one of those is that you do tend to be a little bit more go, a little bit more forward motion, a little bit more, you know, I don't really like type A as a term, but a little bit more type A. And that is what makes you good at what you do. It's also what makes chronic stress much more likely.

21:00Yeah, no boundaries. no off switch. Exactly. Exactly. And I think this is where the human psyche is so interesting because there's always a shadow side and a light side. So what makes you very, very good and very driven and determined and successful is also what makes it very hard to switch off. And what makes it hard to switch off can then lead to chronic stress. And so when we're talking to this demographic specifically, and I'd put parts of myself in this demographic as well, the key thing is going to be about creating space. So actually taking the time, giving yourself the opportunity to engage in these practices, because quite often the faster you're moving, the less time it feels like you have for practices like this, you don't feel like you have the opportunity to slow down.

21:46And so first creating that space. And one really simple way to create that space is to start building this practice of checking in with the breath. I also get my clients, my private clients, especially to schedule in breathing breaks. So whether that is on the tube, whether that is in an Uber, whether that is the five minutes you have in between meetings or Zoom calls or clients, those are your opportunities because I'm not going to tell anybody to take meetings out of their days because I think it's just unrealistic. So it's about stacking these practices into your day. And so whenever you have that opportunity, rather than scrolling your emails, go, actually, this is my time for me.

22:28This is going to mean that I have a clearer head, that I can be more creative, that I have better access to my full cognitive capacity. And this, I think, always lands really nicely with this kind of demographic is saying, this isn't about you necessarily just becoming more balanced and calm. This is about optimizing your performance. And then they go, okay, now I'm listening. Talking their language. Exactly, exactly. And so the importance of this is about optimizing performance and really avoiding burnout. I think that's a really, really key one. And burnout, if we come back to sort of talking in the lens of the nervous system is when we find ourselves over activated.

23:07So put into that stress state, that fight flight response for a long period of time. So it's chronic stress where your foot is on the accelerator 24 seven and you're not taking time to back off and we're producing adrenaline, we're producing cortisol and we're just really stressing our system and what i would encourage people to do the simplest practice you know if you've got two minutes if you've got five minutes if you've got 10 minutes is something i sort of referred to earlier which is extended exhale breathing so making your exhale longer than your inhale for five breaths 10 breaths 20 breaths breathing in through the nose and blowing the exhale slowly out of the mouth all that happens is naturally when we inhale, our heart speeds up slightly.

23:54When we exhale, our heart slows down slightly. So very, very simply, if you make your exhale longer than your inhale, your heart is spending more time slowing down than it is speeding up. Your heart rate drops, your nervous system relaxes, your body relaxes, your mind relaxes. That is the starting point. I think for anybody who is a little bit more that way inclined, learn to slow things down because your body will thank you. Your stamina will improve in terms of mental stamina, physical stamina, and you'll just notice a sense of clarity and balance that returns. You won't feel like you've had 10 coffees all the time.

24:32You'll actually start to feel a little bit more in control and in balance, which I think is so, so important. Oh yeah. Who doesn't want to feel like that? And especially when you're starting a company, you might be faced with an investment meeting, or you might have to fire someone in your team. You need to be in control of your feelings and to reduce that fear factor, I suppose. So those tools are just so important to learn. My goodness, it's fascinating. And if people want to discover more, where can they find you? So best place to find me is thebreathspace.co.uk or on social media on Instagram at the underscore breath underscore space.

25:09Those are kind of the best places. Yeah, there's a few different ways in which to kind of engage with my work, but everything's online. Thank you. And what we have done for this season, we've asked our previous guests to ask our next guest a question. And it's interesting that you said quite a few times to check in with your breath because the previous guest was Matt Johnson, who founded the check-in. And his question for you was, what are the red flags in your business? Interesting, interesting, interesting. It's quite a hard question. It is a tricky question. I think I'd say the biggest red flag that I see in myself in my business is probably something that we've kind of touched on throughout the conversation, which is when I find myself falling into a pattern of whether you call it overwork, whether I call it just constant forward motion.

25:56I think if I find myself just never having any space to stop and feeling like, I think for me, the best way that I see that happening is when my days feel very, very short, when I feel like I have no time, that's when I know something's going wrong when I feel like I'm like oh I don't have time to do anything I actually want to do um that to me is a sign that I'm not creating enough conscious space for myself and for my business when I have those days I look at my calendar I immediately I can feel my chest rising and I'm like and I'm holding more and more breath and I used to sing at school and I know how important breath work could be and calming things and how enjoyable it is when you have deep breath but the first thing that happens when I'm like and you start holding on to that breath like why do we do that?

26:42Why does our body not just go, no, you're an idiot. Don't hold on to your breath, breathe out slowly. I mean, why are we undoing ourselves? It's a funny one, isn't it? I think we have kind of in various different ways, it can be developmental trauma, it can be kind of just adverse experiences that we go through in our lives that push us into sort of almost disproportionate responses to stresses. I think we're so surrounded by external stresses, the news, traffic there's just so much stimulus now that our bodies are you know our bodies are very like a very primitive setup and we're working against modern environments and modern technologies that we're biologically not really adapted for and no one thought about notifications millions of years ago exactly exactly i think you know i always come back to that that thing that people say around the extent of the tribe back in the day was 150 people and now you're accessible to hundreds of thousands of people and that is you know the fact that anybody can reach you on email if they can find your email is terrifying and i think that you know breathe breathe and if you even look at like instagram followers i think instagram followers is a really interesting one because i look at some people and you know i have friends who have hundreds of thousands of instagram followers some people with millions of Instagram followers.

28:03And when you actually think about that number of people and the fact that all of those people are seeing what you do, they have the potential to message you. That is a huge amount of just influence and impact if you don't have the right ways to protect yourself. And so I think that that shows up in our nervous systems, that shows up in our breath. And a lot of people, there's this sort of phenomena called email apnea, which is holding your breath while you like are checking your inbox or sending emails like look don't look and that is a that's a stress response yeah it's a stress response there's a fear response there's kind of also biological levels to it in the sense that when we hold our breath we're actually sending blood flow to the brain so there's some discussion around it helps us focus to to an extent but yeah it's mainly kind of a legacy stress response to things that are getting on top of us, I think.

28:54Well, thank you, Jamie. It's been fascinating to hear and learn more about breathwork and also that you're human and that you occasionally get stressed, but you have tools in your toolkit to know how to deal with it. So thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening to our 12 Days of Christmas from How to Start Up. If you have enjoyed this episode, please rate and review the show because it honestly makes a massive difference to the podcast being found by other people. And to me as your host, it's nice to know you're there. Our normal scheduling will resume in January 2026 and we wish you a very, very merry festive season and hope you get some rest.