Unstressable with Stuart Sandeman - Breathing Better

0:01I am so glad you could join us. I'm your host, Mo Gaudet This podcast is nothing more than a conversation between two good friends sharing inspiring life stories and perhaps some nuggets of wisdom along the way This is your invitation to slow down with us Welcome to Slow Mo

0:34Welcome back. Today we are still part of the mini-series on Unstressable. We can now have paper versions of it in our hands. Everyone will have a paper version of it in their hands by end of April in the US and 9th of May in the UK and international English. I'm very excited so far. We've really been going on plan, a little stressful, but we're unstressables. Today's conversation is about a very important part of being unstressed, a very personal conversation for me, to be quite honest, because I suck at it. Our guest today, when I say our, it's a joint podcast between me and Alice, my co-author on Unstressable, who is also the host of the Unstressable podcast.

1:18Our guest today is Stuart Sandeman, who wrote Breathe In, Breathe Out, the Sunday Times bestseller. He is the host of the BBC One radio show. What was it? The decompression sessions. The decompression sessions. And he really found out about the value of breathing to de-stress, to deal with difficult times through probably the most difficult, stressful experience you can have. Similar to Alice and myself, he found himself hit by life in a way that is quite a stressful challenge and breathing helped him out of it. I think we should probably leave Stuart to talk about that, not me. In any case, the reminder is that this mini-series is to ask you to support our mission of getting a million people out of stress this year.

2:12One of the easiest way to do that is to get the book to the bestseller list because that puts it on the shelves in front of people who would be passing by feeling very stressed and they may actually find it as a result. If you intend to buy Unstressable at any point in time, please pre-order it instead of waiting for the book to be released. And when you pre-order, go to our website, unstressable.com, and register your pre-order receipt to come and join us for the pre-launch webinar on April 28th. With no further ado, I am dying to learn to breathe because as I said, I suck at it. So Stuart, thank you so much for being here with us.

2:52It's such a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Alice. Yeah, I mean, I was about to say, you, Stuart, have got an amazing story. Like most edits, this has all come from total tragedy. But before actually, before we even talk about that part, I'd like to know who Stuart was before you learned how to breathe at all. What kind of a life were you living at that point? Were you stressed? Yes, it's funny. It's funny saying that. The Stuart before I could breathe. You could breathe, right? I thought that the phrasing of that statement was quite interesting. Before you learned to breathe. I felt that is where I am.

3:25Yeah, no, well, it's interesting because I spent my life too busy to breathe. And I didn't really stop and think about this one thing that was keeping me alive, but not just keeping me alive, the thing that can help manage my mindset and my emotions and everything that life throws at you. Before learning to breathe and before finding breathing as a tool for all these things, I was touring the world as a DJ. So a very different lifestyle at that time. Very creative and very busy. And I was having a whale of a time, to be honest. I really thought everything was cool, but quite a destructive lifestyle as well.

4:04I was up late, lots of different time zones, fueling myself with food on the go and drinking too much and all those things. So that was beforehand. Before that, I actually worked in finance for a bit. No way. Yeah. No way. Yeah. Okay. Now we have to be very curious about what's next, but we'll get to that. And before that, I was very heavily involved in sport. So I've always been very active and very sporty on a judo mat at four years old. I was a black belt by 16 and left school to pursue that as a career. So I've jumped a little bit from sports. Many lives. Many lives, yeah. From sport, I left the sporting world because of an injury, slipped a disc on my back, end up at university, end up in finance.

4:50And then music has been a trail through all of that. I've always had a big passion for music and waved goodbye to the corporate job and started touring as a DJ. That's a very big risk, isn't it? It is a big risk, but it was a calculated risk when I took that jump. I'd signed some record deals and I thought I'd take a year off. I think I'll take a year off. From finance. From finance. You never go back. Yeah, and I never went back. Yeah, suddenly you go like, ooh, this is not life. And exactly that happened. So yeah, I have felt like I've lived many lives. But the interesting thing is through all those lives, through sport, through corporate lifestyle, through a very creative life.

5:34No one ever taught me to breathe. No one taught me to breathe when I was high level sport. I never even thought about it. No one taught me to breathe when I was stressed out working in the city. And no one taught me to breathe when I was jumping time zones or trying to come up with new music or be creative. It wasn't until, like you said, more of a tragedy happened that forced me to look inwards. and that was grief which you guys know very well yes I mean that was just you know I know that tale but for those that are listening would you be able to yeah say how you you know came into breathwork yeah well I came to breathwork through grief it was my girlfriend was diagnosed with terminal cancer so that was when I was djing and touring so I put the brakes on what I was doing and And in many ways made me look at the body, mind and spirit already when she was going through cancer.

6:30Forced me to kind of, what are we putting in our bodies? What's happening to our mindset? And what happens when we're no longer here? So these quite loaded questions. And sadly, she didn't make it. She passed away. And I didn't - How long did it take? It took about 18 months. So it was relatively rapid. and again nobody told me about breathing at that time and I probably wouldn't have listened I think if someone just says oh just you should just breathe or if you go off and do some breathing it's going to cure your cancer and I just I would my eyes would have rolled and said this is ridiculous to speak some sense and it wasn't till she passed and I was in a pretty bad headspace and my, it was Mother's Day.

7:15She passed on Valentine's Day, which is another sickener. So she passed on Valentine's Day and then Mother's Day was like the month later and I'd moved back to Scotland where I'm from. My mum and dad had been amazing and something popped up online for Mother's Day saying breathing workshop. And my mum is into yoga and that's as far as I thought about it. And I thought my mum will love this. So I went along with her to this breathing session and that's when the light bulb switched on for me i realized well i had a very powerful experience quite a out-of-body experience both very cathartic i felt a lot of emotion surge a lot of physical energy in my body but i felt like my girlfriend was there holding my hand i know and that was the powerful thing it was so powerful because i thought either i'm going mad either someone's spike my drink before going into this breathing session.

8:09Or the final thing was maybe I've overlooked something called breathing my whole life. And I had the ability to change my mindset and move me into a space that's beyond this physical realm. So I wanted more. That was my, I thought, was this a one-off? I know that feeling so well. So, so it's quite interesting. You're talking about, I don't know what they call it, shamanic breathing. Like, you know, you, yeah. Yeah. So I was epileptic when I was young. And my diagnosis was that when I over-oxygenated my blood, I would get a fit, I would get an attack. And so I always, probably the reason why I breathe so badly is I've always trained myself to sort of under-ventilate, if you want.

8:55And then for the first time in my life, right after I left Google, I decided, you know what, for the first time ever, I'm going to be adventurous. I'm just going to do whatever the F I want. I went and lived in the Dominican Republic and, you know, had a wonderful experience there. And, you know, a wonderful woman came into my life. And, you know, somehow someone showed up and said, okay, we're doing breathing sessions. I was like, yep, let's do that too. As if I'm going for a, you know, psychedelic experience or whatever. And, oh my God, it flipped my life upside down. It's so interesting. And every time I had one of those, First of all, I had a very deep appreciation for the teacher that was there.

9:38I don't know if you call her a teacher. To the point that I kept thanking her for around two or three days afterwards, texting her and saying, this is incredible, right? And then every time I went, I went three times in my life. This tells you how bad I am at following through, right? But every time I went, the minute the session ended, I was like, I'm going to do this every week. This has to be every week. This is life-changing and never followed through. But I can easily relate to when you say it's life-changing. It's a bit of psychedelics, a bit of spirituality, a bit of dying and coming back, a bit of living, all combined.

10:14It's unbelievable. Yeah, it's exactly that. It's interesting that you, because it's often told to avoid, if you're epileptic, to do enhanced ventilation techniques like shamanic breathing or holotropic breath work or any of these vaster connected breaths because it can create the onset of a fit. Exactly. At that time, I was basically so adventurous. I said, so what? What's a fit? Like, you know, I've had many of those. I mean, interestingly, I had completely healed my own epilepsy by learning to breathe, but to breathe the opposite way. Yeah, right. So basically, once they told me it was hyperventilation that got me there, I was like, okay.

10:57You know, like meditating on anything in life, I can meditate to slow down my breathing when I feel an attack coming. Right. And it is somehow quite interesting. Both would show you the impact of breathing. Right. So whatever you do with your breathing can actually define what your health, what your mindset, what your spiritual connection is like. Tell me about her holding her hand. Did she say anything? She said that she did. She said when she was holding my hand, she said, like, it's OK, I'm fine. but she also said and this is what we've been looking for and this is what this is what we're breathing yeah oh when she was very sick we were searching for a cure the whole time oh my god and that was we were looking for something that would help i mean it was terminal but we were traveling a lot from different cities and all sorts of places to find some sort of treatment and yeah yeah that's what came through and since then it's just been all doors open towards breathing for me I've I thought it was maybe wanted to check is it a one-off so I went and did some more breath work and then it starts to make me think well this is one application of breathing what other ways can we breathe and how can we use our breath for different different ailments or different ways so that's that's what she said in that first session and it wasn't just the single time I I would go back and I felt closer to her when I do these breath sessions than I did in my waking everyday conscious experience.

12:27So that's where I felt very connected to the practice. It allowed me, like you said, pulled in everything. It felt very spiritual for me and very beyond our everyday living. I felt like I could plug into something bigger than myself. Can we exchange a few notes on this? So what do you think actually happens? Let's take the health benefits we'll talk about in a minute. But I've had Ali tell me things in those three breath sessions, breath work sessions, that were life changing. And I specifically the third one where, you know, normally it takes you a little bit of time to get to that state. On the third time I did this, it literally took like seven minutes.

13:08And the instructor was a friend. So, you know, he worried because like 10 minutes later I got up and I was so fresh and everything was fine. And he was like, anything's wrong. And I was like, no, we're done. Right. But literally seven minutes in, I saw Ali in his funny way, literally sitting on my chest and saying, Papa, this is very stupid. The answer is A, B and C. Right. And it was actually the answer. Right. So what happens? How does that happen? Are we hallucinating? Yeah, it's the research is a bit patchy, which is what I've been because it is hard to figure out. there's been a couple papers actually there's a paper in December that just came out looking into this looking into hyperventilation or increased ventilation for this purpose but what I have found I know you said oxygenating your body it's actually the opposite oxygen levels don't change carbon dioxide drops so carbon dioxide drops quite rapidly so we go into a respiratory alkalosis which we usually would say don't go into because that is where we have panic attacks etc but in this case so carbon dioxide drops in the body and we need carbon we need a balance of carbon dioxide and oxygen so we need carbon dioxide present in the cell for it to switch places with oxygen to we need carbon dioxide for the offset so what actually happens when you do this style of breathing is we drop carbon dioxide deliberately and it tricks our brain we actually deoxygenate the cells we might be breathing more but we're actually dropping oxygen interesting and there's there's different theories behind what that is what what causes does it cause the brain to go into shut down its default mode network in essence because it's we've stimulated so much the carbon oxide is dropped and it says right okay well this isn't safe and we shut down so we have this near-death experience that's happening i was going to say that and in that moment we have this transcendent experience and we're no longer here for that moment and we get what we need and we come back to the body so we have this rebirth experience this dying and coming back which is why it's some of the therapeutic applications for it is for working through birth traumas and things like that as well because we come back into our body and I mean this is all speculation speculation there is some research that suggests as well that we release DMT in the brain during these experiences because of like we would in low oxygen environments because oxygen levels actually drop in the brain and that can cause us to have this transcendent experience it is amazing though because actually the only proper like intense breathwork session I've done was with you at one of your workshops years ago and I saw my sister who'd passed away at the time and some other things and then I also had this hilarious chicken hands as you call them so like why does that happen because it's like that's the lack of um yeah that's that's just because carbon dioxide dropped in the body yeah yeah so we we basically our hands will cramp up I try to avoid that with with patients or clients yeah as much as possible because it can trigger more stress and more trauma and it's quite a very uncomfortable.

16:25It can be excruciatingly painful. I was just enjoying the ride of what was going on in my head. Which is great. It's just great. Is there a way to avoid it? I mean, it's one of the reasons I get scared of those sessions. It's a bit of a reminder of that sort of being unable to move when you have an epileptic attack. Yeah. what i've found through sessions as is that happens when we have the forced exhale okay so now some practices shamanic breathwork is quite heavy and forced the way i teach that i mean i teach all styles of breathwork we're talking about one yeah we'll go to all of them yeah okay we're talking about this one one application which is uh around release and releasing trauma and having emotional integration that can be very very potent and helping through um different challenges in our life but what happens that cramping happens when carbon dioxide drops too rapidly too rapidly now we can gently allow it to happen and it happens with the exhale so the inhale we're breathing in it's coming in the exhale if somebody's forcing it it pushes it too fast.

17:40So what I found in my practice is if we actually have that exhale is complete surrender, the exhale becomes the meditation because every time we exhale, we drop into complete surrender. So we're balancing the doing as we breathe in, we're breathing in the out breath just becomes like gravity dropping to the floor. Now, what I'll find is people that get tetany, that's the word for the chicken hands are usually those that are forcing the exhale. So they're going and there's a fine line or they're controlling their exhale.

18:21Now, if we can find that sweet spot in between control and force where the exhale just drops out, we find this really nice balance and this balance between the doing and the being. So our meditation happens every out breath and it's a much gentler process to get to where we need to go. When is your next session? We do lots of sessions. We're doing online sessions now as well. Do you? Yeah, which are amazing too. It's funny, before the whole COVID pandemic, I never thought I could apply this online because a lot of what I do is hands-on too. Yeah, I mean. Like release tension from the diaphragm, get the breathing muscles.

19:02Why is somebody's breathing? You said yourself, you're breathing badly, but why is somebody breathing badly? And that breathing badly is habitual because we're breathing so many times a day, 20 ,000 times a day. So what's happening in the actual physical movement of the breath and why is our brain holding on to those muscles or why are we over recruiting other muscles? And a lot of this can be habitual posture and clothing and lots of things, but a lot of it comes down to emotions and a lot of it comes down to our experiences that we have because our breath maps our human experience it brings in the right energy and flow for whatever we're experiencing to give us the demand for energy in that moment teach me master stewart yeah yeah well well breathing is really it's really simple okay it is really simple it's about energy it's about putting fuel in the body and in the process you have the exhaust coming out it's carbon dioxide, which is a bit more than just waste.

20:04As I explained, you need this balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide. But generally speaking, it's about energy. So if we need to run for the bus or if we're running late for a podcast, then we need to run in the door. Yeah, for everyone, I showed up 14 minutes late. Yes, go ahead. Yes, I apologize. What happens is we move a bit faster, so our breathing changes because the demand for energy is increased. Correct. So that's very simple. now this happens consciously or unconsciously because one of our mind's main things is to keep us safe which we're where the whole stress process comes in our fight or flight response kicks in in any moment because the mind says there's a threat we need to get enough energy to either fight it off or leg it our fight or flight response or sympathetic drive unless we freeze in that moment which is the this even more intense response which is parasympathetic again but so breathing is really dependent on what's happening around us and also what's happening in our minds because our mind doesn't know the difference the unconscious mind that's driving our breath doesn't know the difference between what's happening around us what's happening internally so we're our breathing then becomes a cue to our environment internally and externally which is amazing because we can start playing with our breath so we can use our breath to change the environment, change how we feel, change our energy levels, calm ourself down, all these amazing things that we can do with our breath through breath control.

21:42Where I find breathing and breath getting, where it gets really exciting is well unconsciously we're trying to control our environment by controlling our breath unconsciously. So we're holding our breath, we're creating restriction in our breathing cycles to stop ourself from feeling or have an emotional outburst. So if we are feeling really angry and something's pissed us off and we realize, well, it's not appropriate to shout and scream, we contract our breathing muscles to stop the flow of anger. If we are feeling really upset and you're at work and you're busy and you get some bad news and you don't want to burst into tears in front of your colleagues, you hold your breath, you constrict your breathing muscles to stop that natural flow of emotion.

22:29It's the same with the good stuff. So if we shouldn't find something funny and you're trying to hold yourself back from laughing, we hold our breath to stop the laughter. So breathing is a really important part of this emotional integration. As we feel and we have an emotional experience, our breath moves to enable that integration and then we have some sort of reaction or outburst. If we deem it not appropriate to feel, we hold our breath. If our unconscious mind, which goes one level deeper, because of our belief system, says it's not appropriate to feel this, our breathing shuts down without us even consciously interacting with it.

23:12So you find that people will be stuck in certain breathing archetypes because of the experiences that they've had through childhood or through their past, peak experiences, griefs, traumas, their breathing changes as a result. Do you think then because a lot of people today, a lot of breathwork specialists, and I don't know if you say this, like we all breathe wrong. It's like what the general consensus is and as a society, we're not breathing correctly. And do you think that that's because as a society, a lot of the time we're emotionally repressed and we're only just starting to come to connect to how to process our feelings and actually be connected to that part of ourselves.

23:49It's a huge part of it. And it's interesting because we're all breathing wrong, but our unconscious mind is only doing what it's been told. So it's saying, oh, no, we don't do this right now. This is the way we breathe. And then because the physical body gets in tow with that as well. So let's say you have an experience where the example I often share with people. So if a tiger came in the room, simple stress response. tiger comes in we see the tiger we hear the roar our brain sends a signal to our breath our breath moves and we leg it or we fight it off simple fight or flight response if a dog comes in the room okay people in the room will have a different response some will run towards the dog and experience love and joy and happiness more run away more run away okay great and i know exactly why why would you run away from the because when i was eight or nine year old i was attacked by a very vicious dog in darkness at a very late time with knowing that the owner was around 50 meters away and so yeah I love them I really do like I I really love dogs but can they please stay away amazing I mean it's perfect example yeah yeah so you've had an experience where you've had a vicious attack and you've felt that and your brain's fired and wired create a pathway and a belief dogs are not safe let's keep them at arm's length yeah keep the dogs away and also keep the saliva to be honest but yeah that's another thing yeah yeah so maybe compared to alice the dog comes in the room and alice breath expands and opens yeah she feels relation with positive emotion our breathing opens for yourself fear kicks in your breathing shuts down so your brain before even consciously being aware triggers the response to your breathing because of the experience that you've had of course yeah so that's where i find it quite interesting when we see all people breathing badly or incorrectly well we all have experiences in our life that will impact the way we breathe so our mind and body is doing the best it can with what it has the information that has in the present moment now the present moment information is the bag of bricks that we're carrying around from our past all our experiences all our vicious attacks all our dog barks and bites and then everything else that's happening in the moment and then also our forward projections and it's all shown in the way that we breathe which i just find fascinating so you can start to see our breath as a real snapshot of what is happening for somebody in the present right now all of their based on all their past and i i find it fascinating because when someone sits and breathes in front of me or lies down and breathe before they even tell me what's going on for them I'm like oh well this is going on for you damn and I'm exposed well it is all of a sudden the veil is lifted because our breath doesn't lie it tells us the story someone says oh I'm really calm well actually you're not so calm because your breathing's saying otherwise and I think well we intuitively do that anyway we're always reading cues from environment from people and And if I sat down here and went, is she okay?

27:02Yeah, is she okay? Or did he run here as well? Like, yeah. So you start to create, and maybe we match their breathing as a form of empathy. Of course, yeah, yeah. So we can tell a lot about somebody by the way they breathe. And in Breathe In, Breathe Out, I go into these various archetypes. Our breathing is as unique as our fingerprint. As unique as our fingerprint, because all of our experiences are unique. So when we get to the real, that we have similar patterns and archetypes, but everyone's breathing is slightly different. And there's other things that will keep us trapped in certain breathing patterns.

27:35And that might be stress. If we are stressed, well, what happens? We start to hyperventilate. We breathe faster or we have periods of holding our breath and not breathing. Then we take gasps of air. So our breathing becomes very irregular. And let's say we're breathing too fast because we're stressed or we're breathing in our chest because our brain thinks the to-do list or the should-do list is the tiger in the room. And our fast breathing drops our carbon dioxide. And our body doesn't like prolonged change in its pH. So if we're stressed over a period of time and carbon dioxide drops, and we like to have that range of 7.35 to 7.45 in terms of pH, but if carbon dioxide drops, pH changes, we're too alkaline.

28:21so the body holds on to acidity instead of peeing out so you're inflamed so you become more inflamed your organs have more acidity you become more inflamed because it prioritizes ph over breathing rhythm no so now you get trapped you get trapped in a fast rate of breathing because our trigger to breathe is carbon dioxide increase so when carbon dioxide increases our breathing a breath a brain says take a breath so if we've got this fast rate of breathing because we're stressed and it lasts more than 20 minutes it lasts a couple of days a week a year however however many years then our breathing gets trapped in this fast rhythm and shallower probably shallower as a result so the body compensates its ph and then we get stuck in that because the the the new range in ph changes because our body's natural baseline is different so you'll get you'll find that people are stuck in these ways of breathing maybe because of an experience that's been stressful where they've held their breath and they've held on or maybe because of habitual stress happening day in day out and or then it can be it can be things like posture injury or illness as well that that will change our breathing patterns you talked about archetypes so for those listening how many archetypes are there and is there a particular one that we want to try and be you don't want to be like me whatever my archetype is yeah well there is because everyone's breathing is unique there's infinite amount of styles of breathing but in general terms five archetypes you've got chest breather so chest dominant breather stressful archetype you have a frozen breather you'll see even in posture in people where the frozen breath is like this and we're collapsed the lungs we have reverse breather reverse breather instead of engaging the diaphragm and the in-breath the diaphragm goes out on the in-breath and that can be it tells the brain the brain becomes confused so those individuals who have certain characteristic traits may be a little bit clumsy or they're not very good at coordination or coordinated sports so what was that that was that first three three so we got chest breather we got the reverse breather we've got the frozen breather and we've got the perfect breather which is the end one this one just slipped my mind right now four out of five and for the fifth people what's the perfect breather then that's the perfect breather is somebody who engaged oh that was it it's come back to me it knew it'd come back which is an interesting one and i can't believe i forgot there for a second the fourth archetype is the controlled breath the controller and this is what I was because I would have thought I was a I was a perfect breather before I went to do that breathwork class and before I started looking at my own breathing I'd done sports all my life my diaphragm was engaged I felt like I could move my breath wherever wherever I wanted to move but the controlled breather is often the yogi actually believe it or not a lot of yoga instructor people that practice yoga get so good at breath control because it makes their life feel under control so as you know through meditation if you control your breath well everything becomes calm and control but if this becomes a habitual controlling pattern then we try and control everything in our life and we find it very hard to let go of control so we find it hard to trust it's so interesting yeah so the controller pattern was myself i was very good at controlling my breath but i wasn't able to let go and the letting go comes down to this out breath there's times we can control our breath to make us feel calm or to make us change our our state but are we allowing our breath also just to drop away to completely surrender to the the nature of um the universe around us can we just allow that to happen so So the perfect breather is somebody that is using the diaphragm to breathe.

32:30We have a natural relaxed exhale. The rhythm and rate is much slower. So you were doing exactly what you were doing for your epilepsy. We want to slow our breath right the way down. The research says that 5.5 breaths per minute, which is very slow because most people breathe about 13 breaths. Yeah, exactly. So it's not possible to keep on doing it that way. but the opposite happens to the stress breath when we slow our breath down. So interesting. When we start to slow our breath down that you've practiced, Mo, when we start to slow our breath down, the first thing that will happen is we'll start to feel a bit of air hunger.

33:11We'll feel this desire to breathe more because carbon dioxide's increased. So we've gone the other way from hyperventilation. Carbon oxide's now increased in the body, it's elevated. And that's the first trigger for the brain to breathe. so as we slow our breath down it starts to feel uncomfortable we feel like we're suffocating we're not getting enough air we feel breathless but it's the opposite we've actually just got too much carbon dioxide now when we practice this daily when we practice slowing our breath down using different slow rates of breathing of rhythms the body does something different it says wait a second i'm too acidic what am i going to do about this how can i fix my ph again we're too acidic so what it does is it starts to create more red blood cells it starts to increase epo in in the bone marrow erythral protein which is famous for the wrong reasons because i'm lance armstrong was injecting this stuff but yes i remember that yeah but um this is what in essence happens is we have more red blood cells so in one breath we get more output yeah we absorb more so our breathing becomes much more economic.

34:19So we can take less breaths, use, sorry, more economic. We can take less breaths and get the same energy output from doing so. And we feel calmer in the same process because we're not breathing fast. We're not triggering the stress response. I love when we talk about the human machine as a machine. I love that. This is so, this makes so much sense. It's quite simple, the machine of the body in this sense, but it's fascinating. And it's fascinating that we don't get taught this in school. Yeah. So actually, this is one of the more interesting sides of this. I think, I understand that the archetypes, I'm probably that controlled one.

35:00The yogi description, I'm not a yogi, but I'm definitely very thoughtful about how everything works, right? But I also believe I'm a junk breather. You know how you get those moments in life where there is so much going on, so you end up eating junk food. Yeah. Right? You just tell yourself, it's fine. I will look at this when it's a little slower. Now is not the time to focus on healthy. And it's quite interesting how I think many of us are probably like that. It's that we don't give breath our priority. It's like there are so many other things happening now. Let me just focus on what's going on.

35:36First of all, how much of priority should it deserve? I think you probably are going to sell this very highly. But what can I do? is there a way where I make it second nature, not a deliberate priority? Is how do I get to a, I eat healthy, right? Now this is a big priority in my life, especially after reading Alice's chapter on physical stress in this book. So can I, why do you eat healthy? Believe it or not, multiple layers, right? One is, of course, the stoic view of doing the right thing, right? But underneath that, you really, I mean, for all of our listeners, cut sugar from your diet, pains, aches, sluggishness goes away in a way that completely trumps the joy you get from a cookie.

36:23So you tell yourself, I enjoy a cookie. And yes, you may actually with a cup of coffee and the joy lasts six minutes, right? The joy of spending the rest of the day without pains and aches that result from the sugar and the inflammation is just outstanding, right? So you know that for a fact. and third is honestly because with more stress you actually want to reduce the external stressors that come into your life so if I really want to perform and deliver on what I'm attempting to give in my lifetime I need to be at my best shape right and even though I still enjoy a cookie with my coffee I realize that there is more joy and there is more duty if you want to be a higher performer right yeah and and the reason i asked is it's exactly the same with your breath if not more so our cells need glucose and they need oxygen and if it's if it's a driver for our energy levels if it's a driver for switching us on and switching us off when we need it's also a driver for our performance i work with a lot of athletes that want to go that extra round or extra mile and this is all down to breathing why would you not be able to perform at your best you become tired You've got lactic buildup in your muscles or you haven't slept the night before because you've been so stressed.

37:44You're not maybe digesting your food. Well, if you're feeling stressed and even if you're eating the healthiest foods, so if you are sat breathing, let's just say chest breath, which is quite common. You're chest breathing and it's a stressful pattern. In essence, you're sending the signal from your body to your brain that the tiger's in the room. you're sending a signal, the alarm bell's going off. The alarm bell's going off. You've got sympathetic drive happening. You've normalized it in your brain because it's become normal. There's always a tiger. There's always a tiger. But your body's still sending the alarm.

38:22So if there's a tiger in the room, we do not prioritize our digestion. We say, well, that can wait. Our reproductive organs are the same. So we say, well, actually, there's a tiger in the room right now. We've got to fight or fight. We've got to run. so even if you are eating the healthiest diet you've got everything in you've you've to a tea for your body type you've got all your nutrients and macros and everything all planned if you are still breathing badly you're still sending a signal of stress and you're not getting the majority of goodness from the food that you're eating so it's really the first thing is to actually breathe make sure your breath is the priority am i breathing at rest that's where where we were talking before the podcast, is my breathing at rest the perfect breather?

39:09So am I using my nose to breathe in and out? Am I using my diaphragm? Is it open? Is it flowing? Is it relaxed? Is the rate nice and slow and gentle? Then we can start looking at other parts of our day. So if you're breathing at rest, you fix it. You might realize in that moment at breathing at rest that you are a controller archetype. Well, why am I a controller? What is causing me to control my situation? is it an experience from my past that's not been integrated and it's forced me to hold things in place so using myself as an example what I came to realize was the grief was one part of course to my breathwork journey but the reason I couldn't wasn't allowing myself to feel grief was actually the dog bark and bite for me was big boys don't cry so the the program that i had was big boys don't cry done judo martial arts my whole life teddy bear called tough ted um you can see grew up in scotland and created this persona in my mind that when something happens you don't show that emotion that's not possible wow so we can see that when somebody breathes we have all the baggage from before and we have the the present moment whatever's happening so we really want to uncover are my breathing at rest as best as possible we can and then start looking i usually look at different areas throughout our day if i'm breathing at rest fine great then now how am i breathing throughout my day what's my usual day look like is it changing is my work very stressful what else am i doing through the day are there certain moments that the tiger's in the room i mean talk about being unstressable stress is unavoidable but it's how do we manage ourselves through that what does what happens to my breath can i use my breath in those moments as a tool to regulate my nervous system calm myself down when need be the next thing i look at is breathing and speaking we do a lot of that throughout our day majority of people yeah yeah you might find that a lot of people will be let's say a sales job it's my whole life so you're talking talking and you're gasping for air through your mouth so that gasp of air through the mouth every breath so you're talking you're taking a gasp instantly you've taken a gasp you sent an alarm bell again you said oh that gasp of air is the same gasp if you left the studio today and walked onto the road and the car was coming towards you we take a gasp of air there's that moment of stress to alert your body to jump back to safety come on Stuart like you want me to change my career my diet just your breathing exactly Keep the career, diet sounding good.

41:47You just need to change your breathing. How do you breathe when you talk then? You want to try and breathe your nose in between sentences as much as possible. That's so confusing. Hello everyone nose. No, that doesn't work. I've watched you and you do do it now and then. Is that true? That's true. Are you saying I'm not horrible? You're not terrible at breathing. Is that true? Yeah. is that true no i have no now you're gasping through the mouth no i'm now you can see that you're feeling shocked so you're breathing changes you're having you're thinking and your breathing starts to so i'm usually very very very calm that's my that's my like resting state and it's most of most of my life right most of my day like if if i'm awake for 18 hours i'll be calm for 17 and 40 minutes, right?