Leading Breathwork Expert: Wrong breathing linked to stress, fatigue, and underperformance - Jamie Clements

0:00Average adult takes between 20 and 30 ,000 breaths a day. As a young man, you were struggling with mental health problems. Breathwork was the central pillar that allowed you to pull through. Jamie Clements is a world-leading breathwork coach and founder of The Breath Space. He helps people overcome anxiety, burnout, and disconnection using conscious, connected breathing, functional breathing, and nervous system health. He has worked with top entrepreneurs, politicians, athletes, and organizations and hosts the Human Nature Podcast. I don't believe anybody's born anxious that you've been living in a prolonged chronic state of nervous system dysregulation.

0:40The people at the top of every game, whether it's athletes, whether it's business, are as focused and as effective in their output as they are in their rest. They take it as seriously. And that's why they're there. The number one comment that I've heard for the last six years of my career is, I've already spoken with you for probably 10-15 minutes and I feel so calm so if you want to feel calm for the next hour or so stay with us walk me through some techniques of those three pillars for sure so

1:29Jamie mean how would you describe your line of work i create spaces to support people in connecting back to themselves connecting to balance and connecting to purpose in their lives beautiful and how do you do that the logistics of that yeah i suppose that the how is is a little bit more intricate so i my business operates across in person and and digital so i have this kind of hybrid model for the business. The in-person is where you find the most depth. So that's retreats, in-person experiences, working with companies, working with people one-to-one. And then the digital is more the breadth.

2:08It's the accessibility. So I have my own app. I have online courses, online resources, and an online community to enable people to stay connected to their practice on an ongoing basis. And my goal and my intention is always to have those two worlds of the in-person and the digital speaking to each other and supporting each other. So if someone comes on a retreat, how do they integrate that experience? How do they take that experience home? So it's not just a singular portion of time where they escape from their reality and then come back to the same life and nothing's changed. So that for me is really the model and the way that I like to approach things.

2:45And I think Breathwork links so beautifully across those two because there are so many different ways that we can tune in and tap into the breath to create change in our lives. Why breathwork? What drew you to that practice? Desperation. That's probably the one word answer. It depends how far back we go, but I studied economics at university. I had a graduate placement at Lloyd's Banking Group in corporate finance, moved into private banking then I moved into fintech and the world of startups and just throughout that process and even before that in my late teens through university and into my early career I had a number of challenges with my mental health with anxiety with depression with panic attacks and that those symptoms what I kind of view as symptoms of a deeper underlying problem just grew and gotten worse and got worse.

3:44And up until the age of about 24 was probably the lowest point that I found myself at in that sort of nine or 10 year period. And it was at that point I was running a sales team, a startup, and I was just falling apart behind the scenes. And I was very closed minded. I was very sort of typical man in his early 20s There was no sense of well-being, no sense of emotional expression, spirituality. All of these things that are such a core part of my life now just didn't exist and I had no interest in. And at that point, found my way into therapy, then found my way into the world of sort of holistic health and wellness.

4:28Started getting into yoga, into meditation. And it's just really this step-by-step process that happened very gradually, but also quite rapidly that I see happen with a lot of people that I work with. We kind of go from zero to 100 quite quickly of having no interest in health and well-being. And then as soon as you start noticing, actually, there's something here. Like, I feel different. And that, for me, led me to breathwork. And it was breathwork that really was the central pillar. I would never say it was the only thing that made a difference, but it was the most significant thing that made a difference for me.

5:02So I went from having multiple panic attacks a day in my early 20s to not having had a panic attack in probably longer than seven years now. Yeah, probably over seven years. That is fascinating. So as a young man, you were struggling with mental health problems. You did not understand what was the root cause that leads you into therapy and other wellness practices. but then breathwork was the central pillar that allowed you to pull through. I find that very interesting because most people would stay within therapy and then perhaps try different forms of therapy. Why breathwork was the most important or the most useful tool?

5:46For sure. I think there are a few different reasons. I think the clearest reason for me was, as I spoke to, as a young man, I think at that point in my life in particular and where society was at as well in terms of the mental health conversation and kind of emotional expression, particularly for men, I actually found it really hard in therapy to open up, like to actually vocalize, understand and express my emotions, even in the therapy room, I found really challenging. and finding myself in a breathwork session where it was a group session, but it was eyes closed. It was, everything was being processed and happening inside of me.

6:30And not only that, but the experience of the session connected me, actually got me out of my head. You know, talk therapy is very much, it's an intellectually led practice. We're intellectualizing, thinking about, analyzing what's going on, what's happened in your past and what's happening in your present and where that might be coming from. Breathwork actually took me away from that, away from thought. I've always been someone who doesn't have a problem thinking. And so to really tune into what I was feeling, the physicality of my experience, my nervous system, the state of my body and my emotions through the physical lens actually gave me a chance to feel and then regulate what was happening rather than just trying to think about it and talk about it more.

7:18And it's not to say that therapy hasn't been helpful in my life. I think there are layers and different ways that we can support ourselves. Therapy is very much top down, mind first. Breathwork very much bottom up. We're working with the body. And I think for anybody, we need both. There'll be some that work better for some people than others. But I think the combination of the two is really powerful. But for me, breathwork was the thing that most obviously moved the dial. From what you're saying, it seems to me that therapy can work very well for someone that wants to identify a logical solution to a problem.

7:53but for someone that by definition is an overthinker then perhaps that may not be the most accurate tool the most efficient one and then breath work instead of applying more logic to it is more emotions-based understanding how you feel without describing that with words for sure i think it's something i write about and talk about a lot in my work at the moment which is not to discount the importance of therapy, but actually to look at as a society, particularly in the Western world, we are very intellectually led. We can talk about everything. We can analyze everything. It's very easy to confuse, given the nature of the mind and how the brain works, understanding something with having actually processed something.

8:42We can get into this trap where we have analyzed and articulated how we feel, but we haven't allowed ourselves to feel it. And that's a very physical, somatic experience rather than an intellectual one. I think therapy and the whole personal development world has made everybody incredibly emotionally intelligent. We can talk about our feelings, but feelings aren't thought-led. They're very much a physical experience. And so if we're just spending more time talking about them, that's not actually always helping us process them. And if we're too quick to jump to the intellectualization of our feelings we can actually bypass and skip just sitting with the feelings and actually feeling into what that experience is and giving space to those feelings so much of my challenges in my sort of late teens and early 20s came from a place of pushing my feelings down unconsciously but actually now what i see in a lot of people that i work with is that we're doing that in a different way we're still avoiding feeling the feelings but the way we're doing that is by intellectualizing them.

9:47Compensating with logic. Exactly. Yeah. All right. So I have an example that I think might be accurate to portray this, but let me know if this is precise. When we go through breakup, a very logical-based person, even without going to therapy, may be able to understand that for a number of reasons, a number of factors, this relationship is not moving forward and hence I need to move on with my life. Two plus two equals four and that's it. And I'm not going to think about it anymore. I'm going to move on into the next chapter of my life. So that's a very logical approach to a breakup. But then perhaps if we're moving on too quickly, and I think time is an important ingredient in this recipe, we are suppressing our feelings.

10:38We are not confronting them. We're not digesting them we're not processing them as you're mentioning and then perhaps down the line this will come back to us as some sort of unresolved problem is this accurate i would say so for sure yeah i think it's always into i don't know if you've heard the same but there's i guess this generalization in breakups that um it always seems that in the immediate aftermath of a breakup men seem okay like men are men are fine but then maybe a few months down the line it hits them whereas for women it seems to be they feel it heavy and hard straight after the breakup but then move on beyond that and you know there are differences between men and women and that's a big broad generalization but i do think even if we take gender out of that example um people who rationalize and intellectualize the reasons and almost jump ahead to find the lesson in it you know what can i learn from this you know whether it's business whether it's a relationship you're going where's the lesson in this what can i be grateful for from this painful experience and that's a really valuable thing to find meaning in in pain and suffering is valuable it's it's you know, important, but not at the cost of actually feeling the experience and allowing yourself to go, that really feels heavy.

12:08Like that's sad, I'm grieving, or I'm angry, or whatever the emotion is. And once you've actually allowed yourself to feel that, which is uncomfortable, and that's probably the reason that we jumped to the thoughts, because that's, you know, if we can control or have the illusion of control, I can rationalize this and put it in a box. but actually we have to feel it first before we can find the meaning in it. Otherwise, we're pushing it down in a more... It's a societally accepted way of pushing our emotions down. We'll always comment if someone is pushing their emotions down and just not allowing themselves to express anything at all.

12:45We will encourage people not to do that, but it's quite a crafty way through intellectualizing it and just being able to explain it, which I think talk therapy when not applied effectively compounds the problem because people just talk talk talk and there's not as much space to really just sit in the feelings and be comfortable or be with that experience fully it seems to me that the end goal is still very important but important but when we reach the timing of when we reach that end goal is also very important. The lesson learned is the stage in which we all want to be in. But I think, as you were mentioning, and this is my assumption, if we jump into that stage, the lesson learned stage, too quickly, that lesson learned is going to be very simple, perhaps not complete.

13:39It will not give you the overall picture. So it's not really a lesson learned. You could have learned so much more. But if you sit with your feelings and with your emotions for a bit longer, that will make the lesson learned so much more complete and complex that will make you better version of yourself to confront a similar situation in the future absolutely because i think if we're pushing you know even if we're if it's conscious or unconscious if we are denying ourselves the feeling and the right to feel the feeling that will as you you spoke to earlier come back around in another form so even if you've intellectualized and understood the experience and taken the lesson from it it's the processing of the feeling that allows you to integrate that lesson because if the lesson's there but the feeling hasn't been met and held then you're going to repeat that cycle you're going to repeat that pattern that experience again and so i think just that again it's this marrying of the body and the mind of the ego and the self where both exist.

14:48The feelings and the thoughts both exist. And it's not to say one is right and one is wrong. It's just about how can we integrate the two and remove this idea of separation between the two, but then think and feel into the process that we follow of giving yourself space to actually feel the thing, regardless of how uncomfortable it is and then we can think about what does that mean what can I take from this it also seems to me like therapy is a good tool to bring your awareness around a problem in your environment and have awareness and make an assessment on where do you fall within that problem and what are the external factors and have a good, let's say, general understanding.

15:40But if I compare that to what you're saying with breathwork, it seems that breathwork is more an inner understanding of yourself. So it's more of a purely related personal growth. What can I learn of who I am? Which I think is profoundly valuable. Absolutely. I think we're very quick again in the modern personal development space to externalize the responsibility for our wellbeing. We're looking to influencers, we're looking to therapists, we're looking to external people to tell us how to live our lives. We outsource our agency. And I personally view agency as one of the core factors to wellbeing.

16:16So are you living life on your own terms? And I think breath as a singular tool in all its different forms returns sovereignty to the individual in a way that not many other things do because all of a sudden you are able to both connect yourself, but then also regulate yourself through something that is uniquely yours through going inwards rather than going outwards and going, what do I do? Tell me what to do. And I think that's a really powerful tool, even at the level of something like confidence to actually know that you can hold yourself through stress, through strain, through discomfort, through the natural ups and downs of life and have a tool through which to support yourself in that is incredibly powerful.

16:57Is it a tool for meditation then? we were talking about this actually before we, before we sat down. Um, I always describe meditation and breath workers, um, as cousins. They're like not twins. They're not, they're not that closely related, but they are very, they are in the same family. Um, for me, breath work in the modern world, the modern Western world, particularly is a fantastic, uh, support to help someone move towards a deeper state of meditation. The reason for that being that for many people who find themselves stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, burnt out, dysregulated within their nervous system, to ask them or invite them to sit still and meditate for five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes.

17:48Most people I know can't do that straight away. And that's a sign of where we're at as a society and the pace at which things move and the stress that people are under. Breathwork, because it is more of a direct tool and a direct input into the state of your nervous system, it really can directly influence your state. We can use the breath to drop somebody into a more grounded state that then makes that stillness of meditation more comfortable, more accessible. And so I think they can work really closely together. I think for the world in which we live, breathwork and the rise in popularity that we've seen in breathwork, I think in a large part is down to this.

18:28It's more accessible. It gives people something to do and it directly influences the state of the nervous system and the stress response.

18:40What did you study or practice to become an expert in this field? Yeah. So the world of breathwork training and certifications is, um, it's a bit of a wild west at times there's a lot out there it's a relatively unregulated space which creates some challenges and some things that i'm kind of looking into at the moment within the industry to see how we can do things better um for me i started i've done four separate qualifications i started um training in sort of respiratory physiology and breath work for nervous system regulation um with a company called xpt i then trained in um performance breath work with a company called the oxygen advantage I then did a 12-month therapeutic breathwork mentorship with Breath Guru and then most recently did a six-month breath science certification with Performance Through Health.

19:35So for me, I've kind of put those puzzle pieces together. They all serve slightly different purposes. Some of them are more spiritually led, more emotionally led. Some of them are more science-based and respiratory physiology-based. just for me to I've always wanted to be a master generalist within the world of breath work you can specialize you know amazing friends of mine who are specialists in you know peak performance and working with athletes friends of mine who are amazing from more of a therapeutic lens for me I always wanted to be able to to maintain a level of breath across across everything within the space what would you say to our audience right now because they may be deciding if they want to stay with you and I a bit longer for the next hour or so and finish the episode.

20:22So what would you tell them? Why should they listen to you in the next hour? That's a good question. I appreciate my natural bias given my space in the world, but in my opinion and through what I've seen in my work, Breathwork provides a singular, complete framework to address so many of the challenges that people in modern society are facing. And the three core ones that I always pull out that I feel I address in my work are disconnection from self, dysregulation of the nervous system in the form of stress, anxiety, burnout, and actually connection to meaning and purpose. And I think those three collectively take people from feeling stuck lost overwhelmed to actually genuinely finding fulfillment and meaning in their lives and the final piece that i would add on to that is the the number one comment that i've heard for the last you know six years of my career is it was just it's just breathing you know how how much could it possibly give me and i suppose if anyone wondering if they're going to stick around i would say that there's a lot more to it than most people realize and that's something that continues to blow my mind the more that I learn the deeper that I go into the research and into this world I think there's there's so much that we are yet to understand and there's one study that I always come back to incite for anyone who is on the fence about breath work which came out about 18 months ago there was a particular study that found that something called conscious connected breathing which is one of these deeper therapeutic modalities of breathwork can create mystical and altered states of consciousness on par with medium to high doses of psilocybin which is magic mushrooms and so everyone's interested in psychedelics but we can create psychedelic states and psychedelic experiences through breathwork and so if you want to understand more about that then stick around on top of all the educational content that you will be sharing and that people would hopefully be able to implement into their daily lives to feel more connected and wind and release stress.

22:37I've already spoken with you for probably 10, 15 minutes and I feel so calm. So if at least you want to feel calm for the next hour or so, stay with us. Imagine I'm a 10 year old. How would you describe breath work in the wellness context to me? I'm fortunate to have had some experience of working with children. So this It should be doable. The simplest thing that I try to support everybody in understanding is the role of the breath within how we think, feel, and operate in the world. Your breath has the power to change the state of, a child's not going to understand the nervous system, but the state of your nervous system.

23:25Your nervous system at a very simple level is the lens through which you experience the world around you. And what I mean by that is that if your nervous system is in a state of activation and stress, the room that you're in, wherever you are, is going to feel dangerous. You're going to feel on edge. When you're anxious, someone could drop a fork in a restaurant and you jump. That's your nervous system lens. You could be in the same restaurant and your nervous system's in a calm, balanced, regulated state. Exactly the same thing happens. Loud noise. someone drops a fork, drops a plate, doesn't even register.

24:00You go, oh, what was that? That is the expression of your nervous system. It's the lens through which you're experiencing the world around you. Your breath is the single most accessible and powerful tool to shift the state of your nervous system. So to go from jumpy, anxious, overwhelmed, to calm, balanced, regulated, your breath is a remote control for the state of your nervous system if you understand how to use it and how to shift it in order to create certain changes and we can create a number of different changes based on how we influence and change the breath so it seems to me that is more of a reactive tool rather than proactive that's a very good point it can be both it can be both i think the the um popularity of breath work has come through it being seen as a reactive tool if you're feeling really anxious this was my entry point feel you're really anxious or maybe you feel like panic attacks coming on slow your breath down extend your exhale how can you breathe to create calm very very important very very effective the evolution of that both for me and in people that I work with is actually how do I take myself if my level of stress is at a seven out of ten as my baseline how do I actually move myself day to day from a baseline of seven to a baseline of five a baseline of four how do I bring down my overall level of activation and balance within the nervous system and that's where the proactive side of the practice comes in that's where I encourage people to build a daily practice where it's regardless of how you're feeling, what is your daily practice of working with your breath to bring that level of energy, of activation of stress within your system down to a lower level hum.

25:52Because so many people that I work with, and I'm sure people that you know in your life, the number of times I've heard, I'm just an anxious person. I don't believe anybody's born anxious. We have our wiring. we have our you know if we want to go into the generational trauma if we want to go into all of that there are people who will have things inbuilt into them that might make them more susceptible to anxiety but i don't believe anybody is an anxious person and so that typically to me just means that you've been living in a prolonged chronic state of nervous system dysregulation of over stress over work moving too quickly the world doesn't help with that right now because of the pace of everything but we do have tools like the breath that can bring down that level of activation in the system and move someone out of this identification with being just anxious to actually going, oh, my life and my experience of the world around me has shifted day to day.

26:48And that's where the proactive practice comes in. Then breath work has the ability to influence and impact our neurochemicals. Because if breath work can decrease our stress baseline, then it has the ability to decrease our cortisol levels, which are the stress hormone, which is the stress hormone. Is that right? Yeah, absolutely. So I'd say in terms of neurochemicals, the cortisol is probably the one that I would speak about more than any other just because of that relation between breath and stress. um for many of us we don't understand the cortisol cycle that happens throughout the day you know we get this peak of cortisol in the morning that actually wakes us up then rises into sort of early afternoon starts to drop and then drops to a point where we start feeling tired and we want to fall asleep over stress burnout dysregulation throws that cycle off where our cortisol baseline doesn't actually drop to where it needs to be for sleep, which is where things like insomnia start to kick in.

28:00It's also why a lot of people that I work with find themselves waking up in the middle of the night, because if your cortisol doesn't drop to where it needs to be for sleep, you might be able to fall asleep because you're just exhausted. But as soon as it starts to rise again, as it naturally does, it'll wake you up before you want or need to wake up. And so that's where we start to see the impact of stress feeding into cortisol, feeding into insomnia, feeding into poor sleep, feeding into stress, and it creates this vicious cycle. So I'd say, yeah, as far as neurochemicals go, cortisol is the one that we are going to see the probably the most significant impact on as far as breathwork is concerned.

28:38Is there a spiritual side to breathwork too, or is it only science based? absolutely both yeah for me um the way that i always i suppose lay out breath work is is breath work being a real i suppose a catch-all an umbrella term that covers a lot of ground um it's any way that we can use our breath to shift our state physically mentally emotionally spiritually within that there are really core three core pillars the first is functional breathing which is about how you breathe day to day what's your natural breathing pattern and how that's supporting you or not nervous system regulation which we've talked a lot about how can you use the breath simple breathing techniques to create a change in your state and then we have the more therapeutic uh spiritually led emotionally led kind of exploratory practices of breath work like the one i mentioned with that study that can create these psychedelic type experiences that for me is where we really start to get into the realms of spirituality spirituality used to be a very loaded term for me i thought it was very woo-woo very kind of mystical a bit you know too far out there for me who was very logical and very kind of science-led at the time to connect to but as i've gone deeper into this work and as i connected to my own practice more and particularly these deeper practices it inevitably connects you to a sense of spirituality and i think breath is at the core of every major you know religion spiritual tradition they are all uniquely connected to the breath and incredibly connected to the breath as this life force and there's a teacher of mine who who once shared you know the breath really is this gateway between our finite selves, us as an individual, and everything that's around us.

30:33As he said, as the universe exhales, you inhale, and as you exhale, the universe inhales. It's this constant flow of this exchange between us and the world around us. And the more we connect to the breath, the more we connect to ourselves. And paradoxically, the more we connect to ourselves, the more we connect to each other, but also the natural world and everything around us. Three pillars. It seems to me that the first pillar, it is a proactive approach. How can we improve the way in which we breathe every day? And pillar number two is more reactive. There is a problem, there is a stressor that is affecting us.

31:15What are the different breathing techniques that will help us cope with that? And then the third one, which, yeah, it does seem to be the more spiritual one, is the one that can maybe allow you to access different parts of your brain, different ideas, imagination, innovation. Before we deep dive into these three different pillars, and I would like for you to share with me some techniques for each pillar. Sure. Are there certain people that are more responsive to breathwork in general? I would say it always depends. but the type of people that I see coming into my spaces I would say um they're all different but they probably share some some traits as well I'd say they tend to be high performing in some capacity that might be as you spoke to earlier it might be in work it might be you know in life it might be in sport it might be you know just in the world in general someone who holds themselves to quite high standards they are what i would describe as as curious emotionally intelligent seekers so people who maybe have been through therapy and really understand themselves on the intellectual level but are still feeling like there's something more they're asking the big questions they're asking what does this all mean how can i move my life towards something that feels meaningful and fulfilling and i would say a lot of type a's as well so people that are driven, focused, ambitious.

32:50Those people also tend to be the ones who have the most to gain from these practices and get the most from them. Because if you're someone, you know, I've worked also with a few people who are naturally pretty calm. They're pretty at peace. They're pretty at ease. And what I would do with someone like that is different to what I would do with someone who's more type A, a little bit more tightly wound and highly strong and fast moving. um i would say the world sits more on that side in general now of those um slightly more overstressed overworked individuals and i'd say for those people they have the most to gain just in terms of the immediate impact of starting to slow their breath down starting to work with their breath starting to connect to their body and the impact that that can have in terms of stress sleep um focus balance and really it just starts to almost immediately show up in their lives in a in a really impactful way walk me through some techniques of those three pillars for sure so pillar number one um functional breathing average adult takes between 20 and 30 000 breaths a day average adult 20 or 30 000 yeah wow yeah and the number is increasing the more stressed we become um but average adult between 20 and 30 000 breaths the average adult most likely pays attention to zero of those but if we're doing something so fundamental over 20 000 times a day it's probably pretty important to understand how you're doing it how to do it in a way that's going to support you if you're doing something 20 000 times a day in a way that isn't supporting you that's going to have a significant negative impact over time.

34:34So all that to say, the first step of functional breathing is breath awareness, starting to pay attention to the breath. The breath is so powerful because of its simplicity, but it's also the simplicity that means we take it for granted. That question that I've got so many times, you know, it's just breathing, you know, what could it possibly do for me? But because of that simplicity, it's incredibly important. And so what we want to be looking at with functional breathing is how do I breathe day-to-day, moment-to-moment? How do I breathe at rest, during sleep, during exercise, as I answer emails?

35:11You know, all of these moments in our day, how am I breathing? A lot of people, and this is something that came out in the press during lockdown, was a lot of people who hold their breath unconsciously while they're answering emails because they're stressed. a lot of people who at rest just sat watching tv in the evening are breathing fast and shallow and short into their chest which is going to create stress and so what we want to be aiming for with functional breathing is firstly becoming more connected to how you breathe day to day by actually just identifying how do you breathe before you change anything and then starting to move towards the foundational pillars of a healthy more optimal breathing pattern which is going to be breathing through the nose it's going to be breathing expansively so deeper and lower it's going to be both inhaling and exhaling through the nose yes at rest that's how we want to be want to be breathing is in and out through the nose we want to be breathing deeply and expansively into the lower portion of the lungs we want to be breathing slowly so lowering our respiratory rate lots of the wearables now like the whoop and the aura ring have respiratory rate data so you can see what your your respiratory rate is and we want that to be on the lower side and then breathing gently a lot of people think to deepen their breath they have to take these big aggressive expansive breaths the respiratory rate which does that mean that we need to be breathing longer but less yes so it would be less breaths per minute and we want that also to be gentle so we don't want to be taking because that's creating strain on the nervous system we want it to be virtually silent but slow and gentle you know the the you know if you were to sit with a monk for example you probably wouldn't hear him breathing it would probably just be there it'd be flowing without having to give it too much thought and it'd be a really slow rate.

37:11And so that's where, you know, we're not monks, of course, but that's where we want to be moving towards is just deeper breathing, slower breathing, more gentle breathing and through the nose. Should I feel the breathing on my stomach or on my chest? Usually we'll feel a bit of both. Usually in the healthiest breathing patterns, it will move from the bottom up. So start low at the bottom of the lungs and then it will start to fill. The most important thing I think to understand from this perspective is that if you think about how you breathe when you're stressed or anxious or scared or panicking, it's very fast, it's very shallow.

37:53It's like really short breathing into the upper chest and the throat. If you are breathing that way unconsciously when you're watching TV or answering emails, that's sending signals of stress back through the nervous system. And so we're creating this vicious cycle of short, shallow breathing, stress, more shallow breathing, and it just continues until we interrupt it. And the breath is the most effective way to interrupt that cycle. I'm going to play devil's advocate. Sure. So assuming the human body is not perfect, but let's say a pretty good machine, it always has a reaction to a given situation.

38:34For example, if we exercise, we are sweating and that's something that is unconscious that our body is automatically doing because it's aiming to cool down your body now let's say that i'm under stress because of an email or watching a movie because it's a horror movie maybe some cortisol gets released isn't our breathing which maybe it's also automated maybe the speed of our breathing increased because that's what the body needs naturally? Or is this a mistake, an error from our body? Not a mistake. I think that's something I always try and stress to people is that I don't want people to become stressed about how they're breathing because that's just going to create more of the problem that we're trying to resolve.

39:20And so, yes, your body is intelligent. It's always trying to return to homeostasis. The challenge, and I think we're really saying the same thing here is that your breath will fluctuate throughout the day with fluctuations in stress, fluctuations in environment, you know, that will happen. It shouldn't always stay exactly the same. But the problem comes from the fact that the way that we are living our lives now is somewhat unnatural for us in terms of the amount we're working, in terms of light exposure, in terms of time outside, all of these factors that are now well documented, right? in terms of how much we're moving, all of these different aspects.

40:02Because of that, what we're finding is that, you know, it's a term I've used quite a few times, but the state of nervous system dysregulation, where it's really at its core, not about never being stressed, it's about natural fluctuations. So when stress shows up, we're stressed, then we go back into rest. And we have this elasticity of the nervous system and this capacity of the nervous system to be on when it's required and then switch off again on when it's required switch off again but because of how we're living our lives most people wake up jump out of bed grab a coffee we're straight into stress we then start working and we stay up there and we stay up there and then we try and switch off at the end of the day does it happen for a lot of people not in the way that they hope it would which is where they get into challenges with sleep so to come back to to your point yes your breath will when something stressful happens shift in the way that it should because that's your nervous system doing its job the problem arises is when that stress is no longer around you know the the email has been dealt with the difficult conversation has been had the confrontation has been had we're staying stuck that for me is really my personal definition of nervous system dysregulation is when we become chronically activated or chronically stuck in one state that could be stressed that could be shut down could show up in many different forms but for most people it's that over activation of the stress response because we're not getting enough uh not enough proper rest we're not slowing down enough we're not dosing kind of activation and rest in a way that's supportive for us because we're just trying to do too much and we're moving at too fast a pace and so yes we'll see that fluctuation with the breath but quite often we'll find people getting stuck where even when they are resting their nervous system is still ticking over so it's like the foot is staying on the gas even when it's no longer required that makes so much sense also because let's say if we go back hundreds and hundreds of years man sees a tiger your amygdala releases cortisol for you to survive and that obviously would also impact your breath.

42:27But in this day and age, there are no tigers, but there are so many more stressors. It's not only that email that you need to answer or you're getting notifications on your phone. Like you hear if you live in a city like London, you hear the traffic outside. So you are supposed to be resting, but there are all these other stressors, these different factors that are constantly around you will affect you and will keep your cortisol levels high when they shouldn't be and then by default also your your breathing is going to be affected fascinating so breathing from your nose breathe out from your nose from your belly all the way until your lungs slowly and gently yeah so that's really if we think about you know we can think about it as pillars or we can think about it as a pyramid.

43:21That's really the base, right? That's the first layer of just pay more attention to your breath and not overthinking it, but just start to notice. I hear a lot of people saying to me, oh, I just noticed even in this conversation that I'm having with you that I was holding my breath or I was breathing very shallow. And in those moments of noticing that, can you take a couple of slower breaths? Can you breathe through the nose? I think that is where the compound effect over time really builds up is just that subtle awareness of the breath. I never want anyone to be trying to pay attention to every single breath they take.

43:55That would be exhausting and stressful and pointless. But actually just using the breath as a gateway into how do I feel? If you ever wanna know how you feel, go to your breath first. Are you breathing really shallow? Are you breathing really fast? Or are you actually breathing and holding yourself in a way that speaks to openness and calm? So it's also a great window into connecting to yourself, which is the first starting point for any personal practice, any wellness practice. Take me to that second pillar because that one sounds incredibly interesting for so many occasions or use cases. You fight with your partner or you're about to give a presentation at work.

44:35How can you bring yourself to homeostasis, to baseline, calm down? For sure. For sure. So most fundamental understanding of this is thinking about two levers within the nervous system. We have our rest and digest response, the calming response within the nervous system, and then we have the mobilization and activation response within the nervous system. Both have value. we often hear most commonly talked about in my line of work how do we move people into calm sure lots of us are stressed that's very important but we can actually use that other lever to create energy when we need it if we're feeling sluggish if we're feeling lethargic how do we actually turn things on and start start the engine um a couple of use cases you mentioned there you know confrontation or presentation public speaking whatever it might be how do we then start to think about influencing and changing the speed of the breath, the depth of the breath, the ratio of inhale to exhale, maybe using breath holds.

45:35So really starting to get curious about how you can use your breath. But the beauty as well of the breath in this pillar, in this form, is that there are only so many things that you can change. You can change the inhale, the hold at the top of the breath, the exhale, the hold at the bottom of the breath. We've got four things and then you can change the speed, the depth and the ratio. That's really all we've got. But there are so many formulations, a bit like a passcode, right? If you've got four digits, you can change those things in a few different ways to create different changes. And so if we want to be moving down, so reducing the amount of energy in your system to create more calm, more balance, more peace, our focus here, all of those things we just talked about with functional breathing usually breathing through the nose usually reducing your respiratory rate and breathing more deeply what we can then start to layer in on top of that doesn't need to be complicated probably the most effective in my personal practice for alleviating stress and anxiety very simple extended exhale breathing make your exhale longer than your inhale on a physiological basis when we do that the heart slows down and your whole system settles still everything through the nose with that i'm less um less fussy because our goal is to create calm and so the way that we're going to do that is to lengthen that exhale as comfortably but as much as we can for a lot of people who are new to these practices the easiest way to do that is in through the nose and blowing the exhale out of the mouth like you're blowing through a straw so you can get towards something you know a typical ratio might be four second inhale eight second exhale in the nose out the mouth but it could also just be in and out through the nose what we do want to focus on just from a health and functionality perspective is usually inhaling through the nose that's really important we get that filtration that the nose gives us it naturally slows the breath down so extending the exhale is a great way to to create calm within the system we can also use there's a couple of really popular techniques like four four eight breathing so in for four hold for four out for eight four seven eight breathing the same in for four hold for seven out for eight really you know people often ask me about my own personal practice and it's very very simple but it's simple because it doesn't have to be any more complicated than it needs to be and once you know what you're doing and you know your own breath and your own nervous system you can do you know five minutes of a single technique and see a significant change and so for what we call down regulating the nervous system extending the exhale slowing the breathing down and perhaps using some short holds after the inhale so taking a breath in holding and then extending the exhale if we shift then to the increase of energy within the nervous system.

48:37This would be for energy, focus, motivation, really charging you up if you needed a bit of a boost. Almost exactly the opposite, more inhale focused, quicker breathing, still deeper breathing, but bigger breath, so more active breathing. Something like the Wim Hof method breathing is really effective, which is just actually in and out through the mouth where people are breathing quite a quick tempo. And that is just introducing what we call hormetic stress, positive stress, intentional stress, to create a desired response. So that is great if you're just feeling low, low energy, lethargic. The last technique within this realm that is really popular and for good reason is box breathing.

49:28So this was made famous by the Navy SEALs. So they use it on their way into a combat zone. So if you think combat zone, fortunately, we're not heading into any real combat zones, but public speaking, difficult conversation, big meeting, you're already on your way there before you even think about it, gonna be feeling the adrenaline. You're gonna be feeling the energy. What we don't wanna do there is go too far in either direction. You don't wanna feel sleepy and sluggish. You wanna be on it. You wanna be focused. You wanna be motivated and concentrated. But if you start speeding your breath up and adding stress, you're going to be overstimulated.

50:05You're going to be jittery. You're going to be anxious. So how do we find that healthy middle ground? And that's where box breathing is really effective. So box breathing uses all four parts of the breath that we discussed. Inhale, hold, exhale, hold, but an even ratio of all four. Usually all through the nose, we would do four seconds in, four second hold, four seconds out, four second hold, repeat. and that is a great way just to find center particularly in times of high stress that for me is probably the one i use most frequently if i'm just trying to come back to center in the midst of something stressful and something challenging well fascinating i could just you know hear you talk about this for hours and hours i was thinking when you were saying what what you were saying, the second pillar, two different moments in my life in which I very much realized that breath work was very important.

51:03Years ago, I still am under stress, but I guess I'm better at coping with it because I've learned. But years ago, I still had a lot of stress, but I wasn't as capable to cope with it. And I went through two panic attacks, different moments for different reasons it's interesting because with panic attacks you never know what's really triggering it because it doesn't happen in the moment in which you are under severe stress maybe you're under stress for like a few weeks and then you come down for a week and then that's when it happens but while it was harder to pinpoint what was the root cause for the panic attack it was so easy to find a common denominator between both panic attacks which was my breathing it all started from a very unusual very dynamic breathing and i wonder if for anyone because i do know that for example a good friend of my fiance she she has and also a good friend of mine they they have regular panic attacks mine fortunately there were two very specific cases but these two other friends that i have they go through regular panic attacks is there something that they could be doing within that moment so they can either have a shorter milder panic attack or just maybe avoid it altogether yeah it's a really good question um something i feel somewhat uniquely qualified to answer as well from from personal lived experience as well of panic attacks so one thing i used to find incredibly frustrating when i was having panic attacks was someone just telling me to to slow my breath down um you know there's so much advice out there in the world now it's like if you're having a panic attack just breathe in for four and out for 10 and you'll be fine it's like having had them both of us know it's not as simple as that you can't just catch your breath again um interesting study that came out a few years ago found that the first signs on a physiological level of a panic attack actually start up to three hours before the panic attack itself which you never realize right you think it just happens it's just in the moment but it's that gradual build your bucket's just gradually filling up but you only notice it as it starts to tip over And so to come back to the question you actually asked a while back around proactive and reactive, both again, the proactive piece for anyone who experiences regular panic attacks is actually getting into the habit of a daily practice outside of the panic attack.

53:33because panic attacks for me are symptomatic of that bucket being quite full quite a lot of the time and it not taking a lot to then tip us into panic and overwhelm and so how do we bring how do we let some of the water out of that bucket how do we release the valve and just take the edge off that's the daily practice so it might be five to ten minutes first thing last thing throughout the day of extended exhale breathing box breathing something that we've talked about just to to slow things down and that compounds over time from a proactive standpoint to move you away from the regularity of the panic attacks i would also stress and emphasize there there is a place in all of this for for other modalities it might be it might be therapy to actually talk about what why why are they showing up can we understand the root cause a little bit better it might be the more spiritually led end of the breathwork spectrum of actually going, you know, how do we deep dive into it?

54:34It might be underlying trauma, it might be past pain that is manifesting as panic attacks. But from a pure breathwork right here, right now perspective, getting into that daily practice of slowing things down is incredibly effective and important. In the moment of panic attack or an experience of extreme anxiety. Two options that work slightly differently for different people. The first would be using short, simple breath holds in the moment. So if you think I'm not able to catch my breath and slow it down, but what I can do is hold the breath. It might be you hold the breath for two seconds or three seconds, and then you try and breathe more slowly, wait a couple more seconds hold again and so just interrupting the rapid breathing that a panic attack can bring on can be really effective as a means of gradually slowing the breath down for other people they might feel more able to begin actually slowing their breathing down once they've once they've caught it rather than trying to jump to you know in for five out for ten or anything intense from that perspective or or particularly extreme in a shift something called ratio breathing where you just gradually slow the breath down so it might be in for two out for two or in for two hold for two out for two just to reduce your respiratory rate your breathing rate and slow things down and then you might go to three seconds then you might go to four seconds you know this could be over a course of five ten minutes where you're just starting to gradually slow your breathing down and a dual effect i suppose of the actual influence of that on your nervous system to hopefully support the panic attack and being less overwhelming and getting less out of hand but also giving your mind something to focus on a single point of focus rather than what is often you know the experience of anxiety and panic attacks which is you know spinning into overthinking rumination overwhelm so just giving the mind a single point of focus as well alongside the influence of the breath on the nervous system directly is really effective.

56:47Let's go for that third pillar. Let's do it. Let's do it. So it can come under many different names, many different guises, but the way that I teach and what I work with is something called conscious connected breathing. This is a singular circular pattern of breathing, actually breathing in and out of the mouth. So we use the mouth intentionally to create a shift in our blood biochemistry in particular lowering our blood carbon dioxide levels it's not particularly important in terms of the physiology but it's important because that lowering of blood carbon dioxide levels creates a cascade of physiological and psychological changes that open up this psychedelic therapeutic experience typically this work is done either one-to-one between a facilitator and a participant or i host regular group sessions and retreats where we might have between 10 20 30 people in a space breathing in that way together you're breathing that way typically but for between 30 and 90 minutes and through that experience laying down breathing in this way really going inwards we start to see um you breathe in the same way for the how do you breathe so it'd be in and out through the mouth it'd be focusing on breathing deeply again and the mouth is open and you focus on quite a big breath in and then you're connecting removing the pause between inhale and exhale and just a soft sigh out so it's kind of like

58:25isn't that hyperventilating in a form yes it's a choice to increase ventilation so it's a what we would call like a high ventilation breathwork practice because i think often hyperventilation conjures up an image of uncontrolled it's like whereas high ventilation we're just choosing to increase the depth and volume of the breath when we do that over a prolonged period of time we see these physical changes so people often get tingling and physical changes in in the body as energy starts to move and we get these physiological changes and then also we get this altered state of consciousness this mystical experience this psychedelic experience that can show up what's going on under the surface there from our best understanding is we're creating a slightly hypoxic condition within the brain so a low oxygen state within the brain and similar from what we understand um to something like psilocybin we get this down regulation this decrease in activity in the default mode network which is sort of the egoic mind it's the the monkey mind that seat of rumination and um we also see as that happens if we think about the egoic mind as um a bit of a protection mechanism it's very good at keeping us safe but it can also be protecting us from things within our subconscious and unconscious that might be past pain traumatic experiences uncomfortable experiences that live within the unconscious that we might have repressed or suppressed and so we can actually drop into this psychedelic type experience where unconscious material that our ego has been protecting us from can resurface now why would we want that speaks to what we were discussing right at the beginning, which is if we are not giving ourselves space to feel our feelings and we're pushing them down, that can a bit like whack-a-mole pop up in the future as physical pain, mental and emotional pain, spiritual pain.

1:00:30And so as we allow this subconscious material to surface through choice and intention in a space that is curated for that purpose with a facilitator who knows how to hold that you give yourself an opportunity to express things that have previously gone unexpressed you allow yourself to process things that you might have pushed down pushed away not wanted to confront and through that giving ourself an opportunity to let go of those things to process those things to integrate those things into the conscious mind into the the the rational mind and into our sort of wholeness and so it can be an incredibly profound and impactful experience on a on a healing level but also through those shifts on a psychological and a physiological level people also get this connection to something larger than themselves this spiritual aspect of the experience where as the egoic mind gets quieter we feel this dissolution and this sort of dissolving into the oneness that a lot of people experience with psychedelics.

1:01:38A lot of people experience in, you know, peak experiences with nature, for example, even something like, you know, watching a beautiful sunset, when we feel that sense of awe and wonder, we feel very connected to everything that's going on around us in the universe. And similarly, when we work with the breath in this way and drop into this non-ordinary state of consciousness, people experience this, yeah, this dissolution of the sense of separation between themselves, others and the world around them whilst also having space to connect to and process that unconscious material that might surface through the experience it sounds like a life-changing experience how often should we do that should we do it once in our life it can be you know it was a huge part of my personal journey with breathwork and it really did move the dial significantly for me and and yeah i would say it's been it's been life-changing in terms of frequency i compared it's interesting right compared to something like psychedelics For me, it's very much a stepping stone into that world if people are interested in exploring psychedelics from a healing perspective.

1:02:46but when I speak to people about psychedelics because I'm very immersed in that world as well I always say our goal is never to keep sitting in the ceremony there comes a point where we go am I really integrating what's coming up for me in these experiences to help me just live my life in a happier more healthy way do I need to keep chasing that and it's the same but I would say a little less so with breathwork in this form I would hope that someone doesn't feel the need to continuously chase these experiences because they can connect us to this deeper sense of peace and stillness within ourselves.

1:03:27There's a wonderful teacher called Zach Bush who says we've become so obsessed with chasing spiritual experiences that we've forgotten that we are innately spiritual. We've forgotten we are spiritual beings by default. and so these experiences can serve as a reminder of that but we have to integrate them we have to you know have ways of making the changes stick otherwise we will keep chasing it i usually see people in first discovering these modalities wanting to explore them quite frequently so i'd say you know maybe it's once a week once a month dropping into these experiences and then it seems to get less over time.

1:04:11But I would say if people want to engage in it more regularly, once a month, it's just an opportunity just to drop into a really deep connection to yourself, a beautiful experience, an opportunity. If you feel like you're holding a lot of baggage, emotional charge, if there's been a lot going on in your life, it can be a great way just to give yourself a bit of a reset as well. and so yeah you know we can use these practices as long as we're using them intentionally in whatever way we we choose but I would typically say once a month is is more than enough for one of these kind of deeper experiences a friend of mine who follows your work she claims she had once an orgasm from this is this that was my reaction but I tried to be a bit respectful towards her but is this something that like can it happen yeah it's the simple answer um it's something that i have witnessed in in my spaces it's something that i've heard from people um you know i i wouldn't say it's ever the reason to explore this work i wouldn't say you know i don't use it in my marketing maybe i should um but yeah i think you know if we want to think about what's really going on there.

1:05:33The beauty of this kind of practice, you know, it can be in the healing process, it can be in the spiritual side of it. It's also an incredibly powerful embodiment practice. So it connects you to the physical form in a way that if we spend a lot of time in our heads, rarely happens. And we, because we do spend so much time in our heads, we forget how much is going on in our body in terms of sensation, in terms of energy. And so if you start really connecting to your body, there's energy moving in your body. Even if people right now, if I would say to people, just bring your attention, close your eyes and bring your attention into the middle finger on your right hand and try and hold your awareness there, you'll start to feel tingling you'll start to feel buzzing you'll start to feel pulsing very meditative as an experience but also quite profound because you're really feeling things and yeah you know orgasm and pleasure is both a presence problem if we're struggling with it because we're not connected to our bodies and we're not staying present with the physical experience but also um you know it's an embodiment challenge as well and so actually the more connected we are to our bodies more energy is moving.

1:06:50It's a very possible outcome of an experience like this. I feel like if people are going to be trying this at home, I'm sure they're going to go on YouTube, but it can be quite dangerous if they're doing the wrong thing. Where would you advise people to go to? So for example, you are the founder of the Breathspace. Can you walk me through the Breathspace? And also how can people follow your work from home? For sure. Yeah, it's a really important point. So I always say with that third pillar that we've just been discussing, if you can, I would always encourage people to practice in person with a facilitator first.

1:07:33For your first time or your first few times. And if you have the option, I would always recommend in person with a facilitator, not just because it's safer, but because it tends to be deeper as well because you feel more safe because there is quite literally somebody there to support you through the process so subconsciously psychologically there's a level of safety that allows you to drop deeper however i'm also realistic about the fact that breathwork in its nature in all its forms is incredibly accessible and you can do it from wherever you are you can do it from home and so there are a lot of good and a lot of bad practices freely available online, on YouTube, on different apps.

1:08:18But again, I would always, with that deeper end of the spectrum, really emphasize easing yourself in and seeking out proper guidance, whether that's even just finding a facilitator such as myself to ask questions to as to whether it's an appropriate practice for where somebody is in their life. If you have significant past trauma or PTSD, it can be one of the most impactful experiences you'll have but not something that I would ever recommend you do alone because it can just bring up so much and that can be very destabilizing if it's not done in the right way it can also and this is one of the challenges we face in the industry right now with all of the growth people can be re-traumatized as much as they can be healed because if you think about this unconscious material surfacing that can go this way or that way and so that's where we have to be really conscious about understanding what is happening in these experiences I think there's a real lack of education around really what's happening, but also then taking it seriously and treating it with the respect that a powerful psychosomatic technology and practice and modality can do for us.

1:09:26Like we have to respect, you know, it's just breathing, quote unquote, but it's so powerful and so potent. And with, you know, it's the old Spider-Man quote, you know, with great power comes great responsibility. And that really applies here as well. So I think that's the first thing that I want to say is if you do want to explore that deeper end of the spectrum for whatever intention and motivation, go gently, be very intentional and very conscious about how you explore that and who you explore that with. In terms of my work, for those first two pillars, that's where the magic of the digital and the home practice really comes into its own.

1:10:04So the majority of the things on on my app um are focused around um awareness of breath functional breathing and nervous system regulation so we have energizing practices calming practices sleep focus practices there are also some of those deeper practices for people who are a little bit more advanced but it's really kind of a process of getting themselves there um in terms of the breath space as a whole i would say yeah if your focus is um those first two pillars for stress for general well-being then the digital side of things is is probably the best place to to begin and everything can be followed through your app the breath space yes yeah through the app um through instagram through through the online online channels and the website and then i would say if you're wanting to dive deeper that's where the in-person side really comes in all of my my London workshops, my retreats that I have in the UK and Europe are focused specifically around conscious connected breathing and really diving deep.

1:11:04I have a great team around me for my retreats where I'll have massage therapists, somatic therapists, traditional talk therapists, just so we can really create the safest possible space for people to have a truly healing experience um so yeah everything kind of through the website which is the breathspace.co.uk and and the app which is the breath space you also work with corporations yes i do so after your work with corporate workers what are the tangible benefits that you can see in the workspace happier healthier people ultimately um if we think yeah i think if we get into the mindset here of of business and and you know entrepreneurship as well there's we're at the cusp of something shifting away from where we've been with with hustle culture for a while now where everything in hustle culture was just push push push more more more harder harder harder longer longer longer we're now starting to go fuck that's not worked that really hasn't worked people have gotten places but then they're burnt out and they're going i don't feel how i was expecting to feel when I hit that goal or I reached that milestone or I sold my company whatever it might be we're now starting to see that there's a different way of operating and what I always say to business owners to business people who hate the idea of slowing down you know they don't want to work with me because they think I'm just going to tell them to do less and to slow down what I say to them is that my goal isn't to tell you to slow down for the sake of slowing down it's actually to make you better in the time where you are doing things rather than as we spoke about earlier always being on and operating at 70 80 output be at 100 and then take your foot off the gas then be at 100 again creativity goes through the roof uh productivity goes through the roof when you're more regulated when you have more balance and so that for me is really at the core of what we see sorry one quick question so being more balanced means it's interesting because i can see both both conversations being accurate.

1:13:17So somebody might say that always being at 70 % might mean being balanced. But what you're saying is in whatever you're doing, do it with intention. And if you're not doing it, you're not doing it. You're doing something else. If you're resting, you're resting. If you're working, you're working. For sure. That's what I see. I always come back to, I do a small amount of work with elite athletes. and we certainly for myself I always thought these people are just on all the time they're just going the people at the top of every game whether it's athletes, whether it's business are as focused and as effective in their output as they are in their rest they take it as seriously and that's why they're there and I think that's what the people who want to get there misunderstand They think it's just about pushing harder when actually it's about how much are you willing to engage in the restoration and the rest as you are the output and the pushing.

1:14:19Because that's where you strike the balance of actually being able to be at your best when it's required, rather than almost anticipating that and being almost there, but not quite there. and I know for me personally the number one metric for me of regulation and when I feel well rested and in a good place is creativity for me that's that's my measure of it is can I actually you know are there just ideas coming through am I connected to my creativity when I'm stressed I might be productive I might be getting stuff done but it doesn't feel flowy it feels forced rather than expansive and enjoyable.

1:15:01And so I think when it comes to companies and businesses, it's about that in terms of actually the quality of what you're doing, but in terms of better communication, team communication, team morale, not burning people out. Burnout is probably one of the biggest reasons people will leave jobs now. It's probably one of the biggest reasons that people are unsatisfied in their jobs. It might not even be because of the work. It's just because they are not feeling good. and again it comes back to the lens through which we view everything if we're stressed your work's going to feel heavier even if one day you enjoyed it it's going to feel unfulfilling because of your state not because anything's necessarily changed in the work i think the problem lies within how society defines success when somebody asks you in this day and age how are you doing?

1:15:54If you say, I am doing very well. And if you don't answer, I'm so busy, I'm, you know, under an amount of workload. If you just say I'm doing very well, it sounds like you're, people may perceive, unfortunately, that you're not doing anything, that you're on holiday. You may be at work and you could be absolutely fine with everything. But that's, Yeah, that's unfortunately something that I've seen a lot. That I've seen a lot. And I think work like yours can help bring some awareness around it and rebalance what, recalibrate what matters. For sure. And in my opinion, it means exactly what you were saying, doing things with intention.

1:16:44and they think that life and you can apply this into anything right you can apply this into work you can apply this into your workout routine you can apply this into your diet if you too if you do too much one thing that's going to have negative consequences one of them would be definitely burnout but there would be other additional negative consequences so i think having a good balance on almost in almost every aspect of your life it is the best way to live of your life and doing things intentionally. So for example, one of the things that I try to apply in my daily life, since a very close family member passed away not so long ago, is to be present in the moment.

1:17:26And if you are constantly on a work mode, even when you're not working, you're not present. So if you're intentionally forcing yourself to be there, to be in the moment, you are going to be less stressed. I felt that immediately. I think that would also allow you to be more conscious about your breathing. If you're on autopilot, forget about being aware of your breathing. And also, at least in my experience, it unlocks a new definition of happiness, which is being able to appreciate the small things. The fact that perhaps today they're playing my favorite song in a bar that this morning's coffee tasted profoundly nice.

1:18:11And you stop measuring your happiness against these very long-term goals that are very much defined by society. And you stop thinking, once I achieve that, everything will make sense. Once I get that, everything will be enough. Yeah, it's interesting. one of those lessons that feels hard for people, myself included. I think it's just the way that we're wired ultimately, but hard for people to learn. How many people have exited their company and thought it was going to make them happy? And they tell us. These very wealthy people tell us, nothing changed when I became a millionaire. There's a level of, as you mentioned earlier, a level of financial security and safety that money brings.

1:19:02Let's not deny that. But beyond that, it's not making people any more happy. And that's been known for a very long time. And yet all of the people that aren't there yet still think there'll be the exception to the rule. Yeah. But for me, if I get, if I'm a millionaire, then I'll be happy. Right. And we're sacrificing the present moment in the chase of that, not feeling fulfilled here and now and wondering, you know, what's going on? Why don't I feel good? and we're just chasing the wrong thing you know an ever-moving goal post that's just moving away from us every time you know we set a goal we get there we don't feel fulfilled we're like maybe the next goal will get me there rather than being like okay maybe the maybe the problem's the goal maybe the thing is that i'm externalizing my happiness onto something else rather than just appreciating the small things i think that is much easier said than done i'm very aware of that i see it in myself all the time i just there's still things i want to achieve there's still ambitions that I have, but can I move towards those things from a place of acceptance of myself that, you know, where I am right now is good enough.

1:20:07And rather than from a place of lack and trying to prove something, I think that's a really important shift in our society is so geared towards the pursuit of more. And it's almost feels like pursuing more is a necessary part of eventually realizing that it was never about that and it was always about what you've got right here right now and living a life that is meaningful to you and that looks different for everybody it should look different and that's the problem i feel like movies and tv shows define happiness in a very shallow and dopamine based way which means i think they confuse they make people confuse having fun with happiness yeah when they buy that car that's on happiness you'll have fun i'll guarantee you that or if you go on that amazing trip you're going to have fun but that doesn't mean that you're going to be happy and nobody shows you in a movie in the movie after you know they they finish the party or they buy the house and they have the car what happens afterwards usually the movie finishes with them smiling and that's it but nobody shows what happened seven years after down the line like okay you still have the house and the car and how how from where are you drawing purpose and and happiness and and meaning in life and i think it goes back to appreciating those small things so myself i i am very grateful for what i was able to achieve alongside with my twin brother in the last seven or eight years we we did become and i'll disclose we did become millionaires in our 20s.

1:21:43And it's so interesting because it's true that in the very early stages of our career, we were chasing not necessarily only financial success, but reputational stability. And at some point when you attain those things, and by no means I am not the richest person, but I think from my age I did put together a considerable amount of wealth. at some point you realize that the car cannot be fast enough that the food won't be tastier than that and that the view of your flat won't be higher and those things end up meaning very very little and you would trade them all for finding real purpose and to me finding that real purpose was placing value on the small things in life because there are so many more of those and that means that you can really be happy every day.

1:22:38It's like I've given this analogy in the past. When we're kids, and I'm not sure if you can relate to this, but I can relate myself to this when I was a kid and also all of my friends. You're eight or 10 years old in school. This was in Spain back then. We would go through the week hoping that the days would go by so quickly so we could enjoy the weekend. Now, if you do the math, the very simple math, the week has five days and the weekend has two days how many days of your life are you wasting hoping for them to go by just for two days the math ain't nothing and i feel like we're doing that right now our society is doing that at an adult stage a lot of people are just looking forward or towards a weekend or that holiday and they are just hoping that their day goes by Surely they're nine to five.

1:23:30And then at some point you realize in your life and you look back and you see how much time you have really wasted. And we forget that our life on this earth is so finite. And unfortunately, we only realize this either when we go through a very traumatic experience, the loss of someone in a very dramatic way, or in a very advanced stage in life you're in your 60s and your 70s and it's not that it's too late i don't think it's ever too late but definitely most of your life has already been gone it's already gone so if we were to wrap this this part of the conversation into one powerful conclusion for anyone to take home would be appreciate the small things that that life can offer you and through things like for example breath work aim to always get to know yourself better because then you will be able to make the right decisions that will make you happy not anyone else happy not the general definition of happiness but your personal definition of of happiness going back to breath work how do you see this evolving in the wellness space.

1:24:45Do you think this would be better integrated and more mainstream? Yeah, I think where we're at right now in the world of breathwork is, let's say, the real rise in popularity and the boom of breathwork in the wellness world has been the last five years or so, five to 10 years, more significantly, last five. I feel we have now moved beyond, I suppose, is the early majority, which is the people who are already interested in breathwork, already interested in wellness. They're taking care of themselves. They have disposable income. They're exploring these things. That's, for me, the early majority.

1:25:22And I think what we're now starting to see is this shift into the legitimate mainstream. So the legitimate middle, where it's, I always take my mom as a good example. If she's interested in something, then we're starting to move into actually beyond just the London kind of city centric wellness world, which can be a bit of a bubble and an echo chamber at times. And for me, I'm a bit of an advocate at the moment of almost trying to speak of breathwork outside of the wellness world, because I think the wellness world has some pitfalls because it's become an industry. And when anything becomes an industry, you get commodification, you get over commodification, you get escapism, you get, you know, if we really think about how an industry works, if they are selling you something, the wellness world perpetuates the belief that people need fixing.

1:26:19And for as long as people need fixing, they will pay for solutions. For me, breathwork is a framework to help people live better lives for the rest of their lives. It's not some end point that they'll finally go, oh, I'm fixed, I'm healed. You know, it can support you in so many different ways just to come to this deeper acceptance of yourself more fully to navigate life with more ease, more meaning, more balance, more purpose. And so that for me is something that I'm really keen to start talking more about, which is this isn't about fixing anybody or anything. This is just about here is a very simple tool that can provide a framework to support you in moving through life and addressing some of the challenges we all face in the modern world in a more effective way in a more balanced way um if we think about you know your point there of appreciating the small things and being more present the simplest way to to tune into the the present moment is is your next breath it's the easiest most effective way to take you into this moment right here right now and so i think that's what I'd like to see more of is removing it from these parameters of the wellness industry.

1:27:27And then something I'm very passionate about in my work is how do we integrate this into the world at large? So whether it's the education system, whether it's public healthcare, really starting to go, you know, as much as I love taking this work into businesses, into, you know, brands, doing all of the work that I do in that space, how do we get it to the people that really need it, perhaps the people that can't afford it, whatever it is, how do we make this as uniquely as accessible as it deserves to be? And as it naturally is, the breath is freely available for everybody. But how do we really take it to that next level to get it to the spaces where it's needed most?

1:28:06While you were mentioning this, I was thinking, why people go to therapy? And I think there is a distinction in how therapy, for example, is perceived in Europe, in comparison to the US. And I think breathwork perhaps could relate to this. If you are in Europe and a friend tells you, I'm going to therapy, you're going to think that your friend has a problem. And I don't think you need to have any problem for you to go to therapy. I think it's a great tool for you to live a better, more meaningful life. If you ask the same question, if you live in the US and a friend tells you that he's going to therapy, you're going to think that this person is privileged.

1:28:51That's probably the main thing you're going to think. He can afford therapy, great for him because it's going to help him or her, which is a completely different perception than in Europe. I very much hope that breathwork also becomes more integrated within our society because I think if we're all more content with who we are, the whole world in every angle will be a better place from a business perspective from a peace point of view we're just going to be better human beings yeah to ourselves but also to the rest of the world jamie if you had to compress all your knowledge into one essential advice that we must implement in our daily lives what would it be i think the answer to most of our questions and problems that we face today is one of agency and sovereignty and choice.

1:29:50And through everything we've discussed, even the point you made around nine to fives and waiting for the weekend, so many of us are walking around on autopilot, living a life that was never ours to begin with and calling it fate. It's just happening to us. And if you want to take back the reins in your life which can feel incredibly intimidating and daunting but if you want to live life on your own terms and not get to the end of your life wishing that things have been different then the time to start that is now and one of the ways to start that is by taking back control over your internal state and one of the most effective ways to do that is through your breath thank you thank you i really enjoyed our conversation and i must admit that prior to this episode i was relatively skeptical about the benefits of breath work purely because I'm a logically driven person and the notion of something being as simple as breathing, having such multi-layered, complete and complex and profound benefits just seemed something so a bit unreal, like it just came out of a movie.

1:31:02But after going through the research that prepared this episode and then our discussion together, basically all the science behind it, I confirm that I am a believer and I will start integrating some of the techniques and practices that you've shared with me into my daily life. I will definitely message you offline to attend one of your retreats with my fiance, but I do thank you for the work you're doing. I do think it can provide so much benefit to the society. And probably my biggest hope would be that your work does get more integrated within in our society mainstream. And maybe perhaps a way to do that is through the education system.

1:31:43And probably, in my opinion, a good way to integrate within the education system would be to having a discussion with the government. And if that gets subsidized by the government and then implemented, then I just think we're going to be living in a much better world. So thank you. Thank you.

1:32:10You