Breathwork Under the Microscope: Is the Science Killing the Magic? With Guy Fincham

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Ever wondered how a simple breath could transform your life? Join us as we unlock the secrets of breathwork with our insightful guest, Guy Fincham from the University of Leeds. Guy takes us on his personal journey through health challenges and academic rigor, highlighting the authentic and methodical approach he brings to researching breathwork. From dealing with chronic fatigue syndrome to exploring the Wim Hof Method and gentler practices like Qigong and yoga, Guy's journey is a testament to the potential healing power of breathwork.

Our conversation doesn't shy away from critically examining the science behind these practices. Guy candidly addresses the limitations and criticisms of his studies, emphasizing the necessity of informed consent and the importance of safe practices, especially for individuals with specific health conditions. Discover the intriguing findings from his PhD studies, which challenge assumptions about the effectiveness of popular breathwork techniques. We also delve into the complexities and nuances of measuring breathwork's impact on mental and physical health, offering a balanced perspective on its transformative potential.

We also tackle the exciting research frontiers in breathwork, exploring its role in sports performance and its capacity to induce altered states of consciousness. Guy shares insights into ongoing projects, including research on breathwork’s benefits for menopausal symptoms and social anxiety. Our engaging discussion touches on the spiritual roots and cultural significance of these practices, ensuring a well-rounded exploration of their profound impact. Whether you're a seasoned practitioner or a curious newcomer, this episode promises to enrich your understanding of breathwork's remarkable potential.

00:00 Introduction and Beginnings
02:14 Discovering Breathwork
03:06 Healing Through Breathwork
03:36 Research and Academic Journey
04:24 Understanding Breathwork Practices
06:57 Mechanisms of Conscious Connected Breathing
23:38 Challenges and Criticisms in Breathwork Research
27:32 Introduction to Jack Kruse
28:12 Current Hot Topics in Research
29:23 The Importance of Breathwork
30:18 Research Questions and Focus Areas
30:55 Historical and Cultural Roots of Breathwork
32:31 Gaps in Breathwork Research
38:23 Breathwork and Sports
39:24 Challenges in Clinical Trials for Breathwork
48:30 Future Directions and Projects
50:50 Conclusion and Contact Information

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Rich, you've found another unicorn, Someone doing
worthwhile breathwork, research.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Oh, what do you mean?

Speaker 1 (00:08):
another one oh, I was thinking you would be the first
one.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
No, stop it.
You didn't have to say that.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Well, yeah, I did, because you WhatsAppped me about
it.
I have to mention that.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
But no, really interesting guy.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
What's he called?
Where's he come from?

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Well, you've just said his name, guy.
He's an interesting guy.
What's he called?
Where's he coming from?
Well, you've just said his name, guy is.
He's an interesting guy.
He's one of the interestingguys.
His name is guy guy fincham.
He is a university of leedsgraduate.
Way, you know, all the top ladsare me, kia starmer, um,
tolking um and guy fincham.
Um, he is doing proper researchon breathwork.

(00:46):
The world needs it and he'sdoing it in a very rigorous way.
So we're going to find outthings like why he's getting so
much criticism for his research,aren't we?

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Yes, it's a really nice integrity about him in
terms of being very upfrontabout limitations of his studies
and how some of them didn'tnecessarily show what he thought
they were going to, and thatkind of brings a little bit more
trust to what he's doing.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Um kudos yeah, he's uh talks about his lived
experience of breathwork becausehe's got his own issues with uh
.
He's had his health, own healthchallenges that he did breath
work for and kind of came to theconclusion that he was doing
the wrong type of breath workfor his condition and how that
led him to different types ofbreath work and different

(01:34):
modalities to research.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yeah, I think it's sort of the um following his uh,
his heart.
I suppose he's voting with hisfeet, isn't he?
He's like dedicating his lifeto researching what has been so
impactful for him.
So, um, yeah, there's again.
It comes back to thatauthenticity.
It's been um.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
It's really interesting conversation yeah,
and it is great to have a properacademic on, because you know
well one because no, that wasn't.
I wasn't saying I'm not a properacademic no, I mean it's good
to have an academic breathworker on another one.
Uh, because, as great as mostbreath workers are, there are a

(02:16):
lot of breath workers out therewho, um, just don't have such a
deep understanding.
I mean, there can't be manypeople who have as deep an
understanding of the mechanismsbehind breathwork than Guy.
So I think we're really gettingyou know A grade five star
information in this podcast.
Totally agree, enjoy, heyeveryone.
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(02:39):
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Speaker 1 (04:26):
Guy, thank you very much for joining us.
Simple one to start you off,hopefully.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
How did you get into breathwork?
So it's a fairly long story.
I'll try and give it the mediumstory.
It all started from myundergraduate degree.
I was introduced to meditationduring my exchange year in UC
Berkeley in California.
I just became really interestedin mindfulness, meditation,

(05:01):
Buddhism, and I was actuallyoriginally studying
international business and whenI completed my degree I moved to
China to study Mandarin andwhilst I was there I was also
working in a startup and Ididn't really feel extrinsically
sort of motivated and my healthwasn't the best it could have

(05:24):
been and I just I don't know, Ijust didn't feel like I had a
clear purpose.
But I was always interested inmeditation and mindfulness and I
looked into research in thattopic and there were people such
as professor john cabot zinn inamerica and then professor mark
williams in oxford and inOxford, and they were conducting

(05:45):
research on meditation andmindfulness and I thought, oh
wow, that's something I like todo.
Why don't I devote my life tothat, to researching meditation
and mindfulness, Something thatI'm interested in?
So I applied for a master'sconversion in psychology at St
Andrews in Scotland.
I left China, went to India andSri Lanka on my way back and

(06:06):
took part in some very intensivesilent meditation retreats just
to become more familiar withthe topic.
When I got to St Andrews I wascompleting my master's, I was
starting my thesis on meditation, and at the end of the first
semester I then developedchronic fatigue syndrome.
So it forced me to take atwo-year leave of absence from a

(06:28):
one-year master's program.
So it turned into a three-yearmaster's basically.
But during this time it wasalso, I think the pandemic
happened a year into my leave ofabsence.
And during this time I cameacross a guy called Wim Hof.
He's quite famous, obviously.
And I came across a guy calledWim Hof he's quite famous
obviously and I came across himthrough a paper.

(06:49):
Actually it was a very famouspaper in a really big journal
called the Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences and
I just it really grasped myattention because this paper was
basically saying you know, youcan influence your own
physiology, your own immuneresponse through breathing.
You can alter, you know what'sgoing on with your nervous

(07:10):
system just through the breath.
And that blew my mind and so Ijust became obsessed with breath
work.
I kind of moved away from theobservation of breath in
mindfulness practices to controla breath in breath work.
And then I was listening to aJoe Rogan podcast one night and
James Nestor was on the offer ofbreath and he mentioned people,
people like Richard Brown andPatricia Gerbarg, these medical

(07:32):
doctors and psychiatrists in NewYork, and I trained with them
as a breathwork teacher and tookpart in all of their workshops
and practiced frequently andactually managed to cure my
chronic fatigue syndrome.
Breathwork was a big part ofthat.
There were many other things aswell, but breathwork was key to
my own personal healing journey.

(07:54):
And then I decided tocompletely switch up my research
ambitions.
I found a doctoral fellowshipfrom the sasakawa young leaders
fellowship fund in tokyo injapan and they funded me for
three years for my phd at theschool of psychology at sussex

(08:16):
and, yeah, this is the first youknow sort of fellowship of its
kind in the uk and it was, yeah,solely focused on breath work,
and I I got my PhD recently,about a month ago
Congratulations.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
And now moving over to Brighton and Sussex Medical
School to conduct postdoctoralresearch.
So yeah, it's been quite thejourney but it's been good.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
Amazing If I could go back back.
So rich will probably know this, but I don't know if many of
our listeners will.
I mean hearing that breathworkactually helped.
You know chronic fatiguesyndrome.
How, what does that practicelook like?
How do you think that's doingthat?

Speaker 3 (09:02):
yeah.
So originally, as I said, I gotinto breathwork through wim hof
method and this.
You know these are rounds ofcyclic hyperventilation with
retention and initially I wasfinding that this kind of
practice was helping me with myrelapses and in hindsight, it

(09:23):
was probably just the fact that,you know, I was just dumping
loads of adrenaline and it wasjust helping me manage life.
In that moment, you know, I wasvery stressed so I actually
told my, I told uh, richardbrown and patricia gerberg about
this.
You know I'm practicing the wimhof method and they said, well,
maybe long term you know thatmaybe that isn't what you need,
maybe you need to focus on moregentle practices, to practices

(09:47):
from qigong, from yoga, from allaround the world, more
accessible practices withbreathing and movement and some
meditation.
So it was kind of thosemodalities which helped the most
with me in terms of a long-termsort of healing, instead of
just maybe just sticking, kindof like the fast sort of healing
, instead of just maybe juststicking kind of like the
fast-paced breathing might justbe like kind of sticking a

(10:08):
plaster on my symptoms in themoment, just helping me deal
with what trying to make sensewith my life at that moment.
But it's really the sort of theaccessible practices that
really, like, probably shiftedmy my recovery in the right
direction long term yeah, thataligns with a previous guest and
a listener of our show, jamesdowler.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
He I did my conscious connected breathing breathwork
training with him and breathguru and he had chronic fatigue
and he kind of realized, yeah,the over breathing, high
ventilation breathwork stuff isnot so good for him and his
chronic fatigue.
And he's yeah, he thinks it'smore about nervous system
regulation for him.
And so you've done a lot ofresearch, guy.

(10:49):
That's why we've got you onhere as a a person who's done
more research than I think maybeanyone else on breathwork.
I'm not sure if you've got themost published studies, but I
you haven't.
You can correct me there.
You can answer that you don'tthink so?
okay, well for this, for ourlisteners, yeah you're up there,
you're in the, you're in my topthree, um, but there's so many

(11:10):
mechanisms of actions onconscious connected breath work,
so I do also want to come tocoherent breathing and wim hof
later, but conscious connectedbreath work, that's the main one
I teach, that's the one I didmy research on.
So, one, how do you defineconscious connected breathwork?
And two, what do you think themain mechanism of action is?

Speaker 3 (11:42):
So conscious connected breathing, ccb is
Kapalabhati or Bhaskrika, whereyou do it very rapidly but a
breathing rate where you caneither increase the rate or
depth, so it isn't normalventilation, so it's high
ventilation breath work.
So it's high ventilation breathwork.

(12:03):
You know you're actuallyblowing off enough, you know to
kind of get these sort ofeffects that you can get from
conscious connected breathing.
But the key is there is no, youknow, there's no pause.
So after a while, it's notuncommon, for you know, after
five, ten minutes of doing it,it's not uncommon for
practitioners to report that thebreath kind of becomes warm

(12:25):
because there's no stop start inbetween it.
So that that's a good place toto get to for practitioners with
conscious connected breathing,in my opinion.
Don't know what you think, butthe mechanisms, there's so many
potential ones In terms of basicphysiology the fact that you're

(12:46):
blowing off CO2, and CO2 is avasodilator, so therefore your
blood vessels are constricting,so you get vasoconstriction
because there's an absence ofCO2.
And yeah, this basicallyreduces cerebral blood flow to
the brain and this can causehyper excitability.
There's so many differentthings that could be happening.

(13:10):
We don't know, but we've, youknow, kind of hypothesized in
one of our papers, fromAlessandro Colasanti and Ema
Katar, that essentially whatyou're doing through this
hyperventilation or rapid sortof intense, conscious, connected
breathing, your brain is makingpredictions of your bodily you

(13:34):
know, your body, the environment, what's going on with your body
, and your body is sendinginteroceptive feedback to the
brain, right, right.
So your body's predicting youknow everything.
It wants to keep everything ina stable manner.
So it's sensing what'shappening in the body and if
what's happening in the bodyisn't what the brain wants, it
will try and correct that.
So you're over-breathing,you're sending this

(13:56):
interoceptive signal from thelungs to the brain saying you
know you're hyperventilating,the brain wants to stop that.
It wants to say you know, stopover breathing.
So you can get this mismatchbetween what your brain's saying
, what your body's saying, andthis results in something like a

(14:17):
.
It's called a you know,prediction error.
Um, you get prediction erroroverload and what we've kind of
hypothesized is that throughyour brain taking top-down
control and discounting yourintercepted bodily signals, you
are, you know, you're, you'reignoring what's going on in your

(14:40):
body.
You're causing all of thesechanges.
You know, respiratory alkalosis, ph going up, major changes in
your excitability in the brain.
You're ignoring all of that andthis might be why it kind of
causes a sort ofdepersonalization in a positive
way.
People many people report sortof oceanic boundlessness

(15:02):
becoming one you know.
And people some people reportsort of oceanic boundlessness
becoming one you know, and somepeople report you know kind of
out-of-body experiences andinstead of it being a negative,
it actually turns out to be apositive experience for many
people who practice CCBdepression and health, anxiety

(15:23):
or fatigue, where you mightbecome hyper-focused on what's
going on in your body.
You're actually doing theopposite with the breathwork
because, discounting itcompletely, what's happening in
the body, you're kind of causingthis kind of for lack of a
better word shit show in thebody and and, uh, your brain

(15:47):
doesn't know what's going onyou're, and you're just ignoring
it because you're takingtop-down control and you're
overriding the interoceptive, um, you know, sort of signals,
instructions that your body'ssending back to your brain.
But then again there's so manyother mechanisms as well.
But I think from a sort of youknow, overall perspective, if
you want to just look at it froma like a whole sort of system

(16:09):
level, I think that's a goodplace to start, as opposed to
just being like oh yeah, maybeit's um serotonin, maybe you're,
or maybe, oh, it's dmt.
You know, like there's so manythings, but they're like,
they're very small.
I'm trying to think, I thinkwe're trying to think even more,
so, bigger picture, what couldbe going on?
And it's not.
Yeah, so it's kind of like adisruption of this metacognitive

(16:31):
layer and as it so you kind ofyou no longer have this
metastability and yeah, I thinkthat could plausibly be what's
going on but you need moreresearch to do all these things.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
Sorry for the long answer.
No, it's great.
The DMT one annoys me a littlebit because it's like the
sexiest one, but it's the onethat the basic breath worker
just loves to to shout aboutbeing the active ingredient in
ayahuasca.
So it's dimethyltryptamine andall every breath worker who's
just.
You know, they've only everlistened to podcasts and done a

(17:07):
weekend training.
They're like dmt, dmt, but it's.
Yeah, it's so much morecomplicated than that.
Maybe it is dmt, maybe there issome dmt as well, but I don't
think there's much evidence forthat.
I really like that explanation,guy.
I also liked martha haveneth'sone that she did with robin
carhart harris, the sort of thesimilarities with serotonin.
I can't explain it right now,but yeah, is there a paper

(17:31):
people can find with yourexplanation for that?

Speaker 3 (17:35):
yeah, sure, so we published a review in yeah,
neuros, neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews.
So and it's the first part ofthe paper it's high ventilation
breath work.
So that's all you need togoogle and it gives a gives you
a long list of different typesof practices and it touches very
much on conscious connectedbreathing, on ccb, and you know

(17:58):
ccb conscious connectedbreathing is used in other kind
of forms of breath work like,for example, rebirthing or
holotropic breath work.
It in you know, overall, kindof broadly speaking, people have
their different sort ofpractices but and different
names for them.
But I think generally whatwe're talking about when we're
talking about high ventilationbreath work is conscious

(18:20):
connecting breathing.
But again, there are so manyelements that go with conscious
connected breathing right set,setting, facilitator, the
priming, what you do at thestart, integration, what you do
after.
I think they're just asimportant as the breath work
itself and the breathing is justa catalyst for change, in my
opinion what advice would yougive?

Speaker 1 (18:41):
it just occurred to me what advice would you give to
someone thinking about doingthis kind of breath work?
Because some of the thingsyou've described, and certainly
some of my experiences in myfirst session, were actually
quite difficult.
You know, there's weird stuffgoing on.
As you said, it's a bit of ashit show.
So how, yeah, what advice wouldyou give to people looking into
this?

Speaker 3 (19:02):
so, yeah, you raise a really good point.
That's a great question.
I think the most importantthing, yeah, is to know what you
could potentially be gettingyourself into right.
So I think if breathworkteachers who are offering these
sort of classes aren't, you know, providing some kind of

(19:23):
informed consent and giving youa list of potential
contraindications beforehand,then I think that's a red flag.
In my opinion, you can peoplewith epilepsy, history of
epilepsy, for example this thisisn't a good idea because
hyperventilation lowers thethreshold for an epileptic

(19:43):
seizure, because I was justtalking about the neuro
excitability in the brain.
It's, you know, synonymous in away with an epileptic seizure.
So, you know, pay much moreattention if you're, you have a
history of that or you're proneto that.
Hyperventilation can cause, youknow, panic attacks.
So panic disorder is is anothercontraindication.

(20:04):
Read, read into, you know whatpeople are saying on their
websites or what courses they'reproviding.
Just make sure that they theyare like giving complete, the
complete, full picture andobviously taking safety very
seriously.
And obviously you don't do anyof this stuff in an environment
which isn't safe.
That's the first thing to say.

(20:25):
It has to be in a safeenvironment.
But, yeah, it's funny because myfavorite sort of practice are
these slow and gentle ones, butI still came into it through a
fairly intense practice with awim hof method where there were
breath holds in there, but itwas still pretty intense.
So I think it's good to kind ofstart slow in breath work.

(20:48):
You know, even I didn't do thatmyself, but in hindsight maybe
it could have been better to youknow.
Sort of start with these gentlepractices or learn to walk
before you run, you know um.
So yeah, I think it's justmaybe play around with the more
simple practices first and then,when you're comfortable with

(21:09):
you know controlling your breathin certain ways, then it might
unlock another level to yoursort of conscious connected
breathing practice so I've got anice segue for that.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
So coherent breathing , that would be classed as a
gentler one, but you had a studythat found that didn't work.
Can you tell us about that?

Speaker 3 (21:29):
yeah, sure.
So, yeah, I mean, yeah, that'sa, that'd be a journalist title
for sure, and I've been gettingfeedback from people about the
kind of way I've presented thesefindings but essentially what
we did for that study it was thefirst empirical study of my PhD
and we had one group docoherent breathing at five and a

(21:52):
half breaths per minute, fiveand a half seconds in, five and
a half seconds out, with nopauses.
So in a sense in in a consciouskind of breathing way, but just
not at a speed which wouldelicit the sort of changes that
you get in high ventilationbreath work.
And we compared this tobreathing at 12 breaths per
minute as the placebo group andwe took, you know, standard

(22:15):
mental health measures beforeand after.
It was four weeks, it was allonline, there were 400 people
and, yeah, we saw decreases instress, saw improvements in in
well-being, saw decreases inanxiety and depressive symptoms
at post intervention and atfollow-up.
So four weeks post intervention, four at follow-up.

(22:35):
So four weeks post-intervention, four weeks follow-up.
But there were no differencesbetween the groups on the
improvements.
So as a good clinical trialist,you have to say you know the
most.
The simplest explanation tothis is that coherent breathing
as it was delivered in thissetting 10 minutes a day, online

(22:55):
, unguided self-care for fourweeks is no more effective than
a placebo of 12 breaths perminute.
But there's always nuance thereand there could be many other
explanations for that.
I have a bunch of qualitativedata that I supervised someone
on analyzing and you know itshows, going through these

(23:17):
responses, you know it showsthat people had really good
experiences with both of thepractices.
So it kind of draws intoquestion.
Was the control group just initself through, just focusing on
one's breathing for 10 minutesa day for four weeks, just also
beneficial as well?
Um, and you know know I wasprobably guilty of having an

(23:40):
overly reductionist approach tothis, but my sort of interest
was just around was reducing itdown to the breath rate just to
see if there was a difference?
and in this case there wasn'tcoherent breathing just for my
benefit is usually used to justcalm the nervous system yeah, I
would say so, I think, breathingsort of, if you do equal

(24:03):
inhales, equal exhales, it'smore of a balancing.
And then obviously, if youextend the exhale, I think
that's a more conducive todeeper relaxation and for and
you know kind of down shifting.
So for me I would practice, youknow, equal inhale, equal
exhale in the daytime and thenat night I would keep increasing

(24:25):
the exhale out until it gets tokind of a one-two ratio.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
And you ran another study on Wim Hof breathing that
also didn't outperform a placebo.
Tell us about that.

Speaker 3 (24:36):
So I took a very similar design.
Uh, this is my second empiricalstudies with the phd and, yeah,
the primary time point ofpost-intervention, we got the
same, the same sort of resultswith, you know, the decreases in
stress, but no difference in inthe magnitude of the difference

(24:57):
between the groups.
So again, as a good clinicaltrialist you have to say the
most posimonious or the mostsimplest explanation is that the
placebo was not more effective.
The intervention was not moreeffective than the, than the
placebos.
In this study the interventionwas all online, unguided.
You know salpalp.

(25:18):
Essentially it was three weeks,20 minutes per day, the wim hof
style breathing was a day, thewim hof dilation, with retention
increasing from 45 to 90seconds.
So 45 seconds, 60 seconds, um,with 15 breaths per minute,
pretty short holds.
We blinded the trial and put itin a way that everyone was,

(25:41):
everyone thought that they weredoing uh, fast breath work and
it was all done through themouth.
There were no differences, youknow, in terms of the same for
the co-reading study.
There were no differences inthe expectancy and the
credibility of the interventionsand people weren't sure if they
were in the intervention or thecontrol.
So we designed some reallystellar placebos for this and

(26:04):
yeah, it's just, I think it'sjust a good practice, I think
it's a good thing to do in earlyon and in a field where hype
can kind of, you know, outpaceevidence and evidence bases.
In hindsight, I mean, I wish Icould have had the sessions, at
least for the first one,delivered in person or on Zoom,

(26:26):
just to ensure that participantswere performing the
interventions appropriately andthey were adhering to it.
But alas, you know you don'thave infinite study resources as
a phd student.
But my interest is moving moretowards you know, doing the
in-person, or at least you knowfacilitators being present for

(26:46):
the first session, at least justto ensure that people are doing
what, what they say thatthey're doing.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
Yeah, I've found the same thing with my clinical
trial is, you know, we kind ofhad two experiments in that, uh,
we had live zoom sessions forthe conscious connected
breathing and we had amazingresults with that, you know,
huge reductions in anxietyversus the control group.
We had a, you know, obviously avery weak control, as in we
just had people on a wait list,uh, which is fair criticism

(27:13):
there.
But then we also had this sortof moderating variable where we
had people doing 10 minutes ofrecorded conscious connected
breathing and we told them youknow, do this as much as you can
.
And then at the end we askedpeople, how often did you do the
recording?
And we found no differencebetween the people who did it
every day and the people whodidn't do it at all.

(27:34):
So, you know, these threestudies of ours point to maybe
it's the recording, that's thevariable that's making things
much less effective.
Potentially.
That's really interesting.

Speaker 3 (27:47):
I'd love to see this.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
I want to see the last, yes well, nature
scientific reports are lookingat part one and then I need to
put it to part two, the other,the moderating variable.
I need to write that up.
Part two, the other, themoderating variable.
I need to write that up.
But you can have my phddissertation that'll be on pro
quest soon oh sweet.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
After the second study were you losing a bit of
heart on your phd guy, I suppose?
Two-part question as well.
Did you, did you get somecriticism for the research and
how did you, how did you dealwith that?

Speaker 3 (28:16):
yeah, I, I've got loads of criticism on Twitter,
but it's not a real place, soit's all good.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
Sticks and stones.

Speaker 3 (28:25):
I don't mind.
As long as it raises awarenessabout breathwork, I'm happy.
I'm not in it to promote acertain type of breathwork, I
just want to share knowledgeabout it.
I think it's, yeah, it's funnyI when I have had criticism
before, it's quite obvious thatpeople haven't even read the

(28:48):
first sort of paragraph of thepaper.
You know so I don't take itpersonally at all.
But, um, I'm not.
Yeah, I'm not losing.
I didn't lose heart because Ikind I think the placebo is
really really good.
I kind of thought am Iinadvertently creating a second
intervention here?
And to me the placebo is themeat of medicine.

(29:11):
To me I think it's reallyimportant.
I think I'm quite happy thatboth groups improved at the
primary time.
But I don't mind if I thinkhonestly it's.
To me it's a better result thanif breathwork outperformed the
quote placebo.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
Um, yeah, it doesn't matter to me either way yeah, I,
whenever I put out anythingsort of moderating breathwork on
Instagram, like you know, I puta video saying you can do too
much conscious connectedbreathing.
You know you can potentiallyaffect your carbon dioxide
tolerance.
Conscious connected breath worklike this is this is nonsense

(29:58):
and stuff.
I was like what am I saying isnonsense?
And I did reach out to thesepeople and and effectively, so
many people have just black andwhite thinking.
It's like you have to only saygood things about breath work
because, well, the people I wasspeaking to were just
practitioners, so you know anynegatives is going to take away
from their cash flow.
But as an academic, you'rereally like told you really need
to find your criticisms.
You know you need to put thelimitations.
Told you really need to findyour criticisms.
You know you need to put thelimitations in there.

(30:19):
You need to put thegeneralizability section in
there, and the more criticismyou have of yourself, the more
credibility you actually have,whereas in social media it's
like any kind of moderating isjust a red flag, and you can.

Speaker 3 (30:33):
you know you can apply this to all, to everything
right.
You can apply this to exerciseyou.
Everything right, you can applythis to exercise.
You know, sometimes doing toomuch exercise can damage you,
right?
Sometimes it's not healthy toover-exercise, or sometimes
maybe I don't know if you're ona ketogenic diet.
Too much fat maybe isn't sogood.
I think there's a nuance to it.
All and the same withbreathwork, maybe you know if

(30:57):
you're doing too much breathwork in a day, maybe you're
neglecting other areas of thelife like relationships or
whatever.
Yeah, it's, uh, I think it'sthat it applies to everything.
Too much sun exposure not good.
Too little, too little, alsonot.
You know, there's a whole,there's a whole spectrum getting
into jack cruz territory.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
I know you're a fan no comment.
Have I outed you as a jackcruise follower?

Speaker 3 (31:21):
I don't, I wouldn't say I'm a a fan.
Uh, I, I think it's good toprovide nuance for everything.
I think light is a veryimportant tool.
Tool is that?
Is that even a thing?
Light it's nature.
Getting back to nature is agood thing.
I think we're seeing that.
I think spending time outdoorsis very important for our

(31:44):
well-being and general mentalhealth.
But, yeah, maybe I'm not afull-on, I don't know, I'm not.
You know, there's no point evengoing into this territory now,
is there?

Speaker 2 (31:54):
Okay, change of direction.
All right, andy.
No, even going into thisterritory now is okay, change of
direction.
All right, andy.
Now I'd love to know yourthoughts on jack cruz.
Um, no bit of background,please.
Yeah, um, jack cruz, he's ahe's a medical doctor, biohacker
type guy.
He's all about light and thebenefits of light for the
mitochondria, um, but he's kindof since the pandemic, gone.

(32:16):
You know, he lives in panama orsomething now and hates the us
government el salvador elsalvador okay, and he's just
very anti-establishment and he'sjust a very extreme person in
his views.

Speaker 3 (32:29):
But yeah, I think that's enough said you should
have my, my friend from medicalschool, you know okay, all right
.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
Yes, thank you.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
Yes, we'd love the intro what do you think of the
the hot topics then at themoment in terms of like?
Obviously you both put researchout there.
You both had a fair share ofcriticism.
I've no doubt guy handled itbetter than rich, but how?
What are the?
What are the hot topics thatare still kind of being, I guess
, hotly contested?
What are the battlegrounds atthe moment?

Speaker 3 (32:57):
I'll let Richard answer that what are the
battlegrounds?

Speaker 2 (33:01):
Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, there's one I've written
down here.
There's just a lot of debunkingthat needs to be done, isn't it
?
We mentioned the DMT thing.
The other one I can think of isthat the reason CCB works is
because it increases the amountof oxygen in the body.
Yeah, I would say that's a bitof a battleground, but I think
most people know it's not.

(33:22):
It's actually decreasing theamount, and people understand
the Bohr effect.
But what do you think, guy?

Speaker 3 (33:28):
Yeah, I think you're not super oxygenating, it's CO2.
That's the important factorhere, and you need CO2 present
to liberate oxygen fromhaemoglobin.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
So yeah, yeah, any other battlegrounds you feel
like, any other areas you wantto tackle?

Speaker 3 (33:49):
not really.
I mean my, my research.
I do the research I do becauseI just want to know if
breathwork can help people.
Does it work for people?
It's more important to me thanwhy it works.
So I understand people are veryinterested in the mechanism
behind things.
But for me it's more about youknow, does it help you, be it

(34:11):
physically, mentally,athletically, that you know,
does it help you, be itphysically, mentally,
athletically?
You know, you spoke aboutpotentially doing some research
and the sports side of things.
I think, yeah, the good thingabout the breath is that
everyone can do it.
It's accessible.
You can't patent it.
You can try, but you can't.

(34:31):
There's nothing moredecentralized than breathing.
I mean, that's the beautifulthing about breath work is that
you can try, but you can't.
There's nothing moredecentralized than breathing.
And I mean that's the beautifulthing about breath work is that
you can do it anytime, anywhere, unless it's hyperventilation,
then do it safely so what do youthink are the key research
questions that you and theacademic world should be
focusing on?
that's a good question.

(34:51):
At the moment my I'm turning myattention towards altered
states of consciousness and theeffects on altered states of
consciousness that can beinduced and evoked by breathwork
.
There's a database, an openscience project, called altered
states database and they inputdata from psychedelic trials for
different compounds and you canlook at the kind of

(35:14):
phenomenological profile ofthese altered states of
consciousness and then comparethem to other modalities like
breathwork.
And that's why I'm quiteinterested at the moment,
because I think, because of thepsychedelic renaissance and the
way research is going at themoment, that providing that
those kind of data on breathwork and comparing it to
psychedelics can ignite a lot ofinterest.

(35:36):
And then you know, through thatpeople will see that you know
it's not, oh, it's not justhyperventilation, it's not just
conscious, connected breathing,it's all these other things as
well and I think it's reallyimportant just to acknowledge
the roots of breath work.
So the, the most well-known bodyof practices, you know, comes

(35:59):
from pranayama, actually theclassical limb of yoga.
Prana means self-regulation,sort of control, or prana.
Prana, sorry, prana being thelife force or vital energy, you
know can be synonymous withbreath, but isn't breath,
because you know prana is theuniversal energy.
It just is what it is, and thenI am is a regulation of, or

(36:21):
control of, stop, start.
So it's kind of regulatingone's breath essentially, albeit
not exactly, but I think it'sjust important to acknowledge
the roots first before you know.
Just you know we're a bunch ofwhite guys talking about
conscious, connected breathing,but it's much deeper than that

(36:42):
and it goes back, you know,centuries it's probably 10,000
years ago taught by shamans andwhatever, whatever race,
whatever colour, it doesn'tmatter.
I think the beautiful thing,again, again, about the breath,
is that it's accessible to all.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
And yeah, I think it's just a beautiful thing
bearing in mind how long it hasbeen around and obviously all
the different permutations andstuff.
As two researchers in the field, are you kind of surprised of
the gaps in the research yeah,that's a great question.

Speaker 3 (37:09):
I am, I am really surprised, yeah.
So yeah, that's such a goodpoint.
I believe the first kind ofstudy published in the Western
world at least, was 60 years ago, so I think 1964.
I think there's a paper by Iforgot the name, I think it's
Higashi, from Japan, looking atpranayama, looking at a um

(37:34):
looking at pranayama, looking atpractice, specific practice of
pranayama.
But if you went to, you know um, india, then this kind of this
has been used for thousands ofyears and they they don't need,
they didn't have scientificpapers to back it up, you know
um.
I view the time period we're inright now for breathwork as

(37:57):
obviously I said this a fewyears ago, so I think I'm a bit
off but meditation in the 70s,80s you had just a few hundred
papers fast forward to now youget three, over three, four
thousand published per year.
So, like the increase has justbeen mass is huge, unprecedented
.
So I think we're getting kindof getting to that point now

(38:19):
with breathwork where you knowthere's a maybe a few hundred
papers.
Well, probably, maybe more, butit depends what you're
classifying as breathwork.
But I think we're kind of aboutto see that kind of blast off
for breath work research.
So I hope I'm right, because Isaid this at the start of my phd
and it still hasn't, you know,had seen this unprecedented

(38:43):
surge like meditation has yet.
But I think, with more researchgroups that are starting to
take it more seriously, I think,yeah, I think we're kind of at
that cusp and especially becauseit's got a strong link with
psychedelics now throughholotropic breath work and
rebirthing breath work, I thinkthat's only going to help, you
know, advance the field in termsof the number of publications.

(39:05):
But the important thing is to do, you know, good research on it
from the outset, so you don'tsuffer from this sort of
mismatch between the hype andthen the evidence base.
So that could be said of somemeditation research, some
mindfulness research, where youhave these, you know, thousands
and thousands of papers, butmany of them aren't, you know,

(39:25):
of high quality.
So I think it's important to,whilst we're at this cusp, to
really do solid research so itcan, you know, evolve in a
evidence-based manner.
And it's not, it doesn't justbecome a fad, because I think
people with lived experience ofbreathwork, people who you know
I'm an example of someone withlived experience who've really

(39:47):
benefited from breathwork.
So it does work for people.
It just may maybe it doesn'twork for the whole you know,
general population, but forcertain people it could be
tremendously beneficial.
So I think it's just, you don'tneed an rct to say, oh, it's
helpful, because it's always aan n of one, like it's always
what works for you.
And there are so many differentthings that you can do.

(40:09):
I'm going off on a tangent here, but you can.
There's so many things you cando to get to, to the place that
you of well-being, offlourishing.
You know you could do yoga, youcould do breathwork, you could
do exercise, you could do diet,whatever you're trying to get,
trying to get to that same spot.
You know, like mahatma gandhisaid, truth is one, paths are
many and there are so many pathsthat we can take, and it

(40:30):
doesn't have to be breathwork,yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:32):
Well, I think breathwork will take off, guy,
when you start creating clinicaltrials that have positive
results and have softer placebos.

Speaker 3 (40:43):
Well, that's the question right Like is the
softer placebo.
Is it a form of breathwork?

Speaker 2 (40:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:50):
It's really hard to apply this model of clinical
trials, randomized clinicaltrials this is what I'm
struggling with now is thatrandomized clinical trials are
designed for, you know,pharmaceutical interventions
they're not lifestyleinterventions, that kind of

(41:16):
thing into a, an rct, becausethe rct design kind of dilutes
the, the teaching, it dilutesthe lifestyle intervention that
you're trying to study sometimes.
So this it's really hard tograsp between creating a placebo
which maybe doesn't have anybreath work involved in it at
all, no pacing of breath, maybejust placing attention somewhere
else and then comparing thatwith um, conscious connected
breathing, for example.

(41:36):
So this is the kind of thingthat I'm trying to as I'm going
forward with my research.
Is what?
What is a good control group?

Speaker 2 (41:43):
and, uh, if you have any ideas, I'd love to hear your
thought yeah, um, I don't know,yeah, I really struggled with
that and then just go in okay,weightless control.
But I don't know, yeah, Ireally struggled with that and
then just go in Okay, weightlesscontrol.
But I don't know.
I was thinking like ajournaling group or something
like that would be just reallyeasy, cost effective.
Yeah, not not five stars, butmaybe halfway there.
And yeah, going back to yourpoint about who breathwork is

(42:07):
effective for, I think is reallykey Because, again, you know
black and white thinking.
People just want to know doesbreathwork work?
And it's like yes or no.
But you know, with cbt, cbt haslike has a 48 response rate, so
it doesn't work for themajority of people but people
are pretty happy with that.
That's seen as the goldstandard of therapy and maybe
breathwork works for 40 ofpeople and we're really happy

(42:30):
for that but then does, yeah,does breathwork work?
was the title of my thesis and,as it is, it's just a simple yes
, no right, that's all theanswer it's.

Speaker 3 (42:43):
It's a nuance, right, that's a surprise.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
Yes and no okay, um, sport as well, that's an area.
I think that there's not beenany research on ccb and sport.
And yeah, guy, and I've had achat about this with um with a
connection that that we have toa sporting person we'll see
whether or not it comes off.
But yeah, I, I am also mega.

(43:07):
It was so surprised when Ilooked, did my literature review
, and there's like 20 studies onconscious connected breath work
, and even my supervisor waslike you know well, you know
where there were studies.
They thought I was just beinglazy.
I was just like no, there'sjust there's just no more
studies.
I can't do any more.
Um, but uh, yeah, uh.

(43:28):
So what do you think aboutsport and conscious connected
breath work, guy?

Speaker 3 (43:33):
conscious connected breath, breathwork in a fast
sense.

Speaker 2 (43:36):
No, I mean, I like it for athletes because you know
so many people I think you knowin terms of research.
There's so much exercisescience out there because people
just love sport.
So I'm wondering, you know, canwe jump on the tails of
exercise science research withCCB?

Speaker 3 (43:50):
But when you say conscious connected breathwork,
ccbb, what exactly do you mean?
In terms of the internet?
You mean the, the normalpractice of the high ventilation
?
Yeah, okay.
So yeah, I'm I'm not, I'm notsure, I don't know.
Honestly, in terms of ccb forfast-paced breathwork, for
athletes, I think ccb at a lowerrate if you're doing conscious

(44:16):
breathing, but a coherentbreathing rate, maybe it could
be beneficial for things likerecovery yeah even including
physiological sighing aftersessions and maybe you know down
regulating after, aftertraining sessions or before,
doing coherent breathing beforesessions to enhance, you know,
one's sort of focus and calm.
I don't know abouthyperventilating before.

(44:39):
I don't know how I'd like youto.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
I'd love to know more and if you have any thoughts
how hyperventilation could helpwith sports performance yeah,
that's what I was thinking richbecause, like having done it I
mean a few, a fair few times, Iwould.
We're almost advised to take iteasy afterwards, aren't you?
And before, and so they'd haveto be quite a narrow window.

(45:05):
Why would you think it?

Speaker 2 (45:07):
would be good for sports.
I would just like to see theengland football team doing
conscious, connected breathingin a game in the euros final.
They're running around thereand there's me on the side.
They don't need garethsouthgate, it's just me saying
relax your, inhale you, we'reall one no, with sports it must

(45:27):
have been considered.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
But I'm just thinking like why would you think it
would benefit?

Speaker 2 (45:31):
I think it could help with performance anxiety and
flow states.
I think you could help peoplewith, like, getting into that
altered state and then they'revisualizing scoring the penalty,
they're visualizing making thetackle, they're visualizing
lifting the trophy, and maybeit's yeah, it's a type of
visualization manifestation typebenefit, or it's also, uh,

(45:53):
someone with performance anxiety.
Why do they have it?
Oh, it's because they have thisunprocessed, maladaptively
stored memory from 10 years oldwhere their coach, you know,
humiliated them in front ofeveryone and they've never
gotten over that and that'sholding them back.
Um, maybe that's, maybe youcould get there with just, you
know that, with just regularpsychotherapy.

Speaker 3 (46:11):
But, yeah, maybe ccb speeds that process up sure, I
think anything that helps thehuman, you know, flourish, or
improves their well-being, wouldaid performance.
So I guess oh well, I wasconfused at the start of the
question was because I thoughtit was going to be more slow,
breathwork related or evenbreath holding right, you know,

(46:32):
sort of oxygen advantage orsomething like that.
Um, but yeah, no, I think yeah,if you can just help the human,
I don't we.
Were you thinking consciousconnected breathing sessions
right before performing or wereyou thinking in general?

Speaker 1 (46:46):
in general?

Speaker 3 (46:46):
surely not well, I think I, yeah, I think that I
think I think you could be ontosomething here, because I think
it's a very physicalintervention.
Right, you put a lot of effortinto conscious, connected
breathing, at least at the start.
You're putting a lot of effortinto it.
It's a very physicallydemanding task initially,

(47:16):
initially, um, and I thinkpopulations in sports, athletes
it, that's a kind of practicethat couldn't could resonate
with them.
Um, and that's why I think Ihope to see you know later down
the line, sort of trials beingdone with veterans with trauma,
and if a sort of physicalintervention like this, a
somatic, cathartic thing likethis, might be more well suited

(47:36):
to populations which are used todoing quite physical,
physically demanding andchallenging tasks, like veterans
, athletes, military, um, yeah,fire service, that sort of thing
.
I think people maybe we've haveelevated levels of stress in
those populations ofintervention of this kind could

(47:57):
resonate with them more thanpsychotherapy and let's sit down
and talk, maybe they want to.
Maybe using the body more iscould be of more benefit to them
.
So, yeah, I think you could beon to something that I like.

Speaker 2 (48:09):
I like yeah, and the oxygen advantage stuff I think
is also relevant as well.
You know there's there's a fairfew studies on repeated sprint
ability and breath hold,especially with with rugby
players, and I'm in touch with aprevious guest, gray cause, now
that I am oxygen advantagecertified, so go me.
Um, yeah, more research is, umis on its way, hopefully related

(48:32):
to that I really like thisquestion.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
It's one that rich came up with.
Thanks, man ask it, um, butdoes this, like the scientific
work, the research kind of, Iguess, undermine some of the
spiritual, religious history ofthe practice?
Is it kind of like taking awaysome of the magic, if you like?

Speaker 3 (48:50):
absolutely.
Uh, that touches on what wewere talking about earlier, the
cultural roots, but then alsothe rct design, where you're
just kind of reducing thesepractices down.
You know what I did in thecoherent breathing study I was
kind of trying to just isolatethe, the breathing rate, to see
if there was an effect.
But you know, we we didn't have, we didn't include the kind of

(49:11):
psychoeducation in there, thethe kind of context of which it
emerges.
You know, coherent breathing isfound independently across the
world from different traditions.
This sort of rate is found, youknow, in Buddhist meditation
practice in Japan, somethingcalled Zazen, where they enter
meditative states, states, butthey actually breathe at this

(49:33):
sort of rhythm.
And then you can track it toother parts of the world where
they have this similar rhythm aswell, and they also during
prayer in italy I think it's thelatin hail, mary um, where
people are actually respiring atthis rate or a kind of coherent
breathing rate.
So so, yeah, I think this iswhat I'm kind of struggling with

(49:54):
is don't lose the magic of itthrough designing it.
So, in a sense, like you could,people could be like this is
pointless.
You know this is pointlessbecause it's kind of defeating
the purpose, but I'm still alsotrying to provide something.
People who wouldn't otherwisebe familiar with these practices
actually be, you know, in thewestern world, where it might

(50:16):
make it a bit more accessiblefor them, um, and maybe that, in
a way, is also creating its ownmagic right, yeah, for sure
peaking curiosity and attention.
Um, yeah, I don't think.
Yeah, I think it's it's hardit's, but yeah, it could be
doing that.
But also more people could begetting exposed.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
I think that yeah, I think the latter what you just
said.
I think some people do needthat like evidence, like that
hardcore evidence base Okay,this works, and then they'll
experience the magic forthemselves.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
Yeah, it makes me think of birthday cakes.
You know people are like, yeah,if you did a scientific study
on the birthday cake, why dopeople love them?
It'd be like, well, people justlove the glucose molecule.
But it's not.
It's it's the cake, it's thejam, it's the different textures
, it's the candles, it's the,it's the lights going on it's
the people singing happybirthday with you.
It's the attention you get onyou.

(51:10):
It's the song.
It's just so many componentparts that add up instead of
just glucose I was speaking.

Speaker 3 (51:16):
I was speaking to um someone a couple of years ago, a
guy who was setting up gyms inpsychiatric wards, and you know
we were just having a discussionabout diet and he was we would.
He was saying you know someonewho with a mental, mental health
condition in psychiatric wards?

(51:36):
If they're, it's probably, it'show probably it could be
healthier for them to all beeating ice cream together than
for them to be, you know, alonein their room eating a bowl of
kale.
I thought that was reallyinteresting.
It's like it's the wholecommunity aspect around food as
well, around, you know, thebirthday cake.
It's more than the componentparts.

(52:00):
It's, yeah, it's fascinating.
I think there's a lot of nuanceto all of it and I think that's
why I mean group sessions inbreathwork can be really
transformative.
The group element and themagical things can happen when
you're in a group doing this andit's not just you by yourself
yeah, yeah, I think that wouldbe a really interesting study.

Speaker 2 (52:19):
You know, group breath work versus individual
one-to-one breath work.
And there was that study thatthe haven't if the one where
they had a placebo.
They had people just doingregular breathing and they were
measuring their altered statesand the people in the placebo
who were just breathing asnormal had altered states
because of well, they put itdown to social contagion.
So, yeah, just being in a roomwith people in altered states

(52:42):
creates altered states, a bitlike when you go to a nightclub
and you're not drinking andeveryone else is wasted, you
feel a little bit drunk placebois that placebo is that the
power of the mind.

Speaker 3 (52:52):
Is that what is it?

Speaker 2 (52:53):
to be so.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
So what's next for you then, guy?
Um, you mentioned transferringto the medical school.
Can you talk a little bit aboutthat?

Speaker 3 (53:02):
yeah, so I I will be at the medical school for at
least the next year or so,whilst I'm also applying for
sort of postdoc fellowships andmuch longer term funding.
But yeah, at the moment, the myinterest is focused mostly on
high ventilation, breath work,conscious connected breathing
and these altered states ofconsciousness and whether they

(53:23):
can sort of mediate or at leastcorrelate with changes or
improvements in mental healthand well-being.
Um, so, yeah, that's.
I'm also analyzing some pilotdata, some qualitative data I
had from leftover from my phd.
Um, there's, yeah, severalthings going on at the moment,
but that's the main focus rightat this time.

(53:45):
But yeah, there's lots of stuffhappening and I'm involved on a
with a trial on um using sortof wim hof style breathing for
menopausal symptoms, hot flashes, and I'm also, yeah, I'm also
on a uh, a grant with um, auniversity in the netherlands, a
maastricht, and it's on sort ofthis, yeah, conscious connected

(54:08):
breathing, delivering itremotely to people with social
anxiety disorder.
Um, yeah, so I think that's kindof all of the projects that I
can really manage, yeah itsounds like a lot but, uh, yeah,
it's um, a lot more people noware starting to, like, reach out
to me and I think it's yeah,I'm trying to also protect my

(54:33):
time as well, so I can actuallykeep doing the research that I'm
doing.
That's why I'm doing this,right, so it's to do the
research.
I want to keep doing that, um,so I'm just trying not to get
too distracted.
But we also did a we filmed fora documentary on breathwork at
the medical school and thedirector of that is talking with

(54:54):
various streamers and yeah,that that will be out at some
point in in, maybe next year orthe year after.
But uh, yeah, there's lots ofstuff in the pipeline, but I'm
used to that because science andscientific research moves quite
slow, um, sometimes for good,sometimes for bad.

Speaker 2 (55:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:14):
I'm used to it.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
And how do people find you?

Speaker 3 (55:19):
Easiest way to find me is just at breath.
Underscore guy on Twitter X.

Speaker 2 (55:25):
Twitter and you're on LinkedIn as well quite active
there.

Speaker 3 (55:28):
I am on LinkedIn.
Yeah, sorry.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
Guy Fincham on it, guy Fincham.

Speaker 3 (55:32):
Yeah, it might be Guy William, my middle name's.
William, so it could be GuyWilliam Fincham.
Yeah, it might be Guy William.
My middle name's William, so itcould be Guy William Fincham.
But yeah, if you want to justcheck out studies that I'm
sharing breathwork studies andthoughts on breathwork then yeah
, breath underscore guy on X isthe best.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
Excellent, All right well, thank you very much, Guy.
Thank you so much, Guy.

Speaker 1 (55:52):
I really appreciate your time.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
No, I really appreciate it.
Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (56:03):
Welcome back.
Welcome back.
Yeah, really enjoyed that.
I've got to say I think that'sone of the best questions you've
ever written on any one aboutthe.
No, no, I mean it.
Just I really do, because I hadabout three weeks ago, almost
to the day, I had a breathworkexperience, um, that I would put

(56:23):
as one of the best moments ofmy entire life, and if someone
tried to explain that to me withkind of science, I just don't
think I would I'd be able to getthere.
So it's good that he alsoacknowledges the um, the sort of
the, the spiritual element tobreathwork, as well as trying to
find out the sort of mechanicsand the science behind it.
So I found that bit really,really interesting.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
Yeah, science is obviously reductionistic,
deliberately, and it is almostimpossible to capture the full
spectrum of experience frombreathwork.
I've got a lot of of experiencefrom breathwork.
I've got a lot of qualitativedata from my research.
There's no place for it, butit's like this stuff's changed
my life.
I can't believe I met my sisterin spirit.
I can't believe these thingshappened and you can't really.

(57:09):
Yet you can, but it's verydifficult to quantify that.
And randomized control trialsthey're looking for the average
results.
You know I've talked about thekurtosis spread in my study,
which means the variety ofreductions in anxiety and the
kurtosis was huge.
Some people had enormousreductions in anxiety from six

(57:33):
weeks of conscious connectivebreath work and some people had
um minimal changes, almostnothing, and you know you really
need to go into detail to topass that out and I think that
the sort of the magic of, of ofbreath work is something quite,
really, quite sacred.

Speaker 1 (57:50):
You talk about the how long it's been um being
practiced and also, um, yeah, asyou say, people have described
things, but I don't think you'llever really be able to to
describe with the science.
So, yeah, I really enjoyed it.
I didn't actually know whereyou were going with the birthday
cake point, so I'm glad thatactually kind of had a point
what were you?

Speaker 2 (58:08):
thinking birthday cakes, and I was like you
thought I just wanted to talkabout birthday cake.

Speaker 1 (58:12):
Birthday cakes I thought cake so I thought shit
if I missed his birthday.
What's going on here?
Is this like yeah, that's agood analogy.

Speaker 2 (58:19):
Thanks, yeah, lots of compliments for me today, good.
One other thing I would like tomention is the history of
conscious connected breath issurprisingly short.
So, yes, pranayama goes backcenturies and T tumo what aka
wim hof goes back a long time,but, as far as we know, stanslav
grof invented consciousconnected breathing in the the

(58:43):
60s and 70s, and so it isrelatively recent.
It depends what you describe asconscious connected breathing,
but certainly holotropic breathwork was invented by him, and
and then they've got thederivatives of that, such as
transformational breathwork andclarity breathwork and
rebirthing and breath guru, theones that you have just done.

(59:04):
So, yeah, in that sense, it'sless surprising that there
hasn't been so much research,because it is relatively recent.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
Yeah, well, keep doing the work.
You guys, guy and Rich, Pleasejust keep bringing attention to
the subject.
Yes, will do All right.
Where do they find us Rich?

Speaker 2 (59:27):
They find me at the Breath Geek, although I may
change it to Dr Breath Geek anyday now.
Oh wait, I'm waiting for therevamp, the revamp and at andy
esam and we're laughing throughthe pain, navigating wellness on
all good podcast hostingwebsites, platforms and even a

(59:50):
lot of the bad platforms thanksfor listening.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
Everyone bye.