Imagine transforming your life with just a breath. Our guest, Taylor Somerville from Memphis, Tennessee, guides us through the XPT style of breathwork, illuminating how simple breathing techniques can shift us from anxiety to calmness, and even enhance our physical well-being. Drawing inspiration from the natural breathing patterns of children, Taylor reveals how lifestyle changes alter our breathing and offers practical methods to reclaim optimal habits. The episode promises not just a change in perspective, but actionable steps to improve your daily life through controlled breathing.
Explore the dynamic relationship between breath and exercise as we uncover the hidden dangers of over-breathing, inspired by Patrick McEwen’s Oxygen Advantage. Whether you’re an avid gym-goer or a curious beginner, discover how underwater workouts with heavy D-balls and dumbbells challenge the body and mind, offering unique benefits that extend beyond the water. Taylor shares anecdotes from his own journey, emphasizing the power of breath awareness in promoting overall well-being and resilience.
Venturing into the realm of sauna and cold therapy, we compare traditional barrel saunas with their infrared counterparts and delve into cold exposure practices like ice baths. Taylor shares insights from his personal transition from a high-pressure career to advocating for a more holistic health approach, highlighting stress management techniques that go beyond conventional methods. With practical tips on integrating these therapies into your routine, this episode encourages taking control of your health to prevent burnout and foster a balanced lifestyle.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
are you burnt out and need to do some underwater
swimming.
That's an unfair question.
Um, I was just saying to richoff air.
I do admire the stories ofpeople who are maybe recognized.
They're in um a bit of a spot,career-wise, work-wise.
They're sort of workingthemselves into a stress
(00:20):
situation and actually dosomething so positive about it
and take action.
And that is what our guest doeson this episode.
Coming in from Memphis,tennessee, who've we got Rich?
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Taylor take action.
Somerville, that's not his name.
I just added that in therebecause, yeah, he does take
action.
He's an action man and, yes, welearn all about breathwork the
XPT style of breathwork that heteaches, as well as the benefits
of ice baths and sauna, and Ithink sound fun.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
and then you made it sound awful and then he made it
sound fun again, so I've leftkind of wanting to do it, but
not the way you did it.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Well, it was fun.
It was fun.
I guess I didn't share that.
I shared my sort of my blooperreel, whereas actually, you know
, the vast majority of it was.
There were challenges that Iand everyone else sort of
overcame, and that's anincredibly rewarding, exciting
(01:33):
feeling.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
So definitely try it in the, in the right environment
, would be my advice yeah, itsounds very humbling and also, I
think the um really interestingto challenge yourself mentally
in that way, because we've allbeen there underwater when you
think, shit, I really, really,really need to take a breath
here and obviously by doing thisunderwater workouts you're
(01:55):
encouraged to fight through thatto some extent, but not so you
black out.
That sounds miserable.
Yeah, really interestingepisode.
Obviously a very cool guy, verynice accent here we go here.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
We go.
Here we go.
Hey listener, quick favor,quick favor.
Do you like my steven bartlettimpression there?
Do you know?
What would really help us is ifyou could share this podcast
with someone you love if youthink it's good, and if you
don't think it's good, share itwith someone you don't love.
Either way, we get morelisteners, which is good for us
and will be good for you in thelong run, because of karma and
(02:32):
going to heaven, maybe.
So, yeah, maybe.
Share that you are listening toit.
Share on instagram, take ascreenshot of our episode and
put it out there, and maybewe'll give you a shout out as
well.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Taylor, welcome to the podcast.
I'm going to start with aquestion that Rich will want to
answer, but he's not allowed tobecause I want to hear your
answer.
Why should we care about how webreathe?
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Thank you for having me.
Andy Rich Happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Well why?
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Let's see, because it affects every system in the
body.
Breath is the first thing we do, it's the last thing we do and
it is really one of the onlythings that is automatic, yet
it's under our control.
So we can use the breath tohelp change our mental and
physical state.
You know, we're calm, we tendto breathe calmly.
We breathe a little deeper, webreathe a little slower.
(03:31):
When we're anxious, worked up,we breathe a little faster, a
little shorter.
So, just like we're breathingthat way, we have this kind of
bi-directional nature of ourbrain and our breath and we can
breathe ourselves into thatstate.
You know, we can also helpreduce tension in the body, you
(03:51):
know, help make our oxygenuptake more efficient.
So I would say, just looking atthe nature of it being the
first and the last thing we do,that it's pretty important.
But also how we can use it toaffect our nervous system,
affect our emotions, affect ouractions, it's very important.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Absolutely.
One question I always get fromreally funny people is they say
I've been breathing all my life.
What can you teach me aboutbreathwork when you get those
questions?
I assume you've had thatquestion, I don't know if it's
just people are annoyed at me.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
But what would you say if someone said you know, I
already know how to breathe?
I'd say, yes, we all know howto breathe.
But are you breathing the mostoptimal way for what you're
doing?
Are you breathing the mostfunctional manner?
Just like you know you can doanything in life, are you doing
it to the best of your ability?
And we look at children, babies.
You know I've got a11-month-old child.
You watch them breathe.
(04:46):
It's a nice diaphragmatic breath.
It spans the belly and the ribsand that pattern tends to stay
with us until we start sitting alot.
We get in school, we begin toshift into a more stressed state
, naturally because we're notmoving as much.
The foods we eat tend tocausing us to breathe into our
upper chest and you can even seethis in younger children.
As it starts, that patternstarts to shift.
So you know and you can evensee this in younger children as
(05:07):
that pattern starts to shift, soyou know you can continue
breathing like that andnaturally put yourself in a more
stress state, in a more chronicstress state.
Or you can take your breathingand make it a little bit more
optimal, a little functional,and one of the things we really
focus on with all of our clientsis how we're breathing every
day and how you're goingthroughout your day, you know,
making sure you're breathingthrough your nose, breathing
lower and breathing slower.
Doing that one thing canquickly shift your mental state,
(05:30):
going from a little bit overlyanxious to a little bit more
calmer and easier to ride thewaves, and I think that's really
one of the first things peopledo.
That's what we focus on withour clients really work on
building that base and thatfoundation.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
And you can see a shift in a little as a couple
sessions at making that smalllittle change.
You mentioned that your clientsthat.
Could you talk a bit about your?
Speaker 3 (05:55):
journey to breath, work and what you do now.
And so I spent 15 years in theinvestment business here, mainly
in Memphis, tennessee.
You know I've lived here for 20plus years, but I was last 10
years of my career.
I was on a trading floor doingeconomic macro analysis.
I was a trading company, but wereally my part was focusing on
(06:16):
what's going on with thepolitical structure, with
macroeconomics, with interestrates very high, stress,
environment, and I was overlystressed out, overly anxious,
very quick tempered, wentthrough some personal
difficulties, got divorced 10years ago, so had that had a
financial crisis in 2007,.
(06:36):
Had a career where I'm waking upat four o'clock in the morning
sitting at a desk for 10 plushours a day.
You know the desk by 6 amtypically sitting at a desk for
10 plus hours a day.
You know, at the desk by 6 amtypically and very kind of not
able to handle my emotionalresponses as well as I should as
I was going through thatdivorce.
I started meditating, foundmeditation, got into that and
was like man, this is easilystarting to calm me down.
(06:58):
Then I found Wim Hof, starteddoing some of that.
Then I found XPT with LairdHamilton and Gabby Reese, heard
them on a podcast and decided Iwas going to go to one of their
experiences.
So went out there, went throughtheir breathing protocols, the
pool workouts, the hot and cold,and just kind of looked around
at all the people that werethere, from high-performing
(07:20):
individuals, from Olympicathletes to financial people,
through doctors, lawyers reallytrying to challenge themselves
and push themselves and learnsomething new and something
healthy.
And as I went through that, Iwas like you know, I just don't
really feel like I can sit hereat a desk anymore and I quit.
Three, four months later,started my company Symmetry in
(07:42):
2018 and been teachingbreathwork and stress management
since then.
When I started, I had a saunaon a trailer, which I still have
, and I would drive around togyms and yoga studios around
Memphis in the South, put onworkshops, throw people an ice
bath and saunas and teach thembreathing techniques.
And then COVID hit.
I had to go a little bit more.
Virtual Breathwork kind ofstarted taking off and began
(08:06):
working more with clientsone-on-one.
Now we do group coaching,one-on-one coaching, corporate
work, really focusing on stressmanagement, using the breath as
the foundation of everything wedo, and not only breath, but we
look at mindset, look at howyou're moving your nutrition
relationships.
You have focus on sleep as well.
A lot of people struggle withsleep.
We deal with athletes,executives, really
(08:29):
high-performing, busy people.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Awesome.
Quite the journey, which isgoing back to your previous
answer.
You said something about howfood affects our breath.
I haven't heard too much aboutthat.
Can you say more about food andbreath?
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Yeah, heard too much about that.
Can you say more about food andbreath?
Yeah, as we start eating morehigh processed diets, you can
see that can increase your yourbreath rate.
Sugar put your body in a morenaturally stressed state, which
is going to increase yourrespiration rate, and so that's
one of the things also has to dowith your jaw functioning.
You know Weston, a Price, dida,lot of research on this.
There's other books called Jaws, that kind of focus on some of
(09:05):
this, where you see the jawadaptations throughout time and
you know that affects how you'rebreathing.
So it can shift you into thatmore mouth breathing which is
going to, as a child, is goingto narrow your airways, make it
harder to breathe through yournose, narrow your jaw, narrow
the facial structures, nosenarrow your jaw, narrow the
facial structures and so itmakes it.
(09:26):
You know, if you're kind ofeating that processed diet
throughout your life andstarting early, it's going to
shift you into a more mouthbreathing state a lot earlier
which is going to put you intothat more stress state, put you
into, you know, not letting yourproper breathing patterns, not
using it like you should.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, absolutely.
And one of the things sort ofPatrick McEwen teaches on the
oxygen advantage training, whichI'm just finishing now, is
supposedly we're all chronicallyover breathing and what is our
largest detox pathway?
It's the breath.
So if we are eating toxic foodsor you know foods, we need to
put more stress on our body, weneed to breathe faster to
(10:02):
process that well, to carry outthat detox process.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
So go on, andy, taking that a little bit further
, then how would someone know ifthey're breathing particularly
badly?
I mean, you mentioned you havean 11 month old, congratulations
.
You mentioned, likediaphragmatic breathing,
expansion of the rib cage.
What's the opposite of that, Isuppose?
Speaker 3 (10:22):
tend to breathe into your upper chest, tend to
breathe in and out of your mouth.
So first off, very big oncreating awareness, notice how
you breathe during the day.
Sitting here on a Zoom meeting,driving around in your car, or
are you just sitting there withyour mouth hanging open, just
kind of panting?
Might have more tension in yourneck and your shoulders if
you're doing that Creates a lotmore tension in your body.
(10:45):
So really creating thatawareness and noticing it first,
that's how you're going to findout.
Or do you naturally sit thereand close your mouth?
Do you snore at night?
If you're snoring at night, youmight be mouth breathing during
the day.
So it's kind of first creatingawareness and then from there
you can create changes from youknow, knowing what you're
already doing.
But it creates looking a littlebit inside and understanding
(11:10):
and what you're doing in themoment.
And we like to say we like touse what we call transition.
So things like you know, asyou're going from the home to
the office, between meetings orto the gym and back home, that's
a great time to check in andnotice what you're doing.
You know, if you have a bossand they call you into the
office, what happensautomatically.
Maybe you start kind ofbreathing a little bit more
rapidly, maybe you shift to thatmouth breathing, just noticing
(11:31):
it during situational awareness,kind of understanding what's
going on in your body where youmight feel tension, watch your
breath, notice how you'rebreathing there, and then we
work to shift it, doingdifferent exercises, lower
breath, and we can also usethings you know, such as a
fitness tracker, to look at yourrespiration rate as well
(11:53):
there's a lot of telltale signs.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Yeah, just seeing if someone's shoulders are going up
and down, they're breathing.
You know, that's a giant signof upper chest breathing.
And when I was a kid, Iactually used to have problems
breathing, especially aroundfood.
I had a lot of anxiety aroundfood and I would find this thing
where I couldn't get over mybreath.
It just felt like I could nevertake it on a big enough breath
and I just thought I need totake bigger breaths.
(12:16):
You know, you just have tobreathe faster and bigger and
through your mouth.
But actually what I was doingwas making it worse.
You know, what I should havebeen doing was breathing nose,
low and slow, as the oxygenadvantage saying goes, slowing
down that breath, increasingcarbon dioxide, which, yeah,
would be uh, which is the boareffect, which is, uh, the
hemoglobin won't release oxygento the cells without the
(12:39):
presence of carbon dioxide, andwhat I was doing was blowing off
all my carbon dioxide, whichwas making me even more
breathless.
So creating this vicious circle.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Yeah, we so often get stuck in that way, through that
vicious cycle, and I love whatyou mentioned, the vertical
breathing.
You know that's a very telltalesign and I'd say you know, 90
percent of people have no ideathat's something.
So, having just watchingyourself breathe in the mirror,
are your shoulders moving up anddown or can you get lateral rib
expansion?
You know, if you're driving inyour car, maybe you can feel
(13:08):
your low back pressing into theseat as you're driving, or if
you're sitting at your desk, sokind of creating that awareness
there.
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
And I had a chat with a guy in my gym or I just
noticed he's always chewing gumand I asked him like why are you
chewing gum all the time?
He's like, oh, it's because ofmy ADHD.
And he was saying, like well, Inoticed, when he chews the gum
he breathes in and out throughhis mouth and mouth.
Breathing can create ADHD.
(13:35):
So it's like he noticed aproblem.
He tried to solve it withchewing gum, but actually the
chewing gum was making theproblem worse.
What he needed to be doing wasclosing his mouth, breathing in
and out through his nose,slowing his breath down.
You can also chew gum with yourmouth closed.
But yeah, it was quite funny.
I remember sort of alexferguson was always a gum chewer
.
Alex Alex Ferguson's arguablythe best soccer coach.
(13:57):
It's certainly his Britishsoccer coach and yeah, he was
always fuming.
He was always very angry.
I wonder if he breathed in andout through his nose, if he
would be a little bit more calm,but maybe he wouldn't have had
the success he had.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Yeah, just to correct Rich there, sir Alex Ferguson
is definitely the best soccercoach ever.
I'm going to take it in aslightly different direction.
You said earlier, taylor, thatyou exercise underwater.
For those of us who've neverdone that, can you explain a bit
about what that entails and thebenefits?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
we basically take any .
You know dumbbells.
We like to use heavy D-balls.
You know kind of 160 pound, 100pound, 150 pound, like rubber
medicine type balls is what aD-ball is and dumbbells are the
main tools that we use and doingalmost anything that you could
do in the gym.
So in the shallow end, deep end, squat, jumps, thrusters, we're
(14:51):
swimming, holding weights,we're carrying D-balls,
underwater farmers carrying thedumbbells at you and the
benefits I mean there's a ton.
It's a great way to mix up yourtraining If you're constantly
pounding in the gym or you'rerunning a lot or you know it's
going to take off.
You know less impact on yourjoints.
The hydrographic static pressureof the water also is a great
(15:13):
way to kind of help clear outlymphatic fluid.
It also stresses you in adifferent way.
To kind of help clear outlymphatic fluid.
It also stresses you in adifferent way.
We run these workouts here overthe summer and people who have
never done it but maybe they'regreat at the gym, great athlete
you throw them in water and it'san equalizer.
In the gym and sports you cantypically just push and fight
through things In the water.
(15:33):
You can't fight the water.
You just got to learn to relaxand let go of that Navy SEAL
saying slow is smooth and smoothis fast.
That's a great understanding inthe water, yeah.
So learn how to control themind.
We're doing a lot of breathholding techniques, learning how
to push a little further thanyou think, how to keep calm in
those stressful states, and soyou get a ton of physical
(15:53):
benefits and you get a lot ofmental benefits of, for one,
just stepping out of yourcomfort zone, pushing yourself
and learning that sometimes youneed to just back off a little
bit, slow it down, become moreefficient, make your body more
efficient and with the carriesunderwater and things like that,
you can see people increasetheir capacity pretty quickly
when they start jumping out, thefirst sign of the feeling of
(16:23):
the need to breathe that airhunger building up, just you
know, getting a little panickyand bailing, learning I can
actually go further than Ithought and kind of pushing
through, and then maybe by thefew sessions they're able to
make it all the way around thepool.
I run most of my stuff out of myhouse and have a pretty large
pool for this area, pretty deep,and it's a whole lot of fun and
a great different way to trainin the summer and also get you a
little vitamin d as well andget you out of the gym lights
(16:44):
that we train in so often.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Yeah, I, I have done this in uh.
I went to the xbt retreat inhawaii in february and it's
incredible, like it's sodifficult.
I turned up thinking you know,I do CrossFit, I'm probably
going to be really good at this,and I really wasn't.
Like there's some of theexercises you do, like one of my
(17:09):
favorites was basically you'reat the side of the pool and
you've got two sets of dumbbellsand then you push yourself back
off the side of the pool, theweights take you down and then
you have to like squat down onthe bottom of the pool and then
jump up, get like a little sipof air at the top, flip back
(17:29):
down and then go back down tothe floor and you have to do
like eight reps.
And obviously you make itharder by doing more reps, more
weight, or in this pool they hadlike steps.
It was a huge, huge pool andthey had like different levels.
But yeah, it was amazing when Ifirst started I was just
terrible, I do one and then Ijust dropped the weights and
they'd be like so drop theweights, like don't fail.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
That's the number one rule Don't drop the weights.
Yeah, I know the way.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Yeah, I know, I just completely panicked and then,
you know, felt very ashamed andthings like that.
But then you do learn, okay,actually I've got more air than
I realized.
What like I do.
There is a sort of mentalhurdle that you have to get over
.
It's like, yeah, just becauseI'm getting up like a
contraction in my chest, doesn'tmean I'm going to suffocate,
and because no one's doing, youknow, blowing off all their
carbon dioxide like someonewould with windmoth, you know
well, most people aren't passingout.
But yeah, how many people dopass out, taylor?
Speaker 3 (18:21):
I have never had anybody pass out.
We don't do any breath work,any superventilation,
hyperventilation, breath workever around water.
So definitely don't see anyonepassing out.
You know most people aren't.
I don't want to say strongenough mentally but have the
ability to push that far, unlessyou're blowing off so much CO2
where your body is not going tounderstand the signals properly,
(18:43):
and that's when you get thoseshallow water blackouts and
something to be very carefulwith.
That's why, also in the pool,we you know I partner everybody
up, so everybody's got a partner.
You got me coaching andwatching, sometimes another
coach depending on how manypeople, but everybody's got a
partner.
So there's a lot of safety thatgoes involved and I wouldn't
say don't go home and tryanything you might see on
Instagram by yourself in thewater Always a bad idea.
(19:07):
And one of the things youmentioned, richard, the squat
jumps.
I love that because for one,it's a great way to connect your
breath and your movement.
You really have to focus ongetting that breath at the top,
then exhale as you go all theway down so by the time you get
back up you can get another fullbreath.
Most people try to hold it thewhole time and then exhale and
inhale right at the top.
(19:27):
That's not going to ever work.
So you're learning littletricks about efficiency, how to
keep your mind under control ofthose situations, and you know,
the first time you do it I thinkthe first time I did it I
panicked quite a few times.
And still when I try to dostuff in the water, sometimes
you panic, that's just.
You know.
That's kind of the way life is.
No matter how many times you'vedone it, you can still get out
(19:47):
a little bit over your skis.
Maybe your ego takes over andyou're trying to do more than
you think you should.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
The water is going to put you in your place pretty
quickly, big time yeah and whenyou're xpt.
They have a para rescue person,like effectively a doctor's guy
.
The awesome guy called luke wasthere just overseeing us the
whole time, because I think theydo have people pass out there.
They do have people who arementally strong enough to drown
themselves, if you like well,and I mean you can watch in
shallow water blackouts.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
They happen instantly with, I mean, somebody looks
like they're completely fine andbreathing as well.
So it's you know, there's a lotof precautions that go into it
yeah, I can remember.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
The worst thing that would happen is like doing an
exercise like the one I wouldjust mention, because you're
pushing yourself up from thebottom of the pool.
If you don't quite pushyourself hard enough with the,
the weights, when you go up forthat sip of air, many times I
would just sip water and thenchoke and then drop the weights
and be like on the sidehumiliating myself.
(20:52):
It is such a unique challengebut, yeah, such good fun.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
That's very humbling, yeah, big time.
Um, can we talk a bit moreabout like the work you do with
people is?
It sounds like quite a holisticapproach.
You're looking at breath,you're looking at testing the
body that you know.
Mind and mental resilienceobviously comes into it a little
bit.
So could you tell me, like whatit's like to work with you,
what you're looking to do forpeople?
Speaker 3 (21:18):
So we help high achieving people take back
control of their lives.
They have more time, moreenergy and less stress, and that
is our focus.
And when we start out assessing, understand we have a pretty
detailed questionnaire lookingat all areas of their life.
You know even things like whatexcuses do you make when you
fail?
Why do you tend to not hold upand do things you know kind of
create?
What are the stories that arein your head?
(21:39):
Where are you more stressed out?
Work, home?
How is your sleeping patterns?
Yeah, so we're taking aholistic view and approach and
then we take breath to thecenter.
So we're very principlesfocused.
We want you to understand whatmatters.
So we're going to teach you alittle bit about the nervous
system.
We're going to teach you aboutthe breath.
We're going to teach you toolsthat you can take and learn how
(22:00):
to keep habits and keep them fora lifetime.
We start and we typically focuson how are you breathing
functionally, your mechanicalbreathing patterns.
Then we're going to look atyour biochemical Richard's
mentioned a few times, you knowCO2 and the oxygen advantage
type stuff doing a littleassessment in that area and we
work to fix that that everydaybreathing pattern.
(22:21):
Then we're going to give youtools that are going to help you
, you know, downregulate in astressful situation or maybe
upregulate in a stressfulsituation Because when we look
at breath, we're looking at whatI call the five pillars of
breath.
We have everyday breathing,which we've talked about quite a
few times.
We have grounding techniques,things to calm the nervous
system down tends to be longer.
Exhale focus You're going toslow the heart rate down, slow
(22:43):
the nervous system down, get youin the more of that parathent,
sympathetic state.
We look at activatingtechniques, things that are tend
to be a little bit more on thefaster breathing patterns that
are going to ramp you up.
You know, instead of reachingfor a cup of coffee in the
afternoon at two o'clock, whichis going to affect your sleep,
maybe you can do 30, 45 secondsof a breathing pattern.
Some breath holds kind ofnaturally activate the system.
And we look at stressresilience, which tends to be we
(23:06):
look at mainly breath holdsthere.
So we kind of work our waythrough this pattern.
Then we ended with atransformational, more what most
people would think about breathwork a little bit longer.
We don't get into that toooften but it's something that we
can work on with some of ourclients.
But in that stress resilienceis one of the things I like a
lot.
Use a lot of freediving tables.
Really focus on understandingyour breath, understanding that
(23:30):
trigger that happens in yourmind, because what's the most
stressful thing in our life it'swhen we're holding our breath.
Body's number one goal isrespiration.
So you start holding yourbreath, you start really
understanding.
Okay, what's the story?
You tell yourself, how can youkind of calm yourself, just like
we do in the water?
You can do it statically,laying on the ground and work
through those areas.
And we focus on a lot of thatstuff with our one-on-one
(23:51):
clients and with our groupcoaching.
So one-on-one, our programslast typically about six months
with clients and our groupcoaching we're about four months
that we do Used to do some workwith people.
Maybe one session.
When I first started doingone-on-one work started out with
like one or two sessions,realized you know you're not
really getting anything out ofthat.
It's very hard to createsustainable habit change and
(24:13):
just working with somebody once.
That's really our focus there.
And then we go into companies.
We'll teach about stress, teachemployees okay, here's some
breath techniques you can do.
Put them through a breathsession, teach them about the
nervous system, teach them aboutstress and then give them
usually three techniques theycan take home with something to
start the day, something to helpwith sleep and something kind
of for stress in the moment.
(24:34):
So those are some main areasthat we work with in clients and
we run workshops and things ofthat nature we do a lot of our
work is virtual or in person aswell.
The workshops we tend to do inperson, but everything else can
be done virtually.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Yeah, one thing I know you talk about is email
apnea, and you talked about howholding our breath is one of the
most stressful things we can do.
So what is email apnea?
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Apnea is breath hold Email, so it's basically a term.
You can sit here and Google it,and it is when we're working
effectively.
Now, email is just when you'reanswering emails.
They found that people tend tojust unconsciously hold their
breath.
Conscious breath holds can do alot helping us for that
resilience, for that stress,that mindset.
But when we're unconsciouslydoing it, we're just putting our
(25:22):
body in a more stressed state,creating a little bit more
chronic stress, and you'll findthat not only with emails but
with scrolling through Instagramor staring at your phone.
It can just be an unconscioushabit that we create and we'll
repeat over and over again.
So that's another good time tocheck in and notice your breath.
You know notice.
Are you actually breathing?
Some people might be breathinga little fast or some people
(25:45):
might just be doing those breathholds.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
And it's not just a distraction thing, then we're
just distracted from focusing onour breath, because it seems to
me you should still be able tobreathe properly and email right
, and it seems surprising thatthat wouldn't you know so easily
distracted.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
You would think we are very distracted and
generally in this world, in ourmodern culture, that's kind of
one of the things that happens.
But you know, why do weunconsciously do that?
I'm not exactly sure, but it isjust a pattern that is seen
through a lot of research.
Yeah, Richard might havethrough his research he might
have a little bit more actualknowledge on what the research
(26:25):
says there yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
I know it's a thing, I know it's not just something
breath workers have made to selltheir services.
It is definitely a problem.
Tech apnea is the other thingI've heard.
It's like it's something that'sstressful replying to a
whatsapp message or whatsappgroup, the work thing.
People tend to hold theirbreath because they're a bit
anxious and then they, you know,they get lost in the, the
portal that is our telephones orour computers, and then they're
(26:50):
, you know, they lose connectionto their body and things like
that.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
So I think it's that and you can and you can look at
when you say you get startled,something scares you a little
bit.
What do you do?
Take kind of in and hold.
So that's just kind of anunconscious stress trigger.
And nowadays we have so muchcoming at us, I think that's
part of it is we're constantlyjust dealing with information
overload.
What are those emails saying?
(27:15):
Maybe it's something from aclient or a boss telling you're
fired or you know.
And I think that just once itgets ingrained into our system,
into our nervous system, it justrepeats and repeats.
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Sighing good or bad?
Speaker 3 (27:32):
It depends, like most things.
It's not necessarily good orbad, it just it kind of depends.
Sighing is natural, it's agreat stress relief and it's
something we do periodicallythroughout the day.
But you can oversigh.
It's something you can easilysee with people who tend to run
on the anxious front.
You know, it's one of the firstthings I'll look at when
(27:54):
meeting with a client for thefirst time.
How often are they sighing inthe session?
Is it constantly hold, breathhold?
Then you get kind of this apneadriven fear response and it
leads to a little relief becausethat CO2 is starting to build
up.
They got to blow it off reallyquickly.
Natural happens.
But how often is it happening?
If it's happening 15, 20 timesin a less than an hour long
(28:17):
session or an hour long session,that's probably something we're
going to work on and focus on.
And if you notice yourselfdoing that, I would say start
creating just a small littlehole on the exhale.
After you do that sigh, justnext breath, just hold it and
get used to that CO2 building upin your system.
Get used to that air hunger,because it definitely depends.
So there's a lot of good withsighing, you know, and I know
(28:40):
Huberman's got all thephysiological sigh and cyclical
sighing.
Now I would counter that doingfive minutes of sighing is not
the best thing to help with yourstress and anxiety, which is
one of the things he'll talkabout.
Because that's just.
That's really no different thanjust taking a pill.
What's the underlying symptoms?
Why are you sighing?
Why do you need to sigh thatmuch?
(29:00):
Like there's a lot more thatcan go into it.
So I would say, if that's likeyour go-to breath work to help
with your stress, you could beperpetuating a problem because
you're probably naturallyover-breathing through your day.
So you need to work on more ofair, hunger, tolerance, co2 work
, as opposed to just goingstraight to a cyclical sighing
thing over and over again.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Can I just ask for?
Rich always gets me to chirp inif two breath workers are
getting too technical.
So far, I think I'm with you.
The term apnea is thatliterally when you just stop
breathing?
And is that, um, always anunconscious thing, or is it
sometimes like you know?
How does that happeneffectively?
Speaker 3 (29:43):
yes, that's when we stop breathing.
It can be conscious orunconscious and then you have
basically obstructive sleepapnea.
We have something blocking ourairways when we sleep and that's
that creates that, that breathhold we're trying to draw to
breathe.
There's also central sleepapnea when you sleep, which is
basically you lose the drive tobreathe because of some stuff
going on in your brain.
So apneas you can basicallythink of as stopping breathing
(30:07):
and they're conscious andunconscious and, like you know,
what free divers use are calledapnea tables.
So they are holding your breathfor a certain number of you
know, say, my max breath hold isthree minutes, then I'll train
by holding my breath for 90seconds and then get a minute
rest and then I'll do it againover and over again.
(30:29):
There's a lot of different waysto work on that.
Like I would say, somethingthat you can train, but if
you're doing it over and overunconsciously, it's something
you need to be aware of.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Yeah, and then, conversely, you've got dyspnea,
which is a chronic shortness ofbreath and chronic
hyperventilation.
So I had a client recently who,on their O-ring, their breath
per minute rate was over 20,which would be dyspnea.
And then we brought that downwith some exercises to create
functional breathing, createcarbon dioxide tolerance and
(31:03):
things like that.
It is really complicated, thewhole oxygen advantage thing
thing, and a lot of it iscounterintuitive.
So is it all making sense toyou, andy?
Is anything we should clarify?
Speaker 2 (31:13):
absolutely.
I just wanted to be crystalclear on that definition of
apnea which keeps popping up.
So yeah, I think that's crystalclear.
I wanted to ask a question.
You mentioned, I think, whenyou started your business, you
had a trailer with a sauna in.
Obviously that must mean youbelieve in that quite
extensively.
So can you talk to us about whywe should disorner?
Speaker 3 (31:37):
uh well, sauna, I mean the research on saunas.
It's one of the better thingsthat you can do for overall
health, and I'm big ontraditional barrel saunas, not a
big fan of infrared.
They don't get hot enough.
Most of the research is ontraditional saunas over 180
degrees, the Finnish sauna withthe rocks, that's what I have.
I think it's great on metabolichealth, cardiovascular health,
(31:59):
improving endurance, improvingstrength training.
It's a way to kind of trickyour body to still think it's
working out.
You know, great for stressrelief.
It's also good for helping withcircadian rhythm, along with
the cold there as well, becausetemperature is one of the
indicators for sleep.
So there's a lot of benefitsoverall for sauna yeah, big time
(32:22):
.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
So many benefits, like for depression as well, and
all cause mortality andalzheimer's and things.
I think it's one of thehealthiest things you can do.
The infrared versus dry saunadebate is one I I'm still going
back and forth because I have aninfrared sauna and I do try and
get it gets up to 175, but yeah, most that's pretty warm for an
(32:43):
infrared sauna.
Right, it is because, yeah, ifI go in the afternoon the sun
goes like right through theglass.
So the benefit the sun plus the, the actual panels, is is
heating it up.
But I do wonder whether it'ssort of the, you know, absence
of evidence is an evidence ofabsence thing.
I know that most of theresearch on sauna is done on the
(33:04):
dry saunas, the finished saunas, the ones that get hot.
I would love to see a study,you know, comparing a clear,
light infrared sauna 130 degreesfahrenheit versus a infrared
sorry, regular sauna at at 200,because I know that yeah, all
the evidence says like, yeah, itworks at 185, but I don't know
if there's any evidence thatshows it's not working when
(33:26):
you're doing 130.
Is that, is that right?
Speaker 3 (33:28):
well, not necessarily that it's not working.
I know, um, I've read somestuff recently about the way
infrared sauna heats you up isso unnatural as well by heating
you up from the inside that cancause some issues.
So there's a lot of debate onthat front.
Personally, I think infraredsaunas got a lot of.
(33:50):
They're just a lot cheaper andI think they which made it be
easier to put into facilities,and so those facilities then
turn around and say this isbetter.
And another reason I'm not abig fan of them is you can use
electronics and stuff in there.
You can't use your phone in mysauna.
When you get in, it's going toget shut off within like a few
(34:10):
minutes.
So I think another benefit ofbeing in things like sauna is
getting away from everythingthat's coming at you.
So you could be getting thesame benefits by sitting in
there and watching TV orscrolling on Instagram, but
probably not minutes, but whenit's down at 140.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
I can stay in there for half an hour and I'm
dripping with sweat.
I feel like I'm certainlysweating a lot more.
You know, sort of the becauseof the amount of time it's.
It's easier in that regard andI know some people like what's
his name?
Brent bauer.
He has this huge like in saunagroup detox protocol group on
facebook and he says like it'sactually better to do the lower
heat because you're moreparasympathetic and to detox you
(35:07):
need to be in theparasympathetic state, whereas
if you are in a 200 degree saunayou're extremely stressed.
Your body is in fight or flight.
It's not detoxing in thatenvironment, it's just trying to
survive and maybe that's betterfor heart health or resilience
and heat tolerance and heatshock proteins, but maybe it's
not so good for detox.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Yeah, I mean I'm not sure on that.
I would say I don't know.
I would say you can take atraditional sauna and turn it
down, because sometimes I dothat because it's nice to stay
in longer and do more movementthings along those natures as
well.
So that could be the case.
I have to say I don't knowexactly.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
To be continued.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Moving from hot to cold.
Why should we get ourselvescold?
How cold are we talking?
How do we do it?
Et cetera.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
How cold.
Well, I would say that alsodepends on how adapted you are.
There's tons of physicalbenefits, just like with the
sauna.
It helps with your immunesystem, helps with inflammation,
helps with your mood anxiety.
As I mentioned, it can helpwith setting the circadian
rhythm.
So there's a lot of physicalbenefits there the cold shock,
proteins and things along thoselines.
(36:20):
But really putting yourself inkind of stressful situation,
learning to breathe your waydown, kind of come out of that
stressful state, realize you cando hard things, realize you can
do something uncomfortable.
I tell people to start with acold shower.
Don't worry about any time,just get in there and don't use
that.
When you turn on the coldshower which I can say sometimes
(36:41):
is harder than getting into anice bath and you hit the cold
shower, what's your firstreaction?
Get out of here right now, turnit back to warm.
Don't do that.
Don't get out until you cangive yourself three slow,
controlled breaths.
Once you do that, all right,step out If you want to go back
in or you want to stay longer.
But at first just get threecontrolled breaths and then see
how you feel and you can kind ofgradually adapt your way up
(37:04):
there If you've never done it.
We use really cold.
You know in our protocols thatwe have.
Here we are.
The cold tubs are 30-ishdegrees.
I've got an ice barrel, I'vegot a trough and then I've got a
cold plunge with circulatingwater and the cold plunge is
40-ish.
The other two are about 30, andthe sauna's 200 plus.
So it's pretty cold and it'salso not something that I say
(37:32):
people should do every day.
It is a stressor on the body.
It is something that isdifficult.
So it's something you know.
I do it a couple of times aweek.
I have a lot of clients whocome and do it about once a week
, but I don't think you need todo it every day.
I think occasionally, yeah, youwant to test yourself and say
I'm going to do 30 days in a rowof getting in the cold tub.
That's great, but it's not.
You know, it's just likeanything.
It is a stressor on your body.
It's a, you know, something youneed to adapt to and there's
(37:54):
contraindications as well.
You know serious heartconditions, thyroid problems,
they're all can becontraindications on how you can
adapt to that cold.
It causes a shock response.
So with anything it always goeswith depends In this world that
we live in.
You just hear a lot ofabsolutes on both sides when you
(38:14):
look on Instagram and theinternet, and so I tend to skew
towards the middle of it.
It depends on who you are andwhat's your goal with it.
Do you want to do it?
If you're a bodybuilder, youprobably don't want to do it
right after you work out.
If you're a regular Joe andyou're just wanting to get into
the gym and it's going to makeyou feel better, you can do it
right after you work out.
Losing that little bit ofstrength gain is not going to
matter as much.
So it always just depends, andI would say start and do
(38:37):
something, because our bodieswere not meant to sit in 70
degree weather air conditioningall day long.
70 degree weather airconditioning all day long.
We were meant to go back andforth between temperature
extremes, but you got to work ona little bit of adaptation to
get there.
I think.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
So you disagree with Carnivore Aurelius?
Did you see his post sayingthat ice baths are terrible
because it's like putting yourbody into a plane crash?
The amount of stress you'regoing to and we wouldn't want to
be in plane crashes every day.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
I think that's some of what he says is true in that
post.
But being so absolute is wrong.
It depends, you know, itdepends.
It's not great for everybody,but doing some amount of cold
exposure I think it's good andit can help people, especially
mentally and on the mood, boost,feeling, learning how to
control yourself in stressfulenvironments, doing something
(39:28):
uncomfortable, I think is a bigadded benefit.
And but you know, I'd also saypeople who feel they have to do
the cold every day.
Maybe you shouldn't, maybe youshould take a step back and
think about, okay, why do I haveto do this?
But it's a stressor, just likeanything.
Just like a workout's astressor.
You could say doing a hardworkout's like putting yourself
(39:49):
into a car crash or killingyourself every day.
So I mean, you could kind ofput it with anything like that.
So I think there's a little bitmore nuance in that type of
statement.
But yeah, everybody doesn'tnecessarily need to do it.
And I would say, if you're notgoing to get into a cold, start
doing a cold shower and learnhow to control your breath in
that stressful environment, andeverybody can get benefit out of
(40:11):
that.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Yeah, and for people in the UK the water tends to be
cold enough to get a pretty coldshower yeah for sure I was just
thinking that Less so inMemphis.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
Yeah, in Memphis, Tennessee, it's not very cold.
It's at least until the winter.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
It's definitely not too cold right now but there is
a thing now you can get.
It's kind of like a mesh bagthat you can put over the head
of your shower and then you putice cubes in it and you
basically, yeah, you turn yourshower into an ice shower and I
think that's a pretty cheap andeasy hack.
Really, I've never seen that.
Yeah, you'll get targeted onInstagram now.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
Yeah, my phone's sitting over here and it's
hearing me the next time I openit up.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
I'm sure I'm going to get something later on this
afternoon.
Yeah, I think the UK willdefinitely be cold enough and
then, in terms of you're justtrying to, if you wanted to
progress, to maybe puttingyourself in colder water, is it
best to build up just time eachday, or time every couple of
days?
What are we looking to do here?
Speaker 3 (41:14):
I would go to like a week.
Once you kind of feelcomfortable at a certain
temperature, then you increaseit and stay a little bit longer
and stay a little bit longer,you know, at the temperatures
we're doing 30 degrees.
I don't really like peoplestaying in longer than five
minutes.
We typically stay in three,three-ish minutes, but most of
the people are cold, adapted andhave been doing it for a while.
(41:35):
If you've never done it.
50 degrees Fahrenheit, which isroughly about 10 degrees Celsius
, I think somewhere in thatrange, and you know a good rule
of thumb there is like you cango to.
So 10 degrees Celsius is about10, you want to stay in about 10
minutes if you can adapt tothat.
So you kind of go to the degreeCelsius for a time domain as
(41:59):
well.
I'm kind of trying to work upthere and a lot of the older
research was 50 to 60 degrees,but they were putting people in
to cold tubs for, like I think,one of the things they would.
Just you sat in a lawn chair ina cold 60 degree pool for like
an hour.
Nobody can do that.
That's one of the reasons weramp up or ramp down the
(42:21):
temperature and take the timedown as well.
It's a little bit more intense,but it's kind of gradually.
As you feel comfortable, youcan lower the temperature, is
what I would say.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Fair enough.
One question I have that Iexpect the answer is again it
depends, but what have you gotagainst fitness trackers?
Speaker 3 (42:56):
them.
I think I had the first OuraRing, which I thought was great.
That was the first time Ireally ever tracked my sleep.
I think that was the only onetracking sleep that I can
remember, back in 2017, 2018.
What I think can be a problemis people become wedded to the
information and from there theyonly feel good if their tracker
tells them they're feeling goodor they have to burn an X number
of calories a day.
And the problem is most of thisstuff is not very accurate.
(43:20):
Even now I've heard of peopledoing studies where they will
put on the same tracker ondifferent risks and get two
totally different readings fromsleep HIV, everything being
different.
They're relatively good on yourheart rate, on your steps, so if
you've never worn one for one,getting an understanding of how
many steps you're actuallytaking a day, we have a lot of
(43:41):
clients who are active athletesbut they might sit at a desk all
day.
So while you work out one houra day, if you get 4,000 steps,
that's not really you're nothaving an active lifestyle.
So getting a base understandingof that.
Or maybe your resting heartrate is upper 60s, 70s, when
ideally you want to be in muchlower for your active, healthy
(44:02):
person Knowing your respirationrate.
I think it's great when youfirst start using those.
Like you said, richard, earlieryou had the client who was over
20.
That's exceptionally high for arespiration rate when you're
just sitting there.
I was actually trying to think,man, have I seen anybody just
have a resting respiration rate?
When you're just sitting there,I was actually trying to think
I'm like man, have I seenanybody just have a resting
respiration rate?
No, I get worried when they'rearound, when they're getting
close to 20, that's definitelymean you're in a chronically
(44:24):
stressed state.
So getting some understandingthe sleep data, the sleep stages
I think from some of theresearch I've read, they're
about 60% accurate, so but theyare very good at telling you how
long you're actually asleep andhow long you're a bed.
So getting an understanding ofyour sleep efficiency.
I think that helps.
(44:45):
And when you get stressed outbecause your data on your watch
or your Oura Ring or your Whoopisn't telling you what you want
to hear and that's upsetting youbecause maybe you thought your
HRV should be XYZ and you see it, or it said you had bad sleep
data, take it off Like what goodis it doing if it's adding more
stress in your life.
So I think it.
You know there's great times touse it, but if you become too
worried about that data, thenthat's problem.
(45:07):
It's better to get a betterunderstanding of what's actually
going on inside.
So when you start working andusing the data and like, oh okay
, this is how I actually feel,maybe when I've gotten eight
plus hours of sleep, this is howI feel when I am well rested or
my heart rate's relatively lowkind of getting a better
understanding of what's going oninside of you.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
I think is very subjective.
I think it reads some people'ssleep really well.
I think it reads Natalia'ssleep, my wife's very easily
because she sleeps pretty deeplyand she's a champion sleep
score every night, 95 plus.
But mine is sometimes in thelow 70s my sleep efficiency, and
I did calibrate it with theDreamSleep.
So sleep is an eeg sleeptracker.
(45:57):
So it's actually usingfirst-hand metrics, it's
actually reading your brainwaves, whereas the aura in the
whoop they're using second-handdata and my aura gave me like a
78 sleep efficiency and thedream sleep gave me like 92.
So that was when I really sortof lost faith in my aura rings
ability to track sleepefficiency.
But yeah, as say, I think forsome people it can be very good
(46:19):
to, you know, affirm thatthey're good sleepers, like
Natalia and some people it canmake them think they have
insomnia when they don't.
Speaker 3 (46:26):
Yeah, and when you look at a lot of those things
that well, how they do HRV, howthey do their recovery scores or
something, they're all just analgorithm and they change those
algorithms all the time anddon't tell you.
They're all just an algorithmand they change those algorithms
all the time and don't tell you.
So it's like all right, youknow why did my stuff suddenly
shift?
Speaker 2 (46:45):
What could be?
They just updated the softwareand change the algorithm.
Yeah, what is?
I've seen this sleep efficiencymetrics and it's basically
total sleep as a factor of totaltime in bed, if I'm not
mistaken.
So what is the problem?
If you just want to lie in bedfor longer, even though your
sleep might be, you know, youmight still get eight hours if
you're in bed for 10, 10 hoursor eight.
(47:06):
So why does sleep efficiencymatter?
Speaker 1 (47:09):
I think, yeah, if you're just having a lie in,
then that's going to distort thedata and if, when I do have a
lie in, I will edit it in oringto take out that lie in.
But it's more like, well, I'mhaving these gaps in my sleep in
the middle of the night whenI'm trying to be asleep, so
that's when it's.
You know it's a problem becauseI did used to wake up many
times, used to go to the toiletsort of four or five times in
(47:31):
the night and then struggled toget back to sleep.
So I did have a problem withsleep efficiency.
But yeah, you are right, if youspend a load of time, you know,
reading a book and it thinksyou're asleep.
That's gonna distort it, yeahbut you can map, you can
manually edit that okay one lastquestion for me, taylor.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Where do you, where do we find you?
Speaker 3 (47:52):
you can find my website is wwwsymmetrylive, on
Instagram, at symmetrylive or atTaylor underscore.
Underscore Somerville Threeeasiest places, awesome.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
And so what's next for you?
Got anything exciting lined up.
Speaker 3 (48:09):
Right now we've got a new group coaching cohort that
starts on September 10th, Gotsome good corporate work that
we're working on and then reallystart getting ready for next
year, maybe turning some of thegroup stuff and what we do into
a more online course.
We use a lot of recordedmodules as part of that, so
that's something we'recontemplating and working on.
(48:31):
And then you know it's a lotchasing around a little baby 45,
so I'm an old dad and I justcontinue and watch her grow.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
Awesome.
Yeah well, good luck with allof that, and it's been a
pleasure talking to you.
Thanks for trying to get peoplemore healthy and for giving us
some practical tips for our ownlives as well.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Thank you for having me guys me as we're going to
talk about how burnt out you areandy, how terrible you look.
Not this again, we arerecording, andy, yeah, okay,
yeah, we are recording.
(49:13):
I, I did.
I did just bring that on you.
But one thing I do want to say apoint I do make is this sort of
impossible situation that somepeople get stuck in with
something like burnout or withtaking control of their health.
Sometimes you see people andthey're really stressed out,
they're not sleeping, they'vegot a digestive problem, all
these things, things.
(49:39):
And me, as you know, a holisticperson, is telling them you
know, try meditation, try breathwork, to try all these things,
and they're always just like oh,I haven't got the time, I
haven't got the money, you know,lucky, isn't it nice for you to
be able to do breath work?
That's the kind of attitude youget with some people.
It's gonna be reallyfrustrating because you can see
someone's well, they arecomplaining all the time about
their health, but then theywon't do anything about it.
There's there's the one type ofperson.
The other problem, the othersituation you get is when
(50:01):
someone is trying to take careof their health but then
everyone around them issabotaging them.
It is the, you know, theoverstressed mom, the you know
the burnt out father and youknow, let's say, in those two
examples, the the overstressedmom.
Everyone needs her to keepdoing her thing, everyone needs
her to keep burning herself outfor, for the family or in the,
(50:23):
the corporate environment, theboss doesn't care about your
health or your chronic fatigue,they just care about their,
their bottom line, and so, yeah,you can get made to feel guilty
for taking time for yourself incertain scenarios.
So there are many, manychallenges to to, yeah, taking
care of your health.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
And what I liked is that taylor um had walked the
walk.
You know he obviously workswith a lot of um high achievers
and he sounds like he was a veryhigh achiever as well, isn't
and is now a completely um in acompletely different field
achieving, and I think there'sthat authenticity of like he
knows what it's like to sort offeel that stress and also how to
(51:01):
alleviate it.
So I was really really cool guyand learned a lot.
I like the.
I love the practicalimplications.
I'm actually going to give acold shower a try.
Moved away from cold watersubmersion probably when it got
I didn't have an ice bathanymore, but I will try that
tomorrow, building into that whynot good man.
Speaker 1 (51:21):
Enjoy the british winter as it's coming all right,
where do they?
Speaker 2 (51:27):
find us andy great question instagram at andy sam.
At the breath geek, richard hasa website richard l blake.
And then it's laughing throughthe pain, navigating wellness on
all podcast platforms that'sright.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
Like subscribe, write us a review.
We do read them out sometimes.
And yeah, sign up to thenewsletter as well, because that
is gonna be coming at you morefrequently.
All right, thanks, andy.
Thanks rich bye.
Thanks, listener yeah probablythank the listener as well yeah
probably as well, all right, bye.
are you burnt out and need to do some underwater
swimming.
That's an unfair question.
Um, I was just saying to richoff air.
I do admire the stories ofpeople who are maybe recognized.
They're in um a bit of a spot,career-wise, work-wise.
They're sort of workingthemselves into a stress
(00:20):
situation and actually dosomething so positive about it
and take action.
And that is what our guest doeson this episode.
Coming in from Memphis,tennessee, who've we got Rich?
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Taylor take action.
Somerville, that's not his name.
I just added that in therebecause, yeah, he does take
action.
He's an action man and, yes, welearn all about breathwork the
XPT style of breathwork that heteaches, as well as the benefits
of ice baths and sauna, and Ithink sound fun.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
and then you made it sound awful and then he made it
sound fun again, so I've leftkind of wanting to do it, but
not the way you did it.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Well, it was fun.
It was fun.
I guess I didn't share that.
I shared my sort of my blooperreel, whereas actually, you know
, the vast majority of it was.
There were challenges that Iand everyone else sort of
overcame, and that's anincredibly rewarding, exciting
(01:33):
feeling.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
So definitely try it in the, in the right environment
, would be my advice yeah, itsounds very humbling and also, I
think the um really interestingto challenge yourself mentally
in that way, because we've allbeen there underwater when you
think, shit, I really, really,really need to take a breath
here and obviously by doing thisunderwater workouts you're
(01:55):
encouraged to fight through thatto some extent, but not so you
black out.
That sounds miserable.
Yeah, really interestingepisode.
Obviously a very cool guy, verynice accent here we go here.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
We go.
Here we go.
Hey listener, quick favor,quick favor.
Do you like my steven bartlettimpression there?
Do you know?
What would really help us is ifyou could share this podcast
with someone you love if youthink it's good, and if you
don't think it's good, share itwith someone you don't love.
Either way, we get morelisteners, which is good for us
and will be good for you in thelong run, because of karma and
(02:32):
going to heaven, maybe.
So, yeah, maybe.
Share that you are listening toit.
Share on instagram, take ascreenshot of our episode and
put it out there, and maybewe'll give you a shout out as
well.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Taylor, welcome to the podcast.
I'm going to start with aquestion that Rich will want to
answer, but he's not allowed tobecause I want to hear your
answer.
Why should we care about how webreathe?
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Thank you for having me.
Andy Rich Happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Well why?
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Let's see, because it affects every system in the
body.
Breath is the first thing we do, it's the last thing we do and
it is really one of the onlythings that is automatic, yet
it's under our control.
So we can use the breath tohelp change our mental and
physical state.
You know, we're calm, we tendto breathe calmly.
We breathe a little deeper, webreathe a little slower.
(03:31):
When we're anxious, worked up,we breathe a little faster, a
little shorter.
So, just like we're breathingthat way, we have this kind of
bi-directional nature of ourbrain and our breath and we can
breathe ourselves into thatstate.
You know, we can also helpreduce tension in the body, you
(03:51):
know, help make our oxygenuptake more efficient.
So I would say, just looking atthe nature of it being the
first and the last thing we do,that it's pretty important.
But also how we can use it toaffect our nervous system,
affect our emotions, affect ouractions, it's very important.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Absolutely.
One question I always get fromreally funny people is they say
I've been breathing all my life.
What can you teach me aboutbreathwork when you get those
questions?
I assume you've had thatquestion, I don't know if it's
just people are annoyed at me.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
But what would you say if someone said you know, I
already know how to breathe?
I'd say, yes, we all know howto breathe.
But are you breathing the mostoptimal way for what you're
doing?
Are you breathing the mostfunctional manner?
Just like you know you can doanything in life, are you doing
it to the best of your ability?
And we look at children, babies.
You know I've got a11-month-old child.
You watch them breathe.
(04:46):
It's a nice diaphragmatic breath.
It spans the belly and the ribsand that pattern tends to stay
with us until we start sitting alot.
We get in school, we begin toshift into a more stressed state
, naturally because we're notmoving as much.
The foods we eat tend tocausing us to breathe into our
upper chest and you can even seethis in younger children.
As it starts, that patternstarts to shift.
So you know and you can evensee this in younger children as
(05:07):
that pattern starts to shift, soyou know you can continue
breathing like that andnaturally put yourself in a more
stress state, in a more chronicstress state.
Or you can take your breathingand make it a little bit more
optimal, a little functional,and one of the things we really
focus on with all of our clientsis how we're breathing every
day and how you're goingthroughout your day, you know,
making sure you're breathingthrough your nose, breathing
lower and breathing slower.
Doing that one thing canquickly shift your mental state,
(05:30):
going from a little bit overlyanxious to a little bit more
calmer and easier to ride thewaves, and I think that's really
one of the first things peopledo.
That's what we focus on withour clients really work on
building that base and thatfoundation.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
And you can see a shift in a little as a couple
sessions at making that smalllittle change.
You mentioned that your clientsthat.
Could you talk a bit about your?
Speaker 3 (05:55):
journey to breath, work and what you do now.
And so I spent 15 years in theinvestment business here, mainly
in Memphis, tennessee.
You know I've lived here for 20plus years, but I was last 10
years of my career.
I was on a trading floor doingeconomic macro analysis.
I was a trading company, but wereally my part was focusing on
(06:16):
what's going on with thepolitical structure, with
macroeconomics, with interestrates very high, stress,
environment, and I was overlystressed out, overly anxious,
very quick tempered, wentthrough some personal
difficulties, got divorced 10years ago, so had that had a
financial crisis in 2007,.
(06:36):
Had a career where I'm waking upat four o'clock in the morning
sitting at a desk for 10 plushours a day.
You know the desk by 6 amtypically sitting at a desk for
10 plus hours a day.
You know, at the desk by 6 amtypically and very kind of not
able to handle my emotionalresponses as well as I should as
I was going through thatdivorce.
I started meditating, foundmeditation, got into that and
was like man, this is easilystarting to calm me down.
(06:58):
Then I found Wim Hof, starteddoing some of that.
Then I found XPT with LairdHamilton and Gabby Reese, heard
them on a podcast and decided Iwas going to go to one of their
experiences.
So went out there, went throughtheir breathing protocols, the
pool workouts, the hot and cold,and just kind of looked around
at all the people that werethere, from high-performing
(07:20):
individuals, from Olympicathletes to financial people,
through doctors, lawyers reallytrying to challenge themselves
and push themselves and learnsomething new and something
healthy.
And as I went through that, Iwas like you know, I just don't
really feel like I can sit hereat a desk anymore and I quit.
Three, four months later,started my company Symmetry in
(07:42):
2018 and been teachingbreathwork and stress management
since then.
When I started, I had a saunaon a trailer, which I still have
, and I would drive around togyms and yoga studios around
Memphis in the South, put onworkshops, throw people an ice
bath and saunas and teach thembreathing techniques.
And then COVID hit.
I had to go a little bit more.
Virtual Breathwork kind ofstarted taking off and began
(08:06):
working more with clientsone-on-one.
Now we do group coaching,one-on-one coaching, corporate
work, really focusing on stressmanagement, using the breath as
the foundation of everything wedo, and not only breath, but we
look at mindset, look at howyou're moving your nutrition
relationships.
You have focus on sleep as well.
A lot of people struggle withsleep.
We deal with athletes,executives, really
(08:29):
high-performing, busy people.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Awesome.
Quite the journey, which isgoing back to your previous
answer.
You said something about howfood affects our breath.
I haven't heard too much aboutthat.
Can you say more about food andbreath?
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Yeah, heard too much about that.
Can you say more about food andbreath?
Yeah, as we start eating morehigh processed diets, you can
see that can increase your yourbreath rate.
Sugar put your body in a morenaturally stressed state, which
is going to increase yourrespiration rate, and so that's
one of the things also has to dowith your jaw functioning.
You know Weston, a Price, dida,lot of research on this.
There's other books called Jaws, that kind of focus on some of
(09:05):
this, where you see the jawadaptations throughout time and
you know that affects how you'rebreathing.
So it can shift you into thatmore mouth breathing which is
going to, as a child, is goingto narrow your airways, make it
harder to breathe through yournose, narrow your jaw, narrow
the facial structures, nosenarrow your jaw, narrow the
facial structures and so itmakes it.
(09:26):
You know, if you're kind ofeating that processed diet
throughout your life andstarting early, it's going to
shift you into a more mouthbreathing state a lot earlier
which is going to put you intothat more stress state, put you
into, you know, not letting yourproper breathing patterns, not
using it like you should.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, absolutely.
And one of the things sort ofPatrick McEwen teaches on the
oxygen advantage training, whichI'm just finishing now, is
supposedly we're all chronicallyover breathing and what is our
largest detox pathway?
It's the breath.
So if we are eating toxic foodsor you know foods, we need to
put more stress on our body, weneed to breathe faster to
(10:02):
process that well, to carry outthat detox process.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
So go on, andy, taking that a little bit further
, then how would someone know ifthey're breathing particularly
badly?
I mean, you mentioned you havean 11 month old, congratulations
.
You mentioned, likediaphragmatic breathing,
expansion of the rib cage.
What's the opposite of that, Isuppose?
Speaker 3 (10:22):
tend to breathe into your upper chest, tend to
breathe in and out of your mouth.
So first off, very big oncreating awareness, notice how
you breathe during the day.
Sitting here on a Zoom meeting,driving around in your car, or
are you just sitting there withyour mouth hanging open, just
kind of panting?
Might have more tension in yourneck and your shoulders if
you're doing that Creates a lotmore tension in your body.
(10:45):
So really creating thatawareness and noticing it first,
that's how you're going to findout.
Or do you naturally sit thereand close your mouth?
Do you snore at night?
If you're snoring at night, youmight be mouth breathing during
the day.
So it's kind of first creatingawareness and then from there
you can create changes from youknow, knowing what you're
already doing.
But it creates looking a littlebit inside and understanding
(11:10):
and what you're doing in themoment.
And we like to say we like touse what we call transition.
So things like you know, asyou're going from the home to
the office, between meetings orto the gym and back home, that's
a great time to check in andnotice what you're doing.
You know, if you have a bossand they call you into the
office, what happensautomatically.
Maybe you start kind ofbreathing a little bit more
rapidly, maybe you shift to thatmouth breathing, just noticing
(11:31):
it during situational awareness,kind of understanding what's
going on in your body where youmight feel tension, watch your
breath, notice how you'rebreathing there, and then we
work to shift it, doingdifferent exercises, lower
breath, and we can also usethings you know, such as a
fitness tracker, to look at yourrespiration rate as well
(11:53):
there's a lot of telltale signs.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Yeah, just seeing if someone's shoulders are going up
and down, they're breathing.
You know, that's a giant signof upper chest breathing.
And when I was a kid, Iactually used to have problems
breathing, especially aroundfood.
I had a lot of anxiety aroundfood and I would find this thing
where I couldn't get over mybreath.
It just felt like I could nevertake it on a big enough breath
and I just thought I need totake bigger breaths.
(12:16):
You know, you just have tobreathe faster and bigger and
through your mouth.
But actually what I was doingwas making it worse.
You know, what I should havebeen doing was breathing nose,
low and slow, as the oxygenadvantage saying goes, slowing
down that breath, increasingcarbon dioxide, which, yeah,
would be uh, which is the boareffect, which is, uh, the
hemoglobin won't release oxygento the cells without the
(12:39):
presence of carbon dioxide, andwhat I was doing was blowing off
all my carbon dioxide, whichwas making me even more
breathless.
So creating this vicious circle.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Yeah, we so often get stuck in that way, through that
vicious cycle, and I love whatyou mentioned, the vertical
breathing.
You know that's a very telltalesign and I'd say you know, 90
percent of people have no ideathat's something.
So, having just watchingyourself breathe in the mirror,
are your shoulders moving up anddown or can you get lateral rib
expansion?
You know, if you're driving inyour car, maybe you can feel
(13:08):
your low back pressing into theseat as you're driving, or if
you're sitting at your desk, sokind of creating that awareness
there.
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
And I had a chat with a guy in my gym or I just
noticed he's always chewing gumand I asked him like why are you
chewing gum all the time?
He's like, oh, it's because ofmy ADHD.
And he was saying, like well, Inoticed, when he chews the gum
he breathes in and out throughhis mouth and mouth.
Breathing can create ADHD.
(13:35):
So it's like he noticed aproblem.
He tried to solve it withchewing gum, but actually the
chewing gum was making theproblem worse.
What he needed to be doing wasclosing his mouth, breathing in
and out through his nose,slowing his breath down.
You can also chew gum with yourmouth closed.
But yeah, it was quite funny.
I remember sort of alexferguson was always a gum chewer
.
Alex Alex Ferguson's arguablythe best soccer coach.
(13:57):
It's certainly his Britishsoccer coach and yeah, he was
always fuming.
He was always very angry.
I wonder if he breathed in andout through his nose, if he
would be a little bit more calm,but maybe he wouldn't have had
the success he had.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Yeah, just to correct Rich there, sir Alex Ferguson
is definitely the best soccercoach ever.
I'm going to take it in aslightly different direction.
You said earlier, taylor, thatyou exercise underwater.
For those of us who've neverdone that, can you explain a bit
about what that entails and thebenefits?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
we basically take any .
You know dumbbells.
We like to use heavy D-balls.
You know kind of 160 pound, 100pound, 150 pound, like rubber
medicine type balls is what aD-ball is and dumbbells are the
main tools that we use and doingalmost anything that you could
do in the gym.
So in the shallow end, deep end, squat, jumps, thrusters, we're
(14:51):
swimming, holding weights,we're carrying D-balls,
underwater farmers carrying thedumbbells at you and the
benefits I mean there's a ton.
It's a great way to mix up yourtraining If you're constantly
pounding in the gym or you'rerunning a lot or you know it's
going to take off.
You know less impact on yourjoints.
The hydrographic static pressureof the water also is a great
(15:13):
way to kind of help clear outlymphatic fluid.
It also stresses you in adifferent way.
To kind of help clear outlymphatic fluid.
It also stresses you in adifferent way.
We run these workouts here overthe summer and people who have
never done it but maybe they'regreat at the gym, great athlete
you throw them in water and it'san equalizer.
In the gym and sports you cantypically just push and fight
through things In the water.
(15:33):
You can't fight the water.
You just got to learn to relaxand let go of that Navy SEAL
saying slow is smooth and smoothis fast.
That's a great understanding inthe water, yeah.
So learn how to control themind.
We're doing a lot of breathholding techniques, learning how
to push a little further thanyou think, how to keep calm in
those stressful states, and soyou get a ton of physical
(15:53):
benefits and you get a lot ofmental benefits of, for one,
just stepping out of yourcomfort zone, pushing yourself
and learning that sometimes youneed to just back off a little
bit, slow it down, become moreefficient, make your body more
efficient and with the carriesunderwater and things like that,
you can see people increasetheir capacity pretty quickly
when they start jumping out, thefirst sign of the feeling of
(16:23):
the need to breathe that airhunger building up, just you
know, getting a little panickyand bailing, learning I can
actually go further than Ithought and kind of pushing
through, and then maybe by thefew sessions they're able to
make it all the way around thepool.
I run most of my stuff out of myhouse and have a pretty large
pool for this area, pretty deep,and it's a whole lot of fun and
a great different way to trainin the summer and also get you a
little vitamin d as well andget you out of the gym lights
(16:44):
that we train in so often.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Yeah, I, I have done this in uh.
I went to the xbt retreat inhawaii in february and it's
incredible, like it's sodifficult.
I turned up thinking you know,I do CrossFit, I'm probably
going to be really good at this,and I really wasn't.
Like there's some of theexercises you do, like one of my
(17:09):
favorites was basically you'reat the side of the pool and
you've got two sets of dumbbellsand then you push yourself back
off the side of the pool, theweights take you down and then
you have to like squat down onthe bottom of the pool and then
jump up, get like a little sipof air at the top, flip back
(17:29):
down and then go back down tothe floor and you have to do
like eight reps.
And obviously you make itharder by doing more reps, more
weight, or in this pool they hadlike steps.
It was a huge, huge pool andthey had like different levels.
But yeah, it was amazing when Ifirst started I was just
terrible, I do one and then Ijust dropped the weights and
they'd be like so drop theweights, like don't fail.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
That's the number one rule Don't drop the weights.
Yeah, I know the way.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Yeah, I know, I just completely panicked and then,
you know, felt very ashamed andthings like that.
But then you do learn, okay,actually I've got more air than
I realized.
What like I do.
There is a sort of mentalhurdle that you have to get over
.
It's like, yeah, just becauseI'm getting up like a
contraction in my chest, doesn'tmean I'm going to suffocate,
and because no one's doing, youknow, blowing off all their
carbon dioxide like someonewould with windmoth, you know
well, most people aren't passingout.
But yeah, how many people dopass out, taylor?
Speaker 3 (18:21):
I have never had anybody pass out.
We don't do any breath work,any superventilation,
hyperventilation, breath workever around water.
So definitely don't see anyonepassing out.
You know most people aren't.
I don't want to say strongenough mentally but have the
ability to push that far, unlessyou're blowing off so much CO2
where your body is not going tounderstand the signals properly,
(18:43):
and that's when you get thoseshallow water blackouts and
something to be very carefulwith.
That's why, also in the pool,we you know I partner everybody
up, so everybody's got a partner.
You got me coaching andwatching, sometimes another
coach depending on how manypeople, but everybody's got a
partner.
So there's a lot of safety thatgoes involved and I wouldn't
say don't go home and tryanything you might see on
Instagram by yourself in thewater Always a bad idea.
(19:07):
And one of the things youmentioned, richard, the squat
jumps.
I love that because for one,it's a great way to connect your
breath and your movement.
You really have to focus ongetting that breath at the top,
then exhale as you go all theway down so by the time you get
back up you can get another fullbreath.
Most people try to hold it thewhole time and then exhale and
inhale right at the top.
(19:27):
That's not going to ever work.
So you're learning littletricks about efficiency, how to
keep your mind under control ofthose situations, and you know,
the first time you do it I thinkthe first time I did it I
panicked quite a few times.
And still when I try to dostuff in the water, sometimes
you panic, that's just.
You know.
That's kind of the way life is.
No matter how many times you'vedone it, you can still get out
(19:47):
a little bit over your skis.
Maybe your ego takes over andyou're trying to do more than
you think you should.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
The water is going to put you in your place pretty
quickly, big time yeah and whenyou're xpt.
They have a para rescue person,like effectively a doctor's guy
.
The awesome guy called luke wasthere just overseeing us the
whole time, because I think theydo have people pass out there.
They do have people who arementally strong enough to drown
themselves, if you like well,and I mean you can watch in
shallow water blackouts.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
They happen instantly with, I mean, somebody looks
like they're completely fine andbreathing as well.
So it's you know, there's a lotof precautions that go into it
yeah, I can remember.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
The worst thing that would happen is like doing an
exercise like the one I wouldjust mention, because you're
pushing yourself up from thebottom of the pool.
If you don't quite pushyourself hard enough with the,
the weights, when you go up forthat sip of air, many times I
would just sip water and thenchoke and then drop the weights
and be like on the sidehumiliating myself.
(20:52):
It is such a unique challengebut, yeah, such good fun.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
That's very humbling, yeah, big time.
Um, can we talk a bit moreabout like the work you do with
people is?
It sounds like quite a holisticapproach.
You're looking at breath,you're looking at testing the
body that you know.
Mind and mental resilienceobviously comes into it a little
bit.
So could you tell me, like whatit's like to work with you,
what you're looking to do forpeople?
Speaker 3 (21:18):
So we help high achieving people take back
control of their lives.
They have more time, moreenergy and less stress, and that
is our focus.
And when we start out assessing, understand we have a pretty
detailed questionnaire lookingat all areas of their life.
You know even things like whatexcuses do you make when you
fail?
Why do you tend to not hold upand do things you know kind of
create?
What are the stories that arein your head?
(21:39):
Where are you more stressed out?
Work, home?
How is your sleeping patterns?
Yeah, so we're taking aholistic view and approach and
then we take breath to thecenter.
So we're very principlesfocused.
We want you to understand whatmatters.
So we're going to teach you alittle bit about the nervous
system.
We're going to teach you aboutthe breath.
We're going to teach you toolsthat you can take and learn how
(22:00):
to keep habits and keep them fora lifetime.
We start and we typically focuson how are you breathing
functionally, your mechanicalbreathing patterns.
Then we're going to look atyour biochemical Richard's
mentioned a few times, you knowCO2 and the oxygen advantage
type stuff doing a littleassessment in that area and we
work to fix that that everydaybreathing pattern.
(22:21):
Then we're going to give youtools that are going to help you
, you know, downregulate in astressful situation or maybe
upregulate in a stressfulsituation Because when we look
at breath, we're looking at whatI call the five pillars of
breath.
We have everyday breathing,which we've talked about quite a
few times.
We have grounding techniques,things to calm the nervous
system down tends to be longer.
Exhale focus You're going toslow the heart rate down, slow
(22:43):
the nervous system down, get youin the more of that parathent,
sympathetic state.
We look at activatingtechniques, things that are tend
to be a little bit more on thefaster breathing patterns that
are going to ramp you up.
You know, instead of reachingfor a cup of coffee in the
afternoon at two o'clock, whichis going to affect your sleep,
maybe you can do 30, 45 secondsof a breathing pattern.
Some breath holds kind ofnaturally activate the system.
And we look at stressresilience, which tends to be we
(23:06):
look at mainly breath holdsthere.
So we kind of work our waythrough this pattern.
Then we ended with atransformational, more what most
people would think about breathwork a little bit longer.
We don't get into that toooften but it's something that we
can work on with some of ourclients.
But in that stress resilienceis one of the things I like a
lot.
Use a lot of freediving tables.
Really focus on understandingyour breath, understanding that
(23:30):
trigger that happens in yourmind, because what's the most
stressful thing in our life it'swhen we're holding our breath.
Body's number one goal isrespiration.
So you start holding yourbreath, you start really
understanding.
Okay, what's the story?
You tell yourself, how can youkind of calm yourself, just like
we do in the water?
You can do it statically,laying on the ground and work
through those areas.
And we focus on a lot of thatstuff with our one-on-one
(23:51):
clients and with our groupcoaching.
So one-on-one, our programslast typically about six months
with clients and our groupcoaching we're about four months
that we do Used to do some workwith people.
Maybe one session.
When I first started doingone-on-one work started out with
like one or two sessions,realized you know you're not
really getting anything out ofthat.
It's very hard to createsustainable habit change and
(24:13):
just working with somebody once.
That's really our focus there.
And then we go into companies.
We'll teach about stress, teachemployees okay, here's some
breath techniques you can do.
Put them through a breathsession, teach them about the
nervous system, teach them aboutstress and then give them
usually three techniques theycan take home with something to
start the day, something to helpwith sleep and something kind
of for stress in the moment.
(24:34):
So those are some main areasthat we work with in clients and
we run workshops and things ofthat nature we do a lot of our
work is virtual or in person aswell.
The workshops we tend to do inperson, but everything else can
be done virtually.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Yeah, one thing I know you talk about is email
apnea, and you talked about howholding our breath is one of the
most stressful things we can do.
So what is email apnea?
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Apnea is breath hold Email, so it's basically a term.
You can sit here and Google it,and it is when we're working
effectively.
Now, email is just when you'reanswering emails.
They found that people tend tojust unconsciously hold their
breath.
Conscious breath holds can do alot helping us for that
resilience, for that stress,that mindset.
But when we're unconsciouslydoing it, we're just putting our
(25:22):
body in a more stressed state,creating a little bit more
chronic stress, and you'll findthat not only with emails but
with scrolling through Instagramor staring at your phone.
It can just be an unconscioushabit that we create and we'll
repeat over and over again.
So that's another good time tocheck in and notice your breath.
You know notice.
Are you actually breathing?
Some people might be breathinga little fast or some people
(25:45):
might just be doing those breathholds.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
And it's not just a distraction thing, then we're
just distracted from focusing onour breath, because it seems to
me you should still be able tobreathe properly and email right
, and it seems surprising thatthat wouldn't you know so easily
distracted.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
You would think we are very distracted and
generally in this world, in ourmodern culture, that's kind of
one of the things that happens.
But you know, why do weunconsciously do that?
I'm not exactly sure, but it isjust a pattern that is seen
through a lot of research.
Yeah, Richard might havethrough his research he might
have a little bit more actualknowledge on what the research
(26:25):
says there yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
I know it's a thing, I know it's not just something
breath workers have made to selltheir services.
It is definitely a problem.
Tech apnea is the other thingI've heard.
It's like it's something that'sstressful replying to a
whatsapp message or whatsappgroup, the work thing.
People tend to hold theirbreath because they're a bit
anxious and then they, you know,they get lost in the, the
portal that is our telephones orour computers, and then they're
(26:50):
, you know, they lose connectionto their body and things like
that.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
So I think it's that and you can and you can look at
when you say you get startled,something scares you a little
bit.
What do you do?
Take kind of in and hold.
So that's just kind of anunconscious stress trigger.
And nowadays we have so muchcoming at us, I think that's
part of it is we're constantlyjust dealing with information
overload.
What are those emails saying?
(27:15):
Maybe it's something from aclient or a boss telling you're
fired or you know.
And I think that just once itgets ingrained into our system,
into our nervous system, it justrepeats and repeats.
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Sighing good or bad?
Speaker 3 (27:32):
It depends, like most things.
It's not necessarily good orbad, it just it kind of depends.
Sighing is natural, it's agreat stress relief and it's
something we do periodicallythroughout the day.
But you can oversigh.
It's something you can easilysee with people who tend to run
on the anxious front.
You know, it's one of the firstthings I'll look at when
(27:54):
meeting with a client for thefirst time.
How often are they sighing inthe session?
Is it constantly hold, breathhold?
Then you get kind of this apneadriven fear response and it
leads to a little relief becausethat CO2 is starting to build
up.
They got to blow it off reallyquickly.
Natural happens.
But how often is it happening?
If it's happening 15, 20 timesin a less than an hour long
(28:17):
session or an hour long session,that's probably something we're
going to work on and focus on.
And if you notice yourselfdoing that, I would say start
creating just a small littlehole on the exhale.
After you do that sigh, justnext breath, just hold it and
get used to that CO2 building upin your system.
Get used to that air hunger,because it definitely depends.
So there's a lot of good withsighing, you know, and I know
(28:40):
Huberman's got all thephysiological sigh and cyclical
sighing.
Now I would counter that doingfive minutes of sighing is not
the best thing to help with yourstress and anxiety, which is
one of the things he'll talkabout.
Because that's just.
That's really no different thanjust taking a pill.
What's the underlying symptoms?
Why are you sighing?
Why do you need to sigh thatmuch?
(29:00):
Like there's a lot more thatcan go into it.
So I would say, if that's likeyour go-to breath work to help
with your stress, you could beperpetuating a problem because
you're probably naturallyover-breathing through your day.
So you need to work on more ofair, hunger, tolerance, co2 work
, as opposed to just goingstraight to a cyclical sighing
thing over and over again.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Can I just ask for?
Rich always gets me to chirp inif two breath workers are
getting too technical.
So far, I think I'm with you.
The term apnea is thatliterally when you just stop
breathing?
And is that, um, always anunconscious thing, or is it
sometimes like you know?
How does that happeneffectively?
Speaker 3 (29:43):
yes, that's when we stop breathing.
It can be conscious orunconscious and then you have
basically obstructive sleepapnea.
We have something blocking ourairways when we sleep and that's
that creates that, that breathhold we're trying to draw to
breathe.
There's also central sleepapnea when you sleep, which is
basically you lose the drive tobreathe because of some stuff
going on in your brain.
So apneas you can basicallythink of as stopping breathing
(30:07):
and they're conscious andunconscious and, like you know,
what free divers use are calledapnea tables.
So they are holding your breathfor a certain number of you
know, say, my max breath hold isthree minutes, then I'll train
by holding my breath for 90seconds and then get a minute
rest and then I'll do it againover and over again.
(30:29):
There's a lot of different waysto work on that.
Like I would say, somethingthat you can train, but if
you're doing it over and overunconsciously, it's something
you need to be aware of.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Yeah, and then, conversely, you've got dyspnea,
which is a chronic shortness ofbreath and chronic
hyperventilation.
So I had a client recently who,on their O-ring, their breath
per minute rate was over 20,which would be dyspnea.
And then we brought that downwith some exercises to create
functional breathing, createcarbon dioxide tolerance and
(31:03):
things like that.
It is really complicated, thewhole oxygen advantage thing
thing, and a lot of it iscounterintuitive.
So is it all making sense toyou, andy?
Is anything we should clarify?
Speaker 2 (31:13):
absolutely.
I just wanted to be crystalclear on that definition of
apnea which keeps popping up.
So yeah, I think that's crystalclear.
I wanted to ask a question.
You mentioned, I think, whenyou started your business, you
had a trailer with a sauna in.
Obviously that must mean youbelieve in that quite
extensively.
So can you talk to us about whywe should disorner?
Speaker 3 (31:37):
uh well, sauna, I mean the research on saunas.
It's one of the better thingsthat you can do for overall
health, and I'm big ontraditional barrel saunas, not a
big fan of infrared.
They don't get hot enough.
Most of the research is ontraditional saunas over 180
degrees, the Finnish sauna withthe rocks, that's what I have.
I think it's great on metabolichealth, cardiovascular health,
(31:59):
improving endurance, improvingstrength training.
It's a way to kind of trickyour body to still think it's
working out.
You know, great for stressrelief.
It's also good for helping withcircadian rhythm, along with
the cold there as well, becausetemperature is one of the
indicators for sleep.
So there's a lot of benefitsoverall for sauna yeah, big time
(32:22):
.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
So many benefits, like for depression as well, and
all cause mortality andalzheimer's and things.
I think it's one of thehealthiest things you can do.
The infrared versus dry saunadebate is one I I'm still going
back and forth because I have aninfrared sauna and I do try and
get it gets up to 175, but yeah, most that's pretty warm for an
(32:43):
infrared sauna.
Right, it is because, yeah, ifI go in the afternoon the sun
goes like right through theglass.
So the benefit the sun plus the, the actual panels, is is
heating it up.
But I do wonder whether it'ssort of the, you know, absence
of evidence is an evidence ofabsence thing.
I know that most of theresearch on sauna is done on the
(33:04):
dry saunas, the finished saunas, the ones that get hot.
I would love to see a study,you know, comparing a clear,
light infrared sauna 130 degreesfahrenheit versus a infrared
sorry, regular sauna at at 200,because I know that yeah, all
the evidence says like, yeah, itworks at 185, but I don't know
if there's any evidence thatshows it's not working when
(33:26):
you're doing 130.
Is that, is that right?
Speaker 3 (33:28):
well, not necessarily that it's not working.
I know, um, I've read somestuff recently about the way
infrared sauna heats you up isso unnatural as well by heating
you up from the inside that cancause some issues.
So there's a lot of debate onthat front.
Personally, I think infraredsaunas got a lot of.
(33:50):
They're just a lot cheaper andI think they which made it be
easier to put into facilities,and so those facilities then
turn around and say this isbetter.
And another reason I'm not abig fan of them is you can use
electronics and stuff in there.
You can't use your phone in mysauna.
When you get in, it's going toget shut off within like a few
(34:10):
minutes.
So I think another benefit ofbeing in things like sauna is
getting away from everythingthat's coming at you.
So you could be getting thesame benefits by sitting in
there and watching TV orscrolling on Instagram, but
probably not minutes, but whenit's down at 140.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
I can stay in there for half an hour and I'm
dripping with sweat.
I feel like I'm certainlysweating a lot more.
You know, sort of the becauseof the amount of time it's.
It's easier in that regard andI know some people like what's
his name?
Brent bauer.
He has this huge like in saunagroup detox protocol group on
facebook and he says like it'sactually better to do the lower
heat because you're moreparasympathetic and to detox you
(35:07):
need to be in theparasympathetic state, whereas
if you are in a 200 degree saunayou're extremely stressed.
Your body is in fight or flight.
It's not detoxing in thatenvironment, it's just trying to
survive and maybe that's betterfor heart health or resilience
and heat tolerance and heatshock proteins, but maybe it's
not so good for detox.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Yeah, I mean I'm not sure on that.
I would say I don't know.
I would say you can take atraditional sauna and turn it
down, because sometimes I dothat because it's nice to stay
in longer and do more movementthings along those natures as
well.
So that could be the case.
I have to say I don't knowexactly.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
To be continued.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Moving from hot to cold.
Why should we get ourselvescold?
How cold are we talking?
How do we do it?
Et cetera.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
How cold.
Well, I would say that alsodepends on how adapted you are.
There's tons of physicalbenefits, just like with the
sauna.
It helps with your immunesystem, helps with inflammation,
helps with your mood anxiety.
As I mentioned, it can helpwith setting the circadian
rhythm.
So there's a lot of physicalbenefits there the cold shock,
proteins and things along thoselines.
(36:20):
But really putting yourself inkind of stressful situation,
learning to breathe your waydown, kind of come out of that
stressful state, realize you cando hard things, realize you can
do something uncomfortable.
I tell people to start with acold shower.
Don't worry about any time,just get in there and don't use
that.
When you turn on the coldshower which I can say sometimes
(36:41):
is harder than getting into anice bath and you hit the cold
shower, what's your firstreaction?
Get out of here right now, turnit back to warm.
Don't do that.
Don't get out until you cangive yourself three slow,
controlled breaths.
Once you do that, all right,step out If you want to go back
in or you want to stay longer.
But at first just get threecontrolled breaths and then see
how you feel and you can kind ofgradually adapt your way up
(37:04):
there If you've never done it.
We use really cold.
You know in our protocols thatwe have.
Here we are.
The cold tubs are 30-ishdegrees.
I've got an ice barrel, I'vegot a trough and then I've got a
cold plunge with circulatingwater and the cold plunge is
40-ish.
The other two are about 30, andthe sauna's 200 plus.
So it's pretty cold and it'salso not something that I say
(37:32):
people should do every day.
It is a stressor on the body.
It is something that isdifficult.
So it's something you know.
I do it a couple of times aweek.
I have a lot of clients whocome and do it about once a week
, but I don't think you need todo it every day.
I think occasionally, yeah, youwant to test yourself and say
I'm going to do 30 days in a rowof getting in the cold tub.
That's great, but it's not.
You know, it's just likeanything.
It is a stressor on your body.
It's a, you know, something youneed to adapt to and there's
(37:54):
contraindications as well.
You know serious heartconditions, thyroid problems,
they're all can becontraindications on how you can
adapt to that cold.
It causes a shock response.
So with anything it always goeswith depends In this world that
we live in.
You just hear a lot ofabsolutes on both sides when you
(38:14):
look on Instagram and theinternet, and so I tend to skew
towards the middle of it.
It depends on who you are andwhat's your goal with it.
Do you want to do it?
If you're a bodybuilder, youprobably don't want to do it
right after you work out.
If you're a regular Joe andyou're just wanting to get into
the gym and it's going to makeyou feel better, you can do it
right after you work out.
Losing that little bit ofstrength gain is not going to
matter as much.
So it always just depends, andI would say start and do
(38:37):
something, because our bodieswere not meant to sit in 70
degree weather air conditioningall day long.
70 degree weather airconditioning all day long.
We were meant to go back andforth between temperature
extremes, but you got to work ona little bit of adaptation to
get there.
I think.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
So you disagree with Carnivore Aurelius?
Did you see his post sayingthat ice baths are terrible
because it's like putting yourbody into a plane crash?
The amount of stress you'regoing to and we wouldn't want to
be in plane crashes every day.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
I think that's some of what he says is true in that
post.
But being so absolute is wrong.
It depends, you know, itdepends.
It's not great for everybody,but doing some amount of cold
exposure I think it's good andit can help people, especially
mentally and on the mood, boost,feeling, learning how to
control yourself in stressfulenvironments, doing something
(39:28):
uncomfortable, I think is a bigadded benefit.
And but you know, I'd also saypeople who feel they have to do
the cold every day.
Maybe you shouldn't, maybe youshould take a step back and
think about, okay, why do I haveto do this?
But it's a stressor, just likeanything.
Just like a workout's astressor.
You could say doing a hardworkout's like putting yourself
(39:49):
into a car crash or killingyourself every day.
So I mean, you could kind ofput it with anything like that.
So I think there's a little bitmore nuance in that type of
statement.
But yeah, everybody doesn'tnecessarily need to do it.
And I would say, if you're notgoing to get into a cold, start
doing a cold shower and learnhow to control your breath in
that stressful environment, andeverybody can get benefit out of
(40:11):
that.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Yeah, and for people in the UK the water tends to be
cold enough to get a pretty coldshower yeah for sure I was just
thinking that Less so inMemphis.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
Yeah, in Memphis, Tennessee, it's not very cold.
It's at least until the winter.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
It's definitely not too cold right now but there is
a thing now you can get.
It's kind of like a mesh bagthat you can put over the head
of your shower and then you putice cubes in it and you
basically, yeah, you turn yourshower into an ice shower and I
think that's a pretty cheap andeasy hack.
Really, I've never seen that.
Yeah, you'll get targeted onInstagram now.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
Yeah, my phone's sitting over here and it's
hearing me the next time I openit up.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
I'm sure I'm going to get something later on this
afternoon.
Yeah, I think the UK willdefinitely be cold enough and
then, in terms of you're justtrying to, if you wanted to
progress, to maybe puttingyourself in colder water, is it
best to build up just time eachday, or time every couple of
days?
What are we looking to do here?
Speaker 3 (41:14):
I would go to like a week.
Once you kind of feelcomfortable at a certain
temperature, then you increaseit and stay a little bit longer
and stay a little bit longer,you know, at the temperatures
we're doing 30 degrees.
I don't really like peoplestaying in longer than five
minutes.
We typically stay in three,three-ish minutes, but most of
the people are cold, adapted andhave been doing it for a while.
(41:35):
If you've never done it.
50 degrees Fahrenheit, which isroughly about 10 degrees Celsius
, I think somewhere in thatrange, and you know a good rule
of thumb there is like you cango to.
So 10 degrees Celsius is about10, you want to stay in about 10
minutes if you can adapt tothat.
So you kind of go to the degreeCelsius for a time domain as
(41:59):
well.
I'm kind of trying to work upthere and a lot of the older
research was 50 to 60 degrees,but they were putting people in
to cold tubs for, like I think,one of the things they would.
Just you sat in a lawn chair ina cold 60 degree pool for like
an hour.
Nobody can do that.
That's one of the reasons weramp up or ramp down the
(42:21):
temperature and take the timedown as well.
It's a little bit more intense,but it's kind of gradually.
As you feel comfortable, youcan lower the temperature, is
what I would say.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Fair enough.
One question I have that Iexpect the answer is again it
depends, but what have you gotagainst fitness trackers?
Speaker 3 (42:56):
them.
I think I had the first OuraRing, which I thought was great.
That was the first time Ireally ever tracked my sleep.
I think that was the only onetracking sleep that I can
remember, back in 2017, 2018.
What I think can be a problemis people become wedded to the
information and from there theyonly feel good if their tracker
tells them they're feeling goodor they have to burn an X number
of calories a day.
And the problem is most of thisstuff is not very accurate.
(43:20):
Even now I've heard of peopledoing studies where they will
put on the same tracker ondifferent risks and get two
totally different readings fromsleep HIV, everything being
different.
They're relatively good on yourheart rate, on your steps, so if
you've never worn one for one,getting an understanding of how
many steps you're actuallytaking a day, we have a lot of
(43:41):
clients who are active athletesbut they might sit at a desk all
day.
So while you work out one houra day, if you get 4,000 steps,
that's not really you're nothaving an active lifestyle.
So getting a base understandingof that.
Or maybe your resting heartrate is upper 60s, 70s, when
ideally you want to be in muchlower for your active, healthy
(44:02):
person Knowing your respirationrate.
I think it's great when youfirst start using those.
Like you said, richard, earlieryou had the client who was over
20.
That's exceptionally high for arespiration rate when you're
just sitting there.
I was actually trying to think,man, have I seen anybody just
have a resting respiration rate?
When you're just sitting there,I was actually trying to think
I'm like man, have I seenanybody just have a resting
respiration rate?
No, I get worried when they'rearound, when they're getting
close to 20, that's definitelymean you're in a chronically
(44:24):
stressed state.
So getting some understandingthe sleep data, the sleep stages
I think from some of theresearch I've read, they're
about 60% accurate, so but theyare very good at telling you how
long you're actually asleep andhow long you're a bed.
So getting an understanding ofyour sleep efficiency.
I think that helps.
(44:45):
And when you get stressed outbecause your data on your watch
or your Oura Ring or your Whoopisn't telling you what you want
to hear and that's upsetting youbecause maybe you thought your
HRV should be XYZ and you see it, or it said you had bad sleep
data, take it off Like what goodis it doing if it's adding more
stress in your life.
So I think it.
You know there's great times touse it, but if you become too
worried about that data, thenthat's problem.
(45:07):
It's better to get a betterunderstanding of what's actually
going on inside.
So when you start working andusing the data and like, oh okay
, this is how I actually feel,maybe when I've gotten eight
plus hours of sleep, this is howI feel when I am well rested or
my heart rate's relatively lowkind of getting a better
understanding of what's going oninside of you.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
I think is very subjective.
I think it reads some people'ssleep really well.
I think it reads Natalia'ssleep, my wife's very easily
because she sleeps pretty deeplyand she's a champion sleep
score every night, 95 plus.
But mine is sometimes in thelow 70s my sleep efficiency, and
I did calibrate it with theDreamSleep.
So sleep is an eeg sleeptracker.
(45:57):
So it's actually usingfirst-hand metrics, it's
actually reading your brainwaves, whereas the aura in the
whoop they're using second-handdata and my aura gave me like a
78 sleep efficiency and thedream sleep gave me like 92.
So that was when I really sortof lost faith in my aura rings
ability to track sleepefficiency.
But yeah, as say, I think forsome people it can be very good
(46:19):
to, you know, affirm thatthey're good sleepers, like
Natalia and some people it canmake them think they have
insomnia when they don't.
Speaker 3 (46:26):
Yeah, and when you look at a lot of those things
that well, how they do HRV, howthey do their recovery scores or
something, they're all just analgorithm and they change those
algorithms all the time anddon't tell you.
They're all just an algorithmand they change those algorithms
all the time and don't tell you.
So it's like all right, youknow why did my stuff suddenly
shift?
Speaker 2 (46:45):
What could be?
They just updated the softwareand change the algorithm.
Yeah, what is?
I've seen this sleep efficiencymetrics and it's basically
total sleep as a factor of totaltime in bed, if I'm not
mistaken.
So what is the problem?
If you just want to lie in bedfor longer, even though your
sleep might be, you know, youmight still get eight hours if
you're in bed for 10, 10 hoursor eight.
(47:06):
So why does sleep efficiencymatter?
Speaker 1 (47:09):
I think, yeah, if you're just having a lie in,
then that's going to distort thedata and if, when I do have a
lie in, I will edit it in oringto take out that lie in.
But it's more like, well, I'mhaving these gaps in my sleep in
the middle of the night whenI'm trying to be asleep, so
that's when it's.
You know it's a problem becauseI did used to wake up many
times, used to go to the toiletsort of four or five times in
(47:31):
the night and then struggled toget back to sleep.
So I did have a problem withsleep efficiency.
But yeah, you are right, if youspend a load of time, you know,
reading a book and it thinksyou're asleep.
That's gonna distort it, yeahbut you can map, you can
manually edit that okay one lastquestion for me, taylor.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Where do you, where do we find you?
Speaker 3 (47:52):
you can find my website is wwwsymmetrylive, on
Instagram, at symmetrylive or atTaylor underscore.
Underscore Somerville Threeeasiest places, awesome.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
And so what's next for you?
Got anything exciting lined up.
Speaker 3 (48:09):
Right now we've got a new group coaching cohort that
starts on September 10th, Gotsome good corporate work that
we're working on and then reallystart getting ready for next
year, maybe turning some of thegroup stuff and what we do into
a more online course.
We use a lot of recordedmodules as part of that, so
that's something we'recontemplating and working on.
(48:31):
And then you know it's a lotchasing around a little baby 45,
so I'm an old dad and I justcontinue and watch her grow.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
Awesome.
Yeah well, good luck with allof that, and it's been a
pleasure talking to you.
Thanks for trying to get peoplemore healthy and for giving us
some practical tips for our ownlives as well.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Thank you for having me guys me as we're going to
talk about how burnt out you areandy, how terrible you look.
Not this again, we arerecording, andy, yeah, okay,
yeah, we are recording.
(49:13):
I, I did.
I did just bring that on you.
But one thing I do want to say apoint I do make is this sort of
impossible situation that somepeople get stuck in with
something like burnout or withtaking control of their health.
Sometimes you see people andthey're really stressed out,
they're not sleeping, they'vegot a digestive problem, all
these things, things.
(49:39):
And me, as you know, a holisticperson, is telling them you
know, try meditation, try breathwork, to try all these things,
and they're always just like oh,I haven't got the time, I
haven't got the money, you know,lucky, isn't it nice for you to
be able to do breath work?
That's the kind of attitude youget with some people.
It's gonna be reallyfrustrating because you can see
someone's well, they arecomplaining all the time about
their health, but then theywon't do anything about it.
There's there's the one type ofperson.
The other problem, the othersituation you get is when
(50:01):
someone is trying to take careof their health but then
everyone around them issabotaging them.
It is the, you know, theoverstressed mom, the you know
the burnt out father and youknow, let's say, in those two
examples, the the overstressedmom.
Everyone needs her to keepdoing her thing, everyone needs
her to keep burning herself outfor, for the family or in the,
(50:23):
the corporate environment, theboss doesn't care about your
health or your chronic fatigue,they just care about their,
their bottom line, and so, yeah,you can get made to feel guilty
for taking time for yourself incertain scenarios.
So there are many, manychallenges to to, yeah, taking
care of your health.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
And what I liked is that taylor um had walked the
walk.
You know he obviously workswith a lot of um high achievers
and he sounds like he was a veryhigh achiever as well, isn't
and is now a completely um in acompletely different field
achieving, and I think there'sthat authenticity of like he
knows what it's like to sort offeel that stress and also how to
(51:01):
alleviate it.
So I was really really cool guyand learned a lot.
I like the.
I love the practicalimplications.
I'm actually going to give acold shower a try.
Moved away from cold watersubmersion probably when it got
I didn't have an ice bathanymore, but I will try that
tomorrow, building into that whynot good man.
Speaker 1 (51:21):
Enjoy the british winter as it's coming all right,
where do they?
Speaker 2 (51:27):
find us andy great question instagram at andy sam.
At the breath geek, richard hasa website richard l blake.
And then it's laughing throughthe pain, navigating wellness on
all podcast platforms that'sright.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
Like subscribe, write us a review.
We do read them out sometimes.
And yeah, sign up to thenewsletter as well, because that
is gonna be coming at you morefrequently.
All right, thanks, andy.
Thanks rich bye.
Thanks, listener yeah probablythank the listener as well yeah
probably as well, all right, bye.
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