Unlocking the Power of Breath Work with Barney Mercer

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Barnie Mercer, Welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
So me. We're going to talk a lot about breath
work and a few other things, and you are an
awesome breathwork facilitator. I've been to a few of your
breathwork classes. Yeah, one of them, I, as you remember,
brought my now fifteen year old Oscar to it. And
now Oscar, some of the listeners will be a were

(00:35):
He got diagnosed with Cushing's disease a couple of years ago,
which is a pretty fucking horrible disease that's basically a
tumor on the peture tree that causes the hyper secretion
of cortisol for like ridiculous amounts for long periods of time.
Does a number of things. Makes you gain weight. Really

(00:56):
it starts attacking your organs, but destroys your mental health.
And anyway, he got that resolved, and we were trying
to get some mental health support with him, and he
had a really bad experience with a fucking awful psychiatrist.
And I actually took him to a breath work session
with you, and we were talking about mental health the

(01:19):
other day and just randomly, it was a conversation at
the dinner table and Oscar went he said, if I
ever have any mental health problems again in my life,
no way am I going to see a psychiatrist or
a psychologist. I'm going to take myself along to Barney's
breathwork session because Oscar said that after your session, and

(01:45):
I'll tell the story. You may or may not remember this,
but we were lying down going through the whole breathwork thing.
Somebody in the room started sort of crying slash wheeling
a little bit, and Oscar said to me afterwards, he
was landing there breathing away, and he was like, Jesus,
what is that person doing? Why are they crying? You

(02:08):
know that's weak. And then all of a sudden he
started crying uncontrollably, just out of nowhere. He had no
idea what was going on, and he wasn't upset, but
he just said that it just afterwards, he said it
felt like his body needed to do it. But he

(02:29):
noticed afterwards, and it wasn't for a couple of months
that he was talking about his cushions that came up
and he said, Jesus, I've not noticed that I can
talk about my cushings without getting upset, because every other
time previously he had talked about his cushions disease. He
started to tear up because obviously there was so much

(02:51):
emotion there and now he can just talk about it.
He says, it's almost like it happened to somebody else.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
That's really cool. That's really cool.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
Foreback, I love it, Like when your when your wife
sent me that message, I was like, I was. I
actually had a bit of a cry myself, you know,
I was like, Wow, that's so cool.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
I remember.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
I actually remember that day really really vividly, because you
completely threw me under the bus because you booked He
booked four tickets and you made you You showed me
a hole in my system because I didn't know that
you were a fourteen year old. Ah, that's literally the
limit of the age limit that I go in those
big group sessions. That's the youngest I'll do. Oh there's

(03:31):
a there's a young lad here. I didn't any other backstory,
and I didn't know anything about it. It was really
cool to watch him go through. And I remember one
point he had his eyes were wide open. Yes, I
just checked in. I just did that.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
Nothing from him like.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
No one, Yeah, okay, cool, he's here to be asterwards.
He says, Oh shit, were you supposed to close your eyes?

Speaker 3 (03:54):
I didn't realize he did have them closed it at
one point, and then I came back and they were wide,
and then I came back again the floodgates. It was
not what I was expecting at all, because generally with
teenagers they tend to sit rather than fully participate, at

(04:14):
least for the first one. You know, it's that sort
of weird room full of adults being generally kind of weird,
lying on the floor and breathing him, and it's quite
overwhelm quite overwhelming for young people to actually experience. So
for him to go through it in the manner that
he did was crazy. And then when he started, when
he started crying that just leave me alone.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
I didn't go through.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
No. I have subsequently taken a me out there who's
gone through a messy divorce and he had a bit
of an emotional breakthrough. I have done some previous breath
work sessions with Oh fucking hell No, this was years ago.
What's his name? He he's the guy taught Tony Robbins

(05:02):
how to breathe. He's a very famous America's been doing
breath work for ages and we did holotropic breathing, which
was similar to the stuff that we did with you,
but it's slightly different. And when we did it for
like fifty five minutes or our solid and it was bonkers. Yeah,
somebody remembered their birth, said they actually remembered their birth.

(05:25):
There were people fucking wheeling in the room. Look, I'm
quite lucky and that I don't have much baggage, or
I don't think I really have any bag. So I've
never felt anything in those breath work sessions. But I
tell you what I felt like. I was absolutely off
my chops on trucks, right and so. But but there's

(05:48):
there's clearly, because I started thinking about the whole physiology thing,
there's clearly an impact on neurotransmitters. Right with that type
of breathing, they changes in carbon dioxide and oxygen levels,
and definitely there's something going on with neural transmitters, because

(06:08):
I can tell you I've not felt like that without
some chemical assistance. Right.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
It's that full sort of altered state. It's that sort
of release, yes and all that sort of thing. And
a good good friend of mine does a whole a
whole workshop on he calls it.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
Oh what he calls it?

Speaker 3 (06:30):
He implies that everyone's going to get mushroom. It's the
whole thing is that you don't need the mushrooms, You
just need the breathing.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
Because I remember saying reading that that type of breathing
can release d MT. So d m T for the
for the listeners to two times in your life. The
d MT is released in massive amounts, once at birth
and months at death. And they believe that the d
m T actually is there is that whole journey in

(07:00):
to the light, is the d MT going off. I
have had d.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
M T.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Through ayahuasca, So the aahwuasca blend in the Amazon includes
d MT and it's a very potent, very potent to lucinogen.
So other than the d MT, like physiologically, what's going on? Actually,

(07:28):
I think we need to take a step back and
introduce me. Introduce you, not me, that's my podcast, probably
introduce you, right, So, so party to tell people how
you found your way to breath work and all of
the accessory stuff that you currently.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
Do not have.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
You got man plenty of time.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
Basically I found my way to breath work. I was
in a hell of a mess. Surviving life I was in.
I was working hard, producing children, keeping their roof over
the house, all that sort of stuff, and drinking way
too much as people is not something I hide, and

(08:19):
I started to find myself getting drawn towards meditation, things
like sound heat. I knew something needed to be done
that I wasn't doing. I'm a personal trainer as well.
I was learning about breathing in the gym, like how
to connect to my make my muscle connections with different

(08:40):
breath patterns, creating a sympathetic response a specific muscle through
breath patterns and movement.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
All this sort of stuff.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
Basically just also leaning into the anxiety depression side of things,
so rather than just go to the gym it will
help your mental health. We were really sort of deep
diving into the rabbit hole of well, how do we
actually do that? And then they were making us do
workouts like breathe only through your nose for the whole workout,
crazy crazy CrossFit workouts with mouth shut blowing snot all

(09:11):
over the place, or just like an hour on a rower,
like don't do anything but row for an hour, you
breathing through your nose. I can talk about that for
hours because it's really really cool and really beneficial. Then
my I think it was my mayo therapist. We were
talking about all this sort of stuff. She says, Oh,
there's some two doors down, there's a place and they're

(09:32):
putting on a breathwork thing.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
You should go. And I was like, yeah, cool them up,
and I went along full of resistance.

Speaker 3 (09:45):
It was that bring the yoga mat, bring a water bottle,
bring a blanket, bring a pillow, bring a journal.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
Or bring all these things. And I was just like,
I was so full of resistance.

Speaker 3 (09:54):
I just rocked up with my water bottle to the
point where there weren't any spare mats, so I had
to lie on.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
The hardwood floor, you know, not lesson quick.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
Yeah, I just had I just had to find a
space of die down. And it was it was like
thirty people in the room. This lady, she was beautiful,
she just said. But the elation was real brief. It
was like breathing here through your mouth, breathing here in
the same breath and breathe out.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Let's go.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
Okay cool. And I I didn't really understand what it
was for or what was going on. But I like
a challenge and I like to push myself in anything. Yeah,
so she goes right breathe like as hard as you
can for forty five minutes. So if we went, we
all started in rhythm and then everyone often it's different

(10:43):
than what have you, So there was no real sort.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
Of leading from her.

Speaker 3 (10:46):
It was more gentle guidance from around the edges, which
was cool. So there's more of your holotropic breath. And
like a half hour in, I just felt so so
at peace, so rested, so rest and then just this
sensation started at my tues and then just whipped through

(11:10):
my body out the top of my head, like a
full tingling sensation. It was kind of panicky, kind of weird,
and I just started crying. I didn't stop, and I
didn't want it to stop. I was I didn't feel sad.
I didn't have any sort of visual representation of what

(11:32):
I was crying. I was just letting it all out.
It was literally like the bottle was someone had shaken
up the bottle, you know, the fizzy bottle was so
desperate to leak something out, and the breath worker just
loosened the lid that little bit and now it's all
escaping out the side. And that's what it was, and
I was just and then eventually maybe it felt like

(11:53):
an hour I went past, but it was probably only
like five ten minutes. And then we went into the
more shabaster end of it. And then I, like you said,
I was colors and tripping just so peacefully relaxed. And
then it was peel yourself off the floor and get
to little groups of three and talk about what just happened.
I literally in the pool of sweat on the floor

(12:16):
and I couldn't explain what had gone on.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
Got home, my wife says to me, She goes, oh,
what was that all about? So I really don't know.

Speaker 3 (12:25):
We just lay on the floor and I breathed hard
and I cried it a lot. She said, how do
you feel? I felt amazing, and I could you know.
I was standing up to all and my ribcage felt
like I could get more in and all this sort
of stuff. But I felt more at peace and more
calm than I had done in years. And it was

(12:47):
that day, that moment, as I was walking out, I
remember walking towards the door thinking I found the thing.
I found the thing that will allow me to express myself,
because you know, growing up in in England or in
a boarding school.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
The way we did.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
It was very much, don't do that, don't feel that,
don't express that. Be happy, don't be sad, don't be
too excited, don't be too over the top, be homesick,
miss your parents, all these things. Don't be pissed off
because someone's just beating you up or whatever it is.
So for the rest of my life, I kept all

(13:27):
that in and on that day, like I said, we
just loosened off the liddle a little bit, but we
let the pressure off it just I could feel it
in here.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
I didn't.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
I never really understood what people meant when they said, oh,
creating space. I literally felt like I'd let some shit
out and I'd created space for me, for myself to
be more present within my body. And then I took
that and when I went back to the gym and
I started to actually feel my body way more, my
injuries started to go away, all these other things, and

(14:00):
like I went every week, I was like, breath works
my thing. This is how I went. Next thing, you know,
I'd already sobered up by this point. But the next thing,
you know, like that wasn't con I wasn't interested in
the way shape or form. I was like, I found
the thing because I always felt like I was going
two steps forward, eight steps back, and now I was like,

(14:21):
just that's where I'm And then yeah, I'm just messing
about online as you do. And there's this big advert
come up with these guys standing on the top of
a mountain with their shirts off in the snow.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
Go do that. And I went there purely ego.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
Driven vim half by any chance, No.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
I wasn't wim half.

Speaker 3 (14:42):
It was one of his one of his first ever
instructor actually, a guy called Johannah's Eggberts.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
Johanna's. Yeah, I know, Hannah. I I did some stuff
for p w C and your Hannas.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
That was last year.

Speaker 1 (14:59):
Yeah. Yeah, Johannes was taking the breath work and the
I spat yeah, a couple of years ago. He's a
great guy, really really cool guy.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:06):
So I met him on that trip and I went
there purely for this photo. It's gonna be really cool,
and like everyone was like, oh, you're nutsy, and anyone
who has actually been to the mountains, and you know.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
What the mountains was that in Coziostical was No, it
was hot on me.

Speaker 3 (15:20):
It was his first trip, and so I went along
and I nearly came. I stopped the car halfway because
I don't like at the time, I didn't like being
in big groups of men, so I nearly came home,
and I forced myself to go. It's all out of
my comfort sort of ship. And it turns out that
breath work was the thing just taught me so much

(15:43):
while I was away. It was a different time of
breath He developed into the science a little bit for us.
He really sort of explained it, and we got to
go up into the mountain to do the top off thing,
and it turned out it was like an eighty kilometer
an hour blizzard, complete white out. It was terrifying, which
it's fantastic because you know, if you go to the
mountains when it's sunny, you can take your shirts off

(16:04):
and you won't even know.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
But then that that was.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
You know, it'd all been experiential for me up until
that point, and then he started teaching us the sciencey
tire side of things. And then the next thing, you know,
I don't want to go home. I want to stay
here with this guy. Well I learned, and that was
like June. So then in November, I went and did
my Level one with him breathwork instructor and like, it's

(16:32):
a far four or five day thing, and said that
you've done three months worth of online stuff. And by
the time I got there, I was just like, you know,
I was a tradesman. I was like, I don't want
to be here and become a healer. I just want
to fix myself. I'm here purely for personal reasons. I'm
not here to teach anyone anything or go home and

(16:53):
start preaching anything. And he basically the whole system was
he broke it down. There was so much breath over
the five days, and they rebuilt us back up again
and educated us. I got home, well, I can't not
share this now, I mean, I mean And then of course,
another four or five months later I went off and

(17:14):
did my Masters, which was so much deeper and so
much more. You know, I could have ever imagined it
would have been. It's crazy then. Ever since then, it's
just been it just feels natural to get a group
of people together and make them bricked hard on the floor,
or even just do one at once and talk science
with people. By means, any sort of expert when it

(17:37):
comes to the science, and but you know, I know
what I know, and I know how it feels, and
I know what I've experienced with it and how it's
helped with my mental health, my depression, the state of
freeze anxiety. Anxiety is not something that I I even
give a second thought more. You know, I used mad
mad panic attacks. It would really stop me and hold me.

(18:01):
But now it's just I know how my body works,
how my nervous system works for the first time forty
seven years old, and I've only just mastered this year.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
And we should be teaching kids.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
This when there's like ten Yeah, So it's you know,
it's it's been so totally life changing for me that
it's okay cool.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Can we not go out and spread the word of it? So?

Speaker 1 (18:25):
Yes, So let's talk about what you currently do. So
I've been to a few of your breath work sessions,
and we obviously live pretty close to each other. We
go to the same CrossFit gym as well. But tell
our listeners the sort of class, because I've been in
your classes and I've seen live people having real breakthroughs,

(18:46):
generally people who are struggling emotionally. Right, the fucking the
psychologists would be tearing their hair out and screaming and
jumping up and diying. But you're also a trauma informed coach,
so of course talk to us about what you do
and how you you walk that type rope, because clearly
there's big emotional releases that people get if they're holding

(19:10):
stuff in. And it reminds me of the book. I
can't remember that the author excives me, but the body
keeps the score. The idea that we hold emotional tension
in our body, which initially I thought, is that truly?
Is that horseshit? But then I've actually seen on numerous

(19:31):
occasions people having massive emotional releases just from breathing, And
as a physiologist and neuroscientists and now psychologist, I'm like,
what the fuck is going on here?

Speaker 3 (19:45):
Yeah, it's crazy. So what I do is it's a
group session. So about the bulk of what I do
is group sessions.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
I do.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
I do do some one on one stuff, but I
don't really do the big deep dive breath work sessions.
In a one on one scenario, I don't feel personally
that it's going to be as effective. I think it
needs that group shared energy sort of environment.

Speaker 1 (20:14):
Yeah, it is interesting, the group energy.

Speaker 3 (20:17):
Yeah, some people always say I'm a bit too nervous.
I'd rather be on my own. But then I point out,
and it's just going to be you and me, and
it's going to be really awkward.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
You know.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
At first, you know, I thought, you know, for me personally,
i'd do it, no problem now. But when I first
started my breath work sort of side to think journey
as it were, it was like a one on one
You've got to be crazy.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
I'm not doing that.

Speaker 3 (20:40):
So it is very much a very private, very personal
experience done on a ship level. So and it's never
ever really lost on me the vulnerability required for someone
to sorry I touched the table not only just buy
the ticket, turn up, but also walks through the door

(21:01):
to be confronted by a six foot bald, bearded, tattooed guy.

Speaker 1 (21:06):
Who looks like he's who looks like he's out of
the game of Throns, right, Yeah, and then it's monster.

Speaker 3 (21:11):
Yeah, it's like right, like love out on the floor
and close your eyes. Yeah, it's like and do what
I tell you.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah, you're not when you think about breath work, you're
not the stereotypical teacher, right, because I remember walking in
and you're you've got to be at least six foot
and massively muscle. You look like you're out of the
game of throws, right. You look like you're Viking with
all the touns and stuff like that, and it can
be disarming for people. It's like, well, Jesus, this dude

(21:40):
is teaching birth work.

Speaker 3 (21:42):
So it's just like, that's one of the things that
we learned very quickly is it's all about the way
you present yourself and the scene setting and creating an environment.
So you know, when you walk into my room and like,
if you'd asked me this five ten years ago, I
would after you. But nothing makes me more happy than

(22:03):
setting up fairy lights and fake candles, and you know,
it's just like I'm like, I'm like dancing round of
the room like it's a Christmas eve.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
You know.

Speaker 3 (22:11):
I was just like, I havn't the best time setting
up this room making it look all cozy. And even
for men's groups as well, it's like I do the
same thing. You know, you think these big men are
coming in and I'm set up all these fairy lights
and you know, I'm sitting there half in the dark
with some crystal bowls and ship and it's like that's
getting on to here.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
But that's it.

Speaker 3 (22:30):
It's like you bring them through the door and you
you you instantly create comfort and safety, and then they
then you. Then they go into the room and they're like, wow,
oh this looks really cool and it can be an
environment I can, I can, I can relax in because
I've been to breath work where it's just a room
with the lights on and you're like, aha, you can't.
Everyone's looking at each other, no one's talking to each other.

(22:53):
It's already awkward. Whereas when the light's off and there's
just candles and fairy lights, people start talking to each
other and people start just instantly relaxing. And then I
sit at the front and I make a few jokes
about you know whatever, and everyone said was in it's beautiful.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
So then and you sound like Barry White as well,
which people.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
So yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:19):
So the idea is that we get the group in,
I will then explain a bit about myself. So I'll
always explain my journey like I just did with you,
but maybe in a different manner so that I can
then level the plane. So I've been you, I've been
in your map. I've been nervous, i have not wanted
to be here, but I've surrendered to the process.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
I got what I needed. M hm.

Speaker 3 (23:41):
You know, I didn't get what I wanted, but I
got what I needed, which then took me on my
way to what I wanted. So that the process, and
then I'll explain what we're going to do, what it's
going to make it feel like, how it's going to
present itself to them, you know, body tingles, lobster of
handy things and yeah, h just the process that we're

(24:04):
gonna start super slow. We can slow down with breathold.
We can do that all the while trying to explain
what's actually going on within their bodies and then explaining that. Yes,
for me, in my first session, it was a big
cry fest, and it was like that for the first year.
Then it became evers and other stuff. Could be that
your emotional release is in fact an emotional release, which

(24:28):
is cool. It might be a little tear down the side.
People always laugh that their ears fill up with tears.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
It's quite funny.

Speaker 3 (24:36):
Other people, it will be just a super blissful, buzzy,
calm minds quiet state or.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
Yeah, that's that's the way that I.

Speaker 2 (24:47):
Feel all the colors.

Speaker 3 (24:50):
Like some people have the wild stories of past lives
or feeling like the tree or whatever.

Speaker 2 (24:59):
Then there's other people that the.

Speaker 3 (25:01):
Release is physical, so it will be your cramping, it
will be that you know, shaking and the vibrating and
and what what's.

Speaker 1 (25:09):
What's going what's going on? What's going on there?

Speaker 3 (25:12):
And I run a different session I've actually been talking
to your wife about called TRE which is trauma release exercise.
So that's where we actually encourage movement to allow the body.
So if you think about it, if you ever see it,
heard the story of like the zebra and the lion.
So if you've got your zebra's there and it's it's
munching on the grass, and then you've got your lions

(25:34):
stalking it, it doesn't see it. He's getting close enough
to get to the lion. Then all the zebras look
up lion and they all start running. The lion focuses
on this one zebra. Loungeon gets its claws into its backside.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
Let's go. The zebra gets away.

Speaker 3 (25:55):
The lion goes, now, I'm not that hungry, and goes
and lies down. The zebra then catches up with all
the other zebras find safety, find safety as you do,
and then starts eating the grass. But what you'll see,
and you'll see this on like Wildlife documentary, is the
zebra that starts shaking from the tail through to the
oh yes, yes, like the dog when it's wet, but

(26:18):
way more smaller and faster. So the whole does it
all the way down the body and he goes oh grass.
Let's forgets about the lion. So the lions now a
thing of the past. We don't, you know whereas we
go through our traumas immediately the frontal loads of the brand.
You probably know more about this than I do. But

(26:39):
shuts down our response or our social expectations upon ourselves.
Shuts down our response like I want to cry, or
I really want to scream and shout, Like I had
a concussion at work the other day. All I felt
such rage that I wanted to scream and shout, and
I was like, I can't. I can't do that here,
So I dealt with it in another way. I did
some breathing somewhere else.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
But we're conditioned to keep everything in. I'll deal with
that later.

Speaker 3 (27:07):
Twenty five years later, we're still down in the pub
talking about what happened to me when I was fifteen
years old. Whereas the zebra has done it is for
a trauma release and a grass yes doesn't have the
same brain as ours and all that sort of thing,
but yeah, that's what we're after with the breast is
it might just be that you need to have that

(27:29):
emotional release, but it also might be the physical side
of things. So, you know, we talk about trauma, big trauma,
little trauma, you know, the crazy stuff all the way
through to so and so was picking on me every
day for a year at work or a school or what.

Speaker 2 (27:45):
We store.

Speaker 3 (27:46):
We don't store the actual thing that happened to us.
We store the way our body responded, and that's stuck
in our muscles, which is why, you know, it's really
interesting to me when we do I do work with
people in the gym and we're doing sort of emotional
release stuff in the gym. You know, you can see

(28:06):
the blockages on their physiology when you get them to
sort of if it's a man, take their shirt off,
women as close to to that as we can we
get holding away plate over their heads. I'd love to
do this for you see, and then we can see
how the backwards reacts and we can see what's working,
what's not working, and how the muscles then start to

(28:28):
freak out, and then we can we can fix it
via via various methods of training and what. But so,
what I'm getting at really is but the simple way
of doing it is lying on the floor and switching
that frontal low boll through those really really big long
breasts that we do. So it's that full inhale into

(28:50):
the diaphragm down here, then up into the chest, but
not up into the head, and then just lease out
whatever you need to release out gradually. As we it
through that, this all starts to quiet and down the
it starts sending all sorts of weird messages like this is.

Speaker 2 (29:06):
Wrong, you're in the wrong room, you're doing it wrong.

Speaker 3 (29:08):
You shouldn't be here, this is scary, my hair hurts
my hand, And then your hands start doing this weird.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
Thing like your bodies.

Speaker 3 (29:16):
Your brain's trying to bring you back online basically, and
once you get past that, then you then you can
start to let everything from here downwards do the processing.
It's like we talk about icebergs. It's like the tip
of my Icebert going to see you as a psychologist
and talking about our shared tip.

Speaker 2 (29:35):
Of ice experiences.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
Okay, well, what if we just cut the ice but off,
tipically off, and of the stuff under the water actually
come out.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
Deal with this, deal with it.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
It's interesting because the mad of mine wo'd been through
the massive divorce and did the breath work session with you.
He said his hands turned into claws and all cramped up,
And so that that's what you're talking about with the
lobster hands.

Speaker 3 (30:02):
Yeah, that's it's actually so tetany. I don't know why
it's called techny, that's just the name it's been given.
I haven't really sort of research into it, but that
again is it's it's the body trying to bring you
back out of.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
You know what.

Speaker 1 (30:19):
You know, as we're talking here, I'm thinking that they
So I've started with the Me and mine Professor Grants Goofield,
the lab called the Hardiness Lab, where we are going
to be testing a whole heap of lifestyle interventions such
as exercise, cold exposure, breath work, heat exposure, nutrition, all

(30:41):
those things. What I would freaking love to do is
have somebody in a functional MRI scanner doing the breath
work to see what's happening in the brain like that
that we just have to do that ship.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
I wouldn't be surprised if someone hadn't done it, to
be honest.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
But I'm I'm thinking as we're talking here, i just
made a note to myself to do some research after
this to see if anybody has done it, because there
is there's there's so much anecdotal evidence. If you go
online and you just look at people talking about their
experience in breath work, right, there are thousands of people

(31:24):
like Mimi, like Oscar, like the other people I've seen
in your class, like the all the people I saw
in dan Brula that's the guy's name and I did
years ago, right, And the amount of people I saw
in there having these emotional releases in it. It's just
it's so consistent that it's like, fucking hell, why hasn't

(31:45):
anybody really dove into what is going on here physiologically?
You know, I'm sure that there's there's people who have
their theories, but I'd love to see what's happening in
the brilliant I'd love to see what's happening in the
nerve system. Clearly the autonomic nervous system is heavily involved
in this, with the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. Right, there's

(32:07):
there's there's there's no doubt. And I know that the
breath can change neurotransmitters in the brain. We've really talked
about d m T. But there is just such powerful
effects throughout the body that the and and the psychology
community would be skurd shitless of it, and hence they
want to shut it down. And if if psychologists or

(32:29):
psychiatrists were to walk into any number of breath work sessions,
they would be I think a lot of them going,
this is fucking art reigious. You shouldn't be doing this
with our you know, proper psychologists are like they own
emotional release. Yeah, you get a lot of that, you
get and this is this is said from a psychologist.

Speaker 3 (32:48):
Yeah you get people said it's dangerous, you should have
more support, it should be more this that than the other,
and words of it. The interesting thing I found with
with psychologists or psychology its like, up until I started breathwork,
I really struggled withiss Like, like I said, it was
always in the same story and not really getting anywhere.

(33:11):
But then after I started breath, I actually allowed myself
to go to the psychologist or my counselor whoever it
was at the time and actually listened to what they
had to say. You know, I found it not easier
to be in that process. I was more comfortable with
where I would. You know, I kind of figured myself
out a bit first. Then I went to the psychologist

(33:33):
and we could actually have a proper conversation rather than
just just feeling overwhelmed and depressed because I had to
see a psychologist and all that sort of stuff. So
it was it was interesting for my in my experience.
I mean, I still see a counselor.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
Yeah, that interesting you say that. I interviewed a guy
as fucking me and escips me. Paul Paul Libermotski I've
pronounce just read him, but so he he basically is
the lead researcher and practitioner of psychedelic psychedelic assisted therapies
in Australia, right, So so he he runs the first

(34:14):
he does all the research. I think it's a deacon.
I can't quite remember, but there is a there is
a yeah in atmosphere. So Paul Paul Luberminski or something right.
But and and and brilliant guy I did. I shared
the stage with him when we did talks to the
Young Presidents Association, but and then I had a chat

(34:34):
with him afterwards. But and then obviously interviewed him on
the podcast. But he said that the psychedelics act as
a rocket ship for therapy and just open people's minds
massively to the therapeutic process. But his thing and and

(34:55):
very much I think like yours. If you if you
are going to use a rocket ship, you need to
know how to drive the rocket chip. And that's where
the facilitator of the breath work comes in. Yes, And
the way that you set it up, like having witnessed it,
the way that you set it up give the expectation
of people, create that very calm, safe environment, even with

(35:18):
a bunch of strangers, and then the conversations afterwards where
people talk about what they went through. I mean, I'm
looking at this and going this is fucking this is brilliant.
From a therapy perspective, there's that shured connection between people.
And we know recent research comes out that shows that
when people do stuff in rhythm, whether it's singing, chanting,

(35:42):
and it didn't mention this, but I thought straight away,
marching right military when you do stuff in unison, breathwork
would be into it. There becomes a very strong bond
between those people emotionally, right, and and you can you
can actually see this from the start of the class

(36:03):
that you're into the end. So I'm obviously coming into
your class and looking at it one from an experience
so perspective, but also with my kind of researcher's hat
on looking around at what's going. But but it is,
it's a very interesting And I get your point about
doing it as a sure journey rather than one on one.

(36:24):
I think one on one it would be a very
different vibe than it is with a bunch of people
even who are are strangers. And talk to us about
your the man's stuff that you do specifically, so you
do you do sessions for for everybody, but then you
do man stuff. You also do a sound healing which
Carly went to which I didn't get to, but I

(36:46):
want to go to the next one or not aging energy,
not not sign energy healer, actually work with it.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
That's actually happening tonight.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
Right, So talk us through those different classes and higher
they actually different and what are you trying to achieve that?

Speaker 3 (37:02):
Yes, So my normal class is just it's open, it's
all ages or sexes or whatever.

Speaker 2 (37:10):
It's a beautiful community thing. But then.

Speaker 3 (37:14):
I also do the men's session. So a lot of
the time when men come to breath work and I
do beginning, I do a bit of an icebreakers, like
give me three to five words as to way or here,
and mostly the men will be she.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
Brought me, my wife told me yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
Or my wife brought me the ticket, and now here
I am. You know, So with men, do we like
to know how things work before we commit ourselves to
In my opinion.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
I mean so.

Speaker 3 (37:49):
When the men are in a room full of the
women will surrender beautifully every time, not every time, but
most of the time that like, at least eighty percent
of the women go, let's this is my time, this
is my quiet, I'm going for it, Let's get into
this ship and the sharing app is crazy at the end.

(38:10):
The guys, on the other hand, will either feel sort
of slightly wary because they're in a room full of women,
mostly because there'll only be two to five men in
a room of twigs, you know, yes, so they already
feel kind of out of place on edge and then
they go, yeah it's pretty cool, you know, kind of
tingly and yeah, yeah, I'll definitely be back, and I

(38:32):
was like, nay, I'm not going to see you. So
that I created the men's sessions so that it took
a lot of that way. So there's just a big
group of dudes in the room sitting on yoga mats.
I do the exact same stuff. I set it up
and create safety, therefore week ow vulnerability and therefore healing
if you want to call it. It's the exact same setup.

(38:56):
Everything is the same, but it's for the men. And
I sit and I talk more man to man rather
open this is what we're going to do. And then
but I also create more of a I like to
try and create more of a fireside chat to begin with.
So I've got this a frog. It's a wooden frog
about yay big, and it's got a little stick you

(39:18):
can bang it. It's a musical thing.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Ah.

Speaker 3 (39:23):
So I at the beginning, it's not just why you hear,
it's what's going on for you right now. So it's
that sort of fireside chat. So we can then get
them to settle in a bit more and I passed
the frog round. So if you've got the talking frog,
you're the one that's talking. No one can interrupt you
and go, hey, yeah, I know what you mean. No,

(39:46):
it's not your chip. And as a man, I know
full well that sitting in a circle talking to a
group of other men i've never met before eye to
eye is going to really put me on. So they're
talking frog. The men will have the head down and
they'll talk to the frog, or they'll play with it,

(40:08):
they'll fiddle with it. Ah okay, So it's enough to
distract them from the situation in and therefore they will
open nice, nice not only why are you here my
wife bought me a ticket, or I've heard about breathwork.
I just thought, come and see what it's like. Now,
what's actually going on for you right now? And I'll
start I'll say like this week has been terrible, or

(40:32):
or this week's great, you know, like it doesn't always
have to be what you're miserable. Some people come in
and go, I'm having a great time. I really I'm
here to top things up and I want to explore
whatever's next, whereas other people are going, you know, last time,
I think last man's break. We had a couple of
guys who were freshly, so yeah, also talk about that,

(40:52):
and then we go and do the breath work. So
now everyone's already relaxed into it, and now they I
have explained it. I also I say to them, men,
we like to know how things work. You don't need
to know how this work.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
Chill out. I've got you.

Speaker 3 (41:08):
I'm going to keep you safe throughout this whole thing.
You're going to hear my voice the whole way through.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
I'm here.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
Just get into it. Just work hard, do the work,
and you get the bed of the end. And then
we have another share at the end.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
And is there as much it's been opening up and
the men's classes are in the in the open class
that I.

Speaker 3 (41:30):
Was a yeah, I've had some. I remember once I
did a men's session and then in the room across
the hall they were having a.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
What were they doing?

Speaker 3 (41:42):
They were doing like a Christian him singing session. So
they were all singing over there, and the guys.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
There's a pig and pig and red child across the cardinal.

Speaker 3 (41:52):
No, but it was like it was all basically the
gist of it is that it was all old ladies
and a couple of old dudes, and then in my
room there's all these men, and then one of the
guys got really vocal, and then this guy over here
got vocal, and then it got really loud and loud
and loud, and I've got these men screaming and crying
and letting all this rage out of their bodies.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
And so I felt like opening the door with Thory
been a bit loud.

Speaker 3 (42:16):
You know, it got to the point where I couldn't
hear the music so loud.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah, it was just that sort of.

Speaker 3 (42:23):
You are you are free to express yourself, and I
encourage them I go through. So once we're into like
thirty thirty something minutes in, I'm like, well, what if
you put some emotion behind their exit, really start to
push it out, and if I can see on people's
faces where they're at and with that person individually for
like a few seconds to a minute or something, and

(42:44):
just get them to start to go down the path
that they're scared to go down, you know, or they
they feel like they they you know, they're about to
go to a place that they're not sure about, and
I just I just encourage them to tip over the edge,
and I was like, so you, I always say, if
you want to be super loud, you're not disturbing these

(43:04):
people over here, because they might feel like they can't
be super because they're going to disturb you. And it's
that shared energy that we talked about earlier that allows
everyone to relax. Oh cool, or that man, that man
over there is crying and that's making me really sad,
so I'm going to cry. I never did it myself.
The very first time I did a men's I had

(43:25):
a man in one of my sessions and they started
crying and my wife was in the room and she
noticed because she heard my voice crack.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
This guy.

Speaker 3 (43:35):
It was in my garage. It was like the first
ever session I did, and the guys had turned up.
I know him, know what he's been through, and he
started to cry, and it just I just couldn't hold
it in either. I was just so happy for him
and so sad at the same time. It was beautiful.
So yeah, So for me personally, it's actually actually quite hard.
It's a lot harder for me to get through the
men's sessions because I can feel it way more right.

(43:57):
I can feel what they're going through because I can
I can relate as a man obviously, you know with
the mixed session is it is amazing and it affects
me as well. But yeah, just just knowing what it's
like as a bloke to line on the floor and
actually get that release.

Speaker 1 (44:16):
It's and how hard it can be for some guys
to have any sort of emotional yes, I think, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (44:23):
I mean one guy at the last session he yeah,
I had just talked to him after his share because
he was he was being really hard on himself for
having that release, or he's been really hard on himself
for taking the time to work on himself and not
provide and all this sort of shit.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
It's just like, this is exactly what we need. We
need these.

Speaker 3 (44:42):
Moments to to have for ourselves to actually express ourselves,
to take ourselves out of whatever situation, just without any
consequence sort of judgment, feeling and all that sort of stuff.
And the group share at the end of the men's
session is boys, really, can.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
You tell you know you alluded to? Sorry, I'll cut
you off, just just this this quick you alluded to.
When you're going around the room, you can see in
someone that they are reaching a certain point. Is that
fiercial expressions. Is it is it their body or is
it a combination of all of it?

Speaker 3 (45:22):
Man, it's it's it's I can see it on their face.
I can feel it energetically some bizarre way. I'm not
spiritual guru like that. It's I can just tell or
they'll they'll be kind of up like this, and you
can just tell they're this close and if I don't intervene,

(45:44):
they're going to back off. So with a guy, it
would be okay, like if like this, well for anyone, really,
it's spreading open the chest and getting there. Once I've
got the man to open up through here, I can
then stick my thumbs in a couple of trigger points
just underneath the collar into the peck muscle there, and
that has a good Someone did it to me while

(46:06):
I was so bang. I was like, damn it, and
I started balling my eyes up one. Then we can
get into the pecks, because from emotional mapping point of view,
pets your self love.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
So if we can can then just give them a
bit of a proke around.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
In the pecks and then they start they start doing
the mounting here, and then the hands come up and
I can grab their hands and push against their hands,
and then we start to get for you know, into
the brass as we can get that exhale coming on,
and then they start to get louder, and then we
can we can kind of wrestle a bit and then

(46:39):
as I see that then start to subside, I then
can then guide them into a bit more gentle and
wherever it is that they need to go flowing all
along rather than continuously screaming and shouting. But with the ladies,
quite often you can see it on their face and
they're just just almost there. It's around here and down

(47:05):
into the upper trap.

Speaker 1 (47:07):
For those who aren't watching.

Speaker 3 (47:09):
Oh sorry, yeah, yeah, So it's basically basic sort of
a bit of a three trigger point thumb massage into
the base of the skull, down into the upper traps,
down the neck and get underneath and they'll arch immediately
and then they will close down again and then gotcha
is that sort and then then they allowed to step

(47:31):
over into that into that release. No, not every single time, yeah,
but you can. You can just help them along their
way rather than just continuously wandering around the room making
sure everyone's all right. But it's yeah, and obviously we
talk consent before we begin, like there's going to be
the big weird guy is going to put his hands

(47:51):
on you at some point, and I try and make
a little bit of joke about it and not make
it and creepy. But it's always here upwards or knees down.
There is no nothing between the collar and the knee
for anyone. And then sometimes it just feels right for
me to put my hand on some of the leg
and and just allow them to kind of ground a

(48:13):
little bit so flow through me because energy flows out
through the feet apparently then it throws through into the
ground or whatever. And I had people like say, why
did you grab my leg? I'm like, oh shit, I'm
in trouble here, and they said no, because my whole
left side was cramping. It got really really uncomfortable, really
struggling with it. You put your hand on the leg
or then I went off on this beautiful journey of

(48:38):
bliss and peace. So there's there's a certain energy shifting,
which is why I do this session that I'm doing
tonight with Jemma, because she's in fact and energy. So
while I'm doing my breath work, she goes around the
room does what she does and I don't pretend to
understand what she does in anyway.

Speaker 1 (48:57):
Yeah, and Carli actually Carli went to the line that's
one of those, and she said she was because she's
spent her few breath work sessions with you. And then
she said Gemma came around and just touched her on
the shoulders against Carly said she just felt all of
this energy through your body. Says she's never experienced anything

(49:17):
like it before. But that's a get Gemma on the
top about that one.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (49:24):
I could try and explain what she does, but it's
it's it's it's beyond my my, my paygrade.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
But yeah, it's interesting stuff. I find it interesting.

Speaker 3 (49:37):
Uh you've got to be kind of outed as well
if you watch the videos online.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
Okay, pretty odd, but yeah, it works well.

Speaker 3 (49:48):
You know, she does her thing, I do mine. Ultimately
the breath work allows the other stuff to be more
effective in my Yeah, I think you know, you know,
without the breath work, it's just a it's just an
energy heating session with it. So it's it's it's it's
very deep and we get some cool results and big releases.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
It's so why would you like to So we're kind
of getting to the end here, What's what's your vision
for the next three years in terms of your own journey?
And then like ideally, where would you like to take
the stuff that you do with people.

Speaker 2 (50:35):
Well, I'm kind of mhm.

Speaker 3 (50:38):
Obviously I'll continue with the group stuff that that's super
super important. But I always I really quite enjoyed teaching
the science the end of things and the anxiety management, uh,
the Carmon Dix eye tolerance and all this sort of stuff.
I mean, like there's a spectrum of breath work and

(50:58):
of one end you've got big group liedowns, which is
your kind of super spiritual end, but your scientific end
at the other end, Like I did that in the
liedown in first and it changed then I did that
learning that mauth breathing was a bad thing. Carbon dark
side tolerance and being able to hold your breath for

(51:19):
more than ten seconds is very very important thing, you know.
You know when I first did started learning about carbon
darkseye tolerance, my tolerance was so badly ridiculous. A good
tolerance that's just this is twenty five seconds of a
breath hold.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
Before you feel the earth to breathe. Mine was six.

Speaker 1 (51:43):
And I'm I'm certainly not at twenty.

Speaker 3 (51:45):
Five, you know, my max breath hold with eleven seconds.
And I'm sitting in a room full of people. I'm
looking around and they're all still holding their breaths. I'm like,
oh shit, and I didn't know, you know. And again,
boarding school taught me to keep my mouth open because
in the winter, you know British weather, you get pretty
severe cold and you start breathing through your nose and

(52:07):
people start telling them to be less noisy. And I
remember hearing myself tell someone, hey, can you breathe through
your mouth, because it's really noisy when you breathe through
you But then that's super important because it's directly linked
to your sympathetic system up in your chest. So I'm
chest breathing from the age of ten through to forty.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
You know.

Speaker 3 (52:28):
And then when I was an athlete, like we're in
the shower or something, and one of the guys called
me fat was my six pack was impressive as his.
So then I made a conscious decision on that day
never to let my stomach touch my T shirt ever again.
And so I never breathed into my diaphragm. So for

(52:49):
the next thirty years, I'm stood up right, making sure
my T shirt looks so that I don't look like
I've got a gut. And I'm breathing here up into
my chest and I'm hitting a sympathetic every single breath,
and I'm never finding flow state, and I'm never finding
you know, the parasympathetic, and everything's going horribly, horribly horribly wrong. Yes,

(53:12):
that the line on the floor and the release of
all the emotions.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
It's huge.

Speaker 3 (53:15):
Then learning to recorrect my breath pat my functioning breath pattern.
I take my like like I said, my carbon dioxide
was six seconds. I got it up to about thirty five.
I messaged Johannes Egberts and said, hell have you done
to me? I can literally feel energy running through my
body And it was that overwhelming to do list was

(53:40):
no longer overwhelming. It was what's next, let's go. And
the really interesting part from that, as soon as I
got to that point, I copped her again. I got
another concussion at work and I've been documenting it all.
I've been writing down all numbers three times a day
religiously for like three months. And that little trauma to

(54:04):
the head, I got some stitches in my face and
all that sort of stuff, and that trauma then threw
all my numbers. So my resting heart rate went from
forty eight out of bed to ninety six and it
wouldn't come down for a week. My card and dark
side tolerance went from a thirty five second hold to
about eight and everything just went backwards. And normally that

(54:26):
would be like, oh God, I've got to start again,
but no, how this is fascinating. So okay, So this
is how our body reacts to trauma, physical trauma. It
messes with our breath, then messes with our nervous system,
and then we get into that sort of almost like
we jump into the anxiety loop.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
Or the or the overstress loop or whatever.

Speaker 3 (54:46):
We jump into a loop where by overbreathing, we're then
causing ourselves to overbreathe more and then get into this
awful state we can't get at. And so then I
went through the process again, fixed it. So it's that
sort of side of things that I find really really fascinating,
And it's also the hardest part for me to get

(55:08):
people to try and actually attempt. I get told to
breathe and have a good cry and get some cool,
funky visuals awesome everyone.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
Most people are quite keen for that.

Speaker 3 (55:20):
Sit on your arms for twelve minutes first thing before
the sun has come up to and do like three breatholds.
No one wants to do, but it is that all
life changing that I did a function of breath and
anxiety workshop the other day and I said to the
guys in the room, I said, if there's one thing
you can do, it's fixed with carbon dioxide tolerance, and

(55:40):
you will get yourself out anxiety loop and you will
be so much and you'll be able to recognize things
like anxiety panic, Anxiety will not be anxiety anymore, will
will return to what it is, which is enlessness. Sometimes
you know, rather than oh I can't do it unto anxious,
it's like, well I'm nervous about this.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
And people don't realize it's the reaction that they're having
to the CO two right and to their to their
sympathetic nervous system and the adrenaline. An interesting a little
aside for you. My PhD supervisor is he he did
his pH d in Russia and basically designed the test

(56:23):
that was the CO two tolerance test that predicted success
in special forces training. And it was basically you do
a breathold, a normal breathold, and you get where you
need the first breathing reflex. You'll be very aware of that.
And then you then go and you hold for as

(56:45):
long as you can. So it's the delta about how
much longer you can go as a percentage of your
ref of your initial baseline test. And those who could
hold it the longest were much more likely to pass
special Forces selection training. And it's discomfort tolerance, so it's
a discomfort tolerance test. Hence why very useful for anxiety

(57:09):
because it's discomfort tolerance which is strongly linked to distress tolerance,
which is a psychological thing, so that there's the connection
between body and brill in around discomfort and distress tolerance.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
That's very cool.

Speaker 3 (57:24):
That's literally the same test that that's the way I
do my carbon dioxide.

Speaker 2 (57:28):
Tolerance, and and some more.

Speaker 3 (57:31):
You do that, cool, and then you do like super
super slow breathing for three minutes.

Speaker 2 (57:35):
Then you do it again.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
Yeah cool.

Speaker 3 (57:38):
Yeah, it's rebuilding those numbers back up. It's just such
life changing stuff. But the key is to with that
max breathold not to go too far so that your
heart then start crazy. It will mess up your next
because he's only doing it once, and that's great.

Speaker 2 (57:58):
Then go for it. Go blue and the face past out.

Speaker 3 (58:00):
Whatever you need to do if you really want to
retrain the whole thing more than once. So if you
hit that too high a heart rate, it's going to
affect the next one. It's going to make it way
harder to do, and then by the end of it,
your heart rate is going to be high when you started.
It's no idea, right, It's just that I should probably
breathe now rather than dripping the table. Yeah, okay, you know,

(58:23):
going in the face. You know, I tried it. The
visuals are great when you pass out, but it can't
be healthy, you know.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
Yeah, I mean this has been This has been very cool.
What's like what would you like to see, say, you're okay,
I'm going to give you par You're going to be
bizarre of the universe?

Speaker 2 (58:50):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (58:51):
How would you like to see breath work actually employed
across the world?

Speaker 3 (58:58):
Schools, schools from a young age, like schools right from tiny.
I mean, it's teaching children when they're when they can
start to learn breathe through your nose, that's what your
nose is for. I mean, and there's document there's a
book coming what's called a guy who documented like every

(59:22):
Native American tribe in the US in the eighteenth century.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
It's not breathed by Jim's nest, is it.

Speaker 2 (59:27):
Nobody talks about this book in their book, right.

Speaker 3 (59:30):
And it's like, you know, in the tribes, they swallow
their babies with their heads up so that the chin stays,
the mouth stays club or if they're walking through the
try through the village and there's someone standing there with
their mouth open, they'll reach across and close their mouths,
you know. So it's a it's a it's a community
social thing. That they're breathing through your mouth is not
what we should be doing. It's breathing through your nose.

Speaker 2 (59:52):
You know.

Speaker 3 (59:52):
There's a old Chinese you know, a couple of thousand
years old saying or scroll or whatever. You know, if
you want a long and happy life, breathe through your nose.
If you want a short and painful life, breathed through
your mouth, or something along those lines.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
So, if we can educate the kids, then the simplest
things you can get rid of exercise induced asthma, you
can braces will be a thing of the past because
of mouth breathing changes the shape of your face and
you can't fit all your teeth in, So all the
downtistry will be gone for those that don't really need it,
and just just a healthier, happier kids who's aware of

(01:00:29):
the nervous system and how that each breath can potentially
affect their emotions out there, and the nervous system and
how to manage it. I mean, you know, it doesn't
obviously mean getting super scientific with tiny little kids, but
get them, make it, make it normal as opposed to
what I've been breathing for thirty years.

Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Why am I?

Speaker 3 (01:00:49):
You know what am I doing wrong? It's this is
the physiology of your body. Rather than giving away sovereignty
to ask something feels wrong, I'd better go and ask
someone else about like something doesn't feel right within me.
I know how to fix this. I know how to
deal with this. This is fine. I can. I got this.
You know. I've got a good friend of mine that

(01:01:10):
I trained with. He's just he's a primary school teacher
and he's he doesn't teach anymore. He has the breath
work room. He's up in New South Wales, and the
kids come to each class comes to him and they
do a breathwork session. Not like not the full lie
on the floor and tripballs and that, but it's it's
the educational side of things, and it's like, hey, well,

(01:01:31):
what what breath do you need for this moment?

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
And what breath do you need for that moment? And
even just in the gym or.

Speaker 3 (01:01:37):
Athletes and all this, I think he's got like professional
athletes who don't have a good respiratory system, but they've
got hours of cardio.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
They've got seven.

Speaker 3 (01:01:46):
Liters worth of lung capacity, but they use a third
of it when they're actually competing.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
You know. It's all these things.

Speaker 3 (01:01:52):
But so yeah, so if I was to be in charge,
it would be like, let's educate.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
Out of everyone.

Speaker 3 (01:02:00):
Yeah, and then you know, and those that need it, yeah,
come come and lie down.

Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
Or it doesn't. The thing with breathwork is like I've
just sort of good, you had a massive release.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
I'm not going to do that again. It's like, well, yeah,
but what if you know, even if you feel great,
what if you come to breathwork you get those little
answers to maybe some queries that are going on in
your head, or you get that opportunity just to clear
out some junk and just maintenance and keep and keep
going and keep you know, you focused, lie on the

(01:02:30):
floor at home for ten minutes before you go to
work or whatever.

Speaker 4 (01:02:33):
You know, it's we just and also as I talked
to corporates, you know, every half hour ideally is just
you know, get off your ars, move and then sit
down and do some slow control breathing through your nose
because it just it switches on the vagus nerve.

Speaker 1 (01:02:50):
And the fhrenic nerve. It reduces your heart rate, your
blood pressure, increase your heart rate, variabuilding brings your brein
out of a stress to it. It's like I made,
I totally agree, and i'd actually to little kids in
schools just some box breathing or something like that. But
I can tell you, as a reformed nose mouth breather
who had a deviated sceptem for thirty odd years, then

(01:03:13):
getting that fixed and breeding through my nose is a
frigging game changer.

Speaker 3 (01:03:17):
I still have a problems, like when I was training
we were doing sprints in that when I breathe in
hard through my nose, it completely closes up, so I
can't I can't do this, and my coach just looks
at me and goes, breathe up, not in, So you
make the crazy face and you flare the nostrils so
it doesn't matter what sort of state your nose is in,

(01:03:40):
and then you can do a half marathon only breathing
to your notice. You know it's yeah, no. But I
talked to corporate people a little bit as well. My
favorite is the heart coherence breathing, which is just the
five in five hour yes, which will drop your quarterso
levels like a stone. There's hours of evidence out there
and signed inspact. Yeah, studies in that it drops it down,

(01:04:03):
and if you do it for five minutes, it can
last anywhere up to four hours.

Speaker 1 (01:04:06):
So yeah, that five in five. I've actually seen the
study on that clearing beta amyloid plaques from the bloodstream,
which are the plaques that tend to accumulate in the
brill and writes fucking ponkers, completely bonkers.

Speaker 3 (01:04:21):
I do it every morning, but straight out of bed.
I do it every morning with that for ten minutes.

Speaker 1 (01:04:25):
A right, there you go.

Speaker 3 (01:04:26):
And then I recently quit my tree job as an arborist,
and we got the WhatsApp group and all of a sudden,
all the other boys that are posting pictures of me
that they've taken me while I was asleep at lunch
this is a bearard.

Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
It pictures me like this, my head down.

Speaker 3 (01:04:42):
But what I've actually done is quite a lot of
the time, i pulled my hat over my eyes and
I've got an app on my phone that tells me
the five seconds and I'll do my heard coherence breathing
at lunchtime because the machinery and we have microphones, so
the microphones picks up the noise from someone using a
chainsaw like fifty mis as a way, So it all
became really super overwhelming for me. So at lunchtime, I'd

(01:05:04):
sit and close my eyes and do some heart care.
It's breathing, and they all thought other sleep.

Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
So I do love. I do love a midday nap
as well, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:05:13):
But yeah, if you can sneak in a little bit
of five five, you know, and box breathing I think
is wonderful, but not so much if you're anxious, you know,
holding your breath.

Speaker 1 (01:05:25):
The resonant frequency breathing as they call it. I have
a preference for that too. So Barney, tell us, where
can people go to find more about you and if
they live done in the morning to Peninsula to book
into your sessions, or if they're a corporate to book
in to do a breath work workshop and for their

(01:05:45):
people to teach them how to breathe and improve their performance.

Speaker 2 (01:05:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:49):
Like you said, I'm personally based out of morning and
so I do a regular morning in session. I do
to two a month in mornington There's one that I'm
doing tonight with the Energy Heater that's further down the
Peninsul which is in Bonio. I do a monthly session
up in Hawthorne. But you know, I'm I will travel

(01:06:10):
anywhere really, so just get in contact with me via
my business, which is Breathed into Life. I'm on LinkedIn
for all my corporate friends and yeah, the website is
breath into Life dot com, dot au. There's a lot
of information going out on Instagram breathed into dot life,
and my events are on Humanitics. Unless I'm collaborating with

(01:06:34):
someone else and they're in charge of tickets, it will
be wherever they do it. So if in doubt, get
in touch with me and we'll we'll figure it out.
It's awesome, same as the one on one stuff. I'll
travel for that, but not too far. And I have
a local room where I get all set up for
the one on ones and we talk about all the
science and get some get some shipped up with Corbyn

(01:06:58):
Anis and I also so I also do performance stuff
with Jim's.

Speaker 1 (01:07:04):
Yeah cool, awesome. Yeah, I need to get into a
session with you on that one.

Speaker 2 (01:07:09):
I'd love to have a chat. Yeah cool.

Speaker 1 (01:07:12):
All right, let's lock it in, Barnie. This has been awesome.
Thank you for your time, and keep keep keep trailing
that path me that because it needs to be it
needs to be laid out for people.

Speaker 3 (01:07:24):
Yeah yeah, yeah, keep pushing it. Thank you very much
for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:07:28):
Cheers

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