Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #113 How Breathing Can Transform Your Life with Brian MacKenzie

Episode Date: May 19, 2020

CAUTION ADVISED: this podcast contains swearing It is the first thing we do when we arrive in the world and the last thing we do before we leave. It happens automatically 26,000 times a day without us even having to pay any attention to it, yet breathing is one of the only autonomic systems in our body that we can control, if we choose to. But because we can do it without consciously thinking about it, we often forget about it. The reality is though, that we react to every single situation in life with our breath and we have the power to choose how we respond to any situation by controlling our breath. Amazingly, this can also affect how others will respond back to us. No one demonstrates this better than my guest on today’s conversation, Brian MacKenzie. Brian is co-founder and President of the Health and Human Performance Foundation and Creative Director at Power Speed Endurance, a company focused on optimising physical, emotional and cognitive performance. In today’s podcast, Brian shares some of his incredible experiences. Firstly, he describes how he nearly became paralysed in an accident and he also shares his unbelievable experience of voluntarily swimming with great white sharks. In both of these intense situations, Brian was able to control his response by harnessing the power of his breath. Breath is at the centre of everything Brian does and he believes that through our breath, we can all discover who we really are and rid ourselves of the mental and societal constructs that prevent us from being free. We cover so many different themes today. We discuss the concept of carbon dioxide intolerance and what it means for our biology and our emotions. But we also talk about optimising oxygen efficiency in our bodies – doing so can help every single aspect of our lives – whether we want to improve our mental health, our focus, reduce stress or even increase our sporting performance. I understand that starting a breathing practice can feel confusing – where should you begin, what method should you use, are you doing it right? Brian’s advice on this is reassuring. For him, breathwork is about giving it all a try, experimenting, learning and finding out what works for you. I think that is wonderfully freeing and exciting. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did! Show notes available at drchatterjee.com/113 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We are designed to handle stress at very high output and maybe it's not that we have a disorder. Maybe it's not that anxiety and all this stress. Maybe this is just a natural reaction to the stimulus that we're taking in from the outside and not paying attention to things from the inside. To understand how you feel, you have to go in. You have to go to the base layer of what's going on. And at the fundamental layer of all of this is breathing. Hi, my name is Rangan Chatterjee. Welcome to Feel Better, Live More. Hey guys, I've been really looking forward to putting out this conversation ever since I recorded it all the way back in

October 2019 in Los Angeles in California. Now for me, this is probably one of my most favourite conversations that I have ever had on my podcast. The content literally sits right in the sweet spot of where my personal and professional interests intersect. Our emotions and our breath and how they are both fundamentally linked. So let's start with breathing. Breathing is the first thing we do when we arrive into the world. It's the last thing we do before we leave. It happens automatically 26,000 times a day without us even having to pay any attention to it yet. Breathing is actually one of the only autonomic systems in the body that we can control if we choose to. Now here's the thing, because we can do it without consciously thinking about it,

we often forget about it. We don't practice it because we don't really need to. But the reality is that we react to every single situation in life with our breath and we have the power to choose how we respond in any given situation by controlling our breath. Amazingly, this can also affect how others will respond back to us. No one demonstrates this better than my guest on today's conversation, Brian McKenzie. Now, Brian is co-founder and president of the Health and Human Performance Foundation and creative director at Power Speed Endurance, a company focused on optimizing physical, emotional, and cognitive performance. on optimizing physical, emotional, and cognitive performance. I attended Brian's amazing Art of Breath workshop in LA last year, the day before I recorded this conversation.

Now in the podcast today, Brian shares some of his incredible experiences. Firstly, he describes how he nearly became paralyzed by an accident when he was just playing and goofing around with his nephews. He also shares the incredible experience where he voluntarily chose to go swimming with great white sharks. Now, in both of those intense and frankly scary situations, Brian was able to control his response by harnessing the power of his breath. Breath is at the centre of everything Brian does and he believes that through our breath we can all discover who we really are and rid ourselves of the mental and societal constructs that prevent us from being free. We discuss so many different themes today. We talk about carbon dioxide intolerance and what

it means for your biology and your emotions, but we also talk about optimising the oxygen efficiency in our bodies. And I can tell you that doing so is going to help you in every single aspect of your life, whether you want to enhance your mental health, improve your focus, reduce stress, or even increase your sporting performance. Now look, I get it. Starting a breathing practice can feel confusing. Where should you begin? What method should you choose? And actually, are you doing it right? Now Brian's advice on this is really quite reassuring. For him, breathwork is about giving it all a try, experimenting, learning, and finding out what works for you. I think that is wonderfully freeing and wonderfully exciting. Now, I've actually been putting into practice a lot of Brian's protocols into my own

life. And honestly, I feel calmer, more grounded, and more in sync with my own intuition. Brian's approach is not about teaching you quick life hacks, not at all. He wants to really empower you so that you understand what breath practice will work best for you in any given situation. In fact, Brian is so committed to empowering people that he is giving away one month's free access to his company's online educational courses on breathwork and performance. Honestly, this is a fabulous offer. I'll give you exact details on how to access this right at the end of the show. I honestly do believe that this is a conversation for everyone. Yes, we go everyone. Yes,

we go deep. Yes, we cover a lot of ground. But I think that's the beauty of the podcast format. We're able to, without time constraints, have conversations that really matter. I think Brian's work is absolutely incredible. I hope you enjoy listening to this conversation as much as I enjoyed having it. Now, before we get started, I do need to give a quick shout out to some of the sponsors of today's show who are essential for me to continue putting out weekly episodes like this one. Vivo Barefoot, the minimalist footwear company, sponsor today's show. I absolutely love Vivo Barefoot shoes. I've been wearing them for many years now, as have my entire family. And to say they have transformed my life is no exaggeration. They make brilliant minimalist shoes that are really, really comfortable. Now, I've been recommending Vivo Barefoot shoes for years to friends, to

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but do we actually give much consideration to what toothpaste we should use as well? Well, since last year, I have been using Zendium and I really like using it. As more and more research comes out on the oral microbiome, I think it's going to become really clear that just like the gut microbiome, it's a really important part of our immune system. Now, we're normally used to toothpastes promising to kill the bacteria in our mouths, but Zendium is actually a little bit different. It protects your mouth in a much kinder way. It contains natural enzymes and proteins that aim to increase the numbers of good bacteria,

which protect your mouth naturally and reduce bad bacteria to protect it against dental problems. The very best way to try Zendium is to go onto Amazon and order. That is the online store Amazon where you can go and order Zendium is to go onto Amazon and order. That is the online store, Amazon, where you can go and order Zendium toothpaste today. Now, without further ado, onto today's conversation. So Brian, welcome to the Feel Better Live More podcast.

Thank you for having me. Thank you for coming to LA. Hey, not at all. Yeah. So a bit of context. We are here in sunny Santa Monica. It's a beautiful day. Brian, I've been following your work probably for a few months now. I've come across it. And you know, there's so many aspects of what you do that I find really fascinating. I think my listeners are going to enjoy. One of the things you focus a lot on is breathing and i wonder if you could expand on why you feel breathing is so important given that everyone listening to this podcast right now is already breathing um it's one of two things that we have autonomic control over. So meaning, you know, these are respirate or ventilation system is set up in the brainstem. And so we actually can intercept something and control

something that actually is self-regulating, right? So from a self-regulation standpoint, we're just going to breathe, right? It's the first thing you do when you come out of the womb. And then it's the last thing we do, right? Like before we leave, before we die. And it's happening 26,000 times a day. And there's no way to actually think about that all day long. There's no way to consciously do that. Even if you're a monk that's living in Tibet and in isolation, you're still not going to be able to do 26,000 breaths a day thinking about, cause you're going to have to do a couple other things, right? You're going to have to implement some other aspects of your life.

And so where motor control starts to pick up, you know, there's this thing that we have the ability to optimize ourselves with since it controls not only what's happening from the aspect of me like if we were to talk about emotional context you can intercept things you know this is why people like bks i engar have spoken about it why anybody in the yoga sphere in the world has who's ever done real work we'll talk about breathing as a foundation why the word pranayama exists energy control which now alludes more to now i have metabolic control over what's happening so we pull oxygen into the system through breath and then we exhale its waste product right carbon dioxide um and which is one of the waste products. And so, and from a mechanical standpoint, we understand if I want to take full breath,

that's limiting versus now I can get a full breath when I sit up, right? So those are just simple plays on something that from a self-regulation standpoint, the body will do it no matter what. But if the body is in, if the body and mind are in a, you know, dis eased spot, regardless of I have disease or I'm just too stressed out, the self-regulation standpoint may not be optimizing what I could be doing for myself. Therefore I could manipulate something, this thing, in order to optimize something. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people these days are suffering

with the effects of stress, the consequences of being chronically stressed and not actually adequately recuperating from that. And everyone's looking for the hack. What can I do to keep my life super, super busy, but what can I do that's going to somehow magically de-stress me? And it's fascinating for me that breathing could well be one of the simplest and one of the most accessible things to all of us, yet it's something that very few of us are actively looking at and actively practicing.

Why do you think that is? I think we've moved ourselves far enough away from inside out understanding that outside in has become our go-to default. I look at my phone for an answer to something, right? I'm on social media for things, for answers to things. I look at heart rate monitors for things. I look, you know, it continues to add up on the outside in trying. So we're missing the, there's a big variant in that. Like there's a big variation in that because to understand how you feel, you have to go in, you have to go to the base layer of what's going on.

And at the fundamental layer of all of this is breathing. And so actually taking the time to actually reorganize and feel things I can, most people, if we were to introduce some sort of a minor breath practice, like the super ventilation stuff we did yesterday, that'll stimulate anybody, right? Anybody's going to feel that. But if we do slow controlled breathing, a lot of people may have problems with that and not feel that just as quickly. And it's more of a long-term thing. So it's something people have to actually put discipline in, right? To understand it. But that's and and this is where that outside in thing comes and you said you know people are so stressed out and it's like that's all just a conceptualization that's just story that's just a narrative we are designed to handle stress

at very high output it and and maybe and then I'm stealing this from a friend of ours, David Bidler, but maybe it's not that we have a disorder. Maybe it's not that, you know, anxiety and all this stress is actually disorder. Maybe this is just a natural reaction to the amount of stimulus, to the stimulus that we're taking in from the outside and not paying attention to things from the inside. Because when I, I've met and worked with a lot of high level people, whether athletes, executives, whoever, right? The people that are functioning the highest are shutting out everything else. They're in their environment and what they're in, like the conversation you and I are having right now. I'm not thinking about the drive that I've got to go do, except right now when I say that, right now I'm distracting myself. And so this is where

the context of things starts to happen. And then I start to overload more because I'm in an environment I should be paying attention to, and I'm not feeling what's going on with that and present in that situation. And so breathing is that thing that I can go and bring myself right back and stop a lot of the physiological ramifications of that stuff. Sure. I mean, we'll get into the mechanics of that shortly. The thing that really resonates with me from what you just said is this whole idea that maybe anxiety or, you know, a whole list of other complaints is an appropriate response to the environment in which we're living. And, you know, as a doctor, this is something I've been wrestling with for a good five to 10 years now, that actually a lot of the time,

I think that the body is really smart. The body is clever. The body does what it is meant to do. I spoke to Johan Hari. I don't know if you know Johan, he wrote the book Lost Connections on, we had a, just a phenomenal conversation for about two hours on this podcast a few months ago. And again, it's that whole idea that maybe the way we're feeling this chronic epidemic of lifestyle driven disease is actually our bodies doing what they should be doing in a very toxic environment. I went on your Art of Breath course yesterday with you and Rob were teaching and Danny as well, which is fantastic. But I got there slightly rushed. I had to fly in from Santa Rosa to California. We had a chat when I got there. And it was super interesting that,

you know, you consciously have made a decision from what I understand to not live in an environment where you will constantly be fighting these stressful inputs around you. You put yourself into an environment of nature, of calm, of peace. Was that intentional? Yeah. We call that, and I'll give this to Rob Wilson, paying attention. If you're paying attention to what's going on in you, you start to feel the aspects of your environment.

That doesn't mean I couldn't live in LA. 40 years I spent in this LA basin I, I, I 40 years, I spent in this LA basin, right. And I was, I was perfectly fine. It's just, I got away three years ago into nature out in the middle of nowhere, Oregon, and spent a year there like seven acres, 30 minutes from any real town, um, you know, in the forest. And I got to know myself and I really got to know myself. And I had already started doing work to start to feel what was going on in me, but it wasn't until I actually understood like, oh, this is why people actually get away or unplug. Right. And you can do that in, in, in spaces like LA. And I, we actually, I actually had this very conversation at a barbecue we went to after the seminar yesterday with Dr. Tanya Bentley, who runs the foundation that we work with, at her house. And they live up in a canyon in what seems to be not LA.

Yeah. And her husband and I were having this conversation. And he literally was just like, I don't know how you do it here outside of this. And I'm like, I get it. Like I get that. And I don't think enough people understand that like, there's gotta be so, this is where that hack world has to come in. If we're existing in these places, right. Is we have to actually start to hack things. And the breathing is one of those hacks because I actually believe that if we were still out there, meaning still out in nature, still trying to survive, right? Like cave people, right? Like we wouldn't even need to be worrying about breathing

because we'd be existing in a natural environment, responding to that natural environment in the way that we should have, right? Versus putting ourselves into places where comfort and convenience and the illusion of safety becomes this very, it encompasses our entire life. Yeah, for sure. I guess it is in this environment we need to think about breathing. It is in this environment we need to think about breathing it is in this environment we need to think about physical activity because i guess you know in many environments around the world in these blue in these so-called blue zones where people are living to you know 100 plus with very low rates of chronic disease um you know they're not trying to be physically active they're not trying to have low stress levels they're not trying to be physically active they're not trying to have low stress

levels they're not trying to eat healthy food their environment is set up where that is the norm for them so they have to think about oh i need to go to the gym to work out because they're moving every day they're moving to get their their food out of the grounds and they're walking around to see their their friends and their family and so you know we have to now think about these tools that we need in this modern environment a lot of people will listen to this will probably be thinking well you know it's all very well moving out to nature but i don't have access to that and so why the breath really fascinates me because i've worked in in many different areas i've looked after affluent

patients i've also looked after very deprived patients. And I guess breathing is free. Breathing is accessible to everybody. And then what that naturally lends itself to is if you have control over your breath, even if you are living in an inner city where there is a lot of noise around you and there's a lot of inputs that you are constantly having to fight off, well, at least you have a tool like a shield where you can use for your body to help you survive in that environment is that fair to say totally fair that it's absolutely fair that that's where this comes in and it even can come in when we're not even when you're on vacation and you're

in the middle of nowhere nature right or camping Or camping or whatever. But this is absolutely where it does come in. And it's our ability to shift our state, right? To be the ability because we're not staying focused anymore. Like ADD, I've got anxiety. Well, if you've got a, if you're dealing with anxiety, like you're just not responding to your current environment. You're thinking of an environment outside of your environment. And, you know, you're doing a lot of other stuff that's going on versus actually responding to the current

thing that's going on. Right. And I understand this intimately is I'm that type a person who will overwhelm myself and take on bite off more than I can chew and figure that out. Right. Like, oh, okay. I overshot the mark here. I need to pull back. Like I need, I need to stop with all this stimulus. You know, like I chose not to fly down here this trip because I'm on planes pretty frequently and I'm going boom, boom, boom. And I decided a five and a half hour drive both ways will allow me to decompress in a way that jumping on an airplane and being back quickly won't. Yeah. Right. So it becomes what's my environment. So I can't exist in, in, in a big city or in a city or in not in nature. And I just have to manipulate my environment or listen to my environment in a way that allows me to kind of just be in that place. Right? And breathing is that one of those things

that literally brings you, it's why every meditation practice has breathing at the foundation. It really brings you right to that focal point. It's funny that I think back to when I started doing things like, you know, when I was sort of working out when I was like 15 or 16 and, you know,

you'd read the magazines or you'd read what you should be doing. And they'd always you know when you know I don't know a bench press let's say you on the way back up exhale I used to ignore that stuff I used to just think what's the exercise what's the mechanical exercise that I need to do you know who cares if you're breathing in on the way in and breathing out on the way back up. And now with the knowledge I have now, I look back and go, wow, how naive was I? And then you can really expand that across, you know, you mentioned these ancient practices like yoga. Yoga has got breathing at the heart of it. Yet many yoga classes I've been to, certainly a few years ago, and the way I see

many people around me practicing yoga is they feel it's a physical practice. I want to be able to stretch my hamstrings so that I can get in this position, almost ignoring the breath part of it. And I've really gone like completely 180 on this in the sense that I actually think that breathing is, is at the heart, you get that right. Then the physical, um, the physical actions that you want actually follow very, very easily. And you have this beautiful phrase. I think I heard you say once, uh, mind is the king of the senses. Breath is the king of the mind. That's BKS Iyengar. That's me quoting. That's you quoting him. I mean, that is phenomenal.

We can maybe unpack that. But do you feel that in the West today, in the 21st century, when we think about working out, movement, yoga, whatever physical practice it is, going to the gym, CrossFit, have we forgotten about the breath? Like, look, I would say by and large, most people participating in yoga practice right now

around the world are not participating in the way that it was designed. And that doesn't mean I understand it to its totality, but I've been teaching movement and principles of movement for almost 20 years. And we have come to the realization that the way you move is the way you breathe and thus controlling the breath controls the way you move. And so yoga nailed this in the beginning and at the foundation with people who actually understand these deep principles, but we all kind of get lost in all these different mediums. And it's not just yoga. Like you talk about CrossFit running all of these things.

We, we, whatever the medium is, we lose sight of where, what we're trying to do because we get caught up in the, Oh, I'm going to burn some calories. I'm going to, um, get bigger. I'm going to get more flexible. No, those are all byproducts of what this does. And why are we doing this? You know? And it's, it's like you bring up the blues, you brought up the blue zones and it's interesting about the blue zones is, um, you know, is um you know in no blue zone is anybody going to the gym so if you're gonna sit there and quote not you if people are gonna sit there and talk about blue zones and what people in the blue zones eat and do and and use that to an advantage well you better take the consideration that these people live in nature, basically. Like they live far from things and they're doing the work based on a lifestyle that most of us, especially using the blue zones as this idea, are doing.

And so commit to something like that. And that's all I've done a little bit. Like I'm not doing that fully in any way shape or form i'm manipulating the environment in order to suit for how i live a more qualitative life and feel that life and i'm not looking for necessary longevity of life i'm looking for quality of life because i mean i experienced things like, this is a very big rabbit hole, but it, you know, you just need an abrupt, um, check in your life to really understand things. Usually. I mean, most of us, you know, and I mean, I, over a little over a year ago, I, um,

I thought I broke my neck, woke up on the ground and, you know, I had a massive contusion between C3, C4 that I hit my head going up a ladder playing tag with my nephews and woke up on the ground and I couldn't move. And I was like, oh, this is something's wrong. And that event altered how I started really, even though I was thinking about life being this fragile, quick thing, it really was, oh, you just don't even know. You don't even know when it's coming. And yet we behave as though, especially the hacker world, we behave like there's so much

fear around dying that it's like, yo, embrace death. Everything's a death and and come to the conclusion that what you're feeling is allowing you to to really experience life and that's in essence why breath at the foundation and why these yogis and why these people were talking about this is because it is the center of what it is we're doing. Yeah. I mean, we're so busy these days, right? Everyone's, nobody's got time. I really do feel, I've been asked this before, what is the biggest stress in modern society?

And my view, and there are multiple ones, my view is it's the erosion of downtime. The fact that we don't have downtime in our lives anymore every single minute we we look at these damn phones uh you know we get up in the morning we look at these phones we stand in line in the coffee shop and instead of daydreaming and letting you know our dmn our default mode network kick into gear and actually start to solve problems and be creative for us we're're consuming, consuming, consuming. And you mentioned often we need something abrupt.

And, you know, for me, one of the turning points in my life was when my father died, you know, six and a half years ago. And I used to help, I moved back to where I grew up to help care for my dad for like 10, 15 years. And when my dad died, you know, it forced me to start confronting various things in my life. You know, was I living the life that I wanted to? Was I simply a mirror reflection of everything I'd grown up around? Or, you know, who was the real me? And I find that as I've gone down that path, and it's a big rabbit hole, but I think it's the most rewarding rabbit hole you'll ever go down, starting to understand myself better. I would have time,

time, because dad wasn't here anymore, all this time that I previously would spend with him, caring him, showering him, washing him, shaving him, all this kind of stuff. Suddenly with that time, I would, I'd go for a walk. I'd just go and daydream and I'd start to reflect. And I thought, wow, I've not had time to reflect, to self-reflect on my life, my entire, my entire life, but certainly my whole adult life until that point. And once I found that time, once that time was given to me, everything in my life started to come online. You know, I've created a life that I love. I love what I do in my career. I feel very close with my wife and my kids. I feel that I know who I am. And in the last six to 12 months, I no longer have a fear of death. And that was quite a

long story to try and get to that point, but no, but it's, it's, it's when you do the internal work, I feel that it lent, it leads you to your breath actually, because after you strip away a few of these layers of the onion, you, you start to, you know, you, it's, it takes you to your breath and you realize actually for me, the next level of spiritual growth, if you want to call it, you know, or sort of self-exploration is to sort of get control of my breath and understand it and actually start to, you know, really start to play around with it and see how it impacts my mood, how it impacts my state. it impacts my state and i get the impression from as i say it's been a few months that i've come across your work and i get the impression that underneath the breath there's also been a lot of personal growth with you oh yeah yeah it transformed everything about what i've worked on. I mean, I'd been in the self-help stuff for 20 years, like looking at it, reading it,

going through, seeing therapists, going to programs, workshops, you know, all this stuff, this guru, that guru, like all of it. Like, hey, what can I learn here? And it wasn't really until I invested in this that any of that really made any sense. And now it's like, I, you know, I, we joke about it, but I like the real depth of

things, like the true depth of it, like looking at the heart of what my reaction is to something, you know? And, and, and I think that is like, that's the gateway opening. That is the entire thing is looking at and understanding. And we were having this conversation offline, but it's like somebody reacting to you online or something and how it used to affect us before, you know, and I was the same. It used to affect me. And now it's like, I actually understand the behavior and I can have compassion towards that and understand where somebody's at because it's not actually being directed at me. This is actually something that is an internal issue and not understanding. And so somebody just doesn't have the tools quite yet to get that. And I think our job to some degree is to, since we've decided to take this exploration on,

is to explain what those tools are. Yeah. I completely agree. I mean, it's almost, I got that sense from you and your team yesterday at Art of Breath that there's almost, almost a deep sense of obligation that as you have got this awareness, you've developed your understanding, it's almost like, it's almost like something you have to spread with the world. You have to understand it more. You have to be able to communicate it and reach people because it is potentially controlling your breath. Controlling your breath is probably the wrong terminology. Having an awareness of your breath, understanding your breath, being able to manipulate your breath for certain situations is arguably one of the most powerful tools we have.

Yet most of us don't, we do have access, but we don't feel we've got access to it. We don't have the knowledge to access it either. Yeah. I mean, Eckhart Tolle talks candidly about, you know, like, well, he just openly will just say, just be aware of your breath. Like just be conscious of your breath. Like, you know, get, get awareness of that. He doesn't give anything else up, right? Like, he's not like, Hey, use this pattern to do that. You know, there's none of that. Right. And, and I'm only bringing him up because, you know, here's a guy who's really risen up to the top and some very basic, simple ideas in, you know, this self help

or even spiritual realm. Right. And it's great because I think that just the ability to become aware, but most people can't sit there and be aware of their breath. And this is where practices like Vipassana have come in and done tremendous work to where it's like, Hey, you're going to go 10 days, silent meditation, and you're just going to learn to be aware of your breath. And that's it. And, you know, after like three days, you've, you know, felt like you've never been through more pain in your entire life. Right. And then all of a sudden you become aware of things as this 10 days comes to a close right and and but i don't think that's actually necessary for everybody but maybe it is like not everybody should need to go run 100 miles but i did you know and like i got that

experience and i understand that um you know and and just sitting there and being, just being quiet and paying attention to your breath for maybe two minutes or five minutes, or if you can do 10 minutes and you can just continue to do that, that is enough. That'll teach you more than most things will because, and the reason is, is because your breath is connected to everything we're doing. Like it is that thing that's connected to what we're doing. So it responds to the environment. And so becoming aware of that literally opens up the doorway of, oh, I'm just not paying attention to my environment right now.

Or, you know, if there is a lion in the corridor, like you should notice your, you know, potentially that that's not somewhere where you need to stop and be aware of your breathing, but you'll see in those instances where breaths get hold and then, you know, breaths picks up, right? High, you know, stress situations, you know? So it's just, this becomes a very big opening if you can just be aware of it now the optimization factor comes into where i start learning how to manipulate that to bring myself more present or to downshift myself more i keep thinking of um yesterday's auto breath clinic. And in the afternoon, Rob, who's sitting in the room with us, we did this program where, you know,

he had us do various, you know, various movements at certain intensities in a particular way. And the second time we started to focus on our breathing, various different protocols, We'd focus on them as a way of actively recovering or actually recovering in a slightly different way. And yes, it was great to see how quickly I recovered. But the thing that really struck home for me was right at the end when Rob said, yeah, and what were you thinking about

the first time you were recovering when you had no breath to think about, you were just sort of waiting your 90 seconds till your next movement. And the second time when I was actually actively thinking about my breath, and it was incredible because in an instant, that monkey mind just switches off because the second time around when I was focusing on a particular breathing pattern, I wasn't thinking about what I'm going to have for dinner tonight or how many emails I've got in my inbox that I've not responded to yet. Some people are getting irate, but I think there's something about that.

And having some silence, having some downtime where you focus on your breath, I think it does so much. And I experienced that firsthand. So, you know, I don't know how often you run these clinics, but I certainly recommend people listen to this. They, they, they check it, they check them out and have a look where there is one local to them. I mean, where, where can they see the details for your clinics? Uh, powerspeedendurance.com forward slash art of breath. Yeah. So they can check those out. Yeah. And we'll be back in Europe next year. Um, and we'll more than likely be in england yeah london area most likely but it um you know rob's a magician yeah like that's that's you know and that's kind of a joke because you know it's you give somebody something to do and all of a sudden

they become present in the moment with what that you know if you've got something that can do that that's a serious tool right and and that's what this is it's i don't need this thing it's accessible anytime anywhere any place and the moment i'm not aware of it i'm probably drifting a little bit or letting things go but then the more i train it right like the almost easier it is to access the points that we actually feel like we're in this content place you know well let's get into some details um yeah but one of the slides that was put up yesterday is one i really like there was two um two circles one was stimulus and one was response and where those circles overlapped in the middle that's that sort of

that's that for me that's where the gold lies that's where you know what happens in that space between stimulus and response i think it's the key to us owning ourselves, owning our minds, actually being in control of our lives and not being a passenger, but being the driver. And your experience, maybe a year, year and a half ago, where you were playing with your nephews and you had a pretty serious accident. I think that's a great example of what does one do in between stimulus and response? Because for many people, I suspect they would not have reacted in the way you did. So I wonder if you could take us through exactly what happened, what you were feeling, and then what you did to influence your response. Yeah. Well, A, I have done a lot. I consider that I've, a lot of work on myself. I'm by no means a museum

picture perfect example of anything. But I've also at that point had had probably a breath practice, a heavy duty breath practice for five years, right? I was with my sister and her kids and we were, she has four kids that she at home schools. She's a rock star. And we went down to go play at the local school on the kids jungle gym and a game of tag began and they asked if I would play and I played. And all of a sudden my nephew was it and he was close to me. And so I was on the ground and he was running after me and i

saw the ladder that ran up and it kind of spiraled up and went to a platform that went off across the top i went up that ladder and about seven eight feet up there's a gap there was a gap in between the ladder to where a kid you know can fit right through and go onto this plank i did not see the bar up top. And so I went straight up directly into the top of my skull. Um, and it compressed my spine and I went lights out right there and dropped and hit and did a back flip off from what I was told and landed on the ground. Um, and I woke up and I could not move. And I, at that moment, realized that I had a choice. And this is that Viktor Frankl quote, you know, between stimulus and response is choice.

And that's where growth happens. I knew at that moment that there was going to be a lot of people affected by what had just happened. And I have a problem sometimes, but part of me is like, I feel a responsibility to a lot of things. And so I took my breath practice into account. And I knew that if I had defaulted into freaking out, holy shit, holy shit. Oh my God, I think I broke my neck, that probably would have pushed some things emotionally that could have made a disruption in a lot of that long-term. Meaning not dealing with it appropriately versus going, okay, you might've broken your neck.

The best thing you can do is control your breathing right now. And that is exactly what I did. And so I just took a few deep breaths, controlled my breathing, asked my nephew to get Aaron, who was my wife. And she came and was like, what happened? And my sister got there and was like, oh my God. And I said, just call 911 and get paramedics. I'm pretty sure I broke my neck. And I just stayed calm and just accepted the fact that there was a new game and I was going to need to figure out whether I was going to walk or move again and or how I was going to function in the best possible way I could with what I could progress. That was literally what I defaulted into. Did you feel as calm as you sound now

talking about it? Yes. Not in the split second. In the split second when it happened and I was like, oh shit, I'm paralyzed. Like that, that instant of, oh shit, I'm paralyzed was, oh, but then it was, well, what's the reality of this? What's really like remove all of the stories that I'm coming up with right now. Here's anxiety. Oh my God, I'm going to have to have somebody push me around or I'm going to need to push myself around. I'm not going to be able to get up and do things. Somebody else is going to need to clean me. Just all these things starting to ramp in versus, Hey, regardless of these things actually do happen, how can you improve all of this? How could you make this better? How what's like, I like to train and expose things and figure

out where that exposure is in my life right now. Why can't I do that in another situation? And there's people who are doing this every day, like normally, like this is their life. And so why do I get, why, why do I need to make this more than it needs to be? And realistically look at this. This doesn't mean that there's not going to be things to deal with, with this. But that was the idea, like that was what was coming out of me. And so I was pretty calm. And then, you know, the firefighters

that got there were, you know, they were actually pretty surprised that I was as calm as I was. Yeah, I'm not surprised. Yeah. You know, and then the paramedic who had me, I mean, he literally just cut me down and stripped me down. He's like, I'm sorry, dude. Like, I got to do this. And I'm like, it's all right, man. And he was just like, wow. And, you know, my hands started coming back. Like I started getting really bad neurogenic pains. Like it was really painful, but he's like, grab my finger. And I grabbed it and he literally was like, holy crap. He's like, hey, I'm not the doctor, but I think you may be better off than you think right now.

And I'm like, it doesn't matter, man. Like, let's just, you know, let's just do this. right now. And I'm like, it doesn't matter, man. Like, let's just, you know, let's just do this. Do you look back on that now with, with any sense of pride in the sense that, because that's a very impressive story on one level. It's like, wow, I'm not sure I could react like that in that situation. I'm sure most people feel, wow, there's no way I could have that degree of control and that sort of presence to stay calm in that situation, which I'm sure has helped your recovery. There's no question that will have done. Do you look back on that and go, hey, that's pretty cool, actually, that I was able to do that? Does it feel good on a deep level?

Maybe parts of it. I haven't thought of it like that. I think of it like this. You know, we take a lot of pride in what we're passionate about. And I say we, like myself, Rob, Danny, and the crew of people I work with. And we really like learning. learning. And, but on top of that is we also like telling stories and making stories really good. And so part of what we do is like, it's really focused on how we share. So we, we study things like standup comedy and we watch these things. I don't want to be a standup comedian, but I really believe at the heart of intelligence is standup comedians. Anybody able to look at life in the way that a comedian does is an A plus in my book. of intelligence. And I'm willing to laugh at the fact that maybe I was going to be in a wheelchair. I don't think that I I'm any better than anybody else for the way I handle it.

But here's the thing. I tell stories about going and running a hundred miles and it being the most painful thing I have ever experienced in my life. And don't know, like, I remember it being so painful that I was like, I can't take another step. And then literally within an instant that disappeared and I was pain free. And like, I talk about that in a very romanticized way, right? In a story way, I got to go dive with great white sharks. I didn't just go sit in a cage. I went down in the cage 40 feet and got out of it with other divers and swam with great white sharks and took pictures for research. I got to experience the fact that I am in front of a dinosaur that if it chose in a split second, I wasn't going to exist. I wouldn't exist. Why did you do that?

We were trying to understand. We were understanding fear. And I want to understand ventilation. I want to understand breath control and what I could actually do in order to help myself in situations that actually I'm putting myself in these things, these extreme situations. So just to be clear, you are deep down in the ocean and you can see a great white shark in front of you. How far away? Uh, the wall, like really, like legitimately. you can see a great white shark in front of you. How far away? The wall. Like legitimately-

Three meters, maybe. Oh, easy. Two, three meters away. That was one of five. One of five great white sharks. Just circling. So you have voluntarily put yourself in an environment where you could die in an instant.

In an instant. Okay. For the experience. But think about this. I go around and talk about these things to people in a context of a story. So we arc a storyline about this stuff. Of course, I should react the way that I did

when I almost broke my neck. What the fuck am I doing with my life? What am I, what is my experience? If I'm not learning from my experiences and understanding that if I was in the most painful moment I've ever experienced, and then all of a sudden it disappears in an instant because the way I'm thinking is pain, nothing more than just a response or a stimulus, or maybe even just an illusion that I'm creating. So what is it that I'm experiencing? So in not going too deep with that, you go and put yourself in front of a shark that you know is going to, that wasn't the first time I dove with shark. I dove with other sharks that were pretty docile,

like Galapagos sharks. Like they're not going to attack you usually. But, you know, I've had some experience in these things to go and understand what this is. And behavior patterns are pretty evident. Like when you start to look at things, behave like prey, get treated like prey. So don't behave like prey. So how does prey behave? What would a seal do if there was a great white shark around?

It'd run. Run, activate their stress response. Or it would freeze, right? Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't fight and it doesn't stay in the situation. Okay. So the sharks actually are confused or even curious when you're down with them in an environment. And I'm not saying

this, please don't go diving with sharks on your free will just to like do this, do this. If you're going to want to do this, do it with a professional. And guys, I was doing it with guys who've pioneered this whole thing. But the entire idea is what do you think a predator does like you have to actually adapt to its environment so if you're the shark is just curious that you're at its depth not on the surface and not running yeah right like not confusing it's totally confused so the shark's curious literally they just were so what are you doing at the moment are you are you controlling your breath are you are you trying to basically not give out any signal that you are trying to run that you are at all stress you're trying to say hey i'm totally chilled hey how you doing buddy

kind of thing sort yeah sorry i mean one of the most um important things I've ever been told by, you know, someone, Michael Muller, who is a world famous photographer and videographer. He's here in LA. He was, he's the one who organized the shark dive that we went with from Stanford. And he just looked at me right before we got in the cage and he just said, don't get mesmerized by one. And I was just, it clicked. I was like, got it. Got it. Can't just

be mesmerized by the one shark that you think because there's going to be, there's other sharks. And so you just need to be understanding your environment and what's going on. If I'm aware of my environment as best I can, then I can actually navigate that. Brian, as you tell them that story, the thing that popped into my head was, if you act like prey, you will be treated like prey. And you have taken, you know, to what many people would consider quite an extreme example, going deep down in the ocean with a predator who can kill you. But if we sort of step out of that and look at many people's day-to-day lives, I'm thinking, well, when you go into your office and you see your boss or your work colleagues, and you're getting stressed out,

the way you act will influence the way they perceive you. So this isn't actually about a great white shark in the ocean. This is actually to me about how as a human being, how can I control my actions? If I have control over myself, if I have control over my internal state, I can potentially influence people around me. What are you learning? What are you doing? What are you doing?

What you're doing for why you're doing it? What is the purpose of your life? If you're not learning from the things that you're doing, how that like, this is exactly it. Like, and this is evident even in like, when we look at hormones, you know, like Dr. Robert Sapolsky has done a ton of work around this stuff, right? And you look at the hierarchy of even baboons and how like clean

the physiology is of dominant males. Right. And then how all of a sudden, as you start trickling down with the males and the tribe, right. Like their, their physiology is a little bit more disrupted, more disrupted more disrupted more disrupted like you know cardiac disease things like this start to show up low testosterone right but yet when you feel or those monkeys are put in an environment where they all feel equal that totally changes and hormone levels change the way people feel changes like their physiology changes. So if I go in and yeah, I might have a superior who I work with, but like, like, look, I'm, I guess the CEO of my organization, but I literally have conversations and take input from

everybody in my organization. I try and make everybody feel like they are at the top of the food chain so that, you know, and sometimes that can backfire with personalities, but the fact of the matter is, is there's a reason why I do that. And I don't want to be this dominant thing that's, you know, and I don't like that, but, you know, I also also it's exactly what you're getting at is that this is the society we actually like if we victimize ourselves that's a problem and that's unfortunately where we're at right now is we are a victim culture and we're we all should have equal opportunity but if i'm victimizing myself to the degree that I'm

alienating a specific group for my problems, we got a problem. We got a big problem. And that is going to come back and bite us in the butt in a way that's not going to, it's own who you are and be able to feel where you're at. And if you don't like the situation you're in, take yourself out of that situation, move out of the city, right? Move out of the city and go, you know, to the nature and get a simple life and become a blues owner. Yeah, for sure.

I mean, Brian, you know, I've been seeing patient staff nearly 20 years and it's become super clear to me that actually you'd be careful how you say this because it's not about putting blame on people, but there is essentially a story that when we get ill, when we're not feeling good, we create a story and that becomes our daily narrative. And I find that that almost imprisons the person who is suffering because the more you tell yourself that story, the more you stay locked in that pattern.

And ultimately the ones who I feel break free and get better, like completely better, are generally the ones who've taken ownership of that story and actually decide to change the narrative. So it's in our mind where we can have the most positive influence on the way we feel, on our physical body. It all comes down to the mind. And if we think back to you when you had that accident and when you thought you're going to be paralyzed.

So you had a couple of options. you had a couple of options one option was to panic and presumably to breathe fast and to freak out everyone around you including your nephews that were hey what's going to happen but you chose a different path and i want to contrast that with something that happened to me a few months ago maybe maybe four months ago now so i'm a relatively fit guy but i didn't really do endurance i you know i'm i'm all about fitting in quick body weight workouts where I can. So, you know, 10, 20 minutes here, here and there. And I got invited to do something called swim run. Are you familiar with the sport of swim run? Do athlon? Yeah, but it's, it's when you bike, it's just running and swimming, running and swimming, but you run in your wetsuits and you swim with

your shoes on so you know i'm not familiar yeah you would love it it sounds fun it's amazing um and you know it came from sweden where you'd run a little bit you is to get from island to island you make sense now you'd swim from one island to another and then you'd run across the island then you'd swim so it's you do a bit of running bit of swimming bit of running bit of swimming and i'm friends with the guys at vivo Barefoot. I'm hugely into barefoot shoes and minimalist living. And, uh, they invited me to their annual swim run events. And I thought in my head, I thought, yeah, I'm going to train for this. I'm going to get, yeah, I'm going to be ready for it. Um, I didn't, uh, things were busy. I just didn't get around to it. And a few days before it,

I phoned them and said, hey guys, I'm going to come down for the weekend because, you know, it's a beautiful part of the country, you know, and we were booked to come with my wife and my kids to go, but I'm not going to compete. I've still never, ever swum in open water. Never. You know, I grew up in a city. I have not, I had not swum in open water at that time, even though I could technically swim. Yeah. But they persuaded me. They said, wrong. A lot. This is the best environment to start in the safety boats everywhere. And I I've always actually probably a bit like you. I've always jumped off and done things that I probably shouldn't do because I find that's where the growth happens. And it's just something I've always been wired that way a little bit. So anyway,

I do the events and it's, um, I mean, people that way a little bit. So anyway, I do the event. And it's, I mean, people who listen to my podcast have heard me tell this story before. But I'm interested in your perspective on this in the context of the breath and the stress response. So the first swim was very short relative. It was just a 250-meter swim. Then there was going to be a 2.5K run. Then a 600-meter swim. Then a 7K run. Then a 1.2K swim. And then I think another 5K run. Anyway, so I thought when I looked at it, I thought,

okay, I could probably do the 250 meter swim, you know, because I can do that in the pool, even though I stop after every couple of lengths. So I go with my partner, we go in the water, it's cold, right? and just to put it in real perspective for you, and I know it may be hard to imagine, given that you grew up, I think in LA, you've always been in the ocean, I got cold, I'd never worn a wetsuit before, so literally, an hour before the race, I'm getting the wetsuit out of its box, not even tried it on, see if it fits me, so I put the wetsuit on carry my shoes on i get in the water it's freezing and i'm like okay okay cool try and stay calm anyway 100 meters into this swim when i

realize i can no longer see the bottom i start to freak out like i am you know i'm breathing fast i'm i actually grab onto my partner said oh my god God, I shouldn't be here. And, um, I panicked. I completely panicked. And for, for about five minutes, I wouldn't swim. I was just like madly treading water. It just so happened that I managed to get through that. I thought if I finished this swim, there's no way in hell I'm getting back in the water for the next two swims. Just get me onto land. Anyway, my stubbornness, once I got onto land, I did the next 2.5K run. And then I looked at the next swim and I thought, come on, Ron, you can do this. I ended up completing the events, okay? Which I'm extremely

proud of myself for having done that. But I want to go back to that episode, 100 meters in, where I am panicking. So I wonder if we could use that as an example of explaining what was going on in my body at that time, because you could have gone into that state when you had your accident, but you didn't. You had done the hard work on yourself, on your breathing, so you were able to control your response in that moment. I was not able to. So I wonder if you could compare and contrast those things and expand on what was

going on. Practice. I think the amount of practice I've had to understand probably comparatively speaking, that's couldn't be a definitive unless I totally understood everything going on with you. What was going on in the body is basically a response to not wanting to be in a situation. This goes into the story that we tell them the lion, the antelope, where, you know, the lion, the antelope, this situation plays itself out every day that lions and antelopes exist in the same ecosystem in the same place usually not too far from each other perfectly fine until the lion decides it wants to eat the antelope right and then boom lion turns on goes after the antelope and when we look at their physiology there's no real difference between the physiology we break them down right if it was a dashboard we would see the same exact things physiologically speaking

if we were looking at each of these animals right so you what you're saying is when a lion is chasing an antelope they are both exhibiting the same physiology they're both in a heightened sympathetic state heightened heart rate pupil size acetylcholine, like your neurotransmission. Everything's the same. Even though one is chasing and one is being chased, it's still the same. Yeah. And here's the unique thing about us compared to them. We have the choice of deciding where we want to be in that situation.

Meaning if I was the antelope and I wanted to choose that I wanted to turn it on the lion or I wanted to be in that situation, even though that's probably not going to happen, we can make that choice. So when I'm in a situation and I'm just, I'm using this as, you know, an analogy, take your situation in the water where you're panicking. You chose to do the one thing that's going to jeopardize your life the most, yet that's the one thing you're giving a crap about at that point. Like that's what you're totally concerned with. I can't see the bottom. I, oh my gosh, like, am I going to die or what's going to happen? My kids, you know, my wife, like my family, like you're going, this Rolodex of crap is going on because you've created this emotional response

to something that's just a story right and it is just a story because you actually continued and then went on to do the next legs and so you did the exact thing that you is counterintuitive to what we want to do right and we all do it i'm. I'm like, I'm not exempt from this. I do this all I've done. I do this routinely. It's just, I have to remind myself when I'm doing it, this is where the work comes in. Like when things, when, when things hit the fan or an explosion happens, what do you default to? Familiarity is key, right? As you say, because you could put me on top of a steep mountain with deep powder, with no tracks. Exactly.

And I'm fine. Exactly. Because I've been in that situation so much that that doesn't activate my stress response. For me, that's like, yeah, cool. This is great. I'm going to have fun now. But put me in the ocean and suddenly it's a completely different response. Even though I am capable of swimming 250 meters without stopping rational brain knows i can do that but emotional brain

is suddenly thinking so your emotions got the best of you and and then when i say that that means your limbic system went into overdrive and your stories just started to unravel based on that, right? And so the cortex started, the chatter began, right? Versus interception point becomes brainstem. I control my breathing or my vision in that case, right? Like I peripherally look at a horizon, right? I go peripheral. I can shift autonomic response that way as well. Those are the two ways that we have

volitional control over our autonomic nervous system that was one of the beautiful things i learned yesterday was he was saying that it's either vision or breathing these two things allow you to control these autonomic or these unconscious processes that are happening in our body that otherwise we can't or we don't feel we've got control over i didn't know about vision actually yesterday but we were doing one of those drills yesterday where you're saying this time when you're holding your breath and you're walking and you feel as though actually you're going to have to breathe and drop this, you know, make your vision more peripheral, less focused and it works. Yeah. And this is the work of Dr. Andrew Huberman, who's really bringing this to light

and who we've worked really closely with at Stanford. He's the reason why I went shark diving, right? Like he contracted me to come in to do breath work for them. But we have been, we've had a relationship because we both are coming at this autonomic nervous system thing with, we're both, we've got, we've been going after breathing because we knew about the control and he's knows about the vision. And so there's been this, you know, mix of stuff and he's done some really good work here, but this is like, I mean, look who freaks out looking at a sunset. Nobody ever that I've ever seen. Yeah. Go look at a sunset and you're going to basically downshift. It's just math. It's literally a mathematical equation that happens when you do those things right so it's just a simple play

into something that i understand or that i have worked enough to go hey the behavior that i'm eliciting right now is counterintuitive to what i actually think like i want do. So I knew in the instant of me potentially breaking my neck that I don't want to do the thing that is counter to what I need to be doing right now, which is have my head about me and not overreact to something. And if I need to process this a bit more later, I will. And I, and I did, and I have, and I've worked on that stuff. And, you know, but it's not like I, this isn't my identity. The only reason I brought it up was based on the fact that we're storytellers in what we do. And this is the basic context of why we're doing like why the work we're doing is very different is we are not only just focused on the work, but we're focused on the shape of the

stories and how those things are coming in and how we're sharing this information so that it's actually resonating. So when somebody is in a panic situation, they go, oh, I'm going to control this right now because I can't control anything else because my mind's racing. Yeah, control that until you can actually calm it down and then proceed. Really hope you're enjoying the conversation so far. Just taking a very quick break to give a shout out to the sponsors who are absolutely essential for me to continue putting out episodes like this one. Athletic Greens have always been a big supporter of my show and I really, really like this company. Athletic Greens have always been a big supporter of my show and I really, really like this company. They make one of the most nutrient-dense whole food supplements

that I have ever come across. Now today's episode, like all of my podcasts, are about empowering you to become the architects of your own health. Now nutrition of course is one of the most important components of health and ideally everyone would get all of their nutrition from real whole food. The reality, though, is that many of us struggle to do this consistently. That is why I like high-quality whole food supplements like Athletic Greens, which I regularly take myself. And I know many of you who have already taken advantage of their special podcast offer have fed back to me

how much taking athletic greens each day has improved the quality of your life, your energy, your cognition and your sleep. It contains vitamins, minerals, prebiotics and digestive enzymes and I'm a big fan of their travel packs which often accompany me when I'm on the road or on the move. So if you're looking to take something each morning as an insurance policy to make sure that you are meeting your nutritional needs, I can highly recommend it. For listeners of the show,

if you go to athleticgreens.com forward slash live more, you will be able to access a special offer where you get a free travel pack box containing 20 servings of Athletic Greens, which is worth around 7070 with your first order. You can check it out at athleticgreens.com forward slash live more. I love what you just said, Brian, about that that is not your identity. I think that's so powerful because these kind of big incidents in our lives, when they happen, we do tell

ourselves a story about it. We create a story. You know, there's many ways to interpret an event and we can create a story multiple ways, but that almost becomes our identity. That is who we are. And it's so beautiful to hear you say that. That is not your identity. In many ways, I'm looking at it thinking, hey, that was just another day in Brian McKenzie's

life. Stimulus and response. This was quite a big stimulus, but I still had control over my response. You know, it's quite a refreshing way of looking at it. It's just another thing that's going to happen because we can't predict the future, right? So each and every single one of us. Oh, we believe we can, though. Behaviorally, we believe we can, but the truth is, is we cannot.

Yeah. And that's one of the beautiful things I think about training our breath, training how we control it, because then for whatever comes up in our life that we can't predict, we have a tool to be able to control that. And it's, you know, just to finish off that story for you. So, you know, I don't know what you would think of this um i don't like to be beaten by things and so when i had completed that i was okay so wrong and you technically can do that so any opportunity i get i go into open water now and then you know i don't live near open water so it's not that easy for me but this summer i went stayed with some friends in devon in the South

coast of the UK. And my friend said, come on, Ron, we're going to swim around the islands. Like that island there. So yeah, I'm like, mate, are you kidding me? I could barely get in the water two months ago. He goes, no, no, it's fine. It's like one, 1.5 K you'll be fine. Anyway, I went swimming every day in the ocean, just kept going out, going out. And then I thought, okay, let's just go and do it. And we just went one morning, didn't think about it before breakfast, went out, swam around the whole damn islands. And for me, it's been great to understand that three months ago, I couldn't do this. Now I've just swam 1.5K around an island in open water, and I couldn't even do 100 meters

without panicking just a few months ago and that also teaches me how quickly you can change things how quickly you can change a story how quickly actually you are able to change things in your life and i want people to hear that and and it to inspire them to go actually you know what the way your life currently is now it does not have to stay that way. There are things that you can do and it can change very, very quickly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, the, the, the real rabbit hole is not getting attached to the identity of being, you know, this new version of what you are are and that was a very profound thing that happened to me probably 10 years ago you know and and that's like oh i'm i'm now a runner i'm an ultra

runner and oh no i'm a triathlete or i'm a coach or i'm this you know and it's like this is my new model right and it's like that you're heading right down the same path and understanding that is the real work and being able to detach yourself from any of these stories and what we're trying to do and i'm not saying like i encourage people to continue to push and chase changing these narratives, try not to get caught up in the identity of what these things become. It's like alcoholic, drug addict, that's an identity. You've just pigeonholed yourself into something. And I realize that there are people who suffer pretty hard from these things. I have participated in that. I've done work in that. And we lose sight of the fact that we're human beings.

And that's what we are. If I become, call it vegan, if I become paleo, if I become alcoholic, I've now stuck myself inside the bottle and my world will shatter the moment that something occurs outside of that and so that's where really like the work really gets fun it's really understanding that yeah i think that is so so true and it's one of the reasons why i think things can be so polarizing on social media now. And I think, in fact, I read that this neuroscience study maybe about maybe a year ago,

where they were just showing that actually when your identity is being challenged, you go into a fight or flight response. That is how serious, that's how it changes your physiology. And then suddenly you, it explains why social media can be so toxic. Like Twitter sometimes can be just horrific. And you know, you are literally going into a fight response because your identity is being challenged. So I think that's a very powerful statement, Brian, don't make these things your

identity. It almost imprisons you because that's. That is a cage. That is a cage. It's your new cage. It is a cage. There's no ifs, ands, buts about it. It is what it is. And I've pigeonholed and stuck myself in these cages my entire life. And I am at the point of learning to be outside of the cage very, very well and constructing that in a way that allows a freedom that you do not understand freedom until you are out of that. Yeah. A hundred percent. And Brian, I've got to say one of the things I respect about you the most, the way you communicate is you don't claim that this breathing stuff is new, that you've come up with it. You know, you always pay homage to the past.

We didn't invent breathing. Yeah. This is, you know, there have been yoga practitioners who've been talking about this for 5,000 plus years. You're not criticizing people who do live in those cages. You're saying, hey, I have lived in that cage for much of my life. But now that I'm free from it, I want to share, you know, how good it feels. But it's like, you know, I think social media is a very toxic environment only to the degree that you don't understand its use. And this is where an identity is challenged, right? And when

my identity is challenged on the Twitter or on Instagram or on Facebook, like that becomes this thing because I'm in this voyeuristic world of I'm behind the screen. I'm not actually in front of somebody having a conversation to where things just melt apart. And we do not like, you just see how people kind of where their behavior's at. Right. And so you kind of understand a lot, like if you've done a lot of the work we've done, it's like you start to understand the biology of this stuff and how this plays, what this person's life might be playing out like. And so you can actually develop some compassion towards it. But in the same essence, I also believe social media is even on the most minute level, doing the most basic thing that we do and that is sharing

of information and if you are not authentically sharing information you have misunderstood the tool and so this is the great conundrum of why social media gets the bad rap that it does is because when i'm taking naked cell or half naked selfies and this stuff and talking about things like, and there's, I guess there's nothing wrong with that, but that just doesn't do anything for me. I mean, seeing women half naked, trying to glorify themselves and men trying to show off their, like, that just isn't my thing. Like I'm just not, that doesn't help me. And I'm, this is just a prime example of like, you've got a million followers because this is what you do. This isn't even real. This is not a real place. So what happens if let's just say Instagram disappeared, what happens to you? Who do you become? And that's the idea is like,

if you can authentically express who you are through this medium, you're now doing what a basic cell is doing. It's sharing information to the next cell so that we can communicate and progress in a way that's helping the totality of the system or here we go on earth, right? And so we're missing a lot of this idea with things. And I think that's what the opportunity of social media is, is to authentically express yourself and bring forward things that you're learning. But if you're not learning anything, I'm not interested. I'm just not interested. It is.

It's very profound that, brian because i think if you are not sharing things authentically then what you do is that you create this identity that you then have to live up to which isn't real so you're then having to filter particularly things on instagram stories now like if you've created this image of yourself online which is not you then actually you have to mentally, it must be fatiguing every day thinking about, well, what is this? What is this image that I'm giving to people? I have to play up to that. Even if it's not how I feel today, I have to show that it's, it is, it's, I don't know. That's the entertainment world. That's what's difficult about the

entertainment world. Like I've got friends that are, are i mean major like players in the entertainment world they're like it's so difficult like you have to be so good that you are like aren't the character yeah you have to become like there's this separation of character and person and social media has presented this place where characters are being developed that aren't authentic and therefore when i step out of this medium i don't like this is i i have a lot of trouble existing now and now i'm not who i'm proclaiming i am and that's like that i can't that's not does i feel that i literally feel that in my core. And so I can't do, and that's what breathing has done for me. Breath work has allowed me to feel who I am and what I'm doing and when something's right

or wrong or like what the response is. And so that ability has allowed me to transcend what it is I've gone through. Yeah, for sure. So breathing. Okay. Many people's view of breathing is it helps me to get oxygen into my body and oxygen is fuel. It's the only way. Yeah, exactly. So, um, is that simply all that breathing is? No, no. Cause you know, we, oxygen is the most important molecule we've got right um it's like in terms of for for energy right um maybe it's not the most important it's the thing that's allowing us to exist right in the manner that we are uh 500 million years ago multicellular organisms

figured out how to use oxygen for fuel and thus aerobic metabolism began. The evolution has continued for that long, right? So going on that timeline and seeing that we have not turned back from the most efficient way to produce energy, which is aerobically and bringing oxygen into the system. And that's what the design of the inhale of our lungs does is it brings oxygen in the system. The only way to make that oxygen available though is another thing, you know, another gas, right? That's carbon dioxide. And so the carbon dioxide and so the carbon dioxide is a response to a hostile environment i guess you could call it and that's what we that's what this planet was right before multicellular organisms figured out everything right and then plant a little algae figured out how to convert sunlight

into energy and convert the sunlight in and the byproduct of that became oxygen right so the planet got engulfing algae and this is a gross basic overview of some serious stuff that people have done real work on right but that that's toxic environment left for anaerobic metabolism primarily in single cell organisms to work now not all single cell organisms will function off of anaerobic metabolism primarily in single cell organisms to work. Now, not all single cell organisms will function off of anaerobic metabolism, but it is a default system that we use and they work congruently in our system, right? So when I don't have enough oxygen present, right, being used, I will, my body will just, it instantly beautifully starts to switch over to this anaerobic system. so if there's not enough

oxygen present in something we default to another energy system and that would be the anaerobic system right and so using more sugar and glucose for energy because the brain and the nervous system actually require glucose as as its only source of fuel, right? And this is 20% of the energy we use, right? So as I inhale, I draw oxygen in, it enters the bloodstream, it goes to the bloodstream, then the mitochondria, which are the powerhouses of the cell, the organelles of the cells, go to work and use the oxygen. The only way for that oxygen to come off the red blood cell through blood is by carbon dioxide replacing that molecule in the red blood cell. And so I need to have enough carbon dioxide present in order to make the environment,

let's call it perfect for oxygen to work. for oxygen to work. Now we're doing this in a very regulated way all day long, 26,000 breaths, right? You're using oxygen predominantly, but how much are we using that oxygen? And that starts to show up in things like if we look at respiration rate, well, like the Buteyko method, I think the Buteyko folks believe, and this is a method that was designed by Konstantin Buteyko out of Russia, the former Soviet Union, that 80% of the population roughly chronically hyperventilates, which means they're over-breathing. And so when I over-breathe, when I breathe, have a high respiration rate, I'm actually blowing off or getting rid of more carbon dioxide than probably necessary.

So hyperventilation becomes a stress reaction, right? A higher stress reaction. I breathe more. Think of working out. You start running your respiration rate. You're, you know, you start to breathe more frequently, right? Yeah. is the same thing. If I'm sitting here and you're stressing me out in any way, shape, or form, my respiration rate will tend to follow if I am stressed out, unless I'm actually aware of this. This is where consciousness and awareness have a game or a play, right? So where I can take volitional control over my breathing and manage that or train that in a way to bring me back to a place to where I'm actually using that oxygen. And this is also known as the Bohr effect

to a large degree is having enough acid in the environment in order for the oxygen to be used. And so that's why breath control becomes such a big player in things is I can actually optimize myself to use more oxygen. Yeah. I mean, super incredible. And, you know, in the morning of your awesome breath clinic, uh, course, I don't know what you call it yesterday. Um, that was, it was really great to understand that, that of course we need oxygen. We know we need oxygen. But actually, in order for that oxygen to come off and do the magic that we want it to do in our body, we need enough CO2, carbon dioxide. But we have become a carbon dioxide intolerant society.

80% of us potentially are over-breathing, which means we're blowing off too much carbon dioxide intolerant society you know 80 of us potentially are over breathing which means we're blowing off too much carbon dioxide so yes the breathing is you know we want oxygen but without enough carbon dioxide we can't use it yeah and i say when i when i talk to people and it says what how i wrote about breathing in in this resolution was about breathing is information breathing is information for your body. The way you breathe will give your brain information. Are you in danger or are you safe? And I say to some people,

look, when you are on deadlines and you have 10 emails to get back to you and a few projects to finish, you are probably changing your breathing without realizing it. You are probably breathing more from your chest and your diaphragm. You're probably speeding up your rate and that is sending information to your brain that is again it's like a vicious cycle um and i love that that test you

guys do um with your students the co2 tolerance test yeah uh which i found super super interesting so i want to just unpack that for, you know, maybe laymen who might be listening to this. You know, what does it mean to be CO2 intolerant or carbon dioxide intolerance? Yeah. So we're currently working on defining this. And a lot of the work Rob does, who is my partner in this with the Art of Breath, and who's my counterpart and what we do has come up with a term that i think is probably going to take off and that is how what this is psycho metabolic reactivity and so the snapping yeah isn't it i love it but i do actually yeah well i i look at this is how well we're willing to optimize this so psychometabolic optimization and how you react to what is the

metabolic waste product of energy that is co2 so it's it comes down to our relationship to co2 and so we'll take this to when you were swimming and you went into that panic attack and not seeing the bottom of the floor of the ocean anymore, and you went into an override. I can guarantee you based on our work. Now we'd have to prove this, but we're currently have plenty of research starting to show this, that your CO2 tolerance hit the floor when that happened. Meaning there was elevated levels of CO2 and you started to react to that because of the context of the story and what was going on. Hold on. So let's go through it. So I was swimming. Yeah. Okay. No problem. Higher levels of CO So let's go through it. So I was swimming. Yeah. Okay.

No problem. Higher levels of CO2 because of work. Okay. So I was working and therefore I'm starting to build up carbon dioxide in my blood. That's why your respiration rate went up. So everything goes up to, you know, and this presumably will happen if someone's running or anything that they're doing.

So, but then I hit a point where I got scared. Yep. So I've already got raised levels of CO2. So I'm hyperventilating to, I'm assuming to get rid of that CO2. You got it. You literally, so the only time that you don't react to anything with your breath is when you're dead. Your brainstem is online. It's a part of everything you're going to do. So you're going to react in any instance to your environment, to what your perception is, hearing, smelling, seeing, taste, touch, right? So your five senses are here by design to help with all of this and signal even to that respiration pattern what I need to do based on how I need to optimize myself. Self-regulate, right? Well, my thinking's off, so self-regulation right now,

I'm responding to the CO2 that's in my blood. Now, it didn't need to be that high. Your CO2 did not need to be that high. You could have dropped that with like, if you're like, let's say you hate flying. Like, like I'm not a big fan of flying. I've gotten good at it. Right. Because I've, I've done work at it. Right. Control your breathing while you're doing it. So that when things start to shake or start to do things and you think the plane's going to go down or whatever, that's just a story. Like that's really just a story. And so it's the content. And so now I'm responding through the limb, like these emotions that are happening through this story, right?

And my respiration center responds to that. So controlling my breathing allows me to manage the carbon dioxide. And what happens in a panic situation? What's one of the things we do for people when they're freaking out? Brown paper bag. Bingo. Brown paper bag on the face, breathe into it. So what's going on there? Why? CO2 is you're rebreathing. You're actually using more of the oxygen that you've got right just unpack that for people listen to this you're having a panic attack you're over breathing yeah so you're blowing off a lot of carbon dioxide yeah so remember what i said about how we default into a so we have an aerobic system or we default into anaerobic what happens when we don't have enough carbon dioxide in the environment we're

not able to utilize any oxygen that we have we're not able to get what does the brain need to function oxygen but doom so suddenly we don't have enough oxygen so what is the brown paper bag doing it's recirculating the carbon dioxide that you're you're rebreathing it's basically a rebreather so you're putting more carbon dioxide back in you couldn't breathe into this bag for five minutes you know you you it's just a few breaths right but you're re-breathing and getting your trick you're basically tricking the brain yeah and they're uh dr justin feinstein out of oklahoma is doing work on bolus hits right now of carbon dioxide with super high anxiety patients and having insane results like people getting one hit and just like this freak out mode thing happens but because it doesn't happen in the successive breaths

that people regulate and the brain start and you calm down you're like oh this isn't as bad as i think it is and i'm able to control this so if i was, had I been trained at that point in breathing and done a bit of practice and been to the ocean before, um, in theory, are you saying that I could have switched off that hyperactive stress response that was going on in my body? I could have actually switched it off, maintained control, maintained calm and carried on swimming? That is where choice enters the situation and choice of breath. I choose to breathe and control my breathing right now. Now I need to choose and change my narrative because I'm now exacerbating a situation that is counter to what I want to be going on.

I'm freaking out. There's no need for me to freak out. I am not an imminent death. And if I am freaking out, then get the fuck out of there or excuse me, but get out of there. Like, right. If it's truly a freak out, or if you want to participate in this and change how your brain works, plasticity, lay back on your back and control your breathing until you can calm it down. If you're in the water and you're in a wetsuit, you're going to float. Trust me. You're not going to sink.

There's a reason why free divers need a weight belt to go down. Right. Like, so even, even that, so I, I've, I've sort of tried to, um, dissect what happens. And I think for me, there's so many reasons why I freaked out. One, I never wore a wetsuit before. Oh, I didn't even know you absolutely made you broke every rule of like going into a competition for the first time or doing something yeah i never wore a wetsuit before i didn't trust the guy behind the guy next to me

said look wrong and just line your back and you'll float i thought there is no way i'm lying on my back at the moment i am gonna sink so i didn't know that the water was cold. And if we have time, we can maybe explore what that cold does to people. Um, and yeah, sure. I hadn't been in the ocean before. So all these factors together, it's like almost like a perfect storm, but I would probably have had to do a lot of training to. But the fact that you unpack it like that, like you're able to do that, like, look, but the fact that you unpack it like that like you're able to do that like look so what does this mean for rongan what does this mean like oh i tend to overpack put things like jump onto things and do everything for the okay maybe i should start dissecting that a little bit further back in my life when that started how that started why that started you know and for brian

you know especially like you know i think it really comes down to a lot of the relationships and things that we've done. And so I, you know, I look at like my childhood and it was like, I was rebellious, man. I got attention. I got a love because I rebelled. Like I got attention when I was rebellious. Hence, look at me. Like when I've got my shirt off and I'm in short sleeves, I am, you know, I'm covered in tattoos. I grew up in an environment that was very rebellious. I looked up to people that were punk rock, you know, it was like this whole thing and it garnered me attention. So I felt love that way.

So that then transcended into aggression and what that meant. And, oh, this is my default for survival. Like, so I, I tend to overdo things, right. And be, Oh, I'm going to do this. I'm responsible for everything or I, you know, or, you know, like it just, and we think that's our personality. It's not who we are. Exactly. And I sort of gabble Maté. I spoke to him a few months ago. Do you know Gabble's work? I mean, I love Gabble's work. I think he talks with such compassion. What's it telling ghosts ghosts? Hungry ghosts. Hungry ghosts, yeah. Yeah, and one of the funnest conversations I've had on the show for sure.

And he talks about how we use language and how that determines a lot of the way we think we are and what we think is our personality. But we could go down a big rabbit hole right here if we want to. I'm going to pull us back to the breath because I'm keen that people listen to this who think, okay, look, I get it guys. I get it. Breathing's important. Somebody listens to this who has not a clue how to start. Yeah. Right. A simple solution for that. Well, let's, let's, let's dive right in. We all have apps on our phones. We designed an actual app based off the work we've done and what we saw was that not everybody responds to the same patterns in the same ways because our physiology and thinking and emotions aren't always in the same place right like you deal with things very differently than

i deal with things that would make sense right like if we were training for the same event we could follow the same training program but we're probably not going to get the same results because you've got asymmetries i don't your physiology starting off in a place mine isn't right like all these things are variant right so we saw pretty early on that people responded very differently so we do we we learned how to put what patterns work with kind of specific ways of dealing with things emotionally. Right. And so we based this algorithm off of how people emotionally handle stress and their CO2 tolerance test.

And so it starts people off and it gives them the state app starts off by taking people through this test and it gives you four exercises to do. And there's one for feeling alert, which is waking up in the morning. There's one for being present, which is maybe throughout the day. There's one for feeling calm, which is whenever you need to feel like you're calm. And then there's one for which most of us, most of us are dealing with is to help you fall asleep, to downshift you big time so there's two on the end that are kind of really important about downshifting and something we need

to take more um into account in our lives because that's the thing we're not doing is it's not that like stress stress isn't the problem we need to lean into stress we need to understand that it's what we're doing between stressors like you know you know, so we're going to have had this conversation for, you know, 90 minutes or two hours. Right. And it's like, when I get out of here, I'm going to get in the car. I'm going to do some, I'll probably do a few breathing exercises as I do, because I'll just come down a little bit. And then I can hop back on a phone call and do things again. And, you know, regularly I can process what we did and then I can move on to the next thing. And that's the thing we're not doing is we're not processing these things. We're not actually going through the process. We're just jumping from one exposure to the next. And so that's what the app is really designed to do. And it's like, Hey, here's four exercises you can do that are actually customized to you. So your app is very different from my app and very different from Rob's app. And it changes and evolves with you based on how you respond to carbon dioxide. Because when you can actually get better at these patterns, you're increasing your tolerance to CO2, which only means you're creating more room and the

ability to shift down or up in an instant. On the whole point of CO2 tolerance. Yep. In that incident, when I was in the water, when I was panicking. Yeah. You said that actually my CO tolerance changed or I was at that point intolerant to CO2. So I'm breathing fast to blow it off. Is that an acute thing that happens?

Or had I been training my breathing consistently and I had raised my tolerance to CO2 on a consistent basis, would I not have felt that intolerant to it in that incident, in that particular moment. Does that make sense? At that particular moment, most likely, maybe a little bit further down the swim, you may have, because it may have required more work or more storytelling, negative thinking, in order to exacerbate it, right? What we're doing is pushing that envelope. Like we're building that gap of choice, right? Like, you know, you've got stimulus and envelope. We're building that gap of choice. You've got stimulus and response.

You're building a bigger area for just going, I'm cool. I know if I continue to push this a little bit harder, I've got a problem. But here's the thing, is you are combining emotions with work. And it's not that we're not doing this when we're training or working out, but we're not doing it in that context where I'm exposing myself to an environment but the thing is is it should be an acute response it should be it should not be chronic and this is where we start to see long-term like chronic stuff like being emotional and not dealing with the stuff that we should be dealing with like at the heart of it when we you know like victimizing ourselves this inevitably does not dealing with the stuff that we should be dealing with, like at the heart of it,

when we, you know, like victimizing ourselves, this inevitably does not deal with things like I'm not at fault. I don't have any play in this. Well, if you're thinking about it, you've got plenty of play in it. I hate to tell, I hate to break it to you. All right. So understanding that there is that thing there, emotional your having a stress to emotion will will hold on to a lower c so it'll affect your co2 tolerance more than physically affecting remember how we did the test yeah after we worked out and your co2 tolerance test plummeted then we did the breathing exercises and that should have gone up. And we saw a lot of people in that room where for the fourth CO2 tolerance of the day, granted the first two were done when we weren't even working, right? We weren't even really doing

any real work. The fourth one, after you'd done two workouts was the best for a lot of people in that room, right? And that's the power of what breath can do, is it can change that CO2. And people felt calmer. The whole room looked like it was just docile after we did that. Yeah, it was so amazing that those sort of five, 10 minutes at the end where everyone had just done this down-regulating breathing pattern, you could just feel the energy. It was just chill it was just felt

calm and it was it was amazing and you four minutes of breathing that was four minutes of breathing and four i just thought wow wouldn't it be amazing to feel this way at one point in the day at least every single day but with with that, you absolutely can. You mentioned the breathing practices make that space in between stimulus and response bigger. Is there anything in life that is more important that is going to have more impact on your wellbeing, on the wellbeing of people around you than actually making that space big?

I don't know if there would be anything else. I don't think there could be because that is what gets us into trouble in our life. Whether we make poor choices, whether we fall out with our wife or our husband, or we shout at our kids. And even this is not new. This is old, old, old, old thinking. No, this is old, old, old, old thinking. I mean, look, Bruce Lee literally conceptualized and brought the idea of self-actualization.

That is that. If you don't build that gap of actualization, you're just a reactive species in an environment that is chaotic. And you give your power to other people. You lost your power. Like I got, I know way too many people that are running around pretending to be happy. Thinking happiness is the key to everything. And happiness is, in my opinion, is not. It's contentment.

You got to understand, and this is buddy fergus connie and i talk about this all the time and this is the big problem with what we're doing right now is everybody's chasing happiness yeah fuck happiness like you're gonna have times where things are tough but you should have the tools to understand that that gap and that hey Hey, you know what? This too shall pass like this. I have the tools in order to manage this stressful situation. Like I'm going through something with my wife that like, I'm, you know, like I've got to have the tools, like I'm in an argument and it got bad and bad and bad. And I'm just, this is an, this is, you know, an, an, an out, like just making this up, but it's like, Hey, I've seen this people with, with people all over the place. but it's like hey i've seen this people with with people all over the place

and it's like does this need to be this bad no it doesn't it does not and if you actually reflect on yourself and use breathing to actually control that response to what's going on that psychometabolic reactivity becomes optimized and you start to actually work through, Hey, I can actually, this isn't rebellious. Brian is just an identity. Yeah. Bingo. That is not me. That was just who I thought I was. I am actually much more than that. And I have the ability to choose how I am. I'm not anywhere near the rebellious person I was. Now there's aspects of me that's pretty rebellious, you know, going and getting out of a cage with sharks and, you know, but, but those are experiences, you know, and, and these are things that i want to be able to go and do and experience and that's

that's what living is that's life that is living yeah and if i can't take those experiences and implement them into what it is i'm doing right here with you right now why am i doing them yeah what's the point or my wife and my kids and this is the beauty of life that you see right now yeah right and what you say about happiness and chasing happiness, I agree. It's we've, we've gone down the wrong track. Um, you know, I've, I've, you know, I, I've just gifted you obviously that my book on stress, I hope you enjoy it. But what was interesting when I was sitting down to write it, I remember thinking, okay, there's infinite stresses in the environment. I want to

talk about it. I want to structure this in a way that people can help. First of all, help them understand where stress lives in their life, give them that awareness and then give them tools. And I thought, well, fundamentally living a life devoid of meaning and purpose is the most stressful thing we can do. That is my view. And I think actually finding meaning and purpose is the most stressful thing we can do. That is my view. And I think actually finding meaning and purpose, and there are many ways in which we can do this, and I do, I've got my own philosophy on that, but it is, once you have that, actually life just, the stress dial, the harmful stress dial, because stress is normal, right? Stress is there, we're designed to respond.

And we're designed to be able to manage and deal with stress. But the unhelpful stress dial just goes down in an instant when you find meaning and purpose, when you stop telling yourself these stories, when you free yourself from the prison in which you have been. It's deep. It's super deep. But I think that's what life's about, man. Yeah, man. I'm my entire, my entire thing, you know, it was, it was, I had this talk with a good friend of mine the other day and she was, we were talking about how 98% of the world goes left and then 2% goes right. Right. And I, I looked at it and i was

like i go to the start every like i want to go to the start and see it for the first time every time i want to and that's what breathing that's what breath work does that's what self-actualization does that means that i can go into any experience and it could be the same, like I could do the same workout, but I'm looking at it differently under a different light. I'm going into the same job and the same thing. And I get to look at this as a brand new thing every single time. That is a choice. That is the ability to make the choice of I'm the lion or I'm the antelope, right? And I have that power. That is what power

is. And that ability, and I'm not saying everybody needs to go and start their day over. I just look at myself as I want to go and understand something for the first time, every time. That's learning. That is what it is. And that brings a beauty to life that I've never experienced in 45 years. So I'm going to continue with that kind of thing, you know, and continue to see things and learn from things because, you know, I've come under this idea that it's like we're either believing in something or we're learning. And I'm trying to dismantle the belief section of what it is I've boxed myself into. You know, we get this idea about something and like, you know, it's like hell. I mean,

it's like the climate change and it's like, yeah, it's gnarly, but we, so many people with so many ideas about how this could be fixed. And yet none of them has any truth to it. Right. I'm not saying that we shouldn't continue to move forward. We should, but everybody gets hooked on this one thing or this one idea or this one, how we're going to do things or how the workforce needs to operate or, you know, how the healthcare system needs to operate or whatever. Like one idea is going to fix them all. And it's like, you know, Rob brought this up yesterday, like one ring to rule them all is going to be a problem. I'm telling you. For sure. Yeah.

So Brian, for people who want to get involved, they want to start taking control. They're inspired by, hopefully they're inspired by what they've heard and think, okay, you convinced me. Breathing. I need to start focusing on my breathing i hope you have more questions and i didn't convince you of anything yeah exactly well that would be the hope wouldn't it really that is literally the goal yeah so where people actually voluntarily think okay cool i really want to now start working on my breathing if they download your app which you spend a lot of time and effort integrating, does it walk them through it simply? Like if someone has no idea on breathing physiology, will the app be able to help them? Will the app walk them through what they need to be doing?

Yes. The app is there to help you through state change, right? And build CO2 tolerance. And this is ultimately what we're looking for because we're in we're in specific states like the higher stress states like i'm i'm uber stimulated right well i need to i need to change that and so this is what that can help people do this is that kind of entry level two things get do this for some time then you can start to play around with it more and ask more questions after you've actually gotten some experience with it more and ask more questions after you've actually gotten some experience with it. And, you know, there, there's a quote in the, in, in the movie Sicario that happens and the, the operative gal asks this guy who she doesn't know who he is, which is Benicio del Toro. And she's asking him all these questions about things. And he just looks at her and he

says, you're asking me how a watch works. And and I'm telling you just learn to tell the time right now this is people we get so hyper focused on all this the menagerie of things and this is why what we teach is a principles based approach because principles are better or not better principles are greater than methods which are greater than tools methods are there for specific reasons to elicit specific responses tools are there in order to help with the methodologies and the idea of using that tool can be implemented in any way once you understand the principles. So if I understand the principles, I can do whatever it is I choose whenever I want to do it. It's when I get stuck on a method thinking it's the idea or the only thing. And back to Bruce Lee, what was Jeet Kune Do,

right? This was the art of the intercepting fist the there was no method to the method it was you know dismantling be like water right and this is why he was such he was probably somebody who's ahead of the time right now yeah is the idea is is never to put yourself inside the cage right but get good enough at the thing. So start here at the foundation. Get some breath practice in by learning how these specific rhythms work with you or specific patterns work with you. Feel them. Be consistent enough with it.

See what the change is. Then move on to the next step. Maybe do it a little more. Maybe add one more. You don't need to do all four. Maybe start with one. then start with two, then go to three, then go to four, then go to our website

and start firing off questions left and right. You know, it goes deep. And we've got a lot of research on the site as well and information under breathing resources. And that's powerspeedendurance.com? Yes, that's powerspeedendurance.com forward slash art of breath or going to the under

learn breathing resources or anything on there that has to do with breath. Brian, we're going to link to all of the various resources, the app and everything in the show notes page to this episode of the podcast for sure. One of the things I loved about the course yesterday, the Art of Breath course, is you were empowering people. You and your team and Rob and Danny were teaching people how to figure it out themselves. There was clearly a lot of people wanted the protocols.

You know, what do I need to do for this particular situation? And again, patients come to me wanting that. But what I want to do is empower them, teach them so that they become the architects of their own health. And what you guys are doing is, I'm not saying you weren't giving protocols. You were giving plenty of protocols to people who,

you know, to get them started. But there was a theme that is figure it out, practice, get to know your own body, get to know how you respond. Then you're free. Then you're no longer looking to what would Brian McKenzie say I should do here? What does Rob say I should do here? Of course, that may be great to get someone started, but ultimately you want to know your breath yourself where you can go in this situation. The best breath practice for me is this one. Yeah. And here's, I mean, just back to how important this work is for us is this is a part of our lives personally. We know what codependency is. We know what enablement is. We've done that work. We're not going to give that to the public. We're not going to create a victim culture. We're going to create

a culture that actually empowers people. That is the goal. So we need to actually be so invested in it that this is a part of our personal lives and it's being implemented in that fashion so that we understand it to the core of what is going on. So that when we actually present information and we take pride enough in that information that we're actually studying people who actually stand up for a living and try and make people laugh or present in front of people like that is part that is as much a part of the work as everything else so that we actually are taking the psychological think the thinking behind this stuff and not falling suit into i I've got this really cool thing that if you swipe your credit card right now, we'll give you access to 30 days of the most advanced

training ideas around breath work, breath work, breath work. Right. And then when you get to that phase, we'll didn't know we're not, we, that is not what we're here to do. I can't tell you how much I love that. It's, there's something for me, having you here, Brian, it's been fantastic because the videos I watch of you, the posts you've done on Instagram, there's something that I deeply, deeply connected with. I felt this is a guy who has done the work, has someone who is trying to empower. He's not trying to lecture and actually shove it down people's throats. It's the manner in which you do it that I think I've really appreciated the most. And hearing you say that, you are conscious of how you guys are

teaching, the way you're putting this into the world. You don't want to add to the victim culture that is out there. I think that is one of the most beautiful things I've heard. It's fantastic to hear you put it like that. Well, thank you. Like, look, I appreciate it. It really makes me happy that that's how it's coming across. But, you know, make no no mistake this is all work i mean two two days ago i reacted in a way to something rob even said that like was there it

was boom and i was like no and i was like oh fuck like no i'm gonna listen to him right now he's more intelligent on this than i am and it's it's right It's, it's there if you let it, but it's also not there if you don't let it, you know, and I don't want, I don't want to exist in a world where that is like how everybody's running around. You know, I just don't, that's not the world I want to exist in. Sorry. I'm not, I don't, and I'll move as far out in nature as I need to, if that's what I need to do. But ultimately you found what it means to be authentic for you. You found your value system and you are operating under the values that you have defined. Make no mistake.

And I found it through breathwork. Yeah. I, I, I found it through breathwork and, and based on my understanding of history, which let's be very clear. History is one of the most important things we have. It is very important and it's very important to understand it. And that this has had profound effects, this profound of an effect. If this is coming across profound for more than 5,000 years, we just weren't listening in the capacity that I think people are finally starting or

we're creating a language that people can really start to listen. And hopefully, hopefully those that are in the professional communities such as yourself are, and you are, but you talk about psychiatry, right? Like this is such a closed off society to a large degree to things that are so impactful like this and the like this is we've got an anxiety epidemic do we maybe this is just the absolute natural response to something that we're not actually learning to deal with from a physiological level and oh like why can't that be a conversation? Why can't we start looking at that? And like, why, like Rob brought up a beautiful point yesterday about, uh, this was

a conversation last night about, Hey, we're starting to look at therapy and stuff like almost like periodized strength and conditioning programs. This is what we've been doing for 20 years. Yeah. Small doses. Let's dose, let's build upon the physiology that's been dealing with this psychometabolic reactivity. Boom. It doesn't mean you need to go back squat. It means like, Hey, let's whatever you want to do and choose to do. We can implement breath control, something that's been implemented in yoga. We breathe into a position. We breathe out of a position we follow the breath as you said at the start how you breathe is how you move but doom that's it

well brian i think that's a pretty good place to wrap this thing up um i have really really enjoyed this conversation it got pretty deep there but hey that's why i like these long conversations because what i do hey no it's good It's good. It's a lot of fun. Two final quick questions. First one is, what does Brian McKenzie do in terms of breathwork on any given day? How much time do you spend on this? Anywhere from a minute or two, like in the morning, to what I might consider my entire day. Now, I don't just sit in Lotus and breathe.

Granted that may start my day. A lot of the days. Yeah. I mean, like this morning I was doing alternating nostril where I just literally jumped into it as Rob and I were sitting in, in the front room watching grappling. You know, we were watching the adcc and i literally just started to and i was like oh yeah i need to start i need to get my breath practice going this morning and i just started moving some air and just started feeling where i was at and like how much i might be able to handle today but it's something you will do on pretty much every day oh it's every day every day every day in some capacity i'm doing that now i may not just do that in a seated way but i will do something like sun salutations you know um like

a small movement practice in the morning then i'll move into an actual training whether i'm getting on a bike or whether i'm going into the gym or whether i'm going to jujitsu and even at jujitsu i am breath control i'm letting my breath dictate what it is i'm doing i'm not in a place quite yet with my jujitsu where i allow myself to step out of that right there will be a point i'm just still in big learning phase but that's empowering even one or two minutes in the morning for people to start the day i think that oh that people listening to this that is achievable if someone thinking, when are we going to find time? Just start there. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's discipline. Unfortunately, it's discipline and consistency in the beginning. And then it should be freedom.

Like, oh, I know I want to do this. Right. Then just don't, you know, like, let's not do this. Like after some time, like give it a few months doing something. Understand that thing, right? Then venture out into something new and do that and learn from that and then come around, you know? There's so many different methods and things out there on breathing and ideas. And that's essentially what the app, what the state app does, right? And so that app actually has all different breathing patterns in it so that people actually feel the difference between these things.

Final question, Brian. Yeah. This podcast is called Feel Better, Live More. It's fairly obvious why I genuinely have seen time and time again when people feel better in themselves, they get more out of their life. And what I'd love you to leave my listeners with are some of your top actionable tips, things that people can hear from you that they can actually apply into their own life immediately to start improving the way that they feel. I'm sure some

of them we would have already covered, but just as a kind of inspirational piece right at the end, either breath related or non-breath related or a bit of both, what are some of your top tips for people to live their best lives? Try, I would say if you can get to the point where you take nothing personally, work towards that, work towards that because there is nothing personal and that's going on. This is all just an exacerbation of other people's internal workings. You know, we judge,

you know, we, we judge ourselves by what we, what's going on internally, you know, but we judge everybody else by their actions and intentions. And so thinking that it's a personal thing against, you just don't know the framework of everything. And so thinking that it's a personal thing against, you just don't know the framework of everything. And I, so that's something I literally have to work on every day. Like I'm like, this isn't personal. This isn't personal. Right. So I think that's huge. Right. I think having a breath practice is probably the most fundamental thing you can do for yourself. I don't think there's anything more fundamental. I think nutrition follows that to some degree. I said, don't get hung up in nutrition. I I'm not saying that's the third.

I'm just saying like people are like, well, what you eat should be very important. No, oxygen is more important. It literally is. It literally is. You can go some time without eating. Okay. Like you can go 30 days or roughly without eating. How long can you go without breathing? Okay. Pay attention to that thing. Then I think make some choices about things in a movement practice that stimulate you in a positive way. I don't care if that's hiking. I don't care if that's jujitsu. I don't care if that's CrossFit. I don't care if that's hiking. I don't care if that's jujitsu. I don't care if that's CrossFit. I don't care if that's running. Now, don't let that own you. Just let that be something that is fun to do in a part of your life and teaches you something about the rest of your life. What is that experience? So the last thing I think would just be, be the experience, like just be the experiences you're having. Like if you're

experiencing something profound, apply that to the most minute thing in your life. Maybe that's coming home from work and having screaming kids and a wife who's just, or a father or, you know, or a husband that's off his rocker from dealing with kids. And it's a, it's a chaotic environment and take your experience of being in chaotic environments and learning how to manage those things and make a better decision. Use that to make a better decision. Brilliant. Brian,

I love them. Thank you for making time. I've got so much more that we could be talking about. So if you're over, maybe next time we're in LA, we could continue this conversation. For sure. Or when I'm in London. Keep up the great work. Thanks, Brian. Thank you. That concludes today's episode of the podcast. As you can probably tell,

I loved my conversation with Brian. I really hope you did too. For me, I think Brian's tips at the end there were really quite profound and well worth spending a little time thinking about. I think for me, learning to not take things personally has been huge and breathwork has certainly been a real help here. Now, as I mentioned at the start, Brian has made the really generous offer of one month's free access to one of his company's online training programs. It is called PSE Pro. Now, if you go to his website and take a look, it may look as if this program is

just for athletes, but it really is not. The tools that you will learn on there are relevant for every single one of us. Basic breath work, breath control, ways to experiment and find out what breathing protocols work best for you. And also something that I find really interesting, the different gears to breathing, how you can move from gear one all the way up to gear five, depending on what you are doing just go to powerspeedendurance.com forward slash pse pro that's psc for power speed endurance psc pro and if you type in feel better pse you get access to one month completely free of charge now just to be super clear and transparent i am not being paid to drive you to Brian's courses. I'm simply doing it because I'm a fan of his work. I think what he and his team are doing is incredible

and helping a lot of different people. You can see everything that Brian and I spoke about today, including that free one month link, his website, social media channels on the show notes page, which is drchastity.com forward slash 113 and I would really encourage you guys to follow Brian on Instagram his page is underscore Brian McKenzie and on it he shares a lot of education wisdom and experiments that you can try out of course do let us both know on social media what you thought of today's episode and if you get a second please do rate review and share the show with your friends and family now there is actually a whole chapter on breathing including six different breathing exercises that you can do in my second

book the stress solution which is available now all over the world in paperback ebook and as an audiobook and for those of you who live in the united states and have been patiently waiting for field veteran 5 to come out there we now do have a date september the 1st 2020 so if you want you can jump onto amazon.com right now and pre-order your very own copy. I am super excited to see the response to this book in America. But don't forget this episode, like all of them, is available to watch on YouTube. If you have friends or family who you think would benefit from the information in this episode but don't listen to audio podcasts, please do point them in the direction of my YouTube channel. A big thank you to Vedanta Chatterjee for producing this week's podcast and to Richard Hughes for audio engineering. That is

it for today. I hope you have a fabulous week. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back in one week's time with my latest conversation. Remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle changes always worth it. Because when you feel better, you live more. I'll see you next time. Thank you.