Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Breathwork for Wellbeing, Longevity, and High Performance | Brian Mackenzie

Episode Date: October 2, 2024

How can something as simple as your breath unlock greater resilience, enhance performance, and transform how you navigate high-stress moments?Our guest today is Brian Mackenzie, a human performance expert and pioneer in the field of breathwork, endurance, and stress adaptation. And he’s back for the second time on the podcast. As the founder of Shift Adapt, Brian's innovative training methods blend breathing protocols, movement, and mindset strategies to optimize health, performance, and resilience for athletes and everyday individuals alike. In this conversation, you’ll learn how mastering your breath can be one of the keys to unlocking your potential. But it’s not just about performance; Brian shares how breath control is a remote control for your nervous system, helping you manage high-stress situations and live with greater clarity and presence.If you’re looking to deepen your understanding of how to harness your breath for both high performance and everyday well-being, this conversation is packed with insights._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. How can something as simple as your breath unlock greater resilience, enhance performance, and transform how you navigate high stress moments? Welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast, where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high performance psychologist. And our guest today is

Brian McKenzie, a human performance expert and a pioneer in the field of breathwork, endurance, and stress adaptation. He's the founder of ShiftAdapt, where his innovative training blends breathing protocols, movement, and mindset strategies to optimize health, performance, and resilience for athletes and everyday individuals alike. And he's back for the second time on this podcast. I love how his mind works. I love our friendship. I hope you love this conversation as well. So with that, let's dive right into this incredible conversation with Brian McKenzie. Okay, Brian, this is like a real treat for me. It was 2018 was the last time we saw each other on this podcast and a lot's happened since

then. In 2018, you broke your neck. Pretty, pretty close to that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I want, what I want to do is bring that story back forward for folks that, you know, were part of your journey in our community at that point. And then just like, how did that go? What have you learned? How are you different? But let's just ground our community in what happened at, in 2018. I was, so Memorial day weekend, I was with my sister and her kids and her brood of kids she has four and um we went to a playground down the street and we got into a game of tag and the ground was hot the playground was where everything was happening so you had to be on playground anyway my nephew was chasing me on the ground and i found a ladder went up a ladder shot up the ladder it was a spiraling ladder to the top, which was about eight feet off the ground, seven, eight feet off the

ground. And I went to go stand up to go across the top because the ladder met a plank that goes across the top that you can walk across. But this was a jungle gym. It wasn't an adult jungle gym. So I didn't notice that the gap was not very big and so when i went to go stand up i was going full speed and took a bar directly into my skull um which compressed my spinal cord and at c34 contu made it had a i had a spinal contusion uh i was shut off immediately so i went lights out um i i remember vividly dropping hitting my butt and then everything was gone um but lights went on and like like all these you know sparks kind of went off and i well i woke up on the floor on the ground of this astro turf and apparently i apparently I had done a back flip off of that.

After I hit it, I fell off backwards and I landed and I couldn't move. So I was like, oh. At first I kind of was like, oh, I'm not moving. I can't feel my hands. You know, after I was like, what am I doing down here? I'm like, oh no, I did something. And then I would say within 30 seconds, I had understood that I probably broke my neck.

But I also knew there were four kids that were there and I didn't want to freak out, even though I was kind of like, oh, like there's a new life. It's about to start. For you. Yeah, for me. For me. Quadriplegic life. Yeah. to start for you yeah for me for me parallel quadriplegic life yeah at the at the moment a quadriplegic um that changed in the ambulance ride i started getting neurogenic uh pain in my

arms um and the emt was was he was good he was good because he was like look i'm not a doc and i can't tell you what's gonna happen but this is a good sign i'm like this is pretty is pretty painful. And he goes, oh yeah, because that's a good sign. That means things are starting to come back. However, like don't run with that. Like I'm going to, you know, we're cutting off all your clothes still. And I mean, they cut everything off, strapped me down, took me in. My legs came back, um, I think at like 30 hours. hours however everything was like it was like a three and a half week process to learn to walk again and i did i had no idea and nobody had any idea how much of that was going to come back with what what had happened at the cord because it definitely got pinched and you could see the bruising all the way in um so you, it was a sketchy process, went into an emergency surgery within

10 days. They wanted to do it at the hospital, but I wouldn't let them because I had insurance at Stanford Medicine at the time. So I was like, I'm going to go to Stanford and Andrew Huberman, who everybody kind of knows at this point, nobody knew at that point, but he was, he was, I had been doing research with him. Um, and I had reached out to him about, uh, neurosurgeons and he got me three, he got me in contact with three, found the top guy, the number one guy at Stanford. So I ended up going meeting this guy and I knew instantly when I met the guy that this was going to be the surgeon. So that happened, the surgery happened. And then, you know, I, I worked on recovery and kind of played a new game for a while. What's the new game? Well, I, at the point it was like, I don't know, nobody knew what the recovery was going to be like. So, you know, it was obvious, Hey,

you're not going to go on and deadlift. The new game was getting base functioning back. Base function. I basically could go walk. I mean, I think the first week I could walk like a hundred yards. That was about it. Like what I was capable. And it looked like Bambi on ice, like literally it was, it was pretty trippy. And, and you are recognized globally as a, you know as a leader in physiology and fitness and breathing

more specifically. So here is one of the top leaders in our field of human performance that's taken a life altering moment. And okay, it happens. But what I'm struck by, there's two things I want to just highlight. One is the first few moments of your experience, and then the deeper learnings you learned about yourself through the process. So in the first few moments, it does reveal our framework and our psychology. So why me as opposed to, oh, there's kids here. Okay, be cool. That's a different framework so at the moment of

intensity crisis trauma high acute stress moments they are forcing functions that reveal what we are actually made of from a physiological and a psychological perspective our belief systems are called into action or as a forcing function so it it sounds like, I don't know if it was, call it the first, second or third beat, but the third beat certainly was there's kids here. It sounded like the second beat of your philosophy or your belief system was like, okay, my life is about to change. Like there's a deep awareness of a truth telling moment, which I know you as a truth teller. Yeah. So that, that makes sense to change. Like there's a deep awareness of a truth telling moment, which I know you as a truth teller. So that, that makes sense to me, the compassion and awareness for others makes sense

for, for how I know you. And then the, was there something before that, that you left out that, that came before that? I mean, in that process in there along with the kids was, uh, you know, there's going to be a lot of people that are going to be affected by this. So it's still, it was about others. It's not, no, not just about others.

It means this was actually about me. It was like, this is going to impact a lot of people around me. You know, I, I was married to Aaron at the time and I knew it would impact her. I have a family. Okay.

So go to the first beat. I still think that's third beat, which is awesome. Like these beats are really important, you know? And I hope the listener is going, Oh, how,

what is my, well, I knew something had changed in a way that was, I mean, I instantly knew something had changed in a way that was, there's a new game, whether you like that or not. So there's going to be, how do you want to,

how do you want to go about that process? Second beat. That was second beat. Pretty close. Okay. What was there? So describe to the listener what's on your knuckles. Unscared.

Yeah. So it's a tattoo on each, each letter per knuckle, unscared. And what I'm trying to get to is the, like, was there, oh, shit. Was there a fear response anywhere in there? Or, like, being unscared requires a little bit of explanation. But I want to understand, was there a fear response at that moment? Which would make sense to me. No.

Yeah, okay, that doesn't make sense to me so i want to under because i think you've what is something happened yeah there's nothing i can do about that at that moment you you either accept that and i have i mean there's a history of me having to get to that point like yeah there's like almost 30 year history of me working towards understanding acceptance and being in a moment. But I unpack that the 30 years in a couple of sentences. This is really the fullness of your history. I mean, I partied pretty hard. I got clean, really young, 23.

Yeah. And that tells a full story in itself for people that know who. And I went through hardcore, rigorous self-help and program work and then sought out teachers, like monks, like program, like Buddhist monks. So you didn't go the 12 step. Oh yeah, I've been through that, but I also went other routes and looked at other things. And I'm a search, like I'm looking for the truth.

So it's like, it's not just one thing. And I have a pattern just like everybody else where it's like, oh, the group's doing this. I'm gonna jump into this. This is so successful. Oh, here we are. I'm part of this collective. I'm gonna think like the collective.

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I just want to kind of quickly put them on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Attia, someone who's been

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for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Yeah, you and I, I think have a similarity and I think we're both cult proof. Correct. Yeah. Like I, I, the way that I am wired and the way I work and see the world,

there's no flipping way I could be part of a cult. i'm just no i'm not wired that way and i i'm not i'm not trying to say better than people in a cult no but it's a different psychology of people that want there is no better yeah right yeah it's just different yeah yeah so you're are you friends with dr bob and bill w uh i mean i guess you could code for the 12. Yeah. I mean, I get, you can kind of say that, um, I, I'd be happy to go to a meeting and hang out and I could say, yeah, I'm sober. Yeah. That's not my, it was a part of the process. And then that was a part of the process until, until it was no longer a part of that process.

And I no longer identified as that. I don't like the identity aspect of things. Why did you choose drugs? It was a very quick thing that made me feel free. What was keeping you kept? I think a frustration that people didn't understand me. At a young age? At a very young age.

I mean, I was partying every weekend, every week, like all week, like sometimes, you know? As a high schooler? Oh, God, I was in a fraternity in high school. Like I was inying every weekend, every week, like all week, like sometimes, you know, like. As a high schooler? Oh God, I was in a fraternity in high school. Like I was in what was called- A college fraternity? No, but we started a high school fraternity called the Rat Pack that I literally, and the only way into that thing

was through some obnoxious drinking game that they had created that very few people could get through. And I breezed through it. Like, you know, and I instantly rose to, you know, party stardom. Delinquency. Early delinquency. The irony of all of this is that many of those individuals that were a part of that have come to me and have lived in my homes and have gone through the process that I've gone

through. And I forced them to make- Of sobriety. Oh yeah. I forced them to go to meetings even though I wasn't going to meetings at the time. I'm like, no, no, you will go through this process if you're going to live here because you're not going to go back to that other way. You're also going to train.

You're also going to do this stuff. Anyway. Yeah. You're a disruptor from a young age to even how you've disrupted the high performance, human performance industry. And so the counter, you and I both have a deep affinity for the counterculture approach to life. Like when the world's zigging,

let's look at what the zag could be. And so I really appreciate- We critically think. So it's an impossibility to be caught up into a cult-like mentality. Yeah. It's an impossible, it it literally but you have something different than me here is that i think most people would recognize that you would have more of an

extreme commitment to the counterculture i mean look at your arms yeah you know like that's very normal right now but you are early on the on a tattoo world i was the first person in high school to be tattooed yeah and my coach did not like it what sport water polo swimming yeah so it's pretty exposed yeah um so let's just do a fun before we get into like your take on high performance and how you're contributing to um scores of people being the better version of themselves let's go through your arms let's go through your your back and your body like what are some of the tattoos that you have that have meaning that um are important that help

others understand who you are um i don't know that anybody's really ever asked me to do that it's so intimate there is it isn't it most of what i have on me is through symbol obviously symbolism but uh i have a deeper connection towards uh symbolic art they all have symbolism i mean i've i've rewritten things like on my hands or as my my uh like a year like a year i was born right yeah and then i've got 1998 and that was the year the light bulb went on. That was when I changed. But it wasn't just getting sober. It was, no, I understood. I understood that there was a path towards the truth that, as I understood it at that point, was going to be a lifelong process.

It was like going and becoming a monk in essence, but it was a very different. It's like a second birth for you was 1998. And that birth was to get to the truth. Yeah. It was just, that was the pursuit. And you went physical physiology.

I landed there a couple of years after. Okay. I was in the, still in the restaurant industry. Thank God. You know, and I was still cutting, couple years after okay um i was in the still in the restaurant industry thank god um you know and i was still cutting cutting it in there and i i'd reached a high enough level there to where i

understood that was not what i really wanted to do i mean i was working at a five four or five star restaurant i was a maitre d i was running the show kind of the floor at the time. I had cleaned. I had bussed. I had waited. I had done all these things. But that was not what I wanted to do. Yeah, God, the service industry, man. People, it's just, it's real tough. Even though I'm in kind of a service world, I now have learned enough to where I'm doing

things the way I want to be doing them with people. So this conversation with you could go so many ways. We can get into the tactics of breathing and enhancing physiology to impact your psychology, which is I want to do that with you. But it's also a life design conversation. If somebody could really understand what you understand about becoming your very best, what showed up in the moments of your injury, what showed up prior to that, the 1998, what showed up and how you worked from the service industry into entrepreneurship.

What would be a few things that you would hope people could embrace and apply in their lives to design a life that is great? Yeah. I mean, I'll start just because of the breeding thing, like we'll get this one out of the way. And Rob Wilson, who I used to work with, said this, I think he said it in a seminar and i was just it stuck with me but rob is rob used to work with me uh he was he's a coach um anyway uh he's in virginia beach i think he's working with uh a lot of the um like operators etc now with virginia high performance um at any rate he's he was working with me when i was teaching we were out teaching art of breath etc and he said something and it was,

this is one of the truest statements I've ever heard. There is no amount of breathing that will change the pain you're not willing to confront. So looking a bit deeper at that, when I had my accident, you know, and when I kind of woke up in 1998, those were moments where self-abandonment just started to disappear. That sits at the root of all our problems, every problem we've got. And it shows itself in with the people we work with as I really love

what I'm doing. However, I don't know how to shut it off. I just push and push and push. You're doing that in a way that has become an attachment. So at the level, you understand this where it's like, well, now it's become an attachment. So you can't love what you're doing anymore because there is no love. There is attachment or love. That's what you get. Yes.

So yes, the way that I capture that is the performance-based identity that I am what because there is no love, there is attachment or love. That's what you get. So yes, the way that I capture that is the performance-based identity, that I am what I do and how well I do it, which is a, it's a poison pill. Oh yeah, I mean, there's documentary after documentary of professional athletes out there. I mean, like The Last Dance is a perfect example of like,

wow, I don't want to be Michael Jordan. I don't, I wish, yeah, I wish I have, at some point I hope to meet him and understand him. Yeah, I've heard he's a wonderful person actually. Like, and he seems now to be pretty at ease. Like I've seen him with the race car scene because he's involved. He owns, you know, some of that stuff.

But did you work with that team? I spent some time with that team. No, no, no. And they push, those guys push. You should push, it is performance. Well, you should push. It is performance, however. Yeah. I think we're going to vibe in the same way about the documentary.

I was like, oh, man. Yeah. That is the dark side. Well, it ended. I mean, the ending is a perfect example. There's no – his family's not around. He's not showcasing his family. He's not showcasing anything happy at this point.

Nobody's showcasing anything happy at this point nobody's showcasing anything happy at this point right i mean although you and i got to see the entire thing play itself out with the chicago bulls and that was amazing yeah like but behind you know anyway that mentality also has shown up in you see the weight of gold with what phelps did with the documentary right and i remember interviews happening with athletes who I've worked with. I mean, there are athletes I've worked with that were in that documentary.

I've watched that. I've cut off relationships because of the way, it's just, there's no getting through to the athlete of like, dude, it's, if you don't figure out a process about life through this, like that helps you become like more in touch with your soul, then you're out. Like I'm out.

I can't help you. Okay, so that's where, I want to go back to self abandonment but what you just said is people ask me all the time, like, what's your secret? Well, first there are no secrets. Okay. Um, there's no seven steps. There's no hacks or tricks or tips. Like it's just some fundamental principles that are applied consistently. Um, and like, what's your secret? Like, how do you, how do you, how are you able to work with such, um, visible, uh, high performers, like people that are doing it on the world stage.

And I think part of it is like, I'm looking for people that will do the work. And that work to me is the work that you have fundamentally organized your life around, which is to get to the honesty and to be truth tellers about how to get better at something, to not be selfish. These are my criteria, the people are not selfish. They're actually wanting something bigger and to be part of something bigger. And they are interested in mastery of craft and mastery of self. What you just said, if you're using the craft high-performance thing, but it's not touching your soul, you're like, I'm not interested.

Did I get that right? Yeah, pretty much. You know, it was funny because during the Olympics, the surfing took place in Tahiti. Yeah. Yay, French Polynesia. Yeah. Anyway, the guys who were commentating, we were watching it. And one of the guys goes, this is how surfing works. Because he's explaining, he goes,

the person who looks like they're having the most fun in the water is winning. It's such a good statement. And I'm like, it's such a good statement. If you ain't having fun and look, that doesn't mean it's not going to get hard. Of course.

Like that's the problem is that you, when you start to think it all has to be hard, you've just missed. So tie that back to the self-abandonment. What does that mean? What does self-abandonment mean? And what was the emotion that you were experiencing as you were describing that part?

Yeah. What was that? I mean, it's a bit of a deep sadness, but a deep like kind of – I mean, it's just – unfortunately, it's just where people are – most people are at. Like self-abandonment takes on many different forms. A lot of people that I'll deal with – so if you talk about a professional athlete, if they're not competing, if they're not winning, they're not good enough. Some people do it by simply doing like codependency. There is self-abandonment. Like alcoholism isn't actually the problem.

It's codependency that's the problem. Granted, that doesn't mean that there aren't going to be people who would be alcoholics who wouldn't kill who wouldn't end up dying by themselves but it'd be very few if there weren't people who were running around cleaning up the mess and okaying everything there's those types of people then there's the types of people's people who are working who are running businesses or getting into a business, and they cannot not be in contact with that business or the people they're interacting with at any point or most points. They have no boundaries.

Basically, what self-abandonment looks like is I don't have boundaries. And when that starts to occur, I think the life of a fighter is very interesting, and I've worked with a number of them. You're talking about cage fighting and MMA. Yeah, so I've spent enough time with John Jones, and I was introduced to him a number of years ago through Ari. Ari Manuel at WME. Ari Manuel, and I was with him before the DC fight and introduced him to some stuff.

And, you know, my experience with John is that when that dude is in fight mode, that is the mode you want to be in. It is, everything is towards that goal and he's paying attention to everything. And the team that that guy is surrounded by. I mean, I've been blown away. Like the entire team of how these guys operate, what they're looking at, what they're reading, what they're teaching John about his opponent and how he's doing it and the things they're – they make the environment super – like it's always positive. That's a fight camp. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing

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You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. Not at the abandonment of truth. So it's not the hype machine. Now, there quite possibly could be things outside of John's life as the media and many people have found out that are going on that are not. He's recognized as probably one of the greatest to get in the kitchen. Oh, he is. Right.

Yeah. And I mean historically. I'm not just saying. No, he's the greatest MMA fighter of all time. Yeah. That said said there are people who are trying to come to take that at some point not but and i've experienced many fighters in fight camps and most fight camps are like that so the life of a fighter is pretty interesting but

outside of that it gets pretty destructive yeah it's a violent it's a violent game destructive did you know i cornered three fights? No, I did not. Yeah. So I got to corner three fights in the UFC. Oh. So head coach, me, which was the second head coach, as they like to call it, and our striking coach. So the three of us. Yeah.

So Rico Ciparelli was one of the early coaches in MMA. And so I was part of some really radical camps, Randy Couture, da, da, da, da. Oh, yeah. And then, but I didn't corner. I did not corner Randy, to be clear. But I get to corner three fights. That's awesome.

And you get the whole experience of the fight from the back end. What it means to love somebody and to see them go into a cage and potentially be physically and emotionally damaged. You know, there's a great emotional risk when, for some of them, some people can go in and get their ass beat and they're fine, you know, but some people there's an emotional risk that is right down to the ground. Been around fighters like that? Yeah. But I mean, I think that fight is happening with everybody.

What do you mean? That's a cool statement. Yeah, well, that's, I mean, this is kind of where I was pivoting, pushing this was like, the fight camp is a great, you know, unfortunately MMA has taken a, the martial arts and the way the martial arts was developed has taken a backseat to what's happened with mma at this point there are very few people who really embrace or embody

the martial art the art of side of this the art of you know like the art of war like you know like being disciplined like i think george St. Pierre embodied that a lot. I don't know him. He was on the pod. He was great. Yeah. Yeah, he was great. He truly does have that sense about him.

If you get through the French, the thick French accent on that. You know, he's amazing. But he really did have the art of the martial way. Yes. And he was a physical specimen, which was pretty good to watch. And I think self abandonment occurs as a result of A, martial way yes he you know and he was a physical specimen which was pretty good to watch and i

think self-abandonment occurs as a result of a what we learned from our parents which is by no means something that was maliciously done some cases maybe but it doesn't matter who you are it's going to happen because you're going to you're going to onboard their emotional intelligence to you and you're going to mirror the behaviors of what it is goes on in that world. And then the other aspect is from a cultural and societal standpoint, we are literally being programmed into self-glorification and self-promotion. And that's self-abandonment? That is quite literally. Abandoning yourself.

Abandoning yourself. Abandoning yourself. Your full self, your true self for the highlight reel. For the highlight reel. You're looking for more worldly feelings, things that are manufactured. Meaning when, if I pray, so this is something I caught on to pretty early was when people would praise me for what I've done. And, you know, you gotta be, I started to become very, very careful of enjoying that. Yeah. That's a drug. And that brought, led me to, oh,

yeah. I mean, emotions pretty much are these tethering, these binding agents to an experience good and bad or indifferent. And if I get excited about about doing something and this is the interesting thing about the celebrity world is it's like i mean i've got a lot of friends that are pretty i mean like a-list people and i've watched things happen and i'm like wow i do not want that andrew andrew and andrew's a good example but i mean you take somebody like toby mcguire who i'm friends with i mean toby i toby and i went up to pelican bay together i took him to we went up to the prison up there um he's uh we we were in downtown once working and uh we were at um this bakery downtown i forget the name of it they work with x collins

right and homeboys yeah homeboys yeah we went down there he was on the the founder was on the pod as well was he yeah like our world toby and i went down there to circle and so many ways and you know he brought his celebrity and i brought a lot of breathing stuff and we taught a whole room with these guys and they were like loving it but the moment one person we were outside like oh that's spider-man yeah right yeah i i kid you not there were a thousand people that just went out of nowhere outside in the streets of LA, like around homeboy. And it was like picture. And Toby was gracious and is like kind and open to doing pictures and saying hi to people.

And I'm like, I'm like, whoa, like this is crazy. Like you see this stuff and you get these experiences, but you then hear about, well, these are drugs like you know and it's most people don't get the fact that like the praise thing is not a good thing um and i using not a good thing is not the appropriate language it's something that's going to have another side to it yeah i think okay you you're, you're editing your words. Cause you don't want to say good and bad. Correct. You don't, you don't want to be binary in your language. Yeah. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. But if you're going to get excitement from something, you're guaranteed, this is the problem with relationships. As I get into a relationship that I have an attachment to

that some chick drives me wild and makes me excited. There's going to be a low, a big low. Yeah. It's funny you bring this because there's a really clear research that on a first date, if you want to cement the relationship or have a better chance of it continuing, get in a fast car, go really fast around corners. That's a beautiful thing. Right. And so then both people have this adrenaline pairing and there's a neurochemical exchange of binding. Yeah.

And then there in last, that's like the first hit of the drug. Like, oh, I'd like more of that. She drives really fast or he drives really fast. Let's do that again. It's not about the driving. It's about the neurochemical bonding that's happening in an invisible way. So if the listener wants to yeah i mean in the dating world yeah i'm not necessarily i mean this is like this is why things like you know like uh

crossfit or extreme endurance you know events like people bind to these things because they're extremes right um and i do both right right you i participate in those. However, 20 years later, 25 years later, I have a very different relationship to those things and how I work with inside those. Okay. So let's go back to the life design piece in a, in let's just do, let's do a forcing function. Yeah. Three words, three, this is just like made to be more fun than it is like serious but three words that you say i wish people really understood this to i think we all want a great life i think everybody i know wants to live a great life so what would be three words that you would say are have been important for you living and design co-designing a great life. Consistency. Cool.

The truth. I knew you were going to go there. Yes. The process to get to the truth. Yeah, yeah. So, and I mean, this is how I think of mastery, right? Like, so Sandra asked me to think of like, just for the next couple of months,

think about, right? So it's a consistent process towards the truth. That's it. That's mastery. That's your definition of mastery. That is quite literally. And my experience tells me this. I've participated in Shaolin monk programs.

I've participated in a Buddhist monk semi-program. I have gone through the program of alcoholics anonymous i have worked with multiple therapists in the beginning because i want i needed that sort of thing but i've hired in particular people who i wanted that mind i wanted to understand that mind to learn from that mind certain physiologists exercise physiologists i follow people doing certain things um you know certain training modalities strength uh you know power uh like putting myself in into inserting myself into these world cooking like that's my outlet right like at the end of the day if i get to go cook that's the that's the day because i can go get creative and I don't have to think about everything else I was doing.

And so it's all a process. But it's like I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is I'm moving my joints around, opening that stuff up, going through a process of moving the joints. Because after I've done that, I feel 180 degrees different than when i did when i woke up so i've learned that that process of me getting up and doing that then doing some coffee but then going and starting hey what am i going to do first i'm going to go walk okay wait on the joint movement thing is this like a somebody could reference this online, like a Taekwondo type of joint movement where you're just kind of circling, you're not breaking a sweat,

you're just moving stuff around. Yeah, so yoga does something like this, like with sun salutations, but the martial art, like a Shaolin program, Qigong, these are very gentle, easy. There is a reason why these ancient practices have these things at the foundation of what they're doing very cool there's a very good you're literally just moving your joint your wrists around yeah figure out what works for you if you want to take some of this but go don't do what everybody's

doing figure out what works for you let's do something if you're not moving yeah cool this is big problem i mean this is part of stuff i test with with athletes and people who come to me yeah cool it's your morning lactate level there's a direct correlate with lactate levels and cortisol so i know what's going on you're not doing lactate testing and cortisol testing every morning now i have with me yeah just to see what happens yeah well that's part of the that's part of that scientific it's like oh sure i can go talk about this study, but if I'm not actually applying this, well, I have no practical application of that.

Yeah, cortisol spit tests are great in the morning, but it's so, there's so much friction in it. No, no, lactate's the easiest thing. Prick, finger prick. Boom, and get the reading. What does it say? All right. Under-recovered, over-recovered, blood, boom, and get the reading. What does it say? All right. Underrecovered, over-recovered.

I'm sorry, over-trained, under-recovered. But after I go for a five-mile walk, which I typically go in the range of four to five miles. So that's after the coffee or tea or whatever it is. Yeah. It's a five-mile walk. Yeah. And how many cups of tea for you? I'll do two espressos.

Okay. Throughout the day or just? That's typically my day yeah it might be one more during the day but it's i'm at like three cups of green tea uh earl gray or green tea that's kind of my jam i tea's not my thing i tried that it just never became my thing yeah and okay my my my wife is she's ital Italian and she is very into espresso. Like that's the only thing she drinks. So we. My wife's Cuban. So it's about the Cuban coffee.

Literally. You know, we're drinking espresso. You're not allowed to drink any of that. At any rate, I, the walking happens when I get back. Five mile walk. It's like an hour. Hour and a half. Yeah.

Hour and a half. And what are you doing during that time that's where the you're walking that's where the processing all the junk and everything the creative all the processing of what and how i feel on that walk tells me a lot so it's a walking it's not a traditional walking meditation but it is a um i mean you're out there 90 minutes getting to know yourself yeah i'm not on my phone i'm not listening to music i don't do that um i don't even train and listen to music um i might have classical on in the background if i'm training but like i don't have anything i'm i no longer do that i used to you know blast death metal or punk music yeah those days are gone um

got it okay it's just a different evolution at this point. Um, but I, you know, I'll walk and I know exactly how I feel on that walk and what I can feel like I, my body can handle that day, whether I'm, I can go at it real hard later. Um, but then it's, I eat like I, I eat five, six times a day. I mean, I put out four to six hours of movement a day, like heavy duty. Training or coaching? No. Between walking, moving in the gym, and playing in the evening usually.

Got it. Or if there is a swell, I'm surfing during the day. But even if there's not, I'll typically go down to the beach at the end of the day. Got it. And I'm in the water screwing around playing but i bought like dude i will literally go body surf the shore break yeah like just to go screw around so that i'm playing you know it's so i you know i grew up surfing and i have a the the ocean was a like one of my most important altars like a place that I would go get right. And now this is like sad, but I look at it

and I'm not getting in the water. Like, this sounds terrible. Everyone's into the cold hard. I'm like, I don't want to be cold right now. Well, is it? No, you shouldn't have to go be cold. So I'm not, I'm just not doing it, which is like-

I just put on a wetsuit if it's cold. Yeah. But I've got enough cold training in me like i you know do i've done enough cold exposure it's not like my wife gets very cold she'll get out of the water real quick but you know i mean look that's where the the that's where the the idea of discipline has to come in right like i i'm gonna have to discipline to do this, but it's not really discipline. That sounds more fun. Yeah. Giving in the cold is there's a discipline. There's an active discipline. Slightly. You know, if you can get to a point, I think if you're consistent enough with something, you start to see the process and whether you like it or not, whether this, you know, I just don't believe people are truly,

this is where the self-abandonment thing comes in. So people really are truly doing what it is they want. They're not doing what they want and they're doing what they think they should be doing. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional

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Their products are simple. And they reflect the kind of intentional living that I want to build into every part of my day. And they make my morning routine really easy. They've got some great new products I think you'll be interested in. A shampoo, conditioner, and a hair serum. With Caldera Lab, it's not about adding more. It's about choosing better. And when your day demands clarity and energy and presence, the way you prepare for it

matters. If you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20 off your first order that's caldera lab c-a-l-d-e-r-l-a-b.com slash finding mastery well that's where i'm i was going to ask about bro science yeah that phrase you know that i think it feeds right into like people not uh scrubbing research or understanding it which i that's fine but then feeling as though because a scientist has said this is what you should do without really understanding it that maybe it's not right

for you and your physiology or the time of your life but like the idea yeah man i was you know the research on cold is like but they haven't actually done the work they've just listened to you talk about it so what is your take on bro science and what is your take on cold yeah um i think you need i i think it's pretty important to understand what it is you want to participate in in life what edit whatever if you're going to participate in something go understand that like if you want to be this is our problem is we don't want to go understand it we don't want to go put ourselves into this and do it and then read about

it or look into the physiology of it yeah my job has become quite literally to tell people what truth actually is because their mind's lying to them in most cases. And mine does it. Yours does it. We live in a world that perpetuates that to happen. How do you coach people when they're pulling back from something or making up a story about something? That's the – you've got – I mean, as you know this, like you're dealing with personalities. So you're dealing with very different people

all over the place. You know, you take somebody like an Ari Emanuel who is quite, he's so easy to work with because I understand what drives him. Well, you've had a decade long relationship. And for folks that don't know who he is, go watch entourage the tv show yeah and i mean he's even more yeah i mean he's even more he's way more than that though i mean the guy is literally running he's at the head of multiple businesses you know and he just he loves what he does he is the rain

maker in hollywood correct yeah he he he he crushes and he's 62 years old. How many clients do you see per month? I have less than 10 people I work with, you know, on purpose. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I know. Yeah. That's not the issue. Like, and I know the listeners, like, I want some that. And I'm just setting it up that the list is probably long. But what are some of the criteria or interests that you have to take a new client on? Like, how do you gate that? Somebody who's ready for the truth. I love that.

Okay. Go back to cold. Yeah. So the cold is, you know, I mean mean i got into the cold because of laird hamilton um who stuffed me in his icebox after sitting there for three me watching him sit there for three minutes having a conversation with me as though he was sitting in a tub like you know a warm tub so i was like oh i could do that and um at the time his his icebox his cold plunge was in this dungeon that he had in his backyard that literally was hidden like from an underground like it was

you get in it could be very claustrophobic if you got into a sketchy situation, at which point when I got into the ice, I was like, what? And everything just went like that. And he laughed his ass off. You had a panic attack? I didn't have a panic attack. I was like, how long am I supposed to be in here? And he goes, three minutes.

And I got out within 10 seconds. And he just, he fell on the ground laughing, rolling on the ground. Classic. And this must've been a while ago. Yeah. Oh yeah. This is like probably 10, 12 years ago. So where are you on cold now?

I use it, but not a lot. I think it's a great medium for exposing some things with people. I've had clients that it was good for and was working for them. However, they were just addicted to the whole damn process. So I was like, we should probably pull this out and start some and do something else that I would, would be far more beneficial to what is going on with you than just this. Yeah. There's some really interesting, compelling research around what it can do, you know, from a physiological health and adaptation standpoint, whether it's brown fat or fill in the blanks, like I go for a walk. Yeah. If you're interested

in like, I, and I've, I've harped on this. If you're sitting here talking to me about brown fat and you don't walk 10,000 steps a day, you don't have any business. Like we're not on, we're not, I'm not listening to you anymore. What I'm most interested in it is that. So as a psychologist, yeah. The walk to cold matters. Oh yeah. And it's like the cold is like the truth moment.

You meet yourself on the walk to the cold. And as soon as you get that, and it all comes up, you're like, do you, are you trying to escape or can you work with yourself yeah to back yourself to calm yourself in this is the way i look at the cold this is the way i use it with people yeah i think it's a psychological training oh that outstrips uh not outstrips that outweighs the physiological benefits and there are good physiological benefits dr lisa are good physiological benefits. Dr. Lisa Regan pointed this out to me is that,

the most effective tool for the cold is 30 seconds in the cold, 30 seconds in a warm water. Like sauna. That was the contrast. That's old research. Correct. That's been around for a long time. But that has been the most beneficial process for an athlete in terms of getting the biggest

bang out of your body. When you go to a football locker room, there's a cold and a hot tub. And guys get in the cold for a little bit, and then they get in the hot, and then back and forth. Yeah. So, all right. So it becomes a psychological thing. A thousand percent.

Is what it is. And so if we can use it for that, great. We use it for that in the beginning, but I mean. Cold shower for me, two to three times a week. Cold means all the way cold. And, you know, that, I don't, am I getting the benefits that you would hope I would get from a cold shower two to three times a week? Yeah.

Yeah. I think you're fine um i would say so most most of us aren't willing to go down the road of getting an adaptation first yeah the short-term benefits of the cold are like see if you can get a three minute cold plunge you don't need need anything, anything beyond that. And yeah, anything beyond three. So anything under three minutes. Awesome. Do that consistently for, I don't know, a month cold takes a lot. Um, cold is a much shorter term adaptation than heat. Most people don't spend the time getting heat adapted even though they're

in a sauna almost every other day right they're just not actually getting the benefits of heat adapted getting their core temperature up to a point to where they can really handle something i did i did an article for plunge about this because they put out a new sauna and um i helped them understand a little bit about that i've been screwing around with heat for 25 20 close to 25 years because of the crazy endurance events that i would go do but so wait go cold yeah go stay cold and let's get to heat and then yeah so cold i i think getting to a point where you've, it gets easy, done. Now just intersperse it.

Like just toss it in from time to time. That's where it works. And this is like strength and conditioning. Like, hey man, how often are you squatting? Like every day? Really? Like, really? Like probably shouldn't squat heavy every day.

And nobody's doing that but shorthand benefits for cold for the listener who's not switched on to the benefits oh you're gonna feel calmer throughout the day you're gonna feel more engaged but calmer that's that parasympathetic that's the rebound effect so you know just going back to han cilia's work you look at the stress response right this is all we're doing. This is anything we're talking about right now. Hans Selye was like 1920, right? Yeah.

Some of his research. So this is like when you stress the system, there's a flush rebound effect to recover. You're looking for a positive rebound effect of the stress response. Yeah. And the cold can provide that if done correctly. What about the counterpoint to cold, which is all this stress, acute stress, we should be more precise with that language, is an accelerant to aging?

I would say if you can't slow down a bit as a result of the tool you are trying to use, then in today's world, then your tool is ineffective. So stop using it. Got it. Okay. All right. So it's a learning process. If I'm going and doing cold plunges in the morning, just to ramp myself up so that I can go at 800 miles an hour all day long, probably not the thing. Not the thing. Okay. The glow is unreal when you get out of a cold it is it is super shiny yeah super shiny okay so let's go heat and then let's go kind of the bread and butter for you which is breathing yeah um i i i'm not i'm not versed on heat research

heat is fantastic heat is far in my opinion heat is far superior as a training model infrared or like dry sauna so there's there's three things we can do here okay so you could have infrared which is great it's okay you're going to be in there longer um just because it doesn't get as warm and it takes time to get your insides warmer um The traditional, you can get much hotter and you can make bigger adaptations with, from my perspective, meaning you can adapt to going into over 200 degree sauna and then being in there for a long period of time,

over time. Now, you don't necessarily need to do that you could also get what quote unquote are called sweatsuits and so the what we what we all remember wrestlers the trash bag yeah the train and fighters will go to that is another way of heat training is going and starting that but to be intelligent about this you you want to be monitoring something and the feeling i go with is claustroph the mild claustrophobic feeling that is the first that is the cutoff point for this is done if you're if you're are going to use a technology heart rate's a great way to go because the heart responds to heat pretty well um and watching the heart rate increase so i like if you go in a warm sauna 150 degrees okay

and you're on a bike in that sauna right or you just do squats on the minute like five or ten squats every minute on the minute you're gonna see your heart rate go up much faster than you will if you're outside of that sauna pay attention to that and when those feelings start to come on and then do not override those things about 130 140 heart rate but that's not that that that is not necessarily the the prescription but you don't really want to exceed that at first. But when you get heat adapted, those markers work like they would outside of the sauna. And there is a very close relationship

with altitude training and heat training. Meaning you could probably get yourself closer to ready to going to altitude by being heat adapted, which is a very easy thing to do while not having access to altitude. It's interesting. Yeah, you're straight down the performance lane here, you know, and I'm more interested right now

in the longevity health, organ health piece around heat. And so is there enough there for you to say? the longevity health, organ health piece around heat. And so is there enough there for you to say? Yes, getting in a sauna and spending two weeks every day and working up to about 20, 30 minutes of being in that sauna. Dry. Dry. Not infrared.

You could be infrared, but you're gonna have to be a little bit longer. Yeah. If you were to buy one, do you have one? I do. Yeah. If you were to recommend someone to purchase. Plunge makes a great sauna.

I have it. And again, heat, dry or infrared? Dry. So you went dry for your personal. Oh, yeah. Not infrared. I had an infrared. And then when Laird and I started screwing around with things and he dunked me in the cold, I was in his sauna and he could hang out. And I had been doing sauna and heat exposure work for quite some time.

He could hang out in the sauna far longer than I could. And we were in his traditional. And it was over 200 degrees. Got it. So I was like, oh, so there's something here that I'm not like, I'm not getting. Breathing. Finding Master is brought to you by iRestore. When it comes to my health, I try to approach things with a proactive mindset. It's not about avoiding poor health.

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Like, help us be better. Okay, I'm gonna make a big statement. Yeah. As a classically trained psychologist with specialization in sport and performance, that I think without some combination of breathing training, insight work, which is kind of talk therapy, and mindfulness work, it almost is negligent in thinking that we're going to get the results that

we really want to get. If we look at anxiety alone, insight work, it's a it's a um best best case science insight work is really good without breathing i'm not sure how it really gets done anymore so for folk for the folk who is has some anxiousness under there i'd love for you to speak to what you understand about the benefit of breathing keep it away from performance for a minute yeah go straight down the lane of like um well-being wellness vibrance in life so how would you help us understand the benefits of breathing in that way it's a remote control to your your chemistry it's to to controlling your nervous system it is literally the remote control to slow things down or speed things up in some cases but we'll talk about slowing it down yeah mostly in this this is where breathing kind of gets

a little dangerous it's not the answer it's simply there to get you to self-reflect so that the moment you either become the victim or you get into these self-abandonment behaviors, you can check yourself and say, oh, I'm responsible for me. I'm responsible for the experience I'm having right now. There are POWs. There are people who've gone through much more horrific things

than I have gone through in this moment sitting in traffic right now. Yeah. Or my kid playing soccer. But that's psychological awareness work. That's insight work. And when you pair that with- When you apply breathing. Right. Yeah. You give yourself the opportunity to change how your chemistry is working. So if I do some breathing in the morning, let's say, I've altered my chemistry in a way. Downregulated, created more space.

My nervous system is downregulated. I'm opened up the vasculature more. I'm bringing on these effects, these very positive effects that allow me to be much more clear in my thinking and maybe buying me some time or some place to where I'm not as reactive to certain things that then I can self-reflect a lot easier. Yeah. So the way I, the image in my mind of what you just described is like, let's go, instead of dealing, waking up and getting into the rapids of life. Yeah. There's plenty of rapids.

Yeah. Let's take a moment and let's actually go upstream where it's really kind of calm and we know that there's a waterfall down there and there's rapids that are going to show up but let's go upstream where we can be calm and embrace like literally have a calm boat before we get into the rapids as opposed to just waking up and going straight to rapids and so when you when you go to the breathing stuff like for the down regulation i love the joystick analogy because it is one of the it's one of the only things that casper vandermuel vandermuelen came up with that one yeah it's a good one yeah yeah the meaning that you can it's one of those it's automatic breathing is automatic it's been happening the last 45 minutes and you can also control it and that's the joystick right yeah and when you pull back on

the joystick i guess is for down regulation am i oversimplifying it when i just say basically it's a longer exhale than inhale yeah is the down regulation yeah okay and are you thinking more about i would love for you to walk through the gears for performance in a minute. Yeah, I think that's really important. I wouldn't have done this without that. Yeah, without that. Okay. I am not interested in exhale through the mouth for downregulation training outside of a fitness performance environment. Can you move me off of that? Is there a case for exhaling through the mouth that...

Yeah, I mean, the cases that I understand are, you know, where somebody has stressed out, and they've gotten into a position where they, they're holding their breath a lot. Yeah. It can be beneficial, but repeated, you're not gonna want to do that. Not going to want to do.

Repeated exhales through the mouth. Correct. Consistently. Right. I mean, you can, but what we're regulating is CO2 when we do that, not oxygen. So you're getting plenty of oxygen regardless of what's going on. So if exhale through the mouth i'm offloading excess co2 so i'm changing you're dumping i'm changing the ph which means if the ph is changing that that then changes how the oxygen and many other components are operating and so when i breathe

through the nose um you know it buys me an opportunity to really filter the air change the air use the diaphragm and then humidify the air again as it comes out but it slows it down from coming out yeah excessively so that so that everything's kind of staying regulated so if i slow down my breathing exponentially you'll start to heat up and that's literally your you know thermodynamics going to work is you're just, the system is now opening up. The vasculature is dilating. You're becoming more parasympathetic dominant. Oh, that's really interesting. I didn't have that nuance. So say I'm having a high heat moment. My body temperature is heated up. I'm going to go do something that's got some

emotional kinetic energy around it. I'm feeling it. do something that's got some emotional kinetic energy around it. I'm feeling it. I'm a little more activated than I like to be. I want to downregulate, but my body's also hot. You would suggest don't humidify your breathing. In that case, would you say dump the seat? Yeah, you could do that physiological sigh like Andrew talks about. Yeah, which is now double inhale. Double inhale inhale so you're opening your bronchioles

on the second one you get a full yeah and then you can exhale it's just a sigh so what is why is he going through the mouth why is he suggesting mouth well that's what he did the research on and he found it to be effective um they found to be more effective than box breathing in fact and then box breathing for the listeners like you make up the unit, but it's four seconds in. Four, four, four. Four second pause, four second exhale, four second, or five, five, five, five, or six, six, or one, one. And that's the stuff I like to work with. I push the boundaries of that. Like, hey, where are you at?

Like, okay, let's just say we were using box breathing with an athlete or somebody. Let's use a rhythm that really makes you calm. Great. When that becomes very, very easy, let's push it up a bit. Let's use a five, 10 count. When did we meet at the high-performance Hurley USA surfing camp?

Was that like 2014, 12, 14? Something like that. I can't remember. But so you introduced me to, it was like a 4-4-8-4, 5-5-10-5. Yeah, that's 1-1-2-1. Yeah, 1-1-2-1 protocol. I don't know if I've told you how much of a game changer that's been for me. Like it's been a radical game changer.

That's a more advanced kind of, yeah, but that's a great rhythm. So I've been using that as almost a stress inoculation, meaning that, so I've worked up to, maybe this is child's play for you, but 11, 11, 22, 11. No, that's great. Yeah. And I feel like I've had to work to get there. Okay. That's a long.

It's a lot of work to do and i want to escape at around breath eight i just want to stop the whole freaking thing oh eight rounds into it so eight breaths into that i feel so i've hit i'm using this for like a moment that's about cute that's where that place is yeah so it's a we i meet myself in a near panic moment. I trip over an anxiety wire around seven or eight. And it first happened at like 7-7-14-7, breath number eight. So that's an important thing that you just said that maybe the listeners should probably hear. Okay. Because anxiety, we have a physiological marker for it.

Yeah. And it's not just psychological. No, no, no. There have a physiological marker for it yeah and it's not just psychological no there's a physiological it's the interaction between there's go there there's a sensitivity through the nervous system that's occurring with co2 go there and you hit it with your eight breaths in yeah which is phenomenal yeah that's essentially what I push people to do, including myself, with things. It's like, hey, we want to push these rhythms a bit so that we can get to another level. So that the unconscious breathing. So you're not getting into these tripwires, these places. So you're remaining calm and not having to go. Yeah, right.

Your every day is you don't know i'm breathing right that's right right so i've gone from a chest breather to a diaphragm breather through training yeah you would with going 11 11 12 but you know like going into the free diving stuff is even like i really love breath hold work but you know like erwan lacore has taken this on as he's the guy who started moving at he really has done a good job with the breath hold stuff. I mean, the guy holds his breath for seven minutes. He's got a world record now. And he's got a program for developing breath hold work that's centered around understanding that psychology that interacts with those panic switches that are occurring.

Yeah, that's right. Because we all get them. It's set up. We all have them. Yeah. Like the whole system is set up for this. The amygdala is a regular is a modulator of sorts of co2 where our chemoreceptors are picking up on what receptors chemoreceptors

so they're basically you're detecting carbon dioxide in the aortic and the carotid arteries right and you also got baroreceptors which are pressure so if your blood pressure changes you get blood pressure changes like you get blood pressure changes. Like you can start to feel these things starting to change. You can get pretty intimate with a lot of the things that we've got going on under the hood that you never thought you could be. But the easy one is the panic mode, which everybody has, which is why it's called panic. And everybody's nervous system can experience that.

But unfortunately, when we get ourselves into trouble with overthinking and not moving enough and not doing enough to compliment this stuff or overdoing things with work, that anxious button gets hit real early. This is why people are intolerant, frustrated, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And so there's an anxious response

and they respond with aggression. There's an aerobic component to this. This is why people are intolerant, frustrated, da, da, da, da. And so there's an anxious response and they respond with aggression. There's an aerobic component to this. This is great. So the more fit you are to oversimplify, potentially the better. In some cases, yes. Potentially maybe the better you'd be. A lot of endurance athletes who feel like, or even CrossFit athletes who feel like they're pretty fit, you'd be shocked to see what happens to their breathing patterns at even very low levels where they're mouth breathing pretty early on.

Because of their interpretation of stress. Well, the first respondent when we are exercising to our breath changing is CO2. So as work goes up, oxygen demand goes up. So we use oxygen as you know we all know right so what's the byproduct of that oxygen demand going up co2 is one of those major things so co2 starts to rise so the breathing rate changes so if i'm from calm to you'll see you'll see people who are um you know like less than four percent co2 coming out of them which i already know you're you're anxious you're more anxious yeah i i can pinpoint even with other things to

where it's like you know your tissue's not using oxygen but you're you know everything says that you're still aerobic but your sympathetic nervous system's clamping down right now on things cold hands white fingertips sweaty whatever it's like you start yeah oh yeah oh yeah yeah these are all real interesting things that i go and look at with clients and that we look that i've seen but all correlate to this lifestyle these lifestyle choices we've made and where when i insert breathing or breath control into somebody's program it isn't just hey there's some super secret um breathing protocol you should do it's like well what are we trying to accomplish here like you're getting at it's like hey what's

this you know easy takeaway for people and it's like yo if you could just start with some breathing in the morning maybe um or at some point in your morning to regulate things. Awesome. However. Down-regulate. Yes. Down-regulate. Yes.

So, okay. I want to know how to properly. This is how I've categorized breathing. Maybe I got it from you. I don't know. Down-regulation, box breathing, and stress tolerance. Okay. So the down regulation is like, we'll oversimplify it, 4-8.

Okay. So one inhale, two exhale. Box breathing, we've already talked about. The stress piece one that we've been talking about is the one I talked about, like 4-4-8-4. So 1-1, two, one. I don't know other breathing protocols that I find to be valuable enough to-

Oh, I think there's like some apneas. Like you could do like without the exhale hold, there are things like you could do like one, two, one, or one, two, two. But there's four parts part this is where i get confused i don't know your work here but there always are four parts no there's always a pause even if it's a half a fraction of a second fraction of a second yeah but we don't you're saying ignore that you can ignore that yeah you could start to work with protocol so you're on

uh you're on just over a minute cycle 11 11 20 to 11. yeah you're on just over a minute cycle. 11, 11, 20 to 11. Yeah, you're on just over a minute cycle, right? Yes. So that's like 66 seconds or what? Yeah. 60 per breath. Yeah. Yes.

Right? So take that and apply that to, I would say try 20, 40, or 10, 40, 20. Inhale for 10. Hold for 40. Exhale for 20. 20.

And then straight back to the breath. Yeah. It's not 9, 36. If that's too tough. Yeah. 9, 36, 18. And then what's the one down from that? 8.

Multiplier of four. 32. 16. 16. Okay. And what is apnea protocol doing? So that's helping you develop the ability to hold on to air, which is a stress response. See, I thought that's what I was doing with the 10, 10, 20, 10.

Training your breathing pattern with that hold, with a slight hold, you're doing a double hold., 10. You're training your breathing pattern with that hold, with a slight hold. You're doing a double hold. Double hold. You're ready. The 20 exhale and the 10 empty at the bottom is panic mode, dude. Like you know this. Like all you want to do is get like out of that experience and take a big inhale in.

You want to get to the point to where that isn't a panic mode. Yeah, that's right. Shouldn't move until that becomes. This is why I have to back myself. I can be with this. I am content in this world. Here's the interesting thing that's going on is it's not that you're yes,

developing some of the CO2 tolerance. However, it's really a nervous system thing is what's going on. It's you're now becoming, okay, it's just like the cold. The cold isn't't 32 degrees or 34 degrees didn't get warmer you adapted got it that's what we're looking for yeah you made the long you made the adaptation so now there you go oh i'm just gonna sit here and do this one thing well no i should be the greatest cold person okay great go go be the ice if that's what you

want to go do or go go see your next thing but i use breathing quite frequently like you're using on a daily basis because it's a check-in process for me not just on regulating but where am i at like where is my my where's my nervous system at sure my hrv could say so one thing but this is saying a whole different a whole different whole different thing i know intuitively after years of playing with this what that means in terms of my output for the day so then it's like okay well what am i going to do and and this is where the breathing gears comes in it's like yeah i go on a walk for five miles my mouth's shut and i'm largely in a very big gear one, which would be an equal in and out, inhale, exhale. Through the nose.

That's well over four seconds in length, meaning it's probably around eight to 10 seconds if I'm walking. So like a five, five. Yeah. But I don't necessarily go five, five. I check it from time to time and i walk and i do my thing there are however a few times a week where i am definitively engaged in one breath cycle every four to five seconds working where i'm like on a bike or i'm running and i'm engaged in that process because if i am doing that in a gear one i am retraining the cage that this cage my rib cage is the epicenter of everything it movement physiology the whole nine yards like this is the epicenter because this is what this is the beginning and end point of respiration so if you're active on a bike,

you're purposely going four seconds in four seconds out. No, no. Two into out. I get to a point where I'm two into out. So here's where the two seconds in two seconds. So it's high gear. One works to heart rate.

So this'll be some zone one heart rate zone two. So you want to work that gear one to a heart rate zone two. That way you understand you're pretty close. You're pretty close yeah you're pretty spot on without having to draw lactate yeah to know that you are incinerating fat have a conversation you have oh yeah you could have a conversation but you are incinerating fat at that point oh yeah zone two is this why zone two is so popular right yeah zone two training is it's right on the cusp of the of

where the metabolic shift point is oh so beyond that you start to get another now you could go you could still hold a gear one a little bit longer but if i'm let's just say i'm on a bike and i'm getting up into heart rate zone three four you will want to shift up into more power nasal and even easy mouth breathing right would be gear four gear four is that's in and out through the mouth in and out through the mouth easy breathing anything above 20 breaths per minute okay is really dude just shift it i've watched i've looked at this under metabolic on metabolic cards like day after day after day after day switch most people could be doing it's you you're creating more problems metabolically by not onboarding oxygen quicker

now through your mouth because metabolic so oxygen is for the metabolic side of things so now once that once i'm metabolically at a certain point, I definitely need to on more and more oxygen or I'm creating more hydrogen. Oh, okay. So gear one, in and out through your nose, chill. Gear two, in through your nose, out through your mouth. Gear two is power nose.

So it's beyond that gear one. Got it, okay. Gear three would be nose mouth. Nose mouth. I use that, but it's really a transitional year for downshifting. Okay. Gear four is easy mouth breathing. So we usually jump from gear two to gear four. Okay. Okay. So we go, we're very short with gear two, but we go into gear four and then gear five is upwards of like 30 breaths per minute. It's yeah. Yeah.

And there's time and place for that every week. There is. People, and here's the funny thing is that I have not only with myself, but with a lot of people I've tested who've gotten on the nose-only game are retarding. Ari was one of these people when we tested him at PI. Retarding the process to using air more efficiently at those higher endpoints, at those higher intensity points. So what happens is if somebody goes from from nose only, then they go immediately into mouth, but they're there for like, like seconds and they're, it's over. It's over.

I see. Over. I see. Okay. And you should be able to hang there for a bit. I love that you just sharpened, like get to, get to gear five once a week. I love that. 5%.

5% of all training. Should be at least. Okay. Per training session? No. No. A be at least. Okay. Per training session? No. No. Per week. Volume.

Yeah. Volume. So you could do, I imagine you could do it on a wind bike, right? You could do it on a rower. 30 seconds all out. You'll get there. You'll get there. Have you tried Carol bike?

No. Oh, I got it. I want to have you over. I've got a Carol bike and I think you're going to love this. Okay, I'm going to expose you. Yes, expose me. They've been a great partner, but they've got this way, an AI-based technology.

It's a bike, and what they're doing, it is, call it a two-minute warm-up, 20 seconds flat out at the highest pace that you can, two-minute recover, 20 seconds flat out at the highest pace that you can two minute recover 20 seconds. So it's two bursts of 20 seconds, but they are finding the absolute sweet spot for you. And I want to, I'd love to get your take on it. I've loved it. That's interesting that they're. Yeah.

And it's, it gets me right into that gear five with two 20 second bursts. Some of their research is that it's as efficient as a 45-minute, like, zone four workout. So I want to expose you to it. Me. We'll see about that. Yeah. Okay.

One last thing on this is that when I trained for, I don't know if I thanked you publicly, but when I trained for my ultra, I did the gear training. Yeah. And it made a massive difference. And so I didn't do didn't do heart rate have you had your vo2 max tested i did it was a long time ago but you haven't recently not recently no so just put this out there yeah um i'm seeing upwards of 20% increases in VO2 max with people who think they're at their limit. What does that mean? You're gaining 20% on your VO2 max.

You've probably gained way more than you thought. My VO2 max is in the 60s, like high 60s. I'm 50. So I shouldn't necessarily be there, but based on based on what I do. Um, and I have seen professional athletes have even bigger increases in that, but this isn't necessarily, Oh my God, I'm totally, no. What we're doing is we're getting them to use through this training, their breathing muscles, their primary breathing muscles. You would, it's shocking watching professional athletes. I mean, we're so, as you know, we are so adaptable.

It's pretty amazing. As professional athletes, you can even get like, you can be very determined and your physiology still responds pretty well to things. But you will, I will see people come in and they're like, you know, they're, and I'm like, oh wow oh wow this is gonna be so fun yeah because within three weeks i've seen 50 increases in vo2 max and which is a marker for

longevity an important marker for overall health and longevity had somebody like me not come along right to expose this hole right and it's not like we're i mean we're applying some of the training but like if i hadn't given them the gears inside of training right they would still be like in these stuck positions they're in and competing at the level they are but they're shortening their career because we know physiologically speaking you're using more sugar Your tissue can only recover so much. Like it's stiffer tissue, like the fascia, all of this stuff is integrated into the, it's all a system. And the shortened careers that we're seeing, I think we're going to start to see much longer careers.

I've got, do you know Dean Karnazes? Yeah, of course. So Dean did this and hits me up and he goes dude i've been doing this for like eight months now my vo2 max has increased 20 i've been you know how long i've been running like yeah i've run with you yeah i'm like amazing like any good so how do you how are you translating this to people is it um app courses courses, one-on-ones? What are you doing? One-on-one work with people.

I've really taken a step back to trying to teach and get stuff out there versus just concentrating and having boundaries for my own life and really living the life I want to live, which is one of a process. And I'll probably put some which is one of a process. And, um, you know, I'll probably put some of this stuff into a course that, uh, we have had the course in the past, but it's evolved so much and the information is so deep. Um, so, you know, I really, I work with clientele and then we provide programming through our, our membership website to people that the gears are integrated into and there's programs people can go through on shiftadapt.com yeah shiftadapt.com yeah um and then it's really just the one-on-one work that people do with me i mean you know somebody like ari like this stuff is applied throughout his daily his weekly program so i provide him

programming that has i mean i I oversee like his altitude stuff. I oversee his breathing training. I oversee his, um, training, training, like physical working out training. Um, and then making sure he's doing like hyperbaric on certain days and not overdoing things. And, you know, like I kind of, I, that's awesome. But a true high performance director dude i'm telling he is the highest level athlete i have ari ari emmanuel is the highest level athlete i have come

across that's pretty rad it is wild what he is capable of doing his motor is intense i've seen it up it's wild because i don't they're they're worried that they're the younger generation doesn't have the drive and and the the desire they probably just don't even have the physiology that's saying this is what i should be doing versus like this guy really loves what he's doing he loves helping people he's loyal he's so loyal but like he can make deals happen and he does it like that, even though he's sending you a middle finger telling you to fuck off. And you're like, I get it, but I get it. I know what that means. You still love me. Oh my God. Amazing. You are such a gift to people's

lives. I could have this conversation over and over and over with you. Thank you for bringing the insight. Thanks for having me. The honesty, the authenticity, the depth of knowledge, the really applied way that you can share your information. And your clients are lucky. People in your life are lucky to have you. And so, and I'm lucky to have you here. So thank you, man. Well, I appreciate you having me.

And ditto, man. Yeah. I like having this conversation with you. Yeah. Let's do more. Yeah. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another I like having this conversation with you. Yeah. Let's do more. Yeah. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us.

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