In this 2.5‑minute video, former physician‑turned‑entrepreneur Luke Murray demonstrates a simple breathing exercise he uses to open every meeting and explains why it transforms meetings that previously felt ineffective. He leads the group through deep belly breaths, then shares brief reactions from three employees who each report feeling calmer, more emotionally grounded, and more connected despite personal stressors. Murray argues that traditional meetings focus on head‑to‑head information transfer, but by first creating a safe, regulated nervous system the team can share information from a place of calm, allowing intellectual work to flow more naturally. He reinforces this with a story from a retreat where participants described their bodily sensations, which dramatically increased group cohesion. Murray concludes that regular conscious breathing is a life‑skill that regulates the nervous system, improves emotional connection, and prevents meetings from "sucking," and invites viewers to share their own experiences in the comments.
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Are you in charge of running meetings and they all end up sucking and you'd like for them to not? Well, if so, then this video is for you. I'm going to take you into a 2.5-minute introduction of how I start a meeting, and then afterwards I'm going to talk about the effects that that has on myself and those in the meeting during the meeting, as well as the effects that it has on my team after the meeting. And obviously, why I think it makes meetings not suck. If you don't know who I am, my name is Luke Murray. I am a former physician. I've been an entrepreneur for about 20 years. During that time, I've done about $100 million in revenue. I currently have a portfolio that does about $3 million a year, and I make these videos because I would like to have ambition without the bullshit. And I'm guessing you would too. Let's go to the meeting. Breathe deep into your belly. Last one, biggest breath. Welcome, guys. I started to feel a little bit of that today. How'd you do today? I felt my body relax, holding my mind focused. It made me think. Selling. I don't want to get out. I thought about my mom. I'm very sad about that situation right now. Oh man. So like my body was like, uh, yeah. Mom, fuck it, Mom. What kind of feeling? Same, my body relaxed, but like, I'm pissed at your mom too. Yeah, but I got a lot of shit in my head going on right now. Great. I'm glad that at least we calmed something down. I felt better just because I was prepared for it. And just, I think it was more like an acceptance thing or something. I was just like, we're doing this shit. That's what I felt like, yeah. Before you're like, hey, are we really gonna breathe? I got shit to do, pal, let's go. Yeah, yeah, okay. I mean, I enjoy it. I try to do it at least a couple times a day anyways. Mm-hmm. It does definitely like slow me down a little bit. So yeah, when I'm driving the bus again, like that did not take 60 seconds. Take 60 seconds if you, you think you need it. And honestly, especially when you know you don't have time for it. As we said, Martin Luther King was like, whenever I know I don't have time to pray, that's when I need to pray the most. So there you go. The first 40, 45 seconds was just us breathing. So what benefits does this provide in the meeting to make it not suck. The first is that we walk into meetings thinking that it's about sharing information from my head to your head. But what I care about being rich in is the currency of like energetic and emotional connection. And honestly, if our nervous systems all feel safe and connected, then like our brains can work and we can solve, like honestly, the intellectual stuff solves itself. So you heard that the benefit it created in the first 45 seconds was one of my employees, their body calmed down and they were able to feel an emotion that maybe would have distracted them about some drama with their mom. Then the next person basically said the same thing, and I really appreciated that. Made me feel more connected to them in that moment. And then I turned to my third employee and they said, hey, I do this throughout the day. And honestly, If I had one piece of advice for anybody ever about how to live life better, I would say, yeah, breathe. Just take deep, conscious breaths because that regulates your nervous system, whether you're feeling fine or feeling super freaked out or dreading a meeting that you're about ready to enter. So I'm going to restate what I said earlier about why I do that for myself. It's because what I want is not just to efficiently share information between each other, but is to do that from a place where I feel calm, where I feel not freaked out, and where the— as woo as this sounds— the flow of energy can be unimpeded in a connection with people. Actually, there was a story of a guy I know that was running a retreat. He had everyone go around and say, what's your name and what do you do and an interesting fact about yourself. And around. And then he did the same thing and said, now just tell me an experience you're having in your body. Like, my stomach feels tight, my throat feels tight, my shoulders feel light. So everybody did that, and he said, hey, which one of those things made you feel more connected? You knew nothing about each other when you were just saying, my shoulders feel tense, but what made you feel more connected? Anyway, folks obviously said just knowing the physical experience they were having made them feel more connected. What about you? Have you had someone start a meeting off this way? Or actually tell me what has worked. Have you seen someone start meetings or end meetings in ways that really affected your energy in a positive way? Let me know in the comments.
