7 Minute Breathhold Instruction, Multi-Orgasmic Breathwork, DMT Activation, How He Rescued The Homeless With Breathing & Much More With Travis Steffens Of "The Breath Source" App.

My name is Ben Greenfield and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life.

Podcast, they've taken people who were incapable of feeling fear because there was a portion of their brain that was shut down for that, like Alex Honnold, the free climber and the soloist. And when they injected them with carbon dioxide, they actually felt fear for the first time because it puts the system into such a fight or flight mechanism that it throws them over the top.

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

Well folks, it's of course no secret.

That I am a fan of breathwork and have been a fan of breathwork for many years, even unknowingly so, since my triathlon and swimming days when I would work on rhythmic breathwork and breath holds and breathlocks, and eventually extended that after reading a book by Bud Coates about rhythmic running to running. And that would include nasal breathing, you know, exhales on the foot strike to avoid the inevitable side stitch that plagues many runners. To again working on efficiency and long breath holds in the pool and of course cold water swimming, which I thought at the time just allowed me to swim in a thinner wetsuit. But it turns out there's some benefits of that as well, which of course Wim Hof and other folks who are also breathwork practitioners have made pretty popular. So anyways, I've been on the breathwork bandwagon for quite some time. I'm going to brag before it got hyper trendy, so I dodged that bullet. But one thing that I've talked about before on the podcast is that I also like to meditate, I like to pray, I like to read scripture and other encouraging religious texts. And I for the longest time felt as though I could be pairing my breath work with those type of activities to allow me to enhance my spiritual practice, become closer to God, memorize scriptures, pray things of that nature. But I really was a little bit disillusioned with many of what appeared to be kind of like secular breathwork apps and still with a great message but affirmations. I'm good, I'm great, I'm wonderful, and gosh darn it, people like me. Which is wonderful for picking you up in the morning or dwelling upon something you're grateful about, which is fantastic as well. But there's also for me and my background as a Protestant Christian, there was a lot of third eye chakra stuff and connect with your higher self and you really are purely good inside and you are consciousness and some of this stuff that. That, for me at least resulted in a little bit of a heebie jeebie effect combined with a desire to be able to connect with God more deeply via some kind of like a breathwork app that had something that really appealed to me as a Christian. So in my searching for all this, I came across one app called the Breath Source. And upon using it, I was actually pretty impressed. It has videos, downloadable breathwork sessions, and think of it as though you're walking into a gym and lined up in front of you are like 20 personal trainers, and one specializes in functional fitness and one specializes in cardio, and one's the spin instructor, et cetera. And you just get to kind of choose the instructor that is your flavor for the day, depending on the type of workout that you want to do. And that's kind of like what the Breath Source app is. You go in and you kind of select which instructor you want to work with, and you go through one of their sessions, or you pick another on a different day and go through one of their sessions. And I actually reached out to the company and asked them if maybe I could do some cool Christian sessions for my own section of the app that has things like breath prayer and praying on the armor of God and dwelling upon the fruits of the Holy Spirit, et cetera. And the gentleman who I dialogued with at the company about this was named Travis Steffens. And it turns out that Travis was not only a seasoned breathwork practitioner himself, but was also graciously open to the idea of me partnering with Breath Source to lay down some of these tracks to accompany many of the other breathwork sessions that they have within this app, which is fresh. I mean, it launched in the past four, five months or so. So it's been incredible getting to know Travis and his team and also learning a little bit more about Travis's intriguing story as an entrepreneur, as a conscious capitalist, and as a breathwork practitioner and instructor himself. So I thought, what the heck? I've got all these sessions in Breathwork. Travis has a. Or in the Breath Source app. Travis has a fantastic story. I should get this guy on the podcast and learn more about his journey with breathwork and teach you a lot more about how you can use some of these sessions within the Breath Source and elsewhere to enhance your own life. So Travis agreed. And here we are in all the shownotes, you guys, including links to that app, the sessions that I talked about, everything you can find@bengreenfieldlife.com breath source podcast bengreenfieldlife.com Breath Source podcast Travis, welcome to the show, man.

Ben, thank you so much. It's such an honor to be on your show. Have to admit, I was a little nervous because you've been a hero of mine for a long time.

Oh, geez, you're. You're too kind, man. You know, it's kind of funny because I was just hanging out with you, like, two weeks ago in Phoenix and just to, you know, express to people the power of the type of stuff you guys do. You had another guy who's a featured instructor within the breath source app, Dr. Blanking on his name. Now, who was it that led that session?

Sachin.

Yes, Sachin. Dr. Sachin. And that's not. That's not. That's his first name, right? Sachin.

Yes. Yeah. Sachin Perot.

Yeah, yeah, Sachin Perot. And he led a session. People were weeping, you know, crying, shaking, trembling. And we were all in this conference room with a bunch of health influencers, you know, over 100 of us, super powerful Breath Source Ash breathwork session. And you were there helping out and helping to instruct and coach people, and it was just fantastic and made me pretty excited about this podcast. And I guess I'm just curious how you got into all this in the first place, man.

Yeah. Thanks, Ben. So I've been a seeker of self development and biohacking for quite some time now, and I was one of the guys that have to admit that Wim Hof is the one that dragged me into it. So I saw this crazy guy.

Diving in the ice and breathing. And I had. Where I lived at the time, there was a spa in our building, and I would go down every morning to do my rituals. And much like you, I was raised in the church, and I. I was big on morning rituals and would go down. And I decided to start practicing this Wim Hof stuff. And so I just went at it one morning without anything. There was nothing instructing me. I just knew that I needed to breathe a subset of 30 breaths, and I knew I needed to do an exhale hold and an inhale hold. And the tetany was so powerful in my hands and my feet that I felt like they were gonna blow off. And tetany is when your PH level rises and your. Your blood starts changing, and so your. Your tingling sensation of the outer part of the limbs kicks in, and it's. It's quite intense. So I fell in love with it then. And there was a hot tub nearby that was a saltwater hot tub. And so I would get in there and practice my inhale holds underwater and then I would practice my exhale holds outside and just really fell in love with breath work at that time. So then started my journey to look for what types of other modalities are out there. Then I came across Soma. Then I came across Pranayama with Mikhail biker. And that's how the app kind of came to fruition. Is just following all of those guys. And I'll get into the story of the app later, but my breath work journey started at that time.

Now when you talk about the tetany, just to jump straight into the physiology here briefly and the tingly sensation and you said the rise in ph, right? The rise in phase that causes that. Is that, is that primarily because of the blowing off of the carbon dioxide or is it more nitric oxide related or how would you kind of define that onset that so many people feel when they start doing breath work?

Yeah, it's blowing off of the carbon dioxide. And every mil, every mil of carbon dioxide you blow off, these are little facts, but you lose 2% of your mental capacity and then your blood vessels start to.

Constrict and it starts to raise the ph level in the blood because there's more carbon dioxide than oxygen and you're super oxygenating the body and there's less carbon dioxide and you're super oxygenating the blood. But our tissues make carbon dioxide, as you well know, and it's pulling all of that carbon dioxide to the edge of the tissue, to the edge of the vascular system and it creates what we call tetany, where it, your hands will start to curl, your feet will start to curl. And you might have input on this too, Ben, with your biology as well. But that's what I understand about it.

Yeah, yeah. And that's, that's really especially achieved during these longer or forceful exhales that you encounter with something like the WIM HOF breathwork or you know, four, eight breathing or something along those lines. But it's also interesting. I don't know if you've thought about this before and I definitely do want to get back to your story of how you hey came to create the Breath Source app. But my mind just loves to delve into these physiological rabbit holes. It is, it is interesting how, you know, if you, if you read a book like James Nestor's book Breath, how some folks will use carbon dioxide inhalation or even machines like this that concentrate carbon dioxide for breathing in one called Carbogen, I'm familiar with to, to increase resilience to anxiety or stress related scenarios. Have you heard about that before? Kind of. Kind of. Rather than this concept of breathing off CO2, actually exposing the body to higher amounts of carbon dioxide for stress training.

Yeah. I love that you brought that up. Because in my opinion, one of the magics of breath work is CO2 tolerance training. And through the machine that you're talking about, they've taken people who were incapable of feeling fear because there was a portion of their brain that was shut down for that, like Alex Arnold, the free climber and the soloist. And when, when they inject them with carbon dioxide, they actually felt fear for the first time because it puts the system into such a fight or flight mechanism that it throws them over the top. And so, as you know, when we don't have to. So when we're in an inhale hold or an exhale hold and the body starts to freak out, it's not because we need oxygen. It's because the carbon dioxide becomes, quote, unquote, poisonous to the body when it's used up and it needs to get out.

Okay.

And so I love carbon dioxide training because I feel that that's where we can truly rewire the nervous system and create a new state of being by taking the mind back from the nervous system.

Yeah, it's probably why, similar to a cold plunge earlier in the day, everything from a stress standpoint seems easier. If you start off your day with a breathwork session that includes some of these long exhales, for example, where you're breathing up and then exhaling and staying in that state for an extended period of time, sometimes overriding that first urge to breathe, It's a little bit, and I would imagine if it's been slightly confusing to me, it might be a little confusing to some members of my audience. Well, if we're blowing off all this CO2 and we're CO2 deprived on the exhale, how then does that translate into CO2 tolerance training? You mentioned some of the breakdown products of CO2 being toxic, I believe. And so is there something that's occurring in terms of a reaccumulation of CO2 or something like that that occurs on these exhales that then dictates we are in a CO2 rich state rather than a CO2 deprived state. Does that make sense?

Yeah, that's such a good question, Ben. So when we do an exhale hold, of course we're emptying the lungs primarily on a WIM HOF or just a release. You're, you're using up the oxygen that's in the body. So what's cool about it is our body is a factory. And the factory doesn't stop just because we stop beating. And the factory is powered by this thing called our heart. And every time our heart pumps, the entire lungs blood supply exit and enters. So every time the heart beats, everything that has had any type of gas transfer in the alveoli leaves the lung sacs, the entire lungs, and it makes its way through the vascular system of the body to your 26 Forever Young foundational tissues. And the tissues are continually creating carbon dioxide, whether we're breathing, breathing or not. So the hemoglobin of the red blood cells is still capturing those carbon dioxide molecules and shuttling them back to the lungs. And this is where carbon dioxide becomes so important, is it starts pulling all that used carbon dioxide to the surface. And in my opinion, from what I've seen and studied a bit of, is that it cleanses the body of the old carbon dioxide and it gets it all into the lungs. Now you're in an exhale hold. So what you'll notice in long exhale holds is that your lungs will actually start to fill up. You haven't breathed at all, and you've exhaled completely on the exhale hold. But once you're two, two and a half, three minutes in, you can actually go and breathe out a fair amount of air used CO2. And so that used CO2 is what's creating that, that tolerance. And the longer you hold an exhale hold, the more is shuttled back to the lungs.

You have just very elegantly described what has been a head scratcher for me for a little while, which is why when I blow out all the air from my lungs, and I swear I blew it all out, do I still have more that I can release after holding this for two minutes before the inhale? So it's a reaccumulation of carbon dioxide and also a re exposure of the body to that gas, carbon dioxide. That can then increase stress tolerance and stress resilience. And even though you've blown it all off, it builds up again and then the magic happens in terms of the stress resilience and tolerance training.

Absolutely correct. Yep. And it's such a beautiful process because when you're. The longer you go on an exhale hold, and over time, and this is over time, and you and I have talked about this, I've been able to get my exhale holds up to six and a half minutes.

Six and a half minutes. Wow.

Yeah. I've had some of my students have got over seven. Um, but the body will react and is, and what's cool about it is once you get the mind out of the body, meaning the thinking mind, the ego mind, and you go inside, this is where the magic with breath work, in my opinion happens. And I believe you find this too. And I love your breath work because of connecting to source, to God. You actually get to go into that deep state of nothingness. No time, no space, no ego, no mind, and you're gone. And it allows the body to heal and it's doing it by just cleansing.

Yeah, it's a very unique state. It's a very open and receptive state as well, which is why I came up with that concept. As you've probably heard in some of the scripture based sessions I've made in the Breath Source app is I plant a new Bible verse in someone right before or during that exo hold. And for example, I've just going through my own sessions, been able to memorize, you know, all those strength of the Lord sessions. Like he gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. And I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me and he upholds me with his righteous right hand. You know, each of those six different rounds in that session, for example. It's crazy how quickly you can memorize scripture. Same thing with the, with the fruits of the spirit session. But most of it is done when someone is in that very receptive, you know, remarkably altered physiological and psychological state during the exhale holds. So you're right, it's, it's, it's something that, you know, Stanislav Grof, for example, when he did holotropic breathwork invention, you know, he was basically just looking for a way for the body to be in the type of state that something like lsd, you know, very powerful lysergamide would normally produce. And he wanted to be able to do that, but you know, be able to stand up and walk away from the breathwork session, not be metabolizing, you know, an entheogen or psychedelic for the next six hours. And it's actually quite remarkable how you can do that and within like 10 minutes be upstairs eating breakfast or in the cold pool or something like that. So yeah, it's a pretty cool state. Especially I would encourage people who haven't kind of experimented with some of these long inhales and long exhales to do so because I find it to be transformative when I have friends who are going through stress, through anxiety. I had a call with one of my buddies the other day who was having some issues with his parents. One of the first things that I told him to do was to start doing these breathwork sessions every day as a way to not only train the body to manage that stress and anxiety, but also keep the body from wanting other things like antidepressants, alcohol, etc. And it's very, very effective as a way to. Well, Wim Hof would say get high on your own supply, but I would say tweak your physiology and alter your neurotransmitters and increase stress tolerance on your own supply for free. And you mentioned Travis. Six and a half minutes, seven minutes for some of your students. Let's pretend I'm one of your students, which I feel like I already am after having done some of your sessions in Breath Source. But right here, live. Let's pretend I'm one of your students. What type of protocol, practice or system would I go through to actually get up to a six and a half, seven minute exhale? What's that actually look like from a practical standpoint?

Well, so it's a fun question. And in my opinion, you know, we're all after this thing, quote unquote, called enlightenment of some sorts. And discipline, in my opinion, is the entry gate to, to that state. And so being disciplined in your practice would be number one and then number two is stepping into your practice with no expectation. I think one of the most challenging things that people come up against is Travis. I can't get past a minute and the first thing I ask him is what are your expectations going in and are you timing yourself? Because if you're timing yourself, I guarantee you you're less than half of what you can do at your current state. It's so important that we get to that place of. And I'm going to quote Dr. Joe Dispenza here. No time, no space, no ego, no mind. You have to become no thing to be able to come out of the thinking mind and let the body do what the body's capable of doing and so cannot time yourself. The only thing you can do is play a music or a track, for example. I love Dan Vadnais stuff. I've been working with him for gosh, five, six years.

He's got some great sessions in there by the way. I like his. He has just a 12 minute euphoric session in there that if I don't have time for my child. That's a fantastic one.

That's my favorite one. Natural euphoria.

Yeah. Natural euphoria.

Yeah, yeah, he filmed that at the launch of the Breath Source. We were up in, in Sedona, Arizona. And that's where that was born.

Okay.

I do that almost every morning.

Gotcha.

So in the pattern of how to get to a long exhale hold, what you have to do is you have to have a build up. So I start with Heart, mind, coherence breathing, Then I move into Fire breathing, and then I move into Kriya breath, Then I move into DMT alkaline, which is what we talked about with this natural euphoria.

Can you, I want to slow you down for just a second. Can you go through what each of those are?

Yeah, absolutely. So Heartmath Institute came in with the Heart Mind, Coherence breath. Now, every listener on here, keep in mind this was all born from the ancients. Pranayama has been around since the dawn of time. So I don't want to make it sound like Heartmath invented anything. And they wouldn't. Howard wouldn't say that. He's like, we just put science behind it. So Heartmath Institute with the Heart Mind coherence breath is placing your left hand over your heart. Left side of the body is. Is the feminine side of the body placing your left hand over your heart. Breathing in through the nose for four seconds, breathing out for five seconds. You can breathe in for five or out for six. In for four, out for five, or you can breathe in for four, out for four. Not to get confusing, but the point is, is as you breathe in, you're tuning your breath into the heart and you're wrapping your heart with your breath. And the point is, is Your heart has 40,000 sensory neurites on it that are 100 times more strong than the electromagnetism of the brain. And what it's doing is it's activating your heart to connect to the field which is the mind. So you're creating a heart, mind, coherence, and it brings you into very beautiful parasympathetic state, which is your rest, rebuild state.

Okay. And by the way, just to throw in a quick anecdote, there's a book, I believe it's called Coherence. It's about that research that you were just discussing from Heartmath Institute. And it's very interesting how it goes into the science behind the fact that every human being walking the face of the planet experiences an increase in HRV and typically a slight rise in parasympathetic rest and relaxed nervous system activity, with anywhere from a 4 second to a 6 second inhale and or exhale with the sweet spot landing right around five and a half seconds. So interesting in fact that that book had a downloadable audio at the end of it. That's a, that's a clock and a bell. There's. It goes tick tock, tick tock ding. Tick tock tock, tick tock ding. It's every five and a half seconds. And for a month after reading that book I would play it while replying to all my emails in the morning because I'm one of those people who had struggled with email apnea holding my breath when I'd go through emails. Hold, hold, hold, hold, hold. And then click send and then take a breath and start in the next one subconsciously until the book went into the fact that many people do it identified. I was and, and just that simple cue of five and a half in, five and a half out totally changed the amount of stress during the workday. You know. But via measurements I was actually measuring my HRV at that time with the, with the Hanu app. And, and it was, it was crazy how effective that is and possibly even crazier how it applies to every human being that that 5 1/2 ish second scenario.

Yeah. Beautiful. I love that. So yeah, it's, it I love and I would recommend to any listener if you need any breath work to combat anxiety, depression. Just a quick fix. The heart, mind coherence breath in my opinion, if you feel the same Ben, but is the heart math coherence breath?

Yeah. That's fantastic. So that's step one of this type of session that you do for these, these long exhales. Then what comes next?

So that gets me in coherence and in tune with my body. And then what comes next is a fire breath or breath of fire and that's breathing rapidly in and out of the nose. Mouth is closed, you're sucking the belly. You're, you're, you're sucking the belly in rapidly which is exhaling naturally out of the nose. So it's a. So when you pull the belly in you picture your belly button coming into the spine and it force exhales out the nose and then you just let the belly relax and it comes back in. So.

And that's called breath of fire.

You said that's the nose that you do that?

Yes sir. I do it out of the nose. You can do it in and out of the mouth as Sachin did when we were at chs.

Okay, is, is that different than the type of Breath that I've come across in a few of the sessions where they tell you do this through your nose, but if that's too difficult for you, open your mouth, stick your tongue out, and pant like a dog while you do it. Is that a similar form of breath work, that Breath of Fire, if your mouth is open, panting like a dog?

Well, my opinion is if your mouth is open and your tongue is out, it's a cooling breath.

Okay.

Because you're running the air over the tongue and the sensors in the tongue is causing the body to cool. So it is have some similarities, but I feel like it's fairly different because you're not getting the nitric oxide or the nasal oxide because you're not using your upper cavity of the nasal passageway.

Okay.

And you're blowing off more carbon dioxide.

All right, got it. Okay, so we've got the heart, mind, Coherence, and then the Breath of Fire. And then what. What's the third. The third style that you go into after that?

So, and at the end, I do 108 reps of Breath of Fire, and on the 108th one, I take a final inhale in, and I hold an inhale and I let the belly drop so that the diaphragm is able to drop down. Everything drops down, putting pressure on the perineum. And then I just let it sit for as long as I can hold. And then I exhale with the hum.

Because that creates carbon dioxide up to 1300x. And then I go from that into Korea Breath. And Korea breath is a very ancient breath brought over by Yogananda. And it's a very interesting breath. And I won't do it on film because it'll freak people out, but I roll the tongue into the back of the soft palate of the mouth, and I inhale through the nose as I restrict the throat. So it sounds like this.

So I restrict the throat, inhale in through the nose, and I picture all the energy centers from the root to the crown lighting up, and the eat of the pingala, the shoshuna of the spine, all traveling up the spine. So this is an activation, energetic energy systems in the spine. And then once I reach the crown, I hold, I pause, and then I exhale out with a hum and I energize the centers. As the breath comes down, I'm starting at the crown and I'm acknowledging each energy center as. As it comes down for the exhale out. And the science behind this is the creation of nitric oxide. And you're starting to get into carbon dioxide tolerance.

Okay, got it. Especially with that vibratory sound, from what I understand, that can actually result in. Due to some of the haptic sensations, the actual creation of nitric oxide. So you get that vasodilatory substance when you're doing the humming or the audible inhale or exhale.

That's correct. So you're starting to dilate those blood vessels, and you're getting a. It's a hypocapnia response. And you start to get that air hunger because you're breathing very slow and very low. I mean, we're talking like one breath every two minutes kind of a thing.

But it's consistent and circular, and it starts to become very challenging to the nervous system. So once that's done, go into Dan Vadnais, dmt, alkaline breathing. And his sets, as you probably know now, are a minute and a minute and a half. And so I just pause it and I hold. And then on the final one, I just let it run. And what you can do is, if you really want to get to where, you know, where you're. You're sitting, you can start to get to where on the second set, you don't pause it. You just let the third set run. And there's a subset of time between the start of the second set and the end of the actual video. And you can go back, find where you left off, just mentally, and then you can time it. That's. That's the best way to time that I found without using a timer.

Okay, got it. One other logistical question you mentioned, when you're doing the inhale hold, that you kind of let your diaphragm drop and kind of rest over your perineum, that soft tissue in the crotch area? Is that different than what you'll often hear coached on an inhale hold, which is to squeeze everything. Squeeze the Permian like you're closing off the urinary sphincter. You know, squeeze the fist, squeeze the jaw, you know, scrunch up the forehead and shoot all the light out the top of the head. You know, that's a lot of times what you'll hear as the instructions for an inhale hold. Are you doing something different when you're holding that inhale or locking that inhale?

Yeah. So an inhale lower belly hold. And I feel like I might butcher this particular one, but you're letting the belly distend and you're letting the diaphragm drop and the lungs drop low, and all of that weight carries down into the perineum, but you're not actually squeezing the perineum and you're holding. And it allows the blood to transfer down into the organs instead of being pressed up into the upper areas of the chest. And you'll find that you can hold your inhale hold longer if you let everything relax down into the lower portions of the abdomen.

Yeah, that's been my experience also, although I like to, and you probably heard I do this on some of the sessions I've recorded for the Breath source app. Squeeze everything and contract on the inhale sometimes for a couple of reasons. I've found that sometimes the relaxed exhale that occurs after that because similar to like when you, when you're doing, let's say, progressive neuromuscular relaxation to say, you know, achieve better sleep onset and you're kind of squeezing the toes, then relaxing them, then squeezing the calves and relaxing them, the post contraction relaxation seems to be more pronounced than a relaxation without a contraction that occurred before it. And so I sometimes find I can relax more, much more deeply into the exhale hold if it's followed by some kind of a real intense contraction on the inhale hold. So that's one reason. The other reason is I have found there to be a direct transfer between focusing on and being aware of and contracting and relaxing the pelvic floor musculature, including all the muscles around the perineum, you know, the urinary sphincter, et cetera, and, and orgasmic quality, meaning when I've gone through a period of time where, you know, for example, recently I just got done with three months of daily breath work while preparing for a freediving and spearfishing trip. And kind of the, the side bonus of that was that for about the last two months, my orgasms have been extremely long, extremely powerful, and obviously very pleasurable. And I think that there's something to be said for the transfer between breathwork and sexual performance or particularly the activation of the pelvic floor muscles and some of those ejaculatory muscles for a guy, I would imagine some of the same could be said for women as well. But have you ever looked into the transfer between breathwork and sexual performance?

Yes. As far as the working of the perineum.

His name is not on the top of my head at the moment. You probably know who he is, but he's a Japanese gentleman that teaches about.

Yeah, Montauk, the guy who wrote the Multi Orgasmic Male. Same guy, yes.

Yep, same guy.

Yeah. Fantastic book, by the way.

It is. And.

He talks about getting masturbation up to the point of ejaculation, but not allowing yourself to ejaculate because. And then doing it over and over and over and over. And I've done that practice, actually for 30 days to strengthen my perineum and also understand what he was talking about of retaining that energy. And so the perineum and the sphincter muscles, what's cool about them, and this comes back to the orgasm, so we'll get back to that. But when you squeeze your perineum on an inhale hold, so you'll hear breathe in, pull the belly button into the spine, squeeze the perineum, or root lock, and it pushes the coccyx bone up into the cerebral spinal fluid. Pushes the cerebral spinal fluid up the spine into the back of the brainstem, puts pressure on the pineal gland. And the pineal gland holds what we know of as the God molecule, which is dimethyltryptamine. There's little rhombohedron crystals surrounding the pineal gland, and crystals carry energy. Our entire body is made of tiny crystalline, but there's special rhombohedron crystals on the pineal gland, and they separate and they cause a piezoelectric effect when they come back together that allows it to leak ever so tiny little particulates of dimethyltryptamine. And, Ben, I've done a lot of plant medicine journeys. I think you have experimented with that too. And we have to take two or three or four doses of ayahuasca because that dimethyltryptamine is not coded to our body, but the dimethyltryptamine that's in our body, in my opinion, is coded to our body. That's why it takes such small amounts to have an absolute euphoric transition to that God molecule. And I think that when we are working the perineum right during orgasm, we're activating some of that same power when we're in that ejaculatory state.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. It's pretty powerful. I have a few thoughts based on what you said. First, do you guys yet have any couples breathwork sessions in the Breath Source app? The reason I ask is my wife and I have a few 20, 30 minute long ones that I have on my phone will occasionally do kind of as foreplay or as a way to connect at the end of the day, you know, in a quiet place. In the evenings, typically in the bedroom, you know, legs intertwined or, you know, sitting close to each other's laps, breathing in and out of each other's. Mouths, noses, doing locks and holds together, et cetera. And it's, it's amazing as a partner practice, but I didn't, I don't think I ever asked you if you guys have a couple sessions in the Breath Source app.

We don't, and we absolutely should. So I'm going to have to recruit you and Jessa and start that for us.

Yeah, yeah, that would be it. Although it would be, I guess that's my one complaint about the coaching during such a session is you do kind of feel like a third person is there in the bedroom with you. And I would apologize profusely for anyone who'd have to put up with my voice, particularly while you're trying to get it on with your lover. So I don't know how comfortable I'd be with that. But you know what if it's just for coaching people and then they can break off and do it on their own, that's great. And then the other thing you mentioned, the reduced ejaculation frequency for increased drive, aggressiveness, energy, et cetera in males. I don't think I talked with you about this, but gosh, it's probably six or seven years ago now that Men's Health recruited me to do about a six month foray into all the things that a man could do to improve his sexual performance, both ancient and modern stem cells and PRP into the nether regions to, you know, gas station dick pails and all manner of different herbs. You know, all the way down to the reduced ejaculation frequency. And I also did a 30 day stint as part of the immersive journalistic aspect of that article, which, which they published as entitled New Year, New Dick. It was a, it was their January edition. And I, I must say that the aggressiveness that you find when you're engaged in that practice is almost annoyingly high. As far as your energy, your drive. I mean, it works as promised. But remember, we're not talking about.

Not getting an erection or not having sex. We're literally talking about doing all of that, but not ejaculating, which as many guys can probably imagine can kind of leave you a little frustrated and pent up afterwards. I almost didn't like it. It was almost too much for me. I was just like, gosh, got to stop again. But it definitely is, is an act in self discipline and seems to, seems to cause that energy drive as well. So a third question that I had for you as a follow up to what you were talking about with this breathwork practice that you do is. Is there a session in the Breath Source app that kind of walks people through everything that you've just described? Do you actually have this as a done for you session in the app already?

I don't. And what I'd be willing to do, I do have a lot of these in the app in my section, but after this, I'd be willing to put that in there as long as everybody promises me that they'll take it in strides. Because it's not about what you can do at this moment. It's about what you're willing to be disciplined over time to build yourself up to. So I would be willing to do that then.

All right, you heard it here first, folks. I'll hold you to it, Travis. So go to BenGreenfieldLife.com breathsource podcast and if. If Travis does it, I'll put it in the show notes. And I'm also gonna. I'm gonna hold you to it, Travis, because I didn't tell you this. Even before we started recording, I was up early this morning. It's Memorial Day. I had less work than anticipated. And so I actually mapped out my next Breath Source session. You and I were talking at that conference about how I wish I had one that was just like. So I've got anywhere from 10 minute breath prayer sessions all the way up to. I think the Armor of God session is the longest and hardest at 42 minutes. But I mapped out an entire session this morning that I'm probably going to record tonight, which is one of my favorite, most powerful passages of all. The Bible, Romans 8. That is woven into about an hour of holotropic breath work. And so I'll do it. If you do it. We'll hold each other accountable and both get each of our sessions done.

Okay. That sounds good, man. I love it.

Yeah. And your choreographer, your team are fantastic in terms of putting this to music. And the sessions, just if you're listening, you got to try these sessions because they're super fun and especially with headphones, very powerful. You know, the last thing I was going to mention. And then I actually want to go back to your story, Travis, because we didn't even finish about how. How the Breath Source app came to be is you mentioned DMT in the pineal gland. I. I spoke quite a bit about decalcification in support of the pineal gland when I interviewed another breathwork practitioner from Sedona, Anahata Ananda. And so I'll link to that one in the show notes if you Go on to listen to more about how to care for your pineal gland, which if cared for properly, can really enhance not only sleep but also breathwork sessions. But then even though I don't really do a lot of, or any journeying like traditional journeying with plant medicine anymore, for, for personal spiritual conviction reasons, I've just, I think it can be a dangerous place to go. I still use microdosing, you know, for creativity, for focus, etc. You know, psilocybin or lysergamide like LSA or LSD, you know, occasionally something like Wachuma for connection and social events. And I occasionally will use anywhere from 150 to 200mg of oral microdose DMT about 30 to 60 minutes prior to a breathwork session. So essentially you're flooding yourself with your own endogenous supply from the pineal gland, but then you have a little bit of extra exogenous DMT on board. And for some of these longer sessions, I've found that to really enhance that state that you achieve during the exhale of receptivity relaxation, kind of like that blissful near nothingness. And I don't know if you've ever messed around with microdosing with DMT prior to breathwork, but it's super interesting.

I haven't, but I have done breath work on 5 Meo DMT after a journey to, to return back into the journey. And I've taught it during the sessions as well. And it's very, very powerful. It reactivates it rather quickly.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And proceed at your own risk and under medical guidance. I don't want to turn my audience into a bunch of psychonauts, but a microdose of intranasal ketamine seems to also lower the heart rate, increase heart rate variability and lower respiratory rate to the extent to where you can also get a little bit of a longer inhale and exhale and be a little bit more relaxed during the breathwork practice. That's another compound that seems to pair pretty well with breath work.

Yeah. And the reminder on these holds is the magic and the discipline that comes around that is taking the mind back from the body. Our nervous system tells us all day, every day, gotta pee, gotta eat, gotta drink, gotta get frustrated, gotta worry about this, worry about that. And the nervous system as just being a cellular structure. The cells are retaining those memories and it's dictating our lives. And so going into these breath work, these breath session holds like Ben's talking about, what's so important is realizing that you're taking through that mastery and through that discipline, you're taking the mind back from the body. And same thing with cold plunges and everything else to where when an opportunity arises to be frustrated, to be upset, to be anxious, to be depressed, you just watch it pass by like a cloud and you just keep moving forward with your joyful self.

Yeah, yeah. And I should also mention, by the way, you know, I believe that.

Humans are not inherently good. We're actually capable of great evil, especially if we just let our minds go willy nilly wherever they desire to go. And so I should make sure I clarify when I say the state of nothingness or receptivity. My goal now in those states is not simply to sit back and wait for whatever the universe would bring to me. And this is why I intentionally created some of these more spiritual breathwork sessions within the Breath Source app. I use that as a time to connect with God, to pray, to dwell upon a certain passage of scripture and, and to fill my mind with the good things, particularly from God, that would keep any of the selfish evil tendencies or temptations from within me from rising up. So that's kind of my flavor in terms of my take on the nothingness of the exhales.

Beautiful. Love it.

And so I want to go back to the breath workout because if you run into you on the street, Travis, or even like right now, folks are watching the video, you look like, you look like a, like a lawyer or a real estate professional or something like that. Like, you've always got a suit and your hair's nice and tidy and you're clean and you even smell good. You know, I've given you a hug down there at chs and then you're not some kind of like hippie, dreadlock wearing, you know, patchouli dawning, stereotypical breathwork practitioner. Not that I have anything against hippies with dreadlocks. Although I don't really fancy patchouli too much. Uh, so. So I, from what I understand, you have a more of like a professional, you know, corporate ish business background that. That preceded this whole work in the breathwork sector. So can you tell me about that transition?

So I started a real estate and I started my. I was born and raised on a ranch in southwestern Colorado. We were homeschooled. It was a beautiful way to grow up. Started my first business when I was 18, got married when I was 20 and started a real estate investment company when I was 26 years old. Moved up to Denver, Colorado and we got into high Volume fix and flip houses between 2006, 2010. Then in 2010, we jumped into refurbishing multifamily projects all over Denver. And we were buying some of the largest projects in Denver, and they were very, very distressed. And I was going into these slum lord conditions and seeing these individuals that were living in there, and it just broke my heart. And so my desire to set a new stage for conscious capitalism was born there. And as I grew as a company, we realized that we needed to go out of the state to find more deals like that. So by 2014, we went national. And then by 2017, we. We had projects spanning across nine states, and we were working in the toughest neighborhoods in the country. For instance, Ferguson. We were in Ferguson during the riots. We had a 787 unit townhome apartment complex there, 100 buildings on 40 acres. And we had properties in Cincinnati and Indianapolis. And they were all in the rough areas. And we. They were so rough that we had to build our own security companies. So Archangels, it was called. And we had to go in, and we would. We would take the crime out ourselves, and the police force would work with us. And so we would suit and boot. And my little sister Hannah, who runs a tactical company now, her and I would have ARS on sbr, ARS on our chest sidearms, fully suited up. We'd do our own surveillance. Uh, we would go in. I didn't have to kick the door because I had the keys. We'd take the guys down, cuff them up, cops would come get them. And we were doing this for months at a time, just doing nothing but travel and cleaning up the properties. And then we had a property management company that we would use to love on the people that were left in the. In the properties to be able to raise their financial consciousness. And then we had a nonprofit that would sit underneath that to help facilitate how to manage their money and how to take the lives back into their own hands. And then we had a construction company to renovate the entirety of the property. And most real estate investment companies come in, buy a place like that, clean it all out, push everybody out, redevelop it, gentrify the area. And we are exactly the opposite. We wanted to raise the collective consciousness in that area by doing the right thing with the property, empowering the individuals that lived in it, and empowering the whole neighborhood through that. So the construction company, we would only hire homeless people, so we would take them off the street in the area. We would house them in the project, give them the tools for the trade, and we train them. We built a software company, built a software called Sidewinder. And we have Dr. Joe Dispenza and Dr. Bruce Lipton's algorithms of falling in love with the future self and the biology of belief. And this is where my love for biology really kicked in. I studied under Bruce Lipton for quite some time to really understand that people need to heal from the cellular level out. And we reproduce the 694,000 cells a minute. And the reproduction of every one of those cells, a cell stops before it reproduces and it looks for new blueprints and new information. And by taking these homeless people out of the environment that said they were homeless, putting them in a new environment with love, accountability, respect, the cells will automatically gravitate towards immortality. And so we would allow them to understand their healing from the cellular level out. So we built a software that would combat self sabotage and they would accidentally quotes succeed, which was our goal. So they were constantly in this succession and they were constantly getting those dopamines and those serotonins running of Wow. I actually did it. I actually just won. They would win again. I actually won, won, won, won, wow. And if we could get them to feel a sense of significance, we could get them to feel loved, cared for, and they would start to heal. So through the healing process, breath work was one of my key components. So I would show up at the property in my suits and they would always see me and they would know that the next morning we were going to have a breath work session. We'd get everybody out there laid out. There'd be 40 to 50 men and women who we had recently taken off the street, and they would get high on their own supply, as Wim says, and they would come up afterwards and say, man, could I please get a video or something? That was the most amazing thing I've ever felt. And I could never get them a video bin. I couldn't text it, I couldn't email it, they didn't have Dropbox. They just. It wasn't accessible. So I'd end up giving them like Soma on YouTube and big fan of Niraj.

Yeah, Niraj Naik, the Soma Breathwork. That was the very first Breathwork course I ever took. So his stuff is fantastic. He's also within the Breath Source app, right?

He is, yeah. And he loves you. So I would text him a video. And then three and a half years ago, I was sitting at the Thanksgiving dinner table at my family's house and one of the individuals texted me and said, hey, having a tough time, could I please get one of your videos? And so I sent him again a Soma video and a DMT video from Dan Badenay. And I just decided then and there it was time to build an app. So the universe sent me these amazing angels that I thought I was there for them and the whole time they were there for me. And the app was born. So the Breast Source was born about three and a half years ago. And the goal with the Breast Source was to create a co creative platform where all the world's largest breath masters such as yourself could come together into one platform. Bring a business like Ben Greenfield Fitness or bring an individual like Dan Vadnais into the system and everybody cooperate and co create instead of compete. And it took a minute to get everybody bought into that, but then the ball started rolling and everyone that really has any name in the breathwork community has joined aboard and it's been such an honor and such a beautiful thing to watch Happen. We launched 10 weeks ago, we're over 15,000 downloads and we're in 52 countries now. And as you, as you've been or one of the greatest guys on there. My mom wouldn't do breath work now. She does breath work with you every morning.

But that's, that's super encouraging actually. That's, that's fantastic because I get a little bit self conscious because we have our family meditation at like 7:30am most mornings and I'll sometimes just put on one of the breath prayer sessions. I'm always self conscious, probably similar to how I would be self conscious listening to myself coach myself for sex, breath work, sitting there with my family, listening to my, my own voice. It almost seems a little bit counterintuitive, as though I should be just teaching it live myself right there. But that's super encouraging to hear that there are people other than me who might want more of a Christian flavor of a breathwork session. And perhaps more importantly, Travis, that is one of the coolest creation stories for a technology or an app that I have ever heard. And I can just imagine you out there with 40, 50 homeless people on their backs doing breath work and allowing people to experience the same transformation that they might have otherwise sought out drugs or alcohol or you know, unaffordable therapy to do and instead of cheap through breathwork. So I mean that's just, that's a fantastic story, man.

Thank you, brother. I appreciate it. It was one of the greatest gifts and Covid hit us really hard and so we had to Wind down, but we'll be ramping back up when the market crashes and comes back around, because that's where we thrive. But it's one of the greatest gifts I've ever been given is those angels in my world.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, related to the Breath Source app, I actually wanted to ask you, you know, you talked about Dan Vadane's sessions, we've talked about mine a little bit. We talked about a few of yours. And I wanted to ask you, just you being kind of a seasoned breathwork practitioner, and I should clarify, I'm not. I'm just a tinkerer who likes to make breathwork sessions. So I'm no certified verified instructor or anything like that.

But.

But Travis, for you, with as many different instructors as you've seen, et cetera, if someone were listening right now and they got the app, what do you think are some of the. Some of the sessions that would be really good to get started with to really wrap your head around breathwork or to try one of the more unique flavors of breathwork within the app?

Great question. So we. Michael Mayer, I want to give him a lot of credit. He owns Take a Deep Breath, which is the world's largest breath podcast and YouTube channel in the world. And he is some of the best practical breathwork teacher that I've ever met. And he's an incredible human being. He's also a partner in the app.

Him. And then you've got Mikhail, biker for Pranayama. Mikel is such a beautiful individual. I'd highly recommend looking at his stuff. Ben Holt has beautiful stuff that's more connected spiritually. So it kind of depends on what you're looking for. Oxygen Advantage. You know, I want to give a shout out to Patrick McCowan and Ben, I'm sure you've had run ins with him. He's such an incredible prophet of today that's just brought the knowledge of breathing through the nose. And I want to say that while we're in this is the nose that's on your face is the most powerful tool we've been given biologically. Breathing is the first thing we do when we enter the planet. It's the last thing we do when we leave. And if you could understand one thing about breath, understand why you breathe through the nose, understand why five and a half breaths a minute is optimal. And Oxygen Advantage is probably some of the best tutelage in the world for understanding that. So we have that on the app as well, which is with Gray Cause.

And his book by the Way is, I think Soup to Nuts, his newest book, one of the best practical treatises of breathwork that's out there. I mean, there are books like James Nestor's Breathe and you know, the book Jaws, which talks a little more about the mouth and the nose formation and several other good titles out there. But Patrick's book is very good in terms of a practical walkthrough of just about everything you'd ever want to know. I think it came out maybe three years ago or so. I forget the name of it. I think it might be called the Oxygen Advantage.

Is it atomic?

I forget. I'll find it and link to it in the show notes. Yeah, but it's Patrick's book.

We have all of Patrick's books in the app in the shop as well. And then Jesse Kumar, who's also a very functional breathing practitioner, is in the app as well. It's loaded with the world's leading practitioners. Guys, we'd love and gals would love to have you in there.

So, yeah, you know, I was thinking at some point, I don't know if you ever thought about this much. Do you do any spearfishing or freediving, Travis, or have you messed around with that at all?

I have, yeah. Yep.

Okay. Well, as, as you know, many free divers don't necessarily do a lot of this, like, you know, ancient Pranayama, Breath of Fire, you know, Wim Hof type of breath work, even though they do have some purging breaths to blow off CO2 at the surface before they dive. And typically a very relaxed like 2 second in, 2 second hold, 10 second out, 2 second hold for, you know, three to eight minutes before they'll actually do those purging breaths. Fold and dive. So they are blowing off CO2 and lowering the heart rate. But a lot of freedivers use apnea tables, right? O2 tables where you're doing breath ups with a shorter period of time in between each inhale, or CO2 tables where you're doing exhale holds or shorter and shorter periods of recovery in between the exhale holds. And you can obviously, if you're listening in, just Google Freediving static apnea tables to see some examples. Have you ever thought about having a section or a series of sessions within the app that would be just that style of O2 and CO2 static apnea tables?

Yeah. So we just took on a gentleman. His name is Johannes Everts. I want to make sure I didn't mess that up. And he's a beautiful free diver, as is Mikhail, biker and I, we're going to be built putting a diving app into.

Into the, the system. And so I want to check on Johannes here. But if you look in the app now, Johannes is sitting there with a pair of goggles on his face in a beautiful, I think I saw this one beautiful position. And if you look him up.

He.

Is such a stud, man. Yeah, Johannes Egbert. Egberts. And he's a, he's an amazing freediver and he's.

He'S just incredible. So look up Johannes Egbert and he'll be in there and he'll be doing a lot of freediving stuff. And Ben, we'd love to have you in there teaching those tables as well. We're going to have a surfing section which is somewhat of the same understanding so that guys can start doing breathwork before their heats. And then we're going to have cycling section because all of it. And Ben, you know this better than anybody. Those types of biological breathing are so fundamental to daily life and becoming the best version of yourself in those sports. And it's highly misunderstood.

Yeah, that's fantastic. You're giving me so much more to explore within the app now. It's kind of like this never ending bucket of instructors and these rabbit holes you can dive into with each one. So the other thing I was going to ask you is there's kind of like you mentioned, for example, the shopping section of the app and how you've got books in there. But there's all these different devices, right, like the Aero Fit and MMA instructor Bas Rutten has a device. And there's the Nemstar and the Relaxator by Anders Olson. And all these different devices you typically place in your mouth or over your face to do things like resist the exhale and increase diaphragmatic or inhalation and exhalation muscle strength or force one to breathe through one's nose or even devices like the turbine, you know. And some people will of course use mouth taping for this, for dilating some of the nasal passages. Do you ever use any of those in conjunction with breathwork or have you experimented with that at all?

Yeah. So the devices like Aerofit or a breathing Restrict mask, which Oxygen Advantage sells, a lot of people sell them. And then Ben, I've seen you with the mouthpiece that you bite the rubber one.

Yeah, the ones I have right now is I have the relaxator from Anders Olson, who actually has a great book on breath work as well. That'll hang around my neck sometimes when I walk that One forces me to breathe through my nose and has a mild passive resistance on the exhale. And then there's one that's a little bit more extreme that I use out in my gym on the Airdyne. That one's called the nemstar, with just an adjustable flow valve that allows you to increase or decrease the resistance that you would experience upon exhale and also force you to breathe through your nose. And then in my travel bag, I have one of those power lung devices. So if I'm on an airplane and want to do some breath practice or just sitting around, nothing to do, and want to fill my time, I'll do a power lung session. So, yeah, I have a few scattered around my house and in my bag.

Yeah. So got to give credit again here to Oxygen Advantage Hypocapnic training. And it's like altitude training and just giving you that restriction of inhalation, which is causing the strengthening of the diaphragm, and then the restriction of the exhalation, which is causing the carbon dioxide tolerance. And really what we're after in 99% of this is that carbon dioxide tolerance to get the nervous system to calm down.

Yeah. And I think that they're really useful. I actually don't like to use them during the. A breath work session. I fancy them during a walk or an exercise session. But what there seems to be is a direct transfer into my overall lung capacity and inhale and exhale times when I'm actually doing the breath work. So I don't use them during the breathwork sessions, but I use them apart from that, typically during exercise or for a separate session. There's one actually founded at the Health Optimization Summit last year in London called the aerofit that even has an app that will coach you through different sessions while you're wearing the device. It got me thinking about, you know, maybe the Breath Source app could partner up with such a device and have a series of sessions with them there on that, that actually use, you know, an external device to train the breath. So all sorts of places you could go with this thing, man.

Yeah. And we. We did partner with aerofit, but that's a really good. So they're in the store, but that's a really good idea to have a tile in there that is usable for devices. I would love to see that. That's a great idea, Ben.

Yeah. And for you listening in when he says tile, basically when you open up the app, there are squares that feature each different instructor or different sessions, and you just click on that and it kind of opens up a whole collection of additional tiles that you then click on to view the session or listen to it through headphones or even download it. You guys added a download feature, which I love because you can use it in offline mode. So there's a lot in there. And you know, the, the. I'll put a link to it to all the books that we mentioned and other resources. If you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com breathsource podcast, I forget, Travis, you'll have to remind me, do we have any kind of like special code or anything like that for people to get any kind of discount or trial period or anything like that? Or is that just all automatically built in if they use my link for the app?

Yes, sir, it's automatically built in. If they use the link for the app, they'll get a free trial period.

Yep. Okay, I'll make sure I include that. If you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com breath source podcast BenGreenfieldLife.com breath Source podcast if you don't know how to spell any of those words, use GPT, AI, Google, or your 8 year old child. So.

Travis, dude, what a cool story. I've actually never heard the whole story unpacked about how this thing came to be. But man, you're doing a lot of good in the world with this thing and I'm grateful for you, man. It's pretty cool.

Thank you, my brother. I'm grateful for you. You were with me the whole time, whether you know it or not. I was studying everything you were doing and you were a North Star for me.

Awesome. Well, I'm glad the stars aligned, so to speak.

Yeah.

So folks, thank you so much for listening and check out the app. Let me know what you think. Go, go leave a comment or a question or some feedback in the, in the show notes. And also if you have particularly for me, any particular sessions, such as verses, you know, favorite passages of the Bible, different spiritual practices that you would like to see me weave into my session, I'd be happy to do so. I forgot to say I, I do have that spiritual disciplines journal. And the most recent two sessions that we went live with in the Breath Source app were the morning and the evening. So spiritual disciplines journal sessions. And so those are in there. And so that's an example of something that includes meditation, gratitude, journaling, breath work, et cetera. And then if you go to the show notes and leave comments or questions or feedback, if there's other features that you think would be cool to include. Let Travis and I know because I'd love to just hear what you guys want to see in the perfect Breathwork app. And it's pretty amazing what technology and some good developers and engineers can do these days. So leave us all your comments. And Travis, thank you again for coming on the show and sharing all this with us.

Oh man, thank you so much. Yeah, be sure to check out Ben's Be Still My Soul. Absolutely incredible. Love it.

Oh, thanks man. Thanks. That was a fun one. All right folks, well BenGreenfieldLife.com breath source podcast. I'm Ben Greenfield with Travis Steffens. Travis Steffens, if I can spit that out. Signing out. Have an amazing week.

All the love man. Take care.

More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh, entertaining, well informed and often outside the box approach to discovering the health and happiness and hope that we all crave. So I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. And if you liked it, or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel, wherever that might be, and just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. Means a lot.

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