EPISODE #985 Upgrade Spotlight: How to Use Your Breath to Stop Stress - Robbie Bent / Othership

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Today is an Upgrade Spotlight edition where I bring on someone who's made something really cool so you can figure out something new. And in this case, I actually got you a free demo while you listen to the show, which is really cool. So I just want to save you some time, give you more energy, make you better at something really, really quickly. And these short episodes, like, hey, let's meet the person who made it, see if it's legit. I can promise you, if it's on here, it's legit, but it may not appeal to you. In this case, it's pretty neat. And it's about breathwork. And as you know, breathwork's been a major part of my journey, even since doing holotropic breathing. Oh, man, like 20 something years ago. And Stan Grof, who invented that, has done. And one of my events, we've had James Nestor on the podcast Wim Hof on stage at the biohacking conference. So this has been a part of it. And it turns out that Robbie's going to be at the biohacking conference as well, who runs a company that does breathwork, and they do an app for it. It's called Othership, like mothership, but with no M. It also talks about things like ice bath and sauna classes that go with the breath work, which is particularly cool. And as you know, heat and cold are kind of environmental variables that you can change in your life. They're major parts of biohacking. You know, even at Upgrade labs, this is part of what we do. So when you stack breathwork, hot cold, you end up having massive control over your state, like how you're going to feel and all of that. So you put all that together with community and connection and all of those things, and you just realize, okay, you can get there faster. And that's what Robby is working on. Robby, welcome to the show, man.

Thank you. What an amazing, amazing description. You said it better than I could. So excited. Excited with where this is going to go.

Well, you're one of the guys who entered biohacking. We'll say backwards. I kind of came in saying, I just want to feel good. I want my body to work right. I want to stop farting all the time. And I sure would like to lose this £100 and not have all the bad skin and all this stuff that happens when it's not working. So there's the health people who come in and they're like, oh, there's more than health. You though, kind of came in like, I'll just go do Vipassana. Tell me how you got into this because you kind of came in from the top down, right?

Yeah, my nervous system, like you said, was just completely, completely fucked. And so, you know, like, people listening, ran a startup, would wake up, check my email first thing in bed, would be stressed, anxious all day long. My business was failing. It ended up failing as a result, as a crutch, I got pretty into drugs and alcohol. And when the business failed, I was at rock bottom. I was overwhelmed, feeling anxiety every day. I had to move back in with my parents at 28. I had to sell my car. I was just in this place of what am I doing with my life? I'm a failure. And so imposter syndrome major. And just really fatigued, overwhelmed, burnt out. And so I was just looking at like, how do I get back? How do I feel normal? And you know, I had been doing 10 minutes kind of headspace a day and I ended up moving to Israel and somebody had said, hey, you know, you're, you're meditating. This is real meditation. You need to try this thing. And I actually couldn't afford to fly home over Christmas and so I just booked a Vipassana on Christmas ending at New Year's to say like, hey, maybe this is a way I can change my nervous system or, or feel a little bit better.

Now for, for listeners who didn't come in from the spiritual side, Vipassana is a 10 day silent and sometimes dark meditation retreat where you go really deep. And I did something very similar to that at Copan Monastery, actually on the same trip where I first had yak butter coffee that was the inspiration for Bulletproof and like, wow, okay, so there, there must be something to this Vipassana. Jack Dorsey's talked about doing it. Um, let's see who else has been on, on the show. That'd be good. Emily Fletcher talks about doing it and quite a few of my friends have done them as well. So you decided, okay, rock bottom entrepreneur couldn't deal with the stress effectively, so you chose a very natural way of dealing with it, which is addiction. Like, this is the way human operating systems work it. It's not like it's a choice or even a moral failing. It's just biology. Just like you know when there's overwhelming stress going to do something. And it's exceptionally common among entrepreneurs to not actually go to drug and alcohol, but just to go to working too much. So you just become Numbed by your work and you overwork and, you know, then you wake up, you know, fat, unhappy, and, you know, just things aren't working really well. So you actually took the fast path to hitting bottom instead of like, you know, working yourself to death for 25 years, then realizing that you wasted your life. So congrats, man. Uh, you probably made a good choice there with that alcohol. It sounds dark, but for real.

No, I was super lucky. Cause a lot of my friends, you know, who had stuck with that path, they're bankers or lawyers or engineers and are sort of now, you know, I'm 38 and doing well, but, like, stuck in that career. And so I was just really lucky that, hey, I had no other choice. And so I was forced into this exploration of self that a lot of times doesn't happen until after you retire. And so at that, you know, psych. At that Vipassana retreat, it was the first time I'd realized, why am I working so hard? Why don't I feel self, love? A lot of these emotions had come up that I'd never explored before. So everything, as you said, was on autopilot, was like, work, work super hard, make money, get these things. Stimulation, phone, drugs. And just that was the first time I'd stepped back. And at that retreat, I learned about psychedelic medicines as well, which had another profound effect.

You know, you're really not supposed to mix drugs with vipassana at a real Buddhist monastery. You know that, right? The rules are like, no killing, no drugs, no lying, no sex.

Learned about them. Didn't. Didn't mix them.

Oh, good, good. Okay. That was probably for the best. Otherwise those Vipassana deities will come and kick you in the balls. I'm not telling you how I know that. I'm just telling you, don't do that. So how did you get into biohacking then? Because there's some people kind of come in on the woo side of spirituality, but they don't get into biohacking.

So I came back from an Ayahuasca retreat, which I did after the Vipassana was fully committed to being sober, and I'd met my. My wife and girlfriend at the time. As soon as I got back, she picked me up from the airport. We'd been chatting on Instagram and she was a massive fan of your show. She ended up buying me the book Headstrong. We started reading it together, and our first date was actually in a sauna. And so we searched like, dang, that's a hot day.

Literally.

Talking about saunas and ice baths. And so we searched on Google and found a Russian style bathhouse. You know, 30 minutes out of Toronto. It kind of like looked like an old strip mall. We're like, what is this place? And that was our first date. And we did the sauna and cold plunge together and just, it was so amazing not having our phone. And you know, the ice bath boost the norepinephrine in the brain and you're just feeling like, wow, like super alert, not nervous. And we, we really connected. And that's how I got into biohacking was, was through her and through your podcast.

Oh, that's amazing. So you picked up some knowledge on the show. Thank you. I appreciate you listening and just, I just appreciate knowing that it's, it's helped even one person. So you, you got on this, I love the first date is like you're just both reading a book and sitting in a sauna instead of just doing Netflix and chill. Not a. Not a bad strategy either, but I guess it depends what you're watching. So. All right, you got into it and six years later you're starting othership and tell me what it does. And because these are rapid episodes, you know, just tell me more about breathwork. Because you don't do breath work at Vipassana usually anyway. And you may do it at ayahuasca, but not in a traditional ceremony with the shaman. But there's all kinds of people who are like, well, you know, I mix Rice Krispies in ayahuasca. It's, you know, it's a. And so like, it's going a little bit sideways sometimes, but so talk to me about your breathing experience independent of the other things you've done.

Yeah. So we tried to teach people meditation and psychedelic medicines for many years and just found it wasn't a great first step. And if you tried calm or headspace, it's like I'm sitting there. Most of my friends, like, I'm sitting there, nothing's happening. I'm just thinking, am I doing it right? And they would try and quit. And so I really struggled with that for a few years because it worked so well for me. And then I sent people on psychedelic medicine retreats and when they came back, they were changed for three weeks or a month. And the behavioral change, oftentimes it was hard to stick. And so I'm listening to your podcast again. Got introduced to Wim Hof. I'd like the cold plunge so much. I listened to a Wim Hof podcast where he guided a breathwork Every day for a year. And then I started teaching the breathwork to friends instead. Like, the same style. In the morning, they'd come over for a coffee and a breath work. And I saw, like, wow, this really works. People are actually doing this, and they can feel it in a single session. And so where meditation, it definitely works. It just takes a really long time, and for most people, it's hard to make it a habit. Breathwork worked instantly, and I saw it with my friends who were struggling with overwhelm. They could, boom, do this, like, tummo style, Wim Hof style, holotropic style, breathwork, and have feelings. And so that was kind of gave us the idea to push forward with it. And when Covid hit, we really thought, like, wow, we have all these customers coming to our backyard. Hot, cold experience. Let's do breath work for them while they're struggling. And so every week, we did a zoom session where we'd take electronic music, really awesome sets that were fun to listen to, and made it feel kind of like a mix of a fitness class and dance party. And so on Friday night, first there'd be 20, then there was 100, then there was a thousand people joining these zooms. And it was kind of like listening to your favorite set of music, but breathing and having an emotional response. So it was like a dance party breathwork. And then that grew so much. We put all those on YouTube and launched a course. And then the course grew to, like, a thousand users. Then people kept saying, hey, I'm having Covid fear. Can you make one for that? Or him, you know, doing this presentation, and I'm really nervous about it. Can you make one for that? And so we would go deep into psychology, behavioral change, programming, and we'd write these scripts and combine them with breathwork. And then finally, people were like, yo, I'm using this every day. Like, can you make a headspace? Or Com? And so myself, my wife, who's a huge fan, and then our three co founders made this app with the idea that there was no headspace or com for breathwork. With all the different styles in one place, that was super simple to use. So that's sort of the Genesis story.

I so appreciate that. Because one of the biggest problems that we have is friction. So when you're sitting down and you're saying, all right, I'm going to do something like breath work, okay, you have to decide which breath work you're going to do. And if you're new to it, like, well, my yoga teacher taught me this alternate nostril thing. But then I heard. And then you go through this litany of, you know, 10 different things. You're not sure that you're good at any one of them, right? So then I. I don't know. And you do it. But by the time that happens, you probably don't do one because you got distracted by, you know, know, eating some chocolate or, you know, drinking some danger coffee. See that smooth plug. No one even caught me there. But whatever the deal is, it's like the friction is so important. And so now with an app, you're saying, well, here's everything, so you don't have to have the fomo, which is the other part of it. Like, what if I'm doing the wrong one? Because that will, that uncertainty will actually stop you from doing something. So now you don't have to worry about it. You can just pick one and you kind of have a description of each one. So, you know, and now you have the canonical library of breathworks and you can sample them and you can save the ones that really get you there. Because the weird thing is, if people read fast this way, the reason it's called that is there isn't one way to fast. You have to find the way for you on that day. It's not very hard to do it, but it's different. And so honestly, once you know, oh, this breathwork meditation from othership works for you in this state. That's awesome. And what we're going to do for listeners is we're going to do like a free 3 minute version of this as a part of this episode. And when we get to that in just a minute here, though, you can't be doing it while you're driving because that would be stupid. It also could possibly be dangerous. So if you're driving, you have to pause it or go to like pull over or something like that in a safe place and et cetera, et cetera. Just like, don't do dumb things that would cause an accident. So should we do the demo and then talk a bit more about the possible styles?

Absolutely. And just as one, a quick intro is for this demo. It's called up. This particular style is an amplifier and energy booster. And so when you're breathing in, you just want to breathe deep into the belly, just and through the mouth to really create that fight or flight response. So, yeah, let's get into it. And this you'd use, you know, before a big presentation, if you're tired in the afternoon, if you want to boost your Coffee in the morning as part of your ritual tool. It's really like enlivening, upregulating.

Okay, let's. Let's do it. This is straight from the app. We're piping it in.

Alright, here we are. This session is designed to get you into that heightened state as fast as possible, finding yourself seated. This is going to be a two count breath, breathing fully and deeply from the belly. All mouth. Here we go. And, and two out. Two and all the way in and out. There it is. Keep that going. Yeah. Feel the belly rise. Let it go. Feel the belly rise. Let it go. There it is. We're only here for one more minute. It's short and fast, so go all out. Let's double the pace here. One count breath in. 3, 2, 1. And in, out, in, out, in, out, in, out. Yes, come on, go all out here. The deeper you breathe, the higher you'll get. Getting ready for a full breath in. Here it comes. In three, two, one and full breath in. All the way to the very top. Give it a squeeze and let it go. Releasing all tension, all effort. Empty, every last morsel of air out and hold on.

Empty.

And in this hold, ask yourself what would make today great? Go there and feel it as though it's already happened. All right, let's take in a nice slow, full breath, filling up on that life. Hold it at the top, squeeze it all to your head. And we're going to release with a sound that embodies that amazing day. And let it go. Holding on. Empty. Just tuning into how you feel right now. How you feel different from when you first came into this practice. That was three minutes. That's all you need to shift your state anytime, anywhere.

So, Robbie, am I supposed to want to drink espresso after I do that?

Sure. Whatever makes you feel good. I mean, for.

You can feel it. Anyone who pulled over or just stopped and that it's three minutes. And here's the weird thing, and I know this from having a million dollars worth of upgrade labs, biohacking gear downstairs, having something to walk you through, doing breath work, doing, doing meditation, doing neurofeedback, doing exercise. Whatever it is, it makes it 10 times more likely that you're going to do it because you put it on your calendar, thing pops up and you just hit go. You don't have to make the deciding, you don't have to do the counting. You don't have to question yourself about, is it the. How many breaths was that? And I say this not lightly. For five years, I Did Art of Living Breathing meditation every morning for 15 or 20 minutes. And this is full on. Sitting with poses with your arms in different positions, all three speeds of breathing through lower lung, middle lung, upper lung of breath work. More than, more than a lot of people who are out there, because it was just something that really worked for me to get control of my nervous system and my brain. And I, I'm still a fan of Art of Living. I don't do it every day, but it. It's. It's this, these different techniques. But it took me a year of daily practice to be confident that I was taking the right number of breaths in at the right speed. Maybe I'm a slow learner. By the way, my trick for doing 20 is I would count on all 10 fingers and then all 10 toes. Or you could just have other ship and it just does it for you, so you just get there faster. And that's why I wanted to bring this out in an upgrade spotlight. And now I want to talk about the different session styles that are in the app because, I mean, you spent a lot of time making it comprehensive here. Can you tell me some of the examples? I actually have a list of them all. But, like, like, what are the types of meditation slash breath work that's available here that you wouldn't just get on a normal meditation app?

Yeah, so I think there's three styles. So every. Every single one is like where meditation's related to awareness. These are related to state change. So every single one creates a physical, physiological state change. So the one we just did was an up, and that was super basic, right under three minutes. There's ups all the way from three minutes to 15 minutes. And that's kind of like your morning, your energy booster, your pre presentation, your pre sporting event. It's like your. Your hype up, you know, and you could see. And then we combined sort of some NLP questions. It's like, what made you feel great? And I did the breath work and it was like crushing this podcast and having an awesome conversation because I was pretty nervous before coming on. So, you know, the up is like before a podcast. Then there's the. The down. And so the down is just parasympathetic style breathing box breathing. 4, 7, 8. Breathing long exhales why you might want to use down is, you know, I've been working for 14 hours. My mind is racing. I'm just scrolling on my phone. I want to go spend time with my wife or kids, and I want to be present. And so in five Minutes. With slow breathing styles, you can get into that parasympathetic state, a state where we feel more emotions. And so that can be used before bed to increase hrv. It can be used, you know, kind of again in the afternoon when you're feeling like acute anxiety. And then for me personally, I use it after work to kind of move from I'm working to I'm being. And then the third part of the triangle is the explore. And so that's when you're pushing the up style. Breathing holotropic is an example of this so hard that the oxygen to the brain decreases. And as a result, your sense of self, your sense of time, your memories, your limbic system, all that stuff changes. We shut down that thinking mind and we process emotion. Now people think, oh well, processing emotion, what does that mean? It's just, you know, there's these things that we're holding on to. Grief. It could be a job loss, it could be somebody, a death in the family, it could be financial strain, it could be fear related to work, it could be imposter syndrome. And we kind of recommend these once a week. So Saturday morning, Sunday morning, they range from 20 minutes to 60 minutes and they all have themes. And so it's usually about 30 to 40 minutes of breath work to get into that state where your mind, your conscious mind, that thinking voice is shut down. And you start to process these emotions through, you know, maybe laughter, cry, scream, vocalizations. And it's just like if you feel now you're really tense and tight, all that emotional baggage is helping to let it go. And in that section there's, you know, couples breath work with eye gazing to replace a date night. There's guilt releases and anger releases. And so it's taking all these different emotions and helping you process them.

That's some pretty powerful stuff. And it is. Anyone listening can tell this is pretty different than just a meditation app. I would throw a little bit of caution and you have it in the app if you go for a hard long going deep. I have seen more past lives and more crazy stuff from doing the holotropic style, the up style, for long periods of time, usually a couple hours than I have from any plant medicine. And I've also seen more neurofeedback on par with what I see from high end breathwork like that. So this is not necessarily for the faint hearted. If you're going to go and do a double session, do it for a long time. I actually think it would be wise to have a friend who Knows how to hold space near you if you're going to go like really deep or do it with someone else. What do you think about that advice?

Yeah, so on this site we never. Or on the app we don't have anything longer than 60 minutes. And it's only tummo style variants with breaks. And so what that does is keeps you from getting into that state through holotropic and would definitely say, you know, resources are available through us if you want to go deeper. And always, you know, if you're going into that holotropic like total death and rebirth state that comes after about an hour of breathing, there can be like definitely traumas coming up. But we've been very careful in the app to not use that style.

Okay, got it. So you're not taking people that deep because it can be pretty big. But you also have some facilitators that are available, but that's like outside the normal subscription. Right? You basically say, I want to go really deep. I've learned the basics here. So then I want someone to be with me virtually so they can kind of talk you down. Down. How do you know what, what a facilitator, like, who makes it a good facilitator?

I think the ability to hold space. So we look for trauma informed training. So there's the, you know, science, understanding breath work, then the ability to like write scripts to make the breath work, which is sort of different than the holding space aspect. And so for the holding space aspect, we rely on people that have trauma informed training.

Okay, are these actual therapists or they're coaches or what are they?

It's a mixture.

It's a mixture. Okay, very cool. And they're just working remotely, which is cool. And guys, if you're listening, going, what? You might need a therapist or a coach. Yeah, breath work is that powerful. And it's one of the laws and game changers. I talk about breathing and there's no way in three or four pages in that book that I could talk about pranayama versus Tumo cell breathing versus Holotropic versus alternate nostril and like all these things. And on top of that you've got hypnosis and somatic release and vocal toning and even some movement and dance, which, I mean, for me, I don't know that I can see myself, you know, propping my phone up on a couch and then dancing. But hey, you know, maybe I could. I haven't done that yet. I think I need to be a little bit altered in order to really get into it or you know, have a, maybe as part of a date night that could be fun. But it's, it's a very vast library of breathing. And that's why I think this is something that was worth listeners time to understand. Plus it comes from a good place. You know, you, you did the, oh, I'll be the conquering entrepreneur. And it didn't work. And so the fact you use this to recover from that is also, I think, just cool and noteworthy. Now when people want to do facilitation.

How does this work?

Like, talk to me about what othership, like, what's the pricing model?

How, how does it all work?

A bunch of people listening are saying, all right, I'm going to try this.

Yeah, absolutely. So the pricing is, is we looked at Sam Harris and said, hey, we're a premium breathwork, you know, kind of a premium service versus common headspace. And so it's a monthly subscription at 18 bucks or an annual subscription at 128. And then we have a scholarship program. So if people can't afford it, they can email us and we'll give them access to a free complimentary membership. And then we do a couple other things. So we have a physical space and so one thing we're super excited about is the sauna and the ice bath, as I had mentioned, based on that first date. And so we built a space that's sort of for people to do this in community. And so the Space is a 55 person sauna, four ice baths in a tea room, and we do these breathwork classes that you find on the app in the sauna and ice bath. And now we've moved a bunch of the programming on the app, we'll be releasing specific guided breathwork ice bath sessions for people that are doing ice baths daily. We've seen a lot. You kind of mentioned that at the start of the show, but that's sort of the progression is, you know, you start with the app, you come to the space, you start doing this stuff in a group. And we talked a bit about habit building and friction, but the best thing we found is like doing this stuff with. And so the goal, the vision is to build these spaces, these community spaces that are kind of replacing alcohol at night, that feel like a nighttime party with friends in a class format.

That's a big vision. And to be perfectly clear, I would much rather be doing sauna and breathing and maybe eating some rib eye with friends than I would at a noisy bar where I don't really want to Drink because it makes you age more quickly and gives you a worse functioning brain. Like, it's actually not a particularly wise thing to do on a regular basis. So. And you can't hear what anyone says in a bar anyway. I don't know, maybe I could say, well, maybe it's because I'm, you know, all of 28% of my lifespan. But even when I was 25, I didn't like bars and 20, like, what's the point? So I think a social activity that's a bit more authentic and connected and just real. I'd much rather do that. Where's your space?

So we have a space open in Toronto. It's on Adelaide Street. We're opening a second in Toronto and then a third in New York. And so we've just put a lease together in New York and are hoping to be open in April.

Nice. So other ship is the app and the fact that you can do it, you can just play it. Anyone who's listening can have a party if you have a sauna in a cold tub, or maybe you're in Toronto, just wait till winter and just have a backyard and a sauna and then you can do hot and cold therapy and you can play Othership and it's cool. And of course, you always get a discount if you're listening to the show. So Othership Dot Us Dave. That's Othership Us Dave. They'll give it to you for two weeks. And that's full access for two weeks, right?

Yep.

So. Well, there you go, guys. Give it a try. And after two weeks, especially if you do it every day, I know very well how different you'll feel because I've done breath work every day for five years straight. So, yes, it's the real deal. It's awesome. And this is the best way that I know of to get a broad introduction, to just see the scope of possibility and learn how to do it properly. The community aspect, in my mind, and the hot and cold is kind of like icing on the cake.

It's.

It's gravy, but, like, you know, not gluten, full, gross gravy with msg. Like the really good gravy. That kind of gravy. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.