The Life-Changing Habit with Stuart Sandeman

Stuart, a massive welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

Thank you. It's amazing to be here. Such a pleasure.

Oh, it's so great to connect. We have a mutual friend in the amazing Alistair Gray, so I'm glad he connected us.

Yeah. I mean, Ali is such an amazing person. Brother from another mother. He's. Yeah. Just an amazing human being and feel very blessed to have him in my life. So it's great that he's connected us to be here today.

No, 100%. And today we're going to be looking at breathing. It's something that many listeners right now might be thinking, hey, that's just something we do. It happens. And why would we dive deep on that as leaders, as parents, as athletes. But you and I both know that the power of breath is just phenomenal. And it can really help us traverse challenging situations. It can really help us relax. It's got so many different tools and uses. Now. Your book, Breathe In, Breathe Out, I took it with me on a recent trip, trip to Australia. It was phenomenal. First of all, your story was very heartfelt, very touching, and understanding what led you to breath, it was really incredible. And then the tools, the strategies, the science that were packed in that book, I was like, wow, taking tons of notes and highlighting. So I'm very excited to explore that today and for the listener to actually get an understanding of how the stresses that they carry in their life or perhaps even the trauma that they're going through or will go through, because life is going to throw as an ambush how breath work and particularly your techniques will really be able to help them. So I guess to get started, what led you to this breath work, discovery and then really diving deep with breath?

Yeah, well, it was.

Quite a challenging time that I went through. And you shared most, maybe people listening think, oh, I just breathe. And I was certainly in that camp. I never thought about breathing. And it wasn't until.

My girlfriend was diagnosed with terminal cancer that I started to really look at different tools and practices.

And looking at everything in that kind of body. Mind, spirit spectrum, the body looking at the physical body. How do we beat cancer? How do we work through this challenge? And from a kind of physical perspective, the mind looking at different tools and techniques to manage the stress of that moment and then the spiritual side of things, well, what's life all about? Why are we here? Where do we go after this experience of being here? So a lot kind of loaded questions were brought when she had that diagnosis. And I wish I could say that I found breathing at that Time. But I don't think I would have listened if somebody said just to breathe through cancer. I would have rolled my eyes or maybe swore at them or something. But.

Yeah, I'd spent my life too busy to breathe. I hadn't really thought about it and it wasn't until sadly my girlfriend passed away. She passed away. It put me into a bit of a bad headspace, as you can imagine, kind of bit of a negative spiral. And all that happened was I took my mom for Mother's Day to a. A breathing class. I was meeting my mom on Mother's Day last minute me, I didn't have a present for her. And this was about six weeks after my girlfriend had passed away and I was in.

I was in all sorts of states as you could imagine. And this popped up online. I thought, my mom will love that. She's into yoga. Let's just go together. That's as much as I thought about it. And we went the following weekend and that was my first experience of.

Breath work or using our breath as a tool in, in a deeper format. I said I hadn't thought about breathing before, but I came from a very sporting background as a professional judo player. So I trained at very high level and I noticed when I was out of breath and I did things, but I never really focused on breathing as a tool or when I worked in, in music or even in finance and these different roles. I never thought about how breathing could be used as a tool to improve me through those moments. But here I was in this session with my mum and.

A little bit out there and I thought, oh boys, what's going on here? And, and probably because of the. And I share this in the book. I'd spent 18 months looking for a cure and, and the alternative world always said had seemed to have a cure, but it felt like a bit of a minefield at times. So I'd been almost scarred by my 18 months of. Of cancer journey with my girlfriend and she passed away and I just was in such a rotten.

And there I was in this session in this class and showing this form of breathing and I was just kind of like, okay, let's go for it. And had this very profound experience both physical. First, first of all felt this physical experience change in my body, tingling and buzzing. It felt quite bizarre but felt quite good at the same time. And then I just started to get this rush of emotion and as I kind of moved through this kind of release of cathartic release, I felt that my girlfriend was there all of a sudden. Holding my hand and, and saying this is exactly where you need to be. Which wasn't easy, but it felt really good at the same time. So that was my first experience. That's what brought me to breathing and breath work and being the person that I asked, I was like, right, what just happened? I needed answers and that was the big drive into this. I needed answers. I asked the facilitators there and they didn't quite give me the answers that I was, I was looking for.

And I thought, well, what, what just happened? I was just breathing. I had kind of, there's three options. Either someone has spiked my drink before going in and they didn't seem the type to do that. So that was kind of like, right, okay, it's not that because it was quite a bizarre experience, quite out there. The other one was I'm going mad. Like this is it part in the grieving process is, is like.

My mind's gone all over the place and having this crazy experience or I thought, or there's something in it, there's something very special that just happened just by breathing. So I went for the, for the final one and just start to uncover myself just self practice working very closely with that form of breathing.

To dive a little bit deeper and see was this a one off or could I continue to connect to the space? And that's what it felt like. It felt like I was connecting. I was kind of casting off the baggage, the grief, the, the stresses, the strain that was this initial grief point. But it started to peel away and it started to go into, deeper into my core and, and as I would do that, I connect into this space and then for me it was the space that meditation had always talked about. But I didn't have a reference points and I certainly couldn't get there through meditation personally, probably because I couldn't be long enough. My life was so busy and I was going from one thing to the next. So I, when I sit to meditate, I'd be stubborn enough to sit there, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't know if I was doing it right. I didn't access anything or get much in my view from it. But when I was doing this breathing, it started to really be a tangible place that I could connect to. And within it I get insight and answers and felt really good. And the benefits were starting to pile up tangibly as well. Feeling much fitter, getting much, much better sleep at night. The voice in my head changed. It was like much kinder to me. So I think for many Practitioners, it's the same. It's like we. You find something that really helps you, and as it helps you, you just want to start sharing it with the world. So that was the case with me. I. It helped me profoundly through grief. I start to notice all these shifts and changes and then started to uncover as well from that practice was like, what else is out there in terms of breathing? How can we use breathing and not only this tool to integrate trauma? And that's what I was doing. It was integrating my trauma through grief, but realizing my trauma was actually from my childhood.

Like most of us, the habits and patterns and conditioning that was making me act in a certain way. But also then these more tangible concepts like, well, how do we use it to improve our sporting ability? How do we use it to ace an interview? How do we use it to reduce our anxiety when we're out and about, or improve our sleep or even improve our digestion? So that's kind of where I came into breathing and breathing as a tool. And then I just got so excited about it because it kind of fits all these things. I was looking for that through that cancer journey, the physical works with our body, the mental, emotional, the way we breathe affects our thinking and feeling. And then this spiritual place, we can connect into this very powerful state of awareness where we do get insight and clarity and deep thought and deep stillness and creativity. So it kind of answered the questions that I was asking myself through that cancer journey.

Albeit it was this, this process that I had to go through to arrive at this space. So it's, it's been quite, quite a journey coming into it, but it's, it's just been so amazing. And being able to help and share this with others has been fascinating to just seeing the shifts and changes that people go through and life changing changes that people have been going through by just using their breath as a tool.

Well, Stuart, thank you for sharing that and I'm sorry for your loss and what you had to traverse. I'm deeply grateful that you did the work that you did and now your mission is to share that with others, whether they're going through traumatic times or whether they're trying to get more balance or as you say, deal with anxiety. This work that you're doing is so important. Probably the one question that I have, and I think you had as well when you went to that class with your mom, was what's the science? What's actually going on in our bodies at that kind of biochemical level, when we do engage with really intentional breath Work.

Yeah, well breath work to I guess backtrack. Breathwork is a bit of an umbrella. It's obviously using your breath, consciously using your breath to evoke a change in the body. And when we use our breath we're going to trigger different states. So we have one side of breath work which is, I like to think of reactive. Reactive to the world around us in this moment. This is because our breathing is linked to our autonomic nervous system.

We have our on switch, our sympathetic, our fight orf flight response that gets us ready to act, motivates us, but also gets us out of danger. That safety response. We have our parasympathetic response, our rest digest repair mode, which is our calming relaxation response. And we kind of have this interplay throughout our day. In fact, every in breath you take switches you on a bit. Every out breath switches you off. So it's that simple. When we look at it that way, like our breathing is bringing energy into our body and waste out. It's a bit more than that, we'll probably uncover a bit more, but we'll start off with the basics. So breathing is about this energy exchange and because it happens all by itself, because our mind is wanting to keep us safe, it will trigger this faster rate of breathing to get us more energy to get our danger. Ultimately that's, that's what happening. So on one hand we can use our breath or breath work as a reactive tool in the moment. So I'm feeling certain away. So that comes with awareness, noticing how you're feeling. And if you notice that you don't want to feel that way anymore, then you can use your breath to evoke a change in your body by changing the chemistry of your body and also triggering either the sympathetic or parasympathetic state. So that's one hand. So that reactive might be. I'm feeling stressed, I want to feel calm. Well, let's slow our breath down, move into this parasympathetic state, long out breaths and we can, we can do that quite quickly. That out breath slows your heart rate, blood pressure drops. Or you might go the other way, feeling quite lethargic and I've got to get something done. Or is that slump in the afternoon, you don't want to hit the fifth cup of coffee. Well, we can actually evoke stress, positive stress to motivate us to get us ready for action. So. Or we can do some cool stuff as well. Is actually sit in the middle of that and find a bit more flow state where we balance in breaths and out breaths which is great in a kind of work context or a sports context as well. So that's one side of breath work. Using your breath as a tool to change how you feel in any moment.

Kind of activating the parasympathetic or the. Or the sympathetic response of our nervous system.

Now in some ways that's the kind of basic form of breath work. What I felt was really, really interesting about my experience was what was happening there when I was actually releasing deep emotion. And what is the science behind that? Because it felt a little bit patchy. And what's happening in these deeper practices of breath work. And when I say deeper practices, if we're always noticing we're stressed for always noticing maybe we're lethargic or we're so we're noticing again with some awareness something's going on and it's always the same. Well, there might be an underlying reason for that happening which usually goes a little bit deeper. So let's say, let's use myself as an example with grief. I could have calmed myself down through those. Those grief that. That grief. But I was still grieving and I was. For me grief came as.

Or complete outbursts. Slamming doors, punching walls or complete withdrawal. Didn't want to speak at anybody. Didn't want to get out of bed. Now I'd obviously been through a very traumatic time. But why I was experienced grief in that way was actually because of something much deeper. Big boys don't cry now that was my belief system. I had built that up over time. Big boys don't cry Done martial arts all my life. Teddy bear called Tough Ted grew up in Scotland. Yada yada yada. We can see that the past and the society and it's quite common for. For that was the acceptable ways to show emotion is. Is don't show it hide away or them store as some sort of strength like hit something. So we can see that that is the. That pattern of experience or belief system or to uncover that a little bit more we, we. We need to get a bit in. We need to get into our breath a little bit deeper. So the practices that I was doing was a much more dynamic practice that allows you to shift the chemistry of your body. When I say the shift the chemistry of our body breathing as well as having sympathetic and parasympathetic. It also is really about this exchange of gases which we know. But one of the key gases I said earlier it's a waste product. It kind of leaves the body the carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is actually one of the key players in breathing, and it's one of the key players in breath work because if you hold your breath, carbon dioxide increases and the body becomes acidic and the brain starts screaming, take a breath. If we breathe too quick, then carbon dioxide drops and the body changes and adapts. So a lot of these practices for trauma release or deeper work to integrate our past, our beliefs, our habits come with this kind of faster way of breathing, dropping carbon dioxide. So we deliberately move into respiratory alkalosis. Body becomes very alkaline. Now, in a medical term, that's probably not a good thing to do in some, some circles because we're going to super ventilate and we're breathing much quicker. But something quite magical happens. And again, this is still.

Being researched and a lot more research is going into it at the moment. Even Imperial at the moment in UK are looking into breath work to uncover some of these states that people go into. And what happens is in essence the body. Carbon dioxide drops. We can't actually get this balance in our body. And what happens is we start to shut down and we have these releases and experiences we're creating. We're evoking a bit of stress in the body. And what happens is the mind is we can.

Detach from our ego self. And within that I like to think of it, it kind of hands us to the key so we can unlock deeper parts of our consciousness or subconscious so we can start processing and working through emotions in our past. And I like to think of the it being the key to the cellar under the stairs that we don't really want to look at. So that's another form of using our breath. So we've got this kind of one side of using our breath to manage our stress. Switch on, switch off, create flow. Using our breath to actually work through deep rooted challenges. Why is this happened? What's going on for me? Is this something that's now or is it actually dated to my past? We can start using it as a really, really powerful tool to shift through that stuff. The negative happens, the negative pattern, the negative patterns and belief systems that we all have. And then we have this third space that is an exciting space as well, which is to do with optimizing performance.

Now.

This is also to do is like the other end of the scale. How do we actually evoke the body to breathe much more efficiently? How do we reduce breathlessness? So when we're engaging in exercise or sport, how can we go an extra round or run that extra mile where we can start to force our body using Some light stress techniques to create a more effective breathing system so that we don't gas out so quickly or we don't get too much lactic acid so quickly, which is also linked to respiratory system. So there's kind of those three areas, really, this kind of breathing to change in the moment, this reactive and feeling a certain way. I want to feel something else. Breathing as a tool to release, let go and integrate our emotions and trauma. And then breathing is a performance enhancement tool that we can use to really optimize whatever we're doing, whether that's sport or whether that's going, going on throughout our day. So there's so much to it and there's so much context to it, and I think it's just such a fascinating space and so overlooked. And only now we're starting to see what I guess the yogis have been talking about for years and years and years, but now we're starting to see, well, actually this starts to make sense and that can be. That can be used there. And it's like this magic secret has been under our nose this whole time. And fortunately, we now start to build more science around it and understand, well what's happening in some of these sessions. How are people managing to release their trauma from their past or work through some deep, deep, challenging.

Aspects that maybe years of therapy would traditionally help and support. But can we get there and find that nugget quite quickly? And that's what. What seems to be happening in these sessions.

It's amazing. Thank you for sharing. Sharing that. I think that's a. For some people, that's going to be a lot of new information. It's a lot to take in, but honestly, that really helps to kind of get the head around it. And my understanding is this, is that we have a natural breath per minute rate that we breathe at. And, you know, obviously the structure of our heads has changed a lot as we have evolved, but perhaps the breath rate that we have is not conducive to a really healthy body. And when we look at some of those, and you actually mentioned it in the book, you look at some of those more spiritual practices, yogis, even with the rosary and stuff like that, the breath per minute was like about. Was it five, five breaths per minute or seven?

5.5. Yeah. Right.

So what's the. What's the story there?

Yeah, so we'll find that. Again, this is to do with going into the science again. Our breathing rate is actually.

Determined by our sensitivity to carbon dioxide and the mechanics. So a natural, effective breath at rest, because it depends what depends what you're doing. Because you're breathing maps your, your experience. But your natural breath at rest is using your diaphragm in and out through your nose. So it's like nice and slow. It's calm, it's deep into your torso. Now, if you have a stressful day or stressful moment, your breath speeds up because it thinks, your mind thinks you're in danger, it needs more energy. So your breathing speeds up so it might move to your chest. And as a result, carbon dioxide drops in that moment because you're breathing faster. So if that stressful day becomes. We're well, well equipped to deal with stress as human beings, that kind of acute stress, 20 minutes bouts. But if we. A stressful day becomes a stressful week, becomes a stressful month, our breathing pattern just moves and changes. We start breathing too fast, we start breathing too fast. And what tends to happen is because our carbon dioxide drops. Now if our carbon dioxide drops, ph drops. Oh, sorry. PH increases, the acidity drops. We move into this kind of alkalosis. So body doesn't like that either. The body likes to keep a tight range on its ph and almost prioritizes that over other things. So if we're breathing fast because we're stressed all day, carbon dioxide's dropped. Body doesn't like it. So the body says, right, well, we actually need to balance this out. So it starts to hold on to acidity and it's in our kidneys. We don't pee out when we go to the toilet. So we now get this new normal of ph, but at this fast rhythm of breathing. So the body is, the body's now prioritized, the ph in that moment re zeroed itself at this fast rate of breathing. So our breath per minute is sky high. So you'll find, I almost think the, the average has kind of gone up for many people on breaths per minute. When we look at spiritual practices or.

Optimal, there's been sight a lot of science around this as well. What is the optimal rate for the human breath? And it, and it lands in at 5.5 breaths per minute, which is pretty slow. It's, it's, it's quite a challenge to, to keep a rhythm at that rate. But there's many practices that.

Use that rate or mantras that tend to be of that rate because ultimately speaking is an out breath. So you'll find that different rates of speaking or different.

Tools, singing in choirs, certain hymns will probably get you to that rate of breathing, which is quite fascinating. And it's, it's such a nice tool. Do you want to join us? See how sensitive you are to carbon dioxide?

Oh yes, please.

I was just thinking that. And maybe people listening because this is a lovely bit of awareness because it can, it's. And if it's a score that isn't an amazing score, I always even get excited about it because it's one thing we can change quite quickly about our breathing. So to find out how sensitive you are to carbon dioxide, it's very simple. We take a normal breath in and a normal breath out. And then we hold our breath. And I'll start counting.

Okay.

And I'll count and whatever, you just clock whatever number it is when you feel the desire to breathe.

Okay.

Okay. That's not a maximum breath hold. We don't want to be sitting here and going blue in the face. This is just the desire to breathe. Because the first trigger to breathe is in our brain. Our brain, it doesn't think, oh, I need more air. In this moment, the first trigger to breathe is actually carbon dioxide increasing. So if we go back to that example of the stressful day, the stressful month, the stressful year, we're breathing much faster.

And.

Because we're breathing faster and our PH has changed and it's re zeroed itself, then our sensitivity to carbon dioxide becomes quite high. So it might be like our brain's going, take a breath, take a breath, take a breath, take a breath. So you can get stuck in this pattern of breathing. And because it's two way street, our brain is sending a signal to our breath and our breath is sending a signal to our brain about our environment. We might be feeling stress because of the way we're breathing. Could be because of that stressful week, month, year and when we trying to chill out, but we're stuck in this fast rate of breathing, it can be sending an alarm bell to our brain the whole time. So this is a really nice exercise. It's super simple. So it's normal breath in, normal breath out. I'll start counting and you just need to clock what time it is. What, what time I get to. Are we ready?

Let's do it.

Yeah. So normal breath in, normal breath out.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. We'll stop there. See we're seven. Yeah. Those listening, you might have even gone further than 20, but we'll stop at 20. So that ultimately says every seven seconds your brain is saying take a breath. At least now that number I like to push an edge, edge up, edge further up towards 20, 25 seconds. So you have this much longer buffer in between the desire to breathe, which means your breath slows down, which means you start breathing a little bit closer to that 5.5 seconds per minute which is where your body's relaxed, you're getting the most from your breath, you're in this natural state and then if you need to spike into stress, you can, but then you'll come back to this natural state, natural resting breath. It's something that was.

Looked a lot by a doctor called Dr. Beteyko, the Buteyko method, which is one one side of, of school of thought which is very effective in these kind of balancing our breath tools. So yeah, so at seven seconds, definite room for improvement. If you're lower than that. Absolutely. It's something that you, you really want to start shifting and changing because ultimately it means that we're holding on to too much acidity in our body and we're breathing a little bit faster than we ordinarily should, which will affect our ability to perform during sport. We'll get breathless a bit quicker. It will affect.

Our mind, it will affect how we're kind of triggering into a stress mode throughout our day.

Well, thank you for that. I think it's important. So essentially I've got to be working towards 3xing that. So from 7 up to like over 21 to 25 is where I need to be headed.

Yes, absolutely. Now a simple technique and.

Probably one of my favorite breathing techniques just for like day to day.

And it really helps with that score. It will really help build it up. Is a, is a practice called box breathing. Now box breathing is the reason I love it so much is it just like it's an all round great technique and it's so simple and accessible and achievable. It's called box breathing because we, we breathe around a box, we're going to breathe in for four, hold for four, breathe out for four and hold for four. Okay, so already we've kind of got eight seconds around one side of the box before you take a breath. So for you, you're pushing over that barriers even with, with the four second box breath. Now why I love it box breathing so much as well is.

I talked about kind of in breath switching you on, sympathetic out breath switching you off, which is parasympathetic rest digest. The box breathing sits in the middle so it's kind of on and off in equal measure.

Now in breath, heart rate goes up, blood pressure goes up, out breath, heart rate goes down, blood pressure goes down. So when we start box breathing, we actually start increasing this heart rate variability. I see a lot of the heart maths over in the States did a lot of work around this about heart rate variability and emotion, which is fascinating research. And again, with box breathing, we start to send a coherent heart rhythm to our brain. So no longer is this kind of jagged signal, we start to find this smooth flow and coherent signal from our heart to our brain, which research has shown helps to move into what we call flow state, which is like the perfect state to be in throughout our day if we want to kind of get things done. We want to feel focused and relaxed and motivated, but chilled at the same time. And it's something the Navy seals use a lot, box breathing.

Because I guess they don't want to go and feeling sort of Zen diet and chilled out and peaced out and they don't want to go into conflict feeling very stressed and anxious. And what they also found, which is really fascinating point, which when I will go in and work with corporates and different groups, is when we collectively box breathe together. So you and I today, or maybe some other people listening, when we collectively box breathe together, our heart rhythms all start to match the same cadence. So we can start accessing this kind of collective flow, which can be really, really amazing in, in group context, even for teamwork or creative projects or to just start getting on the same level as, as the rest of the group. And again, the, the Navy seals, well, they have to go into a situation like a collective brain. One looks left, one looks right. So again, box breathing is really, really effective for them. So I think if it's good enough for the Navy SEALs going into conflict, it's good enough for our busy days.

Let's do it.

I'd love to go as well.

So just do, let's just do four rounds of this. So just closing your eyes, just relaxing into your body.

And we're going to close our mouth, we're going to breathe through our nose.

And I'll count you in. So just first of all, just notice how you feel. Just notice.

How your body feels, how your mind feels, maybe even notice the way in your breath is flowing currently. Are you breathing in your chest, Breathing in your belly?

What comes first? Are you noticing your posture? Sometimes that can be.

Nudging our breathing pattern.

So now we're kind of noticing where our breath is. We're going to put maybe hands on our lower belly so you can feel it rise and fall. We're going to breathe in through our nose for a count of four.

And then pause and hold for four.

And then breathe out through our nose for four.

And pause and hold for four.

Good. Breathe in for four.

Hold for four.

Out for four.

And hold for four.

Let's keep going. In for four.

Hold for four.

Hurt for four.

Hold for four.

Try two more rounds. In for four.

Pause and hold. Keep calm and still.

Now breathe out for four.

Hold for four. It's a challenging one sometimes at the bottom.

Good. Last round. Breathe in. Feel your belly rise.

Pause and hold.

And breathe out.

And hold that.

Good. So now slowly this coming back into your space.

Wiggling your toes, your fingers loosening your neck just.

A little, little micro practice. How are you feeling?

Wow, I feel vastly different than I did a few moments ago. Very relaxed yet clear, very clear headed. But I can feel less stress in my like less tension, muscular tension in my shoulders, in my belly as well. I feel I didn't realize it but a moment ago I was holding a lot. I was almost holding my belly. I'm breathing mid, mid lungs. Yeah, I feel, feel great.

Amazing. So that was only four rounds of box breathing. And.

Amazing that you're not with such a shift. And it doesn't take long to do. We've done it more of a kind of meditative way, kind of closing our eyes and stopping and pausing. But I often do it in transitions like walking to the bus stop or just before a zoom meeting or any time that I have those moments in my day I'll revert back to box breathing just to just kind of balance everything back in. Like you shared your, you feel a bit clearer. So in our minds we've got so much going on, we're thinking, thinking, thinking or coming back into our box. Breathing just kind of grounds everything again. So a super, super helpful technique just to use throughout our day as much as possible. And because we've got those short holds, we start to improve our balance between carbon dioxide and oxygen. So we can start slowing our breath down or getting better at slowing our breath down to get closer to that 5.5 breaths per minute. Now if your score on our carbon dioxide tolerance is quite low, I, what I encourage people to do is maybe practice that box breathing four, four, four, four for a week. And when that becomes easy, four minutes, four four, four, four four. Following week, do it. Five, five, five, five.

Next week 6666. Next week, 777. So you're building up this.

Tolerance if you like. And what's happening is we're actually. Because we're going the other way. We're kind of.

Holding a little bit longer. The body becomes acidic, but the body doesn't really like to. We're just doing it very slowly with these little increment changes. But what the body does is. I'm acidic here. I'm not sure if we like that. What do we need? Well, we need more oxygen to balance this out. So it actually creates more red blood cells. Creates more red blood cells, which ultimately means become. We become more economic at breathing because red blood cells are the oxygenated cells. Delivering.

Delivering to ourselves oxygenated hemoglobin that's delivering to the cells. So we start to actually. For every breath, we're actually getting more oxygen delivered. So we become more economical in our breathing. So ultimately that's kind of the best thing we can do is slowing our breath down and box breathing. It's just a great, great tool to practice.

Thank you for doing that and sharing that. And hopefully the person that's listening give that a go as well. And yes, it's phenomenal. And I think about the person that's listening, and they may have recently, or it might just be about to hit them soon, but they might have had some adversity, they might have had a challenge that was thrown at them, some confrontation, and they have a response. They have to respond to that in some way. How do you feel breathing can help people respond when their ego gets attacked? Respond when people are unpleasant towards them? How can breathwork really help us respond in a really empowering way?

Well, firstly, it helps you respond instead of reacting. So.

I think in those moments when the ego gets in the way, there's a reaction, or we're triggered, we're triggered. And. And what happens when we are going through an experience and we're going through any experience through the lens of our past, through the filtering system of our past. Like I said, big boys don't cry, but it might be some other experience for somebody else. Often think it's like we start our life with an empty bag on our back and we start to put things in the bag and. And that bag starts to fill up, especially from 0 to 7 years old. And it starts to shape the. The you that you identify with.

The school, the parents, the society and all these things. Because then when as an adult we go through an experience and something triggers us, then we usually react or something happens or we go through this challenge, we say, I'll do it this way. Well, our breath is also really, really Key throughout our life in the emotional experience.

So our breath moves and ebbs and flows within experience. And when I say experience, I'm talking about emotions as well, emotional experiences. Usually our breath will just roll through and it's part of that emotional processing. So what tends to happen when we are triggered or we're reacting in a moment over choosing to respond? Often we'll hold back and hold our breath. So we hold our breath in those moments. Let's say someone cuts you off on the road and you got that road rage kicking in. It happens to everybody. And we go.

Don'T want to shout out the window, but what do we do? We hold our breath.

Yeah, I've been there.

We hold our breath to, to stop that emotional outburst.

Because the conscious mind says, well, it's not appropriate to shout and scream out my window right now. Or the unconscious mind says, this is going to hurt, let's not feel it. Which might not be right for that example, but maybe if we.

Are.

Going through a traumatic experience and our pattern says, well, actually this, this is going to hurt. Well, let's just hold on. So we, we hold our breath. So.

That might be for your anger situation, that might be holding back tears because you're at work and you want to hold it together in front of your team or your boss. You might be holding that laughter because we shouldn't find something funny. So we, we hold our breath to stop the laughter. So our breathing is actually part of this response and reaction to either our environment around us or our internal environment, our thoughts. Something's triggered us. Might be our own thought, might be something around us. Our breathing moves. We have a chemistry, chemical change in our body. Our breathing moves as reaction. And usually part of that breathing will flow through. We will have some sort of energy reaction. It might be tears, it might be laughter, it might be joy, it might be rage. And we either have a expansion of our breath or we have a contraction of our breath. Now you'll find that most positive emotions is an expansion. Joy, bliss, feeling, good, laughter. Whereas stress, anxiety, guilt, shame, starts to create this contraction in our breath, we start holding on. So what I get people to do is, and when we start holding on, in essence, it's like we're trapping the emotion in our body. The emotion doesn't have its full integration, it doesn't have its full processing. And if we don't allow our emotions to process, they get trapped. They get trapped. We're still holding them in our body. So when we go through experiences.

I.

Usually tell people or show People that we can. First of all, instead of having that knee jerk reaction, a tool that I use in, breathe in, breathe out is recognize, breathe, reframe. So recognize what's happened to make me feel this, like what's going on, what's going on right now and, and labeling it, but not becoming it. That's quite key as well. So if it's anger, it's like I'm experiencing anger. Instead of saying I'm angry, start saying, right, that's part of me now. But we can say I'm experiencing anger. This is something that's moving through me because of this experience. So taking that moment that comes with awareness. It's easier said than done when we're in that real heightened moment or reactive or responsive moment. But I'm experiencing xyz.

Then breathing through it. Now there's. You can either just intuitively let your breath flow. So if it's anger, it might just be that shaking it off and I'm doing something. If that sounds a bit abstract, just slowing your breath down.

Calming yourself down. Moving from this heightened state of awareness, which tends to be a stress response, slowing everything down, allowing it to process with a bit more clarity by hitting the off switch, the parasympathetic mode. I often share that phrase, if in doubt, breathe it out. So love it. If in doubt, long drawn out breath just going to help your system calm so you've got recognized. I'm feeling something. Breathe. Taking a moment to breathe. Now Harvard research says that emotion through an experience takes 90 seconds to integrate. Blows my mind because I held on to things for.

90 days. I was gonna say 90 years. I'm not that old. But there will be some people who have, who have held on to things for a very, very long time. But if we actually let emotions flow as they naturally shoot and it moves to the body in 90 seconds, unless we hold our breath and trap it in those moments. So allowing our breath to move in those moments are really important. Now that might mean just moving yourself, taking yourself away from that situation.

Breathing out. And then it's after that kind of 90 seconds has passed, it's just reframing it, which is more of a coaching tool. What happened to make me feel this way?

Is there some, is there, does it make sense? Is there a logical reason for it happening? Also acknowledging what you want to do about it. So that might be. Well, I want to jump out my car and shout and scream at this person. So acknowledging it is quite important because usually we acknowledge it in our mind to go, that's absolutely ridiculous.

And then the final question for reframing is, is there a better way?

And by that point.

We'Re very much in responsive mode rather than reactive mode. So recognize what's happened. How am I feeling? Breathe through it. Take that moment to breathe intuitively. We might want to use our breath in different ways, but otherwise, if in doubt, breathe out nice long, drawn out breath. Calm yourself down and then just asking yourself those questions to reframe what's going on. What, what do I want to do about it is quite key as well. And is there a better way, Is there a better way to manage myself in these moments?

That's incredible. Thanks. Thanks for sharing that. And I think about any new behavior. It starts with, hey, I need discipline to really practice that behavior every day. But if I have enough discipline over enough days, it then becomes habitual and I just do. It's automatic. So with breath work, you know, morning, noon and night, is there anything. If someone's starting on this new journey of being more intentional with how they breathe, is there anything you would suggest they think about daily as a practice to help them get that habit developed?

Yeah, and it's really key. It's a really key point because we are creatures of habit and we go through our day with choice, a lot of choice, which is amazing because we have a choice to make a change. And it comes with awareness and it comes with noticing. I notice every time I'm. I'll play with that same example that I have. Road rage. Yeah, it happens every time I'm on this bit and is that me is or am I driving erratically? We can start to question these things, everyone. It comes back to actually daily practice. There's using your breath reactively in those moments like we shared. I'm feeling this, I need to calm myself down. But forming a habit of a practice, allowing yourself to settle into your body instead of just like waking, the alarm goes off and catapulting into your day and running from one task to the next, to room to room, whatever it is. Allowing yourself to stop and pause in the morning and create a daily practice to connect back to yourself, to find some stillness to regulate your nervous system. And with that practice, I like to do it in the morning. It might be evening time as well, if you are trouble sleeping, etc. Maybe something in during the day. But starting off with just a small practice in the morning, that will be maybe your box breathing that we practice. Great one. To kick off with stopping starting your day that might be, you know, coming edge of Your bed, sitting up straight and doing four minutes of box. Breathing as a practice regulates your nervous system. You start to feel clear, energized, but relaxed. You already get your mind set, maybe set an intention for the day as well.

What would make today great? Or how do I want to feel today? Or what, what, what will excite me today?

What makes, what would make me feel alive today? So we're setting this kind of positive.

Intention for our day ahead. We're doing our breath just to really relax into our body and that will set us up for, for a much smoother day ahead, as opposed to jumping around and bouncing around so much.

Yeah, you're so right. It's interesting. So growing up in Northern Ireland, the thought of yoga, breath work, spiritual practice, a lot of that stuff where I grew up, people shaking their heads and thinking I'm crazy. Right. And so I feel like I'm a very practical, pragmatic individual. But looking at the more spiritual side of things, looking at breath work, integrating yoga to me, it's been one of the greatest things I've ever done for my own self, for the people around me. In terms of my patients, I was not a very patient person. I'm still working on it, but breath work has helped me be more patient. It's helped me to respond way more so than react. So for the person out there now that's going, ah, I can't be doing this stuff. I just want to get, get going. Let's do this. I work at a million miles a minute. Let's take someone that's running a team. Let's say it's maybe in the corporate sector. How could breath work help them? And also how can they encourage their team to perhaps practice that collectively?

Yeah, so I mean, patience issues, you've, you've mentioned that just then. What I find quite interesting is when we sit into our breath practice, I talked about me accessing this state of awareness, this place, this deep meditation that I could access through these sessions. And what we're in essence Accessing is.

That 5% of creative thought, pure creative thought. How do we access pure creativity where we have find solutions and answers to problems and we, we make much better decisions from that place because 95 of our thoughts repeated.

95 of our thoughts repeated. So it's quite fascinating. If 95 of our thoughts are repeated and we only have 5% of pure creative thoughts, well, how do we actually access that pure creative thought? So if we are not having some sort of stillness practice or breath practice, we won't be able to filter out the noise of the day and the, the repetitive thoughts and we won't be able to access that stuff. But when we do, that's the golden thing. Sometimes I will.

The busier I am, the more breath worker meditation I'll do.

And it's so counterintuitive and it's so hard to, to like.

Say patience. It's like sometimes for me it's patience with myself and I battle it and I have to sit with it like oh, but I'll find that I've got XYZ all these things to do and I'll create all the problems around that when I'm rushing around. And this is if I don't speak to this person, that's all this is, this is how. And it's like I'm doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, doing which I think the majority of us are all just doing the whole time.

So being and it's if you like just sitting and being is really quite hard when we're doing, doing, doing, doing. But what we find is when we sit into that being space, we start to create more space, better ideas, better solutions quicker so that we find that we get more done, we're more energized, we're less stressed, we come up with better ideas, we sleep better as a result, we're happier, we're more patient, we're more enjoyable to be around. The team loves us and the team all on board of this as well. We all start working much, much smoother together. So.

For me it's a complete no brainer like why wouldn't we create more time to do this? Even with the team I shared before her box breathing we can access collective flow together. And that again in itself is such a valuable tool to regulate ourselves as a unit, as a team so that we all and I was in a, in a corporate this week.

Doing a big session and it was actually for their athlete summit. But then I was called back in to do do it again and this was with, with meta. So like a big, big organization.

Epic.

Yeah it was, it was a great session and they messaged after somebody else messaged from the session afterwards said oh my God. The following day the one of the leader team leaders started their session where one of the breath work techniques I shared it was such a different message, such a different session for them. So being a champion for it going right, okay, yeah we got, we got team meetings so we're going to kick off 4 minutes box breathing or 4 minutes of slow breaths just to relax into this space so that everyone feels a bit calmer. I noticed the difference hugely. When I'm doing maybe a public speaking gig or a keynote or something like that, I'm feeling nervous beforehand.

Fortunately for me, I'll just go on stage. Let's all just breathe. And I can definitely get away with it, but I encourage people to do the same. Okay, why wouldn't you start your session? So everybody gets out of their own busy, chaotic mind and just starts to simmer down and just, just.

Arrive, arrive fully present in the space. And that's what a lot of this is about, finding presence. Most of us are.

Worried about tomorrow or.

Overwhelmed by our past and these. That's where all the stresses lie. But when we start to sit in presence, then that dissolves. All that worry dissolves. All that stress dissolves. And from that place of presence, you can really access you. Your kind of. Your uniqueness and your team's uniqueness as well, because you have everybody working from this place of presence. So I think it's for anybody that is working with teams or finding challenges like sitting into that, sitting into our. Asking yourself, using that as your attention for your breathwork practice, like, okay, how can I resolve this challenge that I have? And then moving into your breathwork practice and allowing your breath work to. When we use box breathing, but sometimes we use these deeper practices where we're using a bit. I call it infinity breathing and breathe in, breathe out daily infinity breath practice to sit with that question to solve the problem. And you'll find that a solution comes out as if from. From thin air, literally while you're breathing. And that can be so effective to move forward with.

Thank you for sharing that. It's as you say, that I think of the work that Dr. Joe Dispenza has done around the science behind brain heart coherence. And when two intimate partners that want to become more intimate and connected, one of the greatest things to do is to sit with each other and literally mimic each other's breath and breath rate. And all of a sudden you become more connected. It's. It's really fascinating. And if I go back to. Go ahead.

Sorry, I was going to say we, we do this naturally as, as mirroring or matching people is a form of empathy. So makes a lot. I mean, I'm a big fan of Joe Dispenza and. But that makes a lot of sense. Matching someone's breathing. And we naturally already do it. So if I, if you came to meet me and we're in a cafe and I was, you'd be like, oh, what's, what's up? Are you okay? So you're matching the breath. So. And then you both start to taper down together. So naturally you will, you will, you will connect to somebody and match their breath to say, it's okay, I'm the same as you. Let's work through this together. So it's a form of empathy. I had to share this within the book that you, you would have seen the, the like.

Like almost like fact box bits. Yeah, a little bit grayed out. And I talk about yawn. Did you. Have you got to that bit?

Yeah, have. Yeah.

And that's exactly what I'm talking about. The yawn. Why do people catch a yawn? So I yawn and likelihood is other people in the room will yawn with me. And it's, it's this form of empathy. We're matching a breathing pattern. A yawn is just temperature but also chemistry. We're breathing because our body needs to regulate itself. So we take this breath in the big yawn, and then usually someone yawns with you. And the interesting little tip that I added in the book was the people that aren't yawning with you got to watch out for because the research says that those who don't yawn or catch the yawn are more likely to be sociopaths.

Yeah, I've seen that in the book. I laugh.

So it definitely changes your. When you do yawn, you're going to go scan the room and see who's not yawning and you'll find out who's the sociopaths in the room.

What is really interesting on that front, when I read that, the one thing that I connected with was this. So when I was competing the world championship, particularly the morning of the competition, so many people be like, you're so relaxed that you're yawning. And inside I did not feel relaxed. Inside I was nervous, but my body, for some reason, I didn't feel tired at all. It kept yawning and yawning. And the closer we got to the competition, the more I would yawn. So is there something in that yawn breath that really protects the body or allows us to kind of get through this stress and this, this nervousness.

Oh, that's interesting.

The yawn usually regulates this carbon, this pH level. Right. So perhaps in that moment you were breathing very quickly and you needed to regulate, or maybe you'd frozen completely and weren't breathing at all, which also can happen. That fight I talked about. Fight or Flight but there's fight, fight or freeze. And in that freeze we heart rate actually drops and we don't breathe and we sit still hoping that I can. The tiger goes past us so that stress in our environment goes away. So perhaps you weren't breathing or you're breathing too fast and the body's trying to regulate itself with, with those yawns. That's what the only thing I could think of in that moment is Interesting though.

Yeah, it makes sense. And I do a bit of work mental skills with professional athletes and teams. So let's say it's half time and it's a prop now quarterfinal, semi, final and they are down, they're struggling and they're in. In the changing rooms and they need to get re centered but also re energized. What type of breath work is going to be really helpful for them?

For something like that I'd go back to what we've practiced, box breathing. Simple, effective. It doesn't take much to get everybody just. And we. It calms everybody down. Post game something very different. You want to completely relax the body. So it would be something more like a four in, four hold, eight out. But in that kind of halfway point we want to keep them, keep them kind of energized and relaxed to go in to the next one. I wouldn't, I wouldn't probably jump into kind of these faster breathing practices either. That would kind of evoke that, that energized response because it might just be too much in that moment when you've got, you've got a game to go in back into. So yeah, I just stick with box breathing, get everything regulated, get our breathing slowed down. You may even want to practice just like alternative nostril breathing. So it could be some which is similar to box breathing, but I would just balance out the hemispheres of the body and just get everything really nice and still very before going back out.

Thank you. And for those that are listening, hearing all these different things we've talked about, there's two things that I want to encourage them to do. One, please go to the Show Notes and you'll see a link to purchase the incredible book Breathe In, Breathe Out. It's phenomenal. I read it recently. I will reread it. I'm going to gift it to a number of clients as well. I'm going to get a number of copies. It's incredible. So please go and buy yourself a copy. And secondly, if you're a very visual person, I'm also going to put a link in the show notes as well, where you can download a short course where Stuart will actually take you through some of the basic breathing techniques, if you like, to learn visually. So I'll put those both down below. And Stuart, I know how much goes into creating a framework like this, so it's years and years of work and research and trial and error. So I just want to. Want to say thank you for the work you've done.

My pleasure. It's. It's funny because writing the book.

It'S almost ironic in some ways. A book about managing your emotions and. And keeping calm and. And working through the challenges. And I think writing it was one of the biggest challenges as well. The amount of times I almost threw my laptop out the window, which is quite ironic. But it's. It's. Yeah, it's packed. Packed with lots of tools, techniques, lots of science, but lots of magic as well. And I wanted to capture that. And when I say magic is the trying to figure out the unexplainable parts of. Of the depths at which we can go through breathing. And that kind of question of, was my girlfriend holding my hand in that first session or not? And I find that fascinating. And I think that's the. Where science sits too. Say, well, let's question these things and see if we can figure out or get closer to some answers for the unexplainable experiences that people have, which I think is just fascinating. That's not just my own experiences. It's actually a lot of clients as well what happens in these sessions.

And I know you said the visual. For visual people to check the course. There is those little. There's the pictures in the book as well. So there's some animations and visuals in the book, which is quite handy.

Oh, it's been brilliant.

One thing I want to applaud you on there as well. So I think authors struggle to do this, but I can see why this would have been such a difficult journey for you in authoring it. It's the things that you have to take out. It's easy to write and write and write and have this big, lengthy, long explanation when you can take things out and make it simple and powerful. The only other author who I think does this really well, and when I read this, it reminded me of him, was Robin Sharma with the 5am club. And this reminded me of Robin's style. It was really powerful and I just didn't want to put it down to be fair. I just wanted to keep reading.

Good. So, so nice. I. I wanted it to Be manageable book.

And so is that as well. That's kind of broken down into parts so that you could just go through that page. And it's also that page, you're like, all right, okay, I've got that. Now on to the next page. Oh, there's a fat box here that. Oh, that's quite interesting and funny. Often put those really sciency bits in the box. So it's like, oh, I need to think about that one. But let's carry on reading. So amazing that you found it so, so enjoyable to read. It's just such a. Such a joy now coming out the other end of having written it because then you write the book and then it goes out and then you tell everybody to buy it. And then it's like, oh, I hope people like it after. After I told them to go out and get it. And hearing feedback from people just honestly make all that hard work and stress and stressful moments of putting it together all just worth it. People sharing that from every aspect. Oh, this helped me calm down. Or this helped me. I usually scared of going to the dentist and I went to the dentist and I wasn't scared. Or people going for operations and finding that. Or managing pain, both chronic and immediate pain. People messaged me saying, oh, you know what? Their stuff actually worked. I'm like, what do you mean? Actually? I don't write a book to. For. For not to work. But yeah, and it's. It's amazing and it still amazes me daily. Amazing me daily when I need to regulate myself in some sort of way or I need. If I have had a lot on, I'm feeling stressed or going through a challenge and I'll go into deeper process and like, wow, that's great. It's. This is provided again. And what I find so special about.

Breathing is you don't have to go to take anything or you don't have to go and do something crazy. It's like you just with yourself. And that for me has been so empowering and so empowering for.

The whole. Working through grief and managing that like it was me and allowing myself to access that stuff. Obviously a bit of guidance. They've got the book there to guide you along, but it comes back to you as having awareness, noticing the habits and patterns and what makes you you and. And saying, oh, these are the parts that I love about me and these are the parts that maybe I don't want to subscribe to anymore and I'd like to let go of. Well, then we can use our Breath to be that tool, to really allow ourselves and facilitate that positive shift in our life.

Yeah, it's amazing. Take it with you wherever you go. Whether you're on a plane, whether you're on the rugby field, whether you're lying in bed, you can take it with you. You're absolutely right. And hey, Stuart, just one last question before we wrap up. If we were to fast forward way into the future, it's your very last day here on Earth, and you are aware that it's your last day, you've got five minutes left, and someone very young in your life, maybe perhaps it's a grandchildren, asks you, stuart, how do I lead my life on purpose? What would your advice be to them?

Love that. It's almost like the meditation on death, thinking about it in some way.

Following.

Your highest excitement in any moment.

Is a tool that somebody told me.

And I didn't realize that I'd actually been doing it most of my life anyway. And it comes with integrity, following your highest excitement. But if you follow your highest excitement to your best ability in any moment, then you're ultimately connecting to you and your purpose, naturally, because that excitement that's built and built within you is exactly the thing that you should follow. So it would be as simple as following your highest excitement. You just do have to have that little caveat of with. With integrity. Because some people's excitement might lead them down a bad track. But if you actually connect into yourself and that might come with different.

Different decisions. Like what face with this crossroad. What actually excites me more? Usually in that moment we say all the reasons why we shouldn't do something, or because of this or because of that. But if we actually just break all that away and just say, well, what excites me more? Simple question. We can actually move forward with a lot more purpose in our life.

That's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that. And just a heartfelt thank you for taking the time out to share the knowledge and the wisdom from the book. And I'm going to put all the show notes in there. I'll have the book, I'll have the course. And also make sure and put in your social channels because I'm sure there'll be a listener that wants to connect with you and follow your journey. Maybe even join you in one of your Radio 1 decompression sessions.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The Radio 1 shows great, great tunes, a lot of good music on there as a show, but also pick topics each time to kind of unpick whether that is managing emotions or that stress whether that is maybe some more light hearted stuff like how to cure a hangover or there's all these different elements kind of pick a, pick a topic each show so it's definitely worth checking.

Out now we'll definitely tune in. Well Stuart, thank you so much. I don't think this is the last time we'll chat. There'll definitely be another time in the future so I just want to wish you nothing but the best.

Ah, thank you. It's been so amazing to chat today.

Hey guys, if you enjoyed the content today please smash that subscribe button below. And if you want to become part of my community I've got an amazing free Facebook group. Please come and join us. The link is in the description below. And also if you've got any questions about today's session I'd love to know just comment below and I'll be sure to get back to you guys. Have the most amazing day.