👨‍🏫 Guest Masterclass: The Art and Science of Functional Breathing w/ David 'Jacko' Jackson

Hello. Hello. Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. Lovely to your faces. Hey, David. Hey, Ritz. Nick. Hey, Brent. Thank you for your Edge challenge Share video. Brent, that was awesome to watch.

Scott, be careful when you're driving. There's someone watching in their car.

Okay, well, if you'd like to share how you're feeling in three words in the chat and we will begin in about a minute or so. What comes to mind? Scared. Excellent. Congested. Yeah, me too. Really bad pollen.

Right now I've got two things we can try.

Cool. Excellent.

May or may not work.

Maybe we can start off with that. Oh, more people. Congested. All right. It's clearly that time of year, huh? Okay, Ocean, if you'd like to let in Yoda. Thank you. Okay. All right, well, welcome, welcome, Jacko. It's really great to have you here.

Yeah, thanks for. Thanks for inviting me.

Yeah. I've heard so many great things from Connie and I've been watching a bunch of your videos lately as well, and I'm excited for this conversation. But let's dive into what you just shared about congestion. I mean, that seems like there's a lot of people, myself included, who have got stuffed up sinuses. So what would you recommend?

Yeah, so. And also I guess some people won't maybe have no idea who the hell is this guy. So I'm a master instructor with, with the Oxford Vantage, which is a lot of you, I'm sure probably have come across, like science based breathing techniques. And as a former professional rugby player myself, I retired in 2013 from professional rugby due to a brain injury which had affected my breathing. That was my way into looking at breathing, but not for a few years after that. Because despite there being 60 years of research, I've recently found that brain injuries affect your respiratory center and your breathing, which is not so surprising from the trauma of that. Nobody is still. If you went into hospital now with a brain injury, nobody would assess your breathing. Nobody would give you breathing exercises to help restore cerebral blood flow to your brain and help with recovery. Yeah, there's a whole piece. I went boring with that. There's a whole piece that's obviously clearly very close to my heart because of what happened to me. And there's hundreds or thousands of other sports people that are suffering with long term concussions. Mine. I only started dressing four years after my actual injury. Met someone. I met someone literally the other day. He's three. Three years after his concussion and he's still got symptoms and he's never been given anything to help with it. So, yeah, That's a little. Little piece on me.

Yeah. I mean, I'd. I'm curious about that. Was it through Patrick McEwen that you learned about the connection between brain injury and breathing, or was it through your own experimentation?

So that was at first, interestingly, I had an ulcer on my tongue from. I must have. I had a seizure on the training field. I'd had a number of concussions during my rugby career, but the one that sort of did for me caused a small bleed on the brain. I had a seizure so I fit on the training field. Luckily, you don't remember anything that happens when that sort of thing goes on. And so I got hit on the. On the left hand side and I must have bit my tongue and, you know, had it. Had an ulcer as a result of the thing, which was sort of nothing was the least of my worries. But I remember being like sort of three years later and it's like anytime I get stressed, this also comes back. And then thinking back at the time, I was like, oh, I think I had that ulcer for about 18 months. Like, that's a bit weird. Like, what's going on there? So initially, finding a link around the brain gut axis from like brain injury affecting go and then leaky gut or those that type of way into some skin issues and ulcers and things like that. So I had some. I had some skin irritations that had sort of never really had before as well. So that was sort of opened up the. Opened up the idea that my brain injury may have affected other sorts of automatic functions in the body. And that led me into seeing. I can't even remember the. The paper because I guess I've looked at so many other ones since. But yeah, they're being. Being some studies talking about brain injuries and breathing. And then when I was trying to do. You've come across Richie Norton?

No, no, I haven't heard of him.

He was. I was at one of his workshops and he was here. I was asking him, like, okay, I really think breathing. Something I need to look at. What do you recommend? Like, there must be some books or something I can read and. Yeah, and he put me onto the auction vantage and then sort of. Yeah. Opened up the Pandora's box and fell in love with Patrick McKeon's Irish accent. And then the rest is history, like.

The rest of us. Beautiful. Yeah. Well, I've also done a. Patrick's training as well, and I really do recommend it for anyone here. I mean, even if you're not looking to teach this stuff. I think that having a greater understanding of the breath and breathing mechanics is just, it's like, it's like an amplifier for pretty much everything else in life I think for whether it's focus or stress regulation or just, just feeling good and, and it's something that so, so for context everyone here, we've, we've covered a lot. This is our final week in the five week course and we've been covering interoception breathing practices for shifting your state, working with emotions. But we haven't actually covered that much on functional breathing which was in an earlier iteration of the course. But it kind of got taken out due to there just being so much to talk about. But I do feel like it's such an important aspect that I'm excited to kind of have this conversation as an excuse to really dive in and hopefully leave people with some, not only kind of like understanding of the theory, but some kind of practical things that they can use in like five or ten minutes a day to begin that journey of having a more functional breathing in kind of day to day living. Yeah, so, so maybe as a starting point for many people, they might be wondering like, what does functional breathing even mean? Like how do you define functional breathing?

Good question.

Because we talk about like functional movement, don't we? The word functional. So I've got an strength and conditioning background. I've been strength edition coach, credited with ukca, worked with some a lot initially within Paralympics.

Oh cool.

Which you get some interesting, interesting cases there depending on people's various different impairments.

Which just makes you, so it just.

Makes you have to think about the human body a little bit, a bit differently and understanding how the body works is, is part of that and sort of functional movement, the word that springs to mind for me when I think about doing something functionally. It's, it's doing things, something correct, doing something balanced. There is many ways the body can do many things and that's why we're so robust and so resilient and we can abuse our bodies for in all sorts of various different ways. That could be exercise, that could be drugs, it could be anything. It could be just making ourselves have a lack of slee. And it takes a very long time before we eventually break down and either something very bad happen or we actually die because we are very resilient and breathing is so important because otherwise we're dead. Like last year I saw my father take his last breath and knowing how important breathing is, when you see that happen in front of you, it does make something that sounds so obvious, like there's a different. Different perspective on it. But yeah, that. That being said, it's so important otherwise we're gone. And therefore it has to have a number of ways in which it can do it. And then we have the other side of it. I don't recover much on the science of breathing, but breathing is the body's way of regulating blood PH as well as oxygen delivery. It's almost. When you look at. It's quite feels strange in a way that you go, hold on a minute, surely it's all like it. And this was my starting point again, like someone asked you, like, what about breathing? I played professional rugby where breathe, like how we get oxygen into our body is like massively important. Did anyone ever teach us about that? No, did. And I feel pretty stupid and I think I never even thought about it.

The close.

The only. The closest thing we got said was like when you're absolutely like out of breath. Blowing out of your.

Assaulted. Yeah.

Put your hands on your head and take some big breath. It's not necessarily terrible, but it's not exactly scientific and we can do an awful lot better now. Understanding.

But I used to play rugby. I remember doing that myself as well.

Yeah.

Yeah. Intuitively, we do the right. Often, not always, but intuitively we often do the right things or intuitive. We certainly know. We know that like fast mouth panting. There's very sort of vertical and when it's fast ends up having to be shallow. Intuitively, even if we don't know anything about breathing, we. We know that that doesn't feel good. We know when we see someone else do that, we know they don't feel good. We know they're either absolutely knackered, not very fit, or they're at the end of their physical ability or they're in danger because part of the stress response, like if my wife came in the room now panting from her mouth, I'd be worried about her. Unless she's got a running gear on and she's been out for a run. But equally I'd be like, why. Why are you jumping in it? So we know to be able to pick up those things. So coming all coming back round to like the functional breathing question. It's like breathing how we're designed to. Breathing correctly feels like the words. Probably some people might not like me using that word. It was just the word that came to me the most. But certainly breathing how we're designed to. So when we look at functional anatomies, when we look at the the structures of the body. We look at the ribcage, we look at the breathing muscles, we look at the diaphragm, we look at where it attaches, we look at how things do. There is a clear and obvious way to breathe well, which involves the diaphragm, involves the rib cage and synchronization of the opening of the rib cage and the down and flattening of the diaphragm. There isn't really. There isn't really any arguments about that. It's something that's. In its simplicity, it can get. There can be confusion, if that makes sense, in that it can seem so simple and it has that automatic, autonomic like, function that it can seem like something we don't need to really think about or worry about. But just because something's automatic doesn't mean that it's optimal or doesn't mean we're optimizing it and doesn't mean that it can't become the opposite of functional dysfunctional.

Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. And something that. Or a distinction that Patrick makes is between the kind of mechanical aspects, the biomechanical aspects, and the chemical aspects and how both of those things, through deliberate practice and training can be improved. So maybe it's worth speaking to both of those, just briefly.

Yeah. So I guess when we talk about function, there's. This is where it's like something that I get. I like it, but it's like, it depends how sort of into the weeds you want to get that the something as simple as breathing actually has quite a few different dimensions to it. And you've mentioned two there, the mechanics and the biochemistry. So the mechanics, like physically, what's moving. We've already mentioned the rib cage articulation, and we'll do some very simple, practical things that will just help you feel that and be able to go with it straight. Because this is one of the questions I had at the start when I was like, okay, I've had a brain injury, my breathing's been affected. I think, how do I know if I'm breathing right? And then it's like, you should be diaphragmatic breathing. And you go, okay. So to my friend, she's a physio with British athletics, I was like, do you know much about breathing? Like, how do I know if I'm doing it right? How do I know if I'm using my diaphragm? Like, can you look at me and see?

Like, I can.

Can I. Can I feel? What's that supposed to Feel like. And so I had these types of questions as a complete novice and I think that that's one of the things that's, that's helped me to be good at coaching other people that are also at that point of being like, I don't know if I'm doing this thing right. So we'll do some of those things. Yes. And the mechanics, like, if you think about mechanics, we're thinking about like, particularly ribcage articulation and diaphragm and intercostal muscles. So things that are going to help the ribcage to move and the diaphragm that's going to help to draw air down to lower portions of the lungs. We've then got what's going on. I like to hit like upstairs. So what's going on in terms of your nose, in terms of your airway, in terms of your tongue position and all these type of things. And again, we can do a couple of things. What we can try and make the nose feel a bit clearer to breathe through. And so we've got this like, nose, ribcage, diaphragm, as sort of the three key things for the mechanics of our, of our breathing. And then the biochemistry is talking about this gas exchange of how the body's utilizing oxygen, but how it's also dealing with or using carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide actually helping facilitate oxygen delivery rather than just being a waste gas, being, having a good relation, the body having a good relationship with that carbon dioxide sensitivity because of the effect it.

Has on the, on the ph of the blood.

And your body's constantly using your breathing to try to help balance and manage.

Those potential fluctuations in ph.

We've also got the, the effect that breathing has linked in with the nervous system as well, with inhales and exhales affecting heart, heart rate, variability in the nervous system. And then, so that's the, that's those two elements. We've also got the psychological aspect of breathing in that if I'm feeling stressed, my breathing is going to change. And there's only really two parameters that can change within breathing, which will come into mechanics and biochemistry. But there's this, like, there's this very nice simple equation, if you can sort of get your head around, sort of explains a little, almost explains everything that you can possibly do with your breathing. In any breathing practice that you do is simply the, the amount of air that you breathe in a given minute. The fancy word for it is like minute ventilation. But just think of like the amount, the amount of air you breathe in A minute is dictated purely by two things multiplied together. So the size of your breath multiplied by the speed of your breathing, that's it. You can change the speed of your breathing, you can slow it down, you can speed it up, you can hold your breath, that'd be zero speed. And you can change the size of the breaths. The fancy words, that's like tidal volume and respiratory rate. People heard of respiratory tidal volume, that's just the size of breath. But let's say if you understand those things, then you understand how to manipulate your minute ventilation, the total amount of air that you're breathing, or when you're doing a certain exercise, you'll know how it is influencing your minute ventilation. And your minute ventilation, particularly for the biochemistry, for how your body is dealing with and its relationship with carbon dioxide. Those chemoreceptors that are in our brainstem that are sensitive to changes in carbon dioxide, the mechanics, I guess you could say the mechanics sort of can fall into. You can do bad breathing.

Whether it's.

The nose or it's the mouth, you can do bad breathing in all sorts of different. In different ways. But in terms of, like, how your body is influencing those gases, the size of the breath and the speed of the breath are your two major players within that.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's really well articulated. And there was a metaphor that. I forget who shared it with me originally, but this idea that our breathing has different gears, we have five different gears, and there'll be times where breathing heavily through the mouth is actually necessary. When we're at the edge of our capacity, we're sprinting to get somewhere. It's not that that's a bad thing. It's just that if we're doing that when we're like in front of a computer, that is not adaptive. Like, that's ridiculous and it's going to exhaust us very quickly. So you also mentioned, kind of touched on it briefly, but CO2 tolerance. Could you speak to the Bolt score potentially? Because I know it's a big part of Patrick's work. And maybe we could even do a kind of a Bolt score test with people here so they can get a sense of where they're at individually.

Yeah, that would be. It'd be nice to potentially even do if we took the Bolt score and we took a very simple respiratory rate. And then if we do a couple of practical things, see if we can influence those two things in a very short space of time, because it's been shown that our respiratory centers in the. In the brainstem Will, will respond to just 1 minute of good breathing, also respond to 1 minute bad breathing negatively. But we can do some stuff, hopefully to make that feel a little bit easier. And you know, something that I sort of firmly believe in, whether there's, whether there's a, whether Huberman's done a paper to a study where there's a study out there to back this up or not is sort of irrelevant. It's something that I just personally believe that the body does know how to breathe. It's designed to breathe in a certain way, that sort of functional breathing that we were talking about. And when you're trying to improve your breathing, you're not trying to teach it something it doesn't know how to do, but it. There are maybe some restrictions. There are maybe some restrictions physically around your ribcage, physically around your diaphragm. There may be some psychological restrictions around your relationship and your. That your brain has in terms of psychologically with the sensations of air hunger or feeling out of breath. There's also the, the biochemistry side of it, the. Imagine we'd be sensitive to, to the build of a calm doctor. But I believe that because you're not trying to teach it something that it doesn't know how to do, all we're trying to do is just take away a few of the restrictions that might be there. We can make some very positive changes. And I like to say it to people, particularly the start, because sometimes when you're trying to learn to do something that feels like it's new, it feels like it's a bit different, it feels like it's a bit hard, it feels like you're swimming upstream. Like we're designed to walk on our feet, not on our hands. You can walk on your hands and people can do handstands. But it feels quite hard because it's not a natural thing for you to do.

You do feel like if you try.

And learn how to do a handstand.

Or walk on your hands, you feel.

Like you make some progress, but it feels hard. It doesn't feel like the right thing to do. Whereas with breathing, when you're trying to improve the functionality, particularly the functionality of your breathing, you are, you are, you are taking yourself back to where the body wants to go. And it feels good for all aspects of the nervous system. When you breathe, when you do the thing that's got to happen in the background to keep you alive, there's just a base level thing you've got to do. It enjoys when you're doing it efficiently because when you're doing it efficiently, you can do less of it. So they can be smaller and they can be slower, and it doesn't have to spend as much energy on just keeping you alive.

So that's calming.

Yeah, Cool. So, yeah, the BOLT Score is in Buteyko. If anyone's come across the Buteyko world, they call it the control pause. In some of the studies on functional breathing, dysfunctional breathing, they simply call it a controlled, relaxed breath hold after a normal exhalation, which doesn't sound like a very sexy word. So Patrick came up with the acronym BOLT score, standing for Body Oxygen Level Test. So all it is, is when you stop breathing, you're not taking any more oxygen in, but the brain's not really bothered about that because your blood oxygen saturations will be 95 to 99%, 75% of the oxygen. You breathe in, you breathe out. It's not an issue. The brain's not bothered about that. When I stop breathing, I'm not letting CO2 leave the body. As CO2 accumulates, it will reach a critical point where those receptors in the brainstem go, hold on, I don't like this. It's affecting the PH of the blood. It's making the blood more acidic, yada, yada, yada. And it says breathe because. And it will dictate the size of the breath and how fast you do them to try and rebalance CO2 levels within the body. So the inhale is to trigger the exhale. So what we can do is by doing a pause specifically and timing in seconds how long that pause is. We can get a gauge of how sensitive we are to this buildup of carbon dioxide that's happening when we hold our breath. So it's very much a relaxed breath holder. I like to use the word pause. So you take a normal breath in, a normal breath out, you pause. You can pinch your nose if you want. You pause and use weight for the first definite desire to breathe in. You're not using willpower, you're trying to find out, what is that? What's that auto setting in the brain? When the brain will send a message from your phrenic nerve down to your diaphragm, that's. You might feel like a twitch in your neck, it might be a twitch in your throat, it might be your chest, it might be your diaphragm, but you let go and you breathe in, and you shouldn't feel out of breath. Breathing should be relatively normal. I say relatively because you've stopped and paused, but it's going to feel relatively normal people happy with that. So it's not a big. Preparing to do a breath hold.

Right.

Hold on a minute. Jacko, go. No, it's what's normal. So after a normal inhale and a normal exhale, pause, start your stopwatch.

Can you guys see? Yeah, I can like hold this up.

Hold it up here, people. Is. It's probably the easiest way for people to do it is just do it in your own. Do it in your own time now.

Yeah, yeah.

It's important you stay relaxed. Smiling. Smiling helps you relax.

Good.

There you go. There's a nice smile from Fernando. So yeah, relax. Just take a normal breath in, a normal breath out. Don't see it as a test because the stress of a test will make you change your response. Normal breath in, normal breath out.

Pause, start your stopwatch.

And then when you feel like you've got that urge to breathe in, that auto urge, breathe in, stop your stopwatch.

And then.

And you can put your. It's not a comparison of the people, so don't worry. But if you want to, you could put your. If you're happy to be interesting for me to see. Put your scores in the. In the chat box. It doesn't need to be like 15.897 seconds. Like just 15 is fine. Like people sometimes go for the. It's not that accurate that you need to do it to a number of decimal places. Cool. So 13, 11. Yes.

Just.

Just chuck them in like that. Okay. And this is just your. This is a random snap point snapshot in your day. So it will fluctuate a little bit during the day depending on how potentially stressed we are or depending on what's going on with our nervous system. It is an indicator of our CO2 sensitivity or CO2 tolerance as well as.

Our.

Heart rate variability or autonomic nervous system function. So we want that just to give you a bit of a highlight. We don't want to sort of worry anybody. When I started, mine was nine. So like gives you a point. Brendan there.

At 50.

I trained a free diver. So I teach the certification. We had a free diver whose was 45. 50 is very, very, very high. People, people's whose was around 10 or so will be like 50. How many hours? 50 seconds, even getting urge to breathe. But it's showing there is a big differential, a big difference between various different people's carbon dioxide sensitivity and tolerance. And roughly speaking of this conversation around functional breathing. Functional breathing in studies that have been done by. I think it's Cox Or Kiesel, maybe It was a 2017 paper where they specifically looked at all the different ways of measuring people's breathing. And then what was the most correlated to whether someone's breathing well or not? And it was this basically relaxed breath hold and 25 seconds and above, or 25 seconds, they seem to deem to be the tipping point. It's not like 24, we're awful. And 25 were perfect. It's clearly a sliding scale. And all I say for anyone is don't worry necessarily where you are, but if you work on some of the breathing practices, if you're currently 10, when you get to 20, even though 20 is still less than 25, you're going to feel a remarkably different in terms of how you breathe, in terms of how you think, in terms of how you feel, in terms of your physical exercise performance, as well as the way you manage stress. Yes, Jonny, after a normal exhale. So normal breath in, normal breath out. It's after the normal exhale, how long does it take until your brain wants you to breathe again?

Yeah.

A simple one that you've probably done before or be aware of is a respiratory rate. Now, the interesting thing about counting your breathing to get respiratory rate is that study done, I think it was just last year, showed that when you ask someone to count their breathing to get a respiratory rate, they slow it down on average by 20%. So your job during this is try not to win at breathing by trying to breathe in a particular way, you get a true reflection of your own breathing when you just try to let it be. Just let it be automatic. So I want you to just sit nice and relaxed however you are. I don't need to try and do anything, but you are going to put one hand on your upper chest and one hand below where your two low ribs meet, just below your sternum. So not on your belly, because your lungs aren't in your belly. Your diaphragm isn't in your belly either. Okay. And I want you to just simply observe your breathing. Feel it with your hands. Notice it as it's coming in and out through your nose or your mouth. Hopefully your mouth is closing through the nose. And try to get out the way of it. Be the observer of your breathing rather than the breather. Try not to control it. It's quite hard to control it. So it's hard to not control it, but try for the next 30 seconds, too. And then I'm going to start my stopwatch and you're going to count in and out. Is one breath cycle. You're going to count your breath cycles. Everyone happy with that?

Yes.

They've got.

Okay, so in, three, two, one, go. So in and out is one. Just let it happen. Don't worry whether how fast it is or anything. Just let it happen. And also the hands are there just to let you feel where the breath is coming from, where the movements are coming from. Get a gauge of the size of those movements and also the direction of those movements. And we'll compare it after we've done a couple of little exercises. And stop.

Okay.

We do 30 seconds rather than a minute, just so that, that 20% you're slowing down by. We're just minimizing that. So take that number, multiply it by two to get your respiratory rate for a minute. If you're not good at maths, get a calculator out or just double it so that number doubled or multiplied by two. And again we then get this big range of sort of 8 to 14 or Johnny down at 3. So a big range. Yeah, but it's within some. There isn't anyone here up at 30. But if I work with any particularly stressed sort of corporate clients, we get people 25 and above, which is fast. And when you're stressed, the, you know, I said that we had that equation of like your tidal volume, the size of your breaths and your, and your respiratory rate. When we're stressed, it's our respiratory rate that cranks up. We're breathing fast. That breathing fast makes it shallow, makes it inefficient. You stay in that habitual cycle. It's linked into that upregulated nervous system. And it's, and it's. If you're not, if you're not aware and you're not given any simple tools to actually adjust that, we'll stay in that negative snowball. So, yeah, it's, it's a nice one to just, you know, someone said they. You're saying that the aura ring tracks it overnight and it'd be interesting to see when it's, when you look at it overnight, then you see truly what is it like when you're not thinking about it? Because it is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cool.

Okay. Should we do a couple, do a couple of bits to, to try and make some change for people?

Yeah, let's, let's, let's do that. And potentially also for people who are, like, keen to improve this. What's like a realistic improvement or change that people could expect with doing some, like, intentional practices to say, the Bolt score and the Respiratory score.

Yeah, sorry. So I've just.

I'm just.

I was. I was reading the. I can't do two things once I was reading the comments of. Couple of good questions actually in the comments. Can I just. Can I address one of them first please? So we do want to be breathing regularly. Like our breathing wants to be symmetrical and regular. Now Will has asked. It was interesting that his CO2 tolerance was low so it was below 25 seconds but his breathing rate was slow. So there be.

You can't.

You can count your respiratory rate will vary quite a lot through the day. It's much more unreliable in terms of like what's your actual baseline particularly when we're asking you to count it for yourself. And the respiratory rate remember is only one half of that equation of your minute ventilation which is dictated your minute ventilation will be correlated well with our CO2 tolerance. Your respiratory rate is only 1/2 of the equation. It's likely potentially be interested to see for yourself if you're. When you were doing that respiratory rate. If your respiratory rate was relatively low when you were feeling your breath there's the potential for the size of those breaths to be bigger than they potentially need to be at rest. And hence why you're still quite sensitive to carbon dioxide because it's very. You can't really cheat the bolt score. You can try and hold your breath and use some. Use some willpower. When you let go you feel out of breath. You can't really cheat that. I'm not saying that people are cheating the respiratory rate but it's just one that you're is much more normal for us to have some level of con control over. Does that make sense? And it is only one half of the of that equation. So the size of your breath will be interesting if we do a couple of things to see whether we can actually in terms of efficiency as well as breathing slow being able to efficient would be breathing less in terms of the size of them. The same for Nick is commented there. So it'd be interesting to see. That's why said put your hands there to feel the direction of it and the size of it. Can we improve the quality of those movements and the size of it? So almost less is more.

Yeah. And perhaps one other thing worth touching on is for people listening who mostly aren't professional athletes as far as I'm aware of what are some benefits to having a generally higher bolt score kind of in day to day life. What are some reasons that it's worth like putting time into this.

Yeah.

Yeah, great question. Everything in that. And I'm not being a tour, I'm not being a twer in that. Like there is nothing you do in your life apart from breath holding, there's nothing you do in your life where you're not breathing. Your body is always breathing. So if you're breathing, if your bolt score is high, you're going to be breathing better. So if you're breathing better at night, do you think you're going to have better sleep? Yeah.

If your.

Your CO2 tolerance is related to your stress resilience, it's related to your vagal tone, it's the conscious centers of the brain are more agitated or another way to describe be, we're more prone to anxiety and feelings of anxiety. On a physiological level, when our brain is more sensitive to carbon dioxide, there is that direct link and they've done studies on this where if you make someone breathe, you know, if you have a mask that you can manipulate the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. There's normal air. Normal air? Yeah, normal air. Air has about 0.04% carbon dioxide when we breathe in. When you breathe out, you breathe out about 4% carbon dioxide. If you manipulate the air that someone's breathing in a, in a test and you crank that CO2 up high enough, it's brutal. Anybody? Well, have you had it? If you've done it? I've never done it, but anybody in the world. You could create a point where everybody would have a panic attack even if they've got no issues with anxiety or panic attacks at all. Because there is a, an alarm bell, there's a, there's an override for the, in the brain to go. This is near death. You are going to like. Having low levels of carbon dioxide in the body is terrible for us, but having too much could also kill us because the effect it'll have on the PH of the blood. So it's like everything in balance with carbon dioxide. Generally speaking, in day to day life when no one is manipulating the air that you're breathing, you will always benefit from being less sensitive to it. Your breathing will improve and that will improve your cognitive function, improve your sleep, it will improve your stress resilience. There isn't really. And blood pressure, gosh, it's like just think of anything that your body does, it will do better. There's direct links between our breathing and those things. And particularly with like CO2 sensitivities directly linked with blood pressure. There's another example of like something within the body that happens automatically we can influence with breathing.

Yeah, that's awesome. And I'll just speak to that as well briefly myself. I did three weeks of freedive training and there was a very noticeable difference in just how I felt afterwards after doing that training. And like the. The static breath hold went from like a minute to like six and a half minutes in that period of time. And it felt like the kind of. There was like a period, I guess, like a few weeks afterwards where I just felt incredibly calm and centered. It felt like that stayed with me for really the rest of my life. And largely what we were working on was essentially CO2 tolerance and some functional.

Breathing as well, because you'll have changed, you'll have positively influenced those chemoreceptors in the brainstem. And so, so long as you then don't go and do loads of rubbish breathing afterwards, you've like, you've. You've created a new norm. You've created it. You've moved the bar for those receptors and then. Yes, you will make. You can maintain that for sure.

Yeah, yeah.

Awesome.

Cool. All right, so I'll do. Let's do two things to help with the nose. And before we do anything, I want you to breathe in through the nose and just see how it feels to breathe in through the nose. Just take a normal breath in through the nose. Just notice how it feels like. Clear. Block, block. One nostril to test one and then test the other. Maybe some differences, maybe not, but just for you, what does it feel like? Okay, and then we're gonna. And then.

So this. There's two here. One is.

One is directly from the oxygen vantage and more scientific, and I can tell you is the. The reasons behind it scientifically. The other is slightly less scientific in that. Don't know. I'll explain. I'll explain about a bit. Not entirely sure exactly what's going on, but we create a sensation of openness through the nose with our tongue. So the first one. Have you done. Have you come across like utilizing nitric oxide as a gas? The bacteria in our nose creates. It talks. Patrick talks a lot about it. In the oxygen vantage, it's a vasodilator and we can hold our breath. And if we nod our head whilst we hold our breath, we'll do it all together in a second. You can trap that nitric oxide in the nose and as it's accumulating, you then let go and you breathe that. And the vasodilating effect of it can help open up and clear. Make the nose feel a little bit Less congested. Okay, so we'll have a little go together. You can nod your head forward or side to side. I'll do it with you so you don't feel like the only twats nodding their head whilst holding their breath. So come with me. We'll go take a normal breath in, normal breath out, pinch the nose and then noise heads. Maybe like 10 times.

3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

Let go and breathe in. Important that the first thing you do is breathe in. You may notice a difference. If ten felt comfortable, you might notice it just in that first one. If 10 felt comfortable, we'll try 15 or 20. If 10 was enough for you in terms of how long you were holding your breath for, you can just stick with that. Okay, so normal breath in, smile, relax. Normal breath out.

Pinch your nose. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.

Let go and breathe that nitric oxide in. And what you might notice is as you breathe in, just take a breath in now like we did before, the air might feel a bit cooler, it might feel a bit freer. You might notice it feels slightly less blocked. If you block one nostril, check in how it felt compared to before, you might notice a little bit of difference. Yeah, Use the chat box or thumbs up if you give us some feedback. If you're noticing it might be that you need to do like a couple more or for slightly longer. If you do it for a little bit longer, you're going to feel a little bit difference. Okay. So that's utilizing nitric oxide. The other one is a little bit more structural. So our tongue plays a huge role in the. The airway and also our nose is just like the tip of the iceberg. I haven't got a cotton bud with it, but I've got this demonstration where basically it's freaking. Have you seen, have you seen it?

Yeah, it's great.

I haven't.

I'm looking around of something I can shove in my nose anyway. It got me banned on TikTok for a few weeks. But basically there's a demonstration I do where you take a cotton Buddha Q tip and you basically put it back in your nose and it goes about that far back.

Okay.

Because the nose is just the tip of the iceberg and your airway is everything back there. And if you put the tongue at the roof of your mouth now everything you can feel at the roof of your mouth, like your nose and the. The hidden part of your nose is everything above that. Okay. And depending on how well you sucked on your mum's boob when you were breastfeeding, amongst lots of other things will affect the, like how wide your jaw, face, palate and things are. Yeah, that's not the only thing that will affect the tongue. But the position of our tongue is important for keeping the airway clear, also stabilizing the neck. And we're going to feel, particularly feel the link between your neck muscles, your jaw muscles and your tongue with this exercise. Recently it's been called a tongue push up. I did this with a group a few weeks ago and someone said, oh, I love those tongue push ups we did. And I thought that's a good name for it. So effectively what you're going to do is you're going to put the tip of your tongue to where you would make the N noise. So I went N N N n the tip of the tongue to that portion of your mouth. So it's quite towards the front, but it's not touching the front teeth but the top of the mouth. And then I want you to put it there. I want you to do a swallow.

Okay.

And then I want you to try and push or get all of your tongue up flat to the top of the mouth.

Okay.

When you feel like you've got your tongue to the top of the mouth and I want you to try and push it with effort, force, push it up. I want you to be aware of the back of your tongue. I want you to try and feel that you push the back of your tongue right up, right at the back, as hard as you can. And the sensation you're going to try to notice or get is that almost your tongue pushing up in your palate is almost widening your teeth apart.

Okay. So you push.

You might need to swallow, that's fine. But when you're pushing, be aware of when you get the back of the tongue up and you're going hard. Muscles around your jaw and muscles underneath your chin, have a relax, just relax a second. You want to be feeling around the jaw and around underneath the chin if you're getting it right.

As soon as I push up, these.

Muscles are engaging and we're engaging around here. Okay, try one more time. So tip of the tongue to nuh nuh na. Put the tongue up to the top of the mouth. But then actively try and push all of the tongue and particularly the back of the tongue up as hard as you can and feel engagement here, engagement here. And almost a sensation of like your palate or your teeth widening a little bit. Push for like 10 seconds. You might even feel like your head is opening a little bit.

Okay.

And then relax and then just take a breath in through the nose with your tongue to the roof of the mouth. And it might feel like the air comes through easier. It might feel like that airway is a little bit more open. You can test one nostril and test the other.

Cool.

Oh, someone said notice it gets to your stomach. Noisy. We'll work a little bit lower down the stream. Now, in terms of the rib cage and the diaphragm and the notion of understanding. There's loads I could say and do on this, but your lungs are in your rib cage, not our belly. When your diaphragm moves down, it's going to push on the internal organs below and you can feel some movement going around your stomach. But your stomach moving up and down or in and out is very one dimensional for our breathing. It's better than your upper chest moving, but it's not facilitating the right articulation of the ribcage to allow the diaphragm, which attaches onto your spine and all around those lower ribs to actually move and function. So there's a couple of things that we can do to help with that. The sensations of what we're trying to feel and what that's supposed to be like. Okay, so I'm going to. I'm going to come.

I'm gonna have to come stand. Can you still hear me? You still hear me?

Okay, just got to.

I'm gonna.

We're gonna stand up.

Okay. So get ahs people gonna stand up.

And we're gonna get acquainted with.

Our rib cage. So your belly, Find your belly where.

Your belly button is.

Find your belly button. Okay. And then. Which is right down here. Then find your rib cage and I want you to use your. Can you see I've got my finger. If you have a stomach, get your fingers in and have a feel of that rib cage and feel how low potentially goes all the way down the bottom here. Okay. And notice, track it all around the back. It's like, holy crap. Yeah, it attaches into my spine as well. It comes all the wrap all the way around us. Breathing is not just front side breathing into the sides out horizontally, but breathing in to the back as well. So one thing to help us with this is even just that, prod your fingers so your diaphragm attaches underneath those front ribs on the front. Attaching your spine at the back. You can't feel it, but just having a little bit of a press And a palpation, just for a little bit up and down right in the middle. Your abdominal muscles will be in the way, so don't worry about getting right in the middle, but come from there down into the sides. And then just relax. Shake the hands out where you were rubbing. I bet you can feel just like if I rubbed my head, I can feel where I was rubbing my head. You can feel where you were prodding in there. Now, when you take a breath in through the nose with the tongue to the roof of the mouth, just feel that area expand out. You're more aware of that expansion out movement of the diaphragm from some sensory input from your fingers palpating it. Okay. Also, with your hands on your actual ribs, just rub the outside of the ribs, particularly down that bottom angle or bottom corner of those ribs. Run them all the way on the sides and round the back. Rub the back as well. Okay. And then make some rings around. Make nice rings. Okay. Then relax.

Okay.

Now, without touching, I bet you can feel the skin. It's like where you've been rubbing. You can feel. It's almost like fizzy. You can feel that skin right now. Again, stand long tongue to the roof of the mouth. Take a breath in through the nose, but feel that whole area expanding three dimensionally rather than just your stomach moving forward and back. Okay, I've got two more simple little things for you. If you're not sure whether you're feeling the diaphragm itself, it's a muscle. The best way to feel a muscle contract is doing an isometric contraction. If I want to feel my bicep contract, squeeze it there. That's an isometric contraction at end range. We can do the same with the diaphragm because it contracts on an inhalation. If I hold my breath and try to breathe in so I don't let any air come in, it can't move, but I'll feel it contract. Okay. The diaphragm is situated where those two low ribs meet. So if you find those two low ribs where we were prodding around, just put your hand there just to sort of guide the sensations of your breath. You're going to take a normal breath in, a normal breath out. Then you're going to pinch your nose and try to breathe in and feel like, oh, it can't go down and flatten out. It's contracting. It feels like it's sort of wanting to burst out of your rib cage. Try that a couple of times. The normal thing, normal without pinch noise. You're blocking the air coming in, but trying to breathe in, you feel some sort of weird internal like going on. That's your diaphragm. Okay. So now imagine you're doing that blocked inhalation, but just let the air come in and use your awareness of that three dimensional expansion. So by thinking about that sensation I just created with the blocked inhalation, but let the air come in and that diaphragm is going to move down and flatten out. We're trying to get some three dimensional expansion all around this lower portion. Okay. The final part to link in that diaphragm and ribcage move is to take our hands if you can. Depending on the size of your hands and the size of your ribcage, if you can, you're going to try and put your hands like clasp like this. So the thumb is at the back and your fingers are somewhat round the sides. If you can't get round, just lay them on the sides like this. But if you can get the thumb at the back, it allows you to get some feedback from that back portion of the breath. Okay. You're then going to push in, not try and crush yourself. Just push in like gently, 3% effort, but you push in gently. Then with my breath, I'm going to keep that tongue resting to the roof of the mouth. Teeth not touching. Lips softly together. I breathe in through the nose. I feel that diaphragm contraction. The diaphragm moves down and flattens out. And as it flattens out, my ribcage is wanting to expand to help with that space and flattening of the diaphragm. So it looks something like this. I gently push my hands in a little bit. I keep my shoulders relaxed, but gently push the hands in.

Breathe in.

And my hands get pushed apart laterally horizontally. When I breathe out, they come back together. Breathe in. Make sure the shoulders are relaxed. Breathe out. If your shoulders feel like they're tensing, give them a little wiggle. And also what could be helpful, if you feel the shoulders hiking up gently think about pushing your elbows down towards the floor. That helps to depress your shoulder blades. Engages your mid lower trap. You can combine a little bit of your biochemistry with this in terms of trying to breathe as quietly as possible. But feel those ribs expanding and then a little check in on. Are the ribs moving out to the sides? Yes. If you have got your thumb at the back, are your hands expanding this way as well? So there should be an opening front to back as well as side to side. So can I feel my thumb at the back opening the hands up as well as the hands getting pushed apart on that. Inhale and if you can relax, if you practice those things, you're not, as I said before, you're not teaching your body to breathe in a way that it's not acquainted with. It might feel. Our ribcage can be a bit restricted. There's some mobilization exercises and things that we can do. But generally speaking for people having an understanding of how and where it's supposed to expand and how it's supposed to feel, sensory input with your hands is really, really good.

We have poor proprioception or awareness of our trunk.

Everybody does. And so it's very useful to use some sensory input. It's not like you need to do that every day for the rest of.

Your life because you do it for.

A few days, a few weeks, a few times here and there throughout a day and gradually you really change your awareness of your breathing and you reset that new normal. It's not something that you're going to be rubbing and feeling yourself weirdly for.

The rest of your life. So don't worry about that.

It's just something that's a great tool.

To start with just to get you.

Feeling and understanding how those mechanics are supposed to, supposed to work.

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much. That was a really superb demonstration. If, if say people have like, say they have like five, 10 minutes a day, what would you recommend doing in terms of like structuring a practice to kind of keep this, keep this momentum?

I think the, the really key thing is and, and particularly with the, with.

Everything we teach in the Oxford Vantage.

One thing, there's a number of things I love about it, but one thing I love about it is that it's.

All designed to be able to integrate.

Into your daily life. So it's less about having to sit.

Down on your granted.

Do it like put some candles on and some music and sit down in.

Your yoga mat and do it. But equally just whilst the kettle's boiling, just have a little bit of a check in on yourself or just take a minute here, a minute there through the day.

Those little bits of check ins. What's more important than you could do a 30 minute practice that's brilliant and then you've still got 23 and a half hours within the day. If you haven't got that in check, you're pissing against the wind with the 30 minutes of great work that you're doing.

So I know that's a little bit.

Wishy Washy to potentially hear.

But I really would encourage people to.

Go, look, what did we just do there?

Did it feel any.

Use the. The chat box?

Did it feel a little bit better, a little bit easier, a bit better awareness?

And you go, well, did you do anything that was hard? No, you could do it bloody standing.

On your head, like.

So just integrate it into something that you're already doing is my best advice for people. And you'll soon create a new sort of norm. And just by watching this one session.

You'Ll have a different awareness of your.

Breathing tomorrow for sure.

Yep.

Yeah.

Awesome, Pablo, you've got your hand raised.

Jaco. Thank you. Awareness key, as always. And the question I have is, and it's building on the suggestion that you just made to the group, is it a matter of just awareness alone is curative? And the more I become aware of my breath, the more it'll start becoming more optimal. So there's really no extra work that needs to happen. Like, block this time here, block this time there, but just like, take my temperature on my breath.

Yeah, it's a great question. I had this. This. I was talking. So I know if it was on my podcast, I was talking to someone today, literally either yesterday or day before, where I was going, like, I do wonder again, a little bit of a random hypothesis of, like, I think actually it was when I was meditating one morning, I was like, there is definitely.

A certain bit of, you know, I.

Said that if you ask someone to count their breathing and nothing else, they slow it down by 20% on average. So I had this very unscientific feeling, but it's more of a. You lot probably more open to this anyway, let's say like some internal wisdom saying, you know what, how much of. How much of it is my body is going. You're just so distracted, Jacko. Just give me some attention and I.

Will do things better.

And I do think that the, you know, the study that shows we slow our breathing down by 20% by counting it does actually play into that and show that. And I do think that's the case now. Is it. Is that the case for. Actually. So that would help you to slow your breathing down potentially, which will be good for your nervous system and calming for the body. But will you actually be changing your.

Chemosensitivity, which is your key player in restoring breathing?

And the answer to that, sadly, would actually be no.

And I can sort of back this.

Up in terms of you have those chemoreceptors in your brain stem. There are Receptors in the medulla and in the pons. There's probably others as well.

But those that we know of so far, the medulla very much is determinant.

Of the speed of breath. The respiratory rate and the pons is more to do with the size of the breath. Now if you slow your breathing down, your brain goes, no worries Jaco, I'm just going to take bigger breath. You normally do 12, you're going to make us do six. Well, I'll just do six, twice as big and then nothing's changed. You've not actually manipulated the minute ventilation. Does that make sense? So unless you're aware of how to actually create a sense of air hunger, which is a sign that CO2's built up to you, just all we, the simplicity is we just have to expose the body to some slightly increased levels of carbon dioxide and those chemoreceptors have to adapt to it. It's as simple as that. With the oxygen vantage, we have roughly two types of exercises. One that's like breathing light, so trying to breathe slow and low and small amounts. And then the other is breath holding, like purposely holding the breath to stop carbon dioxide leaving. So the body has to deal with more of it. And the sports performance stuff is geared more towards that side of things. But equally some, some simple breath holding can be, and pausing can be very good for everyone in terms of working on their CO2 tolerance. So I think it's great question and it's, there's, there's an answer that like.

I almost wish it was the.

Yep, you just got to give it some attention and that sorts it out.

And it will definitely help.

But I think when we look at the science of breathing and how it affects our physiology, those chemoreceptors are key and they will keep you in your current state. By you change one thing, it will change the other, which I think people make sense, doesn't it?

Beautiful.

The question I have is where can I find these exercises that you just talked about?

So they're all available for my 10,000 pound coaching program. I've got a free foundations of breathing course and I've got a course that's geared more towards specifically stress and anxiety on my, on my website, praybreathfit.com which also comes available as an app.

They're both free.

There's some of the courses if you want to do like for movement and sports forms and that sort of. But the, the basics of breathing are for me will always be free and I feel should be available for free. So yeah, Foundations. Put the links in there.

Thank you.

Cool.

Yeah, that's awesome. One brief thing I wanted to add to that was you can practice breath holding while you're walking. You can kind of do a bolt score where you do the same kind of relaxed, inhale, exhale, and then see how many paces you can walk. And that's a really fun one you can do while you're walking town, while you're going around the house. And you can play this game with yourself where, you know, maybe in the beginning it's like 15 paces and then 20 and then 25 and then 30, and you can like track your progress. And it's actually very satisfying for those of you who like to track shit like I do. So I'm conscious of time. Do you have a hard stop, Jacko, or do you have time for one more question?

Yeah, we can take another. We can take another. I'll get killed by my wife. But that's.

Can I answer one?

Just quickly.

One from Melissa asked. Is, is breathing diaphragmatic always ideal? And I think that there's. Yes.

Is it useful to use your eyes for looking?

It's like the diaphragm is the birthram.

Major role is breathing.

Its other is stabilizing the lumbar, pelvic or lumbar spine, pelvis. So if you're not diaphragmatically breathing well, it's likely that you're not stabilizing the spine well. Yeah, yeah. It's one of those things that. Yeah, I guess I can't really. I feel like I want to say something slightly more profound, but.

No, it's just.

It's just.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Awesome. Thank you. Okay, Louis.

Yeah.

Thanks, Jack, for this.

It was.

It was really cool and really intuitive and I like the practical examples that you gave. Yeah, just quick question. I use this exercise or protocol where basically you're enabling for 4 or 5 and holding for 25 and then exhaling for 12 or something like that.

And.

The app says that it's a good practice. I'm kind of wondering If I have 20 to 30 minutes a day.

To.

Dedicate, you know, to.

To this, you know, would you recommend light breathing breath? I mean, I know, I know you just kind of like answered that in a way, but that's a good question. Or is it all the same?

No, no, it's definitely. It's definitely not all the same. Take something that people may.

May have. Have come across. It's probably the most well known breathing exercise box. Breathing 4 by 4 by 4 by 4.

Box.

That's a 16 second breath.

If it was 15 seconds it'd be.

Easier for the math because there'd be exactly four breaths per minute. Yeah, four breaths per minute is manipulating one portion of that equation that is about breathing the speed of your breath. I could do a 4 second inhale.

Like this.

Or I could do a.

4 second inhale like this.

And no, the screen didn't freeze. I just took a very small breath in.

I'm overdoing it.

So it's really obvious. But can you. We can start to see that. Hold on a minute. One of those is a massive breath. Which one do you think is going.

To accumulate more air hunger?

The small breath.

Which one is going to be more challenging?

The small breath. Are they both four by four box breathing?

Yeah.

Are they both completely different? Yeah.

Even though it's the same exercise. And this is the, this is the problem with the simplicity of breathing is that people actually don't understand the science behind it. And that's one of the big things that we're trying to do with the oxygen vantage to help people understand because it's not super duper complicated over the top of it. But we do need to understand how our breathing in terms of speed and size and then also mechanics wrapping that will affect what's going on.

So in terms of answering then it's.

Slightly more directly your. I just think the box breathing is.

A good example to highlight that. So not all things are the same.

Not that one exercise is the same. So if someone says, oh, box breathing is good for so and so it's like, okay, well how are you doing the box breathing? Because is it in through the nose or mouth or like even those things are going to play a role.

Whether you breathe in for your nose or your mouth influences the brain differently.

Brain waves are different, the brain functions differently. So we can't, it's. And this is, you know, you're hearing me in my rant mode now because you hear people saying things that sound.

Very true because they say them with.

An authority and they might not be actually that true or embedded in science.

You know, so answering your question more.

Directly, what would be better? So learning things in isolation initially is good. So if you try to do the mechanics of what we just did now whilst running, it would be a little.

Bit more difficult because there's a lot.

More other stuff going on, sensory input and whatnot. And it's more challenging because you're actually having to stabilize the spine, Da da. And all these things. So learning in isolation away from other stuff, eyes closed as an example, takes away some sensory point. Just lying down on the floor completely supported is going to be the easiest way to tune into your breathing and work on some of the mechanics. But it doesn't set you up for breathing well in your everyday life when you're going to be more upright, so then being able to do it while seated, but not supported by a back rest, to standing, to walking. And actually, if you want to improve your breathing to improve your health, you'd be much better doing it outside in.

The real world, breathing nice fresh air. Go real hippie with me.

If you want to take your shoes and socks off and put your bare feet on the grass and get some grounding at the same time and do some light aerobic exercise in I'm walking. And as Johnny said, like we can do some simple breath holds whilst walking or I can do some breathing, light practice whilst walking, I can do some mechanics with my hands on there whilst. And actually that is a much more holistic approach to being better at breathing, being better at health. That's actually more likely to transcend automatically into your everyday life. Because if you practice for 30 minutes lying on your yoga mat, on your, on the floor with your eyes closed and get good at breathing like that, I can near enough guarantee that when you're stressed out in your car getting road rage, you ain't going to breathe well because you haven't actually given yourself any chance to make that change. So when I'm working with professional, My sport is rugby, we learn in isolation.

But then we've got to get them.

As close to being able to get to get good breathing whilst they're being challenged.

And those guys are getting smashed by.

Each other, turned upside down, blowing out their ass, all sorts of stuff going on, wanting to kill each other. And they still got. We want them to be able to breathe well. So, yeah, we're with the Oxford Vantage, we try to get people learn in isolation, but then start getting it into more practical everyday life situations. And the best thing with that is literally walking, you're upright, your eyes are open, you move it and understand that as you slow your breathing down, your brain wants to make your breasts bigger, then everything's the same, whereas you want to actually influence it. So as you slow your breathing down, you resist the natural urge to take a bigger breath. Don't need to make it stressful, don't just make it like real height, but creating that sense of air hunger is how you make real change to the biochemistry and chemo sensitivity.

Thank you very much.

Pretty comprehensive answer. Sorry, it's been too, too long. Kind worth saying, Jackie, you went on a bit too long.

All right. Well, man, this was really, really awesome. Thank you so much. I. Yeah. Just really appreciate your teaching style. I feel like we covered so much ground today. What would be some links, resources, places that you would direct people, People like, okay, this is an amazing world. I want to learn more. Like, what would be the kind of first few places you'd send people you've mentioned Probreathwork.com you've got amazing YouTube channel.

Yeah, Probrethwork.com is my website. My Instagram. I put a lot of stuff on my Instagram. That's Jacko David Jackson, the book by Patrick McKeown, who is the sort of.

Master who taught me.

His book is called Oxygen Advantage. He's also got a more recent book out called the Breathing Cure. Breathing Cure. This is a beast. If you want a lot of. And it's like small. Small.

You can't see.

Yeah, it's a lot.

He calls it the Breathing Bible, but that's literally everything.

Yeah. James Nestor's book, Breath is a really nice read. He's probably. Some of you have come across him as a journalist. So it's written. It's written more like a nice story. And he's telling of his own experiences and stuff and done some experiments on himself and his buddy, which is really, really insightful. Yeah. And if you want to dig right into the weeds as a master instructor, I teach certification as well, so I teach people to become instructors. Yeah. So you can. The details are all on the website for that and whatnot.

Amazing. Well, any. Any final comments, any closing, closing thoughts?

This is where I get a chance to say something really profound, isn't it?

Yeah.

I was watching.

There was a. There was a little slug and not a slug, a snail, because I had a shell on it. It's a snail is with a slug with a shell on his back. So he's got his house on his back.

And.

This isn't like some sort. This is as in it was there in front of me when I was doing a little morning meditation yesterday.

And it's funny, like, an hour and a half later, I came back in.

My wife was outside and she was.

Sort of stressing a little bit about something.

And I was like, catherine, look at it, look at, look at, look at my little friend here. I says, an hour and a half ago he was there and now he's here.

It literally moved like a meter and.

A half Was that good? I don't know whether it's good speed for a snow weather, but, like, I'm.

Fairly sure he was happy it was doing his thing.

And it was like just this visual metaphor of, like, speed is not the marker of sort of success or achievement in life because as I saw with my dad last year. And I'll try this one, like, losing a little bit, but, like, we're going to die anyway. And that's not in like a. That's not, oh, God, let's just kill ourselves. But just in the. Like, that's a reality that we need.

To wake up to and be aware of.

How you breathe now, until you take your final one is going to influence how you behave, how you think, how you act, how you feel. And, you know, don't be in a rush to get it all fixed because it can't be perfect or, you know, whatever, but just be where you're at now and take it slow and steady like the snail and make some process and enjoy it. If it's a little bit challenging along the way, it's always more fruitful. You learn more. I literally, like, really quickly, like, I'll teach someone, do sessions with someone now, and I'm like, they're going off three weeks, three weeks later. So. Well, you know, the box score still not 25. It's like 23. And it started at 8. And I'm like, it took me about two and a half years to figure this stuff out. Like, I was like, you know, it takes. But because it. Because I had a lot of trouble doing it and getting it right. I've learned so much more along the way, and it was frustrating at the time, but it makes me better at coaching it now. And so I'm very grateful that it. That it has been difficult. And yeah, don't. Don't fall into the trap of sort of wishing everything was easy because it's a. It's an illusion, and that's of everything in life. It's an illusion of. It's not. It's not actually what we want. That's the weird thing of life, isn't it? Like, what we think we want isn't actually like that we do. So, yeah, there's some random thoughts in my head.

Well, you nailed it with a profound closing thought. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jacko. All right, well, thank you also to everyone. Everyone who's still on. Let us close by unmuting and saying thank you so much, Jacko, you fucking legend.

Thank you so much, Jacob.

Thanks for your amazing group, everyone. Thanks, everyone.

Thanks, Johnny. Guys.

Thanks.

Bye.

Bye.

Have a great week. Ciao. Ciao.