Welcome to the School of Breath Science

Hey everyone, and welcome to this bit of a introductory episode to what the School of Breath Science is going to be about and to give you an introduction to myself of how I got into this world of breath science. So the Breath Science podcast is really going to be a dedication information towards those individuals who like to use science to understand how we can apply things like breath work, cold heat exposure, even sleep sciences to help individuals with their health and well being. In the school of Breath Science, which is at the very, very beginning. You are joining me here on what I believe is going to be the journey going forward for myself to transition to build an online school where people can understand and apply a range of different tools to help things such as stress, anxiety, burnout. These are prominent figures in modern day society. In fact, we could say that stress at the root of all disease. And that's what I saw throughout my career. I spent 10 years as a clinical, respiratory and sleep scientist and for the majority of the individuals that were coming from my clinic, in fact 1 in 50% had normal results yet were leaving, going home, noticing that they weren't feeling good and feeling healthy. So that sparked my mind, that sparked. What is it that's causing these problems? Well, it happened to be stress and anxiety and I came up with the concept of performance through health, the idea of putting your health first, to be able to achieve your goals in life. And so performance isn't necessarily about being an elite athlete, it's just been about being able to move towards the vision that you seek in life so that you can have some purpose and live in that purpose with energy, with positivity and feeling grounded. But where did that stem from? Well, we need to go back all the way into 2019. In 2019, I can remember being in a physiology lab at university and I studied at Nottingham Trent University and Mike Johnson and Graham Sharp, who were professors in physiology and they specialized in respiratory physiology. So I remember being in a lab and we were testing our strength of our diaphragm. How much pressure can we generate from inspiring against a device that is plugged off? So imagine sucking against your finger and trying to pull air in. Quite a strenuous activity. But it's measuring that pressure generated, the force generated and it's measured in centimeters of water. And as it was being passed round, it got to my friend Alex and Alex pulled it in. Alex was one of my housemates and he was a rugby player and he was quite a fit person. And when he pulled his maximum strength on this device, you have to blow all the way out, you pull in at 50%, 60%, 80%, then you go 100% and you get five chances. We only had two chances because we were in a lab in a. And he pulled in and he hit 120cm of water. And the lecturer said to him, you know, that's pretty good. And he did it again and he got 130, 140. And the majority of the people were getting 90 centimeters of water. A couple of people got just short of 100 and the lecturer himself managed to get 150. So what is that measuring before we go into? We're measuring by the distance that someone would be able to pull water through a tube if they were to suck as hard as they can. So 150cm of water, you'd be able to pour water 150cm. When it came to me doing the warm up, and as I did a warm up hundred on the warm up, then I went again and we did 60%, 70%. We go 120, 130. And then I did a maximum and I hit over 200 straight away, I think it was like 2:07. And the lecturer looked at me and Mike Johnson looked at me and said, can you go again? Pulled again and I got like 217, 218. He was a bit fascinated, so he goes, can you do that again? So the third time I hit 230. So this was almost double the majority of people in the class and it was the highest he'd ever seen. So he asked me, invited me into the labs over the next few weeks and we had to, I had to do a all different tests on my breathing. Let's do what's called essentially like a BLEEP test for your respiratory function. So there were weights in like this vacuum and I had to breathe against the weight to lift the weight up. And when the weight went down again, they stacked another one back on top of it. And I would have like 30 seconds rest and they would keep stacking weights on until the person was no longer able to pull that in. And that was kind of the measure of a bit of endurance and strength at the same time. And as we went through, they stacked more and more weights on until they had no more weights left and I was still able to move this machine. So that got me curious, like, why was it that my diaphragm and my inspiratory muscles were so much stronger than other people? Now I've put it down to a few different reasons and we'll leave them for another conversation. Just to Speed up this episode. If you want to find out, drop me an email or drop me a comment below and I can let you know. Anyway, that led me to get into research. I became involved in the research of my lecturer and also involved in the research of a PhD student who was there at the time called Dee Mills, who now works at University of South Queensland here in Australia, still focusing on respiratory physiology. I believe that stemmed into me doing my master's degree in a research master's in the area and particularly focusing on that research. And that was a really challenging part of my life. Reflecting back on that now that was a period where I had mental health issues but probably didn't realize. Well, I did realize because I was also on antidepressants. So I did realize that was I had mental health issues, but I didn't realize the extent at which that was affecting me because I was very driven but also at the same time mind was scattered all over the place and issues with my partner, issues with my weight and my health and all different things were going on. Anyway, I was really interested and I worked and did a research Masters. I worked with Dean Mills pretty much for the year straight, waking up at 7am in the labs till 7pm, working on some fantastic different skills of how to measure breathing during exercise and looking at spiritual muscle training, all these different things. Then I wanted to get a job as a sports scientist. And if anyone has studied sports science, well, a lot of people have. It's not as simple as getting into a sports team or professional team as you think it will be. Anyway, that led to me getting an opportunity about six months later and then the opportunities was to be interviewed for what was called the Clinical Scientist Training Program by the National School of Healthcare Sciences over in the uk. And they had multiple different roles in terms of biochemists. They had people who in X ray radiology, they had cardiology and they had respiratory and sleep. And I thought, well, if I'm struggling to get a role in performance, perhaps a clinical role would be beneficial for me. And this was a really quite competitive application process. But anyway, I eventually got a place in Nottingham and trained at the Queen's Medical center as a respiratory and sleep scientist. And it was one of the most amazing times that I've had in terms of the opportunity to see different things within a hospital due to surgeries and catheter implants and people in A and E, people being brought back to life from shocks, from having heart attacks and array of different things across the board, broad spectrum. There's many many stories during that period of my life, and I'll bring those out as we go through some of these podcast episodes. But that led to completing that. I then spent some time at St. Bart's Hospital, which is one of the largest cardiology departments in the uk, even in Europe. And I helped to write all the protocols and procedures for their cardiopulmonary exercise clinic for people with heart issues. And again got to work with some amazing people. But I'd already made a decision. I'd already already made a decision to move to Australia. It's been a dream of mine ever since I was 15 years old. And at 15 I said to myself I was going to be a scientist. I'm going to work in Australia at the Sydney Olympics, Johnny Wilkinson's drop gold in Australia. And in fact, my older brother got to go to Australia when he, when I was 11 years old and he, he was 12 and I missed the opportunity. I had this drive in me to move. So I'd already got the application and applied, just waiting on my visa. My visa came through and that led to moving to a company called Cardiorespiratory Sleep. Now, this was transitioning from some of the largest public hospitals in the world to a small private clinic in Perth, Western Australia. And Perth is quite a secluded city. It really is. It's the other side of Australia from Sydney and Melbourne and Brisbane. And whilst there is a city here, it's the most isolated city in the world. So it's not that big. You can be a big fish in a small pond, essentially. But I realized soon that I was a small fish in a big pond. And we'll get to that in a moment. But anyway, what that then led to was a six year career at a private clinic in a company that worked with cardio, respiratory and sleep, combining all three together. And over that period of working for these people, I worked myself up to a senior position. But I noticed a common thing. Half those clients that were coming to see us with sleep apnea, with heart problems or breathing problems had stress and anxiety issues. And like I said, I was a small fish in a big pond. When I came to Perth, I didn't know anyone. There was one person I knew, he worked in the mines. So I had to really find people, friends and family and within a very small time frame starting a new job. And it was quite challenging. The first six months led me to getting a lot of anxiety issues and I got insomnia. Now the breath became a perfect practice for me to actually integrate into my Life at that period beforehand I didn't really struggle too much other than when I was at university which I didn't know have the tools then and I started to build my own practice. However, I started to have conversations with some of the patients that I was working with and how they can help stress our anxiety. And then one night I remember 2017, late 2017 this would have been I woke up and had a dream and this dream was just a pyramid, it was kind of like a lightning bolt and I woke up in the middle of night and it was when I was going through a rough patch, a period of my life and my mental health and I woke up and just thought of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And that is basically like you have physiological needs, you have safety needs, you have network in terms of relationship needs and then you start having self actualization needs. But you have to pass through all of these needs to be able to reach your best. And for me it was at the bottom was kind of like, well that's your physical health, that's your mental health, that's your building your relationships and your like minded individuals. Then you've got your leadership and at the top you've got your vision of what you want the world look like. By working through that process, I built performance through health and quit my job in Covid, period. Left with a beautiful partner, Delphine. We traveled the world and built this six figure business performance through health by integrating breathing tools, breath science, sleep optimization and stress management in a period where the world needed it. Then I had multiple people reaching out to me around a similar time asking whether I did a mentorship and started to build the breath science certification. Now the vision at the top of that peak is the school of breath science and that's where it brings us today. So that's the journey. We're at the very beginning. I'm grateful that you're listening involved. When I quit that job clinical role to travel the world, there wasn't a lot to do. Going from a pretty busy clinic, trying to build an online business, working out a lot. So then going to live on an island called Nusa Penida off the edge of Indonesia when no one was around during COVID there wasn't a lot for me to do. So I wrote a book based off seven simple habits to help you prevent burnout. Scientific habits that include different things across the day that you can implement. And that was in the last email that you got. If you didn't get that email, drop me a message and I'll send you it, but you can get download that book. That was a 20,000. I think it was 20,000 or 15,000 words. It was the first thing I did when I quit a role where I was busy to then go and live in a land, an island where I wasn't that busy. And guess what? I wrote that book. And I don't even know if anyone's read it. I had no feedback. I built an online webinar around it and no one showed up. But look where I am today. So don't give up people just because there are roadblocks along the way. Have a vision. Keep moving forward and we'll be building the School of Breath Science. Thanks for following me along.