Breathing Through Burnout: Simon Fogarty’s Journey to Balance

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I suppose I've always wanted to have a conversation like this. And you know, we're hearing so much about work, life balance, we're hearing so much about burnout, we ourselves know the application of breathing exercises. And I'm talking to Simon Fogarty, he's based in Wellington and we're going to delve into his career and a career in which it led to burnout. And looking back then, what might he have done differently? What can we learn from it and start teasing out? And I suppose we may not come to any conclusions on this, but we're both two individuals in our 50s and once we hit that age, you start to realize that, yeah, there's less future left, you know, there's more in the past than there is in the future and that kind of causes you to think a little bit differently. But Simon, you're very welcome and thanks very much for joining me today because I knew when I seen an email that you had sent in and the email just described that you were in a burnout situation and that you actually had to leave your job as a result of it. And I said, this is exactly who we want to have a chat with. So just your little background, you were born and brought up in Christchurch in South island in New Zealand, and then you moved to Wellington as a 20 year old. Thinking back, were you quite a driven individual? What brought you into law? You know, why did you choose that career? Because very often I feel that people go into occupations and I'm always curious what might drive them. Is it their choice or what was the reason behind it?

Yeah, that's a great question because. And thanks for having me, I'm really excited to be here. And that's a kind of an interesting question because part of me just feels like I fell into it and I'll explain that a little bit. So I have a brother, older brother, he's a lawyer. He always wanted to be a lawyer from when he was little. He's six years older than me. He always talked about going into law. He went into law. I guess I kind of went through school. I didn't have any particular desire for a career. I went off to University, did a BA in history. And then I think I was kind of, well, actually I was a bit naughty. I got accepted into first year law and you don't have to do a first degree in New Zealand, you can just do it straight out of, of school. And I slacked around and didn't get into second year, so I did my arts degree and then I was kind of thinking, what do you do with a ba? And I didn't want to be a teacher, which ironically now I'm a yoga teacher. And people always said to me, you should be a teacher, but I still don't think I want to. And so I thought, well, I'll go into law school. I had some friends, had gone to law school, so went into law school.

Got through that, so I had my LLB and then thought, I'm not ready for the workforce yet. So I did a master's in law and seven years at uni. And then it was like, I need to do something, I need to get a job. You know, I accrued a little bit of debt. I was, I just turned 25. Most of the people I started university with, long gone.

And so I then contacted a few law firms. I did a master's in intellectual property, so copyright, patents, trademark law. I copied a few, contacted a few specialist law firms and one of them said, come up, we want to meet you. And they offered me a job. And this was at a time when lawyers were having trouble getting jobs, graduates. It was not a great market and.

That was kind of it. And away I went and I worked for the same firm for 17 years.

Wow. And do you think in terms of as, as a youngster, that is there a way to do it differently in that, do you feel that the law degree that you chose, does it match your skill sets? In other words, was it ever something. So you fell into it. I'm just trying to see the gap between, say you have a skill set and you're doing something that you love to do. And there's a huge difference between law and yoga and breathing. So it's almost that, you know, they're, they're two ends of a spectrum, almost. So where do you think your skill sets is now? I often wonder, like, why as a 20 year old, do we not delve into what we may be good for? Ash? Not so good for, but good at, like what suits us, you know?

Yeah. And I think.

For me, I had the skill set, right. I had the intellectual capacity to, to do it. I could pass the papers by all accounts, when I was practicing. I was good at my job. I did litigation work. So court work was involved in what I did. And that was kind of the bit, ironically, that I enjoyed the most. Now, most people would probably say, if you have to stand up in front of a judge in a court and make arguments, they'd run a mile, you know, before they'd want to do it. But that was the part I really loved. And I think that probably harked back to. I did a bit of theater at school. I did some at uni. I liked being up. I like performing. And I think there was a little bit of that performance thing there.

Having looked back and done some work, I think it's a. I think it's values, you know, and I think I never really looked at what are my values.

Kind of work with. They suit.

And when I look at what I'm doing now, I do divorce coaching as well. I. I teach yoga, and I am a breathing coach. And these are all roles that are helping people.

And it's funny, I had a conversation with Jeremy Wheel, and the two of us were off in Switzerland there at a breathing training that we were doing with Oxygen Advantage, and values come up. And I kind of had to tease it because when I hear the word values, I'm never sure what do values mean? I say, is there another way to explain it? So he was saying, then what's important to you? You know, and if so, say, for example, if one was then deciding on. Because sometimes when you come out when you're 20, I knew what I didn't want to do, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I remember my uncle asked me, and what are you going to do? And I said, I'm going to find a job that I absolutely love. And he kind of. I just felt that he maybe felt that it wasn't attainable where it should be now. I didn't fall into breathing first off, either. I was in the corporate world, and I have to say, I did not like it at all. So there's a couple of points there. It's a little bit when you talked about standing up in front of people, some would love that. That's really, really exciting. And the other aspect was that your theater work probably led to that. So sometimes you feel that it's a little bit like Steve Jobs dropping out of college and doing calligraphy. And then it was based. It was based on the calligraphy to determine the fonts that went into the first Apple Computer. So if you were to look back again, how would you frame it. Or what would you say to your 20 year old self, same self, in terms of the values of what's important to you?

Yeah, and look, I'm not fundamentally, I think my values are probably the same as they were.

But did you know them back then?

Well? Yeah, great question. I think probably not. Not. It's like your friend Dermot said, it can be quite hard to articulate what they are and it is really what's important to you. And to me what's important is, although some of my friends might say I'm a bit abrasive sometimes is like being kind to people, treating people well, helping people. Now that doesn't mean I want to necessarily work in a hospital or some kind of environment. And the other value that really came out when I did this values work was autonomy. So independence.

Not working for someone else.

So if I could go back and talk to my 20 year old self, who would not listen. So let's just put that out there now, I'd probably say, hey, you're just kind of drifting a little bit into this because you don't want to do, say teaching, for example, so you're going to do a law degree and that's fine, do the law degree, but do you really want to to do law? And if you do, maybe there's another branch of law that would be better suited for you. So, and what's, and what's important to you right now? And look back then that was probably hanging out with my friends, going out for a few beers on Friday, Saturday night, playing a bit of rugby, you know, the more superficial things. Whereas now with the benefit of time.

I kind of know what those values are and what's important to me and it took a long time to get there. And I think.

Maybe it's a rare person who knows when they're 20 what their values are, but also I think it's the kind of thing that we don't get taught, we don't get asked.

So.

There'S kind of that going on as well. And of course I found out about two years ago I've got add.

And so that has also made me look at things a bit differently as well in terms of you can kind of fudge through that at school and university if you're smart enough, but not in a workplace that doesn't give you respite.

So.

The values I think I know now.

But it took a long time to get there. Even if you'd asked me 10 years ago, I probably would have been not quite sure. I Need. And someone actually sat down with me. I paid. Someone sat down with them. They pulled out the flashcards. We'll start with these hundred. And there are things coming up. I'm like, is that a value? You know, honesty? I suppose it is, you know, trust. And she just kept, take some away, takes them away, takes them away. Until you got down to like three or four. What are the sort of, what are the not negotiables in terms of your behavior and things that you would do in your life? And then you really start to get into the.

Wow. So you actually went through, so you went, you met up with a life coach or somebody like that. This went through it as an exercise. Okay, that's cool. Was it, was it beneficial?

Yeah. Well, now I'm doing things that involve kindness, helping people and have autonomy.

Which, you know, came up as a big one for me. So I set my own work hours. I don't work for anyone. I'm just completely, pretty much online exclusively with the work I do. And I love that, you know, now if someone had said to me when I was 20, you'd be better off not working in a corporate world, well, as a lawyer, you have to do at least three years in New Zealand to get your practicing certificate so you can work alone. So you have to be supervised. So I could have gone, okay, I'll do the three years and then maybe I should be practicing in my own account and I'll take clients when I want to and work when I want to. Having said that, I'm not convinced law was ever the right profession for me. And that's kind of a. I'll never know. Right. But I'm never going back.

See, the other thing is though, okay, so we're coming out when we're in our 20s and I think some, some youngsters will have an inherent drive. You know, I felt that I had, I had quite a drive and sometimes when I look back, I felt, sometimes, did I overdo it in terms of work? But it's really, it's a hard balance though, because on one hand you want to go into a profession that you love and on the other hand you want to be able to generate sufficient income that you can provide for yourself and your family.

Yeah.

And it's not always an easy one to square up, you know, so like, I don't know, I don't know where the answer is in that, but I was thinking like, you know, in terms of a 20 year old, a 20 year old could say, well, I want to be a rock star. But then you have to realize then, well, how many musicians actually reach to those heights? Maybe it's a half a percent of all people that go into music.

Yeah.

So it's kind of striking that you. Do you have kids, Simon?

I have two.

You have two.

Boy, girl, twins.

So this is the conversation then. Do you actually cover this or go through it with your own children? In terms of what ages are they now?

They're 18. Well, they'll be 18 in July, so.

So this is a great age.

Oh, well, you'd say that.

I won't tell you about my son and his motorcycle accidents.

No. Yeah, yeah. Is he okay?

Yeah, he's all right.

Okay. Okay, that's good.

So, yeah, I'm going to move on a small bit. So I haven't quite. As I said, we might raise more questions than we do answers, maybe. And you went in then to the. Into the lawyer. You were working as a lawyer and then you were working for a period of time and he got burnt out. Can you just kind of describe it? Was it the workload? Was it the stress? Was it the hours?

And what if you were. So maybe just start with that.

Yeah, that's a. Again, that's a really difficult question to answer because.

It'S hard to know. I lived in a flat for a while in an apartment building that was quite noisy and so had quite a lot of sleep interruption. So it was on quite a busy street in central Wellington. It's a bit of a slope, so skateboarders would be going down it at 2 in the morning. You know, the wheels good on them, they're having a good time. So a little bit of me is thinking that the sleep was part of it, part of the puzzle. The, the add thing is really interesting because now I've looked into that a little bit more and I saw a psychologist for a number of years and we'd sort of talked around a lot of stuff and then this came up. And the interesting thing, she goes, oh, you've achieved quite a lot given what's gone on. But my brain basically needs time to recover. So if I can focus on something, you know, for hours and hours, and then I need a break, and that's not 10 minutes, that's hours, maybe a day kind of thing. And so we sort of talked around that and hypothesized that at school and university I could just keep getting downtime. Like you go to a lecture, take some downtime. I played a lot of arcade games, played a lot of pool, wasted a lot of time.

And then you do an assignment, but you could still engineer downtime. You know, the university. I think it's harder than it was when we were there. I don't know, it was a lot of exams when I was there and not a lot of coursework. So you could get through the year doing not a lot. Then you go into a work environment that is high stress, quite demanding. The hours weren't crazy where I was working, so I mean, partly crazy. You know, I would work probably from between 8 to 5:30, 6 o'. Clock. So I wasn't in like a, a big, a magic circle work until 10 o' clock every night. But that's still a lot of work when I'm not getting any downtime during the day. Right. Like I'd go to the gym and I'd have some lunch. But if you came in and they said, oh, there's an interim urgent injunction application, we need to get it filed by five o', clock, well, hands to the pump and away you go. And so I think what it was, was probably combination of things and like an erosion. It kind of just, you don't even know it's happening. And then one day I'm just sitting at my desk, massive panic attack.

And what, what, what's going on here? You know, it just absolutely slams you from out of nowhere. And if you ask anyone who's had one, they're like, yeah, one minute you're there and the next minute is just full on. And that was kind of the, the beginning in terms of the symptoms of what was going on.

And if I could go and talk to myself, then I'd probably say you need to have a pretty serious think about, is this what you want to be doing? Is this going to work for you? Because I just keep going back to work. I would take time off and keep going back to work. And then I started to get symptoms of depression and anxiety and it just kind of snowballs, snowball snowballs until it reached the point where I was just like, actually, I can't function at work anymore.

But it's not an easy decision because if you think of it, you're after putting so much work and effort to get to where you were in that organization. You probably may have had a young family at the time. You can't walk away from it. You have an obligation, there's responsibilities financially and generally we tend to push through things and we kind of override the signals that our body is telling us. So it wasn't an easy decision.

And I'm not sure, you know, Would I have been able to step side either unless I was fired, unless I was forced to step aside, you know, that kind of way?

Yeah, yeah, it is hard because especially like by that stage the financial remuneration was very good. But you've got a mortgage like you say. And my wife at the time, she, we'd opted for her not to work while our kids were little and so we didn't have another income to fall back on and we had a mortgage and bills to pay and all that kind of stuff going on. And you know, I really love the people I worked with and I still catch up with them now. And it's been over 10 years since I was in that environment and that was when the time came to actually leave, when I, it was really an easy decision because there wasn't really another option. It was if you don't go. And look, I was never suicidal or anything like that, but you could see if you don't go, maybe that's the path you're going to end up on. Yeah, you know, maybe it's going to be really bad. Yeah. But yeah, when it first happened it would have been really challenging because you think, well actually I can get over this. And everyone says, look, it'll be okay, we'll manage your workload. You know, there was no pressure to stay at work, but there was help there. And then you see a psychologist and they say, well, we can manage the symptoms. Da da da da da.

It's really. If I'd known so much more, I probably could have avoided the whole scenario anyway by better management of myself and probably could have had a thriving, lengthy legal career.

Can we delve into that a little bit more? Okay, because this is what I want to try and find out. I want to find out you looking back, what would you have done to manage yourself?

Because I'm just thinking about Simon into context of say a 35 year old highly stressed in the workplace.

What could you have done differently?

Well.

I think I could have like probably gone to work for myself if I really wanted to. That would have been one potential pathway. I could have worked part time, so less time in the office. But I think it's, it's really more about managing the mental side of things rather than the physical spaces that you're in. You know, if you'd written your book in 2000.

And I'd had that and I'd been able to adhere to it, then I think that kind of thing would have made a big difference. My yoga practice has made a really big difference. To my life as well. And I think it's.

You know, there's that saying, what? You know, the body keeps the score.

And I didn't really understand that until quite recently. But all that stuff does build up and it's got to go somewhere. Right. And so it's going into your body. So what should we be doing with our bodies that can help us, you know, sustain work? And to be honest, we're not designed, we're not engineered to work the hours we kind of do and suffer the kind of stress we do all the time. Right. You know, getting cortisol hits every two hours, five days a week. Not good for you.

So I think learning things like the breath work kind of things that actually really make a big difference. And then my partner has noticed and has said, you're like, after six months of doing breath work, you're a different person. Not in personality, but just in my ability to deal with stress and anxiety and those kind of things. So.

Yeah, there's kind of needs to be a beginner's guide to stressful jobs. Here are the things you should do. You know, good diet, good exercise. I'm a. Historically a chronic mouth breather, you know, so there's all that physiological stuff that was going on that was unhelpful for me.

All those kind of things that we pay lip service to a little bit. I think, you know, people go to the gym and go, oh, that's my thing. I've done my hour. But. And that doesn't hurt. Don't get me wrong. I think that's great stuff. But it's almost like we do our average and we go, oh, well, I'll be all right now. And then I head back to.

I head back to work. Whereas for me, looking at my life now, it's more of a holistic kind of thing. It's taken me 50 years to draw the pieces in together and go, actually, this is what's going to work. And I'm trying to talk to my kids, not saying, don't be a lawyer, you'd be crazy. But, you know, what do you want to do and what do you really love and what do you enjoy? And that's not to say everyone's going to have a career they love and enjoy, but then start, well, what are your values? What are things that are important to you and that then aligns your mental capacity along with your physical body? So it's kind of the combination of both things. And that's why I like helping people. Now I've got you Know, a friend of mine I met in Auckland a couple of weeks ago, he goes, oh, my God, my breath's all in my chest and I'm hunched over at my desk and, you know, you've probably heard it 10,000 times. And I was like. And then he goes to me, you've got it all sorted, you know, you're doing your yoga, you've got your breathing going. And I was like, yeah, it took me a long time to get here, but let's do some work. And within, you know, one session, he's like, I feel better. And a week later he comes and goes, I'm more relaxed, you know, just from little changes. Breathe through your nose, you know, all that stuff, all the podcasts, all the books.

So, yeah, I often find it's amazing why it isn't being taught in school.

You know, the ability to be able to deal with stress, to be able to self regulate, to be able to improve sleep quality, but even able to hold attention. You know, where I spent 12 years, you spent more informal education. And I couldn't come out. I wasn't able to concentrate. You having add? Can I just circle back to add?

Do you feel that you were born. So this is sometimes a conversation, you know, if. If somebody has very poor sleep. Yeah, it does. The symptoms of ADD arise out of very, very poor sleep. So say, for example, somebody who's a chronic mouth breather, somebody who is snoring, somebody who's having insomnia, somebody with obstructive sleep apnea, or somebody just with resistance to the breathing, they will have the same symptoms of ADD as somebody who may get a diagnosis of add and trying to square what the difference there is.

Do you feel that it is a genetic trait in you, or do you feel that it may have been a result of your poor sleep? In other words, could it have been something that could have been addressed early on, had attention being paid to the fact that you were a chronic mouth breeder? And anybody who's a chronic mouth breeder, myself included, I had terrible sleep.

Yeah. I can't tell you the answer to that question, in all honesty, because I don't know. I've got a neurodivergent child. And that's actually what sort of triggered the. And then I started talking to my siblings. What about dad?

And my dad love him, God bless him, he's still alive. He's 90. He's about to turn 94 this week.

Wow.

And. And he's been a chronic mouth breather all his life, so.

Wow. Jesus. Just Hope for the rest of us.

You know, we used to joke about how you'd be walking home at one in the morning and you'd get to the corner of the street and our house was three or four houses and you could hear the snoring. But yeah. And so I'm not sure. And to be honest, part of it, I'm not really sure it matters in some ways. The reality is I've got these traits, and you could call them add, and maybe they were caused by genetics. And when I look at my dad, maybe, maybe they were environmental, the breathing, all that kind of stuff, but the effect was kind of the same. And interestingly for me, the breathing has helped dampen that effect down as well, regardless of which one it is, whether it's genetic or environmental kind of thing.

So I have two questions on the back of that. Did you feel that you over. Were you. When you were in the corporate area, were you overthinking quite a bit? Do you think that was a factor that heightened your stress response? And the other connection then was when you started breathing practice, what did you actually start? What made the difference to you? So the first question is, can you remember? Did you have a lot of thought activity, a lot of thinking going on? The mind overthinking, rumination and.

Catastrophizing is a big one.

And kind of the one that leaps out for me, which is classic overthinking, right. Is if I quit my job, I'll lose my house. We'll get, you know, things will just. The children will be starving, we'll be living under a bridge kind of thing, which was never going to happen. You know, we would have. We would have found a way. We would have been okay. And just to kind of shoot back, I did find school reports from when I was like 6, 7, 8, 14, talks too much in class. Would do better if he paid more attention. So there's whatever was the cause, the traits were there.

Sure.

And so, yeah, probably a lot of overthinking.

Not so much at work. The problem at work was probably once I hit, I could have my intense focus, but once I hit that wall, I couldn't do it anymore. So the brain just kind of went nah. And then I could read the same thing five times and nothing. Right.

Is that not normal, though, Simon? Like, I. I think I'm like that, to be honest with you, as well, you know?

Yep. But my colleagues were reading the same thing, so I was also a patent attorney and my colleagues were reading the same things and getting it in one Hit. And I was like, am I dumb? You know? But I think it was just my brain needing a break. But, yeah, my partner is always joking with me. I'm always, like, doing little rhymes and little ditties and little songs. And she's like, you're so good at that. You should be in the creative industries. And I'm like, I don't think I could work with creatives.

She's not a creator, but she works with creatives. And, you know, they. They have another way of doing things that is different to how I would do things. But, yeah, my brain's always. It's always just kind of. Things are just kind of tumbling and words come out sometimes. And some of it's funny and some of it requires apologies. So. But yeah, so definitely really active, active brain. No doubt about it.

When you started Dan, on your breathing journey, so what got you into breathing?

Well, I guess I always knew that breathing could be helpful and you could use breathing to down regulate and, you know, and quiet your nervous system. And to be honest, I have no idea where I found that out, but that was back, I think, probably early 2000s. It might have been after I had, you know, my initial panic attack, and I think it was 2004, but. But it wasn't particularly effective because what I was doing was I'd be like, freaking out. I do three or four minutes of breathing, I feel a bit better. Five minutes later, I'm freaking out again. So there was no. I hadn't built a base of breathing. I didn't have the fundamentals that would then support doing those extra exercises. And I think that's kind of really important. It's huge.

Because you can say to someone, well, do box breathing or whatever it is, but if They've got no CO2 tolerance, for example, then that's not going to be very effective. In fact, it could have the opposite effect totally. You know, the anxiety response. Yeah. Or it might just be. They go, well, I just don't feel anything.

Yeah.

You know.

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's. I think that's the case with so many people because when you talk about breathing to people, you know, they feel that breathing is take a deep breath or do box breathing or something like that, but it's only scratching the surface. So I really like that you're talking about getting your everyday breathing right. Get the foundation right, that builds up your resilience, and then you're in a better place that you can cope with the situation. But then if there's a situation and it Unfolds. You have tools then to deal with it. So talking about the foundation, so what did you bring into your way of life in terms of building up that foundation?

Well, over time I started doing yoga and I do ayenga yoga and it's not particularly breath focused, but I think as part of any yoga practice, breathing becomes an element of it. And especially the way I've been taught yoga is, you know, it should be quiet, it should be effortless. Effortless effort apparently was I think what BKS Sayenga said and he founded it. And you know, if you watch videos of him doing yoga, you're like, that's what that means. You can see it and understand it. For most of us, we're not in that space. I mean he dedicated his entire life from when he was, I think 10 years old.

So when you, when you do your yoga practice, then are you breathing in through your nose, out through your mouth? You're breathing in through your nose, out through your nose. And did you say that your breathing is quiet during the yoga practice?

I have more recently made a bigger effort with my breathing particular like inversions, headstand, shoulder stand. When you've got the abdominal pressure coming onto your diaphragm so you're more restricted with your breathing. What I really noticed was I was upside down going.

And you can see, as a teacher, you can see it in people, their heads are like, look like they're going to explode. They're going bright red, there's huffing and puffing. So then I was kind of like, I don't really think about my breathing much when I'm doing my yoga. Let's start bringing that in a bit more and trying to just keep it quiet, you know, light.

Light breathing, yes. And try not to think about anything else. And that has the physiological effects that go with it. But it also.

And this is kind of a physiological. The brain then has time to focus on the yoga and the type of yoga we do. I Inga is very much, we're always talking feeling based practice. What are you feeling in your body now if your mind's racing and you're going, well, my foot should be there and my arm should be here and my head should be there. You can't get that feedback from your body that's telling you where your body is. So the breathing then lets you have the quiet in your head. So when the body's sending the nerve signals up to your brain, you're like, oh, my shoulder blade is here or my calf is there. So it's Kind of like a twofold little benefit. You're getting the nitric oxide and the CO2 and the quiet breathing. And you're also getting the brain going, hey, I can feel what you're doing.

We just circled back that because I'm sure there's plenty of people who are yoga instructors and yoga students who are listening. And oftentimes I feel that with many yoga instructors, they actually encourage taking full breaths and over breathing can be a part of that. But you're saying that when you're doing your practice, you're breathing in and out through your nose, most more recently than before, and you're breathing light. Okay, you spoke about carbon dioxide. So when you're breathing light during the practice, there is an increase or an accumulation, only slight, of carbon dioxide in your lungs and blood. And as carbon dioxide increases in the blood, it's going to help dilate the blood vessels. So this increases blood flow to the brain. But also as carbon dioxide increases in the blood, it slightly drops blood ph, which reduces brain cell excitability. So this, in turn, you were talking about, then you're doing your yoga practice with more focus, but it kind of makes sense because you're doing your yoga practice with controlled light breathing. And that in turn then is setting up the brain response that it's going to cause a natural quietening of the brain. And this is. These are the things that are really worth teasing out because, you know, can you imagine a yoga instructor being able to weave in the science of functional breathing practice into it and how it could help people? And I often wonder, how is it? Why has this been overlooked? Like, how. How on earth have they missed it?

Yeah. And.

I can't speak to other styles of yoga, and I know there are some that emphasize breathing more than others. And we do do pranayama, which you'll be familiar with, I'm sure. And.

Again, for me, I've seen people doing pranayama and really struggling with it. And I think it's because they don't have the baseline tolerance and things like that to do it. And look. And so just to digress a little bit, when I tried meditation practice, I think I had the same problem. I breathe quietly, but I didn't. You know, when I first did the bulk test, I think it was 13 seconds. So not. Not terrible. Terrible, but not great, right? And so I'm like, well, it's no wonder I'm uncomfortable trying to do these much deeper, longer inhales because my body's going, dude, you need to breathe, so you need to build that stuff up. As a teacher, I find the breathing a bit of a conundrum to teach because I think a lot of people actually aren't capable.

Of bringing the breathing in for those reasons we've already talked about. So for me as a teacher, basically, I just encourage the students pretty much every class I start, you know, just keep the breath light, breathe in and out through the nose, and away we go. And that's rather than. Yeah. And some styles will be inhale here, exhale here, breathe in through the nose, breathe out through the mouth.

But I'm not sure that's actually good for the students necessarily, unless they're at a level kind of like say, if you taught me, I'd go, okay, my bolt's up to 30 seconds now. I've got the tolerance, I can manage it. I also know how to breathe in a functional manner. I can do it. It's almost like you need to teach people to breathe first and then bring them in. Having said that, even people who have, and I see it, dysfunctional breathing, they get a lot out of the yoga practice. They do get quietness and things. So it's kind of, for me in that environment, I've got my yoga teacher hat on. It's about what's the benefit they can get from the yoga practice.

And if we can get a little bit of breathing in there, great bonus. If not, they haven't come here to do a breathing class unless we did like a pranayama class or something like that. They've come here to do their yoga for whatever reason, and people bring all kinds of stuff into that space with them, and my job's to let them do their yoga. So it's about. It's a. It's a bit of a juggling act, but if you had the skills and you're doing the yoga, it's. It's helping me to deepen my practice because I'm just noticing I'm quieter.

But at the same time, you're not encouraging your students to over breed during the yoga practice. In other words, like, and that's huge because, you know, like, for me, it doesn't make sense. Taking these full, deep breaths, getting rid of too much carbon dioxide, that could actually heighten your sensitivity to the gas, carbon dioxide. That comes back to what you said earlier, the foundational breathing. We have to think about how strong is the drive to breathe. So when you see students then, who are struggling a little bit during the asanas and they're running out of air and they're feeling that they're. They're overly breathless. That's not just about the breathing on the mat, that's actually about the breathing off the mat. That's about nose breathing during the day, nose breathing during sleep, all of the stuff that, you know.

Yeah.

So your mind is calmer now. Do you ever pay attention to what's going on in your mind? Do you ever step back? Is it part of your routine? What do you do in your normal everyday life?

So I, as I said, I dabbled with meditation. I dabbled with other breathing programs. You know, you kind of go in and out and it's not working.

And now what I do is generally in the morning, I have what I call a breathing practice. So I don't call it a meditation practice. And I've, you know, I've listened to the podcast and there's you guys discussing meditation and how that can be quite confronting for people. And I don't think it's going to be confronting for me, but actually, I don't feel like I need a real meditation practice. So for 20 minutes, generally in the morning, I'll get up, I'll sit, I've got a timer, I'll just sit and I'll do a breathing practice. Now, that might vary from day to day. Kind of my. One of my favorites is.

Seven seconds in, hold for seven, seven out, hold for seven, and just cycling. So you're looking at two breaths a minute, give or take. Now, if you'd said to me even six months ago, you're going to do a breathing practice, two breaths a minute, I would have said you're nuts. You know, but actually, I'm at the point I can do that. And it's little bit of hunger. Yeah, hunger. But it's not hard. But there might be a day I get up and I'm tired, and so I might just do breath recovery or I might just do a force. I just pick what feels right for me on any given day. And if I'm feeling really ambitious, I'll do long breath holds and then probably the last five minutes, something a little bit quieter.

Yeah.

And.

That is. It's funny, I don't really. I kind of notice the difference, but my partner has noticed the transition more. And.

Just as an example, I still have anxiety and probably always will to a certain degree. And that's okay. I can deal with that. I had to go to Auckland to do my teacher certification for my yoga a few weeks ago, and there was a massive storm. All the flights are cancelled. We had to rent a car. The day before, jump in a car, drive up to Auckland, which is. It's about an 8 to n hour drive, give or take. It's 650ks on New Zealand rides.

It's a long way.

It's a whole day y. And when we got back and I passed the damn thing and got back, my partner was like, six months ago, that would have completely derailed you.

You would have just had a mega catastrophic meltdown. And she says, I'm not sure what would have happened, but it could have derailed the whole assessment process. So it was kind of like, ah, yeah, actually, that's right. No, I can. And now I, I can catch myself going into anxiety states.

Or like teenage kids, they cause you moments. My son crashed his motorbike. He's fine but he had to go to hospital and have surgery in his arm. He's got a, he's now got a plate in his arm. He's a celebrity amongst. Yes. But it was kind of like there's a time I would have completely lost my. And I would have been in the hospital probably standing over him going, what have you done? Why have you done this? Probably a lot more swearing. Yeah, I just got in, you know, there were lots of medical staff around.

They were amazing. And I just went in to see him, they just arrived in the ambulance. I got there around the same time and he's just like, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm like, that's all right, mate. Yeah, I just want you to be okay. Yeah, we don't need to talk about any of that other stuff because he knows I hate motorcycles. Yeah, yeah. But just those things where I'm actually just able to manage myself now. When he was in surgery, I got quite anxious, did a lot of pacing. But yeah, I just able to manage that dayto die, I think a lot better than I would have.

But that's huge, you know?

Yeah. Like, sorry. Carry on.

To be able to take things in your stride, like things happen, unfortunately, and life throws a curveball and to be able just to manage them that little bit easier and that we're not carrying them around. But it's so much, and it's not always easy that we're not. Okay. We might say, for example, get into a state of anxiety, but we can recover so much quicker. And now I'm beginning to think had you got these tools in the corporate world, you may not have had a burnout because number one is you would have known easier or earlier what was going on in your body. You would have known not to override the signals that your body was telling you, because sometimes that can happen with burnout. It's already happening. But we have a capacity to override what the body is telling us and that we're going too far. Do you ever think that possibly had you these tools then in the corporate world, would they have been beneficial in the corporate world?

Yeah, no doubt. I want to get more into teaching people in that space these techniques, because I have no doubt if I'd gotten up every morning and done a little breath work before I went off to work, I'd be going in a. I'd be leaving and commuting in a calmer space.

You'd have the baseline all the time. And then like you said before, when the stress hits, oh, actually I need to take five minutes here, you know, and maybe I take five minutes every hour to, to do this. And so you're constantly. You're turning the cortisol off, right?

Yep.

And the half life of cortisol is just a nightmare. What is it, two hours or more? Whatever, way too long. But when you're continually whacking it all the time, you know, and I was probably hitting it most of the day. So if you can dial that down and if you can get out of your upper chest and if you can close your mouth, you know, I've just listened to the nitric oxide podcast that went up and it's like, oh, Lord.

That'S a totally different episode.

But yeah, but yeah, I, I think.

You say, you know, breathing for a long time has been a bit woo woo, and I think it's not woo woo anymore. I think it's really starting to get traction that, oh, there are benefits to this and mainstream medicine is kind of starting to come in and go, oh, maybe there's something. And that's sort of what you need.

Yeah.

Because then if the doctors are saying.

This is good for you, patients will go, oh, well, there's lots of coaches. I'll go and see someone.

It's making it normal. But I actually think the doctors need it, you know, because if you consider anybody in a highly stressed job, like if, for example, we have a habit of rumination because we have been trained how to think with education, but we haven't been provided the tools, the capacity to be able to quieten the mind. We haven't been provided the tools to improve our everyday breathing. You spoke about if you were breathing through an open mouth, if you're breathing upper chest, how many people are breathing that way? Dysfunctional breathing is quite Common. And of course, if we breathe that way, we're constantly telling the brain that we're under trash and all the brain wants to do is get us out of this situation. And of course, if we're going into a meeting and we're feeling our heart rate, is that a bit higher, we're feeling the butterflies in the stomach, we're going into a fight or flight response, we're not going to do well in that meeting because this is not a time for creativity or decision making, this is a time for fighting or fighting, you know, so it's important to change our physiology. Coming back to your sleep, do you, do you close your mouth during the night?

I mouth tight with Myotype.

And has that made a difference to you?

Yes, it has. So I would say my sleep quality has gone up quite a bit. So originally I did what most people do, you just buy a bit of tape and whack it on your mouth. I'd never tape. I never, I never did the whole across there.

That's the way I was doing it.

Yeah. I read Jen James Nestor's book.

Yeah.

And I had a strip and interestingly enough, that was right at the start when I really started getting into the breath work and I would wake up tearing it off. I'd be in the process of tearing it off as I woke up because obviously I was having a little anxiety moment, not getting enough earth, you know.

So then. And that's because it took so long for the Myotape to ship from Ireland to New Zealand, you know, it's like a. A million miles away.

And then so I tried the Myotype and found that much more satisfactory. And my partner says I do puff sometimes in the night.

Which is really interesting because I'm not. She would say I'm not really a snorer, not in that. I didn't get my dad's freight train snoring. That's a bonus. But what I have noticed there are some times I had an issue with my nose and it had to have a little procedure on it and I couldn't breathe through it so I had to ditch the tape at night and I woke up with this driest mouth you could possibly imagine. And I look at my watch and it's one o' clock in the morning, I'm like, oh Lord.

And that's when it wasn't until I started doing the taping and the mouth is closed at night that I started to realize how dry it is if I sleep with my mouth open.

So.

I do have deeper sleep. I'VE actually found I don't need as much sleep or probably I'm getting the same amount of sleep. It's just condensed in that smaller period of time and generally the quality is better. I think I'm also fighting a little bit of historical insomnia and stuff, so there's a little bit of rewiring that's got to go on. So it's going to take more time for me but can definitely see the benefits, you know. And I wear a, the old, the Garmin watch, you know, that records data either accurately or inaccurately but it's more about the patterns that you see with that data. Right. Is the quality and generally going up or stable at quite good quality sleep. And of course, you know, I feel it in the morning. You feel a difference. Right.

So is your concentration now improved as a result of both better breathing during sleep, mouth closed, ideally tongue resting in the roof of the mouth, waking up feeling more refreshed and then an ability to self regulate throughout the day?

Yeah, I think so. Because if you'd come to me even a year ago and said you're going to start your own business and you're going to do sort of three jobs, my yoga, I teach for a studio, so that's kind of easy. I have a fixed class every week, just the one that's enough for me in that space. But you're going to start your own business, you're going to be managing clients, you're going to be doing all your own email and setting up your website and you know, all that stuff. I can't afford to pay a big staff of people to do all that. Well, I probably can but you know, I was quite happy tinkering away. But I've invested a lot of time in those things and.

I would have said like a year ago, that would have freaked me out.

So in a relatively short period of time, if you think about my 53, nearly 54 years, been quite a turnaround.

And I'm kind of still a little bit.

Astounded at that. I'm sort of. Part of me is waiting. Come on, it's coming. You're going to have that moment where it all falls apart.

The catastrophizing brain, you know, and, but it's kind of not. And you know, there are other things in there. I manage my days. So the most.

Appointments I would ever have in one day is like four people. So it's set up, my booking system set up. If four people booked in one day, all the other appointments just evaporate. But I've also set myself a sort of a target of 10 to 15 hours a week of coaching work. And look, I'm in a fortunate position. I can do that. We don't owe any money on our house anymore. You know, all those big pressures where someone else might go, oh, well, I have to work 30 hours or 40 hours to make ends meet. But I think if I had to, I could work longer because I'm writing blogs and doing all other kinds of stuff that, you know, really, the science has really piqued my curiosity, even though I'm not a science background person. But getting into that and just spending time and working on marketing and things that I just don't think I could have done without the breathing kind of underpinning it all. And that's, you know, that's, that's the honest truth for me.

Do you feel I gotta, you know, ask you this whole thing about work life balance? Do you feel that you have achieved? Well, I, I think I know what the answer is, but I'm going to put it out there anyway.

No, it's terrible. I don't like to call it work life balance. My old boss was always like, it's just life balance. If your life's not balanced, then you need to change something. But yes, and I think there's a whole lot of factors that play into that.

The breathing is a big one. My yoga practice is a big one. Being able to choose the number of hours I work, you know, there's a whole lot of things that are coming together that allow me to have that balance.

Plus meeting your values.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. You know, I'm doing work as opposed to thinking, oh, I've got some corporate nut bar in America who wants me to do something. And look, just to kind of get some context for that, I did a lot of work for us corporates here who are doing business here. You might do a big case that might go on for a year, 18 months, you get a successful result, you'd write the email, oh, we got a win. Da, da, da, da, da. Send it off. You'd hear nothing. They're onto the next thing. Deeply unsatisfied. When I go to yoga, if I teach a class, even 10 people, five of them walk out going, oh, that was great. Now they're not saying to me, you were great. Well, what they're saying is, I got something out of this today. I needed this. And a lot of people go, oh, I really need that today. And I'm thinking, God, you look like a Nightmare to me. But, you know, you. You don't know what's going on in people's heads, but satisfaction is in what they are getting out of it.

Yeah.

You know, one of. One of my teachers always says, grain of salt, Simon. Take all the compliments with a grain of salt. It's about them. It's not about you, you know, because as a teacher, you have good days and bad days yourself. But, yeah, you just. I just really enjoy that. And working with. I had a client. I've got a breathing client. She came to me at the start of the year. Her bolt was two seconds.

Yeah. And she. Look, she's like, look, I've had this. She's similar age to me. I've had this chronic breathing problem all my life, and it's in my breath, in my upper chest. And I was like, well, look, we can. We can work with this. And now she's up to 10 seconds or something like that, but I can see her. She comes on and goes, oh, you know, I can actually get on the. The bike and bike and just breathe through my nose. Wow. You know, how good does that make you feel that you've helped another human get some of their life back or improve their quality of life? Or maybe, you know, if we want to be bold, maybe they're not going to have a stroke or a heart attack or, or whatever you do, you know, those things. You don't know.

It's. You don't know. But at the same time, breathing is that autonomic function that we can influence, and it does have an impact on other functions in the human body, like respiration and cardiovascular health are tightly interconnected. You know, one affects the other. But respiration has quite an impact on cardiovascular. Like, I don't want to go off a tangent, but Dalham, George Dalham, wrote a paper on endurance athletes, and he talked about cardiac fibrosing happening as a result of athletes pushing themselves too hard, possibly mouth breathing, which they tend to do anyway. And as a result, it's causing reduced blood flow to the heart and contributing to atrial fibrillation and cardiac fibrosing and nose breathing could help to prevent that.

Could, yeah.

I'm just going to bring it to a close, Simon. So for. I think it's been a really good conversation. You know, I always find it so interesting. And even though, like, the podcast is on breathing for people to hear about you. So you're an Oxygen Advantage instructor. I'm. I'm correct there, aren't I?

You are correct, yes.

Yes.

I should have I should have checked. I should have done my homework at the arts.

I didn't. Oh, no, I'm with some other school somewhere else. Yeah, no, I. I did the functional breathing course last year and at some point probably do the advanced training as well.

Great, great. Well, you have your foundation there, so you talked a lot about foundational breathing and it's a good place to be for people who might want to reach out to you and people who want to get an insight into your work. What's your. How do they find you?

Claritycoaching co nz I'm on LinkedIn. I have a very small Instagram presence under the claritycoaching co nz or email. Simonlaritycoaching co nz.

I think that's the executive summary. So, yeah, LinkedIn's a great easy way. Can you just put my name and Simon Fogerty and you're done?

Actually think it's an Irish name as well. Fogerty.

Oh, yes, it is. And I. My mother always says Fogerty because I think she wants to make it sound posh, but I'm pretty sure the true Irish say Fogerty.

Yes, we do. So, yeah, your mother is right.

I had some Irish people laugh at me once. I was like, oh, I have to look at how I'm saying my name.

Yeah, Irish ancestry all the way.

Oh, good stuff. We'll take you on. Great, Simon, pleasure. Thanks very much. And finally, last question. Do you feel comfortable that you have carved out a space for yourself that will bring you into when you're 60 and 70 and possibly even 80 years of age?

Yeah, I think so. And I think like, health wise. Yeah, fingers crossed, touch wood, all that kind of stuff. I think it's making a big difference to my life and in terms of working, I'll kind of. I think I could just carry on working until I kind of don't want to, because the work is in some ways really easy.

Yep, that's what it's all about. Pleasure, Simon. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Patrick. It's been great. Cheers.

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