I think it's particularly important for men because of its
capacity to act as a non verbal form of psychic exploration and
and as a therapeutic tool. But I do still think for a lot
of people, but men in particular, being able to go in
and process stuff where it's all internal and you're able to
process and reconcile stuff is, is a really powerful thing.
Also because of the role that breath in this form can play in
clearing and processing emotional charge that we hold
within the nervous system, that has usually come about as a
result sort of repression. Right, welcome back to the
Heroic man. This is Round 2 with Jamie
Clements, the breath Workman of London, right?
This this episode we're going to go a little bit deeper.
So last episode, if you haven't listened to it yet, TuneIn, we
talked about the fundamentals of breath work.
Super interesting, some really great insights there and some
how to's. This time we're going to go a
little bit deeper on the power of breath work and how it can
activate existing trauma and can help process healing, and then
some of our own experiences around that.
So, Jamie, what is conscious connected breath work?
It's a good place to begin. So I'm going to call it CCB
because it's less of a mouthful. So if people are wondering what
CCB is through restless conversation, conscious
connected breath work. So CCB is the underpinning
technique of pretty much every healing informed style of breath
work. So whether you're coming across
something like transformational breath, whether you're coming
across soma breath work, holotropic breath work, all of
these kind of sub modalities, they're all underpinned by some
form of of conscious connected breathing.
And this is a continuous circular pattern of breathing
usually done through the mouth that is delivered in either A1
to one or group setting to create an altered state of
consciousness. That is really kind of the the
what that has typically been done, as I said, kind of through
a helium formed lens to in a similar way to psychedelic
therapies where we're looking to explore that altered state of
consciousness in whatever form it shows up to see what lies
beneath that day-to-day waking state consciousness.
So very ego LED, monkey mind LED.
We're not very tuned into the subconscious and we can use CCB
to really flip into this non ordinary state where these
protector parts, these ego parts get quieter and quieter and
quieter. And the subconscious mind, the
emotional body, you can get closer and closer to the
surface. And when that happens, that can
show up as a very physical experience.
It can show up as a very cathartic emotional experience.
We can start connecting to memories, to past experiences,
whatever it might be. It's this, this tool ultimately
that that opens us up in whatever form that takes.
And that can be really varied as I'm sure we'll kind of dive into
when we talk about personal experience a bit more.
But yeah, at its core, it's a healing modality.
It's an exploratory healing tool.
How does it work? We're still unpacking that it's,
it's the I I guess the, the honest answer and the factual
answer from what we know and I, I guess what I know through
looking at research and through anecdotal and and sort of
evidence back research as well. What is going on The 1st domino
really in the experience is the change in breathing pattern and
breathing volume creating a change in oxygen and carbon
dioxide levels in the in the body and the brain, particularly
paying attention to carbon dioxide.
When we lower CO2 levels in the and the blood in the body we are
which is what happened is happening with CCB.
We create this physical shift, so we get a bunch of physical
changes going on in the body that lead to the tingling that
people experience, that lead to changes in temperature, physical
sensations. We get decrease in blood flow,
so we get vasoconstriction. We also get or can get something
called tetany, which is where we get a reduction in ionized
calcium in the blood and we get a bit cramping in the
extremities. That drop in blood CO2 leads to
that from a physical standpoint, it then also leads to hypoxia,
so low oxygen in both the body and the brain, which then seems
to lead to further experiential aspects of it.
So the shortest version of kind of what is going on as a result
of those biological and physiological changes is that
we're able to create a trance like hypnotic state where these
protective parts of the mind are less active and the more
emotional aspects and subconscious aspects of the
brain become more active. And that seems to open up this
altered state, mystical state that many people experience
through breath work. Yeah, yeah.
And then how does that then relate to being able to process
past trauma? So if we think about trauma,
which is a an interesting word because it's just it's been
thrown around so much and discussed so much in in social
media world that I think we have different interpretations of
what it means. If we look at trauma as adverse
past experiences that have left a legacy of that experience in
your nervous system, in your brain, in your body.
When we go into that state through the breath where these
protector parts, these guards within our brain that do a very
good job of keeping us safe. That is part of their part of
their role. When they are less active,
aspects of past adverse experiences can begin to
resurface. That could be through memories.
That could be through emotional charge in the body.
If we think about the way that we we hold that emotional energy
of past experiences in the nervous system to actually begin
to bring it to the surface. Often with past adverse
experiences, we end up almost guarding ourselves from the
processing of them because at that point in time where that
event occurred, we needed to be protected from it.
Our nervous system wasn't able to hold that experience.
We didn't have the capacity for it.
And so we might have shut down, we might have cut ourselves off
from it. We might have compartmentalized
it, put it in a box. And so we then keep ourselves
safe from it in that moment, but also going forward.
And that is what can lead to some of these ingrained
behaviour patterns as a result of trauma, is that we are still
keeping ourselves safe from something that perhaps even
happened in childhood. And so when we open up this
altered state and we almost change brain activity through
the breath, we are able to explore aspects of those
experiences that we may have been protecting ourselves from,
even at a point where we no longer needed to be kept safe
from them. And when we can go into those in
a safe held environment to recontextualize and readdress
our relationship with that experience, that's where we
might start to hear the language of healing trauma.
Because we're going, OK, there's a memory coming up here.
This is something really, really common.
A memory coming through here is something that I completely
forgotten about. That is a challenging memory.
There's emotion attached to it. There's there's fear attached to
it in a lot of cases. But in a safe space where I'm
better resourced as an adult to face that, to understand that,
to interpret that to, yeah, readdress my relationship with
it. You can then start to work with
that in a safe container with support, guidance, facilitation
to come out the other side with a slightly different
relationship with that experience.
For sure, yeah, yeah. I'll give you an example.
So an example for me that I got a download essentially, I got a
memory like you just said there that I hadn't, oh, and I don't
know, 37. I hadn't fucking remembered
this, that when I was 11 or 12 years old, looks like I, I was
able to access this by doing breath work and and getting into
a deep meditation. When I was 11-12 years old.
I'd locked myself in my bathroom when my parents were together
and we had big, big house, big family bathroom and we're going
to school. And I locked myself in there
because I was convinced my father didn't love me as much as
he loved my brother. And it was like, I was like,
fucking hell, that's fucking deep that I'd remembered that I
was, you know, I was 1112 year old, now I'm 37.
But now being able to look back at that and go, well, how can I
look at that from an adult's perspective, a man's
perspective, rather than the little, little boy who was, he
was scared, didn't think his dad loved him as much he loved his
brother. And how can I look at that and
then see where else that is affecting my life in terms of my
own self worth, my own self love and so forth, and how I'm also
parenting my own son? Super powerful to be able to
access that through breath. Yeah.
And it's fascinating. Like I, yeah, I've been doing
this myself as a an individual for coming up to 7-8 years and
practicing and teaching for 5-6 years.
I'm always fascinated by individual experiences and my
own because I'm like, I can give that explanation that I gave of
what's happening, but that's still to me.
It's just, you know, it's very surface of like, OK, by, by the
by, I want to know the what of what someone experienced because
that's the power. And I remember even when I did
one of my trainings, I would be asking questions if like, yeah,
but what's going on in the brain because I wanted to
intellectualize it and understand it.
And my teacher just had no time for it.
He was like, doesn't really matter so long as we know that
it's safe and there are certain medical contraindications,
disclaimers, so on and so forth as to why someone might not do
it. But as long as we know that it's
safe, it's the experience that matters, not why it's happening.
We just like to intellectualize this stuff.
It's part of the process. And especially when it comes to
regulation scaling, when it comes to getting this into to
broader audiences, it's important that we know what's
going on so that it can be safe. But the the experiential side of
it is so powerful and so undeniable.
You go, OK, like we can put the science to one side and just
look at what is happening in front of us.
And for me, one of the the kind of landmark experiences for me
back in back in the day when I was first getting into this work
was I'd been, for want of a better term, struggling with
depression for, you know, on and off for the best part of 10
years. And my depression was very much
a numbness and a shutting down where I would didn't experience
major highs, had some big lows, but it was mostly just pretty
numb. And I had one experience with
with breath work where I felt this joy like this euphoria that
I hadn't experienced or that it had been such a long time since
I had experienced it that I'd forgotten it was possible.
And it was this light bulb moment where I was like, Oh my
God, it almost in that moment lifted me out of the depression
that I was experiencing. And obviously it took work and
integration beyond that, but it just woke something off him up
in me to go, oh, that's possible.
That's, that's doable, That's real.
And because you've experienced it and it's a felt experience,
that's an incredibly powerful thing.
And that I was listening to a conversation about psychedelics
and altered states of consciousness, where when we
have these somatic, bodily, very real felt experiences of
something through psychedelics, through breath work, through
whatever it might be, it can almost act as a, an inverse
trauma. If we think about trauma as this
negative legacy of a, of a, a challenging experience, if we
have a uniquely positive experience, why wouldn't that be
able to leave a similar legacy, a similar mark?
And I definitely think, you know, the fact that I can still
remember that experience to speak about that experience 7-8
years on certainly speaks to that for me of like the what is
the positive knock on effect of a intensely powerful felt
positive experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Why do you think as a guy, why do you think it's this sort of
this sort of going deeper into breath work is important for
men? I think it's particularly
important for men because of its capacity to act as a non verbal
form of psyche exploration and and as a therapeutic tool.
So two sides to it, non verbal because you know, there's this
legacy of men struggling to vocalize and talk about what
they're feeling. I think it's starting to become
outdated because a lot of people doing a lot of good work.
But I do still think for a lot of people, but men in
particular, being able to go in and process stuff where it's all
it's all internal and you're able to process and reconcile
stuff is a really powerful thing.
And also because of the role that breath in this form can
play in clearing and processing emotional charge that we hold
within the nervous system that has usually come about as a
result of repression. And again, men, historically,
emotional repression is a big challenge and a big, a big
issue. And so it's a really potent tool
to help people go inward, which is great, but also to clear and
process that that weight of emotional energy that we're
holding within the within the nervous system, when within the
body. And then I think an extra bonus
point from my perspective at least, is that I see it
connecting people to a sense of spirituality and a sense of
something bigger than ourselves. And I think again, this is
broad, broader than men for sure.
But certainly for guys, we are quite, we can be quite
blinkered, quite logical minded, quite intellectualizing of, of
life. And that can be quite a quick
route to, to misery as well. When all you believe in is the
six inches in front of your face and nothing else.
That can lead to challenges as well from a mental health
perspective. And so having these big
expansive experiences that kind of shake you up and wake you up,
you go, Jesus Christ is more to life than just wake up and grind
and lift some weights. And I think that's a really
powerful piece of the puzzle as well.
It is that that essentially can give a man faith and hope, which
is powerful is why religion can be incredibly powerful, whatever
religion, because it gives people faith and faith can get
you through the darkest of times. 100% what?
What's your journey been like with I suppose spirituality and
and faith? Yeah, so I'd actually say when I
was in my early 20s, I had like a timid relationship with God,
right. I wanted to to believe God was
there, but didn't really know how to go about doing that.
Then in my mid 20s, I lost my best mate in a car accident.
So then it was like, fuck you, like God doesn't exist.
And it was a big fuck you to, to whatever that looked like.
But actually in my mid 30s when I started to step into more this
sort of work, men's work and that sort of spaces, going to
breath work, going to some psychedelics that opened me up.
And actually whether that's God, the universe, spirit, a higher
force. I now do have a belief that
there is something there, that there is a higher force.
And it just, I'll tell you what makes life a little bit more
exciting just to be open to that rather than close to it, to be
able to have deeper conversations.
And I'll give you an example probably two months ago when I
did my last men's event in London.
We do also somatic breath work. And I don't participate myself,
someone else does. But I had an enlightening
experience there where I essentially saw Jesus and then
saw Goddess come in and, and it was incredibly powerful that my
own mind created that. And it was very, very
enlightening. It's like an out of body
experience. And that's exciting, Yeah.
To be able to do that and to be able to to know that you can
create that inner peace and that inner enlightenment as just as a
man. Yeah, yeah, it's fascinating.
I think there's a woman called Doctor Lisa Miller who's done a
lot of research on the role of spirituality of mental and
emotional health. And her view is that we're all
innately spiritual beings that, that actually we just lose our
connection with it rather than have to build our connection
with it. And it's often about
reconnecting to that. And, and it's fascinating based
on what we do know about the neuroscience of altered states
of consciousness and mystical states, that there seems to be
a, a commonality of spiritual experiences through these
altered states of consciousness. It's it's sort of it leads us
there, whether, you know, whatever you want to call it,
whatever you end up just deciding to believe in or have
faith in, all roads lead back to, to some sense of
spirituality. And I think you're absolutely
right. I think, you know, I most of my
life grew, kind of grew up as a pretty staunch intellectual
atheist. I was like, yeah, but there's no
evidence. So why would I believe in that?
And actually, it's a pretty bleak place to live from because
you're like, well, I have to see something and feel something to
believe it. Otherwise it's not worth
anything. And actually, that just cuts you
off from. Yeah, the excitement and I don't
even the expansiveness that comes with actually going.
There's so much and I think that's maybe where all of the
states of consciousness come in is it shows you that there is so
much that you do not know. And it's that not knowing that I
think underpins faith. Faith is underpinned by an
inevitable non knowing or kind of a gap in certainty.
And to think that you to think with absolute certainty that you
know, everything is pretty naive in my, in my opinion.
And so I think once you connect to something that shows you how
little you know, that's where faith starts to to bleed into
into your life. What would you say in what's
been the most breathtaking experience that you've had or
you've seen witnessed through like conscious connected breath
work? So the one that I spoke to for
myself was, was like a light bulb moment that that turned on.
I think everything has happened since.
So that was the one where I went, oh, I wonder how one would
go about teaching this to other people.
And I had a conversation with the guy that run that session.
Now I'm still in touch with the week after that.
And I was like, oh, OK. And that and that to me has kind
of changed my life trajectory. I've seen.
So, you know, thousands of people come through sessions,
there's some that are quite recent that stand out, a couple
of people who have connected to late partners or late parents
and had really incredibly healing experiences through
reconciling relationships with with people that have passed.
So that's that's been incredibly powerful to witness.
I think there's something in if I look at every, you know, group
session 1 to one session every, every session is, is there a
common thread? I think the common thread that
that I see is a connection to self that enables connection to
other people. And I think that's, again, it's
like a collective light bulb moment where everyone there in a
group session, 20 people, 100 people, however many is there
lying down, eyes closed, having their own experience.
And then come the end of the session, they open their eyes
and there's a felt connection between the person that they
were next to, even if they're a complete stranger at the start.
And I think that to me underpins all of it.
It's like the shared humanity. And it's waking up as, as you
said earlier, kind of that collective consciousness shift
where it's just like, oh, I just remembered I'm human.
And I can see that you've just remembered that you're human as
well. Isn't that nice?
And now we have a connection. And it's that coming back to,
you know, whether it's God, whether it's collective
consciousness, whether it's the universe, whatever you want to
call it, it's almost like we're stripping back some of the
layers and connecting more closely to that shared sense.
And so have they. And so there's an inherent
connection. It's this idea that we're all,
you know, we're all ultimately connected.
And it's just that we forget, and we forget through the ego
and through the mind and through the separate self where we go, I
am this and you are that. And therefore we're not the
same. And then you do have an
experience with an altered state of consciousness and you go,
we're more or less the same, just with different layers built
up on top of that. So, yeah, I think that that
would be like the biggest singular thing that that I've
witnessed. Yeah, yeah, I've witnessed a
lot. And you know, one of the big,
one of the, one of the biggest ones that you actually know the
guy, the biggest transformations that I've seen very, very
recently is a, is one of the guys that she curing a, a
stomach condition that you have for like 6-7 years of a really
intolerance of not being out between most foods and if you
would eat, eat stomach a blobby carpet rashes and so forth.
And we did a whole weekend essentially on or we did a
probably about 6-7 hours on forgiveness.
Yeah, just like work shopping on forgiveness and then went into
like, probably, you know, it's a good two hours of breath work
and a whole ceremony around that.
And there was about 35 guys and most men were processing some
form of forgiveness in their life.
This particular chap processed forgiveness for his father.
They didn't even know he needed to do.
And that that came through because he was able to get rid
of the ego, get rid of his, you know, access more of his
subconscious. And then you get into some root
causes. How old is stomach condition?
Yeah. It's world, isn't it?
Like this is the bit where, again, you know, science can
tell us bits about this, but then we see things happen like
that. And for me, it's just further
confirmation of the role of the mind or the mind body in a lot
of these experiences of life, whether it's chronic illness,
whether it's, you know, whatever it might be.
At what point did that start and what is the core driver?
Is it the fact that you are just allergic to that thing?
Or was it the thing that happened to you in your past
that led to this happening, this happening, this happening that
has led to this frontline symptom of allergy?
There's a woman who came on one of my last retreats who had been
struggling with chronic fatigue for I think four or five years.
And the last day of the retreat, the last breath work session,
she kind of came back around after the session and goes, I
feel like the chronic fatigue has left my body.
And I said, hold on to that, believe that and let's just keep
keep an eye on it. Let's see where it goes because
I don't want you to come up here and then crash again, Try and do
everything. Spoke to her a couple of weeks
later. She's like, yeah, it feels like
it's gone, feels like it's shifted.
And there's so many layers to that.
There's the the physiological processing piece that we've
we've spoken to. There's the belief system.
You know, if you're identifying as someone who has a condition,
your mind is going to be reconfirming that over and over
again. The mind is so much more
powerful than we have any ability to comprehend in terms
of how these things play out. And so there's, there's layers,
but to see again, it comes back to faith because I would love to
be able to sit here because I like to intellectualize things
and explain exactly why that's happened.
But again, comes back to faith. I go, it's happened so great and
kind of step back and let it happen and be able to, yes,
again, integration is a word that's come up a couple of
times, but like help people in the integration of that so that
it can become a long lasting thing.
Because there's nothing worse than someone having an
experience like that and then cycling round and cycling round
and feeling like, oh, I am broken, I am broken.
Why is it coming back and actually helping someone to kind
of progress within that process as well?
Yeah, when it comes to like the deepest somatic breath work, the
breath work where it is going into trauma, kneeling,
processing, talk to me about integration and like the
importance of that. Yeah, it's it's really, it's a
fancy time for making things stick.
It's taking the insights, it's taking the experiences and and
committing to integrating that into your life longer term.
Because with any psychedelic, with any altered state, the
difference between sort of alchemy and escapism is the
integration. Because we can all do the
breathwork session, half the high and then come back to where
we were before and be like, oh, that was fun, wasn't.
It breathwork. Is cool, but that's it.
Or you know, the mushrooms, mushrooms are great.
I'll go do that again next week. And actually, if you're not
making this stuff stick, if you're not planting those roots
and allowing things to, to kind of bloom from there, then it is
just escapism. It really is.
And so integration can take many different forms.
But typically what I encourage people to do is, is some form
of, of journaling in the, in the recent kind of aftermath, also
meditation and just sitting with those experiences.
The daily breath work piece that we talked about in the first
episode of actually, how do you keep your system regulated?
How do you kind of keep working towards that?
And also conversation Co regulation therapy to actually
go, oh, this is what I experienced, but I don't know
how to make it stick and getting support with that.
And then to put conversation we're having just before we
start recording this one, the embodiment of the integration.
So, so well and good going. I think I feel better now.
I go, OK, well, what's changed in your life?
What are you doing differently? That to me is, is a sign of
integration having taken place, is that you are living from a
different place, not just with a different understanding.
And I think that's where a lot of people get stuck.
And it's one of the things that I'm sort of trying to address in
my work at the moment is seeing how many people have got a bunch
of great lessons in the last few years, but their lives are the
same and they're going, I still feel shit, maybe even a little
bit shitter because I know what I could be doing differently,
but nothing's changed. And so how do we actually
integrate, properly integrate lived experience of difference
through making different choices and doing different things?
Because something that I experienced through integrating
an ayahuasca experience was how uncomfortable doing things
differently felt to begin with and how easy it would have been
to go back to doing things how I did them before.
And actually weeks of, oh God, this, this doesn't feel normal.
And I really went to a place of like, what's wrong with me?
Like I don't feel normal. And then I had to just keep
reminding myself, this is what you wanted.
You didn't want to stay the same.
You didn't want to be in that place that you were before.
So things have to feel different and different is uncomfortable.
And so just reminding myself of that and going, I chose, I want
to choose a different path and that takes different action.
Different action will feel weird, but you just have to
commit to it until it feels normal, which takes us way back
to the first part of the first conversation.
Conscious breathing, functional breathing.
It'll feel weird and intentional to begin with until the point
that it doesn't. And I think that's the the big
factor. Yeah, I like that.
I like different action as well because there's a lot of, you
know, take action, action, action, action, take action.
But actually it's different action.
And you're right on intellectualizing, you know,
it's, it's, it's you can have all the insights in the world,
but if you don't take a different form of action
afterwards, it's just the librarian of the mind.
It's just fucking. It's all in there, but nothing's
changed. I was that for a very long time.
I remember a podcast conversation I had almost five
years ago, I think, and the guy I was interviewing, great guy
said, you know, I like to look at it as having a PhD in my own
mind. I'm like, I loved that at the
time. I was like, me too, That's what
I'm doing. I love it.
I understand myself. I know all this stuff.
And if that's all you're doing, and that's not to downplay that
as a part of the process, but if that's all you're doing, I don't
know if that works. I genuinely don't because I've
seen it myself. Like you just become a very self
aware person and I without self actualization, without
integration, without doing anything differently.
I'm not sure what that gives you other than the ability to sit on
a podcast and talk about yourself.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's, it's if we talk, we
go back into the first episode. We, we, we touched on like
masculine and feminine energies. self-awareness is very is a very
feminine energy. Being able to sit in yourself
awareness, but it's a good thing.
But if you sit in it for too long, you're just sitting in it.
There's no action. You're just sitting in it and
being aware of your awareness. Great.
But it's then it's like fucking sweet, got the awareness.
Now there's there's the insight. Now let's go back into a more of
a masculine before a guy, right? A male masculine energy.
What can we do now to take action?
How can I do some different action right now?
Yeah, and I think I very much view, you know, I used to talk
about this as sort of healing 1.0, healing 2.0.
So it's like 1.0 is an important part of the process.
You need to figure yourself out. You need to understand yourself,
otherwise the action is going to be misguided.
It's almost like that's the, you create the user manual to then
take action. And that might take six months,
a year, five years, 10 years. But within that you're always
iterating how you're acting and actually building.
You know, I've, I've changed tact a lot over the last few
years in terms of, you know, some of my views on things.
I'm very open to having my view changed on based on my
experience and based on conversation.
But you're constantly refining it and constantly refining it.
And as, as you perfectly said, you know, if you're just sitting
in it, you're not really doing anything.
And ultimately, we're doing the work on ourselves.
Again, comes back to the first conversation we had so that
things can be different for ourselves and people around us.
And I think that's really important is, is to alchemize
the work for a purpose, whether that's your purpose or just a
purpose. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
I like, I like, I really like the word tolerate.
So it's like do some breath work, do some psychedelics,
whatever, have the have the awareness, have the insights.
Then like a super easy thing to do is to look at your life and
go, where am I tolerating the things that go against the
inside? I've just had like what am I
tolerating in my life That just fucking goes against that.
Well, there's that in my relationships, that in my work,
that in my health. Then just look at this fix.
Just sort out. Just go, I'll do the different
thing. Then do that life change.
Absolutely. And I think it's we often put
ourselves in positions in our lives that confirm the beliefs
that we hold about ourselves. So one for me was a still is I
suppose I, I spend a lot of time and, and this is something I
view as a positive as well. I spend a lot of time with
people older and more successful than me.
Incredibly inspiring, drives me, motivates me, keeps me
absolutely stuck in the belief that I'm not good enough because
I'm surrounded by people older than me and more, more quote UN
quote, more successful than me. And so there's light and dark to
all of this. But again, it's come back to
that point of what you tolerating.
What positions or situations have you found yourself in that
make you uncomfortable or that you don't like in your life?
What belief is that confirming about yourself?
Because actually the beliefs, you know, that belief that I'm
not good enough is probably the one that I've held onto.
And I know for a lot of other people for as long as I can
remember. And so to change that I'm going
to feel different and different is hard.
It's easy to stay in that belief.
And so actually to start doing things differently, even if that
different is going to make you feel significantly better, can
feel really challenging. And so if you're in a position,
you know, a job that you don't like, a relationship that you
don't like, maybe asking that question of like, what belief is
this confirming? Is it that, you know, I'm not
worthy of love or that I will never be successful or I don't
deserve something? And then go, do I want to
believe that? How do I change that belief?
And then also how do I change that situation?
Yeah, fucking beliefs. There's some thoughts going
around your head, actually. I mean those.
Those beliefs, man, they but that's the thing.
It's, it's, it's a belief. A belief is something that we've
made-up. It's, it's, it's a story.
What the, The thing is like, like my arm right now, if I drop
it, what's dropping it? It's gravity that's dropping it.
Really. It's like that's what's pushing
it's that that's what pushing us down.
Gravity is science. It's real.
It's there a belief is not it's something that we've made-up.
It's a story for the most part that just bullshit.
But then for the most part, because we've held those beliefs
for so long, they are it's like it's the security in our
insecurity. So we we gain security by
staying in that bullshit insecure belief and it's and
then it's on repeats patterns for all of our lives.
That's it. And I think, you know, I, I
speak a lot about autonomy and agency in my work at the moment,
which is, you know, I ended up in a place in my life that I was
deeply miserable. And I felt like I'd ended up
there by accident because I just lived pretty unconsciously in a
state of autopilot. I was like, I've made choices,
but how many of those were my own?
How many of them were really driven by what I truly wanted?
Very, very few. And once you kind of can shake
yourself up to that fact of like, I've ended up somewhere
seemingly by accident and I don't like it here, that's
almost the starting point. You go, OK, well, now's the
opportunity to do things differently, but knowing within
that that you're going to have to make some choices that might
feel uncomfortable because it's not familiar.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is where for for men,
it's important to to go. I don't need to do this on my
own, I don't think. I've been trying on my own for
fucking years and it's not working.
Like find a men's group, find do some a breathwork coach, find a
great therapist, find a shaman, whatever that looks like to go
right. Am I going to am I going to do
this, but not on my own. Build the power team.
It's like best teams in the world or Navy Seals, best
companies in the world, Amazon. They're all built by the the
teams. So it's having a superpower team
yourself to help you figure this shit out and then gain the right
actions to then change. 100% And I think I guess speaking to
that, like finding the unfamiliar and breaking out of
the, the sort of security of the the insecurity is also, and it's
hard, it's easier said than done, allowing yourself to seek
out unfamiliar forms of support. So it might be the shaman or it
might be if you've always had a female therapist, it's a male
therapist. Or if you've always gone to
men's groups, maybe it's a mixed experience, like actually going
even in doing the work. And this is where it just gets
fucking overcomplicated. But even in doing the work,
where am I keeping myself stuck? Because I'm going to the
familiar, I'm going, I'm going to the comfortable and I'm just
reaffirming the beliefs that are already there rather than going,
How can I bust this wide open and actually get get some food
for thought from a place that you might not expect it because
that's where you're going to get the, I think this the kind of
snippets of, of real gold and real change.
Yeah, someone recently offered me to go and study and get
trained in kundalini activation, right?
And I was like, do you know what?
Not right now, but because I've got my own things going on.
It's just another thing on my plate that I don't need.
But at some stage next year I'll do that.
Because for me, it's so fucking left wing.
It's so the other way. It's completely different to all
my very, very masculine orientated science backed
modalities that I've but I'm very well trained and versed in
and I'm like, yeah, do you know what that makes me feel
uncomfortable doing this completely whatever the fuck
that is, right. And it's and it's very, very
different. So I will do that.
Yeah, I think, I think that's it.
It's it's the curiosity piece and, and knowing, especially
with modalities and and faith systems, I think both of these
probably speaks to is that they all come back to very similar
places. So something like Kundalini's
very much about getting into your body, about life force
energy moving through your system.
Could say exactly the same for conscious connective breathing
in a different form. We're all, when you strip it
right back, we're all speaking very much to similar things,
whether it's modalities or phase systems.
Where do you see breath work evolving, particularly for for
conscious guys, it's a. Timely question because I, I'm
in a position right now where I feel like it has to evolve.
It's evolving for me in terms of how I operate the business, how
I practice myself. And again, it's very, very
similar. And this is where I think just
the world is hilariously patent LED.
It's similar to that healing one point O, healing 2 point O.
We could almost say breath work, one point O, breath work 2 point
O, one point O is let's package this up as a really nice neat
modality. Let's go.
Here are your techniques, here are your tools, here are your
workshops. There you go.
And people can get a lot from it, but it's really the
commercialization and commodification of the thing.
And that is a really quick way to suck the life out of it, to
suck the philosophy out of it, to suck the, the, the gold out
of it. Ultimately, 2.0 is about how do
we, how do we shift beyond that? And, and for me, this is about
the breath is a, a fundamental part of, of everything that we
do. And how can we really turn it
back in, in the Western world, at least back into an integrated
life philosophy. So people are just aware of
their breath day-to-day. They know what tools they need
to use, and then they're able to empower themselves to create
change in their lives with breath as a part of that.
So the three pillars that we mentioned in the first
conversation of functional breathing, nervous system
regulation and, and therapeutic breath work still apply.
But the way that I'm now approaching it for breath work,
2 point O is breath work is a gateway to reclaim awareness,
autonomy and purpose. So rather than speaking about
the tool, we're speaking about the, the thing that it empowers
you to, to gain access to. So to reclaim awareness,
autonomy and purpose. And the breath can do all of
those things for us. And so that for me is if I were
prescribing something or drawing up a road map for people to to
go and follow is explore breath work and perhaps you go breath
work. One point O first is a way into
that part of the journey. But also, rather than thinking
about what, what breath work tool do I want to use?
It's going, why am I seeking this thing?
What is my intention here? What am I trying to get from
this? Am I struggling with awareness,
balance, autonomy, agency, purpose, meaning, what is it?
And then seek accordingly and apply accordingly.
So I think it's it's more about that for me now of how do we
create an integrated life philosophy that supports us not
just in the moment of doing the practice, but just across the
board. Yeah, I can sync that with
something that I say to guys because I think with with guys,
particularly when I get into self development, personal
development, it's all about how. Pete, just give me the fucking
road map mate. Give me 3 steps.
How what, what do I need to do and how.
And that is very much the 1.0. It's the, it's the in the breath
work, it's the workshop, it's the, it's the trainings, it's
the it's the how. But the two point O and the same
as self development, it's not about the how, it's about The
Who. It's never about the how.
It's always about The Who you are, who you are being and who
you are becoming. That's like the two point O
there. Yeah, and it's it.
You know, how implies that there's a solution, it implies
that there's an end goal. And I think that The Who is the
that's the journey, Who is the journey, The Who is the
acceptance, The Who is the, the seeking without a desire to to
find something other than to continue the journey.
I even see it. It's something I've been talking
quite a lot about recently as well with non fiction and
fiction. You know, I've pretty much
solely read non fiction for the last five years, learned lots,
understood lots, gained lots of knowledge and and awareness.
Now almost exclusively reading fiction, interesting fiction of
like philosophy and mystery and and stuff that is still, you
know, fascinating to me. But very much viewing that as
reading nonfiction is information gathering.
That is the how and then fiction is going.
How am I choosing to interpret this story through the lens of
who I am? And it's empowering The Who.
Like what am I choosing to take away from this story?
What is it making me feel? How is it making me think?
And it's much more of a personal interpretation and integration
of a story rather than give me some knowledge and I'll remember
it and then I'll might spit it back out at some point.
So I do, I think that's something that that we're seeing
across the board is this one point O2 point O shift in so
many different aspects of of development.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely right, Jamie.
Let's wrap it up, mate. Good to see you on the.
Mic Yeah, good to see you, Mike. Same.
Thank you for tuning in and we'll be back next week with
another one. Cheers guys.